Zabery

Last night our 10-man crew got our first Lich King kill.

It took us probably around six hours of solid, focused practice. Every few hours we’d slide into a comfortable rhythm with another phase and perfect the next transition. We managed our server-first kill (without [Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings] or heroic 25-man gear, we’ll have you know!) on the second pull on our third night of serious attempts.

I thought it’d be fun to go over the highlights of healing this fight as a Holy Paladin while the experience was still fresh in my memory.

Overview

There are four distinct modes of the fight. It’s cut up into three main phases with two transition phases between them. The first phase isn’t so bad and will feel comfortable after you’ve learned it. The second phase is the meat of the fight. Even after learning its rhythm you still must pay close attention. The third phase still feels chaotic to me, but we didn’t get much time to practice it. We managed to push through it to the kill after a handful of clean transitions from phase two.

I won’t cover every single detail of the encounter. The following links do a far better job of that. I’ll focus on the aspects of healing the fight as a holy paladin.

Background Reading

• StratFu
• Vallen’s ‘So you want to kill the Lich King’ post on Feral Aggression
• TankSpot 10-man videos: part 1 and part 2
• Blood Legion’s world first 10-man kill videos: part 1 and part 2

Phase 1

Mechanics

• Necrotic Plague — Cleansing this is the only new trick to learn in this phase. Watch the timers and call out when it is about to go out and then who it lands on. Once that person is in range of the adds you’ll want to cleanse it. You only have 5 seconds so be careful with long casts as it approaches.
• Plague Siphon — The longer this phase lasts the more stacks the LK will get. Hopefully the LK tank won’t exhaust their cooldowns before the phase ends. Be ready to pop cooldowns and land heavy heals if the stacks get too high.
• Infest — Sadly, The LK regularly casts this on the raid in all of the three major phases. Ideally you’ll bring a discipline priest to roll Power Word: Shield on the raid. More often than not the shields will absorb enough to stop everyone from dropping below 90%. If something keeps that from happening, though, be ready to throw heavy heals on those with the DoT before it gets out of control.

While this is going on the MT will be taking decent damage. The OT might take significant damage if they get a few horrors up and some number of them enrage. Be ready for it, though you won’t have much time to react.

Cheat Sheet

1. Heal from melee on the LK
2. Keep beacon heals flowing between the tanks
3. Watch for spikes from LK’s stacks or from enraged horrors
4. Cleanse the plague the moment its target is closest to adds
5. Watch for the add tank to catch the plague from dying adds
6. Run to the add tank if you get the plague yourself
7. When the LK runs to the center, run to the outer edge of the platform

First Transition

Mechanics

• Pain and Suffering — This is the majority of the damage taken in this phase. In practice, raiders will not be evenly spread out and the DoTs will stack. Be ready to quickly throw moderate heals around the raid.
• Raging Spirit — Raging Spirits will be summoned on raiders throughout this phase. They’ll most likely be running to tanks as their adds are spawned, but it doesn’t always work out. Be ready to top them up if the adds hit them a few times. Bubbling casters can’t hurt. Be ready to run to a tank yourself. Finally, the adds have a nasty frontal cone attack which silences.
• Soul Shriek — The adds use this liberally. Stay the heck away from them. Be ready to cleanse the silence immediately, including tanks. It can stop them from taunting the newly spawned adds.
• Summon Ice Sphere — It’s likely that DPS will worry about killing the spheres, but they’re worth mentioning. Some strats talk about having healers take care of the spheres so DPS can focus on the adds. The spheres have very little health. If you get a chance, a well-timed Hammer of Wrath or 40-yard judgement could be well worth it. At the very least have name plates up so you can call out of the spheres get too close to the raid.

As the transition starts the add tank will still have some adds with the plague left over from phase one. Keep them healed up until their adds are dead and you can finally cleanse the plague off of them. Everyone will stay away from them until that happens.

From that point on, pick a nice spot away from the action and spam heals as the tanks and DPS deal with raging spirits.

When you see the LK cast Quake — you’ve had him as your focus target, right? — tons of blue cracks will appear on the platform. That’s your sign to run back to the center of the platform.

As you run in there are two big snags to watch out for. It’s likely that a raging spirit will be up. First, don’t run in front of its silence. Tanks will likely run in towards the edge while everyone else hugs the center. Second, watch out for lingering spheres. It’s surprisingly easy to overlook them. Keep name plates up and make a conscious effort to watch out for them. If you get too close they’ll explode and send you flying, oh, half way back to Outland. It’s funny the first few times.

