At first glance, the Blood Prince Council is a very complicated fight.  You’ve got 3 different bosses, each with at least 3 different abilities to watch out for and a shared health pool.  The first few times your raid goes in may be like a madhouse… people flying all over the screen, taking damage everywhere, and wipes happening quickly.  However, once you get the hang of dealing with a few basic abilities, the Blood Prince Council becomes  a much easier fight.

Gear Requirement

Blood Prince Council is definitely an execution fight.  The gear requirement probably isn’t as high as Festergut or Rotface.  However, better gear will help give you some leeway on the execution.

Group Make-up

Blood Prince Council is a unique fight in that you will need 3 tanks - one as a ranged tank.  For you, this means you can’t heal all the tanks at the same time with Beacon.  You’re going to have to choose one of the tanks to Beacon and heal the other two the old fasioned way.  The healing requirement on this fight can be low if execution is done perfectly.  Therefore, its definitely doable with only 2 healers, but 3 will help a lot while you’re learning.  As is often the case in ICC, a druid healer will help due to the movement required.

The third tank can really be any class that can keep threat at ranged.  A death knight works great because he can be an actual tank with high health and should be able to hold aggro on the boss and the orbs with no problem.  A warlock or a hunter will also work, usually in their high health or PvP gear.

The Pull

The pull on Blood Princes can be a little hectic because you’ll need to coordinate the three tanks to pick up aggro on their bosses at the same time.  Its possible at the pull for someone to unexpectedly get hit by one of Prince Keleseth’s Shadow Lances, usually a healer, so be ready to heal them up.  Positioning is also important in this fight, so you’ll need to make sure to get it right at the start.

Where you position yourself depends on who you are using Beacon on.  I would recommend using Beacon on the ranged tank (Keleseth’s tank).  The ranged tank will be moving around quite a lot, and using Beacon on him should ensure that he always gets heals, even if he is out of range.  You can then position yourself between the other two tanks (closer to the doorway) and alternate heals on them as needed.  If you do this, you will probably need a little help on the tank heals to keep them both up, although you should still have time for some raid heals while both tanks are at full health.  Alternatively, you could use Beacon on Taldaram’s tank and heal the two real tanks like normal and have another healer dedicated to healing Keleseth’s ranged tank.  You should be able to keep both tanks up pretty easily by yourself this way as well as do some raid healing.  If you choose this method, you could actually position yourself on the far side of Valanar so your Beacon tank is over 40 yards away.  This might help you be in range of the rest of the raid and it will make it easier to avoid empowered ball of flames.

You should try to always be almost 40 yards from both tanks so you can more easily avoid Empowered Shock Vortex and Empowered Ball of Flames.  Also, remind your raid members to stay at least 12 yards away from you to avoid the shared effect of Shock Vortex.  Since you’re healing, they should be the ones to move, but you may also need to move away from them if they are getting close during a shock vortex.

Keeping everyone in range

The biggest obstacle in healing this fight is when people go out of range of you, especially the tanks.  There are three abilities that could potentially cause you to go out of range of the tanks.  Two of them are completely avoidable and shouldn’t affect you if everyone performs correctly.

Kinetic Bomb

Kinectic Bomb is the first ability your raid needs to worry about, but that you can completely ignore.  For the first attempts at this boss, you should assign a dedicated ranged dps to dealing with the Kinetic bombs exclusively.  The bombs are orbs that float in the air that need to be hit regularly like a balloon floating in the air to keep them up.  If they hit the ground, they will explode, doing a lot of AoE damage and knocking everyone across the room, out of range of whatever you’re healing, and probably causing a wipe.  Kinetic bomb may be the source of your wipes for the first few attempts.  Once you get the hang of it though, its easy to take care of.

Shock Vortex

The second ability you need to watch for is Shock Vortex.  Non-intuitively, the regular version of Shock Vortex is actually more dangerous than the Empowered version.  The empowered version is pretty easy to avoid simply by being over 30 yards from Valanar while he is empowered.  If you or someone around you does get hit by it, you may end up flying randomly around the room, although because the knockback happens away from the person who had it, you may actually end up being knocked toward the boss instead of away, which is not ideal, but definitely better than the alternative.  If that happens, just try to run back into position as soon as you can.  The damage from both empowered and regular shock vortex is pretty small and manageable, its the knock back that can cause problems.

The regular version of Shock Vortex happens throughout 2/3 of this fight while the other two bosses are empowered.  Shock Vortex will create a whirling ball of electric mass somewhere in the room.  The ball doesn’t move or do a lot of damage, but it will do a large knock-back to anyone that gets near it.  Its likely that a ball will end up spawning right at your feet sometime during the fight.  You’ll need to watch closely at all times and step away from it if you see it spawn, otherwise it can knock you out of range of the tanks, possibly causing a wipe.  If you do get knocked away from the tanks, do not blindly run back into the same position to start healing again or the shock vortex will just knock you back out again.  The whirling ball can be a little difficult to see since it isn’t bright orange or red, but watch closely for it anyway and be ready to move out of the way of it so you can continue healing.  If you can avoid the shock vortexes, they should never cause you to go out of range of the tanks.

Empowered Ball of Flames

If your raid has Kinetic Bombs and Shock Vortexes down, you’ve pretty much got the fight won (as long as your ranged tank is good at picking up orbs).  The only other ability to worry about is the empowered ball of flames.  You may never get targeted by this, making your job much easier.  However, if you are ever targeted, you must immediately turn around and start running away.  The ball will do less damage to you the farther it flies and the more other people it travels through.  At full power, the ball will one-shot you.  You will need someone to pick up healing on the tanks while the ball is on you so you can run.

You’ll see the ball appear as a large orange orb above Taldaram while he is empowered before it starts flying toward a raid member.  If you see the ball but don’t see the warning that it is targeting you, your job is completely different.  In that case, you want to run into the path of the orb so you can absorb some of its power so it doesn’t one-shot its target.  Don’t worry too much about doing this unless the ball is going near you anyway.  Your other raid members should be helping to absorb the damage and running away from the ball so they don’t get one shot, so you can focus mostly on healing.  However, if one is going in your general direction, feel free to step in front of it to help things out.  The damage it will do to you while passing by is very small.

Summary

Here are the main things to keep in mind and you’ll have this boss down in no time:

• Stay 30 yards away from the Valanar and Taldaram
• Move away (and stay away) from swirling Shock Vortexes that spawn on the ground
• Run away from Empowered Flaming Orbs

That’s really all there is for you to remember, besides keeping everyone healed like usual.  Master these three mechanics and you’ve got the fight down.

Good luck!

Loot to watch for

• Cerise Coiled Ring
• Heartsick Mender’s Cape