Magmaw 10

HI!
Well, this expansion, strats are going to come a fair bit slower as I am with a much more casual raiding guild.  But, I am still going to be writing up everything I can - and this one is about MAGMAW!

First up, Magmaw is a giant worm that doesn't move.  He has a ginormous hit box, so hunters, be really careful when dealing with the small amount of trash leading up to him.  One misclick and you pull the boss and everyone starts wondering why people are dying.  It's funny the first time....

Anyway, for some reason people say that Magmaw has 2 phases - I personally find that terminology confusing, so I wont use it.  It's not really 2 phases at all.  But you will see what I mean when I get to it.  Also, I will do a TL:DR at the end which summarises the fight in about 3-4 sentences.

Magmaw is a gear check.  It has high but predictable damage output, and it is to some extent a DPS race.

Magmaw can do a few things when he is free to wiggle around and you set up your raid team positioning accordingly.

Shopping list:
1-2 tanks (our team goes with 2, but 1 would also work if you are confident with your skills),
3 healers
5-6 DPS - at least 1 ranged

The positioning is as follows:
Tank is on one side of Magmaw, everyone else (except the one ranged I mentioned) is "behind" Magmaw on the other side.  Get as close to the giant worm as you can but don't fall off the edge!!! This, while funny even the 7th time, leads to wipes!  The one lone ranged (usually a hunter for obvious reasons, two if you have two hunters) hangs out in range of heals, but at "ranged".  There is a bit of broken floor in the middle, hanging around that is a good visual marker.

That's it.  Stay with that as best you can.  Tank keeps the attention of the boss,  the DPS/Healer group don't stand in the poop and the ranged dude also doesn't stand in any poop.

What poop is there?
Well, there are several kinds of poop.  There is Ignition, which is fairly obvious as half the room catches on fire.  If it is the half that the DPS/Healer group is on, they need to get out of it asap, then move back when it is over.

There is another kind of unavoidable poop that the healers simply have to heal through.  You will see it because everyone's health bars will start plummeting.  But most everyone is grouped up, right?  AoE heals are fantastic here and make that part of the fight almost trivial when done right.


One is especially for the ranged guy.  Every... oh 30s or so, Magmaw will cast something called Pillar of Flame at someone at ranged (and if there is no ranged, then it will be in melee which is bad).  It's like the steam geysers in Valithria from ICC.  You have 4s to get out of the poop on the ground before you get launched into the air.

BUGS!!
From the ground of this event, a whole stack of adds will appear - Lava Parasites.  Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES must these little critters be allowed to a) live or b) hit anyone.  I can't stress this enough.  When they are out, they are the number 1 DPS priority, no matter what else is happening.  I mean it.

So, now these adds need to be CCed - slowed, trapped, ice bolted... and more especially, kited.  See why I recommended a hunter be at ranged?  Whoever is at ranged needs to kite these suckers around, not get hit, and not die.  Also, they need to keep enough threat on them all that the DPS in melee are not pulling off the kiter.  Every class has something they can do - go research what you can do to help slow or kill these adds.  I mean everyone, pallies and rogues included.  It is vitally important that these bugs die. 

If they touch you, this is what happens: they decide you are a great host for their babies, and stab your stomach and infect you (read the tool tip, it's worth it!), you then get so sick you chuck more parasites everywhere.  I mean, seriously awesome stuff, but kind of fatal to your existence and the existence of the raid.  This pretty much causes a wipe.

OK got all that?
Not too bad - it's pretty much, don't stand in the poop, kite and kill the bugs. 

"The Next Phase"
At some point Magmaw will emote something about exposing his pincers (always a bad idea for the boss to do) which, conveniently, will then EAT THE DAMN TANK.  Yes, Magmaw will bend over and chomp on the tank.  This debuff is visible on most raid frames - healers, time to focus on the tank.  In 30s the tank will irrevocably die so healers, don't worry if your tank suddenly carks it.  It just means the DPS are not doing their job.

