1. #1

    Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Hey, figured since my dreamwalker thread helped a couple guildies a lot, that maybe something of the sort could be used for our Arthas shots.

    We're consistently getting into phase 3 with the Valkyrs but we get into it very sloppy, usually with a couple raging spirits up and the Lich King comes out swinging and angry with 30 stacks or so of the necrotic plague buff, basically cutting off our MT's head highlander style, screaming "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!".

    So, I just wanted to check and make sure we're not doing it in some horrible way.

    We're tanking him facing our cluster group of adds so the horrors/zombies can be picked up easily. Offtank alone with adds, MT with melee, people who get plague run into the OT, pass it off, run back out. Works fine. We get 2 shambling horrors, things go well.

    Then, phase 2, everyone drags themselves over to the edge, and Spirits start to spawn. Offtank picks them up, we keep using the disease on them, everyone continues to run to the spirits and out again when they get it.

    Usually, phase 2 ends with us dragging 2 full health spirits along after us, the plague is still going, and the lich king hits like a mack truck, 35k-40k hits with 30-40 stacks of necrotic plague buffs. One of two things happen:

    - The MT gets obliterated when the first Soul Reaper comes out simply because we're still trying to deal with 2 spirits being up, moving out of the defile AND killing the Valkyr AND trying to taunt LK while taking 20k hits.

    - The OT gets obliterated by having an empowered lich king and 2 spirits on him at the same time.

    Now, is the plague still supposed to be going in phase 3? Do we still use it to kill the spirits? If not, how are we supposed to be handling the soul reaper transitions? There's no way the lich king and 2 spirits are supposed to be hitting the OT at the same time for the first 2 soul reapers (since that's what it would be like, you have to kill the Valkyrs so spirits will get ignored) so it feels like we're doing it horribly wrong, but it is a learning process too.

    Any ideas from folks who've done the encounter? How do we handle the transition into phase 3 cleanly?
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  2. #2

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    You should never have 2 shamblers up imo, and all shamblers should be down before you go into ragins spirit phase. take a couple of ghouls with you to the shamblers if you are having problems since the stack will increase if someone dies and jump to the next zombie.

    When the last shambler go to about 30% you want to get lk to transition phase and just have the shambler tank + ranged get that add down really fast NO melee on that add for easy dispelling when the shambler dies, melee can go onto ghouls.
    Just nuke the fuck out of raging spirits so you max have 1 up, in my 10 and 25 kills we only had 1 with very low health so it was easy to dps it down before valks.

    When you go into valk phase hug eachother when valk spawn and then spread when defile spawns and be sure to run in time since lk will cast defile onto a person. I do not know how high your dps is in your group but you need very high dps for this, cleave classes are nice so is mages and warlocks/shadow priests.

    2nd transition phase is harder then the one before since you will get a 4th add right when it ends.
    Key to the last phase is to manage the vile spirits + the frostmourne room while having melee on the boss.


    You should just control the fight from phase 1 to phase 5 since everything can be controlled.

    You are doing it wrong if you have stacks on lk up in 3rd phase btw

  3. #3

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    You basically dispel the plague before the spirits spawn. The last adds (shambling, ghouls) should die from the plague right as you are in P2, so the offtank should run to a safe place and get dispelled there. That's the end of the plague.

    Everyone but one (two in 25) person (who's assigned to the orbs) really needs to get all DPS on those spirits and make sure they die in time. With a "normal" DPS group, one spirit is likely going to be alive by the end of that phase and should have around 70-40% left. High DPS groups (mostly 25man geared or support stacked) will likely kill the last spirit as soon as that phase ends.

    Now, until this spirit dies the MT uses cooldowns to survive the Soul Reaper, either his own or of your priests / paladins. If he's out of cooldowns before the raging spirit is down, the offtank will have to taunt, no matter if he's got a spirit on him or not.

  4. #4

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Quote Originally Posted by Sofonos
    You should just control the fight from phase 1 to phase 5 since everything can be controlled.

    You are doing it wrong if you have stacks on lk up in 3rd phase btw
    That's what I thought, I was sure we have to dispel the plague and get it out of there before phase 3. So, basically, we want to get the plague cleared, but we'll still have the spirits up? If so, we can actually damage the spirits without worrying about it spreading to melee.
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  5. #5

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Correct me if I am wrong - but I am quite sure that the only valid targets of Necrotic Plague are players, Shambling Horrors, Drudge Ghouls. I do not believe nor have I ever seen it jump to a Raging Spirit in the transition phase, so getting rid of it as soon as the second Shambling Horror dies is crucial.

