Crimson Hall Walkthrough

The third wing of the new Icecrown Citadel dungeon opened January 19^th. In the Crimson Hall you’ll find the Blood Prince Council, which includes Prince Valanar, Prince Keleseth, and Prince Taldaram. After you defeat the Blood Prince Council you’ll then ahave to fight Blood-Queen Lana’thel.

Blood Prince Council Walkthough

You’ll have to take on all three members of the Blood Prince council at the same time for the first battle in this Crimson Hall walkthrough. Use two regular tanks and one ranged tank for the battle against the Blood Prince Council, but note that not all three princes will be active at the same time. The order the three Blood Princes will become active in will change each time, so just have your walkthrough for each of the three battles set and be ready to go to any of the three strategies at any time. Also remember that you must defeat the Blood Prince council within 10 minutes, or they will berserk and wipe the entire raid.

The first prince to become active will always be Prince Valanar, so you can start out prepared for that battle by having your Prince Valanar walkthrough ready. Use a regular tank for Prince Valanar. As soon as Prince Valanar activates, he casts Empowered Shock Vortex, and all melee DPS should run away from him during his cast time. Empowered Shock Vortex does quite a bit of damage to any raid members who are close to Prince Valanar. Ranged DPS should be assigned to keep the Kinetic Bombs in the air. Just keep hitting them while they’re up, and they’ll stay up without exploding and wiping the raid. The Kinetic Bombs look like white balls of light.

When Prince Taldaram activates, use a regular tank for him also. He’s going to conjure a ball of flames that will move from Prince Taldaram’s location to a random raid member. Whichever raid member is targeted by the ball of flames will die unless you follow this strategy carefully. Assign a handful of DPS to break off from Prince Taldaram briefly to follow the ball of flames. It’s best to choose one melee DPS and one or two ranged DPS, who should be spread out equally across the area. These DPS should run with the orange ball as it approaches the targeted raid member. The ball will drop small sparks on the other DPS as it approaches the targeted raid member. Allowing other raid members to be hit by some small sparks will mitigate the damage the orange ball does when it reaches the targeted raid member because it shrinks as it spits sparks.

You’ll need your ranged tank for Prince Keleseth. Yes, I said ranged tank. Warlock may be the best class for this, although it’s up for debate. Just make sure your ranged tank stays out of Prince Keleseth’s melee range because hit hits pretty hard. Your ranged tank also must hold aggro on the dark nuclei that spawn with Prince Keleseth. Anyone who is not your ranged tank must not hit the dark nuclei because they give your ranged tank an important buff to keep him alive. The ranged tank should stay close to all the dark nuclei to soak up the buff.

Blood-Queen Lana’thel Walkthrough

After you knock down the Blood Prince Council, then it’s on to Blood-Queen Lana’thel. She will bite a random raid member early on in the battle. That increases the raid members DPS 100 percent, so this is a very important part of the fight. When the raid member gets Frenzied Bloodthirst, he must bite another raid member and pass on the high DPS. Always bite your highest DPS member first, and then go down the line, biting the next highest DPS and so on. All raid members can only be bitten once, and they must all be bitten once. If you run out of raid members to bite, you’ll wipe the raid. Basically, you’ve got to kill Blood-Queen Lana’thel before you run out of raid members to bite. Every single DPS raid member must be putting out the maximum possible DPS in order to get this done.

Ranged DPS and healers should spread out across the area to avoid damaging multiple raid members when Twilight Bloodbolt hits one player. Healers, watch to see which raid member will have Blood Mirror, which mirrors the amount of damage the tank takes onto another raid member. You’ll have to heal through this, so it’s a good idea to have one healer dedicated to covering whichever raid member is targeted with this. It could fall to the tank healer possibly, if you’ve got the right people.

Stay out of the circles on the ground. Blood-Queen Lana’thel will cast Swarming Shadows on a random raid member. The circle will appear under the targeted raid member, so that member will just have to keep moving until it’s over.

All raid members should also watch for the ability Pact of the Darkfallen. This causes damage to all raid member it links until they run together. You’ll know if you’re linked by the red lines that connect you with other raid members. Just run toward each other to get this off of you.

