Lady Deathwhisper is the second boss in Icecrown Citadel. She is a challenging encounter on 25-man, and fairly trivial on 10-man. This strat guide focuses on the hunter perspective. For a complete raid strat I recommend Tankspot’s Deathwhisper Video. The value of actually seeing a video of a fight cannot be overstated.
Phase 1: Everything Happens
This fight is all about phase 1. If you can make it out of phase 1 then phase 2 should be easy. As a hunter you could get put into a couple of different roles for this fight. Before we get into specifics, let’s take a look at what you’ll have to be dealing with regardless of what job you’re assigned.
- Death & Decay: appears as a large green circle on the ground and damages you if you’re standing in it. Move out of it.
- Mind Controlled Players: be prepared to use your freezing arrow at once if you see a mind-controlled player. Unless your RL specifically tells you not to, this is the responsibility of every crowd-control capable class, including hunters and our crummy crowd control. Note that there is no mind-control in 10-man.
- Curse of Torpor: increases the cooldown of all abilities by 15 seconds, cast by Cult Adherent. That means if this is cast on you and you use steady shot, that now has a 15 sec cooldown before it can be used again. Then you use Explosive Shot, that now has 15 seconds. Your DeadlyBossMods will warn you with giant text in the middle of your screen when this is cast. Immediately stop casting (hit escape) and just auto shot until it is decursed off of you. If your raid is really slow at decursing you may have to just suck it up and do what dps you can (I’ve had every single shot affected by this more than once).
- Mana Barrier: Lady D starts with a mana barrier up, and can’t be hurt until this is dpsed down, which then starts phase 2. All damage done will drain her mana. There were a lot of reports that hunters should use Viper Sting to drain her mana – this is untrue! Your serpent sting will do much more damage than viper sting will drain — thus serpent sting will actually drain her mana faster. That said, if you’re running low on mana yourself, absolutely use viper to regen your mana.
Okay, you always need to be aware of those 4 things so now let’s look at your specific assignments. You’ll probably get one of two jobs: either just dps Lady D, or dps the adds (in which case you’ll be assigned to specific kinds of adds). In 10-man you’ll have to do both. Let’s take a look at these two possible hunter roles:
Job 1: DPS Lady Deathwhisper
This is definitely the easiest role, and one that hunters are well suited for with our high single-target damage, slower dps ramp-up time, and the fact that we can have unlimited mana on her (since we can viper if we ever get low).
She has no aggro during phase 1, so burn your cooldown right off the bat and then again every time you have a good opportunity (ie: on your trinket procs). Be aware of MD’d players and try to trap them. Move out of Death & Decay. Stop casting if you get Curse of Torpor.
It’s also likely that you’ll need to switch to dps down adds that get Empowered, which should be easy enough to do without having to move.
Note that Lady D has a 10 min enrage timer and it takes 14 million damage (25-man) to get through the mana barrier. That means that to drop the mana barrier in 7 minutes (giving 3 min for phase 2) your raid will need to average 33k dps on Lady D, while managing the adds efficiently.
Job 2: DPS the Adds
7 adds spawn at a time (3 in 10-man). The different adds have different abilities, and they can get rezzed by Lady D or empowered, which gives them yet another set of abilities. Your raid leader will tell you which ones you should dps, and which ones you should never dps.
If you’re dpsing the adds just keep looking for and following whatever target your raid leader assigns to you. You’ll want to be standing within range of the boss at all times. Put your pet on Lady D at the start of the fight and just leave it there for the duration. Your pet will do more good contributing its dps to Lady D than running around between adds.
Any time you have a few seconds between adds you should be contributing dps to Lady D. This fight is largely a dps race, requiring high dps on the right adds at the right time and sustained high dps on the boss. Even if you don’t have a few seconds of downtime you should keep a serpent sting on Lady D at all times. When you get to the steady shot part of your rotation, briefly switch over to Lady D and refresh your serpent sting before going back to your add.
Much like hunters with job 1, you can toss up a viper sting on Lady D if you’re having mana problems, and you’ll need to keep an eye out for MD’d players to trap, dodge Death & Decay, and stop casting if you get Curse of Torpor until it’s dispelled.
If you’re doing this on 10-man, you’ll need to dps the adds, and then switch to Lady D between waves of adds. Again, you’ll always want to keep a sting on Lady D, and if your melee are doing well, you can switch back to the boss a bit early.
Phase 2: the Burn
Phase 2 is much, much easier than phase 1. There are no more addds to worry about, and we mostly just burn down the boss. Occasionally Lady D will summon a ghost to chase you around that will blow up if it gets within melee range – just kite it away until it vanishes.
