Lord Marrowgar Hunter Strats in ICC

Lord Marrowgar is the first boss in Icecrown Citadel. He’s a fairly easy boss that is forgiving for a good deal of dps slop (even on 10-man after the 12/14 nerf). This strat guide focuses on the hunter perspective. For a complete raid strat I recommend Tankspot’s Marrowgar Video. The value of actually seeing a video of a fight cannot be overstated.

Phase 1: Bonespike and DPS

During phase 1 hunters have three jobs. In order of priority these are:

1. Avoid the coldflame
2. Dps the bonespikes
3. Dps the boss

Phase 1 will be the majority of your dps. Start off with a misdirect and pop your cooldowns right off the bat to get a good start on the boss. There are three things we need to be aware of:

• Coldflame: Marrowgar will pick a random ranged target and send a line of blue flame crawling across the ground to that target. If you’re in the flame, you’ll get a frost damage dot. Coldflame moves at a moderate pace and is very easy to sidestep. It’s also important to note that it’s not a big deal to take one dot of coldflame damage. If you need to get to the other side of a coldflame line to be within range of a dps target, go ahead and run through it (as long as you’re not at really low health). As long as you aren’t just standing in it, you should be fine.
• Bonespike: Marrowgar will periodically cast Bonespike Graveyard on random raid members (1 in 10-man, 3 in 25-man). This can be cast on anyone other than the tanks, and this is your #1 dps priority. You should have a macro “/tar bone” on your hotbar to instantly target these the second they appear. Don’t bother with hunter’s mark, serpent sting, or your pet on them. They should be going down far too fast for any of those to be effective. Depending on your strat, it’s likely that only ranged will be dpsing these.
• Positioning: You want to remain about 30 yards from Marrowgar. You don’t want to be too close because you want plenty of time to avoid the coldflame, but you also don’t want to be too far, because you want to be within range of others to dps down bonespikes. On a similar note, all ranged dps should be in the front right or front left. Don’t go running off to some secluded corner. The coldflames are easy to avoid, and you want to be within range of the other dps on your side for when you’re targeted with bonespike — that way they can free you without having to chase you down (which you’ll soon learn is incredibly aggravating).

Phase 2: Bonestorm

Every minute Marrowgar will cast Bonestorm. During this he’ll spin around (like a warrior’s whirlwind) doing aoe damage to the raid. He will pick a random raid member and zip over to them then stand in place before choosing another member. He’ll do this 4 times, and the same person can be chosen twice in a row. And when he stops after chasing someone he’ll shoot out his coldflame in 4 directions at once (so in phase 2 there can be 8 lines of coldflame out, all over the place).

There are two important things to understand for phase 2:

• Bonestorm Damage: Bonestorm does more damage the closer you are to Marrowgar, and much, much less when you’re farther away.
• Threat Wipe: When Marrowgar transitions back into phase 1, it is a complete threat wipe.

You want to continue to dps during Bonestorm, taking extra care to avoid the coldflame all over the place and be sure to stay at a decent range from the boss. Remember to use your disengage on this phase if you’re too close to Marrowgar to get to range quickly and without losing your auto shots (but look where you’re jumping so you don’t leap into coldflame).

You will absolutely be responsible for misdirecting Marrowgar back to the tanks for the transition. This is the most important responsibility held by hunters on this fight. To do this effectively you will need to keep track of how many people Marrowgar has targeted (or have an addon to tell you when the phase is almost over – and one that is accurate) and you will have to be within range of Marrowgar before the phase ends (it’s easy to lose track of him when he’s chasing people, especially if you corner yourself).

Pop your misdirection before the phase ends – just a second or two before, and unload on him. This is an area where the 3.3 misidrection changes really help us by giving us more time. You’ll probably notice the first target Marrowgar picks up is a healer (or a dumb dpser) but he should instantly snap to the tank before he has a chance to swing at them.

This transition is where most groups wipe – either because the hunters didn’t get aggro on their tank, or because the tanks weren’t all stacked on each other to mitigate the saber lash. If you survive the transition then it’s back to phase 1: rinse and repeat.

If you’re MM you should be getting 4 rapid fires during this fight (6 if it’s going slowly). In general they’re best used at the beginning of phase 1 (I use two of them during the first phase 1 if it’s going to be a long fight (ie: low overall dps) to ensure that I’ll get all six). Don’t use haste boosts during phase 2 as you will be moving around too much to get much (if any) benefit from it.

Am I Doin’ It Right?

If you’re using recount (which of course you are) or your raid posts raid parses, here is how you can examine your Marrowgar performance:

• Look at Damage Taken and take a look to see how much coldflame damage you took. As I mentioned, sometimes you want to run through coldflame to get to your bone spiked target, but overall your damage taken from coldflame should be very, very low. You can easily compare this to other ranged dpsers to get a feel for where you stand comparatively. If you’re taking too much, it’s time to learn how to run out of void zones!
• Look at your damage done by target. In a World of Logs parse this is under damage done > damage by actor. Take a look at how much damage you did to the bonespikes. Compare that to others in your raid. In general I’ve found that my bonespike damage is less than good arcane mages, but more than anyone else (though this will vary a lot depending on your positioning and how often you yourself were bonespiked).
• And as always you’re interested in overall damage done. Hunters are competitive on this fight. Our dots will continue to tick damage on Marrowgar while we dps bonespikes, which is a boost. Melee classes have the advantage of not target switching, but that’s balanced a bit by the fact that we can do more dps than them during Bone Storm.