ICC 10 First Wing and Beyond = Cleared (Impressions)

HFG entered Ice Crown Citadel for the very first time last night to attempt the first wing in a 10-man raid.  If you’ve been following the blog lately you know that we started playing WoW again at the end of March.  In just a little over a month we have worked our way up to the last raids in the game.

ICC is broken up into various ‘wings’.  The first four bosses comprise the first wing:

Lord Marrowgar: He’s a big skeleton dragon-like thing.  To beat him all we did was stay behind him, move out of fire, and try to not sit in him while he spins around the room like a top.  Looked really neat.

Lady Deathwhisper: This fight sends mobs at you from the sides while the boss stays essentially unaggro’d at the front center.  A couple ranged DPS on her the whole fight while the rest of the raid finishes off the adds and a quick tank rotation after her shield is down and the fight is over.  This one was scary because we did the quest for the extra special loot bag at the same time (on our first run and under-greared).

The Airship: This fight rocks because it’s not the traditional type of boss fight.  During the fight you’re on an airship that encounters the airship of the opposite faction.  You pull up alongside and you have to shoot cannons at the other ship while also killing their ranged units that are shooting over.  During the fight a caster will freeze the cannons and your team must jump over with goblin rocket packs as well as handle adds that appear in a portal on your ship.  Lots of back and forth on this one which makes it fun as well as easy.

Saurfang: For being the 4th boss, he’s a piece of cake.  Just tank him and pull the two adds that spawn away.  Kiting them with hunters and mages is simple.  In my opinion he’s also a loot pinata.

The second wing is where we began to run into some trouble.  We were geared fantastically for the first wing, but the second wing requires just a tad more.  We went in and attempted Rotface and Festergut.  Both fights gave us temple, but Festergut was hitting our tanks way hard after he sucked in all the gas.  Since our tanks are geared right on the cusp, we had to rely on the tank heals to be just enough (which they were).  Both of these fights were fun — especially Rotface — and we finished up all 6 bosses.

Overall, I think ICC is exactly what I expected.  Last night’s run was a lot of fun for our group of 10.  For a first run, with the gear we have and the raid makeup, it wasn’t hard for us to get gear and have a good time.

  • Saurfang used to be alot harder then the 3 bosses befor him though with the 15% icc buff now a days makes it to a cake walk, so dont be to mean to him(he is also the first hard boss in icc hc). gz on the kills

  • See, I don’t like how ICC panned out, personally. It felt underplanned and too many models were reused.

    It just didn’t “fit” with the idea of heading into ICC to finish off the LK. Look at BT instead, for an example of what I’d’ve liked.

  • Yeah- first 4 were always a joke..

    But i remember our guild having a hard time with Festergut/Rotface, due to lack of gear. This was PRE any kind of buff.

  • I think the thing with Saurfang is that any fight which involves alternating between killing adds and DPS’ing the boss is especially sensitive to increases in DPS. Killing the adds a little faster often means a disproportionate increase in DPS time on the boss.

    That’s why the fight has been affected so strongly by the 15% buff. Actually Lady Deathwhisper is similar.

  • i Cbf with ICC, i will get full gear then when cata clysm releases the puples that i spent ages trying to get will be replaced with Greens in a day — PVP ftw—

  • Gratz 🙂 Although I must say, it’s a real slap in the face that you did all six on your first run through, in the minimum gear to boot; we spent a week wiping on Saurfang, and then a stupid amount of time on on Festergut or Rotface.

  • Don’t get me wrong. I have played WOW and really enjoyed it. But if you reach the final stages of a mmorpg game in about a month, then something is not right for the game.

  • @Nireas: It’s their way of showing even the laziest of players the content before they overlap it with the next expansion. Great idea imho, as I will most likely see the end of ICC before Cataclysm and wouldn’t have been able to on my strict schedule.

  • I would have to say that you are pushing this in May when the content you are talking about was released over 5 months ago.

    The first 3 were always fairly big loot pinatas. Saurfang on the other hand was the block at the end for a lot of people. The dps requirements in the beginning were not extremely stringent but they were steep for people not fully geared in 245 gear. This all changed with the addition of the 5% buff. Now that the buff is 15% most people can clear at least 8/12 with extreme ease.

    Don’t get me wrong, I do think that a lot of ICC was done pourly. But this is just another symptom of the overall lack of quality that prevailed in WotLK raiding. It started with a lackluster rejiggering of Naxx, went into the version of Ulduar we ended up receiving 5 months later. Trial of the Crusader was a stop gap, the ZA of the expansion so to speak. It was a joke from day one on normal. The only truly difficult tasks in ToC was the 25 man Grand Crusader. ICC had challenges early on, but semi PuGs are now completing Heroic modes of some fights and seeing LK.