Lich King

So, I had ideas for a lovely series of posts on the city of Dalaran, but I have not had the time to gather the videos I had planned for them. So, I will have to pick up the project again at a later time.

As I have mentioned, my guild's main raid group is working through some very difficult content at the moment. We are on the Lich King, the last boss(a game term for an enemy more difficult than most you would encounter) in the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon. Preparing for this fight has been my main focus lately. And since it is this encounter and the work I am doing for it that is most on my mind, I thought I would share some of my thoughts, and the process by which I prepare myself.

The first step in researching any fight, for me, is watching a tutorial video of the encounter created by a trustworthy group of players who work for the site Tankspot. For very challenging bosses I will watch their video a few times through, getting used to the names of attacks used against the raid, encounter or boss ability mechanics which could make the fight more challenging, or impossible, if not countered in specific ways, and the general positioning of the raid throughout the encounter. For anyone interested, here is part one of the fight we are on:



After watching a video like this I will go to a couple different sites, such as Wowhead or Wowwiki to see lists of the abilities the boss has. This is helpful because I will usually better remember the names of attacks or encounter effects, some of which I might need to watch warnings or timers for, and so that when my raid group talks about strategy I will be able to follow more easily, and will be in a better position to contribute. After this step, I go back and re-watch the video, to try to focus on how the raid handled some of the mechanics and boss abilities I now know more about.

At this point I usually start to consider what could potentially pose a challenge for our raid group specifically, which others might not face to the same degree, perhaps due to greater skill and experience, or even the benefits of a different set of classes with abilities our group does not possess. Of course this is when I also consider the benefits our raid might have, and how we can best use them to our advantage. For specific concerns which arise at this time, I usually look to the WoW forums, Tankspot and Wowhead comments, and to other players in the game for advice.

Each time we get together to work on this fight we make some progress. We have been able to get phase one and the first transition phase(phase 1.5, or phase 4 on the Tankspot video) down fairly well, healer mana is holding out better overall, positioning is more controlled, and mechanics are being dealt with more quickly. We have only seen the beginning of phase 2 so far, the mechanics in this phase are proving to be quite an immense challenge for us. Tonight we will go back though, hopefully to make progress and see phase 3.

Have a great weekend everyone! And best of luck to my raid team tonight! :D