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Comment by patrikman

Falric and Marwyn are Arthas´ captains. They were staying by him as humans and now serving him as death knights. You can see them in This video
Also you might remember Falric from human campaign in Warcraft 3. He was the Captain who protected Arthas´ base when he went for Frostmourne etc.

Comment by 175315

Lich King is final boss in this instance, but this is only resilence fight, where we must survive Lich Kings wrath, but we cant defeat him https://www.wowhead.com/cata/quest=24500. We can kill him in Icecrown Citadel raid instance.

Comment by 297026

I have a question-
Will this be like BWL and MC as a dungeon within a dungeon? Or will you simply be unable to enter unless you have done Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron first?

Comment by 475039

before being able to do this dungeon u have to have completed pit of saron, and before pit of saron the forge of souls.

Comment by Quilan

order of instances:
Forge Of Souls
Pit of Saron (Refrence to Lord of the Rings? mabye)
Halls of Reflection(and by reflection i don't mean mirrors)
Icecrown Citidel raid (instances don't need to be completed)

Quel Delar quest chain:
Battered Hilt (Drop from mob: unknown) to Icecrown south of the tourny grounds
Bring hilt to Krasus in dragonblight then run to dalaran
Get Sunreaver / Silver Convent orders
get tabard from laundry gnome
meet with specific NPC
return to icecrown south of tourny grounds
Go to the Pit of Saron and get 5 infused saronite bars and the forgemaster's hammer and use it at an anvil.
Go to Forge of Souls and use the blade in the Crucible of Souls behind the final boss.
Go to Halls of Reflection and subdue the blade
Speak to a mob outside the entrence of Sunwell (Yes sunwell plateu on the isle is back and needed)
Get a mobs 'blessing'
Dip Quel'Delar into the sunwell (mabye this will be an ashbringer like thing and mobs will not attack you or a you enter a phased sunwell area)
Bring the finished item to the Violet Citidel in Dalaran.

Comment by shadowspa

This is a short,but hard,instance.When you come in,Jaina will be waiting for you.Ahead of you is Sword's Rest,an altar with Frostmourne hoverign above it.When you ask Jaina to remove the sword,she does something and Uther's ghost appears and tells her about how to defeat the Lich King.The Lich King then appears,banishes Uther to the abyss, summons his two captains from Warcraft 3,Falric and Marwyn,and leaves.Jaina follows him and the party has to fight 5 waves of mobs which are the same as the units Arthas commanded(Human footmen,Dwarf riflemen,High Elf priests ,Human female mages and mercenaries

After 5 waves you fight Falric ,who is defensive oriented and not very hard.His attacks are:
Hopelessness,which reduces damage and healing done by the party by 25/50/70%(20/40/60% in normal)
Quivering Strike (N),which is hits as hard as a normal melee attack(60% of normal damage on normal,but is unavoidable and reduces the tank's dodge chance by 20%
Impending Despair,which will stun the target for 6 seconds if it is not dispelled within 6 seconds
Defiling Horror (N),which is one of his more anoying attacks,as it fears the entire party and makes them take 4k damage per second for 4 seconds(2,5k DPS on normal)

After him,the waves become more difficult and Marwyn,the offensively oriented of the two,deals quite alot of damage.He uses
Obliterate (N),which deals 26k(18k on normal),migated by armor
Well of Corruption,which curses people in it to take 75% more shadow damage per 2 seconds,stacking,making it dangerous in combination with:
Shared Suffering,which causes the target to take 6k damage per 3 seconds for 12 seconds,for a total of 24k,and when it is dispelled the remaining damage left on the debuff will be dealed instantly shared across the party.While 24k isn't that much on its own,it's more dangerous thanks to:
Corrupted Flesh,which reduces your health by 50%

After both Falric and Marwyn are dead,you will automaticaly get Wrath of the Lich King.In the hall that Jaina/Sylvanas and her companion ran into,there is a Frostsworn General ,who has a Shield Throw causing around 8k damage and stunning for 2 seconds.~~Shortly after him(or during,dependign were you fight him)~~When he hits a certain amount of health,you will be ambushed by...yourself! 5 mobs,each a copy of one of your party members,will jump out of the walls and attack you.Their attacks vary on what they copy.They are not particulary hard,but may catch you offguard if you don't expect them.

When you enter the next room,Jaina/Sylvanas will be fighting the Lich King and losing prety bad.She will have around 225k hp left when you reach her,while the Lich King still has all of his 27 million hp.She will freeze him and thus start the second ''boss".

You and Jaina/Sylvanas will have to flee through a tunnel.However,not very far inside,the Lich King raises an ice wall,summons undead and casts Remorseless Winter on himself,which reduces his movement speed by 75% but deals around 8k damage per second to anyone within 10 yards of him.

There are 3 kinds of undead that he will summon:
-Raging Ghouls dont have alot of hp,but there are alot of them.They leap.
-Risen Witch Docters are Vargul(those undead Vrykul) and have a single target and AoE shadow bolt,as well as Curse of Doom which deals 4k(6k on hc) damage after 15 seconds.These are probably the first mobs you want to kill.
-Lumbering Abominations have alot of health and use a cleave.They also have a vomit attack which I'm not sure what it does,but probably DoT.

Jaina/Sylvanas will bring the wall down,while the party has to keep the undead away from her.When all the mobs are dead,the wall shatters and you can proceed.The Lich King,however,will be slowly walking toward you.When he reaches Jaina/Sylvanas,he will 2shot her,and then cast Fury of Frostmourne ,dealing 1 million shadow damage to everyone in the instance,thus wiping the group.

After you bring down 4 walls,you reach a dead end,a balcony of the Citadel,and the Lich King starts to strangulate Jaina/Sylvanas.Your faction's gunship,The Skybreaker of Alliance and Ogrim's Hammer for horde,then appears from below and blasts down the tunnel,saving you from the Lich King.On board is a chest with loot and a portal to Dalaran.

Edited for more detailed information,since the original post was from PTR

Comment by 254542

You must stay behind Sylvanas.... If you go ahead, the frozen walls will trap you behind them, and Lich King kills Sylvanas/Jaina...

Comment by 51282

Currently not able to board the ship at the end on Live, it d/cd my party.

Comment by 248337

Bears looking this loot table=sad panda.
There is no tank ring, no tank back, terrible tank neck and all leather have agi>stam. (from bear POV).

Comment by Supremacy

I think I should say something.

A lot of previous posts mention strategies for the bosses, and how to handle the last part of the dungeon. They also mention the (hilarious) bug where you disconnect as soon as you reach the end, right before collecting your spoils. This is all true.

However, I think people may be overlooking just how rough those "waves" are. I think this needs to be made very clear.

This is not Violet Hold. This is not the Black Morass. You cannot just power your way through these waves with Blizzard, Fan of Knives, and Volley.

I think this dungeon - all of them in the Frozen Halls - is an attempt by Blizzard (the company, not the spell) to remind people that you still need crowd control and kill order in dungeons. Also, probably them getting back at us for laughing at heroics.

Those waves are brutal. Especially on heroic. Especially if you choose to take advantage of the cross-server LFG system. Keep in mind that you are walking with strangers into (what I think is) the hardest 5-man in the game. I tanked heroic Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron with pretty much no problem. Even the normal version of this, though, ended up getting kind of close. This isn't a "lol, those ppl on other servers r scrubs" issue. This is "Holy hell, this is a hard dungeon" issue.

DPS paladins, shaman, druids? You need to get rid of those debuffs, or people will die. Yes, your DPS will go down. Yes, your rotation might get messed up. You're just going to need to deal with that.

In fact, I would strongly suggest making a plan before this fight. If you're running with a group that has heroic Algalon and heroic ToGCr on farm, then maybe you can just power through this. I'll be honest with you, though: I wouldn't recommend it.

In short?

Halls of Reflection ain't no joke.

Just my two cents.

Comment by TMWNN

Traditional AoE tanking methods for the undead waves before Falric and Marwyn won't work because

there are almost always two ranged attackers, and
many groups won't have undead-appropriate crowd control.

Normally as a tank I'd handle such pulls using line of sight to force all enemies into melee range so I can tank them, but there isn't anywhere in the round room or the straight hallway where line of sight is broken. Or is there?

Solution: Have everyone hide in the east niche (there are two tiny spaces, about one person's size), behind Marwyn, then trigger the event. As long as everyone stays hidden, each wave will come to the party. Once the wave is there the party can spread out a little bit (it's hard to see enemies when everyone, friend and foe, is clumped up on top of everyone else); just make sure to hide once each wave is completely dead.

After the fourth wave, Falric will come; since the party is in the east niche you'll have a few seconds to prepare for him. Once he's dead, switch to the west niche for the next four waves and Marwyn.

Comment by 424422

This instance is definitely a jump in difficulty to anything we've had before.
The waves are absolutely unforgiving, and a door prevents you from graveyard zerging like H-ToC(5).

Seriously, SERIOUSLY consider crowd-control in this instance.

Also, word of warning to healers, the bosses at waves 5 and 10 WILL and DID one-shot me while drinking.
Make sure the tank is on the ball!

Comment by 238445

Good way is to have Lin-of-sighthide spot wich is either behind falric or marwyn. After each wave hide LOS and let tank pick up aggro. If hunters dont want to come, disarm them. Highest priority should be to kill mages and rogues since mages can iceblock your healer and rogues will make mince meat outta him.

Comment by Reunilana

This instance is realy brutal but there is a way to cheat it a bit.
You can out of sight the mobs near the bosses (behind the wall).
Have the tank and melle dps on left side and caster+healer on the right side.

This is how you do it easy mode:
Tanking tactic:
Let the mobs come to you and if they go on casters use your aoe taunt abilitys (D&D Thunderclap shield etc) and be sure you tank https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38173#abilities and https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38177#comments . If those 2 come to casters its pretty much a wipe. If you dont get them on yourself your healer will get https://www.wowhead.com/cata/spell=72196 or https://www.wowhead.com/cata/spell=72335 but hunters https://www.wowhead.com/cata/spell=72269 wont do much problem because he stil needs to run to you.

Melle dps:
Stay on https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38172#abilities or https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38175#abilities and try to cc them as much as posible. They dont need to be tanked because even on heroic they dont hit hard. Its better to stay on casters because you wont get posioned at all. Note that hunter can be disarmed.
IF you have paladin in group he can also fear them.

