Besting the Blood Queen - Taking on Lana'thel in Icecrown Citadel

Who exactly is the Blood Queen? She's the leader of the San'layn and a big fan of My Chemical Romance. After you've beaten the Blood Princes, this is the last fight you'll have to complete in The Crimson Halls. Her vampiric, time-sensitive DPS race with a twist has been known to shut raids down cold - So learning her abilities and how they interact with your raid is absolutely crucial.

Tanking is incredibly easy for this encounter (Though you will need 2 tanks). The real responsibility of the raid falls on the DPS, both in their ability to move around and be able to churn out the numbers required to tank down her incredibly large health pool. Note that the encounter is essentially the same on both 10 and 25 man, but you'll have more vampires and more people linked with Pact of the Darkfallen, and spreading out is going to be more difficult in 25, as you have the same amount of space but a lot more people. Let's take a look at how the fight works.

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When the encounter begins one lucky raid member will be chosen to be "the first vampire" - It's going to be whoever is on top of threat meters, after the tank. This party member will enjoy a huge DPS boost but it comes with a price and this is where things get interesting.

When the buff wears off, the raid member will have fifteen short seconds to basically play "tag" with another non-vampire raid member by biting them. This will re-trigger the buff on the original vampire as well, so as the fight goes on you will have more and more vampires, and more and more DPS.

If any of your vampires fail to find a fresh target to bite at the end of their buff cycle, they'll lose control of their character to the Blood Queen and this will essentially wipe your raid, as there's nothing to do but kill the poor insane raider and take the massive DPS loss meaning you'll never get her down in time. Because of the nature of the fight, it's on a hardset timer - if there's no "normies" for your vamps to bite, it's game over.

With this in mind, your DPS vampires should be prioritizing their bites to other DPS - with the healers and tanks being bitten last.

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Every so often the Blood Queen will throw a Pact of the Darkfallen onto several of your raid members. It is absolutely imperative that the afflicted pulsing members run to each other as fast as possible, as the damage this spell inflicts is very high and spills off to other players. Running to other pacted players will remove the ailment, so having a set "go to" point for raiders to get to is a great idea - The middle of the room is a good choice.

Your raiders must also keep an eye on a purple mist forming under their feet, known as Swarming Shadows. This essentially puts a "shadow trail" under the raid member who needs to run it around the raid on the "outer track" of the throne room to prevent people from standing in it. Keep an eye out for the purple stuff (Hey, at least it's not fire for once, right?) and make sure you don't have people standing in it.

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Blood Queen's air phases can cause complications and plenty of wipes if not handled correctly. Before she takes flight, she lets loose a raid wide fear that will send your raid out of control and scurrying about. After this is is extremely important for your raid to spread out fast when the fear wears off, as her next spell will literally kill your entire raid if it's not spaced out. It's worth noting that this fear and running around can take place often as vampire bites will need to be done, and can cause big problems if you're vampires are running up to bite someone just as the giant space-sensitive AOE blast goes off.

After this burst of damage, the Queen will return to the ground and you'll resume the fight as normal.

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If you're just getting ready to tackle the Blood Queen, consider going over a few main points with your raid buddies -

• Establish a bite order with your DPS
• Ensure that movement is handled properly for both Pact of the Darkfallen and Swarming Shadows
• Make sure that everyone is properly spread out during the air phases
• Bloodlust/Heroism once all the DPS (or most of it) is bitten

Once you get the main points of this fight down, it's really just a high intensity DPS race. Good Luck!

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