Icecrown Valithria Dreamwalker Hard

[Ciderhelm]

You can find a guide to the normal version of this encounter here!

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Icecrown Citadel Raid Guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll cover everything you need to know about the heroic mode 10-man version of the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter. I will assume that you're familiar with the normal version of this encounter. If you're not, I suggest first watching our guide to the 10-man normal mode to learn about this fight's base mechanics.

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While she doesn't have a bigger health pool, the most obvious change you'll notice in this fight is that Valithria consistently loses a significant amount of health. The only way to counteract this mechanic is to properly utilize portals to the Emerald Dream. As you will see in this video, more than the first half of the encounter is spent slowly getting Valithria past 60% health until our healers acquire high amounts of Emerald Vigor stacks, but more about that later.

We went with a setup of 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 DPS. The healers we had were a holy paladin, a resto shaman and a holy priest. You will want two of your healers to enter the Emerald Dream on every portal phase, while your weakest single target healer stays outside and heals the raid.

Don't assume healing the raid is an easy task, though. Both raid and tank damage are increased significantly. The add kill order remains roughly the same, but here are some things you should know:

-The skeletons' Frostbolt Volley drains approximately 2k mana per cast.
-Gut Spray is cleansable and should be removed from your tank as soon as you see it, since it increases physical damage done by 50% and can quickly wreck a tank that has a lot of mobs on him.
-Corrosion is another move that tends to drastically change a tank's survivability - to avoid having it stack up, you can kite the zombies.
-Lay Waste still hurts.
-Don't leave any suppressors up.

This seemed to work out well for us.

Mana conservation is key for the outside healer and taking as little damage as possible while killing adds efficiently is key for the rest of the outside team. If available, keep an innervate ready to use on your outside healer as they will not be able to enter the Emerald Dream.

The healers taking the emerald portals (note they're red in the heroic version) cannot, under any circumstances, let their Emerald Vigor stacks fall off. High stacks are an absolute necessity to win this fight. It's worth noting that the nightmare clouds in the emerald dream do not respawn like they do in the normal mode of this fight and that touching one will inflict some minor damage. Heal yourself if necessary.

Make sure to pick up a cloud right before your time in the Emerald Dream runs out and take a new portal as soon as it opens, then immediately float up and hit another cloud to avoid having your stacks fall off. If your outside healer is doing their job well, you should not need to spend any time healing the raid, but do keep an eye on your tanks especially if they have multiple stacks of corrosion on them.

Don't be irritated by the slow start of this encounter, as long as your portal healers keep up their stacks, you'll see an exponential increase in healing quickly.

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[Darksend]

This is the hardest encounter so far, we did it with a paladin and holy priest with gheal spec going inside. It is ok if the priest let his stack fall but if the paladin let his fall we would not even try and would just wipe it instantly. We were at about 80% when we hit lust, with a 30 stack that 80% did not even last the full 45 seconds of it.

We also had a tricks and a misdirect so I solo tanked it for some extra dps. Worked rather well for us. We had an aff lock and spriest dotting suppressors and then getting back on adds. Used a frost trap under every single abom corpse, hit swipe once when they were all up and then started kiting with a tricks fan so they almost never hit me unless I was slowed. Landing a bash on the casters they were dead from full health before the stun ended. Let the blisterings be kited, we had a hunter and a DK and by the time they even reached me they were almost dead and I was just taunting it away from blowing up on the casters.

She needs to be healed before the 7th portal or just as it is spawning because that is when you just get completely overwhelmed by adds

[virindi]

Harder than putricide heroic?

[Darksend]

Harder than putricide heroic?

Yes for the simple reason that the entire fight depends on a single person keeping a stack from the very first portal. If after 3 portals they go in and there are none near them and the stack falls it is an instant wipe.

[Trexokor]

Aliena mentions that the clouds inside do not respawn like the normal mode. I'm assuming this is in reference to the fact that, in normal mode, you can hit a cloud or two in one area and then just wait, and they will respawn again 7-8 seconds later there.

Obviously they have to respawn at some rate. However, for clarification, when you re-enter the dream state are all of the clouds up again regardless of which ones you hit just before exiting the last dream state, or are they on a respawn timer that makes you think about where you last ended inside the portal?

Darksend's "If after 3 portals they go in and there are none near them and the stack falls it is an instant wipe." hints at there being a respawn timer that is slightly longer than the time it takes for the portal to respawn from the last time it ended, leading to some empty spots in the dream state when you go back in.

If this isn't the case and the dream state has a fresh set of clouds, you'd never run into the case of entering in an area with no clouds. Healer fail would be the sole cause of letting your stack fall off, rather than a bit of bad luck combined with bad planning.

[Protempora]

Just did this on 10man Heroic, took 7 attempts I think.

We ran 5 dps, 2 tanks, and 3 healers, a Resto Druid and a Shaman in portals, and a disc priest.

The shaman is VERY good at portals, so we put him full time on the boss (He finished about 30k hps in 25man normal, and 22k hps on 10man H). The resto druid was full time portals, but kept the tanks hotted, one regrowth goes a long way, as does a wild growth. The disc priest was able to cover raid and tanks for the most part, with a little help.

