For The Horde!

I had my last raid with my previous guild.  Last Thursday (ie one week ago) I made the transfer to horde and my new cataclysm 10man guild.  I decided to do it then as the night before the 25man barely ran and that night had been called.  My new guild were on my case saying "Come raid with us!!".

So, I was torn.  I sat there thinking "I should stay and help my 25s, they need me, they put effort into me" And then I caught myself.  No, I had earned everything I had via DKP, I didn't owe the guild anything for my gear, if anything they owed me at this point.  I had turned up, put up with complaining and bitching.  Put up with a culture I had enjoyed less and less as time went on.  The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I was still there staying with a guild that I wasn't overall comfortable with and denying the people who actually wanted to play with me (and not just because of my shiny mace).  RealID meant I had everyone I wanted to keep in touch with on my friends list already and I could talk across faction with them.  There really was no downside to my leaving except personal guilt.  And personal guilt, in this case, was very silly!  So, I said bye to the 11 people online, the 3 people left in my vent channel (not including all the people in passworded channels - I really hate passworded channels) after the 25man failure and hit "continue" on the transfer webpage of my battle.net account.

This is (slightly abridged, but) what I posted to the guild:

This has been coming for some time, you all know what I am going to be saying. I'm not retiring, however.

I am moving early to the 10man guild I am starting horde side. The transfer is currently in process. I was going to see out this raiding week, but given the dogging I decided to add to the shitness and move earlier rather than later. 4 holy paladins last night is not great for raid balance at the best of times, and when one is the goo queen [NER: That's me, I keep getting hit by malleable goo no matter what I do!], it's even more sheeite.

I wanted to say that I have honestly enjoyed my time [here]. It was a big thing for me to do, move to [this guild]. Not sure how many of you will understand how big a deal it was, some might, but there you go.
...

I do feel awful about leaving, but I am a guild leader at heart. I have spent most of my wow time running guilds, and to be honest, I miss it a lot more than I thought I would.

But this is what I am going to be going to do:
(it happens to be horde because people wanted it)
I am running a 10man focussed guild... This guild will be special in that come cataclysm when we start raiding, none of us will research anything. No boss mods, no clues. We will walk in there cold. We will take off our clothes and run into the boss and see what happens.

We want to recapture the magic that we used to have learning new bosses, working together, strategising and NUDIE PULLS! FD pulls with pets, remember them? I do, and I miss that feeling of walking into a new boss and looking around in awe and not knowing what was in store. More and more I feel like raiding is simply going through the motions - everyone knows what to do before we walk in there, you get yelled at if you ask a stupid question.

Here is a guild who has been doing it for a while if you are interested in more information:
http://www.converge-dh.com/website/z...ncetactics.php [NER: Oh for the love of the light, I cant find the post with the comment in it from a guildy of that guild to credit them!!]

Yes, this will mean we are not competing for server firsts, but I don't care about that anymore. For me, there are 2 things to playing wow. The satisfaction of defeating a boss by the skin of my teeth with cunning and luck, and having fun with friends.

For me, 25s progression raiding is not magical anymore. I don't care if I kill LK HM, because that first LK kill we did was everything I could have wanted.

So, that was that.  Mostly I got sarcasm and bitterness from the people who bothered to reply to me (there were a couple of nice answers) which sealed the deal completely for me.

Since that time, I have raided twice in my new guild.  And I never realised that going backward in content could be so much fun.  We were wiping on LDW ICC10 normal (because, despite all my raiding time, I have never killed LK in 10man mode) and I was enjoying it.  People were learning, they were improving, criticism was constructive and people never took it personally.  I got to talk about balls to the face, and horizontal and vertical balls when explaining princes (which was hilarious to all involved).

In short; new guild good, old guild broken.  Looks like I will have things to write about soon enough!

The Lich King - Arthas Menethil

This has to be the most fiddly fight I have ever done.  There is zero room for error and the encounter is very sensitive to lag.  Playing with a 300+ ping increases the difficulty of this fight exponentially.  Once you overcome how to deal with defiles, the rest of the fight should fall into place.

I am also going to try to leave lore spoilers OUT of this strategy.  I worked very hard to not get spoilers before I defeated LK, and I will extend the same courtesy to you.


Shopping List:
2 tanks
6ish healers (less if you can)
A range heavy DPS lineup, preferably with a couple of hunters

Quick note for healing infest - this fight is a metric buttload easier with 1-2 disc priests in the raid.  They need to keep bubbles on everyone at all times to combat infest.  Having the bubbles will soak the burst of damage the raid will take, and thus generally keeping them over 90% without any extra raid healing.  If you dont have this, then this fight will be significantly harder and I would recommend taking an extra raid healer to compensate for it.  Infest is cast regularly in phases 1,2 and 3 (not in transitions) and I will not mention it again in detail.  In short, bubble the raid and keep them topped up at all times.  I recommend getting a raid frame addon (the default frames will do this as well) that displays which raid members have infest on them so you can focus any stragglers back to health.


Quick note to everyone in the raid - before you start, everyone should target LK and type /focus.  Ensure that you can see the LK and ensure that you can see the target of your focus, as well, prominently on your screen.  This will become apparent in phase 2.  If you have macros that rely on your focus, fix them up so you can keep LK focussed at all times.  I cannot stress how important this is.

Phase 1 - 100 - 70%
After a minute of roleplay, you can start hitting LK.  It doesn't really matter where you tank LK, the positioning is relative.  Phase 1 is all about the tanking, and the plague.

One tank will hold LK.  Periodically, LK will summon some pets for you to play with.  Tanks take turns in grabbing these adds.  Eventually, LK will summon a shambling horror, and this is where P1 really starts going.  The second tank needs to have the horror MD/tricksed to them if possible, otherwise they need to pick them up under their own steam.  Hunters/Rogues - it is handy for the tanks if you can work out a rotation to get the shamblings to the tank as efficiently as possible.  As they spawn (it's really obvious, they crawl out of the ground like a DK pet), clear the path between the mob and the tank tanking it or you may end up splattered on the ground if you stand in front of it.  No one, except the tank, should ever stand in front of these adds.  Ever.  Ever ever! Or you will die a splattery death.

Now, that tank tanking the mobs needs to move about 10 yards away from everyone on the LK.  Face the add away from the group.  No one will be DPSing the adds, there is a clever trick to killing them.  Your favourite boss timer will show you how frequently LK casts Necrotic plague.  If you have necrotic plague, you need to run as fast as you can to stand behind the Shambling horrors.  When you arrive at the shambling horrors, someone who is allocated will dispel the plague from you.  This will cause the plague to jump to the nearest target - which should be the Shambling Horror.  If it jumps to another player, work out your positioning as a raid to ensure that the nearest target is the Shambling Horror THIS IS VITAL!

Why? Because when that plague ticks at the 5s mark it does 100k damage.  Yes.  100k.  SO! You will use the plague to kill the adds. The allocated dispeller must dispel the plague at 4s regardless of whether the person with it is in the right place or not, if it ever ticks, that person will cop 100k damage and die.  When it jumps it starts the 15s timer again, so that next person has a fresh 4s to get into place. 

One last thing about this phase mechanically - the shambling horrors will also enrage periodocally.  The add will go big and red and mean and will hit the tank REALLY hard.  Healers need to be ready for this.  It can be tranquilized by hunters or rogues, and should be.

Other than that, burn the ghouls down with aoe and incidental damage and hurt LK.  When LK hits 71% make sure the raid is toward the edge of the platform, ready for phase 1.5.

Phase 1.5 70% No damage to LK
When LK runs to the centre, you all need to run to the edge to avoid Remorseless Winter AOE in the centre of the platform.  Using Aura Mastery at this time will help the stragglers caught out in the cold.

This transition lasts 60s, and it is a DPS race.


LK will periodically summon Ice Spheres. These will latch onto someone with a beam and hurt them.  Make sure you have a couple of good bursty range on them and that these things die before they get to their target because you really don't want to get knocked off the edge of the platform when it hits you or someone near you, it gets really annoying after a while!  So, kill those spheres ASAP!

He will also be casting Pain And Suffering on the raid.  So, there is a way to stand to minimise the impact of this.  Melee don't have a lot of choice, they stack up with the LK tank ready to DPS down the Raging Spirit (more on that later).  Ranged and healers need to spread out as much as possible on the cracks in the ice (you will see them).  The Shambling Horror tank needs to be off to the side on his own until the plague finishes off his adds.  The dispeller has to continue dispelling that tank, or they will die from the necrotic plague still bouncing around.

Most importantly, there needs to be a clear path around the very outside edge for the tank to move the Raging Spirits.  4 times in this 60s (the last being JUST before the 60s is up) Raging Spirits will spew like a gut burster out of you and try to eat your soul by tearing away at your flesh!  The tanks need to be ready to taunt them over, and hunters should be ready to assist with an MD.  When the spirit arrives, it is likely to knock you over, don't worry, just get up and try to help get that add to your tank.  Do not stand in front of the spirit as it will probably one shot you.  Tanks will need this silencing effect dispelled in order to be effective tanking.

