With so many sites and stores promoting commercialism and spending, it’s always refreshing to see fansites run contests that are in the true spirit of the season — altruism (and ad traffic, of course). In this case, WoW-Achievements.com is getting into the Winter Veil spirit with their Twelve Days of Grunty contest!

From December 13th to December 25th, the site is presenting one new WoW trivia question each day. A winner is chosen randomly from those who answer correctly, and each day a Grunty the Murloc Marine pet is awarded. No registration is necessary, and the questions are easily answerable with a quick Google search. If you didn’t get to go to BlizzCon ‘09, or if you didn’t order the livestream from DirecTV, this might be your only shot at getting Grunty in your digital stocking, save asking Santa. And I don’t think Santa does the whole eBay thing.

If you know of other sites running holiday contests, please let us know so we can make sure everybody gets a chance to cash in on the season of giving!

If there’s one thing I hate doing in World of Warcraft, it’s missing a raid or instance I said I’d be at.

It doesn’t happen very often, because I try and be conscientious about it: while it’s true that WoW is a game, it is (for me at least) a social game and I consider my guildmates friendly acquaintances at the very least. Just as I wouldn’t bail on friends when we have an appointment to go out bowling or for pizza or when I was in a weekly D&D game, I don’t like it at all when I have to step out of a raid or bail on an appointed “help me get my Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement” or what have you.

Sometimes it’s unavoidable. Recently I had to leave a raid before it was done because I simply couldn’t stay focused on what we were doing due to feeling feverish and run down. I enjoy tanking and healing with my guild but my health and real life have to come first so I bowed out once I was sure a suitable replacement was available. I’ve been with this guild since the launch of Wrath now, and we’ve seen pretty much the whole of the xpac together.

Where do you stand on it? Do you see WoW as something easily skipped out on, or are you in a tight knit social guild where you feel obliged to show up?

They both have millions of users across the world. They both have made and broken friendships and relationships, and they both have raised millions if not billions of dollars for their respective companies. And chances are that they’re both so popular even your grandma knows about them. Gamasutra has written an interesting post comparing both World of Warcraft and Facebook of all things, and they say that the two are more alike than you might think: both enable you to create an identity, and use that identity to interact with others, and both give you a wide variety of options to do so (in WoW, you can slay dragons together, and on Facebook, you can tag pictures or post on walls). Gamasutra wants to get to the center of where exactly the interactivity lies, and in doing so, figure out what makes Warcraft a game, and Facebook a network.

One major difference is in the interface — obviously, WoW is wrapped in a fantasy world, so that in between all of the socializing, you’re also fighting the Scourge or the Burning Crusade. Facebook has games, but it doesn’t have that overarching narrative. WoW also rewards group teamwork and coordination, while Facebook leaves collaboration to its own rewards. And of course the cost is another big difference: WoW is still a subscription game, while Facebook pays in other ways. But the amount of similarities between the two are pretty fascinating. And comparing the two, as Gamasutra does, really makes you think about just what interactivity means, and how two apparently very different types of interactive media aren’t that far apart after all.

If ever there were a boss just begging to be turned into a totally Camaro-awesome tattoo, it’s Lord Marrowgar. Like an epic, multi-skulled skeleton made of bone and skulls and spikes, Marrowgar is hands down one of the coolest looking mobs in the game.
While the sophomoric “Dude, he’s a bone guy with a bone axe!” revelation has me only a little ashamed, I nonetheless get a certain thrill up my spine each time I see him.

Lord Marrowgar is not a complex fight, although there’s a few things about it that are going to be counter-intuitive. I think that slight change-up in normalized behavior is probably the biggest challenge of this fight. It’s kind of a clever design that way, but otherwise, you should expect Marrowgar to be your first, solid gear check in Icecrown Citadel.

The fight with Lord Marrowgar seems incredibly straightforward, since he really only has four or five abilities. Basically, two tanks start the fight. He shoots lines of fire, which your raid should not stand in. (You’ve got the “don’t stand in fire” trick down at this point, right?)

Periodically, Lord Marrowgar will impale a member of your raid on a bone spike. Kill that spike to free your raid member before that member dies. Lastly, Marrowgar does a whirlwind. That’s where the counter-intuitive piece comes in, since you really don’t need to run around like a herd of panicked cats to avoid the damage.

