In this installment we talk about the new bosses of the Frostwing Halls in Icecrown Citadel, and the joke that is Toravon the Ice Watcher in VoA.

I dream of Valithria Dreamwalker.

The video has full vent commentary. You may find it interesting because it'll show you how different raid members figure out abilities on the fly, pointing them out while the raid quickly adapts to the new information. The video doubles as a very good instructional video for those wanting to know how we beat it.

For those attempting her in 25man (or 10man), here are some quick, helpful tips:

- The fight is all about control. We took a gamble and 4 tanked it, when our common setup is 2-3 tanks. It gave us amazing control of the encounter with a tank able to watch each quadrant of the room.
- Kill order: Blazing Skeleton >>> Suppressor > everything else
- Don't feel like you have to use every portal just because several spawn. We only used 2 portals out of the several they give you. We only had healers go in, and once their stacks got high (and they had insane spell damage because of it) we lusted/heroism'd for them so that they'd have crazy healing on Valithria. Others would take portals in their place as a way to regenerate their mana, but we'd never send in more than 2-3 healers or else we'd be lacking raid healing on the outside. We did not send in any DPS whatsoever.
- DON'T STAND IN FIRE. Or in this case, columns of frost. Easy to avoid, and a mechanic everyone should be used to by now.

Important mob abilities to watch out for:

- Blazing Skeleton. These mobs are dangerous. Anyone in the area should stop what they're doing and immediately kill them. They channel a raid-wide AoE and leaving them up too long will cause a wipe.
- Suppressors. Try to kill them before they reach Dreamwalker. They are snareable (Chains of Ice, Frost Trap).
- Gluttonous Abomination. It just hits hard and can one-shot non-tanks. Pick them up quickly.
- Rot Worms. When an Abomination dies, it spawns little worms. A tank needs to hold aggro on these worms while they're aoe'd down. Do no take them lightly. They can crit for 10k EACH.
- Risen Archmage. Interrupt their frostbolt volleys. It's additional AoE damage that's interruptable. A DK or warrior tank can handle interrupting pretty well.
- Blistering Zombie. When it gets low, ranged should finish it off while melee DPS run out. They explode in melee range as they die.

It's a chaotic fight, especially near the end when healing her from 85%->100%. Just hang in there and keep things as controlled as possible. Good luck!

The slaying of Sindragosa.

Extremely intense fight in 25man. And this is just normal mode. I won't go into too much detail on the encounter since the video speaks for itself. With full vent commentary it works as a very good instructional video for those attempting her. I will say a few general things however.

The fight is all about CONTROL. More so than most other bosses. Don't treat it like a DPS race. We 3 tanked the fight and used additional healing (our standard healing setup is 5-6, but in this case we used 7). Amusingly enough, we ended up 24-manning the kill because our resident fury warrior had something come up during early combat that left us down a DPS the entire fight.

When attempting this fight, focus on expert control instead of just zerging through the mechanics. Make sure to tank switch at very low stacks and have assigned groups to handle rotating behind blocks in phase 3. Rinse/repeat and you'll score a kill. A thorough guide will be released for this, and every other Icecrown Citadel boss in the coming weeks. So check back often!

For those interested in our 10man kill video, follow this link.

Toravon, Shmoravon.

Complete push-over. Drops some of the best gear in the game which is all subject to our best friend, RNG. Our tank just got 2 arena pieces last night, the gloves and legs, both in the same run. I guess Blizzard doesn't mind that people who compete in arena have to grind for weeks to get the same gear as someone who gets lucky in one night.

The encounter itself comes down to a few simple things.
- A simple tank switch.
- DPS down frozen orbs when they spawn and move around.
- Put out heavy raid healing while the orbs are up.

I likely made it sound much more difficult than it really is. This boss is very easily PuGable. Don't hesitate to try it for some of the best loot in the game.

In other (annoying) news.

We lost one of our attempts on Sindragosa 25man because she despawned as we engaged her. What's more frustrating is that after the second pull (and wipe) she wouldn't respawn. Putricide and the Blood Princes wouldn't spawn either when we went to go see whether the rest of the instance was broken. We finally soft reset it (zoned out for 30 minutes), and the instance fixed itself. We were set back a good 1-2 hours on our kill with an attempt gone. Thanks Blizzard!

In a future blog, you can hear me whine about guilds that are running a fully geared alt raid in addition to their main raid to inflate their attempt counter. The sad thing is, I can't blame most of them for wanting to stay competitive.

Previous: Road to Arthas: Chapter 4