Icecrown Citadel: The Lower Spire Part II

Due to a nice long Christmas vacation, I've fallen way behind in my write-up on Icecrown Citadel. The next wing is already open, and I will of course write about that one in a later post.

But first, I have to finish writing about the first wing.

After killing the skinny tart Lady Deathwhisper, the raid jumps onto an elevator and takes a short trip to the lower part of the roof of Artha's little house. Up on the roof, Horde and Alliance are fighting over who has the coolest ride; The Skybreaker or Orgrim's Hammer. As all guys know, discussions regarding rides can only be solved in two ways: a) Bash eachother's brains in, or b) compete in a race. And that's what the third encounter in Icecrown Citadel is all about.

Bash in some Horde skulls (if you're Alliance, otherwise that would be bad) and make a run for the Alliance ship: The Skybreaker. Now it's a race to the top, and all dirty tricks are allowed.

Gunship Battle

When taking a ride in The Skybreaker, you are putting your lives in the hands of grumpy drunken dwarves. If that wasn't bad enough, the orcs onboard Orgrim's Hammer has decided to make the trip even more interesting.

This fight is the Chess event (remember Karazhan?) of Icecrown Citadel. It's pretty hard to fail, except when the encounter bugs out horribly.

Before starting the event by talking to Muradin, make sure everybody has had a chat with the dude next to him so that everyone has a rocket pack equipped. With this rocket pack, a player can fly between the two ships, and this is needed to beat the encounter.

The raid is divided into three groups: Defenders, Gunners, and a Boarding party.

The Defenders' jobs are quite simple: Kill everyone within range. The enemy is trying to board your ship every now and then, and these attackers need to be tanked and killed. Whenever there's no attackers, this team should help out killing things in the enemy ship. Therefore, ranged dps is best suited for the Defenders team, since they can attack both the enemy's boarding party as well as the axe throwers on the enemy ship.

Gunners use cannons to damage the enemy ship until it breaks down. They need to avoid overheating the cannons, and whenever the cannons are frozen by the enemy battle mage, they leave their cannons and help the boarding party kill the battle mage. Gunners could be either melee or ranged dps.

The boarding party jumps over to the enemy ship either to just kill off the battle mage who is freezing the friendly cannons, or to kill off rocketeers and axe throwers as well.

A tank should always jump on to the enemy ship first, and leave it last, since the enemy commander (Saurfang in Horde's case) will engage any unfriendly visitor to do some serious hurt. The tank should stack avoidance, since Saurfang gains a stacking buff everytime he hits something which increases his damage done. If the buff reaches 20 stacks, the tank will most likely be one-shotted. The buff resets after Saurfang hasn't hit anything for 20 seconds.

This means that the boarding party cannot stay too long at the enemy ship before they have to retreat and let Saurfang's buff reset. Make sure not to leave pets or totems on the enemy ship when retreating, since this will prolong the reset time of his buff.

The main purpose of the boarding party is to kill the battle mage as fast as possible, so that your gunners can start using their cannons again.

Things to look out for:

• All mobs gain experience and get stronger the longer they live. It's important to kill off all mobs as fast as possible to reduce the damage they will deal. Make sure to prioritize killing order based on how experienced the mobs are.
  
• Battle Fury - this is the stacking damage buff that the enemy commander gets. Make sure that it doesn't stack too high, because then the tank in the boarding party will die.
• Below Zero - this is when the enemy battle mage freezes your cannons. The battle mage needs to be killed as soon as possible, so that your gunners can continue damaging the enemy ship.
• Rocket Artillery - the enemies are bombarding your ship with rockets. Big runes on the deck will show you where the rockets will land. Try to avoid these, since they hurt. The more experiences the rocketeer that fires the rocket is, the more damage the rocket does.
• Sergeants - these are the most dangerous members of the enemy boarding party. They whirlwind and does mortal strike. Make sure these guys don't get too experienced, or the defending tank will most likely die.

Our first experience: This encounter was seriously bugged the first week. After winning the battle, our ship never docked, and since our master looter had died on the enemy ship, he couldn't be ressed and we couldn't distribute the loot. Since this seemed to happen to a lot of raiders, I guess Blizzard had a busy time handling tickets regarding loot distribution from the gunship battle the first week.

To minimize the risk of the tank in the boarding party dying, you can keep the boarding party on your own ship until the battle mage appears. Then move the entire party over to the ship, kill the battle mage and the most experienced rocketeers, and jump back before the damage to the tank gets too high.

Alot of people seem to think this encounter is the shizzle. Personally, I think it's a bit annoying. It's hard to fail, and it just takes long to execute.

When the fight is over, your triumphant ship docks and the next boss is waiting for you.

Deathbringer Saurfang

We all knew death knights were overpowered, but this guy is taking on 25 opponents without flinching. And like any other death knight, he's cheating by healing himself whenever he does damage. Nerf death knights, I say!

The key to this fight is to limit the damage he and his adds deals to the raid, since the damage done heals him. One way is to try to shorten the fight time by making one or two of your healers respec dps to kill him faster. Healing in this fight is easy at first, but gets real nasty the longer the fight lasts.

Two tanks are needed, since Saurfang will put Rune of Blood on his current target, which heals him for 10 times the damage he deals. That's when the other tank taunts and keeps the orc's interest until he gets the Rune and it's time for a new swap.

Tanks should wear avoidance gear, since Saurfang gains 1 Blood Power everytime he hits the tank. When he reaches 100 Blood Power, he casts Mark of the Fallen Champion on someone in the raid, and that's when it gets exciting for the healers.

The hardest part of the fight is probably controlling the Blood Beasts that he summons. These nasty buggers need to be kited and killed as soon as possible. If they hit someone, Saurfang gains Blood Power, which is bad, thus the job of kiting and killing falls on ranged dps. The beasts can (and should) be slowed as much as possible.

Things to look out for:

• Mark of the Fallen Champion - the people who get this will take lots of damage, and will heal Saurfang for 5% of his health when they die. In addition, when marks are up, Saurfang gains Blood Power more frequently. You have a choice here: Keep one healer spamming the people with the mark, or just let them die. On 25-man, letting them die is usually the most efficient choice. On 10-man, it's not recommended.
• Rune of Blood - make sure to tank switch as soon as this is up, since it heals him considerably.
• Call Blood Beasts - melee dps (this includes the tanks) need to stop ALL aoe damage when the beasts spawn, so that the kiters have a chance to get aggro on them. If one of the melee gets aggro, he needs to run away to avoid getting hit.

Our first experience: We wiped on Saurfang until we learned how to handle the Blood Beasts. When we had those under control, the fight was no longer a problem.

My next Icecrown post will be about those handsome fellas Festergut and Rotface.