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WoW.com's Guide to Blood-Queen Lana'thel
Get bitten. Savor the succulent flavor of your raid friends once every 50 seconds. Do crazy, sick DPS. Oh, and stay alive, 'cause this lady's got a lot of health. The Blood-Queen is a fairly unique encounter. The gimmick here is that Lana'thel will bite one of your raid members seconds after the fight begins. Doing so will turn that player into a vampire. Before too much longer, that person will feed on another, and then that person will need to feed. This horrible pattern of events will continue until everyone's a vampire. Like many other boss fights, Blood-Queen Lana'thel has an attack that can cause you to damage nearby allies. The range for this fight is 6 yards, but doing a range check for 10 yards is a good way to be safe -- there's plenty of room. Because of the need for distance, the best positioning for a caster is somewhere in the outer circle of the room. Table of contents Composition General strategy Abilities Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
Totem Talk: Restoration in The Crimson Halls
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast. Two weeks ago, we walked into Icecrown Citadel and took out the first line of defenses that the Lich King had put in place. Last week, we went though The Plague Works, toppling Tweedledee and Tweedledumb and showed the Professor the follies of potion abuse. This week, we are going to play with some vampires. Now these vampires do not sparkle, but they can still be quite annoying. These are the San'layn, a subsection of the Darkfallen, and the Crimson Halls is where their leadership calls home. There have been several seen throughout the history Azeroth and they are quite instrumental in overseeing the Scourge's operations. In the halls we get to face three princes and their dark queen. As before, this is not an end all, be all guide. These are simply my opinions and thoughts on these bosses. There are several ways to do them, and I encourage you to find ones that work for you. So let us take a look, shall we?
Spiritual Guidance: Bleeding the Blood Queen
On Wednesdays, Fox Van Allen takes control of Spiritual Guidance and spams all sorts of shadowy goodness. Pros: Fox Van Allen is awesome, shadow specced, and not a gnome. Cons: The shadow side of Spiritual Guidance is a limited duration spell, meaning gnome-sympathizer Dawn Moore will take over again later in the week. She's pretty much "everything that's wrong with wow.com," and she doesn't even have a Shadowfiend. Lame. I will not reference Twilight in my intro to The Crimson Halls. I will not reference Twilight in my intro to The Crimson Halls. SPARKLES TEAM JACOB OMG LOVE STORY ROBERT PATTENSON TURKISH MAN I KISS YOU STUPID BASEBALL SCENE ZAAAAAAHHHH!!!! ...Damnit. After a week's delay to try and write something that won't make newbie priests' eyes glaze over, we return to our epic series (so epic, it's colored purple) on Icecrown Citadel. We've already raided the ramparts. We've already busted down Putricide's lab. It's time to go face off against the Blood Princes and Blood Queen. Bring some stakes and holy water, because if you don't, you know they'll only come back to life again. Do you really want to face Prince Keleseth in Cataclysm? That's right, it's the Shadow Priests' guide to The Crimson Halls. Follow me after the break.
Raid Rx: Healing Blood Queen Lana'thel
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. You'll find the Blood Queen at the top floor above the chamber that has the Blood Princes. She is the head boss in the wing and is one of the few encounters in the instance that drops tier 10 tokens. This will be a high stress encounter for healers as there is so much going on at once. Piece of cake? Oh you bet. The strain will be on your DPS players to take her down before the enrage. For us healers, we just have to stand on our head and balance raid health for about 5 minutes.
All the World's a Stage: How you can be a vampire
Last week's All the World's a Stage was focused on the idea that not every character concept is appropriate to every group. The fundamental notion I was trying to convey is that each group has their own normative behaviors, themes, and characters. There's not necessarily anything fundamentally substandard about playing a vampire. Rather, many roleplay groups won't have space or stories available for someone who is playing one of the blood-sucking undead. That being said, there was enough discussion about being a vampire that I wanted to take some time and review how you can go about exploring that character concept in the World of Warcraft. Azeroth isn't necessarily home to huge vampire organizations or angsty teens exploring puberty, but there are still plenty of opportunities to try out the ideas without breaking WoW genre.
Lichborne: Crimson Hall loot for death knights
Welcome to Lichborne, wow.com's weekly death knight column. This week, we continue our breakneck tour of the fabulous Ice Crown Citadel, premiere vacation getaway of the dead, rich, and infamous. Our look at ICC death knight loot continues this week with the Crimson Hall. Prepare for corny twilight jokes to go with your raiding (trust me, I know they're coming, and I will be making many of them). There's only 2 boss battles in this wing, but there's still plenty of loot to discuss. As before, I'd suggest you check out the introduction to the Lower Spire loot guide, as it does include some basic stat rundowns and philosophies that you should keep in mind as you read these guides. There's also a few wrenches in the gears (but good wrenches, since they involve buffs) for your loot selections as of Patch 3.3.2, which I'd expect will be live by the time you read this. We'll be getting an Ashen Verdict strength ring and a slight stat adjustment on tier 10 tank armor, so keep those in mind as you read. In short, you'll probably be keeping the Ashen Verdict strength ring as one of your main rings, and tier 10 tank gear looks a lot sexier now, at least for physical-based fights.
