Filed under: Raiding

Over on the EU forums, Slorkuz has clarified a few questions players may have about the new changes coming to normal mode ICC, namely the removal of limited attempts from the final bosses in each wing. While limited attempts will still be in place on heroic mode, they will no longer be in effect on normal mode as of the end of maintenance this morning. To quote:

Q: If you extend your raid lockout this week, will you still lose attempts on Normal after the hotfix?
A: No.

Q: If you run completely out of attempts on Heroic, will the wing bosses and Lich King no longer respawn, even if the difficulty is switched to Normal?
A: YES. So leave an attempt left if you wish to kill them on Normal. We'll try and correct this in a future update.

Q: Why is the counter still visible in Normal?
A: The hotfix being applied just stops the counter decrementing, and nothing more.

In other words, raiders attempting the final bosses of these wings on normal difficulty will still see the counter, it simply won't count down if they wipe. More importantly however is the news that players wishing to attempt bosses on Heroic difficulty will need to leave one attempt up if they want to clear the boss on normal mode.

Far earlier than any of us had expected, Daelo has announced that the normal modes of Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King will no longer have limited attempts. The heroic modes of these encounters will still have limited attempts, however. To quote:

After each region's maintenance this week, raids will no longer lose attempts on wipes in Normal mode for Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. There will still be limited attempts in Heroic mode.

We will continue to monitor developments in Icecrown Citadel in the future, especially since the Heroic difficulty has been unlocked by a significant number of raids.

A very interesting development, and I'm curious why they decided to lift the attempts system from normal modes entirely. Is it due to a relatively low number of guilds actually killing these bosses right now, or is there some other reason?

Although this probably won't affect too many of us in the near future, Blizzard is already tinkering with many of the stats supplied by the Lich King's weapon drops. A community manager on the Korean site posted about upcoming changes to one Lich King-10 and four Lich King-25 weapons, and Boubouille's posted a translation with help from user Locriani. A lot of raiders had been surprised at the itemization decisions, and as a raiding healer, I've seen a lot of commentary concerning the uninspiring presence of MP5 on the Royal Scepter of Terenas II. Blizzard's specifically addressing these concerns.

The following is the list of changes Blizzard's planning to make to Lich King-25 weapons:

• Royal Scepter of Terenas II: MP5 replaced with haste rating.
• Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas: Critical strike rating replaced with haste rating.
• Heaven's Fall, Kryss of a Thousand Lies: Armor penetration replaced with haste rating.
• Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas: Haste rating replaced with armor penetration.
• And on Lich King-10: Stormfury, Black Blade of the Betrayer: Armor penetration replaced with expertise.

We're not sure when these changes are going to go live, but we'll update you when they do.

EDIT: The changes have been confirmed by Ancilorn on the EU forums now as well.

Are you wondering what has caused all the ruckus in the raiding community the past few days? Have you been typing your fingers to the bone since Wednesday night, arguing for one side or the other in forums and chat channels? Whoever you are, or whatever side you're on, in the still-burning aftermath of Ensidia's ban, I feel some reflection is needed. Thus, I am going explain, to the best of my ability, what happened to cause such uproar in the raiding community this week. I am also going to, as the title implies, offer my speculations.

GuildOx reports that Paragon, from the European Lightning's Blade realm, has defeated the Lich King and acquired the Frozen Throne achievement. While well-known guild Ensidia had defeated him yesterday on 25-man difficulty, they also employed some dubious techniques to win and later paid the price for it by having their loot and achievements removed.

Paragon, on the other hand, appears to have completed the encounter in an exploit-free manner and, according to MMO-Champion's Boubouille, did it on their first try. Congratulations go out to Paragon on their clean kill. Now let's see some of those heroic achievements!

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.

A great team of healers need a leader who can help them stay focused and give them the right assignments. Without their direction (or at least, someone to coordinate healing actions), it can get pretty messy fast. Being the boss of healers and acting as an intermediary between them and the raid leader or officers can often times be stressing. They're often the first person people go to after a wipe wondering what happened or who failed and so forth. As a healer though, you can help ease the stress that they experience.

It looks like Ensidia's 25-man world first on the Lich King will go down with an asterisk next to it, because they've all just received a three-day ban for "Abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft." The Ensidia blog post reporting this is down as of this writing due to traffic, but you can still view the Google cache.

The story is that Ensidia made use of Saronite Bombs to "bypass The Lich King fight mechanics" (Saronite Bombs and similar items were disabled in a hotfix last night). In addition to the temporary ban, all items and achievements they gained from downing Arthas have been revoked. Before the ban (but after the hotfix), Ensidia put up a post claiming that they didn't think the bombs were an exploit; Blizzard obviously isn't buying it.

Meanwhile, Muqq, the Ensidia player who posted about the ban, has taken this as an opportunity to quit WoW (and rant a bit at Blizzard about "half-assed encounters"), saying "to ban people when they do not know what's causing the bugs is just a [expletive] joke."

Update: It's worth a mention that the language Muqq used at the end of his post is identical (save places and names) to this post by Tigole (scroll to the bottom -- it's the last thing on the page), written of EverQuest in 2002. Be warned, neither of these are safe for work.

