3.3 Icecrown Citadel First Impressions

By alex

Hey people! Hope you’re all well and have gotten to enjoy the patch as much as me – if not more!!

Lets start from my first impressions of 3.3

5-man Dungeons – I cleared all 3 heroic dungeons last night with a group from the guild the hardest part of this was the first boss in the 2nd instance.  That nasty piece of work in there wiped us a couple of times before we figured out what the crack was with him. You really have to move fast when he starts casting that explosion as the the range on it is quite large. So watch out!

25-man ICC – Independent entered the instance and were greeted with the one thing I’ve not seen properly in a raid since Black Temple/Sunwell – TRASH! Not just any trash – really hard trash! Trash we had to actually thing about pulling and not just sending in a tank to AOE tank the lot of them. These dues hit hard, and fast! and The most odd things are linked to them! So just watch what you’re doing in there with your pulls.  Lord Marrowgar was relatively easy – we got him down on our 3rd try once people figured out what was what – not much trash on the way to the 2nd boss thankfully. 

Lady Deathwhisper is a real wake up call to people I think – everyone has to be on there game in there – especially the Melee and mages.  We had a fairly strong melee group last night and once we figured out what we were doing with the adds and avoiding the nasty zombie dudes who hit for 60k. (ouch!!) We had a few attempts on her leading up to 23:00 when we usually end raids.  at 22:50 we started what was to be our last attempt  – We’d worked out Phase 1 – gotten Lady Deathwhisper’s shield down and gotten her down to about 20/30% when she enraged. So we started – we were doing really well – her shield was going down faster – melee were controlling the adds and things were going well…..then….

“WTF??? LAG!!!”

“Nooooooooo!!!!”

“I think I’m DC’ing”

Vent errupted in the above and we were all logged out to the character screen.

“Everyone back in fast – we give this 1 more try before we finish”

Blizzard had kindly reset the instance server with us in it – and in doing so the trash had respawned infront of Lady Deathwhisper! D’oh!!

This brought our raid to an abrupt and very annoying end! We had her!! 2 more minutes and we’d have gotten her down! Tonight she wont be so lucky!

Other things I’ve not 100% experienced so far is the LFG system. I joined the LFG thing to try it out, but was called into a guild run before it had a chance to do its thing – however our party leader used it to call in a dps for the last instance as we lost one – and it bought in a well geared warlock from another server – no problems – he was a nice guy too – knew his stuff as he’d been on the PTR a lot it seemed or at least done it on normal mode a few times that day – his comment to us at the end was quite amusing though:

“I thought it was on normal mode for a minute there cos you guys were burning through it so fast!”

I’m eager to give the LFG system a proper try tomorrow night or over the weekend when I get time to do so.

We completed our weekly raid quest when we took down Marrowgar – love the rewards for that: 33g, 5 Emblems of Frost, and 5 Emblams of Triumph. Wish it was daily!!!

One thing that did irritate me a bit – the cost of the saronite reagent you need to start the Shadowmourne quest line – 23 emblems per item – as I don’t think I’m going to be getting any of the drops any time soon from guild runs as they get put straight in the bank – we’ll see how that pans out. Oh and btw Shadowmourne…..*drools*…I want that sooo bad!!

Not seen the battered hilt drop yet in the 5-man – although I hope to get that soon enough – that sword is pretty nice – even as an item to just have and keep in the bank alongside some of my old armour from TBC/Vanilla WoW.

Independent have made a few changes to the DKP system now that ICC is here – the leaders are trying to encourage people to be online for the 4 days we raid and ready to raid.  By doing so you will be rewarded with gear – DKP earned will be minimal: 2 for being there for the whole raid start to finish, and 2 for bosses.  People will be given gear based on an attendance level. Not sure how this is going to work - time will tell..