Huh? What Job?
2 DPS need to be allocated the job of jumping on Magmaw's head.  When he bends over to chomp on the tank, a little vehicle arrow will appear when you mouse over him.  One at a time, you can jump up on his head, but beware that vehicle icon is not available for long, so you have to be quick.

Once up, your action bar will have a thing to do, which is use constricting chains to tie his head to the spike in the middle there.  OK DPS, this is where you need to talk on vent or something.  You BOTH have to get your chains on at the same time.  If only one gets done, then Magmaw will rip free and well, you have to go again, and since you only have 30s till the tank dies, you really only get one shot at this.  The animation that goes along with chaining Magmaw is not short, so talk, and time it together.

Magmaw also likes to headbutt the raid at this point often stunning people.  Not a lot you can do about that except wear it.  I mean, you can probably dodge away, but I don't believe it is worth bothering with.

Spiked
Let's assume you got it right, and Magmaw is tied to the spike.  The target will now change to exposed  something or other - be sure that you are DPSing the right thing!  Because, while Magmaw is chained down, you are doing double damage.  Also, there is zero healing required at this time, so healers, you will need to use this tome to regenerate mana however you do it.

CAVEAT: If there are parasites up - no matter what happens, they are a DPS target priority.  The only 2 people excused from dealing with parasites are the DPS jumping on Magmaw's head.  Even then, they need to get their job done asap and get back onto the parasites.

Eventually, Magmaw will break free, and we are back to dealing with him as usual. This is where my group uses a second tank to ease the pain of the being munched on debuff.  But if you are confident, you can use the same tank.

Threat Dump!
DPS - be very careful of threat - there is a aggro dump when Magmaw is chained (I think it is at that point) and it CAN turn around and snot you for about 120k on cloth if the tank it not quick enough on the taunt.  Possibly not enough to kill you, but it will give the healers the scare of their lives.

TL;DR
OK maybe more than 3-4 sentences...

• One ranged for kiting parasites (priority kill targets), hunter best.
• Rest group up "behind" Magmaw.
• Don't stand in the poop.
• 2 DPS jump up asap, coordinate chain activation (30s Max time for this).
• Burn Magmaw (parasites die first).
• EEEP! Aggro Dump!!!
• Rinse, repeat.
• Collect bad RNG loots.

Good Hunting - that's most of it.  I know I skipped some things, but they really are irrelevant to know about.

Heroic Professor Putricide

Yeah, you thought I would never do it, but here it is! HPP for your reading pleasure.

HPP is very similar to normal mode for the most part.  There are still 3 phases, there is still an abom to control, malleable goo to dodge and adds to kite and kill.  However, I am going to outline a new way to stand in order to deal with the new bits more efficiently.

By now, everyone should have a good idea of where the green goo spawns and where the orange goo spawns.  The new standing strategy goes like this:  Everyone spread out on the right side of the room (and by right I mean as relative to facing Prof Puke's experiment table).  The centre(ish) of the room must be kept clear for reasons I will outline in a moment.  Also, for the same reason people need to spread out as much as they can.

So, one of the new abilities Prof Puke will be using is something called Unbound Plague.  This will bounce around the raid if the raid is stacked up too closely together.  Why is this a bad thing? because once it bounces off you, you get a debuff.  So, the thing is, if it bounces around too many of the raid, then it might bounce back onto someone and that will pretty much kill them.  So, there are 2 things you need to change to manage this issue.  One is spread out, like I explained above, the second is why you need to keep the centre clear.

There are mods out there that help you deal with this debuff, but really, you don't need them.  Just pay attention and organise yourselves and you will be fine.  Being vocal on vent will help a lot with this debuff management.  Alrighty, pick 5 ranged DPS to allocate a rotation to.  DPS 1->2->3->4->5->1 and so on.  To start with, DPS 1 sits in the centre.  When the first plague is cast, that person needs to stop what they are doing and wend their way to the centre without (if possible) giving the debuff to anyone on the way.  This is not as easy as it sounds!!  If that debuff pops off onto someone else, the new person needs to move to the centre.  Hopefully, all goes well, and the person in the centre gets the plague, the carrier then needs to get the hell out of dodge and back to whatever they are supposed to be doing.