Speed is of the essence, those raging spirits need to die as quickly as possible so you have very few up at the end of the 60s.

Call which tanks are taking which spirits and make sure that the tank for LK is free toward the end of the 60s.

At 60s LK will cast quake and Phase 2 will begin.


Phase 2 - DEFILES!!! 70% - 40%
The key to this phase is managing the defiles, indeed it is the key to the entire rest of this fight.

Everyone must run into the centre of the room or they will fall off the edge of the platform.  There might be an orb or two up.  Don't be an idiot and run into the orbs! they will wipe the raid.  Tank pick up LK and the other tank drag the raging spirits into range.  The raid must kill those spirits as a priority over killing LK.  Get them dead, dead, dead.  Once the spirits are dead, you can change your DPS target to LK and start to burn him down.

After a while, LK will summon 3 val'kyr to be annoying at you.  These Val'kyr will randomly grab 3 people and fly with them off to the nearest edge of the platform, ie not the stairs up to the throne.  They will always take the shortest path to drop you off to your doom.  This means that they are controllable.  The raid can stack tightly together, just off centre (hunters can stand back in line with the shortest path to the edge, get your protractors out everyone!), and the val'kyr will all take the same path to the same place.  This means that you can add incidental damage to all 3 mobs to burn them down faster.  You don't have a lot of time to kill them, so obviously you need to slow and stun them as much as you can to buy more time.  Allocate stun teams to each valkyr (boss mods can mark them for you), sort hunters out with traps, and DKs with their abilities to slow and chain.  This is up to your raid team to sort out, depending on what you have available.

Here's another bad paint picture to show you what I mean:

In order to get those val'kyrs down, you really need to stack up to control where they move.  The tank will move LK with the Val'kyr in order to maximise incidental damage on him.

Now, this will lead us to the major problem in this fight - DEFILE!
Defile has a 1.5s cast time (this is important) and when cast will drop a big black blob of badness on the ground centred around the person targetted.  Defile is on a slightly longer timer than the val'kyrs, but not a lot longer.

Before the fight, practise this:
Get someone to be LK.  Have everyone focus that person.  Get everyone stacked in the val'kyr position like they were DPSing the LK.  Look at the lineup. make sure everyone is stacked up tight, and that hunters are in line with the shortest path to an edge.  Get that LK person to cast a 1.5s spell on someone.  The person being targetted needs to run TOWARD the stairs/iceblocked idiot and every single other person in the raid needs to run toward the lift in the opposite direction.

Repeat this until everyone in the raid can do it.  If you get targetted, run toward the iceblock, if you are not targetted, run away.  Make sure everyone understands that you have to move.  If you don't move, chances are you will wipe the raid.  I don't know about you, but I know that we are no high end elitist guild who can rely on the person with defile to get it right every single time without fail.

Ok so got that under control?  Excellent. 

So, why have you LK on focus? Because defile will often be cast while you are burning down the Val'kyr.  Raiders have to be VERY AWARE that while they need to burn/stun/slow those val'kyr, they also need to be mindful that also need to move for defile.  This is without a doubt the hardest part of the LK fight. Boss mods CANNOT be relied on for accurate and timely warnings for defile.  I learned this the hard way.

There are several ways to set up where to move LK for this fight to ensure defiles are out of the way, and none of them will suit you and you will have to work out your own positioning, almost guaranteed.  Check out my post about creating your own strats to help with this.  There is a general rule of thumb here:
Stack for val'kyrs;
Run for defiles;
tanks control the positioning.

Basically, you stack up and burn LK most of the time, you watch your timers and you watch your Focus' target to ensure you know who gets defile cast on them.  The tank then repositions LK ready for the next wave of val'kyrs and defiles.  Rinse repeat. 

The mechanics of Phase 2 are not hard - getting them right, that is VERY hard as one person getting it wrong and not moving can wipe you.  It's is a very fiddly phase.  Once you master defile, you pretty much have this fight sorted out.

One thing to note - the cooldowns in your boss mod are a GUIDE.  They are not 100% every time, so make sure your raiders are not relying on them and forget to use their brains and watch what LK is casting on their focus.  There is a general order to the val'kyr/defile pattern but it is not a guarantee.

Note for LK positioning - try to rotate your stack point for val'kyrs, the last thing you want is to stack in such a way that you send the val'kyrs over a defile.

Last but not least for this phase is a tank effect called Soul Reaper.  In short this is a "oh shit" moment for the tank.  Rotate cooldowns and if you can, think about getting the second tank to taunt off you as soon as possible to ease things up for the healers or get a rotation happening to ensure CDs are ready for it to be cast.

When LK gets to 42% ish, you need to start watching your DPS and control the transition to Phase 2.5.  Move LK and the raid to the very edge of the platform, as close as you can.  Obviously, you don't want to be doing this if you are about to get val'kyrs, deal with the val'kyr's first then move the raid.

Phase 2.5
This is the same as phase 1.5 except that the frosty aoe thing is quite likely to oneshot anyone standing in it.  Get onto the outside ring ASAP!  Use any CDs to mitigate raid damage.

Phase 3 FROSTMOURNE!! 40% - 10%
Destroy the Raging Spirits as fast as you can.  You should not be touching LK until they are dead. 

This has all the same mechanics as Phase 2 with one change which makes all the difference.  Instead of Val'kyr there are Vile spirits.  These guys spawn high above you on 10 random players.  They will then chase you down for 30s then explode.  Obviously, you run away.

So, the best way to deal with this is divide the platform in half.  Spread out in one half until the vile spirits arrive, then run to the other side of the platform, ensuring you are not in range when they explode. Seeing as defile is still being cast, but there is no longer a need to stack for controlling the val'kyrs, spreading out is a much better option for controlling defile.  Again, watch LK to see defile targets and use your brains - stay out of defile.

Occasionally, LK is going to have a hissy fit and try and send someone to their doom in Frostmourne.  Upon getting sucked in there, you will see the good guy (I wont say whom, as that could be considered a spoiler) and the bad guy.

This is surprisingly easy to do. First of all, everyone has to interrupt the channeled spell being cast by the bad guy.

Next, if you are a healer, you need to go nuts getting the good guy to full health.  Heal your little butt off, much like in Valithria, as the good guy gets more health, he does more damage until the bad guy dies. 

If you are a DPS, smash face on the bad guy.  You will be buffed while in there, so don't worry too much about that.  As soon as the bad guy is "defeated" you will be spat out.  If you die in there, then LK gets an enrage buff which can be healed/tanked through, but will seriously deplete your healers and tanks reserves.

At 10% there is a hard enrage.  Sit back and enjoy the RP.  At 10% the hard work is over.  If you screw up the last 10% you should all hang your heads in shame and delete your toons.

And that is the Lich King fight.  90% of this fight is learning how your raid is going to cope with defiles and working out the best positioning to deal with that.  As long as everyone pays attention, and everyone moves, even 1 to 2 ticks of defile is ok.

Good Luck!

Healing as a Pally - The Frostwing Halls

Valithria Dreamwalker
Bacon the dragon
Kings the dragon
You should be going in the portals, so make sure you know what to do
Get into portal position early, use judgement or bacon upkeep/holy shock/FoL combo to keep casting and move into position
Holy Light all the way for this one, so change your gear/spec to maximise crits and Spell power of this spell (the buff means that MP5 is irrelevant)
Help out on raid healing when you can (glyph of HL will be obscene with lots of stacks later on in the fight), and keep an eye on Valithria - make sure bacon doesn't drop off.
Use LoH directly on Valithria when you have 25+ stacks (or when you are on your last healing phase)

Sindragosa
Phase 1/1.5
Single tank at a time fight, so bacon the tank, heal the raid.
Dont get more than 6 stacks of the debuff (and heal yourself if you have to)

Phase 2
Be careful of tank transitions, ensure that you are precasting on the incoming tank to avoid early hard hits
Dont get more than 4 stacks of anything at a time
Don't die to the debuffs - yes that might mean letting someone else die, as long as it isnt a tank, then its a necessary thing to do

Healing as a Pally - The Crimson Hall

Blood Prince Council
Pop bacon on the purple balloon tank
Go hard early, as that balloon tank will be taking a fair whack of damage
Stand as close to the centre as you can, and get people to move away from you.
Heal the other two tanks evenly
Use fire aura and pop AM when the big ball of fire is cast
Keep the current target in mind and keep judgment of light up on it as best you can.

Blood-Queen Lana'thel
Phase 1
Get in melee range and get some mana back on your time with auto hits.
Bacon the blood mirrored off tank and heal the main tank
Make sure your raid frames show who has the bite buff, these guys dont need as much healing
Shadow aura



Phase 2
If you are human, get out of fear with your racial and bubble the second, otherwise bubble off the first fear and tremor totem the second
Get in position early and heal like crazy
Use AM to cover off the fear to position transition and try to ensure people have extra resistance if they get a bad fear

Valithria Dreamwalker

Valithria is an upside down fight.  You need to heal her from 50% to 100% to "beat" her.