The tanks have some threat issues to deal with in phase 2, so you want to pay extra attention to your threat meter on this fight. Every so often Lady D will actually lower their threat, so even if you’re below the tank on threat, you could suddenly find yourself way too high. This is part of the fight, and it will still be your fault if you pull aggro, so don’t.
Be sure to misdirect to your tank at the start of phase 2, and FD early if it looks like you’re getting close to the tanks on threat. Also keep an eye on the threat of other dpsers. If they’re getting high, help them out with additional misdirects.
Am I Doin’ It Right?
If your raid posts raid parses, here is how you can examine your Deathwhisper performance:
- Look at your Damage Taken. You should have zero damage taken from Death & Decay. None. It is that easily avoidable. So if it’s showing up on there, you may need to work on your situational awareness. Or perhaps your cat is to blame.
- Go to damage done and separate yourself from your pet (by clicking on the small triangle next to your name). Now look at your activity time. Unless you died early, your activity time percentage should be around 96% or higher. If it’s lower that means that you weren’t dpsing anything, and didn’t have serpent sting on Lady D. If you ever have a gap in dps you should be dpsing the boss, and either way you should have a sting on the boss almost all the time.
- Drill down on damage done and look at what targets you did damage to (damage done, click on your character, select damage by actor). Were you dpsing adds that you shouldn’t have been? Dpsing the correct target is almost as important as dpsing at all. How was your dps on the empowered adds?
- Finally, as always, take a look at your damage done totals. If you were assigned to dps the boss, you should be leading the pack at your gear level, behind only rogues or feral druids. If you were assigned to the adds you’ll likely be behind those assigned to the boss. Depending on how your raid handles the adds and clumping, you may have a disadvantage to classes with high splash damage as well.
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My guild has very special plans with this fight for hunters, seeing as we can attack any add we want, we have 5 or 6 (i know alot but we pulled all of them in for it) hunters on adds and kite the green ugly ones around while the rest of the dps is killing the boss, we tryed several strats including yours and this seems to be working best for us even though we havent downed her yet, we have gotten the mana to 3mil before we started to fall apart, im confident we will get it today (mana shield was to 3mil within 3.5min btw) what do you think of this strategy? (and YES hunters can attack any kind of add at full dps as long as they are at range.)
Thx for another great guide Frost. I love these guides and hope that you will bring us more of them.
Since we haven’t managed to clear ToC yet I guess it will be a while before we get in here
Member
“There were a lot of reports that hunters should use Viper Sting to drain her mana – this is untrue! Your serpent sting will do much more damage than viper sting will drain — thus serpent sting will actually drain her mana faster.”
Confirmed:
[21:53:48.013] Lady Deathwhisper afflicted by Viper Sting from Bozanimal
[21:53:50.070] Bozanimal’s Viper Sting leeches 316 mana from Lady Deathwhisper
[21:53:52.037] Bozanimal’s Viper Sting leeches 317 mana from Lady Deathwhisper
[21:53:54.074] Bozanimal’s Viper Sting leeches 316 mana from Lady Deathwhisper
[21:53:56.106] Bozanimal’s Viper Sting leeches 317 mana from Lady Deathwhisper
[21:53:56.106] Lady Deathwhisper’s Viper Sting fades
versus
[22:16:44.153] Lady Deathwhisper afflicted by Serpent Sting from Bozanimal
[22:16:46.958] Bozanimal Serpent Sting Lady Deathwhisper 648 (R: 131)
[22:16:50.035] Bozanimal Serpent Sting Lady Deathwhisper 730 (R: 66)
[22:16:52.914] Bozanimal Serpent Sting Lady Deathwhisper 811
[22:16:55.971] Bozanimal Serpent Sting Lady Deathwhisper 648 (R: 131)
[22:16:59.052] Bozanimal Serpent Sting Lady Deathwhisper 612 (R: 131)
[22:16:59.052] Lady Deathwhisper’s Serpent Sting fades
If you have the two-set bonus from T9, you’ll be doing significantly more damage with Serpent Sting than my numbers show, above.
The real issue on this fight is definitely add control, getting them down quickly and cleanly, if you get to sit on the boss yay for you, but its the easy job. meter padding ftw.
My guild went in all cocky after 1 shotting Marrowgar, and wasted time wiping because of meter whoring.
Yes you shouldn’t try to drain her mana with viper, but it is a very good way once ever few rotations to top yourself off mana wise. My 25 man is somehow replenishment short, although no one ever complains so i suspect its just that MM is a mana eater, but this fight was definitely very good for me, I never had to change aspects.
