Really Heroic ICC

[Ciah]

Let's face it, you're probably tired of ICC hardmodes after 9 months or so of the same bosses over and over again. I am too. Everyone in a guild that can kill LK reg mode already has near BiS gear at this point, and the 30% buff has trivialized and changed the approach many guilds take to the encounters. The excitement of a new patch has already started to die down and if you're like me you're just looking for a challenge to tide you over for 2 months. That is why I present to you today...

ICC Really Heroic Mode.
(Disclaimer: This is somewhat serious, somewhat tongue-in-cheek list of ideas I had to differentiate the heroic mode of ICC from reg mode; things I wish Blizzard had done or perhaps snide commentary on things I wish they hadn't. I am assuming the 30% buff and mostly heroic mode gear in this post, as some of the things I have thought up are just downright impossible without these two things being true... Note the numbers I have here are all for 25man, but there's nothing that couldn't in theory be tuned to 10man as well.)

Really Heroic Lord Marrowgar: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health increased by 30%.
- Coldflame lines now spawn at the center of his hitbox, not from the edge.
- Every 45 seconds, Marrowgar casts Whirling Cleave. Has a 5 second cast and hits all enemies within 15 yards for around 90k damage after armor mitigation. If nobody is damaged by the ability, he does a 150% damage enrage for 15 seconds, so someone must stay in to eat the hit with a cooldown. Everyone else needs to run out, of course.
- Spawns small circular fires underneath random raid members that disappear on the same timetable as a coldflame patch. Similar to Koralon's fires.
- Bone spikes still do damage to whoever they have impaled. In addition, they stack a bleed every second on the person who is impaled, which does additional damage and lasts 30 seconds. If the bleed debuff reaches 10, the impaled person just instantly dies.
Changes from live: No more stacking everyone in melee and having the tanks do their dance thing. People in melee range have to actually think now, and you might *gasp* actually have to move the boss too, if too many fires spawn in the wrong places. Bone spikes actually need to die pronto, no more letting them sit while the healers carry whoever is spiked. Essentially, think of this new fight as Heroic Marrowgar, while doing the "Boned" achieve every time, plus a bit of Koralon and Emalon. Requires actually paying attention from everyone in the raid, a should be a nice intro to Really Heroic ICC. Brostorm away!

Really Heroic Lady Deathwhisper: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health increased 15%. Mana shield increased to match the size of her health pool.
- New debuff: Mind Decay. Stacks to 10, reducing casting speed and melee attack speed by 2% per stack. Applied by various new abilities in the fight. Undispellable, duration lasts until the boss dies. If you gain an additional stack of Mind Decay while you already have 10 stacks, the debuff is cleared but you are mind controlled for 20 seconds.
- Curse of Torpor not only increases ability cooldowns, but in addition every time you use an ability while you are cursed, you gain one stack of Mind Decay.
- Death and decay does heavy damage to anyone standing in it, in addition, every time it ticks on you, you gain a stack of Mind Decay.
- Touch of Insignificance. Continues to reduce threat. However, if Deathwhisper applies another stack of Touch of Insignificance to a tank that already has 5 stacks, the tank is PERMANENTLY mind controlled.
Changes from live: Tank switches need to happen on phase 2, and threat during this phase is even more of a huge deal now as she remains untauntable. There are also harsher penalties for not dispelling the curse and for standing in the Death 'n Decay. More mind controls, yay. Honestly, on live this is one of the more chaotic and fun fights in Heroic ICC and it needs little improvement in my eyes. Although maybe the ghosts could be less see-through.

