Last time we covered the Crimson Halls in all it's sparkly vampire glory and although later than I promised, I'm pushing forward to the Frosty area of the citadel's upper spire.  Inside THERE BE DRAGONS!  Two of them to be precise, and oddly, only one of them is frosty.  Which makes you wonder why they didn't call it the Dragonwing Halls.  But anyway...

The Frostwing Halls

Now, since I've covered the Valks flying around the upper spire several times in the past, I'm not going to touch on them again.  Instead, we'll skip right to the trash pulls that lead up to a little event that gives you a free badge for killing a mini boss.  Oddly enough, this boss is no harder than Stinky and Precious and you don't get badges for them... makes you wonder why that could be... But I digress.  Once you hit the Upper Spire portal, you're taking a right into the big circle to head to the Frostwing.  Waiting at the foot of the stairs leading into the hallway to Valithria are a bunch of good guys facing a bunch of bad guys.  The good guys are namely Crok Scourgebane and his Captain buddies.   The bad guys come in the form of Ymirjar Battlemaidens, Huntresses, and Warlords all standing in a nice AOEable little bunch.  Between the groups of these guys there's also 2 smaller groups consisting of one Deathbringer and one Frostbinder each.  The Frostbinders land on the ground and are in the reach of melee.  The Deathbringers fly up in the air and pew pew at people from there.  They can't really be tanked in the true sense, so usually, the raid leaders will have the ranged focus on the deathbringers while the melee beat up on the Frostbinder.  The Frostbinder also summons a group of undead adds that can be easily AOE-ed down. 

Once you start fighting the trash here, you start an event in which Sister Svalna, a Val'kyr mini boss, starts launching spears at the Captain NPCs fighting with you down the hall.  She does this every couple minutes and kills one of them.  It is possible to get through the event with less dying, but I've never seen less than 2 dead.  Once you have killed all the trash before her, Crok calls for you to kill her before she calls in reinforcements.  She quickly informs him that you have brought her reinforcements and rezzes the crusaders she killed.  They'll rush up the stairs behind you and need to be tanked.  Svalna herself can be tanked by Crok without any real danger to him dying.  You can either have your dps kill her first or the Crusaders.  It doesn't make a difference.  While she's fighting Crok and your raid, she tosses out spears that impale one of your raid members, stunning them on the ground.  They need to be pulled out and can be tossed back at her to do a moderate amount of damage.  Once Svalna and her friends are dead, you get a free frost emblem.  From the small room where you fight her, you have no choice but to turn right and in front of you lies...

VALITHRIA DREAMWALKER!

This is by far one of my favorite and the most unique encounters in Icecrown Citadel.  Valithria is a healing check instead of a DPS check or a gimmick fight.  While the healers take the main role in this fight, the DPS is nearly as important.  When you first enter the room, you find Valithria the Emerald Dragon lying nearly dead on the floor or the room surrounded by Risen Archmages.   If you take a look at the room she's in, you'll notice that there are 2 doors on each side of her, for a total of 4 archways where mobs can spawn and join the event.  In 10 man, only the front two doorways are used, but in 25, all 4 are active.  Once you kill the Archmages surrounding Valithria, the event begins and five different types of mobs will randomly spawn in the active archways.  The archmages do an AOE frostbolt volley that needs to be interrupted or it slows everyone in the raid, the healers who are trying to fly around and get dream bubbles included.  They also drop a Mana Void on the ground that's sparkly and white.  It burns the mana on anyone with 6 yards of it then explodes, shooting them up in the air.  Get away from it if  you see it.  The volleys can also be interrupted with Counterspell, however mages aren't the most effective at controlling this ability as counterspell has a longer cooldown than some other interrupt mechanics.  Best to leave this to the DKs, warriors, rogues, and shaman, but keep your counterspell available in case they need a hand.

The next set of adds to worry about are the Blazing Skeletons.  These guys run out in the middle of the room and start doing a channeled AOE spell called Lay Waste that affects everyone in the raid and Valithria doing a lot of damage.  They have a moderate amount of health, but do a massive amount of damage in a situation where there's only one raid healer to keep everyone up.  These are usually priority one for raids, requiring almost everyone to switch to them when they're up so they die quickly.

Next come the Suppressers.  These guys look like geists and run immediately to Valithria, casting suppression on her to decrease the healing she receives.  They all usually clump up around her on one side or the other making it easy to AOE them down with their low health.