I’ve been reading/ hearing that hunters will be top overall dps class this patch, finally beating out rogues and ferals, and that pesky dk in my guild with his fancy 4pc and faceroll spec.
Although with the skill of the people in my guild, winning the dps race really always is a race, and super fight dependant, particularly in toc (I haven’t experienced enough of ICC bosses to draw conclusions)
I will say of the 4 bosses out so far its definitely a tossup between lady and saurfang as to which is more challenging. We didn’t have too much trouble with him, but my guild is super ranged heavy, 3 hunters 3 locks 3 mages a shadowpriest/boomkin and occasionally more even than that if we’re unlucky. and all that ranged makes that fight much easier.
I noticed when I did this in 25-man that DPSing the adds some shots hit for 1% while others hit for 100%. Has anyone been able to determine exactly what we should be expecting on Adherents vs. Fanatic in their various forms? What shots work on which? It seemed that the low numbers were very situational, but to be honest I was DPSing what the raid lead told me to DPS and keeping stings up on the boss, which didn’t leave me as much attention as I’d have liked to read every buff and debuff on the adds.
I’d like to have a more solid description for my raid members on thursday when I explain the fight.
Member
Could you please add that if you are a MM spec’ed hunter during the burn phase you should help with interrupting the frostbolt cast? It is very damaging to the tank and on our first kill we were left up with only 2 tanks, myself, a mage, and our healers. It was a long drawn out phase 2 for us, but the frostbolt hit the for 27k on average. We quickly set up an interrupt rotation over vent and instead of using silencing for DPS, it was used for it is designed for
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/mhccjtzhw50m13b5/sum/damageDone/?s=4434&e=4931
Member
PS. Very well written
Admin
I think it is very unlikely that a MM hunter will be asked to use their 1 min cooldown on an interrupt rotation, as opposed to the classes with a 12sec cooldown on their interrupts
Thanks Frost love these new guides!!!
Member
Silencing shot isn’t a 1 minute cooldown…… am I missing something?
Admin
Whoops! No, silencing is a 20 sec cooldown. Still, too long to be part of any standard interrupt rotation. That goes to the guys with 12 sec cooldowns.
Member
If the tank is on top of it yes, the problem we were running into was that the CD of shield bash was too close to the cast time (sorta like Jaraxxus, but we don’t do that for him any more). Due to the slowed down pace of phase 2 it was easier to set it up and to make sure the cast doesn’t go off. Here is a bit of a parse from the fight that was linked:
[20:09:21.390] Lady Deathwhisper begins to cast Frostbolt
[20:09:33.468] Lady Deathwhisper begins to cast Frostbolt
[20:09:45.937] Lady Deathwhisper begins to cast Frostbolt
[20:09:58.031] Lady Deathwhisper begins to cast Frostbolt
It is every 12 seconds and the warrior should be able to get it every time, but in a 10 man, not everyone is going to have an interrupt. Luckily there’s usually a DK in my raid that I can count on to do this (sadly he was dead for that part of the fight), but should the warrior and DK not be there (backup is a pally tank), then the interrupts in my group are left down to me and a mage. What I’m saying is that this spell does a lot of damage to the tank, as mentioned, 27k which could drop a tank in the blink of an eye. Fortunately we haven’t had to deal with a raid situation like that yet, but on a rare occasion it may fall to us to interrupt that cast.
Another option that we used was to have our two hunter on the mana shield full time while the rest of the raid took care of the adds. Worked out very well. We would call out every 10% then from 5 down it was every one. We’d then time her sheild to come down when the last add went down. Got it on our second attempt. Makes the hunters job se easy.
Member
Downed her last night with my 25 man team. Being one of the two hunters i was glad to see the Bow she dropped.
[Zod's Repeating Longbow]
541 – 887 Damage
2.80 speed
34 agility
51 stamina
“”Equip : Your ranged attacks have a 4% chance to cause you to instantly attack with this weapon for 50% weapon damage”
Quote “Kneel before him (how fitting)”.
By far one of the best ranged weapon around now.
Member
“There were a lot of reports that hunters should use Viper Sting to drain her mana – this is untrue! Your serpent sting will do much more damage than viper sting will drain — thus serpent sting will actually drain her mana faster.”
Frost, do you have the theorycrafting behind this? I’m still running into a lot of people who don’t believe this.
Yeah i was lucky enough to get the bow last week.
its interesting because it’s actually a downgrade stat-wise from the 25 heroic toc xbow (deaths head crossbow) i forget what its called ally side. But the top end dips is pretty badass, as is the proc on use. discuss this new bow! (and any/all icc gear)
Admin
Grambo: we have both theorycrafting and actual raid parses that prove it.
