In my opinion? Lord Marrowgar is the perfect first fight for ICC. There is enough going on in the fight to keep your mind going, yet everything is simple enough to look out for and react to. A enjoyable fight and great first experience at 3.3 raiding.
Where will the boss be? The boss will be tanked where he is, in the center of the room, by your 3 tanks! During his Whirlwinds, you are going to find you go OOR of your tanks VERY easily. I would advise marking them, so you have ready heals when he starts attacking again.
Where should I stand? As a ranged you need to be spread out in a semicircle around Lord Marrowgar. The idea is that you stand far enough to be able to dodge Cold Fire as it spawns out of his hitbox, and close enough for melee to lend a helping hand, lest you get hit by a Bone Spike. You also want to stay away from your tanks, as you don't want be eating any Saber Lash damage!
What should I look out for?
Saber Lash- This is a melee attack that lord Marrow will deal to your tank and your tanks 2 closest allies (In 25 man, this would be your other 2 OT's). A very fast, powerful attack that will put stress on your HoT's. If you have been assigned to tank healing, you are going to want your Glyph of Nourish, complimented by your Rej, Regrowth and Lifebloom HoT's. Lord Marrow is also abit sneaky and will usually use this ability RIGHT after a Whirlwind, So another friendly reminder, keep an eye on your tank, and don't let them go out of range.
Cold Flame - Lord Marrow is going to be pumping these out during the whole encounter, However they are easy enough to avoid. The effect is of a blue strip of flames that will spawn at melee range and move outwards in a straight line. Melee won't take damage from it if they can move fast enough when it spawns on them, and ranged should be far enough to be able to dodge it as it travels outwards. It will do moderate damage to people to get hit by it, however a simple Regrowth or Rej/Lifebloom should be enough to top them up.
Bone Spike Graveyard- During the encounter Lord Marrowgar will hurl a boulder in a random direction, hitting anyone in it's way with a large spike. This spike will be targeted and taken down by ranged DPS but in the meantime, the Spike's victims will be taking damage equal to 10% of their max health, every second. Give them a Rej and Regrowth, and if they dip too low in health, use your Nourish.If YOU get hit by a spike you will find yourself out of action,and unable to heal. Let your raid know over vent or have a Macro ready, so you can warn the other healers to cover for you.
Bone Storm - Every 30 seconds, Lord Marrow is going to cast Bone Storm, or as you would know it, Whirlwind. He has no aggro table while this is being cast, so he will simply target a random player, move towards them, dealing damage to everyone in his path, before changing to a new target. He will target a maximun of 4 players during each Bone Storm, and the closer you are to him, the more damage his whirlwind will do to you. On a brighter note, the tanks will have a break from soaking up the Saber Lash, as he does not use this ability while he is WWing around the place. Use this time to top up the tanks and re-HoT them, and use your Rej blanket techniques for the rest of the raid (5 Rej's + 1 WG, rinse and repeat)
Any healing Assignments? We had 6 healers for our first night in 25 man ICC, So I assigned 1 healer for each of our 3 tanks (2 pallies, 1 druid), 2 raid Healers (1 Disc priest and 1 Druid), and 1 "throw-around" healer (Myself) to be on raid healing, whilst taking over other healers assignments when they got spiked, and out of action.
When should my raid pop Heroism/Bloodlust? I would suggest popping it right at the pull or just after the first Blade Storm, after your MT has gained a comfortable amount of threat.
Welcome to 3.3 raiding guys, Goodluck!!!
Spex <3
Wow Slang Dictionary
OOR - Out Of range MT - Main Tank OT - Off Tank Rej - Rejuvenation Wg - Wild Growth WW - Whirlwind HoT - Heal over Time
After Valentines, This is my favorite in-game holiday. However, I got caught out last year doing this on my mage, trying to open up the Ogri'la faction, along with a few other hundred people, at the same time. Think The Turkinatorfrom the Pilgrim's Bounty festival. Luckily this year I was a bit more organized and dragged a friend around to do some "Winter Veil" preparations.
Now this quest is found in Blades Edge Mountains, Outland, but before you can do it you must unlock a annoyingly long quest chain. So for those who never did it while leveling,this is a quick rundown of what you need to do, to be ready when the festive season starts.
The chain will start at Mog'dorg the Wizened, Location 55, 44, Blades Edge Mountains. he is up the top of a tower and if he does not speak to you, chat to his assistant at the foot of the tower first, before heading back up.