  6. #6

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Quote Originally Posted by krasgoth
    That's what I thought, I was sure we have to dispel the plague and get it out of there before phase 3. So, basically, we want to get the plague cleared, but we'll still have the spirits up? If so, we can actually damage the spirits without worrying about it spreading to melee.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dewkstraykr
    Correct me if I am wrong - but I am quite sure that the only valid targets of Necrotic Plague are players, Shambling Horrors, Drudge Ghouls. I do not believe nor have I ever seen it jump to a Raging Spirit in the transition phase, so getting rid of it as soon as the second Shambling Horror dies is crucial.
    Correct, the plague is only useful in p1 and you should just kill the last shambler with it then get it away

  7. #7

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    I noticed at least one person getting confused with nomenclature: OP refers to phase 2 as what many ppl consider the transition between phase 1 (shamblers and ghouls) and phase 2 (valks). Semantics, regardless.

    Anyways, what the OT should do is be constantly taunting ghouls to tank alongside the shamblers, as this allows Necrotic Plague to hop around the adds and stack to very high numbers. As a safety precaution, we always allow a Necrotic Plague to go out just before pushing LK into the transition phase. You can very well have some adds alive going into the transition phase, but that's okay, as long as there aren't full-health Shamblers in the mix. The trick is to isolate the add that has the Necrotic Plague, stun it (not sure if you can root them, never tried), and make sure nothing is near the add as the plague kills it. Sometimes, you'll have something bad go down, and sure enough, you have Necrotic Plague running through your raid during the transition phase. Either dispel for life til it's gone, or dispel until it reaches a person with an immunity (at which point, they get out of the raid, pop the immunity, bye bye NP). This will bring up quite a few stacks on the Lich King, even coming out of the transition phase, but a tank using cooldowns should be able to survive ~40ish stacks on 10man (I managed to live through a 43 stack without too much effort), just be sure to switch tanks if you have no cooldowns left. Regardless, don't go into the transition phase with Necrotic Plague still hoping around if you can avoid it.

    You mentioned that you have 2 raging spirit at full health coming out of the transition phase? That's a DPS problem more than anything else. If Phase 1 is executed properly, you won't have any Shamblers alive when everyone is in position for the transition phase. 2 of the 3 raging spirits should also be dead before running back to the LK. At this point, the DPS should easily burn down the remaining spirit, and be ready for valks and defiles. A warning: you WILL have a point when a valk is slated to come out at the same time as a defile, you cannot get around this. Just collapse to the center of the room when a valk is supposed to appear, spread out when defile is to be cast. If the timers are overlapping, just use some common sense. If the valk comes first, let it pick a target, then have the raid spread out (except for melee, kill that valk!). When the defile target is chosen, it's only a semi-issue if a melee is chosen... but all the melee has to do is run perpendicular to the valk path to not cause harm. Soul Reaper is more of a tank cooldown issue than a raid movement mechanic... you have a 5 second warning before it pops, you should see it coming!

    Final phase is just about survival, period. Our group nearly pulled it off with an arcane mage as our sole ranged DPS (then someone's internet went out, and that was the night!), so it's not about pewpewing the vile spirits to oblivion. If you have locks/SPs/fire mages that can aoe them all down before they start to follow people, more power to you... if you don't, spread the raid damage! It will take more than one vile spirit to kill someone (pretty sure it'll take at least 3 for most people), so just run when they follow you. Nothing else in this phase really is difficult to strategize, since it's pure survival for the rest of the fight. I suppose don't get super excited when the Lich King gets to 11-13% and forget to kite the viles, resulting in a possible "1% wipe."

    That's the normal mode fight in a nutshell. One size does not fit all, make alterations to fit your raid. ;D
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  8. #8

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Heres how you do p1 and p1.5...

    Stand in 3 groups, ranged, melee, offtank, doesn't matter where. Get offtank to taunt some of the ghouls and all the horrors. When diseased run to the horror, get dispeled, run back. Every single dps on the lich king the entire phase, any dps aoeing that isn't part of their rotation or dpsing the horror is wasting dps. Just burn the lich king before I cant remember its either the 3rd or 4th horror, I forget which. If you have done it right the plague will 2 shot the horrors for you and therefore no damage needed to kill them. While the plague does its business the offtank should be slightly off to the side in 1.5 with the main tank picking up the first raging. Dispel the disease from the offtank when its done its job and there you go, no disease. Burn down the horrors, run back in, gg, get onto the hard phase.

