Blood-Queen Lana'thel (tactics)

Blood-Queen Lana'thel is the leader of the San'layn and a boss of the Icecrown Citadel raid. The fight is a cross between a very intense DPS race and a hellish battle for survival. High raid awareness and understanding of the fight are critical, even a single player death can mean a wipe.

This boss is available since January 19, 2010 on US servers and January 20 on EU servers.

Preparation
She should be tanked right at her starting position. She requires two tanks, because she links her primary tank to the player standing closest to the tank (Blood Mirror), which means the linked target takes the same amount of damage as the tank. Shamans should use Tremor Totem, and it's a good idea to have all healers in a group with a shaman. If no shamans are available, Priests should Fear Ward healers.

The raid needs to stay distributed throughout the encounter (6 yards away from everyone else). It's a good idea to keep a circle of about 10 yards free of players right in the center of the room, and also to have everyone stay away from the walls. Ranged DPS make a semicircle at maximum range.

Strategy
The fight has only one phase. Although every two minutes she performs a very short air phase, the mechanics of the fight remain basically the same at all times.

Every player constantly takes damage from her aura (initially 4.5k per tick, increasing with each vampire in the room).

At random intervals, a random raid member gets Swarming Shadows, which makes them drop Shadow Fire on the ground until the debuff expires. Affected players can avoid taking any damage by running. It's a good idea to keep the walls free of other players, so that players with Swarming Shadows can simply run along the walls.

Another ability which she randomly uses is Pact of the Darkfallen. This links 2/3 (10/25 man) players to each other, they take increasing amounts of damage until they stand on top of each other. Linked players should meet in the center of the room.

Every two minutes she takes off, fears the whole raid and launches three extra Blood Bolts at every player. When she takes off, ranged DPS should run to the walls of the room while melee spread out in the middle. Healers should be in a circle between melee and ranged. After the fear is over, players must spread out again very quickly, else the Blood Bolts can be lethal. Healers should move only minimally after the fear and instead start a massive spam of AoE heals right away.

Vampire debuff
The Blood Queen has an extreme amount of hitpoints and a 5:30 minute enrage timer. An average of 9.8k/7.8k (25/10 player) DPS is required to beat it (assuming 2 tanks and 5/3 healers). Virtually all raids use the Vampire debuff to boost their DPS (although it's theoretically possible to beat her without using it).

15 seconds after the start of the encounter Blood-Queen Lana'thel bites the highest threat player which is not tanking, dealing the Vampire debuff. Becoming a Vampire has the following effects:
 * Targets deal 100% more damage while also creating no more threat
 * Targets heal themselves for 10% of the damage they deal
 * After 75 seconds, targets must bite other non-Vampiric players or become mind controlled after 15 sec

The Blood Queen bites only one player throughout the whole fight. After 60 seconds, this person must bite another raid member. After 60 more seconds, both need to bite two more players, next four, and so on. It's extremely important that damage dealers get bitten first (starting with the highest DPS first), and healers last. DPS cooldowns should only be used after all damage dealers are bitten.

Some raids establish a fixed bite order. One damage dealer can use all cooldowns while the others hold back a little, making sure who gets bitten first. Assuming 8 melee and 8 ranged DPS, everyone biting within 3 seconds after the Vampire debuff expires, an example bite order can go as follows:


 * 0'15"
 * Bite 1
 * Melee 1 gets bitten
 * 1'18"
 * Bite 2
 * Melee 1 bites Ranged 1 who comes into melee to get bitten then moves back to range
 * 2'21"
 * Bite 3 melee
 * Melee 1 bites melee 2
 * Bite 3 ranged
 * Ranged 1 bites ranged 2
 * 3'24"
 * Bite 4 melee
 * Melee 1 bites melee 3
 * Melee 2 bites melee 4
 * Bite 4 ranged
 * Ranged 1 bites ranged 3
 * Ranged 2 bites ranged 4
 * 4'27"
 * Bite 5 melee
 * Melee 1 bites melee 5
 * Melee 2 bites melee 6
 * Melee 3 bites melee 7
 * Melee 4 bites melee 8
 * Bite 5 ranged
 * Ranged 1 bites ranged 5
 * Ranged 2 bites ranged 6
 * Ranged 3 bites ranged 7
 * Ranged 4 bites ranged 8

16 vampires are out, Bloodlust or Heroism now. It may be advisable to delay the first two rounds of biting a little, in order to avoid conflicts during the air phase - else it's possible that some players must bite during or shortly after the fear, which may mess up the bite order.

After the 5th round of bites, there's no need to bite anyone anymore, because she enrages at 5:30. With this organization no one should ever get mind controlled as long as they memorize their targets before the encounter begins. Healers should keep in mind that when a bite round is occuring, especially the final bite round people absolutely have to bite their targets even if they have Pact of the Darkfallen or Swarming Shadows. Divine Sacrifice or Aura Mastery Shadow can mitigate this if used at the right time, assuming they're available since they're also highly useful in the air phase.

Tips

 * Hunters may use Deterrence during Lana'thel's air phase to mitigate damage done to the raid.
 * Use Fear Ward on ranged DPS or a priest before she fears the raid to put in some extra damage or to dispel fear.
 * For 10-man at least, it is possible to have a holy pally OT and heal by beaconing himself if your MT is over geared for the fight.

Heroic Mode
In heroic mode, Blood Queen Lana'thel gains a stack of Presence of the Darkfallen for each vampire present. Each stack of this buff increases the power of her Shroud of Sorrow for 5%.

Quotes

 * Aggro
 * yell


 * Vampiric Bite
 * yell
 * yell


 * Swarming Shadows
 * yell


 * Pact of the Darkfallen
 * yell


 * Player mind controlled
 * yell


 * Player killed
 * yell
 * yell


 * Air Phase
 * yell


 * Berserk
 * yell


 * Wipe
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell


 * Unused quote
 * Death is no escape!

Sound files
See Sound Files of Icecrown Citadel: Blood-Queen Lana'thel