Somewhat Heroic Gunship Battle (lol, stick with me here): Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Enemy ship health increased 10%. Allied ship health decreased 50%.
- Jetpacks have a 10 second cooldown. (seriously they should have put this on live...)
- Falling off the boat actually kills you.
- The enemy commander's stacking buff also includes a massive run speed gain. No more endlessly kiting him.
- Knockback on the rockets increased by 5000%. Think shadow trap. Maybe you'll pay attention to em now, huh!?
- If someone overheats their cannon, they die and the cannon is permanently destroyed, likely causing you to not have enough dps on the enemy boat.
- The enemy mage has a shield that reflects 20% of damage done to it back to the attackers. Please actually bring a healer over to the other side now.
- Two new adds that spawn on the allied boat:
~~ Priest: Casts a greater heal that heals allies for 400k, 3sec cast, should probably be interrupted. When not healing, casts a big holy fire (that applies a dispellable DoT just like any other Holy Fire) on random raid members who are on the allied boat. Untankable and just stands under the spawn portal.
~~ Deathknight: Melee dps with a cleave. Periodically casts Deathgrip followed by Chains of Ice on random players on the allied boat. Chains should be dispelled immediately of course, fairly deadly a raid member gets chained in the Sergeant's whirlwind.
Changes from live: Obvious mechanics actually kill you now. Derp. The enemy leader is not kite-able anymore. Some fun stuff to dispel and interrupt on the allied boat to hopefully keep it more interesting for those not jumping. I'm sorry I really didn't have much to work with here.

Really Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health increased 10%.
- When Saurfang reaches 100 Blood Power, he casts 5 Marks on the raid. In addition, he does a 8 yard AoE explosion hitting melee and tanks for about 20k if they don't run out.
- Marks do the same amount of damage as on live currently, but the Blood Power Saurfang gains from marks is reduced about 60%.
- At 20, 40, 60, and 80 Blood Power, if there is at least one Mark on the raid, Saurfang removes a Mark, heals himself by 1% of his health, and puts a debuff on the current tank increasing damage taken by 1%.
- Scent of Blood is no longer applied to the whole raid, and now lasts only 5 seconds. Applied 5 seconds after beasts spawn and every 5 seconds after that to whoever the beasts are targeting. This doesn't really change much, but it makes more sense to me for beasts to get the scent of the person they're after's blood, instead of the whole damn raid. Whatever.
- If someone with a mark dies, Saurfang heals to 100% and enrages instantly. No more "oh well someone died lets just keep trying."
Changes from live: Trying to reduce some of the RNG in this fight. As it was on live during progression, you get all marks on plate and selfhealing classes? Win. All marks on squishies? Lose. That's no fun. With this change, nearly everyone is bound to get a mark by the time the fight is over, and marks are possibly not permanent. There is sort of a Festergut mechanic going on here, after the 5 marks are thrown out the healers need to quickly change to keeping up those raid members, and as marks are removed the raid healing goes down but the tanks start to slowly get pounded harder and harder. By the end of the fight both tanks will have some some 10-15 debuffs, which is 10-15% more damage to make healers' lives miserable at the soft enrage. (Maybe this will require using 3 tanks now? A thought.)

Really Heroic Festergut: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health increased 45%. Enrage time increased by 30 seconds.
- Putricide's Wandering Plague is cast 20 seconds into this fight, and is cast every time it drops off the raid, just like on Putricide's encounter. Consider it a warm-up.
- Instead of 3, Festergut now spawns 9 spores.
- 7 stacks of Innoculated are now required to survive the Pungent Blight AOE.
- If you get more than 10 stacks of Innoculated, you instead get a debuff called Overly Volatile, dealing 10k damage to the raid every second for 10 seconds, then killing you outright.
Changes from live: 45% more health seems about right for making the enrage relevant again, when the new mechanics and the 30 second longer fight time are factored in. The additional time on enrage ensures raids will always get two Pungent Blight AOEs. Raiders must now perform some basic arithmetic to ensure they get 7-10 Innoculated stacks without killing themselves or screwing up the Plague rotation. Compared to as it is on live, this is far more interesting than just assigning 3 spots to stack on, and I'm sure different raids will have different methods of handling this new spore mechanic. Honestly I think this new fight would be a ton of fun, it's one of my better ones here.