    At the start of p2 everyone run to the middle, wait for valk, spread out, kill valk, wait for defile, group in mid, repeat till phase is over.

    Blow heroism on 2.5 to get 3 adds down, same as before otherwise.

    Phase 3 once again ignore the adds, not worth wasting your dps on, just spread out and take them, kite them if you can and use cooldowns.
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  9. #9

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Quote Originally Posted by krasgoth
    Hey, figured since my dreamwalker thread helped a couple guildies a lot, that maybe something of the sort could be used for our Arthas shots.

    We're consistently getting into phase 3 with the Valkyrs but we get into it very sloppy, usually with a couple raging spirits up and the Lich King comes out swinging and angry with 30 stacks or so of the necrotic plague buff, basically cutting off our MT's head highlander style, screaming "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!".

    So, I just wanted to check and make sure we're not doing it in some horrible way.

    We're tanking him facing our cluster group of adds so the horrors/zombies can be picked up easily. Offtank alone with adds, MT with melee, people who get plague run into the OT, pass it off, run back out. Works fine. We get 2 shambling horrors, things go well.

    Then, phase 2, everyone drags themselves over to the edge, and Spirits start to spawn. Offtank picks them up, we keep using the disease on them, everyone continues to run to the spirits and out again when they get it.

    Usually, phase 2 ends with us dragging 2 full health spirits along after us, the plague is still going, and the lich king hits like a mack truck, 35k-40k hits with 30-40 stacks of necrotic plague buffs. One of two things happen:

    - The MT gets obliterated when the first Soul Reaper comes out simply because we're still trying to deal with 2 spirits being up, moving out of the defile AND killing the Valkyr AND trying to taunt LK while taking 20k hits.

    - The OT gets obliterated by having an empowered lich king and 2 spirits on him at the same time.

    Now, is the plague still supposed to be going in phase 3? Do we still use it to kill the spirits? If not, how are we supposed to be handling the soul reaper transitions? There's no way the lich king and 2 spirits are supposed to be hitting the OT at the same time for the first 2 soul reapers (since that's what it would be like, you have to kill the Valkyrs so spirits will get ignored) so it feels like we're doing it horribly wrong, but it is a learning process too.

    Any ideas from folks who've done the encounter? How do we handle the transition into phase 3 cleanly?
    I didnt read all the responses, but heres what we do. Similar to the tankspot video, we split into 3 groups during the transition phase. MT and melee in the center, Ranged on both sides, OT on one side.
    There should still be 2-3 ghouls up chaining the disease. So, the OT should be more than 5 yards from anyone else, and when the disease kills all ghouls, dispelling the OT will remove the disease, getting rid of the lich kings buff.
    Also, we pop heroism during the transition phase, so there's only 1 spirit left, sometimes two. The OT (Without the spirits) picks up the lich king until a tank switch is necessary. By then, there should only be 1 spirit left, if any. The tank with the spirit and the lich king will have to pop cooldowns.
    To help with the valkyr : If you have any warlocks, keep them at the edge during phase 2 (or three, whatever you call it. the one with the valkyr). They put their demonic circle down, and when they get dropped by the valkyr, they can spam summon, and pop back up. I have heard, but not attempted that a hunter can disengage to the same effect.
    Good luck
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  10. #10

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Quote Originally Posted by kriissii1
    I didnt read all the responses, but heres what we do. Similar to the tankspot video, we split into 3 groups during the transition phase. MT and melee in the center, Ranged on both sides, OT on one side.
    There should still be 2-3 ghouls up chaining the disease. So, the OT should be more than 5 yards from anyone else, and when the disease kills all ghouls, dispelling the OT will remove the disease, getting rid of the lich kings buff.
    Also, we pop heroism during the transition phase, so there's only 1 spirit left, sometimes two. The OT (Without the spirits) picks up the lich king until a tank switch is necessary. By then, there should only be 1 spirit left, if any. The tank with the spirit and the lich king will have to pop cooldowns.
    To help with the valkyr : If you have any warlocks, keep them at the edge during phase 2 (or three, whatever you call it. the one with the valkyr). They put their demonic circle down, and when they get dropped by the valkyr, they can spam summon, and pop back up. I have heard, but not attempted that a hunter can disengage to the same effect.
    Good luck
    I can verify.. disengage and warlock portals do NOT work for when the Val'kyr drops you. Maybe they did initially, but no longer. Once you go beyond the edge of the platform, kiss your groupmates goodbye - you are going to the bottom. There is no coming back.