The Light and How to Swing It: Looting the Crimson Halls
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. We're continuing our looter's guide to the Icecrown Citadel. This week we're delving into the Crimson Halls. This is the vampire wing of the citadel and they're kicking it up in style. There are the pretty-boy vampires complete with glitter as well as the vampire vixen leading them. If only Buffy Summers were in my guild, this place would be cake. However, she'd probably end up in love with one of the blood princes and then they'd become good guys for a while which makes us start to care about them only to find out that it was all an elaborate ploy to trick the slayer into a ritual to turn the high school into a demonic portal to hell. Wait, I think I've actually seen that one.
Encrypted Text: Rogue tips for raiding Icecrown Citadel, Part 3
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding Icecrown Citadel's third wing, the Crimson Halls. Blizzard has been bringing their A-game in Icecrown Citadel, with each new wing's difficulty greater than the last. The most recently released wing, The Crimson Halls, plays host to a quartet of vampiric elves who will push your raid to the limit. ICC has been gradually becoming less and less PUG friendly, with complex fights, tight DPS checks via innovative berserk timers, and about twenty different ways to die per encounter. Add in the fact that each end-wing boss has a limited number of attempts, and it's easy to see why raid leaders only want to bring the best of the best to their runs. The two boss battles we find in the Crimson Halls are night and day when it comes to how a rogue should approach them. The first, an unconventional 'council fight', will have your thief senses tingling as danger comes from every angle while you move about the room. The second, a DPS race of highest order, will have you drooling over the huge numbers that appear on your screen as you assassinate yet another member of royalty: the Queen of the San'layn?
Icecrown Citadel: Crimson Halls hotfixes
Even though Crimson Halls has been open for about half a week, a series of hot fixes have been applied today. Most of the fixes posted by Bornakk are applied to Blood Queen Lana'thel. I have to admit though, the bug where the Kinetic Bomb could trigger Blood Queen Lana'thel during the Blood Prince Council encounter did make me chuckle. I'm glad that's been resolved as well. Blood Queen Lana'thel will only be available after the Blood Prince Council is defeated. Blood Queen Lana'thel's Essence has a longer duration. Kinetic Bombs no longer aggro Blood Queen Lana'thel during the Blood Princes encounter. Blood Queen Lanathel should no longer cast Vampiric Bite on pets. In addition, Daelo posted another set of fixes for the Blood Princes encounter: Prince Keleseth will no longer melee players. So if you get knocked into Keleseth or happen to move by him, he won't swipe in between his casts and kill a non-tank. The first Shadow Resonance should appear earlier in the fight, which will allow the Keleseth tank to have more orbs on him or her if Keleseth is empowered second instead of third. We didn't want which Blood Prince was empowered second to be a major element of the difficulty in the fight. We reduced the melee damage for the Princes by 10% for the 10 player difficulty. They were doing less damage than the 25 player before the hotfix, but this change lowers the damage further. Empowered Flames will now run out of power after shooting fewer firebolts in the 10 player difficulty. We did not change the initial impact damage. Valnoth states that the Essence duration was lengthened because the developers didn't like the idea of sacrificing a player to get through an encounter. As a healer, I'm inclined to agree. I hate it when I have to stop all heals on a player in order to progress through a counter. It just goes contrary to everything my character stands for.
Know Your Lore: Quel'delar, the Sister Blade
Welcome back to Know Your Lore, WoW.com's column about the story behind the game we all play. A featured questline in Patch 3.3, the story of Quel'delar is available to any player who attains the Battered Hilt, which can drop from any mob in the Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons. But what's the story behind this ancient and powerful weapon? Long ago, the night elves and the five Dragonflights worked together with great ceremony to forge a set of incredibly powerful prismatic swords, intended to be the first line of defense against any evil that would challenge the races of Azeroth: Quel'serrar, the High Blade, and Quel'delar, the Sister Blade. Quel'serrar was gifted to the night elves, but ultimately nearly destroyed. For thousands of years it remained partially intact with the Shen'dralar of Eldre'thalas, who anticipated that one day it'd be possible to reforge the blade. Only recently did this occur, with heroes reforging the blade in the flames and black heart of Onyxia, broodmother of the Black Dragonflight. The blade's triumphant return to its full glory brought great joy to the night elves, who thought the blade lost forever. Its sister blade, however, followed a different path. This writeup contains spoilers from the Quel'delar questline and should be avoided if you want to be surprised when Patch 3.3 launches.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Queen Lana'thel impressions
I was originally not planning on heading into the patch 3.3 Icecrown testing that was scheduled for Friday on the PTR. Luckily, earlier in the week, I found out my afternoon classes were canceled. Sweet, right? Show time! So on Friday, we fought Queen Lana'thel and she completely mopped the floor with us and used us to clean her chamber. %Gallery-76227%
