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.