Grim(oire) Business, Location 77,30, Blades Edge Mountains. (Note: Pre-3.1 you used to need 5 people to summon him. this is no longer the case, he will just show up for you) Into the Soulgrinder, Location 59, 24 Blades Edge Mountains
Grats! you are now King/Queen of the ogres!
he will now send you to Ogri'La so grab this quest
Ogre Heaven, Chu'a'lor can be found at 28, 57, Who will give you the next few quests The Crystals, Dropped by Apexis Flayers and Shard-Hide boars An Apexis Relic. I suggest notepaper. the device is found at 32, 65 and requires a shard to operate. Ever played Simon Says? Our Boy Wants To Be A Skyguard Ranger, machine is found at 29, 81. To avoid being taken out by fel cannons, use your land mount. The Skyguard Outpost, Keller found at 27, 52 Blades Edge Mountains. Bombing Run, Hotkey the smiley (happy?) bombs and never stop moving, as those cannons will take you out. the ammo is marked with hunter-mark like arrows.
After you hand in this quest the daily will open up
Remember where this quest is, cause you're going to be coming back here when Winter Veil starts. And now you get to laugh at all the people farming Blades Edge Mountains during the silly season, trying to unlock the chain when you've been smart enough to do it early!
Anything else to prepare for?
If you get bored, Head to Westfall to kill Fleshrippers, Teldrassil to kill Strigid Owls or Eversong Woods to kill Crazed Dragonhawk. Why? They all dropSmall Egg, and you will need 5 of these for this quest, Treats for Greatfather Winter, and the AH prices are guaranteed to skyrocket as we creep closer to the holiday.
Every year WoWer's can enjoy Thanksgiving online from November 22nd till November 28th. This is more exciting for me as I do not celebrate Thanksgiving. Do you guys really eat candied sweet potato's?
Anyways, As this event is very achievement based - lets check out what you gotta do.
Food Fight - Bountiful tables can be found at all your factions capital cities. Choose a seat at a table and check out your action bar. your No. 1 key gives you the ability to pass a dish to another person sitting at the table, since the table is rather large and you are probably sitting closer to the dish then them, so you can share it around! Use this skill to pass it to someone, and if you throw too much at them, it will indeed knock them on the head.
Sharing Is Caring - Another "Pass the Dish" Achievement. You need to be able to pass every single type of dish around the table. So musical chairs time! each chair has 1 assigned dish, so sit at each one to pass it around. There are 5 types of food you need.
Pilgrim's Paunch - To get the "spirit is sharing" buff you need to eat 5 servings of every food on the table. if there are no people to pass the different dishes to you, just bounce into each individual chair, eat whats available, then repeat for all 5 dishes.
Now We're Cookin' - At the major faction's cities there will be a vendor that sells Bountiful Cookbook, this opens up all the recipes that you need to complete this achievement. you simply need to cook the 5 different kinds of foods.
*Note the turkey needs cooking level 280, the rest require lower levels.
Pilgrim's Peril - The Robe, Dress and Attire are rewards from the cooking dailies this holidays give. You only need to wear 1 item, and be sure to put it on before you go rampaging into any territory that may get you flagged and in combat. Best done at night or with a bunch of friends.
Orgrimmar - At main gates (Won't flag you)
Thunderbluff - At the main lifts (You will get flagged)
Undercity - Inside the main gates, to the left (You will get flagged)
Silvermoon - In front of the city gates, close to Stillwhisper pond (Won't flag you)
Stormwind - A bit down the road from the city's entrance (Won't flag you)
Ironforge - To the right of the city gates (Won't flag you)
Darnassus - At the back of the Warrior's Terrace, inside the city (You will get flagged)
Exodar - At the second city entrace coming from the dock, Just inside the outer city wall (You will get flagged)
Terokkar Turkey Time- I did this as Resto with a Fury Warrior friend, and the instance was Extremely simple to do. Probably solo-able at 80 but considering everyone needs to go there, grab a friend or two to make things easier. Remember you need to wear the hat as well as a chestpiece.
Turkey Lurkey - Alliance are always easy to get on my server. Just sit in the Dalaran bank or at the Flight Path, and/or ask in general for the whereabouts of any Rogues. The horde on my server, however, are pretty much extinct and they like to hang out JUST out of range in Sunreavers Sanctuary, to tease us. To counter this I mainly sat on top of the horde building in Dalaran, to Ninja-Shoot them. Surprise!