The person in the middle needs to count out about 10s - healer note the person with the plague will be taking an increasing amount of damage, keep them alive! - and then DPS 2 needs to run in and take the debuff off DPS 1.  DPS 1 needs to also get the hell out of dodge.  After 10 or so seconds, DPS 3 needs to swap over.  I think you get the idea.  This needs to continue until the timer on the plague is 0.  The plague has a global timer of 60s, and this is not reset when it is passed around.

Ok got that clear?  This mechanic is the main reason for the positioning change.  The positioning change has one further aspect to it.  Since everyone is hanging out near the green goo spawn point, we need to look at dealing with green goo add differently.  We know where the spawn point is; when the green goo add is about to arrive, everyone needs to stack together so that when the green goo hits (because it will... you are very close to it) you all get blasted in the same direction, and minimal damage is taken.  This is really important, and you will notice the difference if people don't stack properly, they will be flung in weird directions.

The other major change is during transitions.  Instead of smacking everyone with tear gas, Prof Puke will mark everyone with an Orange Affinity or a Green Affinity.  He will then distract you all with spawning 2 adds, an orange one and a green one, of course.  So, those of you with the orange affinity can affect the orange add, and those with the green affinity can affect the green add.  Simple eh?  Well, you better smash those adds down by the time Prof Puke comes back, or you will lose time on the boss, because those adds need to go down as a priority!

The rest is exactly the same.

We are still wiping NER, what's going on?
Are people spreading out?
Are people not moving the plague to the middle?
Are healers forgetting to heal the plague team?
Are the plague team holding on too long?
Are people DPSing the right affinity?
Are people standing in bad?
Are people not stacking properly for green add spawns?

Those questions should address the changes in this fight that cause wipes.  Good luck guys, sorry it was so long between drinks!

Heroic Lady Death Whisper

Lady Deathwhisper in heroic mode is amazingly difficult.  There are a few mechanics changes that make this a bit of a cluster fuck of a fight, I will talk about the changes seperately.  Also, there is more than one way to complete this fight from a strategic point of view, I will address in detail the way I am familiar with it, I will comment upon the other methods, but if any readers have experience with any other ways, pop a comment in and I will update and expand the varying methods.  There is never one way to skin a cat, ladies and gentlemen.

Phase 1 is very similar to normal.  All damage is increased for all adds, and LDW herself hits harder.  The kill order of the adds becomes vital to the success of this fight.  Shadow resistance also becomes far more useful in mitigating damage.  So, don't be crap, tank the adds properly, smash the adds down in the correct order (see normal mode for that detail) and be very sure that you are focussing fire and getting those adds down as fast as possible and back on the boss.  Watch for reanimateds and enrageds.  And, again, remember your kill order and do it.

Phase 1 has another amusing change to it.  Instead of one MC there are now three!  Oh yes, it's Time for Fun!  Now, if you don't manage those MCs properly, your own players will start oneshotting you.  Let me say that again just to be clear.  Your own players will start wiping out the raid!! I highly recommend that if you have a boss mod that marks the MCed players, that you allocate people to control them specifically.  Mages, druids, locks, shammies, stun locks, traps, anything you can do to ensure that those MCs are locked down as soon as possible.  This is absolutely vital to the success of phase 2.

One last thing on MCs... use your CDs early, and keep them on CD.  If you are MCed you do NOT want the AI popping your CDs and a) wasting them and b) oneshotting your team mates.  CD early, CD often, blow hero early on.

Ok, so you managed to get through phase 1 with minimal casualties (none is the preferred option) and LDW is at 5ish%.  Watch the timers of the adds, and try to tick LDW over when you have few to no adds up.  You really dont want LDW ticked over when the tanks are also having to worry about the adds.  So, call it, watch it, and pay attention to what the RL yells out in decision to this.

