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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.
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.
Reminder: The Crimson Halls open tomorrow
As you heard earlier today, tomorrow morning we're being hit with a maintenance period from 3:00 AM PST until 11:00 AM PST. While we're not expecting a patch tomorrow morning (that's next week), tomorrow's maintenance does herald the opening of another wing of Icecrown Citadel, the Crimson Halls, assuming all goes as planned. The Crimson Halls highlights the San'layn, the undead blood elven lieutenants of the Lich King. We'll be facing off against the Blood Princes Valanar, Keleseth and Taldaram as one cohesive unit as the first 'boss' before facing down the Blood Queen Lana'thel. Knowledge of these encounters is currently extremely limited, but you can check out our impressions of the Blood Queen encounter as it was on the PTR. The opening of a new wing also means we'll be getting 5 more attempts at the major bosses in the zone (Deathbringer Saurfang, Professor Putricide, and the Blood Queen) which brings us to a total of 15.
Crimson Halls, next wing of Icecrown Citadel opens in two weeks
Bornakk has confirmed that the next wing of the Icecrown Citadel, Crimson Halls, opens in two weeks. The next one after that will be Frostwing Halls. According to Blizzard: The Crimson Hall contains the leaders of the San'layn, undead blood elves who oversee the Scourge's operations throughout Azeroth. The blood-princes Valanar, Keleseth, and Taldaram were raised into undeath by the Lich King to avenge themselves while protecting their blood-queen, Lana'thel. Plagueworks has just opened today, starring Professor Putricide and his buddies, Festergut and Rotface. And before you have time to yawn at the lack of new challenging content, the next wing will be open. We'll keep you updated on any details, as usual.
The Lore of Patch 3.3
In many ways Wrath of the Lich King can be considered the logical conclusion of one of WarCraft's major story lines. Arthas, the evil sovereign of the scourge, will meet his doom in Icecrown Citadel. Each Wrath patch up until now has lead to this defining moment -- the face off between Arthas and the players representing the next generation of heroes of Azeroth. Who will win? What happens after Arthas is defeated? Is Arthas defeated? These questions lend themselves to a spectacular conclusion to a great tale. In The Lore of Patch 3.3, Michael Sacco, Alex Ziebart, and I will take a look at all the various plots, characters, and environments that lead up to this grand confrontation with the Lich King. You'll want to know this story. You'll want to know this lore. For when you finally face off against the wielder of the Frostmourne, you'll know why you're going toe-to-toe against him, and why your fate can make or break the very face of Azeroth. This article, while containing essential lore, also contains heavy spoilers. Do not proceed if that bothers you.
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%
Blizzard posts Quel'delar preview
Blizzard has posted a preview of the upcoming Quel'delar storyline that we'll be observing in Icecrown. Quel'delar, you'll remember, is the twin of the old Quel'serrar blade that we put together way back in the days of vanilla WoW. For those of you who are spoiler-sensitive, details are behind the break. Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