Really Heroic Rotface: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health increased 40%.
- Casts a raid-wiping but interruptable Ooze Nova every 6.5 seconds. 2.5 second cast time. Only melee-range interrupts will work. Gives melee something to do- think Vezax's interruptable cast. This cast is higher on priority than his Slime Spray, so the Sprays will happen in between Ooze Nova casts. (It just so happens that Slime Spray has a 1.5 sec cast and 5 sec duration, which fits perfectly between Nova casts. I totally didn't plan that, nope!)
- Every 30 seconds, Rotface spawns an ooze puddle the size of the other round puddles spawned in this fight. This puddle appears directly underneath him, and does not disappear.
- Parryhaste enabled.
Changes from live: The interruptable cast gives DPS with an interrupt something else to think about. However it's impossible to just set up an interrupt rotation because people will have to be running from slimes at some points, so the raid will have to communicate about this. I specify melee interrupts only to prevent Wind Shear from being OP. The slime puddle he spawns underneath him causes the main tank to have to reposition Rotface so the melee can still get to him, and it slowly reduces the already tight room people have to maneuver in. This also acts as another soft enrage mechanic. Parryhaste will cause tank damage to be higher on this fight. I've almost never seen a raid wipe from maintank death. In general these changes are geared toward making this fight more interesting for everyone that isn't a healer or kiter. Maybe I could do more with this, but some fights don't need a lot of change.

Really Heroic Professor Putricide: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health increased 30%.
- Now casts Malleable Goo at EVERYONE more than 15 yards away, with a minimum of 8 targets.
- The debuff from the Choking Gas Bombs (flasks) now decreases healing by 50% done in addition to reducing hit by 50%.
Changes from live: For people who think this is ridiculous, I present to you http://www.justin.tv/fireelements/b/271777533. Skip to 33 minutes in to see the hilarious bug that was present on 4.0.1 patch day. Lots more Malleable Goos is about all this fight needs, it's already quite fun on live. The 50% healing debuff from the flasks is there to give healers a reason to stay awake if they go in melee range to avoid getting Goo'd.

Really Heroic Blood Prince Council: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health increased 20%. Enrage time decreased by 2 minutes.
- Kinetic Bomb hitting the floor wipes the raid.
- Flame Orbs need to be "soaked" longer to reduce them to non-lethal damage.
- Getting hit by the Shock Vortex zones do 40k damage to people they hit now.
- Empowered Shock Vortex deals a lot more damage, such that being within the range of more than one other person's explosion is instant death.
- Not dispelling the Glittering Sparks debuff (fucking sparkly vampires) after a few seconds causes death.
Changes from live: This fight is hectic and fun on live, but the 30% buff has made most mechanics a bit trivial. There is already plenty of stuff to worry about. I actually chose to not buff the health by much but decrease the enrage timer significantly in order to make the enrage a real concern without making the fight any longer than it already is. Essentially, buff this entire encounter by 30% so that it is as strict mechanically as it was at 0%!

Really Heroic Blood Queen Lana'thel: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health increased 70%.
- Enrage timer increased by 3 minutes. This fight was always way too short. Time before a vampire has to bite someone increased accordingly, such that (as it is now) the raid starts to get mind controlled right around the enrage anyway.
- Every time someone is bitten, a "Disembodied Essence" add spawns in that location 2 seconds later.
~~ Disembodied Essences have about as much health as an LK Raging Spirit on 25man normal mode. Very easily offtanked and burned down by the raid.
~~ The damage done by these adds decreases the more of them that are alive. With one add up, they will melee a tank for 35k hits, with 2 adds up they both hit for 20k, with 3 adds, each hits for 14k, something like that. Total DPS from the adds does go up as more spawn, but not linearly.
~~ As more people get bitten, more and more adds spawn, but they will die really fast from the increased DPS (who do no threat, too!) The offtank's job gets progressively more and more chaotic.
- Air phases happen every 45 seconds now. BQ runs to the center, fears, and flies in the air, then randomly casts one of these 3 abilities: (She cycles through them such that in 3 consecutive air phases you will have one of each, then it resets)
~~ Flies in the air and, after the fear wears off, casts bloodbolts. Raid needs to spread evenly, same mechanic as on live.
~~ Flies in the air and, after the fear wears off, marks 5 people and roots them in place. 10 seconds later she casts large bloodbolts at these people that deal 100k damage on impact, spread amongst up to 5 people within 5 yards of the impact area. Requires the raid to break into 5 even groups and soak the damage down to 20k. Gotta love ye olde "meteor" mechanic.
~~ Flies in the air and, after the fear wears off, marks 10 people. These people do a pulsing AOE around them that will quickly kill people who are standing next to them. In addition, after 10 seconds Lana'thel will do an AOE which deals 100k damage to every raid member, reduced by 5k for every person within 5 yards. People marked with the AOE aura are immune to this damage. The 10 marked people must spread while the other 15 must stack in order to reduce the 100k to a more managable 25k.
Changes from live: A longer fight means that much more time for someone to screw up. The adds cause some difficulties, especially when there are lots of people being bitten (might need to have people delay bites so that the offtank can taunt them all, etc). The choice of when to stop killing adds and focus on the boss is one each raid will have to make in order to optimize offtank survivability and chances of making the enrage. Random air phases give the fight some variation each time, rather like Twin Valkyr from ToC. The abilities are random but it is nonetheless possible to plan ahead for any of them. Each one requires the raid to respond and stack/spread in a different way. Hopefully this turns BQ from a 4 minute loot pinata to an actual respectable wing-end boss.