The Turkinator - My American friends did not do this without getting cranky at least once during their attempts. Best to do it first thing in the morning, or extremely late at night. The turkeys can be found wandering aimlessly abut Elwynn Forest and Tirisfal Glades. You need to kill 40 turkeys in total, each turkey must be killed within 30 seconds of the previous one. You get a stacking debuff to let you know how many you have killed and how much time until the debuff runs out. Goodluck!
Reward? "Pilgrim" Title and this cute little Plump Turkey Pet!
I never posted my thoughts on these when they first hit the forums, simply because ICC was going to be MONTHS away and I'd promptly forget about all the changes anyway.
However, logging in afew days ago and seeing my background downloader going off it's rocket (Did it download insanly fast for all you guys?) I kinda went into panic mode, as I had done exactly ZILCH reserch on the upcoming changes, and ICC looks to be weeks away, not months as I predicted.
If you're looking for the Tier10 gear, head to my previous post Found Here
And now for what the Dev's have done for/to us.
[Rebirth]: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes.
Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou!!! I love Resurrecting people in battle. I feel so powerful, and if it's a tank, I'm TOTALLY SAVING THE DAY!
"Oh you died? Here let me get that for you! Up you go!"
And now I can do it twice as often!
THANKYOU!!
[Tranquility]: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.
So it's still pretty much useless in 25 man raids, May help abit in parties or 10 mans. I wish they would just redesign the thing. If I could throw it on a party of my choice, or if it was a casted HoT kinda thing, not a channel, I might even put it on my action bar. As it is, it sits in my spellbook gathering dust, to be brought out only for screenshots of when my raid downs a boss.
"Ok screen shot in 5...4...3..."::Raid casts Tranquility/Levitate/Wings/Mirror Image/Army of Dead::
[Rejuvenation]: The base duration on all ranks of this spell is now 15 seconds.
This was actually originally changed to make the duration 12 seconds down from 15, as Rej is considerd Very powerful. However they decided to revert that and it's back to 15 seconds (18 talented), probably because it's going to be nerfed through this next talent change.
[Gift of the Earthmother]: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.
Current Gift of the Earthmother: Reduces the base global cooldown of your Rejuvenation, Lifebloom and Wild Growth spells by 20%.
There is no nice way of sweet talking your way through this, acting like this is not a nerf. This is going to hurt when raid healing, if you cannot get your paws (branches?) on a bucketload of haste, to get back to a 1 second GCD.
How much haste for soft cap?
735 haste rating with 3/3 Celestial Focus, Wrath of Air Totem, and Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura
856 haste rating with 3/3 Celestial Focus and Wrath of Air Totem only
856 haste rating with Wrath of Air Totem and Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura, no points in Celestial Focus
936 haste rating with 3/3 Celestial Focus and Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura only
1063 haste rating with 3/3 Celestial Focus only, no outside buffs
Now I'm usually put on Tank healing, as we pretty much take the whole of Elwynn Forest to our raid. lots of treessss. My favorite skill is Nourish, complimented by Regrowth, Rej and LB stacks. Now the fact all my skills gain a haste bonus, means I might be able to fit in 1 more nourish before a HoT drops off, etc. I feel for tank healing this is going to be a plus, a small plus.. but a plus nether less.
I personally always found GOTEM a pain in the butt when trying to work out how much haste I should be aiming for, so the fact that it will now effect all our heals makes my napkin math a little easier to deal with. Can I mark that as a plus too?
[Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation]: This glyph allows for the druid's haste to reduce the time between the periodic healing effects of Rejuvenation.
I'm still wondering wether this is good or not.. on 1 hand, we could be getting Rej to tick every 2 seconds, but if you are keeping it up on someone then you are going to be refreshing it more often, which means thats a a GCD you could have used putting a Rej on somone ELSE. Unfortunatly I never made it to the PTR to check this out. I will probaly grab afew glyphs to keep in my bags, to test it out when I raid heal, So I guess we can swap stories then :)
In a nutshell? It's going to be REALLY fun to constantly have our Rebirth up, and a pain to get that stupid amount of haste, especially since only 2 of our Tier10 peices come with it. But we had the same issue with tier 9 and we discovered the lovely Vestments of the Shattered Fellowship, So I guess loot is my next project
Spexie is a level 80 Druid on the PVE server, Greymane. She is Restoration (Tree) Spec however has Balance as an offspec. She dates back to Vanilla WoW and yet she still has no wrinkles! Not bad huh?
Posts
