Welcome to the Icecrown Restaurant!

If there was such a thing as the Icecrown Restaurant, your head chef would be none other than Sindragosa, who serves up for your raid a Mystic Buffet, with a side order of RNG.

Seriously, who the fuck thought this achievement in its current state would be a good idea? There's way too many variables and having even one of these fall out of line by a fraction of a second will cause you miss the train on the achievement and have to endure nine minutes of hell all over again.

Let's look at all the things that can go wrong:

You can have your tanks get Ice Tombed, a Taunt resist, among a host of potential RNG issues. Not to mention that every member of your raid needs to be absolutely perfect at all times, which are extremely lofty expectations to set for a gimmick achievement - and often the tanks can do everything correctly and still fail the achievement.

I wouldn't mind it so much if the rest of the fight was actually enjoyable and wasn't absolute hell to do. Oh, and they replaced Sindragosa's voice actor with someone that has some talent at voice acting.

~P

I feel dirty.

I've been bad. So very bad.

So my guild killed Deathbringer Saurfang (heroic, of course, taking us to 8/12 total) this week. I should probably be happy for this, but the kill was rather hollow because each member of the raid was doing 5% more damage and healing and had 5% more health.

Perhaps I'm being facetious, but I personally don't think we'd have killed it without the buff, and that's sad. Either way, we'll never find out if we could have killed it or not. Yes, the option's there to turn the buff off, but let's be serious here - with absolutely zero incentive to do so, do you really think this option is going to be exercised?

On the upside though, I was able to break 12000 DPS on this fight for the first time thanks to the buff. Awesome.

~P

Taking Things Too Far

Blizzard's degeneration of raiding has really gone too far. Seven of the twelve hardmodes in ICC 25 are an absolute joke and will die within 5 pulls. There's another two that will take you only a few more attempts.

The remaining three are slightly more difficult and will last most guilds a few more weeks yet - but that's because attempts on them are limited.

Even the easier hardmodes of Ulduar were a considerable step up from this rubbish - prior to them being nerfed into the ground of course.

And it looks like Blizzard won't even have to nerf Icecrown, it will nerf itself in the form of a stacking HP, damage and healing buff for everyone - stacking up to 30%. Not that you'll need it of course, as everyone except the worst of the worst guilds out there will be 11/12 ICC Hardmode by the time the buff kicks up to 30%.

~P

On Ensidia

In case you've recently been living under a rock, in a shoe, or on one of the moons of Jupiter, you should know that Ensidia recently got banned for exploiting the Lich King encounter by using Saronite Bombs to rebuild the platform, trivialising a certain aspect of the fight. This was the world first kill, but they had their titles, loot, achievement, and credit stripped with the ban.

I'm not naive enough to take a side and defend them vehemently, but it's hard not to feel sorry for Ensidia. They've essentially been beta-testing on live and discovered a broken encounter and been punished for it. There's no excuse for content going live with fatal bugs such as this.

That said, Ensidia haven't had the best record of clean kills in the past (C'Thun, Hodir, Mimiron, etc) and their official statements should definitely be taken with a grain of salt. I personally wasn't sure whether I could trust them when they said they didn't know what was causing the bug.

With that said, banning them is a bit harsh, and they should have been given the benefit of the doubt from Blizzard. Next time this happens (really, you're kidding yourself if you think no boss will ever be bugged again), fix the bug and take away their kill, sure, but at least give the guild another shot at it for the week.

It would appear that Blizzard opted for the easiest way out when dealing with this issue. Respawning the Lich King in Ensidia's instance would have been extra effort, and not to mention the effort Blizzard would have to go to when dealing with the bleeding hearts on the US forums crying out "BUT YOU BANNED EXODUS YOU OBVIOUSLY FAVOUR ENSIDIA".

~P

Blizzard gets one thing right

And that one thing is removing limited attempts on normal modes in Icecrown.

Now, let's see if they're sensible enough to do the same for heroic mode.

Actually, scratch that, Cataclysm isn't anywhere near ready yet, need to keep people playing (and paying) a bit longer.

~P

How to: Blood Princes 25

As my Professor Putricide strategy brought in great feedback, I've decided to continue with the picture strategy format for now.

