Frosty Treasures?
Well, the obvious first question is - what's in the bag?! Based upon feedback thus far, you can get the following:
The Contents
- 5 Emblems of Frost
- Gold (so far, the least I have seen reported is 5 and the most is 50)
- 350 Reputation with the Ashen Verdict
- [Random] Epic gems
- [Random] BoE trash drops, e.g., Wodin's Lucky Necklace
Unlike the other raid weeklies, there are different NPCs roaming about Icecrown Citadel (ICC) that will provide you the quest. It appears that there are 10- and 25-man versions, so perhaps you can do this twice a week, provided you have the raid to do it.
Some of These Quests Are Not Like the Others
Brace yourself, they are not all easy. I know the other raid weeklies have been pushovers, but some of the ICC ones may be beyond your guild's progression. They range from killing a miniboss to downing multiple ICC bosses without wipes.
1. Blood Quickening
This one is akin to the prisoner quest in Heroic Shattered Halls, where you had to stop the executioner from killing his prisoners by pulling him in a certain time window; and, of course, not unlike the Baron run of WoW 1.0.
Well, in this case, you have to save someone, Infiltrator Minchar, from being food for Blood-Queen Lana'thel. The quest giver will be right outside the Crimson Halls. Once you begin pulling trash there, a 30-minute time will start (it used to be 20). The current information is that you just need to pull the Blood Queen before the timer runs out; if the time expires during the fight, you can still finish the quest successfully.
2. Deprogramming
What good would a cult be if you didn't have to rescue someone and deprogram them? This one should be reasonably feasible, but it will require some discipline on the part of your raid, because it seems that the only hard part is making sure you don't accidentally kill him.
Darnavan is the guy you are trying to save. He is an Arms Warrior, and can Bladestorm, Charge/Intercept, and Mortal Strike. He will spawn as one of the cultists, but he will look distinctly different; I guess they didn't have anything in his size.
There are few ways to deal with him:
- Have a regular Tank hold onto him; he will sunder his Tank, but is not fatal. If this Tank is also on the boss, it could become tedious for the healers when he used Bladestorm or Whirlwind.
- Have a Tank pet hold onto him. According to Wowhead, this is feasible with a Tank pet. Just Tank him off to the side and have the Healers keep an eye out for the pet.
- Rooting him. While he is immune to just about every other CC, he seems to be rootable. However, it is reported that he can break out of roots with Bladestorm (of course), so be ready to pick him up.
On the surface, this looks a little hard. You need ONE person with the quest to get a debuff from both Festergut's cloud (easy) AND Rotface's slime spray (not necessarily as easy). Oh, and if you die, the debuffs go away, and they only last 30 minutes.
So, if you can kill Rotface and Festergut without wipes and get back to the quest giver in under 30 minutes, you will have no problem. For many guilds, that will be a problem.
However, the quest is to get the two residues, not kill the bosses. So...what can one do to accomplish this in a tricky fashion? Well...
First, the good news - only one person needs to turn it in for the whole raid to get credit. Thankfully, the Blizzard Developers realize that if people do their job well, many will not get Rotface's debuff.
No matter what you do, you need someone that has been spit on. So, if you can down Rotface, I would down him first; I feel that Festergut is either impossible (due to inadequate DPS) or easier than Rotface (because it does not test everyone in the raid as heavily as Rotface). In the process, you can have your Rogues and Hunters tagged as extra insurance.
Now, you need your Rogues and Hunters to get the other buff. Not really a problem. If things go south do your best to try and hold out and wipe when he has fully inhaled the blight. If you wipe when the room is clear of the blight, your Rogues and Hunters may be able to drop out of combat with their buffs still up. If the blight is still up, there is a great risk that your Rogue/Hunter will get hit by damage and either be pulled into combat or killed.
In fact, we did that last night. It worked out surprisingly well, actually, because at that point Festergut is hitting like a ton of bricks. We lost our Tanks (we were light on healing last night) and quickly called a wipe. Everyone managed to get dead or Vanish before the blight was spewed back out, and we got our credit!
Now, there is another trick I have read and it pretty much sounds like an exploit to me, so I will describe it only to illustrate what you should NOT do. It's simple - a Warlock places a Teleporter outside Festergut's door and ports out when he has both debuffs (unless his raid can easily down Festergut, of course; but then why would you worry about this anyway?). I am pretty sure that Blizzard closes that door in his room for a reason and they do not intend for people to port out. So, I recommend you don't do it.
Additional note: anything that makes you immune will wipe the buff, so no tricks with Divine Intervention.
4. Respite for a Tormented Soul
Another quest that is a little deeper into the content. For this one you have to be able to kill Sindragosa. From comments so far, it sounds like a pain. Here's my current understanding from what I have read:
- The channel has to happen while she is at 20% or less health
- Anyone can channel
- The channel begins a stacking debuff that lasts only a few seconds
- You want to get her to 30 stacks
5. Securing the Ramparts
Hooray! A truly easy one! You do need to be able to down Lady Deathwhisper to reach the Rampart of Skulls, but once you get there, you just have to down a miniboss. Yay!
Basically, he will be on the opposite side of the rampart. Just clear your way to the Frostwyrm you usually kill, kill him, and then keep going around the Rampart (don't worry, the gunship will wait). Kill the Rotting Frost Giant and win!
Since you get this quest from your own faction folks, there are twice as many listings for this quest (Horde + Alliance) x (10-man + 25-man), but you can still only do one 10-man and one 25-man...unless maybe you did a faction change...hmm...how much money would 10 more Emblems of Frost be? ;)
Have fun with the weeklies, I know I will!