Last week, I got my first taste of Icecrown raiding. I managed to squeeze into one of our guild 10-man raids, and was a little leary because I was considerably undergeared compared to my other guildmates. Brandishing level 226 gear for the most part, I knew I’d have my work cut out for me.
Now, I’m really not one to cause my head and ego to swell, but I can do decent DPS, even with some gear that’s under par. But this time, I was going in with most of my gear prior to Patch 3.2. Ouch. I had my 232 weapon, 245 shoudlers, 245 wrists, and 245 libram. My Kirin Tor ring also was up to date. Other than that, I was cruising on 226 gear.
If you want to take a look at the WMO for my run, here is the link: RCC 10-man ICC
Trash
For all you Seal of Command on trash naysayers, I have nothing to say except that Seal of Command was blowing through trash. I won’t use Seal of Vengeance until I see 100% concrete proof it is better. SoC is my seal for trash. The packs made it very, very easy, and being Undead on top of that just made it all the better.
Lord Marrowgar
Lord Marrowgar was probably my worst fight. Switching to SoV, I laid into the boss, only to have him go into his whirlwind and completely render me useless for the duration of his spinnage. He was either right on my tail, or so far away that my ranged spells were non-factors. Regardless, we one-shot him and moved forward.
This is a pretty straight forward fight…a tank n’ spank for the most part. Avoiding Coldflame is very easy…just sidestep and continue the DPS. I found myself breaking off to help the Bone Spike victims frequently, and this also knocked down my DPS.
As a Ret Paladin, don’t expect to be top DPS for the Marrowgar fight. Ranged will clean the floor with us. Hang tight until Saurfang and you’ll get redemption 
I did pick up Shawl of Nerubian Silk, which was an upgrade for just about every stat over my Ulduar lvl 219 cloak.
Lady Deathwhisper
Another poor DPS performance due to phase 1 running around. I figured Seal of Command would be better DPS on the adds in phase 1, but they went down so fast, I think it was inconsequential. Next time I’ll probably just stick with SoV and not chance forgetting SoC is up when I am on the boss. The adds were literally a joke, and phase 2 came, where DPS ensued…but the loss of DPS in phase one really set me back again.
When phase two starts, it’s pretty straightforward at that point, and SoV starts taking on its full effect. Nothing special for Ret Paladins, just do your damage.
I don’t feel too bad here, because all the melee were around 4k DPS for Deathwhisper, but as a Ret Paladin, I always feel I can do more.
Gunship Battle
Retribution Paladin noob here. At my first attempt to use the jetpack, I jumped off the ship. It’s okay, we were in complete disarray that first shot. Second attempt went better and they kept me behind to help AoE the mobs on our ship…hmmm, Ret Pally AoE goodness, or noob Khor cannot use his jetpack?
Fun fight, nothing special for us, though I did have to stay out of the whirlwind on the mobs I was AoE’ing. Not sure what I would have done on the other side, but it seems a Ret Pally would be most effective in this defensive role, helping corral the adds. Don’t worry about DPS here, just worry about being effective in whatever role you are assigned.
Came away with Bone Drake’s Enameled Boots after no one else was going to throw a need roll on them. Since I won the cloak earlier, I waited to see if anyone else needed them. Guess I just got lucky. Bye bye lvl 226 leather boots!
Deathbringer Saurfang
Tank n’ Spank for melee. Ranged have to worry about the adds here. We blew our first two attempts, and couldn’t get him down quick enough. He just kept healing until we all either ran out of mana or couldn’t keep up any longer. They were long fails.
We finally figured out our fail was because we only had 2 ranged DPS on the adds. When we added a 3rd ranged to help get the adds down quicker, we blew right thru Saurfang. I pretty much stayed in one position behind Saurfang, and came up #1 in DPS for our kill. That’s what I’m talking about! With SoV up 100%, I had no issues sustaining my DPS.
There was at one point during the fight that I was called off the boss to DPS an add, but I believe that’s the only break from Saurfang I had.
