Icecrown Lady Deathwhisper

Source: Lore (25-man)
Hi, I'm Lore from Tankspot, and welcome to the 25-Man Normal video guide for the Lady Deathwhisper encounter.

Lady Deathwhisper is fought in two phases, of which the first is by far the most complex. She'll shield herself with a mana barrier that causes any damage she takes to drain her mana instead. In order to get to phase 2, you'll need to empty out her entire mana pool. Deathwhisper herself has no aggro table during this phase, and will stand still chaincasting Shadow Bolts at random raid members, along with a handful of other abilities I'll cover shortly. Meanwhile, waves of adds will be spawning from the edges of the room -- 3 from each side, and 1 from the stairs at the entrance.

Two types of adds can spawn: Cult Fanatics and Cult Adherents. Cult Fanatics are fairly straightforward melee attackers, although they do have a very powerful cleave that will need to be avoided by melee DPS. Adherents are casters who will spend most of their time casting some fairly inconsequential DPS abilities. However, they do have a very dangerous Curse called Curse of Torpor that increases ability cooldowns by 15 seconds. This should be dispelled immediately.

The key to this phase is putting just enough DPS on the adds to kill them before another wave spawns, and letting the rest of your DPS focus on killing the boss. Ideally, you should have melee DPS split between the two sides, with one tank for each group, and a third tank picking up the single add that spawns from the entryway. Although the type of add that spawns from the entrance appears to be random, the two side groups are always the same. As you're facing the boss, the group on the left will always be two Fanatics and one Adherent, and the group on the right will always be two Adherents and one Fanatic. The Adherents should be quickly burned down by melee DPS while the tank focuses on picking up the Fanatics. Once all three adds on a side have been killed, melee should run over to kill the entryway add.

Meanwhile, your ranged and caster DPS will be focusing on the boss while also dealing with the rest of Deathwhisper's abilities. She'll be dropping large green Death and Decays on the ground from time to time -- move out of them. She'll also occasionally mind control a single raid member, who will need to be crowd controlled quickly.

The final tricks up Deathwhisper's sleeves, at least for phase 1, come in the form of spells she casts on her Cultist minions. Deathwhisper can empower a cultist, granting it a couple extra abilities. Empowered Adherents can cast a magic shield and a dangerous AOE, while empowered Fanatics will deal increased damage and heal for 300% of the damage they deal. These are somewhat dangerous, but it appears that they can be purged or possibly even spellstolen. She can also resurrect fallen cultists as Skeletal Adherents or Skeletal Fanatics. Skeletal Adherents have a 99% reduction to magical damage taken, and should simply be picked up and killed by the melee DPS. Skeletal Fanatics, however, have a 99% reduction to physical damage, so the casters will need to swap off of the boss temporarily and burn these down when they appear.

Phase 1 can take a while to get through, but if you can keep everything under control, it's fairly simple. Melee kills the adds, ranged kills the boss. Healers will need to be on their toes as damage has a tendency to come fairly quickly without warning on random raid members. Crowd control will need to be fast as well.

Once Deathwhisper's mana has finally been depleted, her mana shield is destroyed and phase 2 begins. Adds will no longer spawn, so it's best to try to time this to happen just after a wave has been killed. At the very least, make sure a tank is available to pick her up once the shield drops.

Deathwhisper gains a few abilities during Phase 2. The first is a single target Frostbolt that she casts on the tank. This hits for around 50k and cannot be resisted, so you'll need to set up an interrupt rotation to make sure none get through. She also casts an AOE Frostbolt Volley that appears to be unavoidable and simply needs to be healed through. Probably the most dangerous ability gained in Phase 2 however is her Vengeful Spirits. She'll spawn a large number of these around the room, which will move to nearby raid members and explode for a very large amount of damage. These are unfortunately very small and somewhat hard to see, especially in the melee, so be watching carefully for them. Of course, she'll still be casting Death and Decay and mind controlling raid members during this phase, so be sure to keep moving out of green circles and crowd controlling.

Her last ability is called Touch of Insignificance. It's a debuff that reduces threat caused by 20% per stack, with up to 5 stacks. She casts this on the tank, so your tanks will need to taunt off of each other every so often to keep from having threat issues.

Ultimately, the key to Lady Deathwhisper is getting Phase 1 under control and getting through it cleanly for the transition into Phase 2. Once you've got that down, the hardest part is just keeping an eye out for the tiny blue ghosts that are coming to kill you. After all, you don't want to be the guy who dies at 12% and then uploads the video to YouTube.

