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Icecrown Citadel has been out for eightmonths now, and with the availability of i264 emblem gear and the 30 percent zone buff, it's become accessible to raiders with a wide range of experience. Some players have downed the bosses 100+ times on various alts, and other players may be just starting out.

Regardless of your experience level, there are always interesting tricks about the fights that people learn over the course of time. Here are 32 of them.

• Warlocks, time your Seed of Corruption to hit as Bone Spike cast ends, and if everyone's stacked correctly in melee range, you'll be top damage on Bone Spikes.
• During Bone Storm casts, tanks should run to be farthest away from center of raid. Some 90 percent of the time, he'll target the farthest person away to move to.
• Any time you have to split your DPS into two groups (whether it's Thaddius or adds on Lady D or Valithria), an easy way to get balance is to go through Recount by damage done and put Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 on damage done on one side and the rest on the other side.
• Spellsteal or Purge the Vampiric Might on fanatics.
• Boomkin rooting for Darnavan works especially well, but note that he's immune to Cyclone.

• Kiting Saurfang on the Gunship Battle is the best method. Tank goes over, hits Saurfang a couple of times and then jumps onto wall behind where the battle-mages stand. When Saurfang gets up on wall, you just jump down to the battle-mages, then back up. Just position your camera so it doesn't keep shifting.
• When kiting Saurfang, melee players who are not in cannons can stay on the away boat, help kill adds there and make fast swaps to battle-mages, while ranged DPS can AoE down adds on the boat from safety.
• Tanks on Deathbringer Saurfang can watch their own debuffs of Rune of Blood; he generally casts the next Rune of Blood within a second of the first one's falling off.
• Almost too obvious, but having a paladin beacon healing on two marks is generally best.
• For val'kyr trash mobs, have everyone stack up very tight on the tank; it's much, much easier to AoE down Severed Essences.
• If you run into a situation where Severed Essences have gotten out of control because too many DPSers have died, kite them over Crok Scourgebane in front of Frostwing Halls entrance. He and his group are usually happy to help (but don't pull the trash in Frostwing Hall.)
• Precious's Ribbon is not tradeable after being looted, so it's generally a good idea to set the loot threshold to green when killing Precious.
• For Festergut, have healers stand with melee, as long as you have at least eight to nine ranged DPSers. Healers can reach everyone from the boss' feet, and they won't get gassed.
• Mages can Ice Block and spriests use Dispersion on Pungent Blight and not have to worry about getting spores.
• DKs can Chains of Ice on the little oozes on Rotface to make it easier to merge them.
• When Professor Putricide casts Vile Gas, rogues should Vanish and mages cast Invisibility to have some extra DPS time while everyone else is gassed.
• Warlocks should use Demonic Circle and mages should use Ice Block on Professor slimes to give DPS more time on adds. Hunters, be aware if you Feign Death on an orange ooze, it will just retarget someone else, possibly a melee who's not expecting it to suddenly turn on him.
• Kill the archmage that's casting Soul Siphon at start of Crimson Halls super-fast, and one DPSer can click the pedestal in the middle for the buff that increases damage and makes all spells instant-cast. (Note: This does not reduce threat at all; every time I get this buff, I die, but it's a lot of fun.)
• Bears and DKs using Icebound Fortitude can't be sapped by tacticians. For any other tank, kill the tacticians last, because tanks can't build threat while sapped.
• On the Blood Prince Council fight, it's sometimes easy when dealing with bombs and avoiding vortices to lose track of which boss is empowered. Look at the three target frames that come up when fight starts to see which has health (he's empowered), and click that frame to target him.
• Putting a pet on Kinetic Bombs is a good idea, especially pets that have a ranged attack.
• Rogues can use Cloak of Shadows to remove Swarming Shadows on Blood Queen.
• Really, really want to get bitten first? If you can swing it without pulling aggro, have the rogues cast Tricks on you at the start. Vampiric Bite appears to always bite the highest-threat target that's not the target or Blood Mirror, ignoring any threat reductions. However, threat increases (such as Tricks or Misdirection) do work.
• On the first bite, wait 'til two to three seconds are left on Frenzied Bloodthirst to bite. This should make it so that vampires don't have to be right beside someone during the Bloodbolt Whirl trying to bite someone.
• For the adds on Valithria, DPS is less important than control, so some things that would be ridiculous on a normal boss fight actually have a benefit -- for instance, spamming Fan of Knives to put out Crippling Poison on suppressors.
• Tanking adds where suppressors do their channeling makes AoE more effective and generally makes it easier for DPS to see Blazing Skeletons when they start running out.
• Rogues can Vanish during Blistering Cold and use Cloak of Shadows to remove stacks of Chilled to the Bone.
• Standing right in middle of Sindragosa will give you just a little more time to run out during Blistering Cold, because you can start running while other people are still in the air being pulled in.
• During Blistering Cold, the tank for Sindragosa can press his movement key to move backwards and forwards very quickly (jittery, almost) so that Sindragosa won't come up on you so far after the Blistering Cold cast.
• You can make a macro for locations of Frost Beacon placement and spam it when air phase starts. This helps a lot when people are still getting used to where to put beacons.
• Warlocks can put their portals up on side of the Lich King's platform so that when the edge falls off, if you get picked up by a Val'kyr, you can teleport back to platform after dropped.

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Tags: icc, icecrown-citadel, strategy, tactics, tips, tricks

Filed under: Raiding, Guest Posts