TL:DR Boss Guides: Lord Marrowgar Normal

In an effort to complete my Icecrown Citadel boss guides (there’s more incoming guys, I promise, particularly hard modes), I’m also going to be publishing a slight variation on the idea that I did quite some time ago. The TL:DR (too long, didn’t read) boss guides will be published to accompany my main guides and they’re designed for fun more than anything else. Never the less, if you’re starting a new encounter, it might be worth throwing them at your unprepared guildees!

For now, you’ll have to click on the image to get the full sized version, but I’m working on sorting something out. Enjoy!

Elemental Boss Guides – Icecrown Citadel – Lord Marrowgar Heroic

This guide (and all following heroic or hard mode encounter guides) will assume that you are familiar with the fight on the normal level of difficulty. You can read my tactics for this encounter here.

Lord Marrowgar gains a significant increase in health on heroic mode:-

• 10 Man Normal – 6,972,500 health
• 10 Man Heroic – 10,500,000

Aside from the obvious differences in health pools, Lord Marrowgar’s abilities also deal more damage:-

• 10 Man Normal – Coldflame – Deals 6,000 Frost Damage per Second for Three Seconds
• 10 Man Heroic – Coldflame – Deals 8,000 Frost Damage per Second for Eight Seconds

His bonestorm ability now causes additional damage over time in the form of a bleed effect.

Phase One

We use identical positioning to the normal mode encounter.

It is vital that everyone stacks under Marrowgar. This allows for very fast removal of players from the bone spikes without your melee needing to run around the room. When correctly positioned like this, the coldflame will cause no problems in this phase of the fight. One thing to note, particularly when you begin to regroup after a bonestorm phase. As you’re in melee range it’s vital that you do not stand infront of Lord Marrowgar, his saber lash ability hurts. If marking the tanks ensures that your DPS always find the back of Lord Marrowgar then do so to avoid unnecessary DPS or healer deaths.

We use heroism as soon as every is in position and burn as much as we can in this first phase. The priority for all DPS should remain the bone spikes.

Phase Two

Due to the significantly increased damage of Bone Storm in heroic mode, it’s vital that your raid move away from Marrowgar just before phase two begins. All the boss mods provide timers for the incoming Bone Storm phase. He also emotes just before the transition with:-

• Lord Marrowgar creates a whirling storm of bone!

Aside from the increase in damage dealt by Bone Storm and Cold Flame in this phase, there is one primarily difference between heroic and normal modes of the encounter. Throughout phase two on heroic mode, player will still be impaled by the Bone Spikes. As healing will be pushed due to the increase in damage from other sources, it’s vital that the DPS burn these spikes down fast.

Positioning in Phase Two

We make one slight difference to the positioning in the second phase of this encounter from the normal mode. Due to the increased damage taken by the entire raid, healing becomes very pressed. We have a lot of problems in our early tries with people running out of range of healers and thus dying.

In the centre of Lord Marrowgar’s room is a circle pattern on the ground. We stay within this during phase two. This ensures two things. Firstly, the bone spikes don’t occur on people so far away that the DPS have no chance of hitting them before the impaled person dies. Secondly, no one should be out of range of your healers. (For reference, we use three healers on this encounter.)

You will still get coldflame in phase two. Your melee DPS can’t always be expected to reach the bone spike due to flames and because of this, it is essential that your ranged DPS are fast and bringing down the spikes.

As with the normal mode, phase one and two alternate until Lord Marrowgar is dead.

Totems

As with the normal version of this encounter, no specific totems are required. For elemental shamans that are free to use fire DPS totems, the advantage of this positioning is that you don’t have to worry about range to the boss.

Summary

There is a lot of incoming raid damage on the heroic version of this encounter and it’s vital that you’re aware of this, even as a DPS. If you’re used to being able to continue DPS despite the bone storm on the normal version, be ready to move on the heroic version as it does a lot more damage. As an elemental shaman, your primary concerns during this encounter are:-

• Being correctly positioned during phase one
• Switch DPS to the bone spikes as soon as they appear in both phases
• Avoid the bone storm during phase two
• Avoid the cold flames. During phase one, these shouldn’t be much of a problem due to the positioning. In phase two, you’ll find them a much larger problem, particularly as you also need to be in range of the spikes to DPS them

At the time of writing, Decimation have just two more heroic modes left in Icecrown Citadel; Sindragosa and the Lich King. Never the less, this is still the hard mode that causes us the most stress (and annoyance) on a weekly basis. Be aware that while the mechanics barely change, the increase in raid wide damage is considerable and as a DPS, you should be doing as much as possible to avoid excess damage to ease the healer stress.

