How to Wipe on the Lich King Encounter

I thought about doing your normal “How to heal the Lich King as a Resto Shaman” post, but then I had a revelation.  Odds are, I’d come here to write that post after I get my first kill, all pleased with myself for finally downing this sort-of final boss in Wrath of the Lich King, with more than a little bit of “look at how awesome I am, I beat the Lich King” in my voice.  That gets old.  Because you know what?  I’m not an expert on killing the Lich King.  What I AM an expert on is wiping to him, repeatedly, and in every way imaginable.  In both 10 and 25 player raids.  So, I present: how to wipe on the Lich King encounter.

• Phase One

Your best option is probably to make sure that you bring a healer who can’t, or doesn’t like to, remove diseases.  About 10 seconds in to the fight, the Lich King is going to start casting Necrotic Plague on one of your raid members.  Bring 3 resto druids to this fight on 10 man and you can rest assured that the massive HoTs are not going to save you from a 50,000 tick of shadow damage after 5 seconds.

Assuming you want to make it more than 15 seconds into the encounter before you start losing raid members, let’s say you decide to remove the disease.  Well, another great way to wipe is to frantically remove the Necrotic Plague as soon as it is cast, without waiting for the diseased player to position him or herself behind the Shambling Horror, which the off tank has parked about 10 yards from both the Lich King and the rest of the raid.  You certainly don’t want to assign just one healer to watch for the diseased player to run to this location and then cleanse them before 5 seconds have elapsed, because then people will live and the adds will die in a timely manner.

There is very little raid damage in this phase.  Once in a while, the Lich King will cast Infest, and it will hit everyone.  This hardly does any damage right away, so I like to just watch the resto druids try to heal the entire raid up with their HoTs.  I know it lets them dominate the healing meters, but sometimes you need to be a team player and let others get the glory.  You most definitely do not want a disc priest shielding the raid here, because then there won’t be any raid damage at all, and everyone will get screwed on the healing meters.

Another, more subtle way, to help ensure a wipe in phase one is to make sure your DPS maximizes their AoE damage on all those little ghouls surrounding the Lich King.  I mean, seriously, have you seen how high you can get on Recount by spamming Mind Sear here, while killing adds that would have died anyway and doing zero damage to the Lich King, thereby failing to progress the encounter into the next phase?  Some might tell you that the meters don’t really matter on this fight, but that’s probably because you just owned them.

• Phase One Transition

Once the suckers doing single target damage get the Lich King down to 70%, he’ll run to the middle of the platform and begin casting Remorseless Winter.  Make sure to stay inside the inner part of the platform to take some massive frost damage that should ensure your death in a matter of seconds.  

Another great option is to stand right in front of a Raging Spirit as they spawn on top of your raid members.  Melee dps seem to be especially good at this, but there’s no reason healers can’t join in the fun.  If you can manage to stay grouped up in one big pile to ensure that everyone is getting hit by Pain and Suffering at the same time, even better.  This is especially effective if your group seems completely incapable of grouping up on other fights.  Your raid leader will be proud that you finally figured it out.

A good way to run out of mana on this encounter is to not pay attention to your Water Shield charges in this phase, since Pain and Suffering likes to pop them and give you mana back.  Don’t keep them refreshed, or you might have enough mana to finish the fight.  Also, don’t listen to those people who say that you should use Mana Tide more than once in a 15 minute fight to help out your fellow healers with mana.  That’s crazy talk.

Finally, and this is one of my favorite ways to wipe, don’t be in a hurry to get back to the central platform as the transition phase ends.  I mean, the big boss emote that says “Quake!,” along with the crumbling and glowing ice platform under your feet might suggest that you head to more solid ground, and fast, but I find that it’s a lot more fun just to see what will happen if you stay on the outer edge.  I hear if you stay perfectly still, some rogue from Ensidia will unstealth and rebuild the platform for you before you can fall.

Oh, and if you see a big frozen orb coming at you on the way in, make sure to take it to the face.

• Phase Two

To get this phase started on the wrong foot, get in the way of the off tank as he heads towards the middle of the platform, so you can get silenced by Soul Shriek for 5 seconds, and maybe get one shot in the process.  Once the Lich King is positioned in the center of the room, continue to ignore Infest like you’ve been doing.  You definitely don’t want to start casting a Chain Heal timed to land right as Infest finishes casting.

