Icecrown Citadel Raid Progression

Blizzard released their plans for ICC progression last week and the implications are pretty interesting - I wanted to give myself some time to think about it though.

Here's the post.  I'll try to cover the important bits:

Gated Release

Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks.

In a nutshell, this means we'll probably get at least three weeks per wing before being able to progress behind it.

My Reaction: This is amazing, and thank you Blizzard.
If you're in an endgame raiding guild then you probably experienced (at least in the past) that the first 1-2 weeks of a new instance are hell.  When Ulduar came out my old guild raided 6-days for the first two weeks because of the progression rush - very top end guilds require more, with the very top (Ensidia/etc) going 24/7.  The really nice thing about this change is it spreads out the "learning the new bosses" phase across a period of two months or so.  I like raiding and I'm willing to put a lot of time into it, but I never liked the first few weeks of an instance.  With this change, we get to learn and see some new bosses, we get gear - but we also have time to go back and run ToGC, to run 10-mans, and to do heroics while experiencing all the new non-raid content.  It'll make for a nice change of pace.

Hard modes would of course take up more time, but it seems Blizzard thought of that:

Easy Mode First

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week. 

Simply put - no hard modes until you've killed Arthas once on that difficulty.  I feel this is another pretty positive change - it's nice to experience all the content once, and it also helps prevent weird situations where one guild may kill a boss months earlier then anyone else and skew rankings.

The Lich King gating is also good because it provides a more "final" Hard Mode boss, unlike Ulduar (where you could go kill YS-3 before doing any of the keeper HMs).  This gives a little more "linear" feel to a winged instance that otherwise wouldn't have it.

One could argue that the nice pacing would eventually go away once you get to hard modes, but no worries, once again we have:

Limited Attempts

The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana'thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

Yay, limited attempts!  This is a nice equalizer between the more hardcore guilds and the ones that aren't, so in general I'm in support of them.  This has a couple of interesting twists, though:

• Only four bosses are limited - Putracide, Blood-Queen, Sindragosa and the Lich King are all limited.  The other bosses aren't.  This is a new look at the tribute system, where the "easier" bosses are left available to progress, but the harder "gate" bosses are limited.
• Limited attempts on normal modes - this is completely new, and we're also not 100% sure how it works.  I am hoping that normal and HM attempts are separate (IE, you would have 15 HM and 15 normal attempts for the gate bosses) but Blizzard may go with a homogenous system.  Separate attempts would be preferrable because it would reduce the problem of "how many HM attempts can we try and still kill Arthas?", which can lead to raid drama and problems.

Of course, this means we'll have another instance where we sit trials and spend hours hoping the DC-boss loves us, right?  Well...

No Insanity

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

The only real problem I have with limited attempts was the Insanity achievement - not a problem itself, but the fact that it was tied into progression and gear.  And a lot of other people seem to agree, so Blizzard took them out.

There is one more section to Blizzard's post, and I think it's easily going to be the most controversial:

Progressive, Automatic Nerfs

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish.

There's two effects here, and both serve to make it easier to complete content.  Over time we will get additional attempts, and we will get a zone wide buff to health, damage, and healing that gets stronger each week/month (or however they do it).

My initial reaction was that this is ridiculous, insane and I can't believe Blizzard did it.  More attempts I can see - going from 15 to 20 attempts won't help a lot, but will serve to let guilds working on the content still feel like they have something to do.  The problem is with the second effect.

The problem is that gear already does this - it increases your damage, healing and health over time.  That's practically the definition of upgrades.  So what is the point of adding a "free gear" aura?  Raids that are doing ICC would already get this effect, so what is the benefit of this change?  It will let more people see the content, yes - and this is a good thing.  But from the viewpoint of a progression raider, it just seems like a horrible idea.

However, after thinking about it I started noticing the last line more:

Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish. 

The wording here is kind of interesting - "opt out".  That sounds like something you might do for a more difficult run, and Blizzard has been known to reward those.  Maybe Blizzard intends for the "Glory of the Icecrown Raider" achievements to only be completable if you opt out of the buff?  Or possible additional rewards/titles by doing so?  If so, that would make a lot of sense - more casual guilds could see the content easier, but the hardcore raiders would be able to opt out of the effect for progression or additional rewards.

Overall
I think the system looks nice.  There is a good balance between gated/non-gated, and between limited attempts and unlimited.  They also managed to make Arthas the "ultimate" boss, both in normal and hard mode.

The only change that I'm not really happy with is is the raid-wide buff, but even that could be cool if done correctly.

25 (Heroic) Trial of the Grand Crusader: Anub'arak

The subject of Anub'arak hard mode is coming up more and more - spec, gear, rotation, etc.  I've killed it four times now which doesn't make me an expert, but this post will cover my experience and thoughts about the fight.

If you're not 100% familiar with Anub'arak, it has three phases:
P1 - 80 seconds long, with two add packs spawning.  You will see P1 three times.
P2 - 60 seconds long (I think - I'm actually not 100% sure).  Little adds spawn and you will have to manage frost according to your guild's strategy.  After this, back to P1.
P3 - Rest of the fight.  Phase 3 occurs when you get Anub'arak to 30%, which you need to do by the third P1.  This is Phase1 with no time limit (except the enrage), and Leeching Swarm.