Special Note to People with Pets:  Put them on passive.  Not defensive.  Do it NOW.  No, I don't care how good you are at managing your pets, just do it.  Trust me on this.  You MUST have them on passive.  You must 100% control what target they are attacking, this is because if you are a CCer, or you are not attacking something temporarily and an MC person attacks you, your pet will run off and defend your honour!  Now, usually this isn't an issue, but when 4 pets start attacking an MCed player, not only will they DIE, but it will break CC and cause havoc.  The defensive AI in this fight is a detriment to your ability to succeed.  If you are even arguing this point you need to go and learn more about how your pet works.  There are plenty of websites out there that can help you with that.

Passive.  Now.

Ok, sorry for that little rant, I have been killed more than once by wayward pets on defensive while I was MCed, you see.  Ok back to the main plot.


Phase 2 has ticked over in a safe time between adds.  Let me tell you a little story about non tauntable bosses and aggro resets.  I am a holy pally, and I heal things.  I hit like a girl and, generally, I am not a threat to anyone (even when MCed I tend to look threatening and buff the boss with wisdom).  EXCEPT when I am in melee range, I am pre-healing the MT ready for him to take aggro, My heal lands and heals him a metric buttload (and perhaps my bacon target as well) BEFORE he lands a hit on LDW.  At this point, LDW turns around and swats me one to the face.  That is how delicate that aggro dump is.  If you are a DPSer, just plain dont touch her, stay at range if you are melee from about 1% just GTFO!  Seriously!  Don't worry about your DPS, because if you pull, you are DEAD DEAD DEAD and that is terrible for your overall DPS.

Ok so, no one pulled, the first MT has aggro, and people are now pumping MD's and Tricks into the MT to get their threat up.

Phase 2 has some nasty surprises in store for you, and is where the real fight begins.  First of all, adds keep coming, only one side at a time, but they keep coming none the less, more on that in a moment.  Second, 3 MCs keep happening.  Keep up the same CC rotation as Phase 1, no big change there.

Third, the ghosts will probably one shot you and everyone in range of you if they get in melee range of you.  If there is a ghost even in your general vicinity RUN THE FUCK AWAY!  Stop what you are doing, interrupt your casts and GTFO!  They don't have to be chasing you specifically to explode, they explode in 2 ways.  They explode when they reach the spot their target was standing, they also explode when they get in melee of anyone at all.  Let me say that again, THEY INSTANTLY EXPLODE ON MELEE RANGE!!  Melee range is bigger than you might think.  So just stay away... as far away as possible.

Phase 2 will require interrupts, make sure you have an interrupt rotation sorted out for the frost bolts and other interrupt-able casts.

Mage dispels are vital on the tanks, and still important all the time.  This becomes an issue in P2 because adds are still appearing.  Don't forget to continue to dispel.

Tanks will have a new issue to contend with.  There are two ways to deal with this - the first is tank rotation, the second is one tank with a lot of MDs/Tricks.  They come in 2 separate add strategies as well.  I will deal with the two below.

Ok, now we have dealt with changed the mechanics of the fight (I don't think I have forgotten anything), let's look at strategy and positioning.

Phase 1, bring the adds toward the platform.  All healers and range stay up on the platform, melee go to the adds, but be very aware of LoS on healers.  Resto Shaman, and perhaps Resto Druids will be doing a lot of healing in this phase and may pick up stray adds.  Other healers should be wary of who in your team is likely to pull healer aggro and be ready with a quick heal to keep them alive.  Mana can be managed by JoW on the boss and going up and autohitting the boss if necessary.

Phase 2 is much more difficult.  I will detail the strat I am familiar with: Tank rotation+Add Kiting.  There are variations on this theme with regards positioning.  All ranged should spread out around the room, as far apart as possible.  The MT should bring the boss to the bottom of the entrance stairs, and the MT healers should position themselves up the stairs away from everyone else as much as possible. 

The add kiting tank should be ready to taunt/keep aggro on the adds, MDs should be used to redirect any stray adds to the tank that he can't pick up himself.  This tank will kite the adds around the outside of the room.  Make sure they are dispelled of all effects at all times, especially frostbolt slows, and topped up as best as possible.  This should leave everyone free to kill the boss.