Caster dps:
Dps the https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38173#abilities and https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38177#abilities down 1st. You may be geting https://www.wowhead.com/cata/spell=72327 but it wont kill you. Note that priests can shackle the hunter mob.

If you do it right in this combination you are pretty much a winner. Just remember to stun /fear / shackle the mobs and dispel /cure toxins /remove curse at all cost. Small dps loss wont killl you but you will make healers job 10 times easier.

Kill oder: https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38175#abilities (healer) -------) https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38177#abilities (anoying poisions)-----) https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38172#abilities (remember to move out of his flamestrike) ---------) https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38176#abilities and last a https://www.wowhead.com/cata/npc=38173#abilities .

Comment by Aurlon

HoR really is serious business. The waves on heroic are insane, I've taken in excess of 30k+ damage in under a second as a tank.

Trash danger list: mercenary >>> mage > footsoldier > priest > hunter. The mercenary's are the killers here. Each one is capable of instantly dealing over 10k damage on heroic.

The first boss casts a group-wide fear that deals damage over time. He won't attack himself during this time but the fear-dot means you'll be taking a beating and people will die if they arn't topped before it hits.

The second boss is alot easier. Blow a cooldown whenever he puts Corrupted Flesh on you aswell as move out of the void zone he puts on the floor. It's really small so look carefully.

As for the final encounter, it's not anywhere near as hard as the first section but it's vital to keep everyone alive or you will be overrun because of too low DPS. Keep the pace up but don't take risks and it's a win. A viable tactic as of patch 3.3.0 is to stay just behind Arthas during the final encounter and grab the mobs right where they spawn.

Edit: Some updates for clarity.

Update: Ledge tactic described above no longer works as of 3.3.2 due to a new buff.

Comment by 78251

This instance = Magister's Terrace 2.0

Comment by 58069

I figured that I would throw in my two cents here about an easy way to do Falric and Marwyn, or at least, the trash between these two.

I don't know if anyone else has realized it, and I'll admit, I very quickly browsed the comments, and so I could have very likely missed something, but this is a ret pally CC dream come true (assuming that ret pallies dream about CC, which we all know they don't.)

First, I am going to recommend that you use this CC on the ranged only, to reduce the chance of it being broken. To me, the three moves that are very useful in this encounter are Repentance, Turn Evil, and Holy Wrath (I think, whatever the AoE that stuns undead is). I've only done this encounter 3 times now, but it seems like each time you get one of the eight groups to have 3 ranged. However, for the most part, you can just assume two, or even just one.

CCing this fight is quite easy, because all that needs to be done is use Repentance on one of the ranged, and Turn Evil on the other. Assuming the DPS of your group isn't absolutely horrid, which, if you're planning on escaping from the Lich King, it can't be, you can kill the non-CC'd mobs before the second casting of Turn Evil wears off. Since this is the case, you can effectively knock out two of the mobs from each and every wave of this encounter, and it does not ruin your DPS too terribly much. I find it easiest to focus the target that you have Turn Evil cast on, and when it runs out, simply cast it again. The only reason that I brought up Holy Wrath at all is that it seems like the move tends to be forgotten about, and it's extra DPS and a stun, so why not use it?

Since it seems like every group you run with nowadays has a ret pally in it, this little tidbit of info should be quite helpful.

-Andycoqbloq, Boulderfist.

Comment by brionl

For the escape part, make sure that everybody stays near Jaina. Our tank and one of the DPS got happy feet and ran way down the ledge so when the first wall dropped they were on the wrong side. We managed to have my hunter pet tank the first wave, but when we got to the second wall we wiped, because they had kept going and were on the wrong side of that one too.

Comment by rockerboo

One thing to note, the footman, they hit like a truck. They can be cc'd, disarmed, or whatever. In the group I was in, we chose to burn then asap as the other ones do some dmg, not as much as these footman.

As a DK I strangled the mage, then death grip any other ranged, if there was 3 ranged, I left 1 going and threw some taunts on them, but you could probably have someone else silence them or disable if they have 3 or more.

If you have some good dps, this is the kill order we used. Footman, Priest, Rouge, Mage, Rifleman.

Comment by Astygia

From a healer's perspective...

Kudos, Blizz, for finally making a 5man that I can't sleep through. This is without a doubt one the hardest 5-mans I've healed in some time.

Tactics we used on the captains fight (Pally tank, boomkin, destro lock, mut rogue, disc priest) were the same as most of those listed above...everyone hid in the alcove, tank dropped cons on the ground just near it to ensure any mobs charging party members that were drinking had to run across their threat generation.. give ghosts a few moments to pile up on tank, then spread out and nuke, rinse/repeat. And not to say that following a kill order isn't a good idea, but we didn't...we just tried to nuke the rogues, hunters, and mages first, as their CC could put a kink into things. You will not have time to rez party members in between waves of ghosts, but if you are fast, you WILL have time to rez 1 person right after the last wave of ghosts before a boss. This fight was a healer stress test.... as a disc priest with 26k mana, 2212sp, and 502mp5 while casting, I still found myself needing to drink between waves else I'd be oom.

The escape the LK event can either be incredibly easy or incredibly hard...it's very much a dps race and strong AoE is valuable. Keep in mind that by default many of the mobs will in fact be leaping at Sylvanas at first, not at your tank, so trying to kill them before they've backed you into an ice wall is very risky as they'll often get heal aggro and destroy your clothies from behind (not to mention that the LK has a very obvious and very painful aura, you do not want your tank close to him). Best bet here is to pile up on the wall and hold the mobs there. Our tank had his ass up against the mountainside slightly ahead and to the right of Sylvanas while ranged/heals were gathered near the dark lady herself. This way the tank could still see the incoming waves while ensuring that nothing was beating on us. This tactic was also useful because the abominations have a very painful cleave, as well as a frontal cone vomit spray, which can and will destroy your group if not kept under control. Much like the captains event, we didn't really prioritize a kill order. We tried to take out Vrykul and Aboms as quickly as possible, but for the most part we just went for quantity and mopped up whatever happened to be left. I suggest saving any long cooldowns for the 4th and final wave, as it is huge.

All in all, the ICC instances are beautifully made and the mechanics are incredible, and this is the first 5man that I overgeared and yet felt undergeared for. Awesome :D

Comment by Belaflek

Pali tank here. Heroic style
Got it done by using one of the side rooms and having everyone stack up in one of the niches while I tossed consecrate. The heals created enough agro so the ranged came in and walked into the consecrate also. at that point everyone started dps and could step out of the niche. I would fear an add..normally a mage or hunter.
Kill order was
Priest, Mage, Merc, hunter, footman. The hunter has a tendency to go after the healer.
DK can grab the annoying ones and the size or dnd can just about fill the room if u have a dk tank.. At the end of each wave, EVERYONE tuck back in the niche and wait for the tank to get everyone around the corner. You may get healer tank los issues if the tank has to step out some but it should only be for a second or two so the tank has to be careful of not losign LOS to healer for too long and healer needs to stay hidden or ull get popped.
Shackle may be handy for mobs outside of the room but inside may not be feasable because of all the aoe goin on from the tank

Comment by jaq1010

I love this instance, because it is such a struggle to deal with the waves, even with a good group, but it can be a pain for a pug group. Did it with one group that was an utter failure because no one wanted to stack on the tank for LOS but me for Falric and Marwyn. The Lich King event is an absolute BLAST though, love that to death. And people complained when they heard the Lich King was going to be part of the 5 mans!

Comment by 224074

Any CC in this instance is helpful. Having a little or having a lot is the difference between a high repair bill and a clear. Tanks need to be on the ball with aggro, DPS should help with cleanses, even DPS paladins and shamans should help to throw some healing around.

Shadowy Mercenaries are, far and away, the most dangerous mobs. The are rogue type enemies that deal a MASSIVE amount of burst damage - if they aggro to a healer for any amount of time, it's a good chance you'll wipe - even plate dps won't last long before them.
Ghostly Priests don't deal so much damage, but the threat from them comes from their powerful heal (which can healer for nearly 100,000) and their fear, which is bad if it goes on a healer. They're also up there on priority - if your tank is good with aggro and survivability, these may even overtake mercenaries as top priority
Phantom Mages are also quite hard to deal with, though Frost or Fire Resistance auras/totems takes the edge off their attacks. They're in the middle range of priorities, seeing how they can wreak havoc with their AoE spells (and, less importantly, have a Chains of Ice spell) but also spawn an additional Phantom Hallucination at low health. Phantom Hallucinations have the same spells as the Mages, and start with the same remaining health as the mage who summoned them currently had, but in addition they explode for 6,000 damage upon death.
Spectral Footmen have a reasonably damaging melee attack, but that's about it. Just keep them on a tank.
Finally, riflemen are nearly trivial if on your tank, the only problem being that they are ranged, so it may be hard to pick them up. They also pick a random target to Ice Shot, taking them out of battle for a few seconds and dealing a 6,000 damage hit.

In my experience, Retribution paladins (provided they know what they're doing) are a lifesaver. You don't need one, but they have Repentance, Turn Evil (which ignores conventional fear immunity, which these adds have), and Holy Wrath as an OH SH*T! button every 30 seconds. That's 2 in-combat CCs + a radial stun that can give your healers a few seconds to catch up. Plus they can cleanse and offheal.
Unfortunately, most Ret pallies don't take these options into consideration in this instance, but it's something to consider, at least.

Priests shouldn't forget their Shackle Undead either. And I cannot stress this enough: everything in this instance is immune to fear. Turn Evil is the only thing that will work that has a fear effect.

Comment by 497377

However, for the entire last event, The Lich King is attackable and can take damage.

This means that if some group with massive ranged dps could do about 20 million damage in about 7 minutes before the fight ends, and deal with the adds, they could theoretically kill The Lich King in this five man instance.

I expect this to happen before Wrath ends, but surely in Cataclysm.
Last edited by

well it sounded interesting to kill the litch king in the dungen but with 1 tank 1 heal and 3dps each dps would have to be doing over 17k dps on the litch king to down him that's not even including the adds

Comment by 257386

If you die in this instance, where do you run back to as a ghost?

Comment by Nathiest

Don't forget to turn in the quest at the end of the run like I did. I was so excited to get on the ship... I totally fail.