The key to dps here is maximizing it in P1 and P3 by using AOE intelligently.

Consumables
This is pretty standard - there are only two things I want to mention:

1. Pre-potting : This is a very good fight to pre-pot on.  Talk to your MT if you need to, but you should get a countdown - our MT does 5-4-3-2-1-go, and I generally hit a Wild Magic Potion just after she says, "1".  This will be hard on your bank during progression, but the dps increase is very much worth it.  This will let you save your in-combat potion for p3.
   
2. It's Halloween, and that means Candy Buckets.  And Candy Buckets mean Soothing Spearmint Candy.  This is 11 spell power and can stack up to four times for 44 total.  This is a very large dps increase, equivalent to 1-2 upgrades, so you should use it for as long as you can.

Spec
Anub'arak is a fight with a large AOE component, and you should spec accordingly.  I use this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0xRbuiIRcdIVuRuZbxczb

1. I spec for Typhoon for reasons that I talk about here - it is a very large dps boost on AOE fights.  On most Anub'arak parses it accounts for 3-4% of my dps, and it also serves as an automatic Nature's Grace proc.
2. Gale Winds should be pretty obvious.  A large increase to Hurricane and Typhoon damage.
   
3. I ignore mana regeneration talents because I have found I don't need them - Innervate is sufficient regen and I can usually hit it during p2 when I need to be moving anyway.  If you do not have access to your own Innervate, I would definitely drop the rest of Imp IS and move those points into Intensity - otherwise you will have severe mana issues.
4. Improved Insect Swarm - I drop a talent point from this because Imp IS offers the least dps increase for one talent point compared to the other options.
5. Balance of Power - I considered increasing my hit on this fight and dropping one point of BoP in order to max out Imp IS.  What stopped me was Phase 3 - raid healing for this is really, really intense, and anything you can do to decrease incoming damage is a good thing.  6% reduction doesn't sound like much but when you're hovering at <500 life, it can be important.

Glyphs
After some experimentation, I ended up back with the standard glyphs for this fight: Starfire, Moonfire, and Insect Swarm.  There are two other Glyphs (Starfall and Focus) but I eventually decided against them.

Glyph of Starfall - Reduces the cooldown of Starfall by 30 sec.
The problem I had with this glyph is that it just didn't fit into the timing of the fight.  You want to use Starfall on the add packs - with 5 targets it does quite a bit of damage.  The problem is that add packs spawn every 45 seconds and take approximately 15-20 seconds to die.  With a 60 second cooldown, this means that your Starfall CD generally comes up right as the second set of adds dies - which means most of the benefit is wasted.  A 90-second CD fits in perfectly - you can use it right at the start of every other add pack.

Glyph of Focus - Increases the damage done by Starfall by 20%, but decreases its radius by 50%.
The problem with this Glyph is that the damage increase is just too small.   Even with the Starfall Glyph I never saw more then 8% dps from this spell, which means that a 20% increase would be 1.6% dps.  Both the Moonfire and Starfire glyphs are worth more damage then that.

I also want to mention two Minor Glyphs I would recommend for this fight:
Glyph of Typhoon - Reduces the cost of your Typhoon spell by 8% and increases its radius by 10 yards, but it no longer knocks enemies back.
Glyph of the Wild - Mana cost of your Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild spells reduced by 50%

Glyph of Typhoon should be obvious - if you are using Typhoon as a dps increase then you can't be knocking the enemies around and messing up everyone else.  The mana reduction is of minimal benefit, but it also doesn't hurt.
Glyph of the Wild is less obvious.  The reason I recommend this glyph is because if you find yourself nearly OOM and you need to AOE, then this glyph becomes a mana regeneration talent.   The key is that Gift of the Wild - when cast on 25 targets - will very nearly always proc Omen of Clarity.  This means that you only need roughly 1100 mana to cast a 2800 mana hurricane, which is a pretty significant savings.  You probably won't use this option a lot, but it's nice to have it if you need it.

Gear
Part of being successful at a fight is choosing gear that is optimal, whether due to mechanics or other factors.  I gear specifically for Anub'arak 25 simply because it's the only thing approaching progression for my guild right now.

1. 4t9 - 4t9 is better on this fight then 2t8/2t9.  Not for the 4t9 set bonus, but for the extra stats you get from the upgrade - extra spell power, crit, and haste all benefit your AOE, while set bonuses do not.
2. Value haste over crit - I already do this, but for Anub'arak you should take it a bit farther.  The reason behind this is that Hurricane doesn't scale very well with crit because it doesn't benefit from Vengeance.  On the other hand, Hurricane scales extremely well with haste.  Since Hurricane will most likely be 30% of your damage or more, you can see significant gains by favoring haste for this fight.  

Cooldowns
Moonkins have two general cooldowns - Starfall and Force of Nature.  I use Starfall on every other AOE pack, but Force of Nature is a bit trickier.

