Am I doing Lady Deathwhisper right?

Lady Deathwhisper is the second boss in Icecrown Citadel. She is a challenging encounter on 25-man, and fairly trivial on 10-man. This strat guide focuses on the hunter perspective. For a complete raid strat I recommend Tankspot’s Deathwhisper Video. The value of actually seeing a video of a fight cannot be overstated.

Phase 1: Everything Happens

This fight is all about phase 1. If you can make it out of phase 1 then phase 2 should be easy. As a hunter you could get put into a couple of different roles for this fight. Before we get into specifics, let’s take a look at what you’ll have to be dealing with regardless of what job you’re assigned.

• Death & Decay: appears as a large green circle on the ground and damages you if you’re standing in it. Move out of it.
• Mind Controlled Players: be prepared to use your freezing arrow at once if you see a mind-controlled player. Unless your RL specifically tells you not to, this is the responsibility of every crowd-control capable class, including hunters and our crummy crowd control. Note that there is no mind-control in 10-man. 

Quelmiran's note: But imo it's best if a druid cyclone them cause they will become immune and will not take any damage from AoE attacks.

• Curse of Torpor(Not Working in our Server): increases the cooldown of all abilities by 15 seconds, cast by Cult Adherent. That means if this is cast on you and you use steady shot, that now has a 15 sec cooldown before it can be used again. Then you  use Explosive Shot, that now has 15 seconds. Your DeadlyBossMods will warn you with giant text in the middle of your screen when this is cast. Immediately stop casting (hit escape) and just auto shot until it is decursed off of you. If your raid is really slow at decursing you may have to just suck it up and do what dps you can (I’ve had every single shot affected by this more than once).
• Mana Barrier: Lady D starts with a mana barrier up, and can’t be hurt until this is dpsed down, which then starts phase 2. All damage done will drain her mana. There were a lot of reports that hunters should use Viper Sting to drain her mana – this is untrue! Your serpent sting will do much more damage than viper sting will drain — thus serpent sting will actually drain her mana faster. That said, if you’re running low on mana yourself, absolutely use viper to regen your mana.

Okay, you always need to be aware of those 3 things so now let’s look at your specific assignments. You’ll probably get one of two jobs: either just dps Lady D, or misdirect  the adds. In 10-man you’ll have to do both. Let’s take a look at these two possible hunter roles:
Job 1: DPS Lady Deathwhisper
This is definitely the easiest role, and one that hunters are well suited for with our high single-target damage, slower dps ramp-up time, and the fact that we can have unlimited mana on her (since we can viper if we ever get low).
She has no aggro during phase 1, so burn your cooldown right off the bat and then again every time you have a good opportunity (ie: on your trinket procs). Be aware of MD’d players and try to trap them. Move out of Death & Decay. Stop casting if you get Curse of Torpor.
It’s also likely that you’ll need to switch to dps down adds that get Empowered, which should be easy enough to do without having to move.
Note that Lady D has a 10 min enrage timer and it takes 14 million damage (25-man) to get through the mana barrier. That means that to drop the mana barrier in 7 minutes (giving 3 min for phase 2) your raid will need to average 33k dps on Lady D, while managing the adds efficiently.
Job 2: Misdirecting the Adds
7 adds spawn at a time (3 in 10-man). The different adds have different abilities, and they can get rezzed by Lady D or empowered, which gives them yet another set of abilities. Your raid leader will tell you to which OT you should misdirect the adds.
If you’re dpsing the adds just keep looking for and following whatever target your raid leader assigns to you. You’ll want to be standing within range of the boss at all times.  Put your pet on Lady D at the start of the fight and just leave it there for the duration. Your pet will do more good contributing its dps to Lady D than running around between adds.
Any time you have a few seconds between adds you should be contributing dps to Lady D. This fight is largely a dps race, requiring high dps on the right adds at the right time and sustained high dps on the boss. Even if you don’t have a few seconds of downtime you should keep a serpent sting on Lady D at all times. When you get to the steady shot part of your rotation, briefly switch over to Lady D and refresh your serpent sting before going back to your add.
Much like hunters with job 1, you can toss up a viper sting on Lady D if you’re having mana problems, and you’ll need to keep an eye out for MD’d players to trap, dodge Death & Decay, and stop casting if you get Curse of Torpor until it’s dispelled.
If you’re doing this on 10-man, you’ll need to dps the adds, and then switch to Lady D between waves of adds. Again, you’ll always want to keep a sting on Lady D, and if your melee are doing well, you can switch back to the boss a bit early.

Phase 2: the Burn

Phase 2 is much, much easier than phase 1. There are no more addds to worry about, and we mostly just burn down the boss. Occasionally Lady D will summon a ghost to chase you around that will blow up if it gets within melee range – just kite it away until it vanishes.


Be sure to misdirect to your tank at the start of phase 2, and FD early if it looks like you’re getting close to the tanks on threat. Also keep an eye on the threat of other dpsers. If they’re getting high, help them out with additional misdirects.