The other two tanks will take turns tanking and letting the stacks of insignificance drop off.  Calling out stacks and managing threat is key here to ensure that the tanks keep the threat going.  Tricks, and spare MDs can be of great help here managing the tank threat.  It might take a bit of practise to get right, but it is certainly doable.

There is another variation where there is one tank who tanks LDW and all tricks and MDs go into that tank to keep it on top of threat.  This requires a much more coordinated and aware DPS team who will take time off to smash down adds as well, I believe.  The advantage it has is you have one less tank.  It requires a much higher raid DPS output than the method I am aware of.  But again, I am not au fait with the detail on this variation, having never done it myself.  I suspect this will be much less tolerant of mistakes but will burn the boss down faster than the version I am using.

That's pretty much it.  That was quite a lot to explain.  They key features to this fight are as follows:

• Stay AWAY from ghosts, don't be even in the same postcode as they are.
• CC your MCed people asap
• use all your DPS CDs all the time
• careful tricks/MDs
• burn down the adds in the correct order and be coordinated

Good luck!  Don't forget, please comment with additions or mistakes I have made, I did write this one with half a brain (the other half being taken over by flu)

Heroic Saurfang

Heroic Saurfang is again the same as normal saurfang in most of the ways that matter.  In heroic mode, he gets more blood points from all the sources of damage he does.  Oh and everything hits harder, but that goes without saying, right?  One extra added BOOYA of hitting harder is that now, damage is proportional to BPs.  The more BPs he has, the more damage everything he casts/hits with does to your toons.  And yeah, once a new mark goes out, he goes back to hitting like a pussy for a short amount of time until his BPs rapidly increase again.

This makes it significantly harder to heal as marks go out faster. 

One thing that makes this really heroic is the adds.  A commenter noted that I missed out an ability cast upon the adds, being Scent of Blood.  The 80% aoe slow makes kiting near impossible.  If they touch you, you are pretty much dead.  CCing them and killing them cleanly before they get to their allocated DPS is vital to beating this boss.  Allocate your DPS to them carefully and ensure that those adds go down fast and without touching anyone.  Slows, knock-backs, stuns are vital to making sure the DPS have enough time to kill those adds before they attack anyone.

Aim to hold off the first mark until AFTER the first set of adds go out.  If you are getting the first mark before the adds go down, you need to have a look at what is causing the blood points to go up so quickly.  Are the adds hitting someone? are people standing too close together for blood nova? 

Healers need to look at their healing much more closely now.  6-7 healers is recommended, probably 7.  If you can, get 2 holy paladins as they can heal the first 4 marks leaving 5 healers free to keep everyone else alive.  Keep the paladins on the ranged, and let the other better aoe healers heal marks on melee.

This brings me to an extra point for healing - marks transfer melee damage done by saurfang as well as some extra just for fun, that's how it works in normal mode, too.  BUT! In heroic, the difference in Saurfang's melee hits from 0 BP to 99 BP is really crazy, mark healers will really notice the difference, and they will also notice the difference in healing a clothie with the mark and a plate wearer with the mark.  Try to keep your pallies healing the clothies if at all possible (your clothies should be at range anyway, so this should happen naturally).

If in the first 4 marks a melee is chosen, the paladin should heal it, but communicate that they are going to swap to the first ranged marked after the first 4 go out.  2 paladins makes healing much easier, but of course, this isn't necessary, the theory extends to any class.  Make sure that marks are allocated out to healers, (ranged marks to specific healers, melee marks to specific healers).  Keep as much mana for the 35% mark, as things will start going batshit insane for healers at that point.  Save all your tricks for this point, and conserve your mana as much as possible up until this point.

This is a hard fight, there is little to no wiggle room.  Stuff up an add, and healers will be unable to heal toward the end of the fight as marks start cascading out.  Stuff up a mark, and Saurfang heals, extending the fight.  Good luck!

Heroic Blood-Queen Lana'Thel

This is very similar to loot boat, except I wouldn't expect you to one shot BQL!  There is no new strategy in heroic mode, everything hits harder.  Healing is much harder, by extension, and people taking unnecessary incidental damage will now cause wipes as opposed to annoying the healers.  Even with the buff, losing a bite victim early will mean you don't make the enrage timer, in fact, at the moment losing a bite victim full stop will probably push you over the enrage timer!