Really Heroic Valithria Dreamwalker: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Damage to heal increased 40%. Add health increased by 20%.
- Suppressors cannot be slowed or CC'd
- When Blazing Skeletons die they leave a large patch of fire on the ground for 30 seconds.
- Archmages now cast Mana Void and Column of Frost twice as often. Column of Frost deals lethal damage. Mana Voids now remove one stack of Emerald Vigor each tick.
- New Add: Unstable Mass, uses the standard green ooze model. Moves slowly toward whoever has aggro, has a light AOE damage aura and melees for a small amount.
~~ Can cast a channeled spell, targeted at a random raid member that does not have the Emerald Vigor buff. Projects a small green beam on to them, then after 4 seconds the add then sprays a cone attack dealing heavy damage at that raid member and anyone else in the affected area. Whoever gets this on them needs to face the cone out of the raid.
Changes from live: Lots more circles on the ground... and they are not to be taken lightly anymore. A new add for ranged to burn down, which casts a spell that requires some situational awareness. The idea of these changes is to force the raid to use more parts of the room, as usually the area opposite the entrance behind the dragon never sees any love.

Really Heroic Sindragosa: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health increased 20%.
- If Chilled to the Bone reaches 8 stacks, the next stack will not go to 9 but instead cause the player to die, as well as AOEing the raid members around them for 20k.
- Sindragosa's tail smash now does 25k damage in addition to the knockdown. Maybe once it's doing more than tickling for 8k-ish, melee will actually realize she HAS a tail attack >_>
- The stairs are removed. Sindragosa is now fought on a flat, circular arena. Frost Bombs during the air phases may land anywhere in this area. No more hiding on the stairs during the air phases.
- Whelps spawn during the air phases and must be tanked and AOE'd down as the raid dodges the frost bombs. LoSing your healers is a very real danger here.
- The last phase retains the same mechanics as on live, however to further increase the difficulty of this phase, Sindragosa's voice acting is played twice as loud once she reaches 35%. Tremble, raiders, as your pathetic mute button BETRAAAAYS YOU!!!
Changes from live: Air phase is complicated immensely by the removal of the stairs and the addition of adds. Melee now have even more incentive to watch their stacks. The voice clip thing is a joke... I'd hope.