I mean, not taking the damage is great if you can avoid it, but the whirlwind doesn’t hurt so bad that you should range your healers. But, ultimately, the whirlwind damage isn’t all that deadly if you’ve got a potion, or if your healers are on their game. I’ve seen more raids die trying to get back together after the whirlwind than raids that die during the whirlwind itself.

Okay, all that being said, let’s take a look at Marrowgar’s actual abilities.

Abilities

Saber Lash: Saber Lash is one of Marrowgar’s more iconic abilities. It is a massive hit that is split evenly between the tank (technically, Marrowgar’s target) and the target’s two closest allies. This is, therefore, also the ability that requires you to have two or three tanks. (Two in 10-man, three in 25-man.) If you don’t have someone else to help soak the damage, this ability will make pretty quick work of your tank.

Coldflame: Coldflame will target a random member of your raid, and then draw a blue, burning line of fire on the ground between Marrowgar and that raid member. Your raid should simply sidestep out of the flame.

Bone Spike Graveyard: This hurls a massive bone at someone. Whoever gets in the way will get impaled. It really sounds like you can avoid it, but I’ve never seen a spike happen without someone getting impaled. As soon as a raid member is impaled on the spike, though, all possible DPS should be dedicated to freeing them. If you leave your raid buddy impaled on the spike, they will die from the periodic damage.

Bonestorm: The ability known as Bonestorm actually looks like a big spinning whirlwind melee attack. Most raiders — especially melee raiders — are very well trained to not stand in whirlwinds. They instinctively pull away from the whirlwind, so as not to get simply turned into jelly as soon as the ability happens.

This whirlwind, however, doesn’t actually do a vast amount of melee damage. If you can somehow manage to avoid it without completely leaving your raid miles away behind you, go for it. Otherwise, just try and sidestep the worst of the hits. Marrowgar will Bonestorm in four different corners, and then return back to his tank.

What makes Bonestorm really dangerous isn’t the melee attacks — it’s the additional Coldflame lines of fire he puts on the ground when the attack occurs. Just like Coldflame itself, you should avoid standing in it. It’s just as deadly as the regular ability.

So, ultimately, if you can manage those four different abilities, you can handle Marrowgar. It’s a gear check — mostly for your tanks, admittedly — to be sure you’re ready for the rest of the Icecrown Citadel.

Achievements

Boned is the only boss-specific achievement for Lord Marrowgar. You achieve Boned by not leaving any raid members on their bone spike for longer than 8 seconds. That’s not a very tough achievement, but it’s made easier with the use of a handy “/target bone” macro. Pulling off Boned will probably rely on your ranged DPS characters more than your melee ones, since it’d take a few second for them to get into position.

Summary

So, the final summary of fighting Lord Marrowgar is pretty simple. Don’t stand in the fire. When he whirlwinds, avoid it if you can, but don’t lose your head trying to dodge it. When Bone Spike Graveyard happens, free your raid members as quickly as possible. Make sure you have two tanks soaking the Saber Lash.

The most difficult part of this fight, again, is fighting the urge to completely scatter while trying to avoid the Bonestorm.

Good luck!

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

For no discernable reason, the WoW.com Twitter account is asking who would win in a three-way grand melee between the Queue writers — Alex Ziebart, Adam Holisky, and me, the inimitable Mike Sacco. Whoever wins has to face Matthew Rossi in single combat, which, of course, means that they lose. So whoever wins, Rossi wins.

Before we all fall to the cruel burly forearms of Rossi, though, we can probably answer some reader questions. Or at least I can, given that it’s my day to do it.

Edge asked…

When a cross realm group wipes and has to get back to the instance from outside, which version of the “outside” are we in? What I mean is, outside the instance, are we all together on one of the servers, or does each person go back out to their own servers “outside” area, and then come back into the same instance? Or is this a whole new area just for these 5 particular people?

When you zone out of a cross-realm instance, the “outside” is your particular realm.

Mr Shinra asked…

This probably is a bit presumptuous to ask at this point in time, but the 5-level question has me wondering: Since Deathwing’s been built up to be all big bad and with a very high power level (+9k), what are the estimated chances that the (eventual) fight against him, will be a return to the old-style 40-person raids that the game hasn’t seen since the days of Ahn’Qiraj?