Apart from those tips, it is business as usual.  Don't take extra damage, keep your bite victims alive.  Win.

I should add in here that I have noted that BQL will bite the person who does the most damage to her before the bite, not the person with the highest threat after the tanks.  Often, the person with the highest threat IS the person who has done the most damage, but I have gone through the logs of several occasions where that has not been the case.  Someone was clearly highest on threat and another person got the bite.  Upon reflection each and every time, the person with the most damage done (regardless of threat generation) was bitten.

Heroic Valithria Dreamwalker

Again, not a massive step up in difficulty for most people (ie not healers).  For DPS and tanks, business as usual, it is just that everything hits harder and is harder to kill.  So your priority order and ability to burn down adds as fast as possible is on the line here.  Make sure you have allocated your left and right teams well enough to cover off managing adds.  Also note you will be 1-2 DPS down due to increased healing requirements.
 
In heroic mode there are two major changes to Valithria - first, she loses health over time, second, going into the portals is damaging to your health and far fewer balls spawn in the dream.  Oh yeah, and they are red! Because RED is BAD MKAY?

Anyway, you will need about 8 healers for Valithria - 3 raid healers to stay outside and keep the raid going and 5 dream healers.  All healers should be putting any spare GCDs on Valithria as well as any spare AoE healing.  The dream healers need to allocate themselves one eacy to a portal (when they appear) and edge their way toward them and stand next to them as soon as possible.  While outside, dream healers should be helping with AoE healing on the raid, but their number one priority is healing Valithria.

Once in the dream, it is quite likely that there will be a red blob above your head.  Go and grab it to refresh your stacks.  Then, find a fellow healer or two and fly around together bursting red bubbles.  It is really important that you move in groups of at least 2 more if possible so that the most people get the most stacks.  The red blobs REALLY are thin on the *cough* air and you need to share them to get Valithria healed.  As long as you are within the area of the explosion when one is popped you get the (de)buff.

Just like in normal, get your stacks up as high as possible, and heal the pants off valithria.  Heroic is just plain Harder, so expect a few wipes while you find your groove.  Good healers to go into the Dream are pallies and shammies, priests and druids are probably better on the outside.  Save your CD heals for just before Valithria is healed and your stacks are high.

LootBoat Hardmode

If you can do normal mode, you can do hard mode.

Make sure your cannoneers kill the rocket launcher guys at the back, and the ranged kill the axe throwers at the front.  Apart from that, it is busniess as usual.  Don't lose your head, and steady as she goes.

Blood Prince Council Hardmode

The major and HUGE difference in this fight is a simple yet incredibly annoying one: Whenever your character moves you gain a stack of a DoT debuff - it does 500dps per stack, and is refreshed with each new application.  It has a 10s duration.  This means, if you stand still for 10s all your stacks drop off.  This debuff HURTS.  This debuff is applied not only when you run, but also when you get knocked back by anything in this encounter that knocks you around.

So, this encounter now becomes even more about positioning and team work.  Due to the Vortices and the need to be spread out, and also due to the need to Not Move, it behooves the raidleader to plan out where everyone is going to stand as their "permanent" position.  A good idea is to space the healers around the semicircle at the bottom of the stairs with one healer at the top of the stairs to keep those on stage alive due to LoS issues.  DPS need to stay spread around the room.  Melee should be allocated spots on the top of the stage for the personal vortex phase.

Tank both Taladaram and Valanar as together as possible to minimise melee movement.  The Keleseth tank will need to move around obviously, so the healers need to be aware of the stacks on this tank (as does the tank themselves).

The kinetic bombs drop significantly faster in hard mode, and also, you cant allocate 1-2 ranged to go after them as you just dont want people moving around.  Allocate a spotter to call out where the bombs are falling (we actually use a mut rogue due to their reduced damage from all the target swapping and moving) and anyone in that area has to stop DPSing the boss and keep that bomb up full time until it goes away.  If the bombs drop on stage, melee need to be allocated to hit them (in this case, our mut rogue generally handles the entire stage on his own). 