Really Heroic Lich King: Retains all abilities from Heroic 25man. Health unchanged. Enrage timer reduced by 1 minute.
- This fight definitely needs more RNG and simultaneous stack/spread mechanics! Therefore...
~~ Arthas now casts Defile during phase 1.
~~ Arthas now casts Defile during transition phases.
~~ Arthas now casts Defile while the raid is in Frostmourne. The raid is unable to see who Arthas is targeting with Defile while in Frostmourne, but the effect still happens on the same cooldown.
- To accommodate for this insanity, Defile has a 1 second longer cast time.
- Valkyr in the air from phase 2 remain during the 2-3 transition and into phase 3. They remain targetable by ranged and must be actually killed to have them go away. To compensate for this, Valks have 20% less health, and drop the person they are carrying when they reach 25% instead of 50%. When the raid goes into Frostmourne, any remaining Valkyr have a total threat wipe. Should you opt to tank them the entirety of phase 3, they will despawn when Arthas hits 10%.
- While the raid is in Frostmourne, Arthas channels Neverending Winter. It is now not advisable to soulstone people and have them rez after the pull-in to avoid the Frostmourne phase.
- Tirion Fordring is no longer a scenery element. He remains stationary, encased in his ice block, but now is healable (like Valithria) and can take damage from certain mechanics in the fight.
- If Tirion dies at any point, Arthas instantly kills the raid (think "Unholy Ascend to the Heavens")
~~ Tirion cannot be targed by or trigger Shadow Trap.
~~ Tirion is hit by Infest when it is cast, just like any other raid member.
~~ Tirion cannot be targed by the plague, but once it is out it can jump to him and must be dispelled like any other raid member.
~~ Tirion CAN be hit by shockwaves and soul shrieks.
~~ Tirion does not take damage from LK's AOE's during the transitions, nor can he be targeted or affected by an Ice Sphere.
~~ Tirion cannot be picked up by a Valkyr.
~~ Tirion can be targeted by Defile and takes damage from it (gotta heal him through it), but he does not count towards making the Defile grow.
~~ Tirion is not put in Frostmourne.
~~ Tirion is never targeted by a Vile Spirit, but does take the splash damage from their explosions.
~~ Tirion now only has 26k health, as befitting a baddie who takes 15 minutes to remember how to use his racial ability.
Changes from live: More Defile. Sooooo much Defile. Defile in phase 1 causes troubles with placing the Shadow Traps. Defile during the transitions can cut your raid in half along the thin edge, so the raid needs to coordinate very specifically which side of the defile melee should stay on. Defile in Frostmourne is going to be hellish, because the raid cannot see who it is being targeted at, the whole raid needs to spread and contract again, which of course screws up bomb placement. I opted to reduce the encounter time rather than buff LK's health, as he already has plenty. I never understood why the Val'kyr leave at the end of phase 2. They should need to be killed or have them fly away when their master is truly broken and defeated. As it is on live, they just peace out at some arbitrary phase change, which is not what you'd expect from some of the Lich King's most powerful servants. Oh, and having to babysit Tirion is just one more way to screw with the healers. Have fun.



Hopefully this has gotten you thinking of what ICC could have been. I would die from joy (metaphorically) if Blizz put in a joke patch for 2 months that implemented these changes, then took it out for Cataclysm. There would be a Feat of Strength for clearing each wing on Really Heroic mode, but that's it. Oh well, I can dream. If you see anything you like or anything that you think is just patently stupid please comment. (The only one I see as kind of dumb is having to heal Tirion, but man, he totally deserves it!)

I apologize in advance if this is just way too much text. EDIT- added some formatting, maybe that helps

[anthell]

as much as this changes are cool.. some of them missed one very important concept of raiding.

raiding, is like a dance. where you learn how to master each moves. just like dancing, positioning/dance move seems incredibly hard, but
once mastered it became trivialized. however, if such moves cannot be mastered, whats the point of learning them??

some of the examples you had like, defile in frostmourne room..
what gives paragon world first is their idea of stacking and having a path finder.

the changes you suggested makes it seems like... both are not needed.
the thing about RNG, it makes experience useless. anyone who attempted the room without the strat will naturally just spread around to dodge the bombs,
thus making the defile idea somewhat redundant.

your idea of the removal of stairs in sindragosa, makes encounter zones identical.
its always the good players that experiment with the platform of an encounter.
another example is, ignis. just like sindra, tanking ignis on the pool of water itself, make it impossible
for fire patches to spawn. while it makes it impossible to kill the adds, 0 movement improves DPS thus helping to get the 4 mins kills achievement.
its like this, trivializing fights is the true beauty of raiding. every encounter is mad hard if you just blindly attempt it, but as you learn it,
you began to know how to make those complex encounters extremely easy.

[sicness]

- This fight definitely needs more RNG and simultaneous stack/spread mechanics!

RNG doesn't make an encounter harder, it makes it more frustrating when things are out of your control that can wipe you. The LK encounter already has a few elements like that, it doesn't need more especially considering even with 30% buff and more powerful dps/healing it's still a wipe most of the time when a single person dies on the encounter.