Anub'arak has a 9:30 minute enrage.  That means with a 30 second duration and a 3 minute cooldown, you can theoretically fit in four FoNs.  In reality it's going to be better to aim for three - hopefully you won't be that close to the enrage, and using three allows you to time one with Heroism/Bloodlust.

My three FoNs are:
First p1: Just before Heroism.
Third p1: Right at the start.
Late p3: When the cooldown comes up.

As we are killing the boss faster and faster I may have to change to this in order to keep 3 cooldown uses:
First p1: At the start.
Second p1: In the middle with ~30 seconds to submerge.
Middle p3: When the cooldown comes up.

Special Note: Barkskin.  Usually in p1 and p2 you won't have a need for this, but it can be good to use it in P3. Every time it's up, I use it on the last 12 seconds of Penetrating Cold.  The reasoning here is that generally your healers should be able to heal that first tick without any help from you - if they can't then you have bigger issues.  So you want to use Barkskin for the last 12 seconds, where it will both 1) keep you alive as they are trying to reduce healing on you and go to their new targets, and 2) decrease the amount you heal the boss from Leeching Swarm.

Rotation
The only special thing about Anub'arak is that you will be weaving in AOE at predictable intervals.  This isn't going to make a big change - Eclipse is severely RNG-dependent, so it's hard to tell what spell you would be casting.  Anub'arak is thankfully a stationary fight in p1 and p3, so we don't get hurt by a need to move around.

In general, this is what I do:
Phase1:

• IFF->IS->MF->SFx3 to start.  I use starfire right off the bat because I want to extend my Moonfire, and I know I'll need to AOE shortly.
  
• (First Add Pack) : Starfall -> Hurricane -> Typhoon -> back to single target.  My phase1 AOE is shorter because some healers help out - you may thing that wouldn't be much, but keep in mind that balance doesn't have a lot of talents that benefit Hurricane.  A resto druid can put out some pretty respectable numbers, as can priests and shamans.
  
• (Second Add Pack): Ignore and continue single target.  Once Anub'arak submerges, Typhoon -> Hurricane.  At that point they are usually dead and on to p2.

Phase2:

• Run around, DoT/nuke adds, and do whatever your p2 strategy is.

Phase3:

• IFF->IS->MF->SFx3 to start, for the same reasons as p1.
• Odd add packs (1/3/..):  Starfall->Hurricane->Typhoon->Hurricane->Single Target.  Since healers actually have to heal in phase 3, you will get to AOE a bit more.
• Even add packs (2/4/..):  Typhoon->Hurricane x2 -> Single target.

Keep in mind that all the above are estimates - I always hurricane until the enemies are dead or extremely close (<5%).  If your guild's AOE is weaker then mine, or if some people are dead and there is less AOE, then you may need to Hurricane more then I do.

The Economics of Raiding

So this really isn't about moonkins per se, but it's something I've had bouncing around in my head for a bit and I wanted to post on it.  As you may or may not know, a lot of guilds (including mine for some attempts) used the soulstone exploit/trick to kill some bosses in H 25 ToC that otherwise probably wouldn't have died.  I don't want to get into whether or not we SHOULD use it, but I will point out that 1) Blizzard knows about it, and 2) top guilds (Paragon/Ensidia) use it.  Personally I consider it closer to an exploit then anything else, but I also don't mind using it if other guilds are to be competitive - WoW raiding is not exactly a "fair sportstmanship" environment.

The interesting thing I found about the soulstone exploit is this - it's only really viable now because the "currency" of raiding changed with ToC.  Before the primary driver of "how fast you downed bosses" was the number of hours you raided per week.  More hours = more attempts, more attempts = kill things faster.  Now obviously this isn't the only factor - skill also plays a part, and guilds like Ensidia/Paragon/Stars are almost certainly at a higher skill level then my own guild.  But after skill the number of attempts you make is a primary driver of how fast you kill bosses, and the reason a lot of top guilds WERE top guilds is because they could put so many hours into the game.  Not the only factor, but certainly one to consider.

So we have years of WoW raiding where a major factor in progression is hours raided per week.  Then we have 3.2, ToC and the tribute system.  Suddenly hours-per-week really isn't a factor anymore, and instead the major factor is the individual quality of each attempt.  This includes factors such as strategy, planning, individual awareness - stuff that normally develops over time as you learn encounters.  And suddenly soulstoning half your raid does not hurt you by limiting attempts, because your attempts are already limited by Blizzard.

And this is where the economics come in.  Because the tribute/ToC system changes the currency of raiding from "time" to "quality-per-attempt", you get maximum value for your raid by having as many cooldowns as possible for every single attempt, as well as checking combat logs and doing a lot of strategy discussion.  So legit stuff like battle rez, LoH, ankh, or other long cooldowns become important to have, and it also includes the soulstone exploit.  With the way Blizzard has designed the system and how sites like wowprogress determine ranking, it's something that a lot of serious guilds are going to start using - until and if it's fixed.