If you'd like more information on this or any other encounter, check the Project Marmot forums at TankSpot.com. If you're watching this on YouTube, just follow the link in the movie details. Thanks for watching, and good luck!


Source: Aliena (10-man)
Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Icecrown Citadel Raid Guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll cover everything you need to know about the normal mode 10-man version of the Lady Deathwhisper encounter.

This is a 2-phase encounter slightly reminiscent of the Kel'Thuzad fight in Naxxramas. In the first phase, Lady Deathwhisper is surrounded by a Mana Shield that prevents her from taking any damage whatsoever until her mana reaches 0, at which point phase 2 is triggered. In the 10 man version, Deathwhisper has 3.3 million mana, which means you need to deal the equivalent of 3.3 million damage to her to break her shield. Two tanks are recommended for this encounter and 2-3 healers as well as a mix of ranged and melee DPS.

In this phase, she will attack the raid with shadowbolts that deal about 8000 damage and will also cast green clouds of Death and Decay that deal 4500 shadow damage per second and last for 10. What makes this phase challenging however are the waves of adds she spawns. There are two types of adds, Cult Adherents and Cult Fanatics. Adherents are a caster type that deal shadowfrost damage, have a magic shield and randomly cast an ability called Curse of Torpor that increases the target's ability cooldowns by 15 seconds and hence should preferably be handled by melee. Fanatics are a melee type that deal physical damage and cleave.

Both add types have an ability called Dark Transformation which make them deal 100% more damage, and both can also be empowered by Lady Deathwhisper, granting them new abilities, most notably turning their damaging abilities into AoE abilities and preventing them from being interrupted. This appears to be dispel- and purgeable and should be handled quickly.

Every once in a while, Deathwhisper will revive a fallen add and turn them into reanimated adherents or fanatics. Reanimated adherents are 99% immune to magical damage and reanimated fanatics are 99% immune to physical damage, so they need to be handled by melee and ranged dps as appropriate. Reanimated fanatics have a self-buff called Vampiric Might that increases their damage dealt by 25% and also heals them for 300% of the damage they deal, so they should preferably be kited.

To handle this phase, have your tank and melee DPS take care of the adds. They will alternately spawn on the left and right side in sets of three, so make sure your tank is always ready to pick up a new set. The left side will always spawn two fanatics and one adherent and the right side will always spawn two adherents and one fanatic. Should a reanimated adherent pop up, have your casters handle it. Most times however caster DPS should be available to damage Deathwhisper herself to deplete her mana shield. Making sure you keep up with adds while continuously draining Deathwhisper's mana is the whole trick to phase 1.

In her 10-man version, she does not mind control players like she does in the 25-man, so the only real dangers you face is Deathwhisper's Empowerment ability and not being able to keep up with add spawns. Once you figure out a good distribution of DPS though, you shouldn't have any trouble of depleting Deathwhisper's mana and triggering phase 2.

Lady Deathwhisper will break free and actively attack your raid. Similar to Kel'thuzad, her main attacks are Frost Spells - a single target Frostbolt that, unresisted, hits for around 40000 damage but can and should be interrupted and an AoE Frostbolt Volley that hits your entire raid for about 10000 damage. She also gains an ability called Touch of Insignificance which is cast on the main threat target and reduces its threat gain by 20% per application. This stacks up to 5 times and, without an off-tank, will result in your tank's absolute loss of threat generation. Kinda like what you see happening in this video. Waiting until your offtank reconnects from his internet failure is definitely recommended.

She will also frequently summon Vengeful Shades in this phase that act much like the ghosts in Sethekk Halls in that they will follow a player, except when they reach said player they will die in a 15-yard AoE explosion that deals around 18000 damage. Make sure to watch out for them and move away from them if you're anywhere near one. They disappear by themselves after a few seconds but are highly dangerous when they reach a raid member before then.

Deathwhisper will still cast Death and Decay, so make sure not to stand in bad stuff on the ground. Groundbreaking thought, I know. Other than that, phase 2 is much like KT's phase two if you exchange void zones with death and decay and large beetles with small blue ghosts that everybody has to look out for.

This covers the 10-man Deathwhisper encounter! Thank you 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. Also, TankSpot Donors can download all of these movies in High Definition directly from our servers -- so if you'd like to learn more about that, just click the second link in the movie information box!

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