[Ciah]

The comment about Lich King needing more RNG was made tongue-in-cheek. I am well aware that fight can be pretty annoying with its randomness.
However, I still stand by that a great raid can excel to the point where they overcome the RNG. How is it that the best guilds can get Heroic LK down on their first try nowadays, if the encounter is truly so out of their hands due to randomness? They have learned to compensate for the potential errors RNG will introduce, and have risen above that. With the 30% buff, full BiS gear, and a 1 second longer cast on Defile, those same guilds will again learn to rise above the RNG of Defile in 3 new phases.

Part of this change was to keep a nearly year-old raid interesting. I agree, adding many of these mechanics does get rid of the fact we have currently "mastered" the encounters. That's sort of the point.
For the example of Defile in the Frostmourne room, yes, Paragon came up with a unique strategy and excelled because of it. But now everyone who is on the fight knows that strategy. That phase has been mastered.
So I throw Defile into it and suddenly the accepted strategy doesn't work! Once again the great guilds have a chance to prove they can overcome this extremely challenging new scenario. As it was before, stacking is still the optimal way to control bomb spawns, and an experienced guild will know this. An experienced guild will also know the dangers of Defile. These changes are specifically made, then, to change it up on said experienced guilds. Perhaps they stack and move in only one half the room, then spread to drop Defile in the other half, keeping the half they move around in bomb-free. There is one idea! But it is much harder to execute than the current Frostmourne room, which was my goal.

With regards to Sindragosa's room, I realize that encounter space homogenization is rather lame. But the stairs introduced a whole host of issues, such as height- it is possible to LoS the bombs perfectly but still be too "high" over the ice tomb and get hit. In addition to removing any doubts with regards to these issues, I also like that the raid must move 360 around the ice tombs, not just within a narrow band. Even as I have described it, there are a lot of possible ways to handle this new fight. Make a loose ring of blocks and have raiders each pick a block to rotate around, or to make a "wall" of ice tombs and split the circular room into to sections, and hide behind the wall based on what section the bombs are in. I am sure you can think of other potential solutions. So as you can see there is still room for innovation, it is just not the encounter as you know it today. And that is a good thing.

These new fights were designed with the idea that they CAN be mastered, but it will be a huge challenge. Some of these new mechanics have a very clear solution to them, but usually in conflict with an accepted strategy as it is today. That is not to say there isn't some strategy that can solve both problems, just that it will have to be worked out. These new encounters can be trivialized with good tactics, but not the tactics we use today.

[Googolplex]

Your version of LK would be unkillable, but your overall boss ideas are nice

[sicness]

The comment about Lich King needing more RNG was made tongue-in-cheek. I am well aware that fight can be pretty annoying with its randomness.
However, I still stand by that a great raid can excel to the point where they overcome the RNG. How is it that the best guilds can get Heroic LK down on their first try nowadays, if the encounter is truly so out of their hands due to randomness? They have learned to compensate for the potential errors RNG will introduce, and have risen above that. With the 30% buff, full BiS gear, and a 1 second longer cast on Defile, those same guilds will again learn to rise above the RNG of Defile in 3 new phases.

While that's true, too much RNG still remains bad for encounters because all it does is frustrate players. It's also incredibly hard to judge the RNG penalties of the LK encounter as time goes on because of the zone wide buff alone. Making it much easier for guilds who were doing it at 10% to do it with a 30% buff. It's more so about RNG during progression, not farming, that makes it frustrating and not something you should base an encounter around because in the end it's simply just not fair for a raid to wipe on something they know how to do but can't overcome because of bad RNG, and the LK encounter did have that for the top guilds with 5%/10% buffs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for requiring stacking of certain classes/specs in a raid to take advantage of mechanics in heroic modes. But when you have to do so to simply to favor yourself for the RNG of the encounter then it's a poorly designed encounter because of that because part of the reason a guild gets the world/server first is based off a percentage of luck much higher than a non-RNG heavy fight. That, at least in my opinion, is bad design. I mean it's not a coincidence world first Heroic LK was done without any mages, when you can take a lock in their place to get just as much dps but take advantage of them in phase 2, which is significant in their kill video.