I present to you all: The Emblem of Conquest Raid Guide Brigade strategy for the Blood Prince Council on 25 man! A guide to the Queen herself, Lana'thel, will be up shortly.

Happy raiding!

~P

Update

Blood Queen ten-man down, it seemed really undertuned. We killed it in about three minutes, well short of both the hard and soft enrages, and although we're using 25 man gear, I can't imagine it being too difficult for strict 10 man guilds either.

The hardmode of this is probably going to just be a tighter DPS check, I can't imagine it being too difficult either.

Yes, I know, I'm supposed to be talking about that DevChat - I'll get right on it.

The Blood Prince Fight

So far I've been able to experience this fight, as we're yet to attempt Blood Queen Lana'thel.

On 25 man normal mode it's an absolute joke, and it's probably easier if you kick half your raid before you attempt it.

Stay tuned for some great posts over the next few days. Tomorrow I'll be providing my analysis on the Blizzard DevChat and on Saturday you'll be able to access the Raid Guide Brigade for this encounter.

Also, resilience is getting buffed. PvP and arena becomes even more retarded. I'm glad I don't bother anymore.

~P

How to: Rotface (25 man)

Rotface is another boss in the Plagueworks and he represents a considerable step up in difficulty from Festergut. However, with this guide, you should have no problems.

First of all, as this guide is quite difficult to understand without visual aids, you can find them attached at the bottom of this post.

As always, let's discuss group setup:

Five tanks are required. It can also be done with six, but we think this is a little extreme.
Eight healers is a good number, two of each class. If you're running with six tanks then drop down to seven healers.
The remaining twelve spots will be fleshed out with DPS. Bring anything. Really. It doesn't matter.

The Fight:

Rotface should be tanked as centrally as possible. Have your entire raid stack up behind him on the melee, as he occasionally will deal AoE damage to the entire raid, and this makes healing the raid easier. This also counteracts the slime pools that he will drop during the fight - if your raid is in melee, they won't ever be hit by slime pools.

While your Main Tank tanks Rotface, your other 4 tanks should be waiting in the corners of the room as displayed below. Periodically, a member of your raid will be hit with a debuff called Mutating Injection and they must run out of the raid to one of their tanks to drop their slime pool...I mean add. The first person to receive this debuff runs to "Tank 1" in the image and waits for the second person to receive the debuff. They will then also drop an add at the tank. Once both people have dropped their adds, they will merge to form a Big Ooze which must be tanked by the tank at their position. This occurs 3 more times, with the only difference being that the raid members will now be running to different tanks. Once all 4 off-tanks are tanking a Big Ooze, the next two people to receive the Injection will run to the main tank to drop their add. The main tank must then pick up and tank the fifth Big Ooze^. Your main tank will take lots of damage at this point, so big heals and cooldowns are a must! At this point, your 4 off-tanks need to run their Big Oozes to the main tank. All 5 will then merge together and start to explode*, so your raid needs to move away from the Really Really Big Ooze. By this point he should be at like 5% anyway because of the HP nerf, so assuming your entire raid doesn't get exploded on, you will win.

^ Note: If you are using the six tank strategy, have your fifth off-tank pick up the fifth Big Ooze. You should still tank him on the main tank as you really have nowhere else to go.

* Note: You can not tank the Big Oozes once they have merged together, as they gain a stacking damage buff after they merge. Although it is fine to tank a normal Big Ooze (without any buffs), having your tanks try to tank a Bigger Ooze will have them be one-shot, so your tanks need to be careful.

How To: Festergut (25 man)

Festergut is one of the bosses in the Plagueworks wing of Icecrown Citadel, and the easiest boss of this wing. As part of Emblem of Conquest's Raid Guide Brigade, you will be instructed on how to defeat this encounter as well as the other encounters in this wing. Guides to these encounters will be posted shortly.

First of all, let's talk about Festergut's group set-up:

One tank and 5 healers are required, the remaining spots are to be filled with DPS. Festergut has 40.4 million health and he enrages after two minutes and fifteen seconds into the fight, so this means your 19 DPSers have to put out an average of 15750 DPS each. This will be easily achievable if your raid is stacked with the top DPS classes and specs such as moonkins, elemental shamans and warlocks. You also NEED one non-tanking paladin (for reasons that will be discussed later).