The quick and dirty version is that a group of healers go into the portals to get healing buffs then come out and heal her while everyone else manages the adds.

Shopping list:
2 tanks
6-7 healers (3-4 portals, 3-4 raid healing)
DPS - including 1-2 zombie kiters

The Portal Team
The 3-4 healers in the healing team (and everyone else with any spare GCDs) start spamming Valithria as soon as possible and do not stop.  Put your best single target healers in the portal team, eg pallies. Resto shaman really excel at this with their chain healing spam.

Valithria will put up green blobs on the ground saying "I have opened a portal into the dream".  These blobs will eventually become clickable.  The portal team needs to be ready and in range to get in them as soon as possible.

Once in the dream you have 15s to collect green blobs.  You need to jump up off the ground and fly around collecting green blobs in the sky.  It is a good idea to allocate each healer a general area for them to collect their own blobs so they don't try to grab each others accidentally.  Left, Right and Front works for us.  It is useful to know that the blobs have an aoe effect and if someone else pops one and you are in range, the buff will also get applied to you. 

The blobs are tricky little suckers - not only are they small, but they float around.  Their radius of exploding is very small, you really have to go right through the glowing blob in the middle.  I highly recommend mouse turning for this phase.  Try to pre-plan your run so you collect as many blobs in as short a time as possible.  Each time you colect a blob your stack timer refreshes.  Obviously, the the idea is to keep as many stacks on yourself as possible.  The timer is 35s.  In order to keep this as up as possible, watch your dream timer on your buff/debuff list and TRY to pop a green blob JUST before you get spat out into the real world again.

Again, when you are out in the real world your number 1 priority is to get as many heals onto Valithria as possible, and if you have splash heals, splash them around as much as you can.  Bacon, chain heal, LoH (when you have 20+ stacks) all those special move heals which do lots of healy goodness - high HPS get them out and use them.  Heals on CDs, try to keep once per fight heals to the end when you have high stacks.

AAAAAADDS!
This is very stock standard "manage the adds" section of the fight.  You can go read up on the abilities of each add yourself, they are not really very difficult to understand.

The short version:
Get someone kiting the zombies away from the raid.
Kill blazing Skeletons as soon as you see them and with extreme prejudice (Lay Waste hurts a lot)
Try to gather the adds on top of the suppressors to the left and right to take advantage of aoe effects.
Interrupt the archmages
Avoid the columns of frost
Tank the aboms
Kill everything as fast as possible.

Honestly, that's it.  Keep the adds under control, get your stacks as high as possible.  Win.

Healing as a Pally - The Plagueworks

Rotface
Bacon the add tank, heal the rotface tank (as the add tank might run out of range)
Stand on rotface and melee hit him for mana
Shocks on the infected person to assist with a quick heal to keep them alive
Use bubble to make sure your slime merges quickly if you have to run through green goo on the ground
Shadow aura

Festergut
Shadow AURA!
Bacon the tank and heal the raid, as the raid takes less damage focus on the tank.
Have DG/HoSanc ready for emergencies on the tank
Watch the boss for the cast of pungent blight and save AM for a bit of extra shadow protection then (incase someone missed a buff)
Plant your feet in melee range and heal like crazy!

Putricide
Phase 1 and 2
A much more mobile fight
Aura doesn't matter
Bacon on the tank, and help raid heal
Throw additional helping heals on the slime targets
Keep an eye on the abomination and heal it up if necessary

Phase 3
Keep the tanks alive at all costs
Try to keep your best DPS up if you can spare a bacon heal
Pre-bacon the next tank and start pre-emptively healing them when the current tank is on n-1 debuffs (n is the number of stacks you guys decided to take per tank)
Keep bacon on the current tank so you can throw out extra heals on the raid and the previous tanks without losing a beat on the current tank
Keep all the tanks alive (did I mention that? I did? well it really is that important)
Save LoH for the third tank phase

Healing as a Pally - The Lower Spire

Lord Marrowgar
Phase 1
Get into melee range and hit Lord Marrowgar. 
Put Beacon on one tank and heal the other (HL or FoL are acceptable depending on gear levels)
Frost Aura is a must.

Phase 2
Plant those feet, beacon yourself and heal like crazy, Shock, HL, FoL
If the fires come your way, strafe out a little bit so you dont get hit.
Use Aura Mastery at this time to help people stuck in fires.

Lady Deathwhisper
Try to stay as central as possible to keep range on all tanks
Beacon on one tank, heal the other - if they are both in range of you, they are in range of each other for beacon.
Use the aura you are specced into, resist is not a major player here.
Aura mastery not a major player here except for fun.
Keep your judgement up on the lady, dont try to judge the adds (the ret pallies will do that)

Gunship
If you are careful, and stand on the edge of the boat, you can generally have range of everyone.
Beacon yourself and go nuts healing anything and everything.
This is an easy battle, you should not have to do a lot of work.
Judge the axe throwers or any thing in range, really.
Fire Aura!

Deathbringer Saurfang
Stand wherever your RL's strat tells you to
Move HoJ onto your bar
Aura is not critical
Keep your judgment up on Saurfang
Keep Sacred Shield up on Saurfang's current target and FoL spam it (that should be enough to keep them up)
When a mark goes out, beacon the mark and keep FoL spamming.
When a second mark goes out, swap your FoLs to the second mark target.
If a third mark goes out, start using holy lights and alternate your heals around the marked targets and tanks.
When an add comes in range, Stop, HAMMER TIME!  You should be able to get one stun every 2 sets of adds.
If toward the end things get hairy, you might want to use a Hand of Sacrifice or DS to ease the pressure.

Blood-Queen Lana'thel

Well, after spending an inordinate amount of time wiping on this boss the other night, I think I have a REALLY good grasp of how to write this one up.  For the record, this is the ultimate in noob fights.  Super simple mechanics that every man and his worg will get wrong, and it only takes one person to stuff it up and cause a wipe.

Shopping List:
2 tanks
6-7 healers
even distribution of DPS, all with working microphones

BQL comes in 2 phases, on the ground and in the air.  She will have 2 air phases before she enrages and smears your entire raid into paste on the ground.  That's 5 minutes people!

Phase 1
The tanks run in (with appropriate MDs etc) and keep BQL on the stairs.  Turn her to face the back of the room.  She will instantly cast a Shroud of Sorrow on everyone in the room.  This will keep the healers on their toes. 

Ranged and healers need to spread out evenly around the room or you this will kill you and your stacked up buddies.  So just spread out nice and evenly - in fact, spread out as per where you will be for phase 2.  Melee and Holy Pallies stack directly behind BQL at max hitbox range.

Cast your mind back to ToC and to Jaraxxus.  The flamey thing that you had to run around the room screaming whilst on fire? That's back, except this time it is purple and called Swarming Shadows.  When you get it (your favourite boss mod will scream at you, be that your RL or something on screen or both) you need to run around the OUTSIDE of the room as close to the wall as possible, to ensure that everyone has as much room as possible for phase 2.  DO NOT stand still or you will die and be ridiculed by your raid team.  Even running in the wrong place is better than not running at all.  But yes, ideally, get that fire around the edges of the room.

Next, again cast your mind back, this time to Yogg Saron.  Remember when you and someone else were joined together with the bright green bonds of insanity?  Well another similar mechanic is in play here.  This time the bonds are bright red, and explode with an aoe every second or two until you run and give the people you are joined to a hug in the middle of the room.  In 10man it's 2 people, in 25 it's 3 people.  The best way to deal with this is to have everyone affected run to the diamond floor pattern on the floor in the middle of the room.  The AoE is nasty, so again, you need to move as fast as possible to the centre.

Now I have explained the two phase 1 mechanics that are simple, I am going to delve into ones that are not, and are still not really understood.

The tanks are sharing damage, or they should be.  The tank (ie one with aggro) will have an ability on them called Blood Mirror.  The toon physically closest to you will share all the damage that you, as the tank, take.  This is a good thing because BQL hits hard, but nothing that an appropriately geared Holy Paladin or two can't deal with (with good backup of course).


A short time after Blood Mirror is up, BQL will go bite a toon (because she is a vampire and all).  And thus begins the most confusing part of this fight.  That toon will have the buff Essence of the Blood Queen giving you 100% extra damage and will heal you for 15%.  However, it also has a downside.  After 60s, you gain the debuff Frenzied Bloodlust.  In short, you have to bite someone to satiate your lust for blood drinking, now that you are a vampire.  You have 15s to get to another toon and use the vehicle bar now on your screen to bite them.  You cannot bite anyone that is already bit, so I highly recommend getting raid frames that support you seeing the Blood Queen buff so you don't try to bite someone already affected.  Why is this an issue?  Because if you don't bite someone you will become MC'ed and almost certainly will cause a wipe at this stage in progression.

