Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper

Lord Marrowgar went down in one shot last night. I have heard thru the grapevine that he was dealing 25 man damage in 10 man mode. That would sort of explain why he was hitting so damn hard.

We also made a couple of attempts at Lady Deathwhisper (LD) but since it was late and none of us had actually read up on the fight too much in advance, it didn't go that smoothly. We only got to phase 2 once out of like 3 tries.

But I have since researched it and I'm going to put down what I know and what we found out in easy terms that I hope I can remember and might help someone else. Everything is for 10 man normal mode. Note: LD has a 10 minute hard enrage timer.

Phase 1

LD has a mana shield up with 3.3 million mana. You have to burn thru that to get to the point where you can damage her. She has no aggro table at this phase so no tank needed. She does cast shadowbolts and death and decay. Everyone should know the main rule of raiding by this point, which is "Don't Stand in Shit" so when you see the green area on the ground, run out of it.

First adds spawn at 15 seconds into the fight and every 40 seconds thereafter from either the right or the left side of the room. Right side group will have 2 adherents and 1 fanatic. Left side group will have 1 adherent and 2 fanatics. Adherents are casters and fanatics are melee. Only one side pops at at time so tanks pick up and melee burn them down. Sometimes LD will reanimate the adds and then they do a lot more damage.

Adherents are casters and when LD reanimates them, they become immune to magical damage, so make sure to have your physical damage tank (bears, warriors, blood DKs) pick them up and kite them around. Melee burn them down.

Fanatics are melee and when LD reanimates them, they become immune to physical damage, so make sure to have your spell damage tank (pallys, Frost DKs, Undead DKs) pick them up and kite them around. Ranged burn them down.

During most of phase 1, have your ranged dps wail on LD and only dps on the adds if you have a reanimated fanatic. Another job that needs to be done during this phase is when LD empowers the adds, someone needs to dispel it.

An adherent that is empowered will cast Shroud of the Occult so melee needs to burn that as quickly as possible to get the shroud down. Run away from everyone if you get the deathchill blast or you damage everyone around you.

A fanatic that is empowered will get Vampiric Might which will heal them to full and he will do more damage. Kite him around if you can't CC him while you wait for the debuff to go away. Tanks can taunt him back and forth while melee kills him. But remember to beware of his cleave as it really hurts.

If you have time between when you take down the groups of adds and the next wave, everyone should be on the boss doing as much dps as you can. Hopefully you will have her mana shield down in at most 6 minutes, to do this, you need at least 9,167 dps on her shield to get it done.

Phase 2

No more adds will spawn during this phase but she will keep casting her D&D. At the beginning of this phase is an aggro wipe so make sure someone announces she is about to start phase 2.

Have your MT pick her up and keep her until the MT gets 2-3 stacks of Touch of Insignificance then have the OT taunt her. Rinse repeat. Also you need to make sure that you have several people who can interrupt her Frostbolts cause they hit like a mac truck.

LD will also raise ghosts during this phase, and the shades will pick a random target and move towards them. If they get in melee range of the target KABOOM. So make sure to keep an eye out for the shades and move away from them until they despawn in a few seconds. Wowhead says that it is melee range of its target, but I can't confirm yet if it is any target in melee range or just the one it has targeted.

Well I hope this guide is helpful and helps you keep your fur clean and shiny!

ICC

So the patch has hit and everyone is excited. After my group cleared ToC10 last week, we went and tried ICC10.

Woah! Things didn't go all that well. Our best shot on Marrowgar was 54%. However, I think our biggest issue was we only have 1 ranged person. And for whatever reason, I can't seem to buy a ranged person. When we first walked in, my OT was right next to me and I was still getting 1 shot. Holy cow. I have 32K armor with 25% dodge (after the chill) with 50K health. I don't think that is chump change.

I wasn't expecting to just waltz in there and down him, but I sure wasn't expecting what I got.

And now, every blog I read and most sites talk about clearing the first 4 bosses. And all I can wonder is what have we done wrong that they did right?

Then, I went back on Sunday with my "Alt" group. Me on my Elemental Shammy for dps. And this time we had 3 ranged dps, 2 melee dps, 3 healers and 2 tanks. We ended up moving one of the melee to make a third tank and still the best we got was 38%.

I'm just frustrated. So, instead of running ToC10 this week, I have scheduled ToGC10. Just to try to push the limits of my raiders. But I wonder how much difference that will make. I have pretty decent gear and there aren't any upgrades from ToGC10 for me really. I could upgrade my staff one notch, but otherwise, there isn't much. Same for most of my group. So I know the gear is slightly better, but will it give us the edge to kill Marrowgar?

Anyone have any better suggestions?

Bad Kara Runs

So, my wife and I are leading our guild's second Kara runs last week, and they were driving me crazy. Let me break who we had down for you.

1. Me - Feral druid
2. Prot Warrior
3. Wife - Resto Druid
4. Holy Priest
5. Rogue
6. Warlock
7. Mage #1
8. Mage #2
9. Shaman #1
10. Shaman #2

Night 1.
Okay, so we are kind of slow the first night, as there are too many brbs, but we finish maiden. This took way too long, but we had a couple of new people, so we had to explain things more.

Night 2:
Romulus and Julianne. Never done it before, we had to learn as we went. Once we understood what to do, it was going smoother. What kills me is we had to keep telling shaman #2 he was attacking the wrong target and to switch targets. Argh.

Okay, so we move on to curator, no problem, one shot. Then Illhoof, we wipe once when warlock goes down even though it was the priests only job to keep her up. Then we move onto Shade. Here is where I want to kill people, the holy priest isn't dispelling the slow, and to top it off, Shaman #2 moves EVERY single time we have a flame wreath. We finally give up and go to bed. If I hadn't, I would have killed someone.

My wife found a website that everyone doing shade needs to have playing during the fight!
http://shadeofaranchant.ytmnd.com/
But this is hard to understand over the mic, I played it for the group on night 3.

Night 3: Shaman #2 is replace by Hunter #1 and Rogue is replaced by dps Warrior #2. And Shaman #1 is replaced by Priest #2. Priest #2 is in charge of dispelling slow, and after 2 attempts to down Shade, we get Priest #2 on voice, and we down Shade. We do Chess and we attempt Prince. Notice I said attempt Prince.

First attempt, bad infernals.
Second attempt, Priest #1 is replaced by Hunter #2. Bear tank dies in Phase 2.
Third attempt, Bear tank dies in Phase 2.

Now the thing is, the resto druid has over 50% of the healing for these fights. I reset between each fight. And the priest is down at 25-30% healing. And as a bear, there is no way for me to take a potion and not take massive damage. As a bear, I have over 20,000 HP, over 25,000 armor and dodge at 36%. I should be able to tank Prince and not die. I don't know what the heck keeps happening. We finally quit last night, but damn, I am frustrated.

Okay, this should not take 3 nights. I know this, you know this, but what the hell went wrong. I am now checking and double checking to make sure that people are Kara ready. And being Kara ready, does not mean you are Kara able. See shaman #2. His gear is Kara ready, but I was out damaging him on fights, even when I was tanking. That should not happen with an enhancement shaman.

Long story to say, make sure your people are Kara ready and Kara able, as these are two different things. Some people will never be raid ready, they just don't have the skills to raid. But if you are going to take them, you better make sure that everyone else is on the A game to compensate!

Anyone have any suggestions or comments?