If you do get knocked back from a vortex or kinetic bomb, run back to your position in stages to ensure you dont get too many stacks of the debuff.

Even more than in normal, this fight is NOT a DPS race, I cannot stress that enough.  This fight is about staying alive and whittling away at the boss slowly.  There is a stupidly long enrage timer, you are very unlikely to hit it, no matter how long you take.

The key factors are: Staying spread out and staying in your allocated position as much as possible and making sure those kinetics do not touch the ground under any cirucmstances.  It is everyone's responsibility (except perhaps healers) to keep a kinetic up in their area.  If a kinetic touches the ground near you and you didn't hit it, then the resulting wipe is 100% your fault.

Rotface Hardmode

As with the theme of Hardmodes, Rotface is mostly the same but hits a lot harder.  In fact, rotface is one of the easier hard modes to achieve.

There are 3 real mechanic changes, first is that the infection causes a much higher healing debuff, so it is recommended that the person is dispelled as soon as possible and healed until they merge their ooze.

The second is the pools of goo coming out of the pipes now cause a stacking slow debuff that you need to be wary of.  Most especially the tank who is doing the kiting.  It is recommended you either skirt the edges of it, or use freedoms and other snare removing abilities to get the stacks off as soon as possible.  If you are kiting a small ooze to the big ooze, it is wise to not even attempt to go into the green patches, just wait for the big ooze to get to you.

Third is rotface will cast a Vile Gas type thing on anyone at range.  The off tank is a viable target for this as well.  The vile gas will disorient you if you move.  So, get all your range and healers out of melee and spread out around the room as best they can to reduce the risk of the off tank getting it.

Other than that, it is business as usual, just with more hitpoints and everything hits harder!

Lord Marrowgar HardMode

Lord Marrowgar is a great introduction to hard modes.  It is twitchy and confusing and simply great!

There are several changes to the encounter.  The most important one is that now bonespike happens all the time, so during the whirlwind phase, yes, RNG can happen so you are spiked, fired and spun upon all at the same time.  There is not a lot you can do about that sometimes.

So, phase1 is business as usual.  Marrowgar, of course, hits harder.

Phase 2 is where things get fun.  Since people can be bonespiked, it is imperative that you get them out asap.  Also, the whirlwind thing hits a lot harder, so you cant plant your feet and heal youself through it.

So, you divide the raid up into 2 groups, one goes left one goes right.  Spread out a bit, but make sure you are in range of heals.  The idea is to ping pong marrowgar left and right between the two groups.  Try and avoid the blue fire on the ground, and as soon as you see Marrowgar heading in your direction, run away.  I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to move as SOON as you see marrowgar swap targets to someone on your side.  However, keep the group together, so having 2 designated spots to run between on your side can help with this.  If anyone on your side gets spiked, get them out as soon as you can, and healers, try to keep them alive.

But really, that's it!  Heal hard, get those people out of the bone spikes as soon as possible, and ping pong Marrowgar between the raid groups, while staying away from his spinning blades of death, and not standing in fires.

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.

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!

Hot tip for the cold top

Wanna know something awesome for the Lich King fight? 
In phase 3, with the val'kyr who wanna drop your mates off the edge of the cliff?  Yeah, those chicks always ALWAYS head for the closest edge.  Have a think about that for a moment.  Yes, that means you can control which direction they move, and instead of having them go off in seemingly random directions, if you stand stacked just off centre, you can get them moving predictably to the edge.  Which makes CC and DPSing them down a whole lot easier!

It also means that if you stack over there *points* then you can get them going that way which is not over the defile on the ground *turns 180 and points at the black goo on the ground*

No, I haven't killed LK - but I have spent a lot of gold on repairs wiping.

I also haven't yet been in on a Blood Queen kill, nor that green dragon and I finally got a putricide kill last Thursday.  I have 2 strats due to be written up (being putricide and council)

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.