Considering that the mere act of him ENTERING THE WORLD caused half the world to explode, I don’t think 25 people will be enough; and that’s assuming he would fight a bunch of tiny mortal insects (from his point of view) alone.

Blizzard recently stated that there would likely never be a return to the 40-man style of raiding, and I for one sincerely appreciate that. 40-man raids were just like 25-man raids except 15 people weren’t pulling their weight.

At least in my opinion, and in Blizzard’s, it doesn’t matter how many people are participating in the encounter so long as the “epic” feel is still there.

Metatron asked…

Are there any plans of expanding the WoW enterprise to other consoles such as Playstation, X-Box. I’ve heard that Warcraft 2 was made avaiable for PS, but I don’t think any other Warcraft game had it. If there aren’t any plans like this is there any particular reason Blizzard doesn’t want to move into this lucrative market?

Blizzard’s console division, which was working on StarCraft: Ghost, closed down back when I first started working there — 2006 — and every interview since then has stated that their particular development model doesn’t lend itself well to console games. Thus, they’re unlikely to ever produce for consoles.

Can you imagine the headaches involved with trying to get an emergency maintenance patch for WoW over XBox Live? It took something like two months for a patch to get deployed that fixed a crippling bug with Castle Crashers.

Sead asked…

Does the “Raid Browser” Tool work in the same way the new Dungeon Finder Tool work? i.e. can you port into the raid directly?

Nope, the Raid Browser is just a browser. It’s a retooled version of the old LFG pane. It doesn’t assemble groups or allow porting.

Daniel asked…

Since Cataclysm was announced, one new feature has stood out to me, the Path of the Titan, basically a glyph system on top of the existing one from what I can tell. What I was wondering is, will it focus more on class skills like increased crit damage on a warrior’s MS, or more passive bonus like increased overall damage by 2%?

It’ll give broad, class-unspecific bonuses. Examples are -5% bleed damage taken, +10% bandage healing, +1% haste, etc. You won’t see any damage increases for Fireball or anything like that.

Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don’t want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I’m not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I’ll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money.

The new Dungeon Finder that was added in Patch 3.3 has been garnering a lot of attention lately – and for good reason! But did you know that you could use it to make money?

Step One: Maximizing your speed.
If you spend too much time in each instance, or waiting in the queues, the amount of gold that you make per hour will decline significantly. Fortunately, there are a few things that you can do to to help ensure that your dungeon runs go as smoothly as possible.

• You can queue from anywhere, so choose a location that will allow you to do some farming on the side should you need to wait in a queue. Why not try a favorite fishing locale? Don’t wander too far away from a vendor, though, unless you have peculiarly empty bags.
• Don’t be choosy. Sign up for a random dungeon, because you are more likely to find a match more quickly.
• To avoid queues almost entirely, sign up as a healer or tank if you can. Don’t do this to trick your group mates, however. Many people are selecting tank or healer and then showing up in green sets expecting someone else to agree to switch specs. This is not only idiotic, it will take more time in the end.
• Queue prepared. This means snacks, drinks, in-game buff food and water, glyphs, enchants, scrolls, flasks, reagents, and whatever else you might spontaneously want.
• Use the teleport feature! On the way into or out of each dungeon, simply click on the little green eye around your mini-map and select teleport. This is also handy if you do have to go back to town in the middle of the dungeon.
• Sell and restock! Between groups, hit up a vendor.
• Keep a good group member! Once you meet up with a good group member, remember that you can keep them! Ask them if they would like to continue playing with you, and make sure that no one degroups between queues. Polite, competent, geared group members will not only make the experience more enjoyable, it will also speed it up significantly, and minimize dying.That last part is important because, aside from the lost time, repairs will cut into your profits.

Step Two: ???
No, I’m just kidding. Step two is the bread and butter! There are some wonderful features and changes that you might not have noticed yet, as well as some generic tips to help you earn big. To begin with, you will want to use a level 80 character if possible, and queue for Heroic Northrend dungeons.

