Monday, June 7, 2010

Tentative strategy for the Lich King, 10-man

Our guild has finally reached the Lich King!  After discussing the encounter with a 10-man raid leader from Google's guild, I think the best strategy to start off with is as follows (and assumes 2 tanks and 3 healers, which seemed to work fine for us in phase 1):



Phase 1:

  • Necrotic Plague,which we dealt with just fine, and the two types of adds.  Keep the Shambling Horrors facing away from the raid, as they have a frontal cone attack.  If possible, misdirect them to the OT to avoid needing to pull them helter-skelter (facing all directions) through the raid.  Also, tranq them when they enrage.
  • Infest will be cast on the entire raid every so often, dealing a bit of damage and putting a DoT on people that stays until they are healed up past 90%.  But we seem to be dealing with this easily.

Transitions (70%, 40%):

  • Break off dps 3% ahead of time if a Shambling or a Valkyr is about to spawn.  Deal with it.  Pull the LK to the edge as you push the last 3%.  The LK will then run back to center before channeling Remorseless Winter.  Take this invitation to kindly leave the main platform.  
  • LK will cast Pain and Suffering, a cone shadow damage spell with a stacking DoT.  Thus the raid should form an arc, not stack up.
  • Ice Spheres will spawn.  These have very low HP (around 6k) and can be killed by a single hunter as they start to head for the outside edge.  (If they reach us, they'll knock us off.)
  • Raging Spirits will be summoned from players.  They cast Soul Shriek, a 20k frontal cone that also silences all targets for 5 seconds.  Tanks need to grab these immediately and pull them to the edges of the raid's arc formation, facing away from the raid.  They must be killed, or nearly all killed, before the transition ends.
  • Quake destroys the outer platform at the end of the transition.  Make your way off it.  Quickly.

Phase 2:

  • Infest is still with us.  Still shouldn't be a problem.
  • Defile will be cast on one player at a time.  This is the one that places a pool of black on the floor.  It deals shadow damage each second, and grows larger for each person it deals damage to.  If three people are in it, it will grow faster than they can run out of it, or so I'm told.  To counter this, we should all stay as spread out as possible the entire time.  We'll have a two second cast time to see who he is targeting.  That person should run, and will hopefully only take one tick of it by the time it lands (it lands where they were standing at the time the cast started).
  • Valkyr will spawn.  They'll grab someone and drag them off the platform.  Just before they spawn, we need to all collapse to the center of the platform (barring any Defile placed in the center).  Once someone is grabbed, everyone else needs to chain, daze, etc. in order to slow the thing (it will only slow to 50%), and then take it out.  Then spread out again and turn back to the LK.  
  • Soul Reaper will be cast on the highest aggro target.  It will put a ticking bomb on the tank, dealing 50K shadow damage after 5 seconds.  At that point, the LK also gains 100% haste for 5 seconds.  Hence the idea is to have the OT grab aggro during the 5 seconds before the 50k lands, in order to avoid having the MT take 50K and then take lots of LK blows.  The MT should still blow a cooldown.  If Puya was MT for this phase, he could probably do it without switching, by alternating Barkskin and the 4t10.  

Transition again.  This is the time to blow Heroism, to make sure we're clear of Raging Spirits (more of them in this transition than in the first one) going into Phase 3.

Phase 3:

  • Defile is still with us.  Infest is gone.
  • No more Valkyr.  Instead he will summon a flock of 10 or so Vile Spirits.  These will hover for 30 seconds, and then cast Spirit Burst, which is a 5 yd AOE kamikaze targeted on a player that deals 15k shadow damage.  The idea is to AOE as many of these down during the 30 second window as possible.  We'll already be spread out for Defile, so the AOE shouldn't be an issue.  
  • Soul Reaper is still with us.
  • He'll cast Harvest Soul.  This deals 7.5k shadow per second for 6 seconds.  Then it teleports the victim into Frostmourne.  There are two things in there.  A good guy, and a Spirit Warden with 250k HP.  Player damage is doubled due to Harvested Soul.  You need to kill the Spirit Warden before it kills the good guy, else it will kill you.  If you're dps, you need to interrupt the Spirit Warden's channeled Soul Rip, which deals increasing damage to the good guy over 6 seconds.  If you're a healer, you might as well try to interrupt it too.  If you're a healer, you need to heal up the good guy (remember, he won't be on your raid frames, so plan accordingly!).  The good guy will deal more damage to the Spirit Warden as he gets up to full health.  


Actually, I think it's really quite doable :)