Comment by mushy

It's really key to have high dps during the last stent of the instance when you are running from the Lich King. As it has been stated in previous comments. Did this with a relatively decent group, pally tank, dk, moonkin druid, hunter, and myself as a holy priest. I must say the waves on heroic really puts a healer to the test on how well they can play their class. I love it. DPS needs to be high in the end with the ice walls. Gotta keep long CD's until the 4th wall, and a lot of people emphasize that aboms need to be killed first. This may be true, but if you got a decent tank have them AoE tank as much as possible while the others in the group just AoE the hell out of everything and pick up what is left. We ran into the problem of singling out aboms etc etc, and it was only causing us to wipe. Just work on getting GOOD AoE dps on all of the mobs and you should be ok. Man what a TOUGH instance, but it's fun for sure!

Comment by 82397

The adds in phase 1 waves are UNDEAD and able to be SHACKLED. Priests, use it! :) (Then watch your resident dps break it and cry)

Comment by 226137

Tanks, stay out of the frost patches. Makes it really difficult to pick up the mob that just dropped aggro.

Comment by Kathucka

On the escape event, kill the witch doctors first. They do a crapload of unavoidable single-target and volley shadow bolt damage, and they are much squishier than the abominations. They are also ranged, and therefore difficult to tank when you get a bunch of them. Healers need to be ready with lots of group heals to deal with this, especially since damage-dealers are likely to draw aggro from these casters as they try to keep up with the intense DPS requirements of this event.

Abominations after that, yes. The ghouls die to AoE and don't need to be targeted.

Hunters, as they run to the next wall position, can drop an explosive trap and put Misdirection on the tank to make sure that the initial wave gets on the tank, not a healer.

Also, the faster you get through the early waves, the more time you have on the extremely nasty final wave.

Comment by 339106

The throne room where Sylvanas fights The Lich King looks a lot like the room where Arthas killed his father.
Wonder if theres some sort of connection?

Comment by 317544

This is a challanging instance to tank, and heal if your dps don't control themselves. Here are some tanking tips:

The first fight, in the round room in which you start, is the most difficult. It's all about holding aggro - don't bother making sure you face the mobs in the right direction or even having them in front of you - just taunt your fingers off and hit anything close to you when your taunt/ranged is on CD.

If any dps takes damage, then too bad, but as long as the healer isn't being attacked, then you're fine.

With some luck, some of the dps will aid in terms of cc, but have them state in advance what and how the'll cc, so you don't brake it.

Taking crap from dps in here should automatically generate a kick voting.

Comment by lmanth

I have done this only once so far on my enhance shaman, which is definitely not undergeared, and was shocked by how much aggro I pulled on the waves and on the run to the end... in other instances I occasionally pull aggro once or twice but can pull back a bit. In here there's nowhere to pull back...

Comment by 497916

Please,I need to have the sound files for the Lich King in HoR! And I don't mean the video, I need the /run PlaySoundFile details!Please, does anyone have them?

Comment by 230180

List of all of the Lich Kings speech files from Halls of Reflection.

/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_AggroAlliance01.wav")")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_AggroHorde01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack02.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack03.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack04.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack05.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack06.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack07.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack08.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack09.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Attack10.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_DungFin01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_EndAll.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_EndlessCold01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Event01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Event02.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Event03.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_EventAll04.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_EventHor04.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Icewall01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Icewall02.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Icewall03.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Icewall04.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_RasieDead01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Slay01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Slay02.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_SummonAbom01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound02.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound03.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound04.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound05.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound06.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound07.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound08.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound09.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_Wound10.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_WoundCrit01.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_WoundCrit02.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_WoundCrit03.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_WoundCrit04.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_WoundCrit05.wav")
/run PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\LichKing\\HR_Lich King_WoundCrit06.wav")

Comment by Mordach

I gotta say I'm a little surprised at all the comments saying how difficult the Falric/Marwyn event is. I ran it for the first time tonight, it was on heroic and I was the tank (I'm not super geared, epic but nothing crazy, item lvls 200 to 226) and we had no issues whatsoever. It was a mixed group from the new LFG interface. I think you just need to make sure everyone is paying attention. We had a arcane mage, resto druid, a ret pally and a death knight. The ret pally and dk are extremely useful for the event, because you can have the pally repentance one of the ranged mobs during a wave, then have the DK death grip another to the group. Have someone else mark for the tank so the tank can concentrate on quickly picking up the adds, and always make sure to kill the priest first.

Comment by mixter

Notice that he makes 4 walls , so to defeat him you must break the 4th wall

Comment by Kalahiton

I druid healed this one with a random pug and wiped a few times. We made it past wave five ok, then got to wave nine and wiped. We decided that AoD would be a good thing to pop, and it did help a little bit (Not really going to use it elsewhere at this point). We then decided that instead of solo tanking it, we'd have the warrior switch his spec to tank as well. This worked beautifully. The DPS was good enough so the slack of being short one didn't really hit us hard. Rolling HoTs on two tanks rather than spamming nourish on one made this way easier.
It also helped to appoint one of the DPS as a marker to put a skull on whatever his target was (Both ranged DPS since the warrior switched) so that the two of them could focus fire one, making aggro easier to handle and killing key targets faster.

Maybe two tanks is the way to do the first arena type part.
Healers: You can spam clicking food/drink between waves if your mana ends up hurting in the long run. Mana Strudel is free and effective!
Alchemist Healers: Pop your mana pots once per wave. Combat will break and it will begin recharging when it does.
Druids/Rogues/NElves: Stealth prevents the initial aggro. The LoS doesn't really seem to stop picking up aggro, but being invisible does quite well. Treeform stays when you Shadowmeld, and if that's on CD you can easily Cat-form and stealth until the tank starts the crowd control.

I also noticed that Curse of Doom shows up during the chase with the Lich King (anyone else find it odd that he actually casts the spell that makes him slower? I blame Arthas on that one) which deals 9k damage after the duration is up. Easily dispelled as a druid, of course, as are the annoying poisons in the first room with Abolish Posion. Don't forget that you can do that. It helps a ton.

I hope that helps some people get through it. Two tanks really does help the crowd control.

Comment by 49176

I'll be adding to the general consensus that this is a tough dungeon. Really tough on heroic.

To help, I'll post a guide of how I ran it smoothly. It'll be fairly long, so you can get a good idea of the entire instance.

0. Gear and Composition

Unlike other heroics, HoR (At least on heroic) is tough enough for group composition and gear to become issues.

Gear-wise, item level 200 is probably the very minimum. A full set of 200+ epics is probably a more reasonable level. More is recommended for healers and tanks. This place hurts!

The group should have at least some CC. Note that all the mobs are undead, so fear and polymoprh don't work. The Lich King chase battle takes place outdoors, so outdoor CCs like Entangling Roots will work. Chances are, your group would have at least 1 full time CC and a few interrupts (Priests, Hunters, Paladins, and partially Druids are full time CC classes).

1. Marwin & Falric

The fight is similar to Dark Portal and Violet Hold, where waves of creeps will spawn with the captains being bosses in between.

A good location to start is within the small indent within the west or east "corridors". If the entire group hides in there while the mobs aggro, it will be much easier to gather them up.

After each wave, you will drop out of combat a short moment. This lets you eat/drink between waves. After a boss, you get an extended rest period.

Quick Description of Mobs, from most to least dangerous. Considering following this kill order:

1. Ghostly Priest
They cast heals, but they also do some shadow damage on the side. The heal heals for 50k, so it's important that you either interrupt it or kill the priest immediately. They have low health and die quickly.

2. Phantom Mage
These casts 6k fireball/frostbolts and drop a flamestrike with an initial of 6k and ticks of 8k. Simply stay out of fires. They don't melee for anything, so it's safe to have a hunter pet or DPS tank these. It's important that you interrupt these as much as possible. A good target to CC.

3. Shadowy Mercenary
Rogue equivalents of the instance. They do decent poison damage, and will randomly shadowstep party members. These are fairly tankable, so it is tied with the Tortured Rifleman on threat level. A good target to fear.

4. Tortured Riflemen
Hunters. They lay frost traps and shoot bullets. Damage is physical, so tanks can tank them without much trouble. However, they can amplify magic damage taken by 50%. Prime fear target, as they are usually the last damaging mobs to be feared, and their distance makes it hard for CC to break.

5. Spectral Footman
Just warriors. They don't hit particularly hard, but they have burst potential. They will shield bash casters they are attacking, so these should be tanked and left as the last targets.

BOSSES:

1. Falric
A pseudo dps-race. He lowers your healing and damage done by 20% at 66%, 33% and 10%.
He will cast a debuff that stuns a player for 6 seconds if not removed (magic effect).
In addition, he will occasionally fear the party and deal roughly 10,000 damage to them all. This ability has a cooldown, and he has no other AoEs. So make sure the tank is filled to full first before attending to the rest.

2. Marwin
A high-dps boss.
He will cast Well of Corruption, which causes players standing in it to receive "Corrupted Touch", which increases shadow damage taken by 75%. Get out of these.
Shared Suffering does 24k damage over 12 seconds. If dispelled, the remaining damage is distributed among the group. Marwin has no other AoEs, and it is safe to dispel as long as no one has an outstanding amount of Corrupted Touch stacks.

Escaping the Lich King

Overview: To escape the Lich King, you must complete a gauntlet consisting of 5 ice walls. The Lich King will throw undead at you after spawning a new ice wall. After clearing the wave of undead, the current wall will fall. If the Lich King reaches you, he oneshots the party.

The waves consist of (from most to least dangerous):

1. Risen Witch Doctors
Warlock-type mobs. They cast shadowbolt volley and curse of doom. Can be tanked by DPS. Primary target.

2. Lumbering Abomination
This is what makes or breaks a group. They hit fairly hard, have decent HP, and has a conical vomit attack that they tend to cast at the exact same time. The tank should grab these and tank them away from the party.

3. Raging Ghoul
Cannon fodder. These are spawned in large numbers (6 to a dozen). They will leap toward you first, making it easier to separate them. These don't hit like elites (maybe 300 on a tank). Just AoE or cleave these down.

The creatures themselves are not very tough. However, their ability for quick AoE burst damage is very dangerous.

