Raid Rx: Healing Lord Marrowgar
by Matt Low 
Dec 8th 2009 at 7:00AM
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related.
Welcome to the first test of Icecrown. Once you've blasted your way past the many patrolling skeletons, you'll run into this giant floating bundle of bones. You can consider this boss a warmup compared to the rest of the instance. Marrowgar shouldn't be too taxing on us healers, eh? How hard could he possibly hit anyway?
Well, that largely depends on the rest of your raid adapts. The amount of healing needing to be done depends on how quickly the rest of the raid responds and how much damage they deal.
Same old story, right?
Bring in 2 tank healers and 4 raid healers. All 3 of your tanks will be playing an active role here by absorbing Marrowgar's Saber Lash. Basically, your tank and 2 nearest raid members will be splitting 200% of Marrowgar's melee damage between the 3. You may also wish to assign a healer to cover any melee in need of healing.
For positioning, park 2 healers in the center of the room. Place 2 to the left and 2 to the right of Marrowgar's chamber. Try to cover as much as the raid as possible with the healers. There's going to be lots of movement required by the raid. If your raid frames support it, having range finders toggled on to see who is or isn't in range is a big plus.
This worked in the PTR but I'm not sure if any adjustments have been made since. You can park your tank healers directly inside Lord Marrowgar's hit box so that they don't have to worry about Coldflame. The streaks of fire only emanate from just outside his hitbox instead of the center of his character. By standing there, they should be safe. On the other hand, it brings them perilously close to Lord Marrowgar. That's your call to make. It's not difficult to avoid the Coldflames, to be honest.
If you made it this far in raiding into Wrath, dodging fires should be reflexive in nature by now.
Phase 1
How good are your situational awareness skills? You won't have to draw on them as much as you did on Illidari Council (which is the superbowl of not standing in fires). Be prepared to strafe and barrel roll your way from his Coldflames. Keep your head up. You might be able to eat one (8000 frost damage every second for 3 seconds) or so throughout the fight. That luxury won't be there in hard mode so this is a good time to start practicing. (On a side note, I don't know when hard mode is activating. Arthas needs to be killed before that happens.)
Be sufficiently far away from Marrowgar that you give yourself plenty of advanced warning for Coldflames! However, you need to remain close and tight enough to the rest of the raid to keep them alive.
Periodically, your fellow raiders are going to be hit with something called Bone Spike Graveyard. Those players lose 10% of their health per second until the Bone Spikes are broken by the rest of the crew. The longer that process takes, the more you have to do. When I was affected by Bone Spikes, I wasn't able to control my character or cast anything. You are at the complete mercy of the other raiders.
It's possible for Coldflame to affect players stuck on Bone Spike Graveyards as well. Be prepared to blow a cooldown to keep them alive if it comes down to it.
Phase 2
This is the phase Lord Marrowgar turns into a whirling devil.
Bone Storm causes him to whirl around and chase different players at random. Players hit will be nailed for 6000+ damage every 3 seconds until it wears off. A tank can get away with eating this, but most clothies won't be able to.
The reason I would split my healers in such a way is so that there will still be healers available. Bone Spike Graveyard is still present in this phase. It can get scary if all the healers are on one side of the room and Bone Spiked players are on the other side. I learned that the hard way. If you see an opportunity, chip in with some damage spells to accelerate the process. Your raid is going to be in a fairly chaotic state.
Not only that, Coldflames are still going to be hounding the raid. So you're avoiding Marrowgar and fires. Just keep that in mind.
The dangerous part of this phase is when Lord Marrowgar transitions back to phase 1. Why is it dangerous? If your tanks haven't recovered and they're not properly centered on the main tank, then the main tank could end up eating a full Sabre Lash. I actually experienced that a few times on subsequent tries. If you notice that there are no other tanks around to eat the lash, get in range and hit the tank with a defensive cooldown and hope he survives long enough.
- Priests: Dwarves might be able to Stoneform off the bleed effect from Bone Storm. I never tried it though. Even if you are raid healing, stay within range of the main tank and immediately hit them with a shield when Lord Marrowgar phases back into his normal stage.
- Paladins: Keep a Divine Shield or Divine Sacrifice ready when your raid needs it. Be prepared to snap to it if several raid members get caught in a Bone Spike with Lord Marrowgar looming near by.
- Shamans: Nothing cool here. Stick with whatever your raid healers ask you to do (which is most likely Chain Healing into the tanks).
- Druids: Anticipate a hit by Lord Marrowgar? Shift into bear to up your survivability.
