Getting GRID Ready for ICC’s Frostwing Halls

The newest wing of ICC releases today, and with it the healing fight!  Woooooooooo!  Eat your heart out DPS, a fight that is finally NOT about you!  Needless to say, I am really looking forward to it 🙂

As always, In my efforts to prepare for the new encounters, I will again be adding buffs and debuffs to Grid that I think will help me on my way.  Please keep in mind that this is all speculative at this time, so you should be flexible and amenable to making changes to your raid frames as you learn new things about the encounters. I will try to update mine as I experience the encounters and have feedback to add. (Again, I’d like to refer you to Kae’s excellent walkthrough on adding debuffs to GRID, if you need assistance with adding debuffs).  Also please keep in mind these are largely healer-centric!

Valithria Dreamwalker – Because this fight is very healer-centric, there isn’t a whole lot going on that needs to be cleansed, cured, etc.  But I did come across a few things that you may want to consider adding in.

• Emerald Force – This one is probably more important for raid leaders to know about.  This one may also be a “buff” and not a “debuff”.  This is what your healers will receive in the emerald dream phase (after taking the portal).  They will get it from breaking the clouds.  It allows them to regenerate 200 mana every 3 seconds, increases their damage done by 10% and increases their healing done by 10%.  It will stack up to 20 times and lasts for 35 seconds.
• Corrosion – This is going to be a DoT that is caused by the blistering zombies.  Those affected will suffer 2500 nature damage every 3 seconds and their armor will be reduced by 10%.  This can stack up on a player up to 5 times!  I suspect that it will be cleansable, but I am not certain.  Either way, we need to be aware of it!
• Lay Waste – This will be caused by the blazing skeletons, if they are not killed quickly enough, and I’m not entirely certain that it is a debuff that can be tracked at all.  However, it does significant damage (~6k every 2 seconds for 12 seconds).  I believe that it is going to be a buff that the actual mob receives.
• Gut Spray – This is a nasty debuff given by the Gluttonous Abominations.  It is a conal effect that will cause ~3k nature damage every 3 seconds and increases physical damage taken by 25% for 12 seconds.  This should be a debuff that is only on your tanks, and will be something that their healers need to be aware of dealing with.  However…with beacons from paladins healing Valithria, it likely going to be a non-issue while those healers are active and not in the emerald dream.
• Acid Burst – Simalarly to Lay Waster, I am not sure if this is something that is going to be trackable.  This is caused by the Blistering Zombies, and it happens when they blow up.  It will cause ~15k nature damage on the explosion, and will cause ~1k a tick per second for everyone within 15 yards.

Sindragosa – The queen of the frost worms….and does she ever look like a lot of fun!  Similar to Saph, Sindragosa is going to have a raid wide aura that will tick for ~4500 damage every 3 seconds.  And druids of the world rejoiced!

• Frost Breath (?) – This is a conal ability done by Sindragosa to your tanks (or anyone foolish enough to be in front of her!).  It causes 37k-43k frost damage and reduces movement speed by 15% and attack speed by 50%.  It may stack.  It is important for healers to know if a tank is affected by this, and which tank has it (if you decided to two tank her).
• Chilled to the Bone – Physical dps will be affected by “Permeating Chill” which gives their melee attacks a 20% chance to cause this debuff.  While they are chilled to the bone, they will receive 1k damage every two seconds for 8 seconds.  This debuff will stack, so after they receive say 4 or 5 stacks, they will need to stop DPS and let their stacks reset!
• Unchained Magic (?) – This causes the ranged DPS to have their spells “backlash” with instability after 8 seconds causing 2k arcane damage to the caster.  Casting multiple spells while the debuff is active will cause multiple backlashes!
• Backlash (?) –  While I think it is OK to just track chilled to the bone for the melee and not the permeating chill itself, the mechanics of the caster debuff seem to favor knowing when someone has unchained magic, as opposed to backlash.  But I am not positive on that, and I am also not positive that backlash will show in GRID.  I will probably add both my first night looking at her, and then remove what I feel is not needed. 
• Frost Beacon – This will be important for the entire raid to know!  This will mark 5 players with the beacon and after 7 seconds they will be Ice Tombed (and everyone else needs to be away from them!).
• Ice Tomb – This will cause ~16k frost damage to the target, and while they are imprisioned they will suffer 8% of their maximum health via “asphyxiation”.  Help!  Need heals!
• Asphyxiation (?) – I think probably just knowing who is in the Ice Tomb will be sufficient for knowing who is asphyxiated, but this will likely also be an option of debuffs to track!
• Mystic Buffet (?) – this is a phase 3 ability of Sindragosa’s that is applied to all players within line of sight of Sindragosa every 5 seconds.  Healers and raid leaders may want to track this to see how many stacks people have to determine who is going to need a little extra heal love, and who needs to go stand behind an ice tomb to drop their stacks.

When I have an extra minute or two, I will see what I can dig up in the extremely limited information available for The Lich King, and give my best guess as to what we will need to know for that fight!

I will adjust these after I have had some experience with the fight, and know more about what works and what doesn’t!  And as always, any feedback that you might have from your experiences is helpful, and I will add updates on things that you find.

Good Luck and Have Fun!