First impressions: Icecrown Citadel raid and 5-mans
by Allison Robert 
Dec 11th 2009 at 1:00PM
- Forge of Souls is the easiest of the new 5-mans. The most common gripe is that group members don't pay attention to their raid warnings and move in as necessary for Bronjahm, or stop DPS on Devourer of Souls if they get Mirrored Soul.
- Pit of Saron is pretty cool, though quite sad at the end (at least if you're Horde). The trash pulls full of casters are on the tough side if people aren't good about interrupting or moving out of Hellfire on heroic. Also, don't bank on getting Don't Look Up in a pug.
- Halls of Reflection is widely cited for the intense difficulty of the first two bosses (or, more accurately, the trash waves preceding them). The heroic version is not recommended for undergeared groups, and a successful run demands a decently high level of play from all members of the group. The end is really cool.
- Lord Marrowgar is considered a utility fight; it's a gear check for the tanks and a basic competence check for everyone else. This is possibly the result of its being one of the weekly raid quests. Alex Ziebart characterizes Marrowgar as "the first half of Black Temple in review."
- Lady Deathwhisper is the first real challenge for a competent raid and tests your ability to get Deathwhisper's shield to 0% while controlling adds and mind-controlled (on 25-man) players. The encounter punishes players swiftly for a lack of raid awareness, but it's not too steep a learning curve, and once you've gotten her to phase 2, you've pretty much won. Melee DPS are unhappy about yet another set of mobs in the game with nasty cleaves who have to be jockeyed into position.
- The Gunship battle: Very positive reactions in general. On a personal note, I think this is one of Blizzard's best, most unique, and most interesting fights since Sunwell. I want this fight to get married and have kids.
- Deathbringer Saurfang: Phase 4 Illidan meets the spawn of Saurfang. Players everywhere wonder: why can't Saurfang Jr. cleave?
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Instances, Raiding, Bosses
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Sedna Dec 11th 2009 1:05PM
"why can't Saurfang Jr. cleave?"
That's how you know he's really dead.
brian Dec 11th 2009 1:31PM
Well, he actually has Mark of the Fallen Champion, so his cleave doesn't even care about range! That's an upgrade, I'd say.
(http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=72293)
Mordockk Dec 11th 2009 1:42PM
5ish words- Mark of the fallen champion.
Add one point in the fight he was cleaving 8 players. LOL
Lostno Dec 11th 2009 1:09PM
not sure why everyone is so jazzed about the gunship battle.....I dont see the point, nor was it really fun. ....and surprise, look it's buggy
hexzerosix Dec 11th 2009 2:46PM
I kind of agree with you to an extent.
did it on 10 man with my guild, we spent 5 minutes before watching the video and after 1 wipe figured out waht to do, and honestly once you are able to get a flow of killing the mages and the adds on your ship its rinse and repeat easy peasy japanesy. i was really surprised at how short and easy it is. i think this fight is more about flavor then challenge. weirdest part of the fight was after it was over for some reason our master looter got overridden (was nice to get tanking shield on first attempt, but running with a pally and prot warrior the QQ commenced afterwards, the joys of loot council), and for some reason as i was trading the loot to players things went all crazy and 8/10 people in the raid were dumped on a platform with an angry abom waiting to slaughter us.
we couldn't get saurfang down in our first night of attempts as we kind of gimped ourselves by only bringing in 2 ranged dps (my lock and a boomkin), having a hunter to frost trap to help kite the blood beasts a little bit is huge.
Rekkla Dec 11th 2009 5:40PM
@Hex
The boomer you have is a huge difference maker. Have him hurricane at the moment the adds spawn to pull agro, and have him root/cyclone one, while kiting and running away to avoid giving DBS any blood points. If you only have 2 range, you should respec affliction so you can use CoE. And make sure you have a shaman's Earthind totem. If you still struggle to control them, get melee to help with hamstring/chains of ice or even repentence. We even had a tree join in to help with his roots.
But the real difference maker, is if you happen to have a priest with a disc spec. I play disc, and we wiped like 3 times. The 4th time, I finally realized I needed to be johnny-on-the-spot about shielding his blood boil target immediately upon when it was cast. The damage reduction I achieved that way was insignificant, but I was able to greatly lower his blood points, thereby reducing the number of Marks we saw. We got the achievement for seeing less than 3 marks on a kill, and I think our kiters+shielding was so effective that we didn't even get 1 mark put up on us. (If we did get one, it was late into the fight and I didn't notice it.)
walker.kyle13 Dec 11th 2009 1:09PM
I've only done the 5mans and i am so pelased w/ them, the tunnel in PoS just felt so epic, and HoR is stupid hard, but i managed to pug it and 2 dps died on second wave.... we beat both bosses, so if you have good heals less dps means less messed up aggro and makes life slow but easy
zedwards Dec 11th 2009 4:42PM
I remember no one even pugged something like Magisters Terrace when it first came out. That was actually a real challenge.