Blistering Zombies come out one at a time and need to be kited around the room away from the raid.  When they approach low health, they cast Acid Burst which causes them to explode doing AOE damage to anyone in their vicinity.  It's a lot of damage.  While more often than not a hunter is chosen to kite these guys, it can also be done by a mage or a DK.  If you as a mage are chosen, make sure to keep the zombie slowed and pull him around the back of the room near the door you came in where there should be a clear path.  These guys do respond to healing aggro, so be careful to stay on the top of their aggro table so it doesn't break off and kill your healer.

Gluttonous Abominations are the last type of add that may spawn.  For this encounter you only need one tank in 10 man and this is his focus.  He'll hold aggro on this guy off to the side while the DPS works him down.  They have an AOE frontal cone ability called Gut Spray, so stay away from their front.  When they die, Rot Worms spawn from their corpses.  These little guys need to be picked up by the tank as they pack a punch with their melee damage.  Once he has solid aggro, AOE them dead.

Each raid does this encounter differently, but in my experience, the raid leader will assign priorities or a kill order for the raid members.  Pay attention to your assignment and if what you were assigned to kill is dead, use your best judgment to pick a new target and help kill it.  Being idle is a good way to lose this encounter.  Once the healers have restored Valithria's health to full, she hops to her feet, kills any remaining adds and drops a chest of purpz for your enjoyment.


After the loot's been handed out and Valithria flies off (or gives you the last weekly quest, to be covered at the end of this article), proceed to the opposite side of the room where an elevator (aka death trap to those without Slow Fall) will take you on to the next mini-event for the Frost Wing.  Once you enter the next large room, a bunch of spiders spawn.  AOE the suckers down.  Once they're dead, some more Ymirjar spawn.  The big warrior guys do a targeted whirlwind with their sword similar to what the guys in Pit of Saron do.  Those guys die and you get another wave of spiders before the gate at the other side opens and everyone flees out into the room where you fight the next boss.

Waiting on you are two groups of trash that consist of a Frostwarden Handler and a bunch of Frostwing Whelps.  For the most part, these are just packs to AOE down, but be sure your tank has aggro so you don't get eaten alive by the baby dragons.  After these two packs, two dragons from the Frostbrood sit on the edge of the platform waiting on you.  You can engage them one at a time and it doesn't matter which you pick first.  Most raids pick Rimefang to play with first.  (Name sound familiar?  You played with him in Pit of Saron.)  The tank engages him and you pewpew at his side for a little while, then he flies up in the air and coughs up ice furballs, leaving icy patches on the ground that do damage and slow your movement speed.  They can be avoided as there's a little blue graphic on the ground where they land before they hit the spot.  Don't stand there.  A couple of icy furballs later and Rimefang lands again.  You can toss nukes at him while he's in the air, but be aware of where you're standing and your tank's aggro.  If you're on top of his list when he lands, he will eat you.  (Mage taste good.  Mmmmm.)

The other guy waiting on you is not an old friend, but a new one named Spinestalker!  Dragon rules apply to this guy (frontal cleave, tail swipe) so watch your positioning.  And like Old School Onyxia, he does an AOE fear called Bellowing Roar that will send you running around like a crazed chicken.  After the fear breaks, be sure to be out of the way of his head and tail and go back to pewpewing.  Tremor Totem, Fear Ward, and Iceblock do break this fear, but it doesn't really last long enough to make it that scary.  However, be aware that once the second dragon dies, be it Rimefang or Spinestalker, Sindragosa will land and start her encounter.  You CAN skirt around this by having your entire raid run back into the room before almost all the way to the elevator and she'll reset.  BUT if a single person stays too close to the room where you fight her, she walks through the gate and eats you and anyone in the instance will be ported back to her and die.  Once she's reset your tank just has to run down to the center of the room, aggro her, and you'll be fighting...

SINDRAGOSA!