    Our problem at the moment is the last phase - we are trying to figure out if its better to try and kill some vile spirits, or to try and avoid them. If one person is hit by more than 2 of them, they are going down. Are they able to be AOE'd? ie. volley, blizzard, seed? I know they can be single targetted, but at most you are getting 3 or 4 down out of 10, 12? before they start coming for people.

    10man Normal LK is actually a pretty steep bump in difficulty over the other fights in there, with pretty steep gear requirements. Our group has been on it for quite some time, consistently hitting phase 2 and 3, and the randomness of elements of the fight are frustrating as hell. One defile on the melee dpsing a valk, and the entire platform turns black. Its definitely a challenge, but with 10 people geared in half or more 264 gear, with 4-piece bonuses, it should not be as hard as this imo. 10man is supposed to be able to be done with people with 232 gear and some 251. Currently, I think that's impossible, with the hp the npcs have.


  11. #11

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Quote Originally Posted by Aneia
    warlock portals do NOT work for when the Val'kyr drops you.
    That is not correct.We killed Lichie last night,with a warlock in our group who got grabbed by a Val'Kyr twice and effectively used his portal.Your guild's warlocks are obviously doing something wrong.

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  12. #12

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jinkha
    That is not correct.We killed Lichie last night,with a warlock in our group who got grabbed by a Val'Kyr twice and effectively used his portal.Your guild's warlocks are obviously doing something wrong.
    Hmm, interesting. Our lock said nope, didnt work as he fell to the bottom. I know I tried to disengage, and that only threw me much farther out from the platform. And yes, I was oriented the right way with my back to the platform.


  13. #13

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    I'm 100% sure a warlock can do the portal thing, I watch them do it all the time, however they have to put the portal RIGHT on the edge, and have to be closely lined to that portal (they just stand out near it and dot spam or whatever they do)

    as for hunter, disengage won't work.. the closest I got it was like.. maybe a leg length from getting back on the platform then falling down, if you have a parachute I'm sure its possible. I get within a character foot length of getting back on the ledge
    (be sure to turn before trying, usually your aimed facing the middle of the room, and mashing disengage will just launch you out really far

    mages have a 50/50 chance using blink+parachute also.

    Really if your groups cleaving the things down though, won't need to worry about this :P

  14. #14

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Warlock portals DO work, for people who say it does not work then your locks are doing it wrong. Disengage also does work but you that is alot harder to pull off so i wouldn't ignore a valk if it grabs a hunter, but you should always be able to ignore a valk when it grabs a lock.


  15. #15
    Deleted

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Quote Originally Posted by Aneia
    I can verify.. disengage and warlock portals do NOT work for when the Val'kyr drops you. Maybe they did initially, but no longer. Once you go beyond the edge of the platform, kiss your groupmates goodbye - you are going to the bottom. There is no coming back.

    Our problem at the moment is the last phase - we are trying to figure out if its better to try and kill some vile spirits, or to try and avoid them. If one person is hit by more than 2 of them, they are going down. Are they able to be AOE'd? ie. volley, blizzard, seed? I know they can be single targetted, but at most you are getting 3 or 4 down out of 10, 12? before they start coming for people.

    10man Normal LK is actually a pretty steep bump in difficulty over the other fights in there, with pretty steep gear requirements. Our group has been on it for quite some time, consistently hitting phase 2 and 3, and the randomness of elements of the fight are frustrating as hell. One defile on the melee dpsing a valk, and the entire platform turns black. Its definitely a challenge, but with 10 people geared in half or more 264 gear, with 4-piece bonuses, it should not be as hard as this imo. 10man is supposed to be able to be done with people with 232 gear and some 251. Currently, I think that's impossible, with the hp the npcs have.


    Actually disengage does work, it is possible to jump back to platform.. We were doing first attempts to LK today and i decided to try it.. out of 3 tries i managed once to jump back to the platform.. 21.3 it still works .)