Tcl Dec 11th 2009 5:32PM
I pugged MgT the first day it was out, and we did fine.
Kragragh Dec 11th 2009 1:09PM
I actually found Halls of Reflection to be quite easy. As long as the tank can gather aggro and everyone waits for that, and as long as DPS kills the priests first, it's easy. And those two bosses are cake. The running part was really fun too...
Rhoan01 Dec 11th 2009 1:11PM
I actually got Don't Look Up in a pug; none of us even knew the achievement existed, we just hit the end and went "Wow... That was cool!"
And as a helaer, the LFG tool is definitely rocking my face off, especially on off-hours for the server. I can get a group and get started in 5 minutes, where i used to take 20 or longer before.
catharsis80 Dec 11th 2009 1:19PM
I also got it in a PuG last night. Guess we're lucky? Actually, you're entire comment is completely my scenario in every way. :)
devilsei Dec 11th 2009 1:45PM
Yeah same here, the group did have another guildie of mine in it, but that was it. Was actually pretty easy for an achievement.
As for the PuG tool, yeah its nice for a healer, until you get thrown into Gnomeregan... much less a Gnomeregan pug where the tank has more mana than health, and everyone thinks they can solo every mob there (and expect me to keep their asses up when they are 30+ yards away from everyone else, including me...) =P
Kalibas Dec 12th 2009 12:52AM
Were you in my run? Lol, I got that achievement the first time in there on the first night in a pug. No one knew about it or even what to expect in those instances. Pretty fun to tank though.
Random Dec 12th 2009 7:21AM
Yep same here... picked it up on my mage first time in. Only thing that was an issue was that I didn't know some of the first trash mobs in the whole series of dungeons have a spell reflect and had to iceblock to keep from killing myself. >:-(
Matt Dec 11th 2009 1:12PM
I got Don't Look Up! the first time I pugged it. :)
Jeff Dec 13th 2009 1:13AM
Just thought I would point out to everyone feeling smug about getting this achieve on their first run, it is bugged to h$#l. We also got the achievement and I guarantee everyone in the group got hit at least twice on the way up the tunnel. We wiped in the middle of tunnel, ran up, tanked them near the end with ice falling on EVERYONE, walked out of tunnel, and got achievement. Found it very amusing.
PirateEmery Dec 11th 2009 1:12PM
I got 'Don't Look Up' in our guild's first run-through... Got it entirely by accident...
Granted, we had done Hodir the weekend before, so that may explain a bit of our mad snow-dodging skills...
Azizrael Dec 11th 2009 1:12PM
I can only comment on the 5 mans.
FoS - a LOT of people on my battlegroup either don't use DBM or haven't updated it for the new patch. It could also be that they can't read MIRRORED SOUL - STOP DPS in giant blue letters on their screen, I guess.
HOR trash waves the first time through on heroic was awesome fun - the first time what feels like years that I've run something where we've wiped a couple of times and had to actually think about tactics rather than just charge in and AOE stuff. We settled with standing on the stage area behind the first mini boss - the Paladin tank stayed in view and the rest of us hid round the corners to stay out of line of sight of the ranged. The tank pulled them all into the back area and then we burned them down - healer, ranged, rogue, footman.
The final run didn't feel as hard as I expected it to, given the level of difficulty clearing the first event.
InvaderDem Dec 11th 2009 1:41PM
Not to defend people who "don't listen to the warnings," but the text can be hard to pay attention to when you're working on a boss and trying to get everything in order. Throw in adds or high detail of animation and it just gets more confusing.
At first, I had a hard time keeping track of the warnings when I was trying to get all of my necessary attacks/buff/debuffs in place before I can relax a bit but I have no problem with it now.
Plus, from my experience with PuGs, people don't ask to make sure everyone knows the battles anymore. And when they do explain it, they give cliff notes and start the battle without giving a chance for someone to ask questions.
I mean, It's not hard to type that if Bronjahm casts a spell on you that looks like the Drain Soul animation, get as far away from him as possible to give more distance for the soul-thingy to travel.