Tips about the first bites - get the first bites onto your highest DPS.  Now, I have spent a lot of time recently trying to figure out who gets the first Vampiric Bite.  There are plenty of theories going around the net, ranging from threat, to who hits BQL first after blood mirror.  I have looked through logs and logs, and honestly, I cannot really see a pattern to who gets it yet.  When I do see a pattern, I will let you all know.  Hell, even I, as a healer, has managed to get bit first.  It has something to do with threat, something to do with when you hit her as well.  The best bet if you want to try to control who gets the bite first is to get everyone to hold DPS except the tanks and the person you want to get bit.  Let them establish the threat table and hits in first by holding off for 4 or 5s.

Get raid frames that show the buff clearly and a working mic in vent/TS.  I cannot stress this enough.  If your target is bitten, you will need to find a new target and quickly.  Call it out on vent and establish who you are biting as soon as you can.  There are mods you can get to help your raid team work out who is getting bitten when, I don't use them, so I cant tell you what they are.  We call our targets early on in vent and make sure people don't screw it up.

The first biter - bite as soon as you can to ensure that people do not have to try to do bites during phase 2 (you will understand why when I describe it).  If you are looking like you need to bite during phase 2, either get your bite off early, or try to wait until after it is over (risky, but again, call this out on vent if you are worried).  If the first bite is timed right, you shouldn't need to worry about this.

So you understand the math, this is how the bites approximately progress during the fight (note the big fat APPROXIMATELY ymmv due to vagaries of when people actually bite in that 15s window):
0:15s 1 buffed (BQL bites someone)
1:15ish 2 buffed (1 bit another)
2:00 Air Phase
2:10 Ground phase
2:20 ish 4 buffed (2 bit 2 more)
3:25 ish 8 buffed (4 bit 4 more)
3:40 Air phase
3:50 Ground phase
4:30 ish 16 buffed (8 bit 8 more) all your DPS should have the debuff at this stage.
Enrage - there should be about 9 people unbitten who can be used as "spares" for stuff ups.

Phase 2
BQL will swoop up in the air and cast a fear on everyone.  Tremor totems here are invaluable, also any other "get out of fear free" ability you might have helps.  Positioning in this phase is crucial, and you don't have a lot of time to move.

As for Blood Princes' vortices, this is a "spread out or die" mechanic.  All the healers and ranged should know where they need to stand for this already, as they would have already copped the extra damage in phase 1 if they didn't.  Now, the stacked melee need to find their spaces.  The tanks can stack on top of each other where they tank the queen, and all the melee need to spread out around the platform, making sure they have 6 yards between them.  Using your favourite range checker (your eyes or a mod) ensure you get away from anyone after the fear.  If you are having trouble with this, crack out MS paint and draw a picture and allocate people to positions.  Again, simple mechanic, but one person in the wrong position will wipe out a heap of people, and probably cause a wipe.

When phase 2 is done, melee collapse back into their phase 1 positions.

--

So, why are we wiping?
Are you spread out enough in phase 1 and 2?
Are your healers keeping up (it's hard yakka early on)?
Is anyone getting MCed?
Is anyone dying early with the debuff meaning the damage increase is not going out to enough people?
Are people trying to bite the same targets?
Are people simply not paying attention on vent, or not talking when something goes wrong?

I think this fight is actually simpler than putricide, there is just so many more places where people can wipe the raid which make this a very frustrating fight.  Be careful taking new people in on this once you have it under control - even one new person can throw the whole balance out and give you a night of frustrating wipes where the week before you one shot it.

Blood Prince Council

This is one of the harder strategies to wrap your brain around as a DPS.  This is the opposite of a DPS fight - this is a do your job and turn off the meters fight.

Now, there is so much going on in this fight, it is quite likely I will forget something - please let me know and I will update as we go along.

Shopping list:
2 tanks (one for Taldaram - hence forth known as Edward Sparklypants, and one for Valanar)
1 "other" tank (usually a warlock - for Keleseth)
6-7 healers
good mix of range and melee DPS

The pull is straight forward, each tank picks up their assigned mob and moves them apart from one and other. The trick to this fight is that one Boss is Active with the red swirly crap at a time.  They will be the one with a health bar, and they are the one with the special ability active.  They are the one you need to attack.

Before I get into each trick for each boss, there is something that needs to be made so painfully clear you would think you had a wasp sting you nose (don't laugh, I had to AFK recently to rescue someone who had that happen to them).  This is not a DPS race, this is a survivability and raid coordination fight.  There will be some people at the bottom of the meters who usually sit at the top.  This is perfectly normal.  I cannot stress enough that you do your job and you do it with 100% uptime.

With that in mind, let's look at the bosses one at a time.

Normal Keleseth
This dude is tanked by the range tank, usually a warlock.  Keleseth creates floating purple balloons that the range tank has to run around and collect (with aggro) while keeping Keleseth interested in them and no one else.  They need to collect as many as they possibly can, as each balloon channels Shadow Resonance into its target.  Yes, it stacks.

The other annoying thing Keleseth does is throw lances around whoever has its aggro.  The sooner that range tank has 2-3 balloons, the better for the healers. 

Note to healers: this tank will be taking large damage early on from the lances until they can collect a couple of balloons.  Make sure they are all healed up and watched carefully.  I recommend this as a bacon target for a pally.

Keleseth is pretty straight forward: Collect balloons, keep threat.

Normal Taldaram
Edward Sparklypants is the only one allowed to be in front of this guy, so tank him off to the side facing away from the raid or he will turn more people into Edward than we really need to see in a raid (we already have 3 emo vampires in this fight, more than one emo sparkly vampire tank is just too much for the healers to deal with!).

Taldaram also throws balls of fire around the room, which explode on impact with their target.  Fire resistance totems/aura will help here.

Normal Valanar
This guy is all about the physical shock factor.  No resistances will help you with this more than SPREAD OUT!!!

He will create glowing yellow balls in the sky that slowly descend to the ground.  Allocate a hunter, or a mage or someone whose sole job it is to keep these buggers from hitting the ground.  When they are hit with damage, they go up in the air again.  If one of these suckers hits the ground, it will pretty much knock everyone flat on their backs and *points* over there, which stuffs up all the careful positioning, you will have set up to get through this fight.  So, keep these things in the air at all costs.  It is easy to do, and the consequences of NOT doing it are dire and onflowing.

Valanar will also place swirly white things randomly in the room, if you arewith 12 yards when they go off you will get knocked on your arse again.  So, when you see the white swirly near you, make sure you move away.  This is where range finder mods are very very useful.  Keep an eye on yours.

Red Swirly Valanar
Let's take this backwards.
When Valanar is empowered (which means he has a health bar, and is the current DPS target) his vortices also become empowered.

Instead of placing a couple of white swirly things in the room you need to move away from, everyone becomes their own little vortex.  Everyone needs to spread out at least 10 yards apart to ensure that you dont cop multiples of 7k damage.  It doesn't take much for you to die to this.

This isnt a difficult mechanic to understand, but it is REALLY hard to get right.  It relies on everyone knowing what they are doing, have some idea of where they need to be and also having range finders (either your eyeballs or a mod of some kind) telling you that you are far enough apart from the people near you.

Often, to minimise movement for the healers, they are allocated the semi circle at the bottom of the stairs so they have range for everyone and an easily defined space for them to be in.  Everyone else spreads out outside that.

Red Swirly Taldaram
Taldarams empowered ability is his fireball.  The rule of thumb is the bigger the ball, the harder it hits, and this one starts our HUGE.  Fortunately, it also likes to smash people it goes past and that bleeds of fire to do which makes it smaller.  Now, this fireball will hit you really hard if you dont reduce its size by having it hit people as it goes along.  Generally, you have rogues sprint along with the fireball, taking damage and making the final impact lessened.  If you have issues with this, make sure other DPS run in and take some of the damage away.

Having rogues able to do this is easy because this will only happen when Taldaram has a health bar and everyone is attacking him.


Red Swirly Keleseth
Keleseth's empowered ability is his lances.  They hit like mack trucks if the ranged tank is not holding enough balloons.  As long as the range tank has aggro and is continuously collecting balloons, then this part of the fight is quite straight forward.

--
Slowly, slowly is the key to this fight.  Make sure you keep those kinetic bombs in the air, that everyone knows where to spread to when vortices are about, and that the fireball has its power bled off by people being in range to be hit as it speeds along.

The very hardest thing is spreading out.  There is not a lot more I can tell you about that, it is, unfortunately, a bit of a retard check as well.  And yes, one person can wipe the raid.

Healers, there is a lot of damage going around in here, so pay attention and make sure that you keep your space at the bottom of the stairs to be yours so you dont have to worry about moving for vortices.

Shadow resistance and fire resistance is very helpful.


Wipes are generally from the following things:
1) the range tank not having enough purple balloons
2) the range tank not getting heals early on when there are not enough balloons to help mitigate damage
3) healers getting knocked over (either not moving themselves, or someone moving into them) and therefore tanks dying
4) kinetic bombs hitting the ground because the people allocated to stop them is not doing their job
5) People dying to the empowered vortices by not spreading out enough
6) Empowered fireballs not getting bled off enough

If you have that list covered off, you should be well on your way to getting these guys down.

