Shaman healing Icecrown Citadel's first wing

With the opening of the second wing of ICC I figure it is about time for the Sham-Wows guide to healing ICC. This guide is aimed specifically at shaman, but I am sure other healing classes may benefit from it.

Lord Marrowgar - As is the case with almost all raids the first boss is pretty easy. He is no Atumen mind you, but pretty easy as far as raid encounters go. This is a 2 phase encounter and as such is mostly just a tank-n-spank affair. Phase one is plain old tank-n-spank. He does a cleave that does a fairly high damage to the tank and 2 closest melee. DO NOT EVER GET NEAR THIS. During phase one he does a line of frost, that ticks for a substantial amount of damage. As in all raid settings, do not stand in the fire... I mean ice. Phase two is the whirlwind phase, he does a AOE that ticks higher the closer you are. Get away from him. He also shoots out lines of frost during the whirlwind. Strafing is the easiest way to avoid these slow moving lines.

Depending on your healing assignment, there is a few different things to do. If you are assigned to raid heals, your best bet is to stand behind Marrowgar, close enough to melee that they can break off the boss and get you out of the Bone Spikes, but far enough away to get out of the way of the whirlwind when it starts. If you are on tanks stay just outside of his hitbox with the rest of melee.

This fight just requires raid awareness, and keeping players topped up. If you have mana and casting time to spare, it would not hurt to throw an instant cast damage spell on the bone spikes if you can. This will get the dps/healer out of the spike faster, and lower the over raid healing required.

Lady Deathwhisper - I found this to be an incredibly fun fight. The event starts with the Lady in the back of the room protected my a mana shield. She will spawn adds in the front and either side of the room. I am not DPS so I am not sure what the adds abilities are.

There is an element of controlled chaos in this encounter. During the adds phase while Melee and Ranged are taking care of the mana shield, the Lady will randomly mind control people. Be ready with a quick Hex if needed. Nobody wants to be killed by their friends. She will also drop death and decay on the ground. As always do not stand in the fire...or death and decay. Again as far as healing goes there is no big "gotcha" in this fight. Try to keep everyone topped off, run your standard riptide rotation on the tanks, and chain heals on the raid. You should come through this unscathed.

Icecrown Gunship Battle - Three weeks into this new content and I am still not sure what is going on in this fight. All I know is that bear tanks become bears with rockets on their bums, but when we shift to ghost wolf, we get a "Can not be used while shape shifted" error. I cry foul and want this fixed NOW! This fight is pretty chaotic as far as healing goes. Raid members will be jumping off the ship and therefore going out of range and LoS through the entire encounter. If you are assigned to stay on the ship you have a pretty easy job. Stay put, and spam chain heal. There will be targets showing up on the ground around you. If the target is where you are, move. Don't stand in the fire. If you are assigned to go to the other ship. Rocket boost over just behind your tank, drop your totems, and spam chain heal. Make sure you come back to the ship when your tank does. It will go poorly for you if you forget to come back.

Deathbringer Saurfang - This fight is the first fight in ICC that is difficult. It requires a ton of raid awareness. But you are raiding ICC, you have already learned all the lessons tought by raiding since vanilla right? No? Oh. I assume everyone runs DMB or something like that. Before the fight starts type /range 12. This will tell you if anybody is less than 12 yards away from you. If they are, you or they need to move. Saurfang uses an ability called blood nova it hits a random player and all players within 12 yards for 7500-8500 damage.

There is a lot going on in this fight, and the basics you want to be aware of is Saurfang heals when people die, there are also a few abilities that when linked together will eventually heal Saurfang for more than the raid can do in damage. You want to stick to your healing assignments, and do your best to keep everyone up. Do not be afraid to run forward and drop a earthbind totem at the foot of the stairs before he summons blood beasts. But when you do drop your totem, make sure you turn around and run back to position to avoid making things worse in the raid. There is a ton of damage in this fight, and your raid leaders should let you know who to heal and who to let die based on your strategy. Generally we let the first two marked players die, then heal through the rest of the marks. This is a DPS race, a healing race, and a gear check for the tanks.

If this final fight is any indication of what the rest of ICC will be like I am pretty excited about the forthcoming encounters. I think there will be a excellent oportunity for everyone to hone their raid skills while having a blast earning fat loot.