Icecrown Citadel – Lord Marrowgar

This boss guide is now up to date as of the 5th of March when Marrowgar’s agro reset after using bone storm was removed from the encounter.

Lord Marrowgar is the first boss you will encounter in Icecrown Citadel. He isn’t a difficult boss though he does require quite a bit of movement along with some target changing.

There are a couple of different positioning tactics for this fight but firstly, I’ll detail how we do the fight.

You’ll find Lord Marrowgar on the ground floor of Icecrown Citadel. Depending upon your viewing distance in game, you’ll probably see him very early as you start to clear the trash.

The picture above shows Marrowgar’s room. You can buff at the entrance and get an idea of the area. You’ll have to move quite a bit during phase two of this fight, so familiarising yourself with the room is a good idea.

Positioning

As I mentioned at the start, there are a couple of ways to tackle this boss in terms of the positioning. I’ll detail our method first and then cover the second method towards the end.

The image above shows how we position the boss, the tanks and the raid in phase 1. The “pull” is much like Anub in Trial of the Crusader, we all, as a raid, move in together. As a ranged DPS you will be stood in melee range with everyone else.

Marrowgar is a two phased fight. These phases cycle until the boss dies (that is to say, phase 1, phase 2, phase 1, phase 2 and so on)

Phase One

We all charge in and position as in the diagram above. We pop heroism at the start of this fight so for me, it’s totems down and heroism popped.

There are two main abilities you need to be watching out for in phase 1.

Cold Flame

If you ever did Supremus in Black Temple, you’ve pretty much experienced Cold Flame before in it’s previous life. Marrowgar will “shoot” bright blue flames out of him (they’re cold flames though, as the name suggests). These travel slowly and always in a straight line so avoiding them is easy. If you use the positioning that we do and you’re standing directly underneath him, you shouldn’t get hit by them at all.

Bone Spike

A spike will shoot from the ground and impale one raid member. All DPS need to switch targets and kill this before the impaled person dies. The second advantage of stacking the DPS in the position I illustrated is that the impaled person will always be very close to all the DPS. This ensures no one needlessly dies. It also makes the raid achievement “Boned” incredibly easy.

Phase Two

At approximately 45 seconds into the fight, Marrowgar will do the following emote:-

Lord Marrowgar creates a whirling storm of bone!

This signals the start of phase two.

As the illustration above shows, the raid all need to move away from the boss towards the edges of the room. Try and keep a distance from each other. Marrowgar will cast Bonestorm which is a whirlwind type attack. He’ll randomly target and pursue one raid member for a short amount of time before changing targets. This phase lasts for 30 seconds and Bonestorm has a one minute cool down from the end of the phase.

(Note:- As cold flame is a recycled mechanic from Black Temple’s Supremus. Bonestorm is exactly the same as the whirlwind Leotheras did in Serpentshrine Caverns.

Take note that during phase two there will still be cold flames. Be very careful where you run. Avoiding the whirlwind is your top priority as this hurts more than the odd tick of cold flame. Ideally, you shouldn’t be hit by either.

Totems

No specific totems are needed here, so whatever your normal raid totems are will suffice. You may find yourself needing to reposition them after phase two. Our tanks always resume tanking at the wall, close to where you first enter the room. Depending on how much you move him will dictate whether you need to reset your totems

Alternative Positioning

Marrowgar is tanked pretty much where he is stood in the room. The tanks turn him around to face the back wall. As ranged, you will spread around the back of him in a semi circle along with the healers.

The cold flame will be targeted at people stood at ranged. Watch for this coming towards you and move accordingly.

At the start of phase two, run back to the walls of the room.

Summary

Lord Marrowgar is a very straight forward opening boss to Icecrown Citadel. As a shaman all you need to worry about is:-

• Avoid the Cold Flame in both phases (though if positioned under Marrowgar in phase 1, it is of little concern to you)
• DPS the Bone Spikes (it may help to make a macro to target these)

As I said, we use heroism at the very beginning since you then have approximately 45 seconds before the first Bone Storm. Always check with your raid leader as to when he or she wants this using.