The 5th and final wall is the only pull that needs special mentioning. It consists of a ghoul pack, a witch doctor, and an abomination at first. However, the lich king will spawn another 2 abominations and a witch doctor as he gets close. If both abominations get to the party without being picked up, their combined vomit will very likely wipe the group. It is important for the tank to pick up the 2 o 3 abominations and pop what damage reduction skills it can.

Comment by 500566

As a healer with a not-so-good PUG tank I would like to remind you that the Footman like to shield bash - silencing you for about the time it takes to wipe the entire party.

Keep those footmen off your healer if you're tanking - and be sure to outrange them (8 yards is it?) if you're healing.

Comment by Ketho

Spectral Footman (War3) - Shield Bash (N), Spectral Strike (N), Tortured Enrage
Shadowy Mercenary (War3) - # Shadowstep (N), Kidney Shot, Deadly Poison (N), Envenomed Dagger Throw (N)
Tortured Rifleman (War3) - # Cursed Arrow, Ice Shot (N), Frost Trap -> Frost Trap Aura, Shoot (N)
Ghostly Priest (War3) - # Cower in Fear, # Circle of Destruction (N), Dark Mending (N), Shadow Word: Pain (N)
Phantom Mage (War3) - # Flamestrike (N), # Chains of Ice, Fireball (N), Frostbolt (N), Hallucination (*)
- Phantom Hallucination - (Same as Phantom Mage), Hallucination (N)

Falric - # Impending Despair -> Despair Stricken, Defiling Horror (N), Quivering Strike (N), Hopelessness (N)
Marwyn - # Shared Suffering (N) -> (Dispelled), Well of Corruption -> Corrupted Touch (N), Obliterate (N), Corrupted Flesh (N)

Comment by 275343

I've ran this a few times both as a Prot and Ret pally, and the following strategies have been crucial to surviving the waves:

1. Stand behind the tank as the mobs spawn! Even if you think you're trying to help by cc-ing early, running ahead of the tank can cause the mobs to proximity-aggro you instead of the tank, not only resulting in your own death but making it impossible for the tank to collect all the mobs. And don't forget to reset behind the tank as you finish the last mob of a given wave.

2. Don't rush. Take a couple seconds at the start of each wave to find your target, let ALL the melee mobs finish coming to the tank, and let the tank establish a little bit of aggro before jumping in with AoE or big heals.

3. CC the ranged mobs. Not only are these mobs less likely to have their cc broken, but the tank is less likely to maintain AoE aggro on them anyway. If you need to run ahead of the tank to get in range for your CC, try to wait a second or two until the tank has the melee mobs collected first.

4. Mark a first target to burn down. This is a great job for a non-cc-ing dps, as he can assess the wave and decide on the target while the tank concentrates on collecting the mobs. Ghostly Priests are great candidates for the first kill.

Comment by adsamcik

nice drops at normal difficulty

Comment by 190361

Apparently Frostmourne needs to be plugged up and charged during the day

Comment by 71198

Here's my perspective from tanking this as a DK.

Threat is not an issue as a DK - heck, it's ten times easier to to hold all mobs as a DK then as my Prot Warrior.

Unfortunately, DK also takes insane amount of damage here. I'm in full T9 with about 43K buffed HP, but I take a lot of burst damage in the last two waves before bosses (when 4-5 mobs are hitting me at once). Good healer with good gears will usually be able to heal though them, but unfortunately that's rare.

So when I tank as a DK I prefer to fight in hallway instead of the cove and have at least one mob CC. If your group can CC two mobs, then this is a cakewalk.

Every group I've been in will at least have a Priest, Pally or Hunter. All three of these classes excel here. Priest and Pally, use shackle and repentance respectively on the hunter or mage.

Hunter, right as the mob are spawning, shoot trap in front of one to freeze it.

I just had a group with a arms warrior, ret pally, holy priest and a hunter. Everybody insisted that we battle in the cove, so we did, but the priest was undergeared and of course we wiped. I had to beg them to do this my way, but all of em were skeptics and insisted this won't work. Of course it did and we sailed through the rest of the instance without any issue.

So please, if you have CC, use em! It will take a lot of pressure off your healer, and more importantly, lowers your repair bills.

Comment by ascero

Yup, I 100% agree with Somner; this is one of the first heroics where, as a DPS, you will feel just as important as the tank or healer. And you are. This instance requires everyone to be giving 100%; if someone isn't pulling their weight, whether that be a DPS doing 2k, or a healer just focusing on the tank, then you *will* wipe. I applaud Blizzard for making an instance where, if I successfully and rightfully votekick someone for underperforming, I don't feel unjustified. That includes the tank.

That being said, I can offer a couple shards of advice for doing the waves, from a Disc. Priest's perspective.

First of all, targeted, concentrated DPS is key. Decide who to kill in each wave first (usually the mercs for me), then decide who to kill second (usually the mages). After that, aggro shouldn't be an issue.
Down the kill-targets fast; theres a reason why they are kill targets. Mercs deal ~10k per melee, and have a kidney shot. Mages have a fire AoE that will kill anyone standing in it in ~6s.
Casters: do not go near the footmen. They have an attack which silences you for ~5s. This has been the sole reason for a couple group wipes in my experiences. I don't care if you're a dps caster; if you aren't dpsing for 5s, then you aren't giving 100%.
Crowd Control. Crowd Control. Crowd Control. Bring a priest or ret pally. Use Shackle, use turn undead, use everything you have. One less mob per wave makes a *massive* difference; so much that it astounds me everytime a careless DPS breaks a CC.
I have done this both LoS and just standing in the entrance. Both work fine, if the tank knows whats going on and is comfortable. I actually kind-of prefer the enterance, however, because it makes CCing and escaping the fire AE easier. However, I don't recommend the enterance if the tank has problems with AE threat.

Comment by 383903

I have tanked this instance on different toons pally and a warrior and healed it more times that i care to remind myself. But here is my advice... I always go to the corners behind the bosses. It is a pain for your camera but the most effective. The key is to not tuck in as much as everyone else does. I always stand at the corner of the wall ( where it kind of slants outward ) and when i see the first two mobs coming i throw down consecration / thunderclap. After i have picked them up i then pull them back into where everyone else is. This allows what ever ranged that has seen me to come back to me and most importantly this allows you to not have to worry about the mobs coming through the walls at the ones who are hiding. I always try to save my stuns ( Shockwave / Holy Wrath ) for when they pop around the corner it allows me a few extra seconds to sort out what set up we got.

Comment by 87230

Just a fun fact for the last part of this instance.

We cleared this on heroic with 4 players (two really good DPS), and as a result the last event was a really close call.

Right at the end of Lich Kings 4th wave, we still had one caster alive when the Lich King reached Jaina. Squeezing out as much DPS as we possibly could, we downed the last mob just in time (about 0.5 seconds to spare).
The funny thing was that Lich King had just hit Jaina, who had then entered her death animation. When the mob died in the middle of her death animation, she suddenly just stood up and started running towards the ship with only 1 HP left.

Rest of the event played out normally.

Comment by 223475

By looking at the loot table I just found out that ... there is NOTHING for elemental shamans

and before you downrate at least check the loot table for yourself.

Comment by 290285

On 1/5/10, this place got a nerf on the ghost waves. From the WoW forums:

"The ghost waves at the beginning of both normal and heroic Halls of Reflection have undergone several changes that should make them easier to defeat such as preventing 2 mages or 2 mercenaries from spawning in the 5 mob pulls, a shorter duration of the spectral footman’s shield bash, and the spectral mage’s flamestrike having a longer cast time, shorter duration, and (in heroic) doing less damage."

Comment by 517188

Do you gain any buff that makes you hit harder from the trash mobs before Falric&Marwin? I don't know how, but as a combat rogue (mostly ulduar/naxx patch geared) I occasionally made 7k+ crits with sinister strike and 5k+ crits with normal melee swings. Anyone else experienced this?

Comment by Ketho

Myusernameistool: Do you gain any buff that makes you hit harder from the trash mobs before Falric&Marwin?

You might have had that on Phantom Hallucinations, they receive extra damage ..

Comment by Lonehwolf

It was indeed bloody suicide on us... Heroic, me as a disc priest and my friend a tank, both of us in full ilvl232 triumph gear and we had to wipe at every boss lol... Healing this, on discipline at least, is just rough. I feel as if 10 years have been sucked out of my life.

Falric: This was just brutal on me. Keypoint here for a disc is the following: HPS. That means make good use of renew, weakened soul on all the party, and DISPEL. Fear ward yourself, and beware of the Hopelessness aura that stacks up trice. More than anything warn your party that they best plough through his last 10% before he ploughs through you. Healing gets HEAVILY reduced at that point, (heroic, we're speaking about -75%), and keep note that damage will as well, so they have to go all out at that last stretch. This aura starts at 66% health, and stacks again at 33% and then at 10%. DO dispel Quivering Strike as soon as it pops up ("Decursive" can help with that if you don't think you'll be able to keep up with it), Impending Despair is yet another effect you want to dispel on anyone who gets it. You have 6 seconds chance to do so, if fail to, the target is stunned for a full 6 seconds. You do want the dps here at all times, so do dispel it.

Marwyn: Oh god lol. I guess more than tough this is something you have to just get used to: Players will die. Especially melee dps. Take care to avoid any over aggro as possible. This is generally directed to the melee dps. Obliterate is something your tank can take, but your dps might not live through it, when taking into account everything else that may be thrown at them. Shared Suffering is a fairly weird spell when it comes to dispelling it or not. As a disc, I generally check who gets it. If we have a melee dps who can take a beating, I tend to leave it on him and dish out Penance on him, patch him up with PoM and heal the full 16k damage on him. Dispelling this dishes out all the 16k damage amongst all the party members. Not nice for a main tank healer as a disc.

Players may and probably will die during this boss encounter, regardless you can still take him out. In our case we ended up with me (disc), main tank (war) and a mage dps. Both the DK and Paladin were broken, but enough damage was dealt to finish him off (at about 25% health each btw lol) but we did it.

Lich King Lol. Easy as pie. Run ahead, stay behind jaina/sylv and just plough through all the mobs. I personally shielded the tank and clothe and PoMed the tank while switching to dps, and if you're wondering, should the lich king reach you, he kisses jaina good night and breaks you all. Yes, it does feel good.

EDIT: Ran this yesterday with a PuG through the finder (yes, I'm lucky at getting the hardest randoms), and we ploughed through all the waves. I guess the key is getting a tank with 45k+ hp and rely on his healthpool while patching up the rest.