• Right off the bat, you’ll get some goodies. The first successful run each day using the Dungeon Finder tool will net you 26 gold 46 silver and 2 Emblems of Frost. Each subsequent run in the same day will net you half of the gold (13 gold 23 silver), and 2 Emblems of Triumph.These awards are in addition to everything that you get from bosses, including the last boss.
• When something drops that can be rolled for, notice that there is an extra button next to Need and Greed when you have an enchanter in your party, called Disenchant. When you click this, if you win the roll, you will automatically get the disenchanted materials instead of the item. This is a great way to make money. Although the prices of Infinite Dust are down on many servers because the drop rate has been increased, on many servers, they are still selling for 2-2.5g a piece, and you’re likely to get 5-7. It is also a helpful way to get your own Dream Shards, Abyss Crystals, and if you get lucky, Greater Cosmic Essences. The price for the essences has risen wildly on many servers, so be smart with how you auction your new goodies!
• To gamble, or not to gamble? A weapon, whether green or blue, is going to be worth over 10 gold most likely. In fact, you can check the exact amount simply by hovering over the tooltip! As such, the vendors will pay you more for it. Of course, they also award more, or better, disenchanted materials.
• Pick up everything. From food and water to greys and up, don’t pass on or ignore any piece of loot. Keep in mind that you will need some bag space, and take heed of my advice to hit up a vendor at every chance you get. Otherwise, you’re simply throwing away several gold per mob that you were able to loot. If you can skin, mine, or herbalize, politely ask if you can harvest the nodes that you encounter.

Step Three: Profit!
This is the fun part. You can vendor plenty of items in between queues, but you can also funnel auctionables to your bank alts via the mail. If you don’t have anything pressing to purchase using your badges, remember that you can always buy heirloom for alts or even epic gems, which you can either use or resell for a profit.

So how many times per day can you exploit this? As many times as you can stand to before beginning to pull out your hair. As long as you are using the Random feature, the completion of a Heroic will not give you a lock-out. In fact, even if you are locked out for the day, if the Random feature selects that dungeon, you will still be able to go. Happy dungeoning!

If you’re new to dungeoning, why not head over and check out WoW Rookie’s Grouping With Others collection of articles and guides?

We’re going to get to kill Arthas. And as excited about that as we are as players, you have to imagine the mounting incursion against the Lich King gets a much deeper and visceral emotion for our characters. This represents a relatively unique opportunity to roleplay your characters in an otherwise static world. After all, the entire game is about to change in some pretty radical ways. This is the purest possible fodder for roleplay, and it would be remiss of us to lose this opportunity.

Join me behind the jump so that we can talk about the roleplay opportunities. The good, the bad, the ugly.

The Good

The good opportunities here are massive. It’s easy to simply roleplay your way through quests and enjoy the character immersion, but the real benefits can also be had outside of your simple quests. You can (and should!) explore the events surrounding your character by discussing what’s going on in-character.

Certainly, I would expect everyone to want to roleplay those stellar, introductory quests in Icecrown. In these quests, you will have the unique opportunity to team up with faction leaders like Lady Sylvanas and Jaina Proudmoore. Not only will you get to team up with them, you’ll actually get to fight alongside them. They will treat your character like a hero, as a luminary of your respective faction.

For many of our characters, this will be a final, notable “coming of age.” If your character has been struggling as an outcast of your faction, then this could be a final, immutable blessing from a beloved leader. Maybe your character will be surprised and taken off-guard by this level of respect.

More cynical characters should wonder if Jaina is just setting them up. After all, it seems a little foolish to go storming the Lich King’s castle with only six people. Maybe Jaina has finally given over to her love for Thrall, and this is a betrayal to trick your crack team of operatives into certain doom.

Sylvanas has got to have her own baggage. You can almost hear the Lament of the Highborn while cruising through the opening quests. Sylvanas takes this fight very personally. We’ll talk more about the Forsaken’s approach to this conflict a little bit later.

Regardless, the final incursion against the Icecrown Citadel should be treated as a massive, overwhelming thing. After all, this is the final big-to-do of the expansion. This is what (in theory) most of our characters have been working toward for a year. This whole event will live forever in the minds and dreams of Azeroth’s races.