Your 5 healers can be anything, but try to maintain a good balance. Both the tanks and the raid is hit very hard, so having 1 holy paladin, 1 resto shaman, 1 resto druid and a priest of each healing spec is ideal.

Every so often, 3 random players in the raid will receive a debuff called Gas Spore, identifiable by a giant spore floating over the players' heads. When this debuff runs out, the player and any targets near them will be afflicted by a very powerful DoT. For this reason, anyone targeted with Gas Spore must immediately run out of the raid, being mindful not to run out of range of healers as they must be healed up.

Meanwhile, your tank will be hit with a debuff that increases his damage by 10% per stack. Once it gets to 9 stacks, approximately 1 minute and 30 seconds into the fight, the tank needs to have Divine Intervention cast on him, or else he will explode. Some strategies use 2 tanks to deal with this, however this greatly increases the DPS requirement needed to down Festergut, so it's (obviously) an inferior method. Your tank must click off the DI straight away before Festergut murders anyone.

Keep in mind that through all this time Festergut himself will be gaining a buff that increases his damage and attack speed. If you have not killed him by 2:15 into the fight, he will go berserk and cast a spell called Pungent Blight that will instantly wipe the raid, so your DPS needs to be on top of their game! You are also very reliant on your tank clicking off DI in time. Pray that Festergut doesn't go for someone that the tank dislikes when the tank gets DI'ed.

Festergut is a very challenging fight that will require every raider to put in their A-game. Follow this strategy and it should fall over!

Icecrown Tuning Review

Putricide is too easy.

As for the other two bosses in the Plagueworks, also a touch undertuned on 25 man, and right about where they should be on 10 man.

Deathwhisper got nerfed on 25, which is sort of understandable as an entry-level boss, but it wasn't exactly hard to begin with.

Let's hope the next wing provides more of a challenge.

~P

Icecrown Raiding Update, Take Two

We have become stuck on the Deathspeaker High Priest. For those of you that don’t know, this is the most overpowered mob in the game. When we initially encountered it (running with our 4 healers that we needed to defeat Lord Marrowgar), we noticed that the raid was taking too much damage and dying very quickly. So we made the switch to 5 healers and although the raid isn’t dying as quickly anymore, we are still struggling a lot. These mobs heal up about 25-30% of their HP every 10-15 seconds or so, and we can’t dps them down fast enough before our healers go OOM and our tank goes splat. Our 4 DPS (we run 1 tank for Marrowgar and probably will for Deathwhisper once we get there) just aren’t getting it down quickly enough.

We don’t have an MS effect, our only warrior is prot, our only hunter is BM, and we have no rogues, which some of you who actively peruse these forums may have already noted in an earlier thread. Is this what is hurting us, the lack of MS effect? I hope it isn’t, we already had to pay a rogue from another guild to come in and help us clear Marrowgar trash, and I don’t want to have to do the same thing again. Or is there another issue at hand that I am missing?

2010. A new year, but this number is also Larxy's DPS.

As we stand at the beginning of a new year, we have a lot to look forward to, it's shaping up to be the best year of WoW yet.

The secrets of Icecrown will continue to be revealed, as we explore beyond Deathbringer Saurfang and soon, get to experience Arthas and hardmodes.
A possible new raid in the Chamber of Aspects to bridge the gap between Icecrown and Cataclysm. This was hinted at some time ago.
Cataclysm will be released. It's almost definitely this year, my bet is on August/September.

Happy new year, and happy hunting.

~P

Icecrown Raiding Update

I am happy to announce that, with the help of 2 rogues who came and cleared the trash up to Lord Marrowgar with us for 1000g each, we have been able to face Lord Marrowgar. We have, however, been wiping to him for quite some time. We are struggling to deal with the frankly ridiculous damage output that he does to our tank and this is what is wiping us (tank keeps dying).

This is on 10 man, of course.

~P~

Icecrown's ridiculous class requirements

Good job Blizzard, making a joke of an instance that we can't do because we don't have a rogue.

For hours now we have been wiping to the trash before Lord Marrowgar, which we have as of yet been unsuccessful in attempting because we don't have a rogue.