On the theorycraft side: advise your unbelievers to read their tooltips for serpent and viper. Viper drains a maximum of 8% of *your* own mana. So 8% of hunter mana is what it will drain. Serpent does a lot more damage than that, even if you don’t count the critting from the t9 bonus. Remember, all damage reduces her mana (1 damage reduces her mana by 1).
In practice, raid parses can show how much was drained vs. how much damage serpent sting does. In fact I believe someone posted the relevant part above.
Viper is great because you gain 300% of the mana that is actually drained – great for replenishing your mana. Bad for lowering Lady D’s shield.
Member
Thank you very much for your quick response!
Dues Payer
Thank you Frost for your excellent hunter guides this is definitely awesomesauce, looks like you have done all the hard work for me all i need to do is go and put it into practice and have fun . Looks like a early Christmas Present from the WHU these boss fight guides rock !.
@Dergidan:
You shoudnt be firing your magic damage shots (Chimera, Arcane, Serpent St., Wild quiver proc or Explosive in case you are SV) on Skeletal Adherent because they are 99% immune to magic. And you shoudnt fire physical DMG shots (autoshot, Aimed, Piercing Shots, Kill and Steady) on Skeletal Fanatics
All this considered, you shoudnt be
focused on Skeletal Fanatics at all because you could only use shots that deal approx 30% of your total damage – just throw Serpent sting and Chimera (or Explosive) greeting at him, eating 20K of his health, and left him for mages to finish him. On the other hand, you should be burning down Skeletal fanatics with Aimed, 5x Steady rotation + Kill shot if available
WTB edit button: I obviously meant you should be burning down SKELETAL ADHERENTS with Aimed and Steady… Thanks for not flaming me
@Deepfried:
Thanks for the specifics. I assume this only applies when they are skeletal and I can nuke the normal versions with whatever.
Does anyone still flame over stuff like that? I knew what ya meant
Our 10-man group has 2 hunters and one of our casters is out this week. We have 2 hunters, Warlock, DPS Warrior. My next in line alt is a DK. Are we ok with only one caster DPS on this fight or should I pass over the DK to get a mage?
great write up. we were having some problems with the adds on 10man last night, so we will try again tonight! this time we knowing what we are up against!
Thanks especially for the “Am I Doing It Right?” section! I found that to be a very good read. And yep, I was beaten in the boss DPS by a rogue and a feral druid but now I don’t have to go weep in the corner.
Great approach for the Adherents! I am assuming it would be best then to split up the hunters as equal as possible to concentrate on the adherent adds to pick up any slack or lack of physical damage. Our physical damage mele seem to be having issues downing the normal adds.
BTW: Has anyone tried to tank the Skeletal adds with a hunter using Distracting shot to start kiting them towards the back steps? Essentially this does a couple things: Eliminates the need for 3 tanks on this fight as one of them can go dps for faster burn of normal adds. If you coordinate the other two tanks to start taunting the skeletal add back as it gets closer to you, the add is always in motion, not attacking other ppl. Distracting Shot only has 8 sec CD so you could theortically keep it busy while only ranged burns the skeletal add. The other bonus of this is that the mele dont waist time running back to the steps to burn him down. I only pose this approach if the original adds arent going down fast enough. Also, a healer would be dedicated to the hunter as they would already be on the 3rd tank anyway (that is now dps). I have read that this approach is working for some people. Thoughts, criticisms, improvements, junk?
here’s the Tankspot vid for the 10man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXTE2VJSJS0
EDIT: I am talking about the 25m encounter, the 10m seems to be a breeze.
Thought I’d throw out the Tremor video strategy for Lady D. I found it very neat and tidy compared to normal way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_L1d17e77I&feature=player_embedded
Hope this helps
Forgot to add, this is the 10man encounter.
First kill on 25 man last night. So, I’m happy. As a SV hunter I wasn’t noticing that the caster adds were resisting any damage from explosive shot.
The melee adds sure as hell do reduce damage from shots (I saw huge numbers like 41 pop out), but I’m pretty sure I could explosive shot them as well.
We raid with 3-4 hunters and I was trying to find out info between attempts to back this up. None of us could get a good enough read on it to say with confidence that it was one way or the other. What’s the word on Explosive Shots fire damage. I’m pretty sure I saw it damaging the casters fine as well as hitting the melee.
Could some one explain how the damage reduction works? The more I look it up the more confused I become. No info source I’ve found is consistent or credible.
What about the pet? Should I use spider for this encounter for 30% mana regeneration and relatively low range encounter with the lady? Spider could also entangle a target in web for 4 seconds if it was needes for any reason. Or keep it with the wolf for the howl? Cheers