Professor Putricide

I had originally started writing this up as a 10man strat, but since then, I have managed to be able to kill this guy a few times on 25s so here we go! 

The voice acting for this boss is a little tired by this point and is quite likely to send you to your music controls to try to find an option to stop the vocals!  But that aside, this is quite a fun fight.

Shopping list
3 tanks (preferably one with a good DPS output for a tank, ie a bear tank in kitty form is a good idea)
6 healers
Ranged heavy DPS team


The pull

Get everyone up towards the table end of the room and off to the left a bit.  The Main Tank will pull putiricide, your third tank will be DPSing, or at least pretending to, and your second tank is going to go for a ride!  MT tank where putricide stands, and OT go up to that table and drink the bottles labelled "drink me".  You will turn into an AWESOME CREATURE capable of a couple of things.  Now, I have never driven this guy so bare with me here.  You get a few abilities.  One is eating up the goo (which powers your other abilities up), another is slowing oozes and the last is an attack.  I will explain as we go along how you use these for the oozes.  You also have a bit of a stink to you, and you will cause a tick to the entire raid every 2 s.

Phase 1  (100-80%)
This is the second easiest phase and makes you practise the things you will need in Phase 2 (where the difficulty is stepped up).

The 2 slime puddles (as thrown around by the delightful prof) will increase in size and eventually take over the room if the OT doesn't gobble them up!  And as with all things, Don't Stand In The Goo (unless you are gobbling up the goo). All the time throughout the entire encounter, he will chuck out a couple of slime puddles at people.  Get out of them, don't stand in them.

Everyone is out of the goo, the first two puddles are down, and the OT is on top of the gobbling.  It is now time to start explaining the rinse and repeat factor of the fight.  Get this right, and you will have the fight pretty much sorted out (except for transitions, but I will explain that later)

Green Ooze
On the Right hand side as you are facing the table at the back of the room, after the Prof has had a crack at his unstable experiments (this guy will never learn! But it does give you 2.5s warning to get ready), green gas will spew out of that right hand side wall and a green ooze will appear.

As you can imagine, if Bad Things are happening on the Right Hand Side, chances are, you will need to be as far as way as pixelly possible.  And this is certainly no exception.  Drag the boss over to the far left hand corner.  Healers should be in that far left hand corner, melee on the boss but ready to run, and ranged as far over to the left hand side as they can be yet still be in the middle(ish).  Let me find a picture to show you.  Hmmmm.... None that are good.  Here let me draw something awful in MS paint!

Yep, that is truly awful, but it gets the point across.

So, that green woobly thing coming out of the oozes head? That is cast randomly on a raid member, and it freezes them in the spot.  You can still cast and hit things, but you cant move and you are taking damage.  Kill the ooze. Kill it dead as fast as you can.  Obviously the further you are away from the ooze the more time you have to kill it before it gets to the target and explodes.  Now, that damage is evenly distributed to everyone in range and knocks you all back some distance.  If not enough people are in range, then it might do enough damage to kill you!  for example if there are 2 people in range (the target and a martyr) then both will take 70000/2 = 35000 damage!  Ouch.  Splat. 3? 70000/3 = 23k each - almost survivable 4 people? 70k/4 = 18k which is probably survivable.  Obviously, the more people are there the less damage everyone takes.  But 4 really is the bare minimum you need to survive.

So, all the melee need to run to the ooze and sit with it and kill it dead (this should theoretically be more than 4 people!).  If the ooze makes it to the target, which is quite likely, then after it knocks everyone back, it will pick another target and do it all again.  Same deal!  Melee get to the ooze and stay with it.  Keep repeating this until the ooze dies.

Range, you should simply stay where you are and smash that ooze down FAST!

Assuming you do this right, then you will have time to DPS putricide and move into position for the Orange Ooze.

Locks and mages, yes you can teleport and blink to increase the distance between you and the green ooze.  I tried bubbling while ooze stunned, and the results have been unpredictable... the ooze sometimes runs around randomly, sometimes it rehomes... I wouldn't recommend it and save bubble for P3.

Orange Ooze
So, this time an orange ooze will appear from the left hand side of the room.  Here's a picture I prepared earlier:

OK so you can see where everyone needs to be.  You will also note that the ranged DPS really dont need to move much between oozes - which is kind of the point, to try to maximise DPS time on putricide before swapping to the ooze.

As with the green ooze, as soon as that ooze is able to take DPS you need to smashy-smashy and get it dead as fast as possible.  The person targetted by the orange ooze will feel fat and bloated and will not be able to run fast.  It is VITAL that the abomination slow that ooze as quickly as they can.  If that orange ooze touches its target, you will throw up so violently you might kill yourself.  So be careful, make sure you kite that add well and everything will be alright.

Yes, like the green ooze you can use your tricks like lock teleports and blink, just be careful of them and be sure you know where you will end up and where your ooze will go because of it.  As soon as the ooze is dead, prep for green ooze (by moving over) and DPS the Professor.

Phase 1 summary
Don't stand in green stuff (except if you are an abomination, in which case eat it to power your abilities)
For green ooze, go left, for orange go right and kite it around.

And that, kiddies, is phase 1.  Getting this right is pretty much the crux of the fight.  It really isnt that easy as it doesn't take much for one person to get it a bit stuffed up and then everything will go horribly horribly wrong.  Practise and don't give up hope!

Phase 2 transition
At about 82% you need to call out to slow DPS so that you can control when putricide is going to stun everyone with tear gas.  Why is this important to control?  Well, if everyone is stunned for 20s, and there is an add out, and the abomination JUST slowed it... how long does that slow last for?  The answer is "not long enough" and as soon as everything is UNstunned, it speeds its way over to the target killing it dead.  SO clear calls, if you are the abom, and you see putricide at 82ish % and a ooze about to spawn CALL OUT that DPS needs to halt, and the add needs to die before putricide hits 80%.

In other sneaky news, you can vanish and iceblock out of the stun effect and get some free DPS on putricide.  Now, you might be thinking "isnt that an exploit" well... it hasn't been hotfixed so I am putting it in the "creative use of game mechanics" category.


Phase 2 (80-35%)
This phase has everything phase 1 has plus two more things to look out for.
Periodically, the Prof will throw blobs of goo at you or in your general direction.  Simply get out of the way!  Now, this is a ranged attack and if there are not enough people out at range, then this will get thrown at someone in melee, with no time to dodge the blow!  This is a Bad Thing.  So please, make sure you have your ranged people at range, and melee in melee.  Now, these goo things bounce around, while it is possible to run underneath them, it certainly isnt wise to do so.  Strafing is your best option in this case.  One thing to watch out for?  If you are moving sides for goo, try not to run into the bouncing blob of goo.  I learned that one the hard way a couple of times *whistles innocently*

Now the melee people dont get off lightly either.  Professor Putricide will place horrible looking glowing orange bottles at his feet.  If you break these bottles, you will be exploded, and everyone around you will be exploded as well.  Clearly, you dont want this to happen (and this is the source of many wipes when you first start learning this fight), so the tank needs to be aware of this and move Putricide around so that melee can hurt him in *cough* safety.

Again, if you are being chased by ooze, or changing sides, be aware of the bottles on the floor and dont run into them while concentrating on health bars *whistles innocently*

So, Phase 2 is the same as phase 1 but with added "don't stand in the fire"s.

Phase 2 transition
As with phase 1 transition, when Putricide hits 40% be wary of when oozes are due and how many slime pools are up.  You want Putricide to hit 35% with no ooze and as few slime puddles as possible (more than 1 will make P3 really hard).

So control the fight kill that last ooze and clean up the puddles, and smash putricide to 35% triggering

Phase 3
At this point you all get teared again, and yes rogues and mages can get out of it if their abilities are not on CD.

Now we need 3 tanks.  As you will have noticed the slime puddles actually grow in size if not gobbled up.  Well, your "drink me" options are all gone now, you have no monster to clean up the mess, and those puddles are going to grow and grow and grow and yes, leave you all with no room (this is the soft enrage).

Try to tank putricide off to the side, as close to any already present goo piles as possible.  The raid needs to spread out a bit, and try to keep the slime puddles as close together as possible by staying near older ones.  And tanks just need to kite the boss around the room steering clear of trapping themselves in a corner with no escape route.

The tank will be getting stacks of the plague that putricide is carrying around with him.  As the tank gets more stacks, the raid will be copping more and more damage (its crazy healers!!).  Now here is a bit of crazy math for you.  As a tank gets more stacks, the increase in damage to the raid is HUUUUUGE.  So, 1 stack on 3 tanks is smaller raid damage than 3 stacks on one tank.  However, since rotating tanks that quickly is generally unfeasible and assumes you have evenly geared tanks, it is generally accepted that a tank take 3-4 stacks before changing.  Of course, this will depend on a great number of things, including how well geared your tanks are, how good your healers are and how fast your DPS is.