Try and remember that your characters are becoming famous. They’ve just succeeded as the chosen champions from Tirion’s trials. Every little nod and twist is could become a character quirk that spells out stories. Do you still distrust Tirion and his plans? Do you travel with a pet? These are the little details that add depth to your roleplay and it’s just the kind of detail that the bards of Azeroth will sing about for centuries.

The Bad

It’s not just all war and roses, though. Primordial Saronite is being turned into armor for those storming the Lich King’s fortress. Now would be a great time to roleplay your character’s doubts and fears about that. (Or, maybe, your character’s overwhelming support of such a plan.) Why would it seem like a good idea to clothe your finest warriors in the very blood of an Old God?

The Forsaken still have more than a little explaining to do. It’s not like Wrathgate has suddenly become ancient history. During your in-character raids, maybe roleplay through keeping a special eye on the rotting among you. You never know when “Death to the Scourge” is going to make a simple flip over to “Death to the Living.” If you are an Undead yourself, now would be a great time to roleplay your vast sorrow for the event — or maybe your overwhelming indifference.

And don’t forget this whole fight is awfully damned personal to the Undead and Death Knights. This fight isn’t just about “us versus them” or anything so abstract as “good versus evil.” For the Ebon Blade and the Forsaken, Arthas isn’t a general enemy. Phrases like “You did this to me” and “I’ve finally come for you” should be pretty common.

The Ugly

The hardest part about this kind of event, in terms of successful roleplay on a MMORPG, is that you won’t be the only person to do those awesome introductory quests. And, in terms of “game reality,” you didn’t even do them together. How can you reconcile the fact that your 5-man group already killed Scourgelord Tyrannus . . . but so did the guy at the next bar seat over?

There’s a couple ways you can reinforce your suspension of disbelief. First, it’s pretty easy to assume that it wasn’t actually a single five-man group. After all, that was a pretty big assault. Maybe it was dozens of 5-man groups all doing about the same thing. And in the furor of war, you guys just didn’t notice each other. Secondly, you can go with the “we didn’t finish the job the first time.” Maybe they all got better. I know, that’s a pretty weak statement, but sometimes you have to stretch disbelief a little thin to make it all work out.

Your last option is to decide that you didn’t all fight the same guy. Maybe he fought Tyrannus, and I fought Bobyrannus. This is probably my favorite option for disbelief, because it allows you to place your own, unique spin on the situation. Maybe instead of charging up onto a mountain top for the final boss fight, you found yourself spiraling deeper and deeper into the Pits of Saron. You could also “seed” your own future stories that way. Maybe while there, you saw something frightening that reminded you of old Ulduar, something that you’ll become obsessed with for years.

The Real Ugly

The biggest danger zone about roleplaying through the death of Arthas, however, is one of lore. I’ve seen immense roleplay arguments spring up because folks have different opinion of “what happened before now.” It’s not even a matter of being right and wrong. World of Warcraft has a massive amount of stories, characters, and events. It’s a huge world, and it can be very tough to keep track of it all.

I recommend anyone who’s trying to roleplay through the Icecrown Citadel take the time to check out Adam Holisky, Alex Ziebart, and Michael Sacco’s collaborative post, The Lore of Patch 3.3. Even if your character has no knowledge of these people or events, it’s really best for you, as the player, to have a solid grounding in the shared universe. The story hooks to be found via this lore, of course, are also very helpful when you’re trying to plot out your storylines.

Ultimately, this event is going to be about what you can make it. If you just do your quests, the whole thing will fly by, and you’ll find yourself sitting in the Cataclysm before you know it. If, however, you take the time to roleplay your character, interact with other people, and explore the lore… you’re going to bring yourself a whole deeper level of play.

Good luck in there.

In the latest build of the PTR, they have updated the new looking for raid interface (now called the Raid Browser). This interface is completely separate from the new Looking for Group interface and will not share its cross-realm capabilities. This means that you’ll only be raiding with the same pool of people you’ve been pugging raids with already.

While some people are upset at the lack of cross-realm support for raiding, others of us are relieved. This means no cross-realm raid stealing, no cross-realm ninjas, and no cross-realm toy trains for us to smash. It is also fairly difficult to get the same group of people back later to finish a raid when they’re scattered across your battlegroup.