The Crimson Halls

Today is the launch of the crimson hall wing of icecrown citadel and many of you are looking for strategy guides for the new bosses. While noone knows for sure what the live bosses will bring we do have some insight from the ptr and we will share that with you.

The Blood Prince Council Strategy

This is a long one phase encounter. You will need one ranged tank and two regular tanks.

Invocation of Blood will randomly buff one of the Blood Princes and only that Prince will have a health bar to DPS. The other Princes will have 1 HP and attacking them will have no effect. Invocation of blood switches between princes throughout the encounter and DPS must switch with it. Prince Valanar will be the first Prince with Invocation of Blood.

A properly specced Warlock will be the most useful class for tanking Prince Keleseth. Dark Nucleii will spawn in the room around Keleseth and the Warlock must get aggro on them and stand near them. They will give the Warlock a stacking debuff that reduces shadow damage taken, allowing the warlock to survive Empowered Shadow Lance which is cast when Keleseth gains Invocation of Blood. Dark Nucleii should not be hit too hard and also destroy themselves over time, neccesitating finding more to keep the shadow resonance buff up.

Prince Valanar will use Kinetic Bombs which can be targetted and attacked to bounce them higher in the air and prevent them from exploding. He puts shock vortexes on random raid members which knock both them and any nearby raid members back 50 yards. When he gains Invocation of Blood he casts Empowered Shock Vortex which creates a shock vortex on top of every player within 30 yards, melee will need to scatter and get away from him.

Prince Taldaram will do a frontal cone fire attack and conjure balls of flame which follow a random raid member and do less damage the longer they are kited, minimum 10,000 damage. With Invocation of Blood he will launch Empowered Balls of Flame which do a huge amount of damage on impact and lesser damage to nearby targets along the way, doing less impact damage depending on how many players were hit while the ball was in flight.

The Abilities 25 player

Prince Valanar

• Shock Vortex — Creates a vortex of swirling force near an enemy target that inflicts damage and knocks back enemies near it. (Unlimited range. 1.5 seconds cast)

• Kinetic Bomb — Summons a Kinetic Bomb that floats towards the floor and explodes for 12,000 physical damage to every player in the room, knocking them back 200 yards. (50 yards range. 3 seconds cast)

• Empowered Shock Vortex — Creates force vortices on all nearby enemies within 30 yards, inflicting 7,000 Physical damage and knocking enemies near the target away. (Unlimited range. 4.5 seconds cast)

Prince Taldaram

• Conjure Ball of Flames — Conjures a ball of flames that flies through the air toward the target and explodes on impact. 10,000 damage minimum. (50 yards range. 3 seconds cast)

• Conjure Empowered Ball of Flames — Conjures a ball of flames that flies through the air toward the target and explodes on impact, dealing fire damage to nearby enemies along the way. (50 yards range. 3 seconds cast)

• Glittering Sparks — Glittering sparks shoot from the caster's hands in a cone, burning enemies for 16,152 Fire damage over 8 seconds and reducing their movement speed by 20%. (90 yards range. Instant)

Prince Keleseth

• Shadow Lance — Hurls a bolt of dark magic at an enemy, inflicting 17063 to 17937 Shadow damage. (40 yards range. 1.5 seconds cast)

• Shadow Resonance — Summons a Dark Nucleus. (Instant)

• Empowered Shadow Lance — Hurls a bolt of dark magic at an enemy, inflicting 85,313 to 89,687 unresistable Shadow damage. (40 yards range. 1.5 seconds cast)

Dark Nucleus

• Shadow Resonance — The nearest target resonates with shadow, suffering 1,000 damage and reducing Shadow damage taken from all sources by 40% for until canceled. (15 yards range. Channeled. Lasts for 6 seconds)

Blood-Queen Lana'thel Strategy

This is an encounter with two phases: a ground phase and an air phase.
The raid will need to be spread out or Twilight Bloodbolt will wreck multiple players. Especially during her air phase when the whole raid is hit by Bloodbolts.
Tanks need to switch off when they have too many stacks of delirious slash.
Random players will be affected by Swarming Shadows which will drop a shadow patch underneath the player every second until it wears off, forcing them to keep moving for its duration.

Blood-Queen Lana'thel will bite players, increasing their damage dealt and allowing them to heal themselves for part of the damage they deal. However, you must pay close attention to this as you will gain Frenzied Bloodthirst when the bonuses fade, forcing you to bite another player within 10 seconds or become mind controlled.