OK so your first tank has successfully kited around has 4 stacks of the debuff, it is time for the next tank.  Now, think about this, the first tank is still generating 4 stacks worth of raid damage, and now the second tank is copping that plus more stacks of their own, plus general boss damage.  As you can see, you want your best tank last, and your "worst" tank first.

Healers - here's a very important fact.  At no stage is it a good idea to let a tank die in phase 3.  Even if they are finished tanking.  As soon as a tank dies, and those debuffs drop off, Putricide will heal enough probably to cause you to wipe.  So, keep those tanks marked and topped up.

Oh yeah, did I mention that putricide also hits harder in phase 3? No? Well, I have now.

Tanks, its generally up to you in this phase, use your CDs wisely, kite intelligently (don't get stuck in a corner trapped by expanding slime piles) and don't die.

Raid, try to stand as close to a slime puddle as you can so get them to overlap as much as possible to free up as much space on the floor as you can.  Throw down a hero/BL and make putricide cry out in agony.  GO hard and win.

WHEW! That was a long time coming.  Hope it is still helpful to people out there!

Sindragosa

The fight mechanics in Sindragosa are reasonably simple.  But add them together and you get a deadly dance that is very easy to wipe on!  If you can do sapphiron, then this is a very similar fight.  So reach your brains back into naxxaramus and think about the mechanics in there.  Yeah, Line of sighting with ice blocks, melee having a horrible time dancing between face and tail... remember? ok good.  Let's move onto Sindragosa.

Shopping list
2 tanks
6-7 healers
Nice even mix of DPS


WHOA but we didn't finish the trash?
Once you clear out the last trash pack on her ledge thing, Sindragosa will immediately fly down and engage you.  Be ready and prepared for that!

Phase 1
Tank Sindragosa where she lands (in the middle of the middle circle).  It is a good idea to turn her to the left or right by 90 degrees so that melee can avoid being hit.  In other words, have the tank turn her so as to expose her flank to the stairs.  For the love of the light, do not stand near her face, unless you are a tank, or you will die a horrible death from halitosis or just from her swiping at you.  To make matters worse, she also has a tail swipe that will hit you for six if you get too near to her rear end.  Remembering these two things (dont stand near face, dont stand near tail) is really important for phase 3.  So, burn them into your brain right now.

Now that you know where not to stand, let's look at where TO stand.  Melee should stack right up on her middle (much like sapphiron) and range should be directly behind melee at max spell casting range.  The two groups should be stacked to assist healers with the cold aura sindragosa will inflict on everyone.

Every so often, Sindragosa will drag everyone to her then start casting an aoe spell that will kill you if you are caught in it.  So, here is how you get out of it.  Mouse turn immediately and piss bolt for the stairs.  If you are a keyboard turner, now is the time to repent!  You simply do not have enough time to keyboard turn and still be able to run 26 yards to avoid the aoe blast.  Trust me on this, I am a keyboard turner, and I am now mouse turning for this event.  Keyboard turning is simply not fast enough.  I also recommend getting the boot speed increase enchant if you are struggling.  You must run with the pack, or you may struggle with the cold aura and general dying from being out of range of heals.  There is no reason to be dying to this event if you do all of the above things.  Believe me, if you die on this more than once, your RL will be raging at you (if you are an RL, you should not be taking any excuses for people stuffing this up)

What are these debuffs I am getting?
There are 2 debuffs that sindragosa puts on the raid.  One for hitting sindragosa and one applied randomly to casters for casting spells.  Your favourite boss mod will tell you who gets stricken with the caster one and when.  Unchained magic will drop off after a period of time and you can cast freely again.  Permeating Chill is a permanent effect on sindragosa, but it has a chance of application per hit.  It is about 20% from what I read.

These both cause a DoT debuff (hitting / casting) to be applied to the person which cannot be dispelled.  However, the stacks drop off after 8s.  If you are hitting sindragosa in anyway, you need to make sure you manage the hitting debuff.  If you are casting, you need to manage the casting one.  If you are a caster DPS, you may need to manage both.  It is your responsibility to not get too many stacks.  If you are hitting sindragosa, that means stop hitting her for 8s.  If you are casting, that means stop casting for 8s.  Each time you get a stack, it refreshes the timer back to 8s.  It is really important to understand that.  You actually have to STOP for 8s for ALL the stacks to drop off.  Most people will have about 6-8 stacks before letting them drop off, but this will depend on what your healers are capable of. 

Phase 2
When Sindragosa hits 85% (and then every 1:50 after that time) she will flap into the air, much like sapphiron.  Everyone needs to run to the bottom of the stairs at this point.

5 players will be marked with a little blue down arrow on their heads.  Your fave boss mod will probably also mark them with raid markers (if it doesn't, I strongly recommend that you find one that does).

If you are NOT marked, you need to get the hell away from anyone that is marked, and by away, I mean away not just sort of away.

If you ARE marked, you have a very special job to do (and this really isn't easy, and will require practise as you only have 7 seconds to get into the right place).  Each person should have a raid marker on their head - be aware as lag might play a factor in this.  Now, at the bottom of the stairs (and we choose this position to minimise the area in which things can go wrong) you 5 people need to make a pattern.  That pattern should be something similar to what you can find on tankspot in their project marmot vids.  2 people in front, 3 in back, like a pyramid without the top point.  What is important is that you make sure you very clearly assign your raid markers to a position in that arrangement so everyone knows exactly where they are moving to.  RLs, it is a good idea to have a macro reminding people of their positions for the first few attempts until people learn it.  Putting down flares to mark out the positions is also a good learning tool.

Everyone should have a range finder on their screen - when those marked people turn into Ice Tombs, they will inflict aoe damage on everyone within 10 yards.  If you are within 10 yards of a marked/tombed person you are doing something wrong.  If you are marked and are within 10 yards, it is quite likely that you will DIE HORRIBLY and everyone will mock you.  If you are not marked and within 10 yards of a marked person, not only will you cop damage, but you will also become tombed.  This is a Bad Thing, as you will see in a minute.

Now let's assume everyone did that perfectly (which, is actually pretty unlikely).  The raid is on the stairs, and the ice tombs are between the raid and sindragosa.  You all remember Hodir from Ulduar? and getting the frozen guys out of the ice blocks?  Yep, here we go again guys!  It's a smoosh of Hodir and Sapphiron.

So the raid needs to be doing 2 things.  The first is that they need to DPS their team mates out of the tombs before they Die Horribly unable to breathe. Second, is that the raid needs to make sure they line of sight the Frost bombs Sindragosa will randomly drop on the ground.  Now you will see why the bottom of the stairs was chosen!  There will be 4 frost bombs dropped in Phase 2, and each bomb will have a target on the ground for you to line up with the tombs.

So, get behind the back 3 tombs and smash them down while staying out of line of sight of the bombs!  Easy right?  Not so much.  The front 2 tombs you need to get down to about 20% and keep them there until the last bomb drops.  If you smash everything out too quickly, you will have nothing to hide behind!  After the 4th bomb is dropped, free the last two people and get back into phase 1.

Healers!  
You will have LoS issues in this phase, if it becomes too much of an issue discuss with your RL where to position the raid to help you out.  Also, make sure the marked people are topped up to full before they become tombed, and make sure they are quickly healed up after they are released.  It does happen that a tombed person gets released just in time to cop a frost bomb to the face and die.  Be really aware of that, and call out to slow/stop DPS or be ready with a CD to save that person if necessary.

Phase 3
Ok so you managed to transition from phase 1 to phase 2 enough times to hurt sindragosa enough that she now has 35% health.  Stay in your positions (melee on her flank, and ranged behind melee at max casting distance) and get ready for the REAL fight.

In addition to ALL the abilities you previously have known and loved (the face cleave and halitosis, the tail swipe, the melee and caster debuffs, the sucking you in, and you running on out with a mouse turn) she has a new ability called mystical buffay, and we are back to having to LoS it to drop it off!  Well, what a coincidence, Sindragosa is conveniently iceblocking people in P3 as well for you to hide behind!

So, everything else is the same... how do we add in the iceblocks and LoSing?
The first thing you need to do is split your raid into 2 teams, with even distribution of melee and ranged and healers in each.  Each team will be allocated a "side" (generally left and right).

The first person to cop the Ice tomb needs to run away from the pack, and stand as close to sindragosa's front leg as they can without getting the face cleave and halitosis.  Then the team for that side, needs to run over, stand with the iceblock inbetween them and sindragosa, then dps down the block.

Here is the trick: do not free the iceblocked person until the next iceblock is ready.

The next iceblock should be ready, and that person should dash to the back leg, again stand as close to sindragosa as possible without hopping the tail swipe.  As soon as that iceblock is up, the first iceblock should be destroyed, that team head back to DPSing sindragosa, and the other team should be LoSing Sindragosa on the second iceblock.

Again, wait until the next iceblock is ready before releasing the person then run back into DPSing sindragosa positions.

