Review: Icy Veins

The internet is filled with websites that give raid advice and class advice for the World of Warcraft. Http://www.icy-veins.com/, or "Icy Veins" is one of those websites.  It has been recommended to me on several occasions as a resource for understanding raids and classes better.  Personally, I find its layout and descriptions both good and bad.

The positive part of Icy Veins is in how thorough it is.  It goes into detail about every fight and about what each role and class can do during each fight.  It has lists of the abilities that each boss will use and what those abilities do.  It also gives an in-depth description of the boss's health, as well as the health of anything else that will enter the fight.

The strategy and layout sections are relatively straight-forward, though it is hard to relay the layout of a room without pictures to go with it.  Finally, there is a section at the end for what to do when the same boss is being raided on heroic mode.  This means that most of the information you could need on a raid boss is accumulated all on the same page, making it a one-stop resource.

However, I also find the information a bit overwhelming.  The pages make for an awful lot of reading, meaning the chances of remembering all of it will be slim.  Also, the information they give is clearly written for raids that are more difficult than flex.

The assumption that the website makes is that if someone knows the mechanics of a normal or a heroic raid, then they should be able to do easier raids.  This is actually a fairly intelligent assumption, since there are very little mechanical differences between flex raids and normal raids. The only differences between flex and normal are in the group makeups and boss health.  For instance, Icy Veins suggests 2 to 3 healers for a 10 man group, and 5 to 7 for a 25 man group, but flex raids can have anywhere between 10 and 25.

Therefore, I would recommend this site to experienced raiders looking to raid normal and heroic raids, or individuals that enjoy reading thorough descriptions of the fights they want to do. Overall, I'd give this website 4 out of 5 stars because it clearly has a lot of information to offer and only a few drawbacks.