Just to clarify a few of the mechanics. The clouds in the portals do respawn during the down time between portals, but as far as we could tell, the respawn time is slightly longer then the time between portals, so watch out if you're planning to enter in the same place you landed. This wasn't normally a problem, because we ended up in slightly different spots before each portal phase.

We had a little issue with tank deaths when a tank had both a zombie and worms on her at the same time, so just make sure to use a tank CD and have the healers ready (we kited the zombies as best as possible, but the tanks would try to get initial threat).

As noted by others, the end of the fight goes by very fast. At 75% our druid stayed out of portals to help with raid healing, and the shaman used Blood lust as soon as he came out of the portal, and we were able to push it from 75-100 in one go.

We messed around on putricide HM for about 10 attempts, and I would personally say that we had many more issues with that fight, but I guess it all just takes practice =) Best of luck to everyone.

[Kazeyonoma]

any other tips than the overview? Not that Aliena's is pretty spot on, my group which normally excels in all things hardmode is running into a wall on this one.

We've tried several different make ups, here's our healer compositions:

we have a boomkin with an awesome resto set but his dps as boomkin is phenomenal in this fight
we have a disc priest who has an off spec holy (he's relatively new to it but understands the game well)
we have a holy paladin
we have a shadow priest with a disc priest off spec.

we've tried just about every combination here. do we send just the pally in alone? do we send in the pally + the holy priest and have the offspec healers stay out? DPS wise it "FEELS" like we start falling behind very quickly, sometimes its due to the kiter of the blistering's dying, but other times it just feels like once we get 2 archmages up it's a wipe cuz we all get slowed and we're screwed. Any tips?

thanks.

this is for 10 man btw. and yes we've tried solo tanking it as well (which worked surprisingly well).

[Darksend]

this is for 10 man btw. and yes we've tried solo tanking it as well (which worked surprisingly well).

This is how my 10 man got our first kill on her, not sure if we did 3 or 4 healers with 1 tank though, I think 3 but cant remember

[nugiyen]

Just had my first try on Val 10-man HC as a Holypala. And after 3 tries we "upped" her.

Loosing stacks really wasnt a problem in my experience. With 2 inside the portal you communicate before hand on which route you are goin to take. Be aware of yourmate so you don't steal eachothers stacks with the risk of one loosing his. And you should be able to clear the room. get back down to the floor and be ready to heal as soon as you get out. We found that our healer had it a bit though just as we got out of the portals, so I usualy kept a beacon of the tank on my side. And our restoshaman along with healing up val helped with chainheals and such.

From what I can see you might benefit from 2 tanks or another dps and only 1 raid healer. It would provide you with more control and a bit more dps . And being able to down the spawns fast = less healing = more control. When we get out of portals with around 18-20stacks we popped a heroism and "reset" the encouter. Since the time to beat wasnt a problem only the control to the later part of the fight.

[GimlisKar]

Just did this fight over the weekend as an offspec pally healer. The guide mentioned minor damage from touching the orbs inside, though we noticed it was a stacking dot on the healers that really could inflict some serious damage at higher stacks.

Looks like its only about 100 damage per stack and usually wasn't an issue but trying to find the orbs inside as the spatial perception in there can be difficult and healing yourself can prove too much for some. As well as a poorly timed exit out of the portal, coupled with fall dmg (if too high) and frost bolt or tick of lay waste could easily mean a dead portal healer and a wipe.

[Belicia]

Just did this fight over the weekend as an offspec pally healer. The guide mentioned minor damage from touching the orbs inside, though we noticed it was a stacking dot on the healers that really could inflict some serious damage at higher stacks.

Looks like its only about 100 damage per stack and usually wasn't an issue but trying to find the orbs inside as the spatial perception in there can be difficult and healing yourself can prove too much for some. As well as a poorly timed exit out of the portal, coupled with fall dmg (if too high) and frost bolt or tick of lay waste could easily mean a dead portal healer and a wipe.

Just make sure you have Holy Shock bound so you can easily cast on yourself (if you don't want to worry about clicking on your raid frame or whatever, you could just make a macro to target yourself and cast it). I found this more than sufficient to keep myself alive, even with 20+ stacks on heroic.

[Mwawka]

Just a quick question I was hoping someone could answer. I'm gonna be pushing to do Valithria 10 on hard mode tonite and was wondering if anyone had an idea at what percentage health it is safe to stop going in the portals and just finish healing her, assuming your stacks have some time left on them?

[Daimon]

95%

[Mr.Winkle]

I know the last post on this boss was a while ago but just to avoid any confusion for those still progressin on hardmodes, im pretty sure that you can ignore portals at about 80% boss health, but you'll want enough buff stacks to heal her to full so like 20´or more.

[Hordefrost]

I have a holy paladin and i was wondering what tecnique Aliena uses with he Grid,just macros or Clique,i use healbot but i dont like the look of it and like grid better but dont know how to heal with it