This is easily one of the toughest fights in ICC as it's not a DPS race or a healing race, but a survival test.  The enrage timer is tight if your DPS isn't up to par and there is a LOT of raid damage for your healers to deal with on top of keeping the tanks alive.   For the sake of brevity, I'll only cover the parts of this fight that apply to mages (as per usual.)  Once Sindragosa lands and the tank has her positioned (generally parallel with the bottom of the stairs with the raid on the stairs), you open up and start blowing her dragon-butt up.  Dragon rules apply here, meaning she has a nice frontal breath cone and cleave and a tail swipe, so everyone needs to be on her side and for the sake of the healers, on the same side.  For the whole first part of her first phase, Sindragosa is on the ground, breathing on the tanks.  While she's on the ground the first mechanic you need to worry about is Unchained Magic, a debuff she randomly casts on one healer and one dps caster.  If you are the only dps caster in the raid, you'll always have this on you when she casts it.  For every spell you cast, you get a stack of Instability, which in turn does damage to you.  The higher you let this debuff stack, the more damage you'll do to yourself.  It's best to not let it stack above 4 or 5, so just stop your dps till the Instability falls off and pay attention until Unchained Magic wears off as well.  

At the halfway point of her time on the ground, Sindragosa uses Icy Grip to pull the entire raid into her belly, then follows it five seconds later with Blistering Cold doing a lot of squishy killing frost damage to anyone within a range of 25 yards.  This is an EXCELLENT time to make use of Blink and get your magical behind out the way.  That only leaves you having to run 5 yards.  Note that if you get hit and you have the Unchained Magic debuff stacked up high on yourself when she pulls you, it hurts even more and you'll be a robed smear on the pavement.  It's also important to run back to the same place you were standing before so the healers can get to you if you do take damage.  Generally people want you to run back up the stairs.

After a short period of the fight on the ground again, Sindragosa will fly up in the air and away from the platform.  It's a good idea to load her up with DOTs before she gets too far away to keep ticking down her health while she's out of range.  Once she's up in the air she'll cast Frost Beacon, choosing two raid members to hit seven seconds later with Ice Tombs.  Anyone within 10 yards of these two players will also get hit with a tomb and you do NOT want that.  The two people with the beacon should position themselves at the bottom of the stairs, one on either side.  Once the tombs have taken hold, Sindragosa casts four Frost Bombs, marked by whitish-blue circles on the floor that need to be LOSed or you'll take a ton of damage.  Use the two ice blocks to do this.  After she finishes her last frost bomb, the ice blocks need to be broken or the players inside them will die via Asphyxiation.  While their health isn't THAT huge, it's not a bad idea to work them down while she's doing her Frost Bombs, just pay attention to how low they get so you don't accidentally break a block too soon.

Sindragosa goes back and forth between her ground and air phases until she hits 35% and her true Phase 2 where she is permanently grounded.  She continues to use the ground phase mechanics, but throws a few more things into the mix to make things just that much more fun.  Every 5 seconds she casts the Mystic Buffet debuff on the entire raid.  It continues to stack unless you break line of sight with her neck, just behind her head.  In order to do this, she continues to Ice Tomb one raider at a time.  That person has to run away from the raid to an assigned spot to be tombed so that LOS can be broken and the debuff will drop.  If you let this debuff stack too high, you'll get eaten either by the constant damage aura or by her Blistering Cold when she pulls you in and blasts your face off.  It's important to note that the tanks have to do a tank switch here to drop Mystic Buffet so that they don't get their faces blasted off with her frost breath.  Keep an eye on your aggro during these switches as the off tank is not likely to have nearly as much aggro as the main tank will.  In all honesty, the most important thing in this fight is to pay attention to the damage you're taking, especially as a mage.  We're notoriously squishy and can die faster than a ninja can loot a corpse and hearth.

Once you cut your way through the rest of her health and she dies, Sindragosa is kind enough to leave you some shiny purple items for your enjoyment.


This concludes the last boss in the last wing of Icecrown Citadel before you face the Lich King himself, which I will cover shortly.  But first, the last weekly quest!

Weekly Quest Number Five: Even Dragons Have Souls...

So the last quest is picked up from Valithria in her High Elven form after you save her from the corruption of the Scourge and she gives you loot.   She gives you an item called a Pulsing Life Crystal and tells you to use it on a weakened Sindragosa to help save her immortal soul.  Every person who takes the quest gets a crystal and can use it.  The goal is to use it in phase three and stack a debuff called Life Infusion on her to 30 stacks in 10 man and 75 in 25 man so that it changes to the debuff Soul Preservation.  The channel doesn't have to be maintained after the debuff reaches the appropriate amount of stacks, so you can rotate through who is channeling, but someone must be channeling at all times or the stacks will fall off.  Not everyone has to channel to get credit, but everyone has to pick up the item off her body called the Crystalline Essence of Sindragosa and take it all the way back to Dragonblight and the Wyrmrest Temple to turn it in for their Sack of Frosty Goodness and some rep.