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Ability Descriptions (Courtesy Darksend)
Shock Vortex: targets a random raid member, which can include casting it on the tank tanking Valanar, and summons a vortex under them. The vortex will deal damage and knock back anyone inside it. This vortex has a similar graphic to that of a power spark puddle in the malygos encounter.
Shadow Lance: Keleseth's main ability, standard shadowbolt spell, ranged tank preferred.
Conjure Flame: Summons a Flame orb on a random ranged raid member that explodes when it reaches them. Since the raid should be spread out already this can safely be allowed to detonate on the person and just healed up quickly afterward.
Glittering sparks: An ability used by Taldaram. He will turn and randomly cast glittering sparks on the raid. This will deal about 4K damage every 2 seconds but also slow the movement speed of everyone hit by it. It is a magic effect and since it is a cone effect it is easy to predict who it will hit. We had one of our priests assigned to MD that area.
Dark Nucleus: Similar to collapsing stars, these orbs tick out over time. The warlock tank must always be watching how much hp the nucleus has left and be ready to grab new ones, especially during empowered lances.
Source: Darksend (25-man)
Welcome back to the icecrown raid guide, my name is darksend and in this video I will be covering our strategy for the blood prince council, the first boss in the crimson hall.
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The Blood Prince encounter is not your typical council mechanic. Of the three princes, Valanar, keleseth, and taldaram, only valanar will have any health at the begining of the pull. Attacking either of the other two will not actually contribute to defeating the encounter. This is because of the invocation of blood. This ability both marks the target you need to actively be killing as well as empowering that prince.
Every prince has one ability that can be empowered. For valanar it is shock vortex, for taldaram it conjured flame, and for keleseth it is shadow lance.
Shock vortex will target a random raid member and cast a vortex on the ground under them. As a ranged Dps or healer try to position yourself so there is never one directly between yourself and taldaram, I will discuss why in a moment.
The empowered shock vortex summons a vortex on every raid member within 30 yards. Because of this ranged and healers need to be either spread out or more than 30 yards away from him. melee need to begin running out as soon as it begins casting. Make sure to not all run out the same way and have people run out to different distances to ensure they do not blow each other up. This version of the ability does not persist on the ground like the normal version.
The empowered flame has stacks that must be siphoned off. Once it picks a target have that person begin running away from the raid while everyone else stacks underneath the orb. It will flare everyone within 10 yards for 1K damage a second. This flare is what removes the stacks from the orb. Once enough flares have gone off the orb detonating will do non-empowered damage. Should a full strength orb go off it will instantly kill everyone within 15 yards. This is why you do not want a vortex between you and taldaram, as the raid will not be able to follow the orb through the vortex and it will hit you at full strength.
Keleseth never melees but instead spams shadow lance the entire fight Because of this we use a warlock to tank him We found it easiest to just have the lock prepositioned in the back of the room and have keleseth mded to him. Keleseth also summons orbs called dark nucleus. These adds will channel a debuff on the highest agro target called shadow resonance. It will deal minor periodic damage but will reduce all shadow damage taken by the person by 35%, and it stacks. This is how you cancel out the empower. To be safe our warlock tank tried to always have 3 of them on him but usually he had more. The catch is they tick themselves out similar to colapsing stars on algalon.
The final ability in this encounter is the kinetic bomb. These bombs will float around the room, and at times there will be multiple up at once. If they hit the ground they will explode and knock back everyone in the room a decent distance. To keep them from hitting the ground simply hit it with some form of direct damage and it will fly back up. They will eventually despawn after a short time of being juggled. we had a ranged with assist marking each one to help people keep track of which one they were assigned.
When valanar gets emopowered the second time, he almost immediatly started casting empowered vortex. Make sure your melee are away as we wiped on a previous attempt to several melee getting blown up at the exact same point as in this video. The reason for that is that the old empower does not stop casting when the invocation switches, and we had both an empowered flame orb and an empowered shock vortex go out at the same time.
Thanks for watching this movie! As always, feel free to ask questions or add suggestions either on YouTube or in the strategy thread on TankSpot.com.