Comment by Nenn

Ridiculus that it says "You must obtain better gear, 4431 GearScore, average of 5k+ DPS, ALOT more than (almost) everyone in my battlegroup, people with 5.1k GS+ doing 2-3k dps :S Hate that its acceptable to beeing bad in raid guilds now days, getting boosted for gear and still playing like they have no clue how to play their class :S

Anyone who can tell what gearscore is nessesary for HoR Hc?
Though I've done it on Random heroic on my GFs rogue, and it has ~3900 GS :S

Comment by 365520

It seems as though this instance's gear requirment was buffed although i am not sure to what it is now, My deathknight in all 226+ gear with 4k unbuffed power, 30%, hit exp cap. can no longer enter the Lfg for this heroic :/

Which to me seems odd they would buff the gear requirment right after nerfing the instance.

Comment by 360629

Do NOT release if you die on one of the waves. Although there isn't enough time between non-boss waves for a healer to cast an out-of-combat res, you won't be able to enter if you run back either. I died on one of the first few waves, and figuring that the doors would open after the first boss fight, I decided it would be better to be back/ready/buffed instead of waiting to be res'd.

No such luck. Once they close, they won't open until after all 10 waves are done. This mechanic is especially lame if someone drops/has to be kicked, as new players won't be able to enter either.

Comment by Draconax

Anyone know the required gearscore to queue for the heroic version of this place?

Comment by 496475

I've found that doing the first part with 2 healers works very well if you have 2 strong dps. Sure, you MAY get a new wave when another wave is nearly dead, but you got enough healing to outheal it if the healers are good. You'll also have time to keep the dpsers topped up, as you are two on the healing.
I think that any combination of healers works fine, I've done it with holy priest + holy paladin and holy priest + holy priest. Just make sure that one of the healers got dual spec to dps so he/she can switch when it's time for The Lich King.

Comment by 436067

since a ton of good strategies have been added, i would like to add a little bit of lore. upon entering the dungeon, jaina will spawn and be shocked that frostmourne is out in the open. you can tell her to try to remove the blade, or to skip straight to the bosses. if you tell her to remove the blade, she has a VERY interesting conversation with uther the lighbringer's spirit. he reveals that arthas MUST be killed atop the frozen throne, and (this is the real shocker) that someone has to take his place as the lich king. or else the scourge will lose all control and kill everyone! now i think that it is most likely tirion will sacrifice himself for the greater good, OR darion might swoop in, become the lich king, then reveal that this was his master plan all along and resume the lich kings terrible rain. either way, someone has to sacrifice them self. who will it be?

Comment by 528075

hi, this place keep bugging now and then, spirits pop all around the room, the 2 boss as well, but then, waves dont come...

I tried many way to get rid of the bug, getting all group out and in, trying to reset the place, to re-queue for HoR, but never managed to do it...

would anyone be more lucky or smart than me, and share with us the way to get rid of this nasty bug ?

Comment by oxano

Imo some people make it look a lot worse than it is. Needing a 45k+ tank? wtf

I (holy paladin) did this with a 34k tank. Me having 6iLvl 219 items and 1iLvl200 even.
I really don't like the LoS strategy by standing in the cove behind one of the bosses. Flamestrike hits everyone, freezing trap freezes everyone and then there's an AoE knockback/dmg thing that hits the whole party aswell. The footmen can and will shieldbash casters, silencing them for 6 seconds (if it's the healer, your party dies) In addition if your tank steps out to get aggro on some ranged mob, you loose LoS and the combination of this will most likely cause a wipe.

Personally i prefer to stand at the entrance, everything ranged standing with his back against the gate. Tank up front just inside the "circle" and melee dps just outside it. The tank probably will have the aggro on melee mobs. From the moment a heal from me comes trough i'm most likely going to get aggro from 1-2 ranged mobs or something from the other side of the circle (who haven't been close enough to the tank yet). It's also less hectic to have some room to move. People don't panic as fast.
Between me and the tank is about a 20yards space so mobs will be at about 20 yards from the tank to hit the ranged people (including me, healer). Tank can move forward and try to pick them up or just stand still and do 1 of the following:

This does require a bit more skill from the tank in order to deal with the ranged mobs.
DK deathgrip + taunt + death coil,
Druid, feral fire should deal some aggro for the initial heals, charge maybe,
warriors heroic trow + charge to ranged, do aggro move, intercept back + taunting + spell reflect.
Paladin, easiest i t hink, hand of reckoning, not only taunt but a fair amount of aggro, exorcism (in the beginning, don't do it when too many mobs are on you allready), judgement(remember ranged is about 20 yards away, so only 10 yards to move), avenger's shield: massive aggro, and the taunt that's cast on friendly target to take 2 mobs away(forgot spell name)

But even if it's harder, by standing in the corner to use LoS you often have to leave your safe spot to be in LoS of the tank and the same happens.

By being more spread out the AoE abilities of the enemy will most likely hit 1-2 people isntead of 4-5 (unless you got 2 melee dps and it's trown on the tank=3) Stressing the healer less. Much easier to run out of the AoE spot, no LoS issues

I can't stress enough how important CC is. That includes that healers do it too. I always do Turn evil to fear 1 mob for 20! seconds, with no diminishing turns i think. It makes a (big)difference. CC ftw! Priests can and should use shackle,

Oh, shamans, cleansing totem plx.

Comment by 179414

My wife wasn't able to queue for this instance on Heroic. She had completed Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron, but the dungeon finder tool said she wasn't geared well enough for it. Her wow-heroes GS was 2200+, but it wasn't until she replaced a trinket and got the Superior achievement that she was finally able to queue for it on Heroic.
I've seen other people online complaining that they weren't allowed in, even though they had good GSs, so I'm guessing you have to get Superior first.

Comment by PotatoKing

I don't remember the frostmourne being so epic back in WC3 when Arthas (as a deathknight) held it, took lots of attacks to kill people. Maybe it became more powerful when it's in the Lich King's hands now...

EDIT: It took quite some attacks even when he was attacking normal mobs in WC3 when he was a DK

Comment by 532764

When Facing the Lich Kings waves along the last corridor what worked well for our party was to let him pass by standing off to the side (careful not to fall off ledge). Then as he pursues Jaina you wont be in a time crunch to slay the waves as he and his damaging aura move forward. The waves will come to party behind the Lich King so no worries of them going after Jaina.
We did it with Warrior tank, Deathnight DPS, Ret-Pally DPS, Hunter DPS, and Druid Healer
Gearscores ranging from 2480-4280.

Comment by 124017

gearscore aint even important, I've pugged wiht a pally in full greens with barely 16k HP buffed and he was doing the second best DPS on the group cuz he knew how to play his class, that's all there is to it......

You make some good points rankkorr, but you can't overlook the fact that gear is a huge element to this game, and Blizzard tunes the difficulties of their dungeons and boss encounters to certain levels of gear. It's great that your pally in full greens knew how to play his class, but the quality of his gear is a hard cap to his performance (and his position as second best dps could also be attributed to poor gear and/or poor play by the other dps).

Most dungeons are very forgiving of poorly geared players because the party can move at its own pace, pull when everyone's ready, take time to drink and rez, and it mostly just comes down to how quickly you can clear the instance. Heroic Halls of Reflection is not one of those dungeons. The pulls come whether you're ready or not, rezzing someone in the middle of a wave encounter may not be possible short of a battle rez, and Falric's Hopelessness + Defiling Horror combo can really challenge a healer if the dps can't burn off the last 10% of his health quickly enough.

For example, we brought two friends whose alts had just dinged 80 (and who we knew to be experienced WoW players) into the ICC heroics for the 232 drops, did fine in FoS and PoS, but simply did not have enough dps to outrun the Lich King in HoR.

You're right about needing skill to make the most of your gear, but gearscore is still important for difficult content. Keep in mind that PuG's and The Dungeon Finder have no way of evaluating an individual player's level of skill or knowledge of their class. So while some people may use gearscore to feed their elitism, for others it's the only available option to put together a group that isn't bound to fail.

Comment by Bareno

Just a FYI, they've implemented a new measure to prevent people from using the 'ledge tactic', so if you attempt to use it, you will get BLOWN away (In not a good way)

Comment by 202865

As of 3.3.2, Arthus or the Lich King has a New buff Something Called "Pain and Suffering". which do a 2k tick to anyone near him, about 20 yard radius. so If you are doing the Rear Tactic on the Last Encounter, where you have to escort Jaina/Sylva, You have to be at the Edge of the Cliff or may not be able to do the rear tactic at all. you will know if you are getting 2k tic damage if you see a Purple Line between you and Lich King. and thats with Priest's Buff.

I found very easy when everyone in your grp Dps and Nuke Mobs at the Mob Waves at the Begining. Priority Order i had was:
Priest>Mage>Rogue>Hunter>Warr.
but If there is a Warr that have less hp then the hunter, we take care of the Warr first, then go to Hunter. We made everyone, literaly, everyone do single target dps and no AoE. The grp was teamed with LFG X-Server. we did not wipe up till Lich king, due to the fact that we didnt know his New Buff. The Team was: Paladin tank, Shaman heal, Hunter, Mage (Me) and a Priest.

Good luck you all. this instance is not a joke.

Comment by batmonkey

This one is effing tough. I just made 80 two days ago and managed to tank both Gundrak and Drak on heroic without a problem (with a measly gear score of 1145). Got all !@#$y and went here on normal... absolutely brutal. If you're undergeared at all as a tank, your healer must be fantastic, and your DPS must have humility and a basic level of intelligence. Make sure that everyone knows what the hell is going on, particularly during the escape - we made it through the 1st 2 bosses easily only to wipe repeatedly when the DPS ran behind the ice wall (you would think that after the second time they might have a clue). Hunters and locks need to control their pets - the wipe that ended the attempt resulted from the hunter's pet pulling aggro on a mob behind Arthas, out of range of taunts, behind the aura. The melee made a grand sacrificial offering trying to charge through it before Arthas reached Jaina, but 8k a sec is no joke, and that's a big aura.

On a side note, I had a question for y'all. I personally don't want to go back here until I'm better geared (not really into %^&*ing people off, even in a random), but still want to get my daily random in - for some reason the dungeon finder keeps sending me back to the instance (3x in a row last night). Is there a reason for this?