With minimal gear, I think I did pretty well. It keeps me optimistic, and I have added 3 new pieces of gear since then. Upgraded to the 245 helm, 232 chest, and 232 gloves. My gear score got cranked up a notch. Next time around I should be much more effective. I am still not on par with a couple of our heavy DPS pallies in their solid 245 gear, but I’m catching up!
This wing was pretty straightforward and easy. The fights were fun, which is a nice change of pace. I can’t say I loved the ToC raid bosses or the encounters, but these bosses have a much more ‘epic’ feel to them. I know some people think they’re currently too easy, but for me…the experience of the fight is what matters. IF it is easy, that’s cool. If it’s hard, then it just makes downing a boss that much sweeter.
For Lord Marrowgar, if you position yourself closer to the boss you won’t get hit by the Coldflame walls he puts up. Have all melee stack up so if bone spike comes up we can dps it down easily. As a RET pally I was # 1 DPS in this fight
because I found this tactic to be the best. When he does his AOE whirlwind its a 5 sec cast so get ready to run between that time.
I tried this last night and it worked very well! Thank you! I also learned that after the ‘whirlwind’, he does an aggro reset. I had a random Exorcism hit right after he stopped spinning, and he came over and one-shotted me. We still one-shotted the boss though!
Yea when you run don’t even target him b/c he will one shot you…the Aggro resets if you start pounding him during that whirlwind. I just target myself and run away, and once the tanks pick the boss up again you resume back to DPSing GLAD THIS HELPED!
Khor is still a noob in my book, hehe.
Haha dork. I still stand alone with that empty spot next to me. Where o’ where did my hunter pal go?
Been folowing your blogs for ages (refer to you as mah ret bible, lolol.), and i recently cleared icc 10 man myself. I was wondering, exactly how much dps were you doing on saurfang?
Also, gunship battle = funnest fight ever.
For Saurfang, which is the best DPS fight for us currently, since it’s the only wing open, the first time I ran it I was pushing 4500-4900 DPS. But remember, that was with mostly ilvl 226 gear.
This time around I was pushing 5500-6000 DPS with 4 gear upgrades from the previous week, and also on this most recent run, I won Citadel Enforcer’s Claymore and equipped that for the fight instead of my 232 agility polearm. It was without a Beserker enchant and gem, so my DPS could have been higher.
I died with about 33% HP on Saurfang left because of the stupid mark, and the last DPS count I saw for that fight was 5500. But previous attmepts I had seen upwards of 5900.
I wish I had an MMO report to back that up, but I didn’t have one running. So, I can’t even be sure of those numbers. This week I will definitely be keeping track.
Also, based on research…top Paladins for 10-man normal mode Saurfang are hitting 9k DPS. So, I still have quite a ways to go.
Nice post, very informative. I am getting ready to head into ICC but something is terribly wrong with my DPS. On trash mobs of undead using SoC (in a 5 man heroic like FoS) I can eek out 4k DPS but on bosses with SoV it drops to 2.9/3k. You are getting SoV up and keeping it up 100% which is putting you into 5-6.5k DPS range?
Good detail to note on the gunship (ret on D), will save me the embarassment of flying overboard!
Grim, are you hit capped and expertise capped?
Thanks for the post, couple of tips for all you ret pallies trying to top the charts.
1. Marrowgwar’s Bonestorm damage is easily healable, so you can still get close enough him to use CS and DS IN PASSING. Effectively you CAN dps the boss while he is Bonestorming, the trick is to stop dps before he finishes because aggro resets.
2. For Deathwhisper, Ret pallies are one of the few classes that can dps both types of adds. Therefore, SOC for mobs and switch to SOV for boss while keeping stacks up.
3. For Gunship, your priority is to stun the Seargeants because of the whirlwind. This will allow you to max dps without having to run as much. If you’re on the “away team” SOV is best to dps mage down. And again you can toggle back and forth between SOC and SOV gear providing.
All great tips, thanks Baylor!