She will also link the tank with the closest person to them, causing the linked person to take shadow damage equal to the damage the tank takes.

Finally, she has an ability that's basically a reverse of Mother Shahraz: she links players with Pact of the Darkfallen and they must run to each other to remove it. The entire raid (Needs live confirmation) will take shadow damage each second until all linked players are standing next to eachother.

Blood Queen Lana'thel has a huge amount of hit points (62,500,000!) and you will quickly run out of people to bite, making this encounter short and requiring huge DPS. Only DPS should be bitten until there are no DPS left to bite and bloodlust/heroism should only be used when the majority of the DPS are vampires. More than any other encounter in Icecrown to this point Lana'thel will require DPS to be outputting everything their class can output.

Keep in mind we are bringing you what we know from the ptr and this can change when the live version appears. Check back and once we have gotten our hands on the live wing we will share more.

Icecrown Citadel: Plagueworks Walkthrough

Icecrown Citadel: Plagueworks Walkthrough

Rotface is one of the four new bosses you can fight in the latest wing of Icecrown Citadel, due to be released January 5th. Rotface deals nature damage mostly, so use every nature resistance ability you have. The main thing you have to deal with, other than Rotface himself of course, is the oozes.

Icecrown Citadel: Rotface Walkthrough

First stay out of the green areas on the floor. Each corner will turn green as Ooze flood creeps in. Just stay out of these areas because the damage over time is rather high.

Rotface releases Slime Spray every so often, turning to target a random raid member. The player who is targeted should remain in place until it passes. Any players who are close to the targeted raid member should run back around Rotface so you don’t catch any of the spray. You’ll know to run if Rotface turns in your direction but doesn’t target you.

For the 10-man fight against Rotface, start the battle with both tanks on Rotface, but when the small oozes start to show up, one of the tanks should leave Rotface and tank the oozes instead. No DPS is needed on the oozes because they will destroy themselves if you do it correctly. Frequently Rotface will infect random raid members with Mutated Infection. This infection is what causes a small ooze. Any raid member who’s infected with Mutated Infection must leave their position and go to where the tank is on the ooze. Keep all the oozes in one location and they’ll merge into a large ooze. That large ooze will explode, so as soon as it stops moving, all raid members who are near that large ooze must run away. It causes a lot of damage when it explodes.

As far as Rotface himself goes, just tank and spank, keeping the oozes in mind while you DPS him down.

Icecrown Citadel: Plagueworks Walkthrough

Icecrown Citadel: Plagueworks Walkthrough

The next wing of the new 10- and 25- man Icecrown Citadel raid opens on Tuesday! Of course we’re all chomping at the bit to play the new Plagueworks raid. Most of the information about the new bosses in the Plagueworks is either based on the PTR or pure speculation, but here’s what we’ve got so far.

Festergut Walkthrough

You’ll need two tanks for the fight against Festergut, and both tanks will need to carefully watch each other’s Gastric Bloat stack, taunting off each other whenever it starts to get too high. This is VERY important because the tank’s DPS keeps going up with each stack of this ability, but when it reaches 10, the tank will explode, killing him and any nearby melee players.

Ranged DPS and healers should fan out across Festergut’s playing area. Stay spread out to avoid killing each other with Vile Gas, which damages nearby party members in addition to the player it originally hit. Healers, watch for this ability and heal the party member through it. It’s not a ton of damage, provided the DPS stayed the appropriate distance away from other party members. Melee DPS should run away from all party members when infected with Vile Gas.

Another Festergut ability to watch out for is Gas Spore. It should be pretty easy to watch for the mote which tells you that you’re infected. Players who aren’t infected can tell who is infected by looking for the little ball above their heads. Anyone who is NOT infected with Gas Spore should stand next to someone who is so they can catch Blighted Spores. Yes, they will take damage from this, but that damage comes with a helpful buff which makes you resistance to Pungent Blight, a major damage-dealing ability released about 90 seconds after the first time Festergut cast Inhaled Blight. Basically just count three Inhaled Blights and then get ready. The buff which makes you resistance to Pungent Blight stacks three times, so everyone should make sure they’ve got three stacks of the buff, especially the tanks.