Project Lore

I've only gotten into dungeons and raids since the release of WotLK, in the age of brute-force smashing your way through groups of elites, without much planning or group coordination beyond who tanks and who heals. Alright, maybe it's not exactly that cut and dry, but crowd control definitely hasn't been as huge of a deal in WotLK as it once was. That last couple of weeks have changed that. If you still want to power your way through a group of five or six elites in the halls of Icecrown Citadel, you'd better be ready to take a beating. If you want to play smart, it's time for you to dig deep into that old bag of tricks and pull out some crowd control. Let's start in the new heroics. The Forge of Souls has several challenging pulls of four to five mobs at once. And they hit -- hard. The Soulguard Adepts particularly can be a pain in the butt with a combination of Shadow Bolts and Drain Life. They're humanoid, so you have CC options aplenty, depending on what classes you have in your group. That also can make the pulls trickier for those AoE-happy groups that could inadvertently pull the mob out of its CC, so be careful of that. The FoS still is pretty easy to power through without the use of CC. But that gets a bit harder toward the end of the Pit of Saron, as you near the final gauntlet before confronting Scourgelord Tyrannus. Two particularly nasty pulls involve taking on five elites at once -- two Ymirjar Flamebearers, two Wrathbringers and a Deathbringer. An effective tactic my priest-heavy groups have been employing is shackling the Flamebearers, who do some heavy AoE damage that can be hard to heal through, and saving them to kill one at a time after the other three mobs. After killing those two groups of five, use the same tactic with the next two big pulls. CC one of the casters if possible, AoE down the big group away from him, then switch your attention once again. Effective, and usually less painful. Unfortunately, CC is tough to pull off in waves of mobs within Halls of Reflection. Especially in heroic, you'll just need a good group - a tank that can employ line of sight and hold aggro, dpsers that can focus fire down targets and keep their composure as the Lich King pursues, and a healer that can keep up with the massive damage everyone will be taking. That's all (whew). The most fun so far for me with CC has been in the first wing of Icecrown Citadel. The spider mobs between Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper once again pull in big groups, and with groups of 10 or 25 players, you should have plenty of CC options at your disposal. Unfortunately, I haven't yet cleared past the deathwhisperer (like the ghost whisperer but better) -- so you'll have to let me know where else CC comes in handy. Have fun with it. And make sure to use that rogue to disarm traps! (Another rarely-used ploy in the WotLK's play book). So if you didn't play your class in Vanilla WoW, make sure to take another look through your skills. You may find something really useful that until now you've never used before. Has anyone else also been pulling out crowd control tactics for the new Patch 3.3 content? Are you happy to see it make a comeback?