However, some of the new features include the fact that the Looking for Group channel will be turned on by default for all characters and will be available in major cities, just like Trade and General. It will also be uncoupled from the LFG and Raid Browser interfaces. This means that those people who currently spam Trade with raid requests can move over to LFG and still hit their intended audience.

Right now, it also looks like you can queue for both classic and BC era raids as well as the current level content from the interface while on a level 80 character. I’m not sure if this will stay in as a similar feature was available in the normal LFG tool, but was removed a build or two later. There are still a few rough edges, but it appears to be coming along nicely.

Sindragosa. Her very name strikes fear into the hearts of mortals. This once majestic dragon was a former member of the blue flight. In fact, she was a consort of Malygos. Sindragosa was available for testing earlier this evening and she’ll be another boss in the upcoming patch 3.3 Icecrown raid. If she looks familiar, you might’ve seen her in the Wrath of the Lich King intro cinematic. It’s the same dragon that Arthas summoned.

Of the two encounters I’ve seen so far, Sindragosa has proven to be the most fun to heal in Icecrown. I’ll tell you what you can expect when your raid faces her behind the cut below. Also, our Icecrown gallery has been updated with more Sindragosa screenshots.

Today, the gates to the instance promptly opened up. They were on time which was great! Unlike the night before, we didn’t have to wait around for half an hour before being able to go in. Our crew of 10 waltzed in and took the teleporter up to Sindragosa’s lair. Some fancy camera work revealed that there would be several trash packs to clear out before the blue dragon herself would face us.

The trash

We gathered at the top of the stairs and opted to pull conservatively. Ended up having 2 paladins tanking many whelps (left side). Nothing special as they’re just whelps who happen to shoot bolts of frost at range. Both groups also had handlers looking after them. They didn’t last long either.

Once we cleared out a set of trash, one of the frost wyrms would land on the platform as if though to taunt us. It’s best to proceed with engaging whelp trash first and then the corresponding frost wyrm. One of the big wyrms has a fear ability. Start the pull by clearing out the whelp group on the right.

Spinestalker and Rimefang

If you followed my advice, Rimefang should be the first frost wyrm your group will deal with. Rimefang starts off on the ground doing standard dragon things like breathing before taking off and hovering in the air. The big ability that Rimefang will do is target players and drop patches of ice on top of them while she is in the air. Don’t worry, Rimefang will mark the locations with a giant blue rune. You can’t miss it. Not only do these patches slow down movement speed, but players will take damage while standing in them until they are clear of it.

Stay out of the ice (not fire).

Spinestalker will touch down after the left whelp pack gets cleared out. I’d say he’s a little easier to deal with compared to Rimefang. All he does is an AoE fear which can be mitigated with Fear Ward or Tremor totem. I don’t remember them being Dispellable or anything like that. It’s reminiscent of Onyxia except without the many whelps nor the air phase.

Once that part of the trash is done with, it’s time for everyone to get back up the stairs. Make sure you’re actually not on the stairs when Sindragosa lands. She has a massive aggro radius and will go after players who are even on the 4th step from the top. One of our tanks picked an unfortunate time to go AFK and he found that out the hard way.

Before moving on, I hope your raid has some type of Frost Resistance Aura. I’m not sure if frost resist gear is needed as the damage is healable from what I’ve seen.

Sindragosa’s ground phase

The first thing I noticed was she had 9.76 million health.

Toggle on that Frost Resist aura as Sindragosa herself radiates her own Frost Aura debuff which deals a solid 4000+ damage to the entire raid every few seconds. I happened to be sneaking a peek at several livestreams that were going on at the time to gain some idea of what to expect. The tank was directed to pick up Sindragosa and have her facing the stairs (entrance). The rest of the raid stacked on the left side of the room.

Why?

As all dragons do, Sindragosa has a Tail Smash which will knock players back. She also has a conical Frost Breath which will knock out any players who are stupid enough to stand in front. Now tanks aren’t stupid but they can at least survive one of these. So don’t stand in front of her.

Oh and she Cleaves.