Proper positioning is key to causing all kinds of interesting wipes in this phase.  Of course, you don’t want to be paying much attention to the ability timers on the boss mod of your choice, but lets say you accidently catch a glimpse out of the corner of your eye.  Well, make sure to get way the heck out of the middle of the platform when the Val’Kyr are about to arrive.  This will ensure that the DPS has almost no time to break you free, and soon you’ll be plummeting to your death off the side of Ice Crown Citadel.  

If you insist on standing near the middle of the platform, at least be spread in a big circle around the Lich King, so the Valks can head in 3 different directions and your DPS has no hope of cleaving them down.

The most common way to wipe in phase two is to pay very little attention to the Defile mechanic.  Ideally, you want to make sure the whole raid is clumped up right in the center of the platform.  When Defile gets cast on a raid member, they may try to run away from you, but don’t let them get away with that so easily!  You make sure to run right with them, preferably bringing along all of your friends.  If you happen to get targeted with Defile, I suggest either standing still, hopefully near the center of the platform, or running in the same direction as all the DPS trying to kill the Val’kyr adds.

By far the best way to ensure a wipe here is to tunnel vision Grid, and then freeze up when DBM or your raid leader start telling you something.  Yeah, all signs point to getting the hell out of the middle of the room before Defile hits, but you just started a totally sweet Chain Heal cast, and damned if you aren’t going to finish it.  And for the love of God, please do not plan ahead and make sure you’re out of the center of the platform well ahead of the Defile cast.  That alone will almost ensure that your raid makes it to the next phase.

• Phase Two Transition

Anything you did in the phase one transition to wipe the raid you can do here, especially being really slow to get out of the middle of the room.  For a shaman-specific raid wiping tip, make sure to NOT cast Bloodlust here, no matter how much your raid leader screams for it.  I mean, the point of the encounter is to kill the Lich King, Mr. Bossy Raid Leader dude.  Don’t waste that hotness on some silly adds that seemed to die just fine during the last phase transition.

Also make sure you still haven’t used Mana Tide yet.  You want to save that bad boy for the last possible moment.

• Phase Three

If you’ve gotten this far, you have missed a lot of really great opportunities to wipe the raid, so I don’t even know what to say to you.  Your number one priority is to completely ignore the Harvest Soul debuff that is probably rapidly killing one of your raid members every so often.  Sometimes a soul is just going to get harvested, leading to your tanks getting one-shot, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Spamming Lesser Healing Waves on that person is just going to make you look kind of sad for trying.

Let’s assume that your soul is getting harvested, and for some reason people healed you.  Now you find yourself inside of Frostmourne, and you can single handedly ensure a wipe, which is totally awesome.  Aside from just standing there doing nothing while you enjoy the RP, you could try to kill the add with your sick resto shaman DPS.  You’ve been practicing in your daily heroics; now’s the time to bust out that 2k DPS.  Whatever you do, don’t heal up the NPC.  This isn’t the Dreamwalker encounter, ok?  Also, interrupts are for PvPers.  You’re just here to heal, so don’t get any fancy ideas about using Wind Shear.

Back outside, you may see a bunch of little Vile Spirits flying around the room.  If one targets you, resist the urge to kite this mob.  Everyone knows that shamans are bad at kiting.  I mean, Earthbind Totem only lasts for 45 seconds, and Frost Shock might draw aggro . . . on the mob that already has you aggroed.  Your main goal should be to stand there and just take the 15k hit like a man, preferably several of those hits at the same time while you pop any one of the resto shaman’s many defensive cooldowns.  Bonus points if you wave goodbye to the raid like pallies do when they bubble hearth.

Finally, you can continue to wipe the raid with Defile here.  I suggest dropping it near the tank and melee DPS and watching them run away like you’re a leper or something.  Another great plan is to place it in the middle of the room so the tanks have to dodge it as they reposition the boss from side to side.  Really, doing pretty much anything except spreading out and dropping Defile on the edges of the platform can help lead directly to a soul-crushing wipe in the third phase.

• Phase Four

Well, if you have ignored all of these wonderful ways to wipe the raid, the Lich King will do it for you once you hit 10%.  You see that?  He just owned all of you.  Noobs.  I mean, he’s the Lich King.  You really thought you were going to win?  Go ahead and release.

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