The Gunship Battle: Strategy 101

This is one of the more unique fights in ICC, as well as perhaps the easiest one. Essentially what happens is the raid is standing on one gunship, when an enemy gunship approaches. You will witness the least effective “evasive maneuvers” the world has ever seen, then battle will begin. The way to win the fight is to use the cannons on our ship to blow up the enemy ship before their rocketeers blow up ours.

This is slightly complicated by the enemies use of Battle Mages to channel a freeze on our cannons that take them out of action for as long as the mage is alive. The only way to kill the mage is to use your rocket pack (which you are generously provided free of cost by the goblin on our ship) to jump to the enemy ship and blast her down. Once the mage is dead, you can either immediately jump back to the “home” ship, or you can stay on the enemy ship and kill the rocketeers hanging out in the back.

While all of this is happening, a portal is opened on our ship and adds stream out of it. Generally they are just tanked in place and AoEd down.

Rinse and repeat until the fight is over.

Gunship Abilities

• Battle Fury - Saurfang will gain a stacking buff every time he hits someone (hopefully just the tank). The longer the tank has to stay on the enemy ship, the higher the damage will stack.

So what do we do?

Roles on this fight are generally broken in to 5 categories: Tanks, Healers, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, and Cannon people.

One tank will permanently stay on the home boat, tanking the adds that spawn from the portal overhead. Ranged DPS will AoE down these adds, then focus their attention on the Axe Throwers on the enemy ship (no need to jump across, your spells will reach).

The second tank will twiddle their thumbs until the first Battle Mage spawns and freezes our cannons. At this point the second tank will hop over to the enemy ship (calling it out in vent as they do) and begin tanking Saurfang. This allows the Melee DPS to jump over and deal with the Battle Mage (who is so intent on keeping the cannons frozen that she will not even fight back). Depending on how Saurfangs stacks look when the Mage is dead, melee then moves to the back of the ship to kill the rocketeers. Once those are all dead, the second tank will call out that they are jumping back to the home ship soon... this is melee’s cue to GTFO. You really do not want to be left alone on the enemy ship with a fully buffed Saurfang.

The fight will progress like this for 3-5 Battle Mages and then you win.

DPS Specific Tips

• If you are on the enemy ship and do not have time to run all the way across the deck to then jump to our ship, just throw yourself off the nearest edge. You will be ported right back to our ship.
• The adds that spawn on our ship have a tendency to Whirlwind, so let the ranged take care of them.

Healer Specific Tips

• This may be the most boring fight for you in all of ICC... position yourself near the edge of our ship so you can reach the tank on the enemy ship and start the game of who-can-snipe-what-heal-from-who.
• We usually run very light on healers here since damage is so low, so you may well find yourself on cannon duty

Tank Specific Tips

• There is no set number of stacks that you should be watching for on Saurfang, it is entirely up to you and your healers how long you feel comfortable being beaten on. Just be sure to give melee a heads up and a little time before you jump back home.
• Tank Saurfang at the near edge of the enemy ship, this way your healers can reach you from the home ship and do not waste time jumping back and forth.

Cannon Tips

• Your job is to press “1” until your energy/mana/rage/heat (whatever you want to call it) bar reaches between 90-100... then press “2.”
• If you allow your heat to build past 100, your cannon will overheat and shutdown briefly... this is bad.
• DBM has timers for the Battle Mages that appear, but they are slightly off. When the timer reaches 0 you still have a couple seconds to build your stacks. The Battle Mage will not actually lock you out until she reaches the center of the enemy ship, so watch where she is, and get your heat as high as possible before hitting 2 at the last second.

Miscellaneous Notes

The rocketeers will launch rockets at our ship that do damage to anyone in the area when they land. You can see where they will land because it is marked with a rune. As usual, try not to stand there (although the damage is so low that this is really just about best practices rather than a wipe-inducing mistake).

Questions or comments on this strategy? Discuss them at our Class and Strategy forum!