The Lich King (no spoilers!)

[Daewen]

Now that the 10-man group has committed regicide, we might as well collect strategy notes and lessons-learned about the fight.

• Handy basic info: phase changes are at 70% and 40%. Transitions are phases in and of themselves.
• If you get iceblocked at the start of the fight, you are a total noob.
• Iceblocks do not block line-of-sight, and in fact you can run through them.
• If you are furthest from the group, you are most likely to be picked up by a Val'kyr and dropped off the edge before the group can save you.
• If you are nearest to the group, you are most likely to have a puddle of Defile black goo put under you, and probably kill the group.
• You can fall off the edge without any help from the Val'kyr.

[Texaporte]

There is a deceptively large amount of raid damage that we got around by having a disc priest fighting for his life the entire time. You MUST keep the whole raid topped off at all times to avoid deaths to Infest.

Also: proper spreading of social diseases = ++++

[Werehamster]

A social disease? Gee, Officer Krupke... what are we to do?

[Thunderfly]

A social disease? Gee, Officer Krupke... what are we to do?

No one wants a fella with a social disease.

[Texaporte]

Gee, Officer Krupke... krup you!

I have to use West Side Story for Icecrown: The Musical now, don't I?

Anyway, this is the three-healer setup we found to work:

1) Priest (doesn't have to be disc, but it helps) focuses on diseases in phase 1, and infest in all phases. He ran low on mana, so it helped to have some mana boosting (mana tide, innervate would both be brilliant on a shield/PoM spammer)
2) Paladin, for stuns in phase 1+2 and for Beaconing both tanks.
3) AoE healer, in our first attempts we used a tree, but a combination of chain heal/LHW spam or a second priest would do very well here too. Second healer to keep infest under control, plus top off tanks.

[Saerra]

I had shadowfiend up twice to keep mana reasonable, i think chuck hit me with at least one innervate early but i was never at a point on our kill where there was any significant danger of bottoming out. I even still had mana hymn just in case.

I'd highly recommend a quick glance at the bosskillers guide for anyone that'll be on future runs. You don't have to go crazy if you are a tl;dr type person, but at least learn the following abilities: (going to use the bosskillers phase designations)

1) Necrotic plague (phase one only, everyone)
2) Soul Reaper (Phase 3 and Phase 5, healers and tanks)
3) Defile (Phase 3 and Phase 5, everyone)
4) Infest (Phase 1, 3 and 5, healers)

All those are raid killing mechanics that people should at least know the basics of.

[tethealla]

I figured we could perform some thread necromancy and talk about LK25 here.

From a healer/cleanser perspective, I found the following:
1) raid damage in P1 is minimal.
2) raid damamge in P1.5 is high but manageable. What is the mechanic which is causing the damage (LK dark lightning)
3) raid damage in P2 was minimal again.
4) cleansing the disease:
So range was very clumped, so I has a hard time actually seeing when the inflicted person was at the right place. I moved to the side of the range some and it helped. Timing on cleansing was SUPER CRITICAL. I ended up doing 2 things
---> If I saw the inflicted at the AoE tank, I'd cleanse
---> I'd count to 3-4 and spam cleanse anyway. My reasoning was this: If the inflicted was wrong on positioning, the disease would bounce and kill someone else. If I was wrong and the inflicted was in the correct position the disease would do the right thing. Worst case, only one person would die.
HuD map DID show the inflicted, but I found that there was too many flashy spell effects were going on to be able to pay attention to it. I generally ignored it.

Now when Delnar was in charge of it, he never missed one. I'd like to know his secrets(probably practice).
5) I was never chosen as the defiler. Once we chose where defile locations were going, defile turned from a raid killer to an annoyance. I needed to heal the tank, and the tank was out of range. The tank was on the other side of the platform and a huge defile puddle was between me and him. I had to navigate around the puddle before I could return to healing. How long does defile last? I noticed on our final attempt that there were 2 defile puddles up at one time.
6) I don't know if it will help, but I do remember seeing a diagram of the path of the valkyrs in the bosskillers strat that was posted yesterday.

All in all, for the hour we spent on the LK, I think it was a good first night of attempts. Not that it really matters, but I noticed the LKs health on our last attempt and it was around 50%.

[Ustinov]

Phase 2 (defile + Valkyr) always felt like the hardest part to me, since the needs sound so very contradictory at first (clump for Valkyr, but exit for Defile). More so in 25, since it sounds like cleaves/multitarget attacks are the way to go against 3 Valkyr, and that only works if everyone's standing in the same quadrant at the point of capture.

Also, phase 3 lets me do my usual shooting gallery impression, so that might be a contributing factor.

Phase transitions, between the Lich King casting [something] Suffering and the Raging Spirits occasionally hitting like trucks, probably has the most in terms of non-tank damage. Phase 2 consists mostly of either deaths to gravity, or defile damage, which has the side-effect of killing us all if it ticks too much regardless of healing. :p

[Saerra]

Now when Delnar was in charge of it, he never missed one. I'd like to know his secrets(probably practice).

I just watched for the person and started counting to 4 out loud, if the target reached the offtanked mob or I reach the number 4, i instantly cleanse. I missed one in my first ever attempt, instituted this policy and never missed another one.