ICC trash and then maybe Marrowgar

First, I am a PvP guy, never tried ICC trash. Much less even joined an actuall raid other than the easy weeklys. Solo or boxed.......
I started farming the trash for the first time with my 7-man team this week. Prot Pally, 4 Ele Shamans, 2 Resto Druids.
Gear consists of good pvp gear on all except the tank and 1 of the druids who have pve gear. Trash was tough to figure out but allright after 2-3 wipes.
Last night, I decided to transfer a mage and a priest over to another two new accounts(8th and 9th).....with the thought of getting my only rl friend on the server to jump on as the 10th man to either tank/heal/dps(ICC warlock, ICC druid....balance or heals, and 5-man pally tank). It would greatly improve my team for him to bring in heals/dps........but I am guessing I need another tank for Marrowgar at least.

What would be the optimal setup with these classes? I am missing the 13% spell dammage debuff, and the whole raid could use improved faeri fire. So I need to bring in/switch a Resto.... to a Balance druid.
I am thinking:
2 pally tank.....one played by my friend
4 ele shamans
Balance Druid
Frost spamming Mage
Priest......Disc/Holy?
Resto Druid

I ran my 9 toons last night on trash(1 tank,5 dps, 3 heals)....without a Boomkin. I was pulling 5k dps on just about every dps toon from Fur's click macros for the shaman and frost bolt spam from the mage. My big concern is healing. I am using a castsequence atm for the druid and priest to heal the tank and another aoe heal button that throws up wild growth, holy nova, and chain heal on the rest of the group when needed. The aoe heals are nice, but I am worried about the tank castsequence not being optimal.
Any help would be appreciated.

- If I was to pick an external player I'd almost always go for a healer. Because if it's a tank you'll need to heal him as well yourself, and my experience is that healing an external player adds more complexity as you have no idea about his cooldowns or the moves he is going to make. Whereas an external healer will take a huge amount of work out of your hands.

- You could spec your druid into a tank. However it's not really needed for marrowgar if you are geared, use cooldowns, have enough healing, taking into account the 30% buff.

- If you don't want to spec the other resto druid into balance, you could always convert your priest into a shadow buff. Misery gives the same hit buff as improved ff.

So if i was you i think i'd go for (taking into account the 1st 4 bosses in icc).

- pally tank + druid tank
- druid healer
- 3x ele shaman
- mage
- shadow priest with disc off spec
- resto shaman with ele off spec

depending on the fight go with 2 or 3 healers, and this will also give you the possibility to clear bosses on your own if your mate can't make it.

If he brings over his druid he can depending on the fight go for healer or dps (and as a dps he still has self healing abilities for when you are in trouble).

If you clear the first 4 bosses in icc you'll get many decent upgrades. Along with running some hc dungeons and you'll have a very decent pve spec in no time.

Well, I'm probably at 30+ wipes on Marrowgar now with just my 9 toons. Best attempt was getting him to about 60% in 4min.(Im lacking alot of hit that a new trinket should fix). The hardest part for me is just positioning my team inside the hit box. I keep watching McWrathy's video, but i just cant duplicate the positoning that great. Then there was the problem of thinking my 535 defense was the cap.:D

1. I need to look at what toon has run speed skill/boot enchants, cause some keep up with my tank for the initial run in, and some lag behind a little.....and this throws positioning off a little. To far up and Marr is behind the dps, to far back and they are out of the hit box.
2. For the fight I am running 3 healers. Shammy to heal tank...easy. Holy Priest with aoe spells on rotation....easy. Resto Druid spamming wild growth......and this is where i think I am lacking. I am not sure what else to do with the Druid...or how to do it. I think I would sub a fresh 80 priest in for this geared druid If I had one.
3. Now for the fight when I do get positioning good.....I have a /tar bone macro that does great. But my problem is trying to position Marr back on top of the group after he does his whirlwind. It seems that when he stops his ww, he is way off to the side. At this point do I need to taunt him over so he is positioned back over the group? Or should I try to move the group again under him? It appears that after taunting or having full aggro, Marr will get into melee range of the tank(from the video). But evertime I back my tank up out of melee rage to position him over my group....he just stays in the same spot.
4. Cold Flames: If/when I do get my positioning correct, should that group be stationary the whole fight? If somehow it appears that they are in the hit box, BUT they are taking cold flame damage, should I be moving them...or healing through?

But Its funny. I will wipe 5 times in a row from bad attempts and then have a good attempt......then 5 bad attempts and then a good one. A crazy cylce that has me thinking about every possible explanation on what went wrong and how to fix it.
It is frustrating, but I cant believe how entertaining it is. And to think of all the emblems of frost/triumph I used up on heirlooms that could be used for much needed upgrades now.:mad:

Oh, I had to laugh at myself....two of my attempts of the initial run in to the hit box, my two druids stopped when they got into melee range of Marr and starting beating on him with their staff/branches.:D At some point buffing up or whatever, the druids started interacting with target, without me knowing. haha....that got fixed quick.

Great to hear you are at least having fun!