Up until this point you could single tank Sindragosa... but no more!  You will need to swap tanks as the tanks will also need to line of sight her behind an iceblock to remove the stacks of debuff. If a tank gets too many stacks they will be oneshot and die horribly, so make sure your tanks are watching their debuffs and cooldowns and calling tank changes for the healers.

And that is phase 3.  It's much more complicated than it sounds to get right.  Positioning is everything, and something that people are inherantly bad at.  Just make sure everyone has their range checkers on for spreading out the ice blocks, that they mouse turn the sucking in thing and remember where they are supposed to be when and after some practise, you should be able to kill this undead beastie.

Good luck!

Rotface

Rotface rotface rotface.
You are not too hard - if anyone says this fight is too hard, then they might want to really think hard about whether or not they are going to go kill Arthas, because this?  This is just a warm up guys.  It's going to get serious from here on in. 

Rotface is what we call a RAID COORDINATION CHECK fight.  The damage isn't hard to heal though and is mostly avoidable.  It will kill you of you are not paying attention or if you don't understand what is going on.  So, I will break this down into separate chunks, as I do a run through of how the fight works.

Shopping list
1 MT
1 OT with good ranged taunt/threat generation
5 healers
Even mix of range and melee DPS

The pull
The tank runs on in and tanks Rotface where he stands.  Everyone (except hunters) arranges themselves evenly in a semi circle behind the boss in melee range.  Yes, everyone.  Hunters stand as close as they can to rotface.  Smash the living begeebers out of rotface.  OT stands back at the door, on the black circle drawn on the ground, waiting.  More on the boss later.

The Ooze Dance

The infection (part 1 - no big ooze)

The first thing that will happen is someone will become infected.  No matter what your instincts are do not dispel them.  This person need to run out to the OT and hang out with them (if you are ranged, keep DPSing ok?).  When this person is with the OT and in the right position, the OT needs to call out for a dispel.  Now, this person will have a great desire to run back into the pack and continue their job.  They must resist and hang out with the OT. 

Note to healers - anyone with the infection is going to recieve 50% less healing than normal.  You will need to allocate at least 1 person to be responsible for keeping them alive.

The next person will get infected, and they need to trot out to the OT as well.  The OT will call out when they are ready for a dispel, and both players stay put until the merge happens, then run back.

The Merge (aka The Little Adds)

When you are dispelled you will spawn your own little baby add which will love you and attempt to hug you and call you George.  It's threat table is a bit weird, in that it has one.  It will generate a lot of threat on the person who it came from.  This seems to be a bit buggy for things like Mirror Image, and when the add spawns on you and you have images up, it may go shooting off in a direction you don't want, thinking that the person it wants to call George is over there, and not you.  So, please be careful with that spell.

Anyway, the add will start chasing you around.  Do not cloak of noob or bubble.  You want that add to chase you in a controlled manner.  The main thing you need to do is ensure that it is facing away from the raid so when it spews ooze at you, it is not in the middle of the room.  Everyone at all costs needs to stay out of these green ooze patches. 

Note to healers - the little oozes have an aura which is pretty easy to heal through.  Again, the person allocated to healing the infected people should keep them up.

When 2 little oozes get close enough together (6ish yards) they will merge and make a big ooze.  Merging is Good.

The Big Ooze
The OT needs to grab that big ooze and start kiting it around the room in a big circle.  It has a normal threat table so the OT needs to watch and manage it properly.  However, the big ooze hits like a train (it has a frontal arc melee attack that hurts), and radiates an aura that really hurts.  The big ooze also spews goo at you, so as an OT you need to try to avoid that at all costs.  So it's a balancing job of not getting too close, keeping threat, and keeping that add moving around the room.

Oh Danny Boy...

The not getting too close is compounded by the pipes in the room periodically flooding out a corner of the room.  You can see where it is going to go because greem steam will eminate from the pipes in that corner of the room.  So you really have to watch for that.  Hand of Freedom will help if you are stuck, but on the whole, the OT should be able to kite through the flooding without needing to do anything special. 

Everyone else in the raid should avoid going into the green flood if at all possible, especially if you are currently infected due to the healing debuff you have.

The Infection (part 2 - with big ooze)
Ok, this time around you got infected but there is a big add up.  Again, you look to see where your OT is and where they are kiting.  You have 12s to get into the right position.  If the OT is kiting through the green flood, wait for them in the kite path on the other side of the flood, otherwise, get to the OT as soon as possible.

When you are with the OT, call for a dispel (or kite with the OT if that is easier until the infection drops off).  Carefully position yourself so that the little Ooze is within range of the big ooze and wait for the big ooze to gobble it up.  When it is safely gobbled, run back into position and DPS.  Do not, under any circumstances, get too close to the big ooze.  Its aura and cleave will smash your face in and your healers will wail that you went down like the proverbial sack of spuds or other less savoury contents.

I cannot stress how important these bits are to getting the fight right.  Keep the infected person alive, and get those adds merged as soon as possible.

2 Big Oozes?
Occasionally, your raid will do Stupid Stuff(tm) and you may end up with 2 big oozes going.  DON'T PANIC!  OT, just grab threat on both of them, and draw them together.  When they are in range, they will merge into 1 big ooze.

EXPLODING OOZE!
When the big ooze is made up of 5 little oozes, it becomes unstable and explodes.  It will create a little flying bomb for each raid member alive.  The trick here is to watch the big ooze and wait until the cast is done and you actually see the little blobs flying in your direction from the big ooze itself.  Once you see them going, you need to move out of the position you were in and into a position that no one else was in.  Why? Because those oozes target where you were standing when they take flight (just like the rockets on the gunship fight).  So, there are a few ways to deal with this.  You can all just scatter (you don't need to move far, about 10 yards away is enough) or everyone can pick a direction and run for it (ie like call "DOOR!" or "FOLLOW THE BOSS!" something like that).  This decision will depend on your raid's ability to think on its feet and understand mechanics.

After the ooze explodes it's back to the first part of the ooze adventure.  Rinse, repeat.  The only additional thing you need to consider is that the mutated infection is cast faster and faster over time.  So, you want to kill Rotface as quickly as you can.

The Boss
There really isn't a lot going on with the boss.  Tank him where he stands to avoid the green goo on the floor, and if you have to move the boss for the ooze explosion, take him back to the middle when done.  The raid stands in melee range (or as close to melee as they can) in an evenly spread semi circle around the back of the boss.  Periodocally, the boss will target someone and start casting a conal effect spew.  Everyone has to wait until the cast is finished, then run around the boss out of range of the spew.  It is really easy to avoid, and is the reason everyone is spread out evenly so as few people as possible have to move, and there is more DPS uptime.

Healing in this fight is hard if people don't avoid the avoidable damage, otherwise, plan to keep the Tanks and focus the mutated infection person and everything should be fine:
Boss Spew - avoidable
Boss Damage - not massive
Mutated infection - unavoidable, and needs healing focus
Big Ooze Aura - avoidable
Big Ooze Melee - avoidable (but OT might take a calculated risk on it for threat gen)
Big Ooze explosion - avoidable
Small ooze aura - negligable, should only be on the OT or mutagen target
Small ooze spew - avoidable
Flooding - avoidable, OT might need to take calculated risk in it

OK that was a bit of a doozy to explain, and I am sure I am missing things.  There are lots of ways to deal with the oozes, this is the way we are finding is the best for us.

Keep the comments coming! And if they are appropriate, I will update the strat.

Ferstergut

Festergut is not as hard as you might think!

Shopping list:
2 tanks
5 healers (you may need more, but be careful of gimping DPS with this)
rest even distribution of ranged and melee DPS

I am sure everyone is aware of the mechanics of this fight by now (possibly wipetastically familiar with them).

There are 2 parts to this fight - what the raid does and what the tanks do.  I will start with the easier of the two - the raid.

Raid strat
Festergut will be tanked in the middle.  Melee stacks up on his butt ranged at ranged and smashes the boss.  Rinse repeat.
...
Ok, so it isn't quite that easy, but it pretty much is close to it.  There is one mechanic that the raid has to worry about.  When spores spawn (say that 10 times quickly) you will see a little yellow spikey ball dancing on your head.  Everyone needs to get underneath someone with a yellow ball, and all the people with the yellow balls need to spread apart from each other.

In practical terms it means something like this:  Have your ranged people sitting out in 2 ranged groups (I believe there is a minimum requirement for people at range, the usual 7 or 8 I think), and your melee stacked on the boss.  If there are 2 in melee, one person has to run out to ranged.  Basically, there need to be 2 spores at range, one in melee.  If there are 2 in any one group, you are going to have to call out who is moving and to where.  I cannot stress how important that part is in this fight.  For example, if the tank gets the spore and another melee? the melee dude has to call out they are moving and to where.

Why 3 groups?
After 12s those spores are going to explode and put a DoT on people within 8 yards.  1 Dot you can heal through, 2 is pushing it and will probably end up in your death.