Comment by 286251

I was wondering if anyone was finding this instance to be bugged.

The other day I was running this instance on separate occasions, after 3.2.2, we got up to the Lich King event. We're running since we can't do from behind anymore. We just finished the first wave/the wall down and he does his Fury of Frostmourne and wiped us. We were wondering what happened, considering this has never happened before, even before we knew that we could do it from behind.

I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this or has happened to them. Just wanted to point it out.

Comment by azimuth

Anyway knows what are the requirements to be queued for HC HoR on Dungeon Finder? It says I need better gear, I have min. lvl 200 items. Should be higher?

Comment by gomibako

AS OF 3.3.2, THE FOLLOW-ARTHAS EXPLOIT NO LONGER WORKS.
Try it and he'll one-shot your entire group. There also seems to be a bug where he bolts your group even when in front of him, but I'm sure Blizz will fix this soon.

Anyways, a lot of people are upset with the new GS requirement for this dungeon, but I'm glad Blizz made it this way. While GS does not determine skill, it does give a good description of your survivability, and a rough idea of how much you'll be able to heal/dps. (Much like item and character levels.) Granted that the more skilled you are, the better the numbers you'll be putting out, but in HoR, skill will only take you so far. A lot of the instance is a DPS race, and the adds hurt for a lot. If your numbers can't keep up with your teammate's numbers, then you'll wipe. Simple as that.

That being said, I find that a group with gear scores of 4500+ will ensure a smooth run. Add skill and cooperation to that, and you'll have a ridiculously easy run.

glhf

Comment by Efflixi

You can't rely on the gears core mod or wow-heroes or anything like that. Blizzard doesn't use that to do the equipment check. It's actually far simpler, they use an average item level. My priest (4700 GS), at AiL of 226 (mixture of 219-245 gear) is allowed in while my druid (4100 GS) with an AiL of 213 is not. I don't know the exact limit but 219 seems about right since that's the level of gear that drops in the normal version and they probably want you fully 219 geared before attempting this place.

Comment by 498827

I found being a Ret Pally helps a lot in this instance.

Why?

Undead mobs!

Exorcism, Holy Wrath, and Sense Undead Glyph works wonders vs these mobs. Still, you have to be on top of your game to make it through. Use every trick, and give the healer a break every now and then.....use Divine Storm! pretty good damage, and even throws some heals to the group.

Its not out of the ordinary for a well geared ret pally who knows his class, to top the DPS chart here (even in heroic) and by a pretty good margin, at that.

~Dusk

*EDIT*

though, losing your tank/healer/dps mid party sucks.... or right after bosses.

Comment by 544560

Tips for this instance: cc mobs(fear/sheep/turn evil/sharkle/sharp/blind...) if you r pre WOTLK raider u will understand wat i said.

Comment by 93832

When I get this on random, I leave. It had the potential to be brutal on regular and on heroic, especially with a pug/random, not even worth it.

Comment by 271963

This can get hairy if you aren't on your toes.

To all Ret Paladins, be a good pal and work CC abilities as so many have mentioned before. Stuns (HoJ/Repent), Holy Wrath and Turn Evil are life savers for everyone. Then hit for general damage with consecration and divine storm.

Also use Cleanse whenever you can. The diseases here are brutal. I keep healbot running on my ret for this purpose, for the times when the healer needs some breathing room.

Comment by Archangel76

I'd like to add a few things, some of which already said. I gave the good ones a +1 for their contributions.

I ran as a DK dps, so I'm going to discuss from that perspective.

The BIGGEST thing for a plate dps in this fight is pretty simple......
KNOW how to Off-tank. A lot of the heroics and such you can get away with just letting the tank pull and burn down a target. Not here. BE PREPARED. Zoom out your camera a bit and watch for casters/healers getting aggro from incoming mobs. In a lot of the fights, the mobs come in staggered.

The waves in the first portion, we found it easier to deal with these in the alcove behind Falric. Breaking line of sight initially "can" force the mobs to move within melee range. The tank, be prepared to move around to grab aggro and pull the mobs onto you. As a DK, my handy tool was death grip, where I pulled casters/ranged mobs into our little circle of destruction. Our casters took the short downtime after each wave to re-juice their mana.

Falric and his buddy were both pretty simple to be honest. The tank HAS to keep them focused on themselves. They do have some abilities that can crush melee dps and clothies, but relatively, these guys are both straightforward "boss" fights. Tank keeps aggro, dps keep off to the sides or back a little bit, healers keep your distance.

The Frost General or whatever the large skeleton after that was, I don't know what the tank experienced, but this was another straightforward fight. Some adds drop in mid-fight, so be prepared to pull aggro off healers and pull them back to the tank.

The Lich King encounter, again, essentially waves of mobs. Usually kicks off with a pack of ghouls, pretty soft mobs really, but they come in spread somewhat and staggered. Found usually one or two went for casters as the tank got the first few.
If the tank is on their toes, they can move and collect the bunch. The second wave is usually abominations and vry'kul casters. Collecting them onto the tank can be interesting. These come about 15 to 20 seconds after the ghouls and they come in staggered also.

Key to the Lich King "chase encounter"
1) Aggro mobs onto the tank. Off tank any loose ones back to the tank. Keep the mobs in a nice tight group on the tank.
2) BURN down the tank's target. All casters need to focus on that target to help keep aggro on the tank and not pulling any of the extra mobs.
3) Burn through the waves as quickly as possible. This is basically a race to eliminate mobs against an "invisible" timer.
4) Keep the Lich King in view. Our tank turned his back to him and didn't realize how close he was at one point. He got crushed.... we soon followed. His distance serves as the timer. The closer he gets, well, the more serious you need to be about getting those mobs whacked.

Shadowspa's post up above gives great details on the specifics for each boss/mob you'll encounter. +10 for their post if I could.

Other good ones above are:
Supremacy
TWMNN
Reunilana

Those match up with what my group experienced and were the most useful.

Comment by fanficbug

Pallies can also turn on shadow resist aura to make the first boss fight easier. Dunno about everybody else, but I find the first boss to be the hardest part of the instance as a pally healer.

Comment by 502217

During the final chase scene with LK heading your way, move the party into the crevase near the walls that appear. You can LoS pull the waves this way to you.

As a prot pally tanking this, I've found that cooldown timing for longer CDs with each individual wave is crucial to being able to properly pull waves and keep aggro as they arrive(i.e. - holding Holy Wrath and Hammer of Justice until the larger mobs arrive). Holy Wrath is a life saver when timed right with the final zerg in wave four.

Comment by Salculd

As a healer, an extremely common problem I've run into in this instance is the lack of sufficient time to rez people who die between waves. However, tonight I suddenly realized a very easy solution to this, outside of being a druid, which I'd pushed far enough back in my mind due to its otherwise irrelevancy that I'd forgotten about it: jumper cables! They only have a 3s cast time, its cast time is affected by haste, and there's one built into the gnomish army knife, so engineers do, in fact, have a tool to circumvent that problem.

Caveats: It only has a ~66% success rate and the resurrected person will revive at extremely low health, so be prepared to nuke-heal them and drop aggro really quickly somehow, especially if it ends up clipping closely to the beginning of the next wave. Still very much worth trying, though.

Comment by 560575

Do i need to complete a quest to unlock the instance?

Comment by 92763

As a paladin tank farming this to replace emblem gear, I've found this is by far the worst instance I've had to run where I constantly lose gear to ninja plate-wearers. It's an extra burn that the instance itself is not exactly novice tank friendly, so you work extra hard to be ripped off here. I can't recommend enough that you run this either with hand-picked non-plate puggers or guildies. The random dungeon system will only get you ninjaed over and over and over.

Comment by Elarieline

My hunter has got 2 peices of teir 10 and 3 of teir 9 with assorted trinkets and what not. AND IT STILL WON'T LET ME IN HERIOC! Grrr.....

Comment by evilsaint

It's worth noting (hasn't been mentioned in 120+ comments) that the exterior entrance to the three instances is *not* the same entrance as for ICC10/25. It's farther up vertically on the mountain, starting with a cave entrance at 52.6, 89.4 turning into a tunnel with three gates and the summoning stone at 54.4, 90.7.

Comment by 330018

Managed to run through the walls before The Lich King put up the first wall. I simply used aspect of the pack + The nitro boosts engineering enhancement/Rocket boots Xtreme and relaxed at the end of the dungeon while my group members almost wiped. >:)

Comment by 567778

This is a horrifying instance to get when you've just built yourself a fresh healing set and queue up for the experience. Even on a normal random, which I'd selected to ensure I had my hotkeys and addons set, and I got this run for my third go. We succeeded; tank lived, DPS came and went, and that wasn't too bad for a really new healer.

Heroic is even more terrifying. Got this as my second run queuing up for heroics. But once you succeed - and we did, this feckless random PUG (bless you guys), an hour and a half later - you will fear no other instance and you and your healbot/grid will have become one seamless, cybernetic whole.

Holy Pals - you want your mana regen nice and toasty. I very much recommend the Triumph trinket and the ToC trink. If you can get a buff nosh, do it. (I didn't, but I'm gonna be packing from here on out just in case) Shadow resist aura will help more than Conc on the waves in my opinion, because you don't have to worry about spell pushback so much as pure interrupts or, well, dying. The resist will mitigate some damage during the waves. Blow your Plea any chance you can get, every chance, whatever chance. I know you're told that, but you'll need it. 20-25k mana is enough so long as you can manage your regen. If you're a belf, hit that torrent. Every little bit.

FoL healers, you're boned unless you're geared from here to Hoboken. If you are, you don't need these comments anyway. This is an HL spam city. You don't want to risk an underheal, because the rogue mobs will fillet your tank if you're both unlucky.

You're told never to let bacon drop. DON'T LET BACON DROP. And refresh when you can, not just at cooldown, because you may not know when you'll have the next second.

Abuse your bubble as needed, but also judge when's the best moment. Avenging Wrath is your buddy, but the mobs will come to you like they smell the bag of candy you're hiding in your pants. Protect yourself. There is nothing like smelling the end of the instance when you are suddenly both nailed by the CoDoom damage and a just-arrived abom at the exact same second. The tank should be on his game and putting out as much AOE threat and control as possible, but it may be that he's as terrified as you and needs a split second to get the "AIEEEOMGOMG" out of his system.