Now again i'm not a 10 boxer, but I have had quite some good attempts with trying to 5 manning him a while ago (best attempt was 10%). If I had more toons available I'd use the same strategy. Basically I had my slaves the whole fight on follow, it makes avoiding the frost trails way easier. I'd run up to marrowgar, quickly hit my forward key to stop movement on my slaves as soon as they are in the hitbox, jump/mouse turn my tank so he is facing the slaves, combined with a taunt. Stay in position and just nuke/tank with 3 toons auto targetting the piles. Now my tank is pretty well geared (sitting at 75k hp fully buffed in icc nowadays, so I can single tank it).

However a few random points:

- there is also a meta gem that gives you increased run speed + spell power. That or tuskar vitality (or talent). For me it is really important that my team can move at the same speed.

- hit is indeed your most important stat dps wise until you are capped. having a boomkin for improved faerie fire or a shadow priest for misery will give you 3% less hit to worry about. Which is quite significant when you are undergeared (both the fact that you can replace the 3% for actual dps gems / enchants and that you will just hit all the time when you can't reach the cap yet).

- frost resist makes this fight way way way easier. If you don't have a druid in the party, use the drums of the wild. It has 40 charges and is really cheap to buy if you don't have a leatherworker. Using 1-2 pieces of frost resist gear is cheap and make the healing way easier (at the cost of dps of course). For example for sindragosa i used icebane girdle, feet and chest, putting me over 400 frost resist in combination with 20 defense gems.

- you could respec both of your pally tanks into aura mastery. Since your dps output ain't such super you won't have aggro problems as a boxer. Now aura mastery doubles the effect of your aura for 6 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown. Given the fact that you run with 2 pallies (as i understood) it means that you have one available every other minute.

an idea could be to have 2 keys on both of your tank:

key 1:
tank A: /cast devotion aura
tank B: /castsequence frost resistance aura, aura mastery

key 2: /castsequence frost resistance aura, aura mastery
tank B: /cast devotion aura

Obviously this would activate the resistance aura in combination with aura mastery on 1 tank while the other tank switches to devotion aura (and the other way around).

You also have 2x divine sacrifice (if talented, which you should imo) on a 2 minute cooldown. Use it whenever you need to run through flames.

Or you can also drink a resistance potion in the fight.

- And last but not least: shield with the priest.

My point; you have many raid wide mitigation tools at your disposal which can make the fight way more easy. Not sure if you are using those, just sharing my ideas.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Edit: btw i use different (non broadcasted) keys to strafe left/right on my tank. You should strafe left right all the time on marrowgar to avoid the flames with your tank, while your dps/healers are standing static within his hitbox

Edit 2: trying to reposition marrowgar can be a pain sometimes. Taunt won't move most mobs, where avengers shield has better results to my experience. I'd just hit follow and run up to him the same way you pulled him.

Thanks for the tips! :)

LOL....I actually downed Marrowgar this morning with my 9 toons.......and received no usable loot! :mad:

Thanks for the replys, and to all who made movies/strats on this boss.

Grats!

To who can i send the bill?

hehe, i think im almost broke now from repair costs.......but I would gladly send you the gold if I could.

i was talking dollars

but tell us, what strategy did you use to pull off the kill? and what kind of changes did you use (buffs, enchants, classes, macro's, etc )

I managed to get the hit box strategy to work.
-I got all of my dps hit capped finally with the +hit trinket.
-I used Interact with Target for marrowgar and for Bone Spike. Just to make sure that all dps was facing the correct way.
-I mainly used two buttons the whole fight.
1st button: Tank, 969 macro.........DPS, click macro on boss...............Druid & Shammy healer, castsequence tank heals
2nd button: Tank, 969 macro..........DPS, target bone spike macro..........Druid & Shammy healer, castsequence tank heals............Priest, castsequence aoe heals.
and I have a 3rd button that is basicly the same as the 2nd, but it gets my 4 shammies to cast chain heal.

I cant seem to micromanage the group yet, so i tried not to worry at all about single target heals except on the tank. The 30% buff helped me alot.

So currently my team is: Pally tank, 4 Ele Shaman, Frost Mage, Balance Druid, Holy Priest, Resto Druid. That is 9 accounts that I might upgrade to ten after Cat hits.
80s that I currently have but dont raid with: 4 ret pallys, 2 druids, 2 shaman, 1 DK

I am trying to think ahead of time to what I might need for a second 10man team or to swap in on my first group while I have Raf available on 4 of those accounts. I have lvled 4 Locks and 4 priest to 60 allready. Thinking about lvling some mages next.

That will give me at least 4 of every dps caster available, 2 for each 10-man team if need be............2 priest to heal each team..........and 2 pally tanks for each.

I know its early for Cat, but......Is there a certain DPS class that I should be stacking more than 2 of?

Very nice mate, so you single tanked marrowgar by reading your setup. Glad it worked out.

As for cata, i really can't tell. Boomkins gonna be easier to manage as they are less dependent on procs. Their versatility is always a bonus. But I'm only reading cata info for the classes I want to play solo as well (pally tank, ele shaman & disc/shadow priest).

There is a ton of info available however elsewhere on this board.