So we'll be clearing one of the trash packs when somebody steps on an unseen trap which issues forth the Deathbound Ward, which cleaves, silences and spells instant doom for the raid. We'll run back and rebuff, only to have another Deathbound Ward spawn and wipe us again. This goes on for many hours.

It's completely preposterous that we have to be cruelly denied progression in Icecrown because we don't have a rogue available to us. Whatever happened to bring the player, not the class? I just want to see the content, but I can't because I don't have a rogue in my guild.

It's time that you either removed the traps and associated Deathbound Ward spawns entirely or gave the ability to disarm traps to another class/spec (like BM hunters).

Raid Guide Brigade: Preparing for Icecrown

With 3 days to go until Icecrown, it's perfectly understandable that you and the rest of your bad guild want to be as ready as possible when it launches, so you can spend less time discussing strategy and more time wiping to Deathbringer Saurfang.

Icecrown is a winged instance, and only one of its 4 wings will be accessible upon launch. This wing contains Lord Marrowgore, Kel'Thuzad's wife, some stupid vehicle battle and the aforementioned Saurfang.

Something that appears in Icecrown but you would not be familiar with as a result of your exciting adventures in the Trial of the Crusader is the trash mob. Trash has historically proved to be a fun, dynamic pacing mechanism (as seen in Naxxramas and Ulduar) and Icecrown's trash should prove to be no different.The best part of fighting trash mobs, however, is the loot. Loot from trash mobs is some of the best in the game and the fact that it is never guaranteed to drop helps to keep you engaged and interested when fighting trash. Trash will be difficult to get your head around for those players who are coming fresh out of Trial of the Crusader into Icecrown, but if you remain positive about it then you will have the most fun anyone could have in this game.

The trash up to Lord Marrowgore is quite difficult and will present a challenge to raids that have healers and tanks in greens. Once you finally beat this trash though, you will be able to fight a slightly larger trash mob that looks like a flying skull with an axe. Ignore what you've learnt about running out of whirlwinds from Trial of the Crusader, because it hits for about 200.

There are 3 more raid encounters that will be available, but you, the reader, won't be able to get past the Marrowgore trash anyway so it is pointless to discuss them at this stage. You will have to wait until the first round of major nerfs, I'm afraid.

Check back here for more updates on Icecrown soon, and never forget that the Emblem of Conquest Raid Guide Brigade™ is always at the forefront of releasing guides to new content.

Icecrown Gating System

The information on this was released recently in a fairly lengthy blue post, so I'll try and pick out the most relevant details and dissect them one by one.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana'thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace. 

Definitely not fussed about them gating it. I don't mind the more relaxing atmosphere on the normal modes, and it will certainly be good not to blitz everything in the first week of it being released.

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

Good. This should have been in with Ulduar.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.

Pretty self explanatory, but also a good thing.

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana'thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

Interesting, is really all I can say. I don't mind limited attempts on hard modes, but 5/10/15 is far too few when you consider the amount of connection issues involved in ToC currently. Icecrown will probably be worse when it's initially released. The addition of limited attempts to normal modes is a bold move, and one that will probably hurt average, middle-of-the-road guilds more than anything, as well as being counter-intuitive to pugging, which isn't exactly a bad thing.

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

I squealed like a schoolgirl when I read this. Thank heavens they've learnt their lesson from ToC and that they aren't stupid after all.

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish.

This is rather boring to be honest. It's much like Yogg hardmodes, except it's not interesting. Sort of a "hey, you haven't cleared it by now? Yeah okay we'll give you these awesome buffs" option for the terribles.

Daelo's post about this has earned some considerable ire and for the life of me, I can't understand why. Nothing about this system is awful, the worst thing about it is the initial limited attempts on the bosses and even that will be rectified over time. It's certainly an improvement on ToC, although it's not like that would have been hard to do.

~P~

Icecrown: Something Positive, for a Change

First of all, there's no denying that this is a negative blog at times. This is a blog that is dynamic and responsive to the changing world (of Warcraft) and the decisions made within the community will affect the views of the community as a whole. My views just happen to be more cynical. Next.

Icecrown, on the contrary to many things in Patch 3.3, is shaping up really well. I've had the opportunity to see most of the encounters (through PTR testing and streams) and they're all looking very interesting at the moment, and we've only seen the normal modes so far. I'm very excited to see how the hard modes will turn out.

