Mount Hyjal - Rage Winterchill

[Lore]

Friends, Paladins, Countrymen... this is our instance.

Rage Winterchill, like all the encounters in the Battle for Mount Hyjal, is a pretty easy boss with several waves of fairly difficult trash mobs that come before him (similar to the General Rajaxx encounter in AQ20 Pre-BC). For more details on the entire encounter, look over the Bosskillers strategy here. I'll be sticking to primarily Tankadin notes in this post. It's overall a very easy encounter (we killed him the second time we made it through the trash to him, with 24 people, after coming straight from killing Kael'Thas).

There are 8 waves of trash before you fight Rage Winterchill. Their composition is as follows:

Wave 1: 10 Ghouls
Wave 2: 10 Ghouls, 2 Crypt Fiends
Wave 3: 6 Ghouls, 6 Crypt Fiends
Wave 4: 6 Ghouls, 4 Crypt Fiends, 2 Necromancers
Wave 5: 2 Ghouls, 6 Crypt Fiends, 4 Necromancers
Wave 6: 6 Ghouls, 6 Abominations
Wave 7: 4 Ghouls, 4 Necromancers, 4 Abominations
Wave 8: 6 Ghouls, 4 Crypt Fiends, 2 Abominations, 2 Necromancers

As you can see, every wave has at least some number of Ghouls, and those are what you will be tanking. They melee cloth for around 2-3k (we had Warlocks pulling aggro and tanking them without much trouble in some of our first attempts), you should easily be able to tank 3 or 4 of them at once, possibly more if your healers are on the ball. DPS will generally want to single target 1 or 2 mobs down and then AOE the rest (with the exception of waves 6 or 7 as the abominations should all be single targetted), so your job is to pick up a bunch of Ghouls and tank the hell out of them. On wave 5 feel free to tank a Crypt Fiend also. You can also pick up the skeletons that the Necromancers spawn if they manage to summon any.

One or two hunters should be pulling either a Ghoul or Abomination out of the group to get the NPC's in the back of the area in combat, make sure to let them grab it as it's tempting to taunt something you see running off away from the group. It's helpful to make sure they have a raid assist so they can mark which target they're grabbing with an icon.

We can't taunt mobs off of the NPC's, so make sure your warrior and druid tanks are watching them. They add a lot of DPS, and keeping as many of them alive as possible is extremely beneficial to clearing the final waves in time.

Once the last wave is dead, you should have a second or two to start drinking if necessary, and then Rage Winterchill himself comes.

If you are Main Tanking: He's as close to a tank and spank as BC encounters get. Your job is to hold aggro and not die. Be mindful of Death and Decay, it has a HUGE radius and will kill you very quickly no matter how much HP you have as its damage is a percentage of your max HP. Otherwise, tanking him is very simple. His Icebolt ability CAN hit you, but it shouldn't be a big deal as it only lasts a couple seconds and there should be a steady stream of heals coming on you anyway.

If you are not MT'ing: There's a couple things you can do to make yourself useful. You should drop combat easily before Rage Winterchill comes, if you like you can swap into healing gear. Keeping a judgement up on him helps to some degree, although mana is generally not an issue. No matter which gear you're wearing, you should be watching for him to target someone other than the tank and immediately switch to them and start a FoL. His Icebolt ability will kill just about anyone in under 2 seconds if they don't get heals, and even a tiny FoL from tanking gear could save their life. You can dispel Frost Nova if you want, but it's not really an issue as he does not cast Death and Decay while Frost Nova is up.

Jaina Proudmoore should NOT be pulled into aggro with Rage Winterchill, as his Death and Decay ability WILL kill her, thus failing the encounter and forcing you to start over. Other NPC's can be brought into combat with him fine (particularly the Riflemen as they'll stay out of melee), but DPS on him isn't much of a concern.

Overall a very easy encounter, with lots of fun for a Paladin tank. Enjoy!

[Loladin]

Grats on Kael'thas and thanks for the strat -- sounds awesome... but I'll probably never see it.

[Eliane]

Thanks for the write-up, I cant wait!

Hoping for Leotheras today and possible Vashj attempts next week, so it'll be some time before I get to try it out

[Vencedor]

Freakin sweet, Lore.
Grats and thanks for the writeup.

[Atreidies]

I can't wait to get in there, we've spent all week getting Kael reliably to 75% where we just fall apart when people stop paying attention to phoenix and eggs >.< Oh well, we're clearing SSC today instead of continuing on KT, but Tuesday if he's not dead I might have a breakdown.

[PsiVen]

Aye, the trash is lots of fun... but it looks like we'll be healing on every boss if not MTing :/

[Atreidies]

Well, all I can say about this fight is that the trash waves are just flat built for paladin tanks. Waves 1-4 I tanked literally every mob minus the 2 ghouls pulled off each wave to bring NPCs into combat. On the final waves I got MD'ed any free ghouls while tanking Aboms and Crypt Fiends. A GREAT way to start a new instance as a prot paladin. I hope to see more of you guys in here tanking this place

[Thels]

Looking forward to it. Still 3 bosses to down first, though...

Well, all I can say about this fight is that the trash waves are just flat built for paladin tanks. Waves 1-4 I tanked literally every mob minus the 2 ghouls pulled off each wave to bring NPCs into combat.

Now THAT sounds like fun

[Silandra]

When test server was around, I got to do Hyjal and it was by far the funnest thing evar 3rd most damage, 3rd most healing(FotC heals), and most damage taken by far.

[Galiant]

Good job tanking end-game and all!

Your gear list is mighty impressive, I get jealous just looking at it.

So do you actually get to tank in the Black Temple, too? I noticed you had a few pieces of gear from there.

[Lore]

Good job tanking end-game and all!

Your gear list is mighty impressive, I get jealous just looking at it.

So do you actually get to tank in the Black Temple, too? I noticed you had a few pieces of gear from there.

Hmm, yeah I've been meaning to write up some stuff from what I do in BT, I'll try and get a couple posts worked up tonight. For Naj'entus and Supremus I strap on healing gear. Naj is very healing heavy and only needs 1 tank, so it makes the most sense there, and we're not very well suited to MT'ing or OT'ing on Supremus either. I tank on all the trash (there's a few AOE packs in particular that you can fully block their attacks, it's pretty awesome to be tanking 8 elites and taking 0 damage) as well as Shade of Akama who we do pretty well on as tanks as well.

[Nich]

I tank on all the trash (there's a few AOE packs in particular that you can fully block their attacks, it's pretty awesome to be tanking 8 elites and taking 0 damage)

Are there rage starvation issues, with not taking damage and holding 8 elites? o.0

[Lore]

Nah they die pretty fast, I have to drink afterwards but I don't lose aggro til they're dead.

[Lumenactio]

What's your block value at Lore?

Just curious.

[Lore]

It's dropped a bit lately, I can get it up to 575, my usual tanking gear now has somewhere around 537.

Those guys only melee for like 180 though.