Every once in a while, she’s going to Icy Grip the entire raid directly on to her position. Stop what you’re doing and run outwards. Violet Hold’s Cyanigosa was part of the blue dragon flight. She must have learned that icy grip and explode ability from Sindragosa. 5 seconds after Sindragosa death grips you in, she’ll cast Blistering Cold which will blast anyone too close for 35000+ damage. It might be possible for the tank to stay in. We had ours run out but it might be easier for the sake of positioning to simply eat the Blistering Cold and rapidly heal him up after the fact. Otherwise Sindragosa will end up chasing after your tank.

For casters, there’s another specific ability to watch out for and this one is a real pain in the butt. It nuked me the first time before I realized what had happened.

2 players on 10 man will get a debuff applied called Unchained Magic. Healers, this is an ability you will specifically wish to add to your debuff window. This debuff stays for about 20 seconds. When it is active, you must be careful of how many spells you cast. Every time I healed, I gained 1 stack of a debuff called Instability. After 8 seconds of not casting any spells, Instability will go off resulting in 2000 damage multiplied by the amount of spell casts before it.

In other words, if I have Unchained Magic and I cast 8 Flash Heals followed by a Circle of Healing and a Power Word: Shield, after 8 seconds I’ll take 22000 damage. It seems to happen also when the Unchained Magic debuff itself wears off. Whatever Instability stacks are on the player when Unchained Magic wears off will immediately detonate.

If you have Unchained Magic, take it easy for the next several seconds. Slow down on the spell casts. Use your spells in quick bursts and let Instability go off before opening up again.

Mages and paladins, it appears to be possible to render yourself immune and wipe the ability. Ice Block and Divine Shield will remove Unchained Magic.

I do believe her phases are tied to time elapsed on the fight. I didn’t notice a specific percentage that would trigger Sindragosa’s air phase as we were DPSing all over the place.

Sindragosa’s air phase

This is where we separate the pretenders from the contenders. This is one of Icecrown’s biggest situational awareness check fights and I’ll tell you why. This part strongly reminds me of Sapphiron.

She’s going to mark several players in the room with a Frost Beacon. A few seconds after that, they will be completely encased in a block of ice. The ice serves an important purpose. You see, Sindragosa is going to fire Frost Bombs in the area. The bombs have a large radius and will damage anyone who is within line of sight. The ground will have a slight swirly effect which signifies where the Frost Bombs will land. When I did this, I called out the direction of where the raid should be running to on vent (North, south-west, and so forth). Stay close to the Ice Tomb to reduce the amount of movement you need when strafing around.

As you can guess, the objective is to position yourself in such a way that the Ice Tombs containing frozen raid members are between the raiders who are still free and the location of the Frost Bombs. After the first few attempts, we decided that all marked players should run to the middle of the room. Unmarked players should stand near the bottom of the stairs before moving up close to the Ice Tombs.

Unlike Sapphiron, the Ice Tombs do not simply wear off. On 10 man, they had around 270k health. It’s up to your raid to DPS them down at the same time during this phase. Another benefit of having marked players together is so that the rest of the raid can deal incidental AoE damage to them as they are focusing on breaking down the blocks. Players inside the Ice Tomb will die of Asphyxiation if they aren’t broken out of.

Note that any player who gets caught in the radius when an Ice Tomb is cast will also get tombed even if they are not marked.

After she fires 4-5 Frost Bombs, Sindragosa will land again. Pray that your main tank is free and is able to pick her up. Feel free to place her on top of any Ice Tombs still up so AoE damage will still damage them.

Low health phase

Once she gets to about 30% (I didn’t catch the actual percentage), Sindragosa will no longer take to the air. At this point, the raid is in a full burn phase. You have a soft enrage timer to compete with.

Sindragosa will Frost Beacon a random player every few seconds and then encase them in a block of ice. If a player gets the Beacon, they have to run out of the raid immediately as far as possible or they will get Ice Tombed along with any players around them. There is no time for the raid to break down the Tombs. I believe she gets progressively stronger (or the raid gets weaker). Either way, this is the Heroism/Bloodlust portion of the fight where full DPS must be wielded.

All in all, I’d give this a 9 out of 10 for encounter fun-ness as a healer. The encounter mechanics are simple in theory but can be difficult to execute. There’s a ton of damage going around and if a player is even a sliver out of position, they will die. It’s certainly a tense fight that will keep any healer on the edge of their seats and zeroed in on their raid frames.