This is not advice for the experienced. This is for the frightened novice that sees the Citadel wallpaper come up on zone-in and prepares to cry for mama. Cry for mama. She's there for you. But you can do it.

Comment by 597970

Warriors, if you're looking for techniques on tanking this place, then I've got some tips you might want to consider. I am by no means a "Warrior pro" or anything, but I have done it using these techniques.

First you must realize that this may very well be the hardest 5 man heroic dungeon Blizzard has ever introduced. Not only because of the fact the trash mobs are extremely tough to kill and hit extremely hard, but because they are also wave based, giving healers hardly any time at all to drink up, and the area itself is very limited

Warriors will have a tough time tanking this thing, there's no doubt about that. They don't have the AoE that other tanking classes do. If you miss a mob in your Thunder Clap, then that could be a wipe right there if you don't make up for it real quick. This can be frustrating when DPS start before you get a chance to gather them all up and build up some rage to do a clap. (Note that you have very few opportunities to use Charge here, so keep that in mind)

The best way to do this in my opinion is to go up to the side near one of the bosses and try to pull them using line of sight by having everyone stack up in the corner. Unfortunately, people don't always like to remember to stack up again before each wave, so you'll have to watch out for that.

Things to watch out for:

Ranged mobs. These can be deadly if not picked up right away. They usually like to go for the healer as soon as they spawn because he's the one putting beneficial effects on everybody else, which tips the aggro scale to focus on him right away. If the healer is smart, he'll be in the corner. If not, then you'll have to pull some quick tricks to get the mobs where you want them. Below are some techniques you can try to get a ranged mob gathered up with the rest. I will list them one mob type at a time.

Riflemen: If you see a Rifleman out by himself, then you might want to first do a Thunder Clap on the mobs already at you, keeping your aggro up with them, then quickly targeting the Rifleman, charging him, disarming him, then either intercepting one of the mobs you just charged away from, or using intervene on a party member near the action (intervening the healer is recommended). Disarming him forces him to close in to melee range to attack you. Note: You might want to throw a taunt of some sort on him to ensure that he will focus on you.

Mages: Mages can be deadly if left alone to attack whomever they choose. You need to grab these pretty quickly. Luckily, Warriors have 2 silences, assuming the Warrior took the Gag Order talent (which I HIGHLY recommend) Use this to your advantage. If a Mage is out there being a pain and not coming in within Clap range, then use a Heroic Throw on them. Doing so will silence the mage, forcing it to close in to melee range. Heroic Throw deals a lot of aggro itself, so you may not need to taunt it. If not, then go ahead and throw a taunt on it. Using spell reflection here is a good idea as well, as it avoids 100% of the damage that it would have caused on a Frostbolt or other such spell and then damage the mage itself as well. Any healer will love you if you use spell reflection effectively. If your Heroic Throw is on cooldown, then try the trick with the Riflemen mentioned above, but instead of disarming, use shield bash (not to be confused with shield slam).

Edit: I will continue this for the other mobs in a reply to this comment.

Comment by 597970

Another thing about the Mages is that they'll use hallucination, which clones themselves. The hallucination has less damage resistance and dies much faster than the Mage itself. A shield slam crit can do well over 10,000 damage on the hallucination, so killing that first might be a good idea. Whatever you decide to do, just make sure to pick up the hallucination quickly, as it will be a fresh mob who will jump to the first person to get aggro on it.

Now that we've covered the ranged mobs, let's talk about the melee ones.

Footmen: They're not all that bad. They don't have much in the way of special abilities, but they make up for that by just hitting very hard each attack. If there are no Riflemen to worry about, then sticking a disarm on them might be a good idea. It has certainly worked to my advantage before. Disarm prevents them from using Spectral Strike which is a VERY good thing, as an attack that ignores all of your armour is pretty powerful. Note that this mob also has shield bash, which interrupts spellcasting.

Shadowy Mercenaries: These guys are VERY tough. They're like rogues on steroids, so leaving one of these alone for more than a couple seconds could mean a wipe. Pick these up ASAP! They have that annoying kidney shot ability which they'll often throw on you or a healer. They also have an annoying poison ability which can stack, making them a big threat. Kill these second! Note that Kidney Shot is the only ability they have that requires a melee weapon, so disarming them may not be the best thing to do. If you have a rogue in the group, get him to dismantle it instead, so that you can focus on other things.

This last one belongs in its own category, because he's not ranged, nor is he a melee fighter.

Ghostly Priests. Kill these first! They heal, they fear, they do AoE damage. 3 very bad things that make this mob a MUST KILL. If you see him casting Dark Mending, then interrupt him by any means, as a heal done by him could be costly.

Some final notes: If you're a Tauren, then save your War Stomps for when the mob count is equal to your target cap for War Stomp, or when things start to get hairy.

That's about all for now. I hope this helps Warriors who are struggling with this instance.

Comment by 98621

I took off/quite right after clearing 25 TOC 7 months ago, seriously imo pugging this sucessfully will be a miracle on heroic with total strangers unless it is a premade which it is nolonger a pug or everyone simply both is overgeared/skilled, and experienced HOR heroic repeatedly, I tried to tank it once as prot war on heroic randoms, I even warned the people this would be my first ime in here, if they wanted a replacement I'd bow out..
We actually made it past the first boss up unitl the 9/10 of the second wave and we kept getting over whelmed, probably due to the fact I wasn't tanking it correct, I had planned going through HOF on an dps alt or my resto a couple of times to see how other tanks handle it, we were using the side room, it would be a hunter or caster that I didn't pick up burning on my healer, that and the fact dps was subpar 3k average, people weren't burning priority targets priest and rogue, the aoe damage with the group being clumped together made the healers job a royal pain compounded by the lack of dps to do quicker kills....hey this is a 5 man raid, people used to complain about magisters terrace....wtf ever, I personally do not think all the responsibilty should fall upon the tanks shoulders either, other classes need to use thier tools sets i.e. cc,disrupt etc.......and follow kill orders and not worry about dps meters.
Absolutely agree, the first mob that needs to die is the priest or you are asking for a unecessarily prolonged fight.....I think ranged dps should be in charge of marking targets, I think a group should spend the intial time setting up the kill order instead of worrying about burning mobs down, take 1-3 seconds, meanwhile the tank has had a chance to tag all mobs and gained additional aggro...yes the tank will be taking a lot of damage but any healer worth thier weight can tank heal, but tank healing is much easier then trying to keep yourself and the dps up as well with major heals.
I' am going in with old friends I used to raid with a long time ago, we will wipe a couple of time but we will get it down....would I do it as a pug again on heroic? .....HELL NO!

Comment by alexataide

I am feeling kind of stupid of never trying it on the waves, but does anyone know if Priests are able to schackle those dudes?

Comment by 355455

Hasn't anyone thought of why The Lich King doesn't just walk into you with that instakilling aura of his, instead of sending pesky undeads your way?

Believe it or not, you do get an answer to all those pesky "why doesn't Arthas just kill us" questions that have been plaguing people since we first set foot in Northrend. There's actually a method to his madness, so to speak, and you find out when you get to the final showdown with him in the Icecrown Citadel raid.

**SPOILER**

He knew eventually Tirion would show up on his doorstep with a bunch of adventurers, and has basically been throwing all this stuff at us to test us, cull the weak among us, and make us stronger, so that only the very best fighters would come knocking. The plan was then to instagib these adventurers and raise them as his generals.

So you could say that the gauntlet in Halls of Reflection is just another part of that plan.

Comment by 57953

A part of me hates this instance, but i keep getting the urge to do it as the music in the "chase" part of the instance is epic :)

Comment by 625643

Tanked normal a few hours ago with my pala,3,5gs 1st time.No noticable problems but it was quite difficult to hold aggro from the 5,5k gs pala...his power tho seemed to do the trick,so i too recommend some GOOD DPS.

Comment by 109740

Spectral Footmen have a reasonably damaging melee attack, but that's about it. Just keep them on a tank.

Don't underestimate the footmen. Their interrupt hitting the healer is probably what wipes most capable groups, so the healer shouldn't be standing anywhere near them.

Some tips for a priest healer:

If your group is using LoS method, have them all stand on the opposite side of the alcove to you, and fade each wave so the mobs generally don't come near you (fade 2 seconds after dbm says wave incoming.)
Keep yourself fear warded.
The rifleman likes to stand at range no matter how much you try to LoS him, so he is likely to aggro you eventually. If this is happening take the initiative and shackle him.
If you're disc, save penance. Most damage can be handled with bubble/flash/poh, keep penance for the emergencies (like kidney shot on the tank.)

Other tips:

Decurse.
Death grip.
Don't assume you don't have to LoS just because you're a rogue, you can be hit by ice shot while stealthed.
If you notice the mage casting flamestrike interrupt it, otherwise don't bother.
The next wave always comes a few seconds after the mobs of the previous wave are dead, but the mage's hallucination doesn't count as a wave mob for this.
Don't queue for H HoR while half asleep/drunk/high =)

Comment by Lindaron

I have no clue why everyone says this instance is so "hard"..Lol i healed this on my pally with a ungeared tank just hitting 30k hp and decent dps. I kept the tank up 80%+ the whole time and everyone else as well and not a single death, but then agian pally healing is very powerful. I imagine its because my sacred shield absorbs 7k damage plus the HoT i leave on him. Not a hard instance at all just do your thing like any other. :P

Comment by 499570

A few comments about this instance:

There are only 4 waves of undead spirits before each of the bosses, not 5 (the bosses themselves counts as waves).

Shackle Undead works best when you are using the LoS technique, where the mage/hunter would be just out of sight for most DPS'es, hence would be ignored most of the time by time until the others go down. Priority shackle goes to the mage, she can dish some really nasty damage. This is exceptionally important for healer if your tank didn't see the mage, and possibly forgivably so since the melee mobs are huge. The mage will most likely go for the healer when they are out of range of the group, since it is the only person that can generate aggro without any LoS. Healers doesn't have to deal with hunters so much, their normal shot doesn't do nearly as much damage. If you have to choose between mage or hunter to CC, mage wins.

Also, you can use your Shackle undead as a mini interrupt. It won't lock them out of anything at all, but when you notice the mage casting Flamestrike, throw a shackle on it. It will interrupt it even if she is being attacked by 20 mobs, and she will most likely cast something afterwards.

For healers without CC, use LoS to your advantage to lure the mage/hunter closer to the group, so your tank can pick it up easier.