So, send the person with the yellow ball away!
NUH-UH! When those spores explode they buff everyone in range with shadow protection.  It is really important that the entire raid gets 3 stacks of this debuff or when he does this the entire raid will die horribly.

So raid, coordinate your spores (3 separate groups) make sure one is in melee, 2 at range and ensure everyone gets 3 stacks of that buff before festergut explodes the raid.  Apart from that, stand there and go hard with your DPS.  The recommended time for bloodlust/hero is early on while everyone is alive to get the benefit of the buff.  Saving it for "30%" or some other arbitrary number is not relevant if you are losing people in this fight.  And until you gear up and learn the fight, then you will be losing people.  When you are more confident with the fight, feel free to move BL/Hero to wherever is more effective for you as a team.

But you mentioned you NEED people at ranged?
Yeah I did, and I was reminded by a lovely commenter why (as you can tell, I had primed for this and just plumb forgot to write about it).  You need your ranged out... well, at ranged and they need to be spread out so that this doesn't end up in melee, and no more than one person is chucking their guts out at any one time.  In 10s I think its 3, and 25s about 8.

Tank strat
Ok tanks, time to show us your stuff!  This really is a tank check.  Are your tanks geared, and do they know how to use all the emergency buttons at their disposal and do they understand threat mechanics?

Just tank and spank
First of all, you dont have to move - so that makes it easier.  Tank him where he stands.
Now, festergut hits like a mack truck on steroids and you will die if you don't manage your CDs effectively.  And by effectively I mean actually sit down with the other tank and work out a rotation based on what CDs/trinkets you both have available.  This part, I cant actually help you with directly (as there are far too many tank CD combos) but getting this right is vitally important to the success of the fight.  Get out your spreadsheets kiddies!  You need to have some kind of something up at all times - in this rotation you need to include things like healer CDs as well.  

The trick is, every time Festergut inhales the yellow crap on the ground (visually, it becomes thinner and thinner until there is nothing on the ground and he has 3 stacks up), he hits harder and harder.  So you need to keep your best CDs for when he has 3 stacks up.  Because ... as a healer... all I can say is DAYUM! OWIES!  If there are periods of time when it is necessary to have a gap between CDs, try to make this gap when Festergut has 0 or 1 stacks of the debuff.  Your healers will appreciate you for it.

Now depending on your CDs, but this seems to be a general rule of thumb, tanks take 2 stacks of the bloaty debuff festergut bestows upon you as a tank, before the other tank taunts off you.  When your tanks take 10 stacks of it, they explode and that's GG guys!  At most your tanks should be getting 9 stacks.  If festergut isn't dead by then, you will have hit the 5 min enrage timer anyway.

When you have the debuff, you are doing more and more damage, so be very aware of your threat and perhaps even turning off your auto attacks might be a wise idea when you are not actually tanking.

Have a click through to the comments, there is a bit of discussion around CD's stacks and inhale timings which you might find interesting.

Healer notes
This is a gear check for the healers.  Everyone is taking a LOT of damage, most especially the tanks.  Keep an eye on festergut's debuffs and ensure that you ramp healing up appropriately.  Like I said earilier, visually, you can see where the debuffs are up to by the colour of the gas on the ground.  It goes from a thick yellow to paler yellow as he inhales to there not being anything on the ground when he is hitting the hardest.  If you struggle with seeing boss debuffs, this should assist you in remembering where it is up to.

You shouldn't have mana issues if you are in melee range and autohitting the boss.  I simply cannot recommend this enough.  You will be churning through the mana and having JoW up will probably save a tanks life.  Also, JoL and ILotP will be amazing help in this fight along with any auras that help as well.  Any kind of "passive" healing is absolutely vital to keep up.

Make sure your CDs are included in the tank CD rotation, and really, really focus on keeping those tanks alive.  They will be taking a hell of a lot of damage, I just can't stress that enough - from what I am seeing it looks to be about the same if not more than heroic gormok

So why are we wiping?
Is everyone getting 3 stacks of the shadow protection?
Are the tanks sufficiently covered off with CDs, saving their biggest CDs for when there is 3 stacks of the buff on the boss?
Is the raid spreading out properly for the 3 spikey balls?
Are the healers not organising themselves properly to be as efficient as they can with healing?

Deathbringer Saurfang

Some of the nicest RP I have seen in a Raid instance thus far is at the end of this fight.  It's worth watching, even if Jaina is a crying girl who can't decide who she is in love with more.

ANYWAY
Saurfang the Younger is much more interesting a fight than gunship.  I am going to assume you know the mechanics of the fight and work on some strat to make the fight easier.

EDIT: A few people in the comments pointed out I am a dickhead, and screwed up the number of adds.  I am editing to fix that up.  There are also a couple of comments in the comments section with some advice on how to deal with this fight if your raid DPS is lacking.  Personally and for my guild, if your raid DPS is lacking as a guild you have bigger problems about to face you than killing Saurfang.  I would be working on Project DPS.

Shopping list
2-3 tanks (this can be 2 tanked if you need the DPS)
5 healers
As much ranged as you can bring and keep raid balance and the team fair.

Positioning
Positioning in this fight is really important.  You need to be 12 yards apart, yet still in range of the healers.  This can work if people arc around in a semi circle.  So start by setting this up before you start the event.

First, position the healers in packs of 2, 2 and 1; left, right and middle.  They should be at the base of the stairs.

Spread the ranged out, 12 yards apart in the rest of the space.  Ensure that the healers still have range on everyone (this becomes really important later on).

Next pick 5 kiters (one for each add that springs up).  No one can get hit by those adds, ever.  So those kiters better be good.  Give them some backup CCers (frost traps, frost bolts, stuns etc).  Oh and CCers? Dont stun/freeze the adds ON TOP of the healers, or the adds will turn around and snap the nearest thing.  Bad bad bad idea.

Melee all get to hang out on the top steps and smash on Saurfang the Younger.

Tanks, be up there and have yourselves a taunt rotation all ready to go.



OK Ready and waiting!
Start the event.  There will be a bit of RP as Saurfang flexes his muscles and tries to show off his OPness.

Eventually, Saurfang gets bored and starts attacking.  He will get tanked by your first tank until that tank gets a Rune of Blood put on them.  As soon as this happens, the next tank in the rotation has to be ready to taunt so that minimal blood power is generated.

Blood WHAT now?
Yeah, it's kind of like runic power, but so much more annoying.  The idea of this fight is to keep that blood power as low as possible.  The more blood power he has, the more he can generate.  You can go look up the mechanics of how it works on other sites.  Just remember, that your goal is to minimise blood power at all costs.  You do this by not taking damage that is not 100% unavoidable or calculated into the strat (ie healer stacks). 

So, why do we need to be spread out?
Because of this.  This also increases his blood power the more people it hits.  So, spreading out is a Good Thing.

Ok so you are trundling along, everyone is happily spread out, your tanks are taunting correctly and Saurfang is getting minimal blood power.  Suddenly your favourite Boss Mod is blaring in your face ADDS IN 5s!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAADDS! 
5 adds are going to spawn, to the left, to the right and behind Saurfang.  Now, melee, melee, melee... of course you all stopped your AoE attacks so that you had nothing up when the adds spawned, didn't you?  Cos if even ONE of you is cleaving, Consecrating or mauling (YES including you lot tanks, this includes you) those adds are going to turn around and start hitting you.  This is a bad thing. 

Assuming your melee haven't pulled aggro, your healers may have.  This is ok, it means the adds will head out toward them.  Kiters need to get that add's attention lickety split.  Everyone allocated to that add, needs to swap over, and start smashing it down without getting hit.  I cannot stress how important that is.  Kite the buggers around.  Slow them.  Stun them.  Trap them.  Do everything in your power to kill them, but whatever you do, don't get hit.

This is probably the hardest part of the fight - Managing the adds correctly.  It might take a bit of practise to get right with your raid group, but if you can do Deathwhisper, you can do this.

Rinse, repeat!
And that's 99% of the fight.  Everyone goes back onto Saurfang.  Tanks taunt, kiters kite, DPS kill and no one gets hit unless they are meant to.

The last 1%
This is for the healers.  The tanks are not going to be taking a lot of damage on the whole to start with, but it quickly ramps up as he gains that blood power, and especially when the Mark goes out after he hits 100 BP.  There is one thing you have to watch out for, and that is healer cycle synching.  Break this by allocating each healer a group to heal if you need to, and making sure that you have allocated a healer to deal with the first second and third marks (Paladins with Bacon are ideal for this job).  The thing you really need to remember, is that if a player with the mark on them dies, Saurfang heals 5%.  Do NOT under any circumstances let a marked player die.  Apart from that, its business as usual for you guys.  Plant your feet and make sure you have enough reserves for the craziness that is the last 30%!

We keep wiping?
Who is giving Saurfang BP?
Is the first mark going out before 50%?
Are the adds taking swipes at anyone?
Are the adds taking too long to kill?
Are the tanks not taunting fast enough with the debuff?
Is everyone spread out enough?
Are the healers getting overwhelmed toward the end?