Icecrown Lord Marrowgar Hard

[Ciderhelm]

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

Welcome back to the Icecrown Citadel raid guide! I am Splug, and in this video I'll be going over our strategy for the heroic difficulty of the Lord Marrowgar encounter.

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Marrowgar is only slightly altered from his non-heroic counterpart. His health pool is higher, and his damage is increased, but beyond that the tank and spank phase is almost entirely unchanged. Coldflame lasts longer, and as such your tanks will need to work around having three coldflame lines up rather than two. The same tactics that worked for non-hard mode Phase I continue to work: stack the raid in melee range of the boss, cleave down the bone prisons, and have the tanks dodge Coldflame each time it's cast. The raid will want to start spreading out roughly 5 seconds before Bonestorm begins to cast.

The Bonestorm phase is slightly different. Marrowgar will move an extra time, and remains at each location noticably longer. Additionally, he will continue to summon bone spikes between moves. This can be particularly dangerous if players are pinned inside the spinning storm. The Bonestorm also now does non-trivial damage; standing near the center will do roughly 13,000 damage in 25-player, and 11,000 in 10-player. This damage drops off quickly as you build distance from the center of the boss.

We simply had everyone spread out over a smaller area to handle the phase. We kept the 25-player raid contained within the circle enclosed by the trench, and in 10-player confined the group to the circular stage. This helped ensure everyone was within range to be broken free from the bone spikes, without necesarily having clumped or assigned positions which would cause too many people to move at once. Melee and tanks should be careful to not all gather on one bone spike, as it increases the risk of Marrowgar spinning into that position next.

Other than that, the encounter is just longer. Bonestorm phases are longer, and you will need more of them to burn through his increased health pool. If you'd like more information or clarifications, feel free to ask questions or add suggestions either on YouTube or in the strategy thread on TankSpot.com. And remember, TankSpot Donors can download all of these movies in High Definition directly from our servers -- click the second link in the movie information box to learn more.

[Joacimcans]

It is worth mentioning that this boss is now either bugged or stealth nerfed it is no longer an aggro reset after bonestorm so that eliminates one of the challenges for this fight.

[liljohn1466]

i cant see any movies i dont know if i need to download something so i can see it but if u know anything i can do plzz tell

[dvannoort]

We started 10 man hard modes last night and had a lot of trouble with the bone storm phase of this fight. The damage just seemed to be to much for us to heal. On ave. we had 6 to 7 taking 55k on each bone storm is that normal? Any tips on how to limit this damage some? Thnx

[Shortypop]

We did this last night, and after attempting to 2 heal it once, we 3 healed it For bonestorm the best thing you can do is have your ranged and even melee run out (all sort of in the same direction) 5 seconds before he starts it, meaning he's less likely to hit lots of people, after that it's a case of dodging him when he comes, but staying close enough to help bash out spined people - also if it's a choice between running through cold flame or getting whirwinded choose the cold flame everytime!

[Unger]

You know, this boss is, by far, the hardest boss for my 10 man with the exception of the two we dont have down, Putricide and Lich King. We really struggle with survivability and I cant really explain why. One of the key things we figured out before we downed it was that you absolutely cannot range any healers. You have to stay in range of all of them. Also, he will bone spike people and then go Bone Storm on them for what seems like an eternity so we had the melee stop breaking out the bone spikes and had the ranged do it. The theory was that he "targets" someone to whirl on for while and if melee is over there, thats where he will go. We also found that being in fire while bone spiked is pretty bad.... and that causes a lot of our deaths.

This guide is a great start.... but is there anyone who has a more in depth way to handle Bone Storm? That is literally the only time we have any problems on the fight (naturally).

Any help you guys have would be great. Thanks for the help and the video!

Edit: I am speaking to 10 man. Sorry for the omission

[Meatwisper]

Not to inflate my guild or myself, but we run 1 tank, 3 healers, and 6 DPS on this fight (10 man). We tried 2 tanks, 2 healers, but the Bonestorm ends up wiping the raid if a healer is impaled. Tank damage surprising isn't high (20-25k per hit if the hit lands), and with 3 healers during the non bone-storm phase, its very easy to heal. This will allow an extra dps to help with Spikes during Whirlwind. Just my 2 cents.

[Shodowz]

Im in a 10 man guild myself and last nights attempts there was something seriously wrong, we had 1 attempt where we had no bone spikes, then another attempt where we had no coldflames, but his bonestorm was 1 shotting people....

We got marrowgar down last week on our 3rd attempt, last night we had 12 wipes to HM and had to kill it on normal, What we do is run 2 tanks because you can 'choose' where he bonestorms, i let my pally MT and i soak the damage, 10 seconds before a Bonestorm i run west so im a good 30-40 yards away from the group that way he bonestorms me first which gives the group enough time to spread, we have 3 healers (1 set @ North, 1 West, 1 East of the outer ring) healer range that way is covered, melee do not touch bone spikes they stay spread out, and our range take down bone spikes, our healers just heal the spikes and we run 3 pallies so if we get a bonestorm on a bonespike we just BoP that person so he doesnt get insta gibbed.

It looks good on paper but in theory this is fricken hard, something seemed to be completely different from last week, he seemed to own people quicker. I dunno but i cannot find any strats that go into Bonestorm setup properly, Its ok these 25 man guilds showing you there 10 HM kill vids but in only 10 man attained gear this is hard work which we knew, but to go from last week getting him on 3rd attempt to 12 wipes i feel is insane considering we had same group, strat unchanged etc.

thoughts anyone ?

[Belicia]

Shodowz, is there a reason you have all of your DPS/healers spread out? Before bone storm, we have our DPS/healers (who had been standing directly behind the boss) back up about 15 yards. The tanks run as far as possible to the sides of the room. This causes Marrowgar to spend so much time moving around the room, he's barely ever in one place hitting people. Clumping the DPS/healers together also lets them VERY quickly get down Bonespikes (from my experience: he doesn't Bonespike tanks, ever). If you're spreading out, I think you make his kite path less predictable, and you make it take longer to get the Bone Spikes down. With a simple triangle (tank, tank, DPS/heals), he'll only ever bounce back and forth between those three spots--and he'll always spend a long time moving there.

[Healadin]

It doesnt help that Marrowgar got nerfed along with every other icc boss other than lich king....

[rerat]

hi Ciderhelm,..
thanks for the nice video shared,....nice post nice to seen,..