Utgarde Pinnacle

This is definately one of my favourite WotLK instances.

• Slightly gothic, very dirty and cobweb filled castle, check.
• Zombie attendents including awesome ones who turn into wolves, check.
• Sexy Vrykul women, check
• Appearance of the Lich King (what self respecting castle would be without him), check

Besides I love the principle of it. We invade the castle of the King whose wife we already slaughtered. Do we stop off and fill our bags with his gold supplies or steal some ancient statue thats propping a door open. Of course not, we rampage our way through the ancient corridors kicking up dust and killing his servants (can’t help wondering why the undead servants don’t displace the cobwebs.. maybe the dust is allergic to them). Since you get to leave through the treasure room I suppose it makes sense to slaughter first, loot afterwards when no survivors can see you sneaking out with your swag bag.

In the past we had tried to 2 man this before but always got stuck in the Trophy Room (wonder how the King feels about only having one worm in his cabinet) or if we skipped that, we got stuck on Skadi. However given our previous success in instances previously too hard for us like Heroic: the Culling of Stratholme we were somewhat confident (arrogant?).

Our strategies go something like this:

Yes, I’m assuming you are a priest and from my experience Discipline is best – bigger stronger shields and penance with prayer of mending added in make up the bulk of the healing.

Trash: On the early mobs you can use mindcontrol. I tend to go for the Seers for a couple of reasons. Their chain lightning/lightning spells are annoying plus their heal is somewhat large (wtb really).

It is however best to let your pet tank charge in first just incase you get any resists.

Svala Sorrowgrave:

(I find it fascinating that the Lich King manifests himself in a variety of different sizes from the gigantic as illustrated here to the rather more mundane human sized version, yet his armour always fits.)

She of the totally wonderful name, here we go for brute force rather than anything subtle. Standing close together to make sure prayer of mending bounces when she makes the braziers burst into flames. I keep shields up on us at all times and when I get sacrifriced the Gnomeling kills one with direct attacks (nothing like doing all the stuff you aren’t supposed to :D). The sword descends and I leap from the altar spam healing myself. Rinse and repeat your way to a badge of conquest really.

The Undead trash can be shackled, depends what type of tank you have (or whether you can train them out of aoeing everything).

The Trophy room:

The longboat is a lovely touch I always think and probably the best trophy in the whole room, although the pyscho teddybear has to be worth a mention.

The only one of the four mini mini bosses that really presented a problem was the worm… (weird really, we aren’t phased by two, but one gets us all scared). We fight them in their room (having tried various locations all over the castle) and I basically hide out of los so we only have to deal with one poisoned target. I would recommend wearing some extra stamina gear however because of Gortok Palehoof’s nasty withering roar. I was down to 6k health when he died.

Skadi:

The gauntlet is annoying to say the least. However once we have grounded him I stay close enough for prayer of mending in case I get the poisoned spear. You just have to be ready to run if he targets you with whirlwind.

King Ymiron himself:

Another example of a leader who allows his minions to be pulled back and slaughtered in front of his face, although in his case I tend to be charitable and suppose he is blind with grief.

• The spirit strike: You just have to heal through it
• The spirit burst: Prayer of mending and shields pretty much take care of that
• The spirit orb: Run away
• The spirit adds: Tank picks them up and you just ignore them

Finally loot and try not to look surprised when the pet tank picks up the red sword of courage 8 months and 3 tiers of content too late.