A Rogue in Icecrown Citadel – Blood Princes

As with all of my guides, this is not intended to be a strategy for the whole raid.  It is only intended for rogues and other melee dps classes.  For a full strategy guide check WoWWiki .

Blood Princes is a fight that seems like a bad one for rogues – target switching, running around, and trying to avoid raid-wide damage.  Once you get the hang of it, the fight isn’t too bad.

When you start, you’re going to see the three Princes at the back of the room.  Make sure to pay attention to the design of the pull.  If you’re using Tricks to give threat to the tank, be sure you’ve got the right one.  In my guild, we have two tanks do the initial pull, but then our main tank taunts and holds both of the melee bosses for the rest of the fight.  I set my Tricks for the main tank, and wait until he taunts so I can help establish threat on his new target.  Other guilds do the pull and tanking differently, so pay attention.

The Princes share a health pool.  All three of the Princes are active, and all have abilities going on throughout the fight.  However, only one is susceptible to damage at a time.  He’s the one with a health pool.  The other two will have 1 Health and be immune to attack.   The one who is susceptible is also Empowered, and his abilities are stronger.  Every 30 seconds the Empowered boss changes, and you have to switch to the new target.

At all times, the most obvious thing to watch for is the Shock Vortex.  This happens all throughout the fight.  Valanar casts it frequently on random players.  If you see a Shock Vortex on anyone (swirly white area) then get away because it does damage and knockback to everyone within 12 yards.

You’ll see other things going on throughout the fight – flame spheres and shadow bolts and floating Kinetic Bombs.  These are not a rogue’s concern, generally, so you can ignore them unless your raid leader says otherwise.  Focus on your dps on the active boss.

The first boss to become active will be Valanar, the one in the middle (also seen in the Borean Tundra at Naxxanar).  You’ll start attacking him, but don’t get comfortable.  He will cast Empowered Shock Vortex.  When that goes off, any two players in the entire raid that are within 12 yards of each other will do damage and knockback to each other.  When you see him start to cast, you have about 4 seconds to run so you are more than 12 yards away from anyone else.  I always run to the back of the stage area.  Get away, and when the Vortex goes off get back in and get back to damage.

After 30 seconds, a different boss will become active.  Its random, so keep your eyes open.

The boss on the right is Taldaram (from Old Kingdom).  When he becomes Empowered get to him quickly and go to work.  He’s been throwing flame spheres around for the whole fight, but the healers have been healing through it.  When he’s Empowered, though, the fireballs do much more damage to their targets.  Here’s how you can help… as the fireballs move, they do damage to anyone they get near on the way to their targets.  While I’m attacking Taldaram, if I see him casting Empowered Flame I pop Cloak of Shadows and Sprint and try to run along with the fireball, leeching away its energy.  By doing that, I take damage, but the fireball does less to its eventual target.  I’ll even do that when Cloak is on cooldown if the healers know I need some heals.  When the fireball is out of your range, get back to the boss

The one on the left is Keleseth.  You might remember him as the first boss in Utgarde Keep.  Now he does a heck of a lot of shadow damage.  Tanking him properly is the key to success on this fight, but that is the responsibility of the ranged tank.  Since that’s not a rogue’s job, I won’t write about it here.  When he is active, you’ll run to him and start kicking his butt. He doesn’t do anything when Empowered other than cast bigger shadow bolts, so just attack him without worry.

According to WoWWiki, Keleseth doesn’t dodge when he casts Shadow Lance.  Therefore, you’ll get the best bang for your buck by using your cooldowns when attacking Keleseth.

You’ll switch targets every 30 seconds, avoiding Shock Vortex the entire time, running when Valanar is active and casting Empowered Shock Vortex, and helping with Empowered Flames when Taldaram is active.  Repeat until they die.  The Princes have low armor, so you can put up pretty good dps numbers even though you are switching targets.

The 10-man fight drops Soulbreaker, which is a pretty good 2.6 speed sword.  The other drop you might want are Taldaram’s Soft Slippers (not much of a name for dps footwear, IMO).

In the 25-man version the only rogue drop is the oddly-named head slot item Geistlord’s Punishment Sack, which is nice because a lot of high end gear lacks hit rating.  It may be the best head slot item for mutilate rogues until you get into heroic ICC.