  16. #16

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Quote Originally Posted by Aneia
    Our problem at the moment is the last phase - we are trying to figure out if its better to try and kill some vile spirits, or to try and avoid them. If one person is hit by more than 2 of them, they are going down. Are they able to be AOE'd? ie. volley, blizzard, seed? I know they can be single targetted, but at most you are getting 3 or 4 down out of 10, 12? before they start coming for people.
    We used a SPriest and Hunter and tried a few things. Mind Sear on its own got them all fairly low so with seed or another mind sear works fine but volley sucks. We found it best with our setup to just single target as many as we could and just space for the rest. Id recommend getting used to handling the damage and spacing since theres a good chance theres going to be a time 1 of your ranged is inside Frostmourne at some point, so unless your heavily stacking ranged just get used to spacing.

    If you did P1 and P2 right you should have plenty of time in P3 so take it slow and play it safe.

  17. #17

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    This might seem a little slow, but our progress has been plodding up to this point. We've figured out the plague and the val'kyrs and we're working on the spirits, whenever we can bring 10 people together in a little group to actually accomplish something
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  18. #18
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    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    Have your tank position the Lich King on one edge of the platform (no Val'kyrs to worry about in the last phase), then kite him all the way across when he casts Vile Spirits, with your melee and healers moving with him. Make sure there's a clear path for him to kite, so drop Defiles to the sides. Ranged stay within range of the Spirits to kill as many as possible, then everybody kites them. Have your tanks taunt as many as possible to them to take the damage, and make sure that non-tanks aren't being hit by more than one before being topped off. This is a good time for DPS to use damage reduction/immunity cooldowns.

    Depending on how geared and comfortable your tank feels, they might be able to just tank through Soul Reaper without taunt switching; this is particularly useful for when you still have Raging Spirits up occupying your off tank. I used Divine Protection and then trinkets on cooldown for the Soul Reaper, just to make life easier for my healers, but just tanked through it for the entire fight.

    For us, phase two was the hardest phase, dealing with the Val'kyr and defile coming at roughly the same time. Once we were getting into phase three reliably, we downed him quite soon afterwards. The only difficult mechanic in phase three is the Vile Spirits, and they aren't too difficult provided people pay attention and your tanks taunt as many as possible.

  19. #19

    Re: Lich King 10man - Tricks to the fight?

    We've killed it and are half way through hard modes. Here's the way we did it.

    P1: The LK and the adds which spawn are tanked relatively close together near the southern (side opposite from the throne) edge of the platform. This is so that the tanks do not have to run very far to get to P2. The two tanks are perpendicular to each other. That means that if we were looking at a compass the MT on LK will be north with the LK being in the center of the compass. The adds are also in the center of the compass, but the OT is east. If you get the plague you run in to the adds, then back out. This ensures that on the first jump or two the plague always gets on the shambler.

    We also blow hero/lust on the first shambler (after the OT has aggro). The enrage timer is 15m, so you need to blow it about here so you can use it twice. Once the first shambler is dead, the most should die very fast with little or no assistance from your raid as the plague will take care of them. If you are having problems in P1 or coming into P2 with an add from P1 - it doesn't matter if you can get to P3. You need to get the nuances of P1 right or it will flow downhill. If you have to stop DPS on LK (72%ish) to ensure the plague gets to the shamber, you should do that (sometimes we have to).

    P2 (aka Transition but we call it P2 also): We split into 3 groups. There is a crack on the outer ring which is opposite to where his throne in. One group stands there, one group tot he left of them about 10-12 yds away, and one to the right. Each group has a healer. Melee DPS is in the right group, with the ranged split among the groups. The MT is also in the right group, with the OT in the left group. The first raging we have the person run right - to the MT. He gets it and everyone is on it. The OT picks up the next two and the people run left for him, as we want the MT to not have any adds on him for P3. You should be able to get two adds dead during this part. If the second one isn't dead, it should at least be sub-30% health.

    P3: OT drags remaining adds up to ~10yds from center of the room, and makes SURE he never faces them at anyone (their frontal cone hits pretty hard). MT picks up LK. We have everyone collapse onto the LK 5s before a Valk spawns (watch timers). The only time this is dangerous is the second valk spawn. The defile and valk line up very close. For the second valk only we do not run in, but we still get close to the boss. Every other one you should run in for.

    Ranged kills the remaining adds from P2 while melee is on LK. All DPS must swap the valk immediately when it comes in. Make sure DPS are not experiencing tunnel vision here. Getting on the Valk 1-2 seconds late while learning the fight can prove disastrous.

    We do P4 just like P2, except there are 4 spirits now. MT gets first two, OT second two. We use the same positions.
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