Death Knight tanks: use your Strangulate and death grip healthily, they are your best tanking assets. These, and Anti-Magic shells are exceptionally useful against the mages. Icebound fortitude is a godsend here as well.

For the LK chase: For Death Knight tanks, do not bother trying to tank the Ghouls, especially from wave 3 onwards. If you try to tank the ghouls, you will find yourself completely out of runes or moves to tank the far more damaging Abominations and witch doctors. The ghouls do little damage even on cloth, so there is no point trying to tank them.

Comment by Kattenh

I've ran this instance alot (both normal and heroic) on my holy pally, granted it was hard in the beginning but once I got the hang of it i never had any problems (unless the group was extremely undergeared or didnt know the encounter at all).
Tried heroic today with my resto druid, relatively new dinged 80 but good enough gear to heal this anyway.

Each and every time a new wave would spawn, they would come for me because of some heal over time still ticking on someone in the party. The tank took like 4-5 seconds before even trying to get them off me, at which point I was dead.

Tank leaves, we find a new one. Same thing happens. I tell the tank he has to be quicker grabbing that aggro in the start.
I die again in an instant when they come, tank seems to have really slow reflexes. I start going into bearform before every wave, and a few times that saved me with like 5-10% left when tank picked them up.
At this point im fairly frustrated with the tank, and also people seem to blame me, someone asked "healer why are you dying". Weird question, obviously cause the tank is not picking up the aggro initially.

We get to the first boss, all is going well until I get Impending Despair debuff, the 6 sec stun. We got a pally in the group but of course he's not cleansing before the stun hits.
So im stunned and the tank goes down. I immediately combat res after the stun, and start healing everyone up who have been taking heavy damage. I get Impending Despair again, no cleanse, and the tank dies again. "Healer why arent you healing?"

Well, after this we try one last time. I still get mauled in the beginning of the waves and barely survive. If i stick my nose out from behind the corner i get targeted by the ranged mobs, but if I stay in the corner im not in line of sight of the group and cant heal.
During the first wave after the wipe i get this ridiculous comment from the rogue: "drud plzz heal tank". I reply sarcastically with "rog plz do dmg". The warrior calls me a noob and gives a wide variety of less than flattering remarks.
I get unlucky in the corner and get hit by the footmans silence, and of course the tank cant take a few seconds without healing and dies. Combat res is on cd, so we wipe, and everyone leaves.

Comment by 643320

To make things easier for myself (warrior tank) and my party, i made this 2 button macro for marking and telling kill priority. Thought someone else might find it handy :)

Click this macro once after each spawn to mark up all the mobs. Change the priority as you see fit.
This kill priority is:

Priest // Skull
Mercenary (Rouge) // Cross
Mage // Triangle
Footman (Warrior) // Diamond
Rifleman (Hunter) // Circle

/tar Ghostly
/script SetRaidTarget("target",8);
/tar Shadowy
/script SetRaidTarget("target",7);
/tar Phantom Mage
/script SetRaidTarget("target",4);
/tar Spectral
/script SetRaidTarget("target",3);
/tar Tortured
/script SetRaidTarget("target",2);

Use this macro to tell your party the kill priority.

/p KILL PRIORITY
/p 1st = {rt8}
/p 2nd = {rt7}
/p 3rd = {rt4}
/p 4th = {rt3}
/p 5th = {rt2} (Shackle or any form of CC if available)

Comment by Kazi12

Last fight is bugged, we had a pally tank and we wiped, when the lich king did the aoe one shot, ardent defender kept our pally live, he then heald up and rezed us, the event how ever reset.

I would assume rogue cheat death would save your ass, as well as pally bubble.

Doesn't rly change anything but odd indeed.

Comment by phoi

as a healer, here are a few things that make me wince: tanks, use your CC's. warriors need to be disarming mercs and hunters, and stunning and silencing casters. pallies need to be fearing or stunning ranged ghosts. every little bit counts in here.

Comment by 148868

One thing has been bugging me for quite some time. Jaina is a mage. So why doesn't she just put Slow Fall on the entire party and proceed to jump off the edge? Or even open a city portal, since Arthas IS frozen in a lump of ice for the time being.

On a more serious note. It looks like no one has mentioned Tricks of the Trade yet. Rogues should help the tank to some threat through TotT+Fan of Knives (and TotT+Blade Flurry+Killing Spree if combat-specced) on every trash pull.

Comment by 663970

wtf is going every dungeon i search or look for on here is giving me 5 drops and not the dungeon drops and its pissing me off only the raid drops are showing other than that im getting Manual: Heavy Frostweave Bandage
Recipe: Bad Clams
Recipe: Haunted Herring
Recipe: Last Week's Mammoth
Recipe: Tasty Cupcake
these are the five drops im getting is there something wrong with wowhead's database

Comment by 62855

Wow, I'm gearing up my pally tank and am at the point where I want/need regular HoR. Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron come up all the time in the queue, but never HoR. Finally went in and put it in as a specific dungeon request, and I've been queued as a tank for 22 minutes. No one wants to do this instance on regular anymore.

Comment by Zesha

I hope someone from the blizz staff reads this and bring this to its rightfull owner. I had a hard time getting the gear to get into this instance hc mode, and when i finaly do get into it i get in group with a dk which got a mixture of pvp/tank and proper dps spec gear, no way he'd pass that gearcheck if it was one every time u enterd that place, which should be mandatory imo. thank you for reading this

Comment by 91650

Having healed this instance and gotten really annoyed about having to Fade at the beginning every wave (holy priest FTW) despite using the LOS strat, I tried using direct heals (Circle of Healing, unglyphed Prayer of Healing, * Heal, Binding Heal, Prayer of Mending, and those) only. Surprisingly enough, my aggro issues went away. The mobs body pulled to the tank, no sweat.

I tanked it today on an ICC- geared DK (yes, I've tanked thru Saurfang, and could prolly go farther with an upgrade or two) and got in a huge argument with a druid who felt he could spam HOTs and the mobs would still come to me. Unfortunately, the DPS bought his argument about "needing a tank with a brain" when they wasn't even targeting my target (I know for a fact the boomkin was trying to solo the mages and riflemen). So he was HOTing them up, using only Healing Touch on me, and still pulling aggro from his HOTs.

Those two or three ticks before the mobs can get into the tank's Consecrate or D&D can make a really huge difference, especially if they're going off on four or five players at once.

So yeah, if you're a healer and don't want to risk aggro issues, don't use HOTs, or only use them at the beginning of each wave once the tank has aggro, and then switch to direct heals as the mobs start to drop.

Comment by 588530

This is odd because Falric and Marwyn are not ghosts in the WC III cinematic. The two acolytes that are next to arthas are the captains. They are just like arthas being deathknights.

Comment by 798291

the annoying thing about this place is that you have to do a quest to get in there, wich i have ofc but still

Comment by Taraezor

As a i365 or thereabouts Enhancement Shammy it took a few tries but eventually I got through solo.

The key is: after the first of the boss pair there is a very decent break to rebuff and loot. Plenty of time for your cooldowns to be ready for the next five waves.

However, if you did die after the first of the pair is down then when you redo the waves you will not get this respite but you will plough on to the last of the pair.

See notes elsewhere on Wowhead for the specifics of these two bosses. I had my PvP fear trinket equipped as appropriate as well as my Tremor Totem on my main hotbar.

Essentially, you have ten waves of multiple mobs to deal with and within each wave the mobs begin from separate locations around the edge of he circular room and then they move towards you. This makes the decision to use any AoE a really individual and class based choice. A frost mage might care to nuke one or two as they combine and to then cast a Frost Nova on the remainder. An enhancement shaman wouldn't be bothered as there are less than optimal numbers of mobs. A Blood DK would find a little D&D obviously useful.

After that is trivial, a lone mob plus a feeble mirror of yourself that can be three shotted, until you run up the ramp to the good Lady who is making remarkably good progress against the Lich KIng but sadly, about to die. She decides to make a run for it and wants you to come too. You click on her to say you are ready.

While running away the Lich King puts up several ice barriers. They come down after you defeat several waves, each lot of mobs stronger than the last.

At the ice barrier about 3/4 of the way towards the escape destination you will want to have your cooldowns available. I used my elemental totem to tank here, my racial and trinkets. Didn't use Bloodlust because I thought I had one more barrier, wasn't sure.

How you would go as a Frost DK I don't know, at the same gear level as me. Sure you have your AoE and where the mobs will clump together is predictable. But your heals can be few and far between. May have to resort to a few gimmicks especially when you get to the final ice barrier. Army maybe. I will not try this as a rogue.

I was glad I bothered to buff up, well fed and blew a few flasks. I felt it gave me the necessary edge. Loot everything to cover your repair bills. I would say I at least broke even as some epic items will vendor in the 20-25G range!

Comment by 437270

Soloed as i390 feral tank, first two bosses took forever, the add phase was so long, and almost wiped on LK, because barely killed last add to open the ice barrier...- had some rage issues ect, couldn't kill as fast as LK was going...

Comment by healingenzo

Solo'd on my 387 Prot Pally, just to put the ghost to rest.

People forget how F**king impossible this once was as a 5-man. It pretty much made me cry, trying to heal it.

When HOR came up as a random, 1 or 2 people every time would just leave before it started. To finish with the same 5 as you started with was very, very rare - normally with a 6K GS tank and a decent healer. DPS over 3K was preferable. If you had 2 doing under 2.5K you would probably wipe on the waves.

Soloing, it was a bit tight on wall 3 of the escape - I was saving CD's.And I underhealed a bit on wave 4. But held out for the CD of Word of Glory - and it crit'd nicely :)

10K DPS overall with 12K on the last wall. 1.5K HPS, 2k on last wall. 70% Seal of insight.

When that last wall went down, I though - beat him finally - not just survived, but beat the fat boy.

Comment by FyreNight

In case anyone was wondering, i just took a group of guildies in there all about 394 ilvl in an attempt to kill the Lich King durring this dungeon.

He stops losing health at 1hp lol. he can't be killed, sadly.

Links

Halls of Reflection

Icecrown CitadelThe Forge of SoulsPit of SaronHalls of ReflectionFalricMarwynWrath of the Lich KingHalls of ReflectionThe Forge of SoulsPit of Saron

Halls of Reflection

Music

Intro Music

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