If you use specific addons to monitor debuffs on players, I recommend adding these:
- Bone Spike Graveyard
- Bone Storm
Want some more advice for working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered with all there is to know! Looking for less healer-centric raiding advice? Take a look at our raiding column Ready Check. Filed under: Druid, Guides, Bosses, Raiding, Instances, How-tos, Analysis / Opinion, Shaman, Priest, Paladin, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Shep Dec 8th 2009 7:06AM
We shall we.... today is a good day to die!
For the Alliance!
Shep
psoanddeath Dec 8th 2009 7:08AM
That is the coolest looking skeleton i have seen in my life.
Rainee Sue Dec 8th 2009 7:25AM
I really love seeing old fight mechanics get incorporated into newer fights. When you mentioned Bone Spike Graveyard I immediately thought "oh, like Freya hard mode" (I'm sure it's been used in other fights too, but we just got 3 Knocks down a couple of weeks ago so it's still fresh in my mind).
Of course, this makes it awkward when you go back and do old content you never saw at level... we ended up explaining Gruul as "just like Krystallus in Halls of Stone".
IvanZephyr Dec 8th 2009 8:27AM
Actually the "Stop normal moves and whirlwind while chasing other people while some other factors still screw over people" in a raid setting was first introduced with Sartura in AQ40
Sean Dec 8th 2009 7:32AM
Blizzard has really stepped up on the look of their bosses. This one and the giant three-faced stone thing from the 5-man are really unique.
satellite Dec 8th 2009 8:03AM
Reliquary of Souls from BT would like to have a word with your "unique" three-faced stone thing.
Sean Dec 9th 2009 1:58AM
... and how many people were able to run BT when it was relevant? Exactly.
Miatela Dec 8th 2009 7:58AM
Shift into Bear Form, really? Using Barkskin would be a far wiser idea as it would allow trees to continue healing people taking DoT effects.
I have been raiding as a restoration druid for 2 years now and not once have I shifted to bear form to minimise damage especially given the comparatively minor difference in armor bonus between Tree of Life and Bear - Barkskin is far better as the health pool increase will likely not save you with the lack of self cast HoTs. In fact, the only time I have used Bear form whilst raiding was on Faction Champions in order to bash a caster coming out of cyclone.
Your advice in regards to survivability for druids is very misguided in my opinion.
Deevan Dec 8th 2009 8:24AM
Most non-raiding resto's or non-druid players would assume that the PvE and PvP survivability playstyle is similar. In PvE the only reason to shift into bear is for Bash or to run into a corner and shadowmeld/reset a fight.
And it doesn't really happen a whole lot in PvP anymore. In Arenas/BG's I'll be toggling between travel and tree form, hardly ever drop into bear since the massive HP nerfs.
jrizutko Dec 8th 2009 9:56AM
I have come to learn that Matt Low can be pretty good at explaining fights, but he has huge blind spots, particularly in class mechanics. :shrug: No offense to Matt, but I take his advice with a heavy grain of salt.
Mordockk Dec 8th 2009 2:37PM
I think he means that if you're getting pursued(he targets random player) to switch from tree to bear to mitigate some of the initial whilwind damage. Not the bleed...hence why he said anticipate some of the damage. You can go right back to tree form and heal your little heart away, I'm sure you'll still ahve hots rollin the whole time.
Everyone knows a whirlwind cuts down a tree like a lumberjack!
Sky Dec 11th 2009 12:51AM
and barkskin doesnt mitigate the initial whirlwind damage?
jealouspirate Dec 8th 2009 7:57AM
Sounds like a lot of fun, can't wait to try healing it!
As someone else mentioned, this boss is aesthetically very cool.
Apra Dec 8th 2009 8:06AM
I haven't tried any of ICC on the PTR, but I'm wondering this: Do you really need healers split left and right? Or can you have healers in the center with DPS split left and right? I have usually found that having a healer on the far side of any encounter is a poor decision, and leaves him only able to heal half of his potential range.
Gridneo Dec 8th 2009 12:06PM
Are we sure that Bone Spike Graveyard is still casting during P2? Thought that was only going to be in Heroic Mode?
IvanZephyr Dec 8th 2009 8:32AM
If it's easy to avoid flames; why not also put Amplify Magic on the tanks, no?
Jacob Dec 8th 2009 10:20AM
Bone Spikes are not cast during phase2 on normal mode.
-http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f128/58425-lord-marrowgar-encounter.html
Just letting you know.
Wyred Dec 11th 2009 4:35AM
Anyone bone-spiked before he starts whirlwinding and not yet out will still need to be broken out while getting heals. It is very likely that this will happen several times during the fight.
Mordockk Dec 8th 2009 2:41PM
This.
Wist Dec 11th 2009 4:38AM
"If you made it this far in raiding into Wrath, dodging fires should be reflexive in nature by now."
That's what we love about you, Matt; your innocent, positive attitude. :)