In Which I Clear Utgarde Keep

I managed to get into a PUG for Utgarde Keep last night and had a blast. This was my first instance since I respecced to protection and I was really looking forward to tanking. The trash in Utgarde are not bad at all. They tend to be 3 pulls with one or two 4 pulls which have 2 casters.

Prince Keleseth is the first boss. This is a pretty fun fight with a few simple gadgets. He raises (and reraises and reraises) 5 skeletons during the fight to give your dps something extra to do. They reraise from where they are felled, so in theory a paladin should be able to tank them as well as the boss but we weren't successful in getting them kited into the consecration so I can't verify that. The other thing he does is toss out ice blocks that can indeed hit everyone, including the tank. This have about 7,000 hp so can be taken out fairly easily but he will go for someone else when the tank gets trapped.

Skarvald and Dalronn are the second boss(es). For those of you who loved Romeo and Juliette in Kara, you'll love the reprise. Unlike the Kara fight, they don't actually raise each other. Instead, the first to go down comes back as an untargetable ghost and keeps attacking until you kill the other. We burned Skarvald down to about 10% and then went to Dalronn. Skarvald still went down first due to Hammer of the Righteous but Dalronn went down quickly afterwords.

Ingvar the Plunderer is the final boss. He has two phases. The first phase is fairly simple with the big threats being his Staggering Roar, which locks out a spell being cast for 6 seconds and Smash which is a high damage 10 yard cone. I was able the first time to eat the Smashs in the first phase but not the second. You're going to have to run from them in the second phase so you may as well start in the first phase. Phase 1 ends when you take him down. At that point Annhylde the Caller resurects him as a ghoul and Phase 2 starts.

Dreadful Roar now replaces Staggering Roar, locking out spells for 8 seconds and Dark Smash replaces Smash. The smashes only have a range of 10 yards and take 3 seconds to cast making it very easy for the tank to run out of range. What ended up working for me was running from him in a clockwise fashion around the platform he's on. This let the dps and healer set up comfortable behind him without line of sight issues for the healer by the pillars in the middle of the platform.

I didn't get any drops this time through, but there are three quests which all had good rewards and/or xp.