Frost Mage PvE: Lord Marrowgar

lord-marrowgar

Lord Marrogar is a unique creature created of skeletons. He is the first boss in the Icecrown Citadel.”

He has one of the coolest boss character models- he is a 4-headed winged skeleton torso, with a big ice ax! As the first boss of Icecrown Citadel, he’ll serve as a gear check for Guilds to see if they are “ready” to tackle this raid instance.

Boss Stats:

  • Hit Points – 5,200,000 (10man), 23,740,000 (25man)
  • No Enrage Timer

Abilities:

  • Saber Lash: Inflicts 200% weapon damage split evenly between the target and its 2 nearest allies.
  • Bone Spike Graveyard: Hurls a spike at a random player, impaling all players between the boss and the target on Bone Spikes, inflicting 9,000 direct Physical damage, and additional 10% health as damage every 1 second until the spike is destroyed.
  • Coldflame: Inflicts 6,000 (9k on 25man) Frost damage every 1 second for 3 seconds to anyone caught by the moving line of frost.
  • Bone Storm: Inflicts 6,000 (12k on 25man) Physical damage every 2 seconds to players caught in the storm.


Recommended Consumables:

This is a simple fight with a bit of target switching, and a lot of raid awareness. You would want any consumables which may help your DPS.

Frost Mage Overview:

  • Pet Friendly: Friendly
  • Cooldowns: You may want to save your Ice Blocks, and Cold Snap for when you get trapped in a Bone Storm.

Your Water Elemental won’t be targeted by Bone Spike and is immune to the Coldflame- but he can be damaged by the Bone Storm. You pet will have a 80% damage reduction to AoE damage so you don’t have to worry about moving him around. Just have him keep on attacking.

Coldflame

During the fight Lord Marrowgar will spawn blue flames on the ground that will move out towards the raid in a linear path. There will be 4 flames, and they shoot out in an “X” pattern. Pretty simple, don’t stand in the blue flames. They do Frost damage, so have Frost Ward up!

The flame doesn’t follow anyone, it shoots out in a straight line. If you see one going towards you, simply side-step and continue on DPSing. Easy enough, no reason why you should take damage from this.

Bone Spikes

Every so often, he will do the Bone Spike Graveyard, which will target a random person in the raid. That person AND every person between him and the boss will be impaled by a Bone Spike. This means: Spread out, and don’t have anyone standing in front of you, between you and the boss.

Bone Spikes take priority over DPSing the boss. If someone is impaled, free him/her as soon as possible. Faster they are freed, the less damage they take, and the faster that person can go back to DPS/healing. Have a macro set up for quick switching:

/target Bone Spike

If you get impaled, you CANNOT Ice Block out of it. Just hope your raid buddies will free you before you die.

Bone Storm

At some points during the fight, he will begin to spin his ax around in circles, and start whirlwinding randomly around the room. At this point, try to spread out, but stay close enough to one of your healers to stay alive. Run away from Lord Marrowgar if you see him headed your direction. You can DPS if you want, but staying alive is more important.

During the Bone Storm phase, he will also spawn the Coldflames too. So keep a look out for the flames spreading on the floor. If you happen to get trapped by a wall with Marrowgar going all Tasmanian Devil on you, feel free to Ice Block and keep yourself alive.

When he stops his Bone Storm, ALL AGGRO RESETS, so let the main tank pick him back up before you start DPSing again. So pay attention and stop DPS when you see that he is about to stop spinning.

Strategy

DPS boss, kill Bone Spikes as soon as they appear, then hop back onto the boss. This isn’t a DPS race, it is a “pay attention and survive” fight. Dodge flames, run when he whirlwinds, and repeat. Keep Ice Barrier up!

Use Blink to get in range to help kill Bone Spikes, or use it to avoid flames, or to get away from the spinning Marrowgar himself. Keep Frost Ward up during the whirlwind phase just in case you have to run through some flames.

Mage Loots:

A lot of good drop for Mages from the first boss of the instance. The only item that is iffy, is the Frigid Eye because of the mp5 on it. I personally think that ring is better than the Loop of the Endless Labyrinth if you are Hit Capped, but I don’t think I would roll against any healers that want it.

[Image and General Strategy used was taken from WoWHead.com]

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Comments

  • Importantous said:

    Observation doing 10 man regular: You can avoid the Coldflame by staying inside (but spread out in) his hitbox, with the bulk of the melee, dps and healers staying to the rear as much as possible.

    This strategy works well for all classes with the exception of Hunters, whose DPS suffers immensely getting that close. Macro for spikes, Blink on Bonestorm, count on your healers, and have fun.

  • David said:

    Great guide for Marrowgar raid, for ranged dps, it’s a good idea to bunch up together to down the Bone Spikes quick and easily.
    .-= David´s last blog ..Mage – Raiding =-.

  • Bobbo said:

    Marrow does have an enrage, I’ve wiped to it once with a couple people DC’d. It happened just before the fifth Bone Storm and happily obliterated the raid.

  • Yuk Dench said:

    I have to concur with you on most parts of what you said but in the end we will disagree. I will arrive again later on and see what you say.