Utgarde Keep

Went into my first instance in Northrend last nite after finishing off Kara and it is amazing the differences in the instances. Karazhan which was an interesting fight before 3.0 has become rather bland and easy to run through. Utgarde on the other hand was awesome with the visual detail they went into with this low level instance. The fights were pretty even, especially since we had a fellow guildie who had been there before. We made it through most of the instance without problems, it wasn't until we hit the last boss that we had some major problems. Healing was pretty straightforward and I kept my riptides running on the tank for the most part and then filling everyone else up with Lesser Healing Wave. The one thing I did notice is that there is a mana shortage for Shamans but I think this is more my fault than the games. I had been basing my gear on a different model than what was actually in Northrend. With the way it was in BC post 3.0 we could afford to lose mp5 for crit, right now I don't believe that is the case. Since we have no real way of generating mana through talents or crits like all the other classes we are going to have to continue using the fall back of mp5.

Healing strategy for Utgarde Keep

The main thing as always is keep your tank up and for this riptide and chain heal work the best. It is also nice when your chain heal bounces to the other melee in the group and keeps them alive. For totems I threw down Flametongue, Mana, Stoneskin and Windfury, the last one because I had more melee than casters in my group. I usually try to keep my air totem applicable to the group. I did find myself really enjoying Tidal waves for the haste factor for Lesser Healing wave. The first boss isn't too bad, he brings in four guys at beginning so you have to watch the aggro, try to make sure that the tank is between you and the door they come through, this is especially helpful when running with a paladin tank. After you kill them off the boss will rez the four guys again and once again watch the aggro. If it is possible move around to opposite side of the tank so that they have to come past him to get to you.

The second boss consists of 2 mobs, one is a caster and the other is melee. The fun thing about these 2 is that your party has to kill them at about the same time. We got lucky going in there so I can't give you a definite time limit but I believe it was within 5-10 secs of each other. If you don't do this then the one will rez the other and you have to start again. We had the tank move right in and I put my totems close by. We were then able to burn them down without a problem and continued on.

Time for the last boss. This guy is was very difficult for us and we wiped twice on him. Nice thing is that we had a hunter to help us run through the whole instance after we got back in, it is a very long walk. There are 2 phases to this guy. The first one was pretty simple, the only thing the melee had to watch for was his shield bash which was an aoe that affected anyone within 20 or so yds of him. He is easy to burn down since he had next to no Hit Points. The next phase he gets rezzed by a Valkyrie and he starts dealing out shadow damage. You want to burn him down as fast as you can because he does a shout that puts a debuff on the party that increases shadow dmg done to you. Watch out for his shield bash aoe because this dmg is generated though shadow so can be very wicked. Burn him down as fast as possible, we made it through 5 shouts and then he took care of everyone in mail along with the tank and then the warrior and druid in bear form.

GL :)