Cheat Sheet

1. Pick an empty spot right up against the edge of the outer rim of the platform
2. Cleanse the plague off the add tank as the last add dies
3. Beacon/SS/FoLHoT the tank who will be catching most of the adds
4. Be ready for significant damage from stacks of the DoT
5. Boogie to the nearest tank if an add is spawned under you
6. Stay the heck away from the raging spirits’ silence
7. Watch for spheres and nuke ‘em only if you have downtime
8. Run back to the center when you see blue cracks, avoiding spheres and raging spirits

Phase 2

Mechanics

• Summon Val’kyr — Absolute requirement #1: be as close to the center as possible when each newly summoned Val’Kyr swoops down. In practice, this means running to the center immediately as the phase starts. From then on, only leave the center to spread out for a defile when a Val’kyr is out or on cooldown. In an emergency you might be asked to stun an escaping Val’kyr with Hammer of Justice or Holy Wrath, but that’s better left to DPS with longer stuns.
• Defile — Absolute requirement #2: Never, ever, be in a defile. Spread out as it comes off cooldown. Run away from its target during its very short 1.5 second cast. Give existing pools a lot of room, they’re bigger than they look. Maybe pop Aura Mastery with Shadow Resistance Aura and hope for a full resist — the pools don’t grow unless they deal damage.
• Soul Reaper — Work with your tanks to avoid deaths. We let the tanks use cooldowns and we healed hard as it expired. We only taunted and traded tanks as they ran out of cooldowns. This can hit while you’re all scattering to avoid Defile, so keep an eye on where the tank is.
• Infest — Infest continues to irritate in phase 2.

This phase will seem terrifying the first few times. Eventually you fall into a rhythm of collapsing to maximize the distance the Val’kyr will have to travel and then expanding to keep Defile away from everyone. You’ll get good enough to drop Defile pools right on the edge of the platform. It just takes practice watching the timers and coordinating over vent.

Things can get hairy if a healer is picked up by the Val’kyr. It can be particularly unsettling to have your discipline priest grabbed, leaving you to deal with Infest while everyone runs all over the platform.

As he hits 40% everyone has to get to the outer rim of the platform again, but it’s still gone from the quake during the last transition. It is reformed after the raid is forced to eat a few ticks of Remorseless Winter. Aura Mastery with Frost Resist Aura can take some of the bite out of those ticks.

Cheat Sheet

1. Get in a few SoW procs off the LK while everyone is grouped up for an incoming Val’Kyr
2. Spread out a bit the moment the Val’Kyr picks someone up
3. Haul to the edge as the LK starts casting Defile, maybe pop Aura Mastery with shadow res
4. Move Beacon/SS around as the tanks taunt, be ready for cooldowns for Soul Reaper if needed
5. Go into overdrive if a healer gets picked up
6. Lather, rinse, and repeat for what seems like an eternity
7. Run to the edge for another transition at 40%, maybe popping Aura Mastery with frost res

Second Transition

Second verse, same as the first! But more. There are more spirits and ice spheres spawned at a time. It wasn’t enough to force me to blow cooldowns. Just stay focused.

Phase 3

Mechanics

• Vile Spirits — Instead of a Val’Kyr, we now have a bunch of little exploding adds to deal with. Tanks and DPS will hatch cunning schemes to deal with them. We just have to know to stay away from their targets and heal hard as they explode. Their targets will have aggro and so will show up in healing addons. Be ready to coordinate all healing cooldowns with the raid, especially Divine Sacrifice and Aura Mastery with Shadow Resistance Aura.
• Defile — Defile is still here, but at least now we’re trying to spread out for the summoned adds instead of initially grouping up.
• Harvest Soul — Heal hard the moment it shows up on the radar. You only have a couple of GCDs before most raiders will die so do not hesitate.
• Terenas Menethil — If you survive Harvest Soul you’ll have to heal Terenas. Be sure to cleanse Soul Rip.
• Infest — Boy, this never gets old!

There will be a lot of motion in this phase. Try to choose a place where you can be at a safe distance from people while healing hard. The more you move the more the raid is at risk. Don’t spare cooldowns. It’s possible to have Heroism up for a second time around now, it’ll help you light up the raid.

Stay focused and push hard even if you lose people. As you can see in our video, we goofed up quite a bit in the third phase and still had enough raiders up to manage a kill. Don’t give up until everyone is down. At 10% you win. And for heaven’s sake, don’t release.

Cheat Sheet

1. Move Beacon/SS around as the tanks manage Soul Reaper
2. Heal hard and immediately when Harvest Soul goes up
3. Spread out for Defile and to minimize raiders hit by exploding spirits
4. Try to watch for raiders with spirit aggro and precast heals around them
5. Blow all cooldowns, there’s nothing left to save them for
6. Coordinate raid-wide survival cooldowns as spirits descend
7. Blow throughput and haste cooldowns if another healer is pulled in to Frostmourne
8. Heal Terenas, cleansing Soul Rip, if you get pulled into Frostmourne

Magical Mystery Phase

Do not release!
…
Profit!

In Closing

What do we get for our trouble? The Lich King only has weapons in his loot table. For our tank and DPS specs we have [Troggbane, Axe of the Frostborne King] and [Warmace of Menethil]. For Holy, though, we have [Valius, Gavel of the Lightbringer]. In addition to having satisfying lore, Uther’s pointy mace only shares a model with its 25-man cousin: [Royal Scepter of Terenas II]. Guess who lucked out on our first kill?

I think Blizzard did well with this encounter, like they did with Algalon. It’s rewarding because it’s difficult.  After all, we show up for the challenge, right?

Good luck out there!