Of particular note is Valithria Dreamwalker, an encounter you win by healing the boss up to full life. This is very much a nice deviation from the normal tunnel-vision style encounter of "Hit boss, collect purples". The current achievement for the encounter asks requires her to be healed within 31 minutes, although I am currently assuming (and quite safely at that) that this a placeholder value much like the original Yogg-Saron speed kill (22 minute) achievement.

So yeah, Icecrown will probably be awesome. I know someone will find some hidden negativity that isn't really there in this post, so without further ado, bring on the hate.

~P

The Tweetaclysm

Blizzard have abandoned useful forms of communication with its playerbase in favour of Twitter, so the unwashed masses who don't have an attention span sufficient enough to decipher more than 140 characters can get some insight into the developers' minds.

I'm not going to deconstruct every single question that was posed, because some of them are horrendously awful (Are Worgen going to have mounts?)

I will however be coming out and blanketing the stage with more of my trademark pessimism because of a lot of what Blizzard has said is complete nonsense. So without further ado, let's delve head-first into the sea of rubbish.

Q: In the future will hard modes have greater fidelity like Sarth, Sarth+1, Sarth+2, Sarth+3 rather than the Binary Normal/Hard?
A: Generally we have learned that hard modes should be more binary, but that doesn’t mean we will never do something like Sarth 3 drakes again.

No. This is bad. Binary hard modes are uninteresting and generally don't make any sense. Mimiron and Vezax were implemented well, the other binary hard modes (especially in ToC) have been terrible. And with Icecrown, they're doing away with the triggered hard modes altogether, so you'll be toggling switches in your interface to activate hard modes. Right. Ignoring the fact that this makes absolutely no sense in the lore (I just changed something in my game options and now the boss hits twice as hard!), it's simply less intuitive and fun.

Looking at Flame Leviathan's hard mode for instance, it was initially designed on the PTR so that you would have to talk to the Lore Keeper of Norgannon which would activate the encounter on hard mode (there was no option on Brann Bronzebeard). This would require you to clear all of the trash and kill all towers in order to do FL on normal mode, which rewards the guilds that are able to do the hard modes by making the trash less tedious. This was scrapped, and players got the option to start the encounter on normal mode straight away. What did the players that can do the hard modes get in 3.2? Another version of the same boring, repetitive instance to clear, making their experience even more tedious. This is the opposite of what needs to happen. Hard modes need to be used in a way that changes the feel of the instance for players. They need to be able to say "Awesome, we can do hardmode now, so we no longer have to do X", in the same way as you used to be able to with Flame Leviathan. More importantly, players need to have incentive to keep doing the hard modes. This didn't happen with Ulduar, there was nothing positive to be had from repeating hard modes week after week. And it's not happening with ToC either. Icecrown looks to be more of the same.

Q: Any plans for a gated system in IIC like in Colliseum that prevents us from doing hardmodes from day 1?
A: We do have a system that unlocks bosses similar to how we handled TOC and Sunwell. We are restricting hard modes to raid leaders that have defeated Arthas in regular mode.

Mixed feelings about this. The second part is good, the first part, not so good. Arbitrarily gating the encounters is not an adequte substitute for having difficult encounters which can self-sufficiently act as gates, especially not in an instance the size of Icecrown. It's understandable that this content needs to last (probably around 8 months) as it's the last raid dungeon before Cataclysm, but it needs to be handled differently. While the normal modes of Ulduar were bested in the first week, Yogg+0, the last of the hard modes, wasn't beaten until a month before 3.2 came out. The same thing needs to apply to Icecrown, by making the hard modes truly hard, it can last the distance.

There was quite a bit of interesting stuff in the Blizzard comments with reference to Cataclysm, which looks to be shaping up quite nicely at the moment. But that's a year or so away. Let's just hope Icecrown lives up to its potential, for now.

~P

Icecrown on PTRs

Lord Marrowgar (1st boss of ICC raid) is available for testing at 4PM PDT. This is 10AM AEDT on the 16th of July for those Oceanic players who are interested in testing this. Odd that it comes just after I post that it really needs to hit PTR soon!

~P