We do not know whether or not this was used in the Lich King kills we've seen so far (Ensidia's kill screenshot suggests they did), but Daelo hit the European forums to make the announcement that they've temporarily disabled Saronite Bombs and the Global Thermal Sapper Charge. What does this have to do with the Lich King? Well, Daelo says...

We just made a hotfix that disables the siege damage dealt by Saronite Bombs and the Global Thermal Sapper Charge. The siege damage of the bombs was causing the Frozen Throne platform to rebuild, which greatly decreases the difficulty of the encounter.

We'll reenable the siege damage in a later update when the issue with the Frozen Throne is fixed.

It is a longstanding tradition for end bosses to be exploited in the most hilariously awful of ways, so seeing something like this isn't all that surprising. Here's hoping nothing else like it crops up.

Update: Ensidia has released a statement regarding their use of this bug.

Update, take 2: Ensidia's raiding crew has received a 72-hour ban from the game (as well as loss of loot and achievements) for using Saronite Bombs to "bypass The Lich King fight mechanics."

Last night was the world first 10-man kill, tonight it's the world first 25-man kill. The infamous Ensidia of Tarren Mill-EU has scored the kill, and there's a news post on their website confirming it. (Ensidia's site seems to have fallen offline, but you can still read their story via Google cache.) They walked away with Glorenzelg, High-Blade of the Silver Hand and Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas. Well done, crew!

WoW raiding is a bit strange these days, because this kill is actually just the beginning of the road. Now we get to watch the hard modes, which is likely to take quite a bit longer. That's our hope, at least. Will Ensidia walk away with hard mode Lich King as well, or will a group of underdogs come from behind? Will Stars show up in the spotlight again? Only time will tell.

Update: Ensidia's raiders have received a 72-hour ban from the game for "abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft." A hotfix was applied last night to prevent the use of Saronite Bombs (which Ensidia used) in the encounter and Ensidia's loot and achievements have been removed. So that world first? Still up for grabs.

This is it. The final gates of Icecrown have been opened up. If you need help, we have overviews and other resources to the encounters right here. While I'd guess that the majority of us aren't exactly competing for world firsts or even server firsts, progression is still progression. I know starting out that I had my own internal expectations of where our guild would be at and we've met them. We haven't cleared out all the new bosses yet but I know with time, we will be able to. Along the way, we managed to score a few unexpected achievements. I for one didn't recall going after The Orb Whisperer. Anyway, some guilds take their progression seriously. In fact, I think there are a few out there who purposely used a lockout from the previous week just to have the extra time advantage to work on Valithria and Sindragosa.

What about your raid groups? Are you happy with how you're progressing so far? Did they surpass your wildest dreams or are you discontent and think you should be further ahead?

About one hour ago, WoW.com was notified that Blood Legion of Illidan-US has scored the world first of 10-man The Fall of the Lich King (as well as The Frozen Throne.) Ten lucky Blood Legion members walk away with the Kingslayer title, and a... statue of Tirion Fordring? Well... okay. Why not? Congratulations, Blood Legion. Good luck on the hard modes next week!

Before everyone jumps to conclusions and bemoans WoW being easy mode, keep in mind this is only the normal mode of the 10-man difficulty. Blood Legion is a high end 25-man guild, so this kill was not what you would call "pure." A kill this quickly doesn't mean the encounter was trivial, because if that were the case we'd have seen many more kills last night. It simply means Blood Legion had an edge, to say the least.

Icecrown Citadel is just full of news tonight. Hot on the heels of the Lich King's entire loot table being revealed, it appears that the Icecrown raid weeklies are now available. There seem to be five different raid weeklies (here's the list), existing in both 10- and 25-man versions, and they appear to be given by a different questgiver within Icecrown Citadel for each quest.

Tonight Anne, our new lore columnist, did the 25-man version of Securing the Ramparts, and she reports back that the frost giant (a special mob that appears only for the quest) was "friggen HARD" and that although they got it in a couple of tries, a PuG might have trouble. There was an interesting fight mechanic in the form of a disease debuff that must be passed to another player within 30 seconds, or else it kills the target. The original target is now immune for 30 seconds (no tagbacks, I guess).

The giant dropped no loot, but for completing the quest you get Sack of Frosty Treasures, which contains 5 Emblems of Frost, some gold, and a chance for epic gems. Has anyone else had a chance to try the new weeklies yet?

This is surprising: the entire loot table for the Arthas fight, on both 10 and 25-man (normal and hard, judging by the item levels) has just been posted to the Armory. Edit: the loot is also on Wowhead now, complete with 3D models. As tipster Micah noted, if this is really the whole loot table, it consists entirely of armor tokens, weapons, and Invincible's Reins (which is listed as a guaranteed drop on 25-man heroic). The focus on weapons isn't exactly new for raid end bosses, but it's interesting nonetheless.

I haven't had a chance to go through the whole list yet, but as far as I can tell, there aren't any of the nifty proc-based items we've been seeing elsewhere in Icecrown. It's pure stats on Arthas drops (though Alex points out that they all the 25-man heroic items have flavor text). Still, I wouldn't say no to a nice Tainted Twig of Nordrassil for my druid.

Which one's your favorite?

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.

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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 Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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