Summer in the City

The Midsummer Fire Festival is starting on the 21st. And there are some changes this year.
There will be a level 70 summonable boss like the Headless Horseman. He is called Ahune, the Frost Lord and is in the Slave Pens. There is a short quest line to get the item needed to summon him.
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Guide to Flame Desecration/Honoring
WoW Insider has a list of zones in Azeroth and Outland with fires to honor or desecrate, as well as a handy link to a checklist. Honoring your own faction's fire is worth 5 blossoms, and desecrating the opposing faction's fire is worth 10 blossoms. The blossoms are currency for summer festival toys. Doing both also gets you a nice bit of bonus XP if you are leveling. List of summer festival toys, video of garments & pet, and video of brazier.
If you're over level 50, you can also steal the opposing faction's capital city fires. Doing all 4 cities gets you a cool crown, as well as 100 blossoms (25/city) and other summer consumables.
Note: Elana's mostly done, but Esa will be running around Azeroth and Outland this week collecting blossoms. If you want to join in, let me know!
Arr... care for a pint?
Ahune Fight
Ahune was hard... he's like a mini-frosty-Ragnaros. He's definitely not an easy-epic kill like the Headless Horseman. Here's the loot he drops. I don't think the loot differs if you go to the instance on normal or heroic.
He is located in the second room of the Slave Pens after the hallway, so it's a simple clear. He spawns at the second icy patch in the room (not at the crystal where you summon him). There are 2 phases to the fight: submerge (where you attack him), and adds (where you dps off him and kill the adds). There's 90 seconds per phase and the phases alternate.
During the adds phase:
- there's an elite mob to kill
- there's a lot of little frost elementals that shoot frost bolt and do physical attacks. Most of it is physical, and generally hits for 200-350 on plate. Their HP is relatively low, since one blast of Kras' Seed of Corruption will kill them. They can kill the healer though, and it's difficult to get them in a pack for SoC.
- there's a special-add to watch out for. it looks like an air elemental, and will yank people to him causing damage and interrupting casts.
- there's a spell the boss does that causes a huge spike to shoot out from the ground, doing damage and throwing you in the air. Needs to be avoided by watching for a spiral graphic, followed by a pile of ice (by the time the pile of ice forms, it's generally too late to run away). If folks aren't avoiding this, the fight can get healing-intensive in the extreme.
- the boss gains some sort of damage aura during this phase, so if you stand too close to him (melee) you can take huge damage. as far as i could tell, there doesn't seem to be aggro during the phase, so it's OK for the tank to leave him alone. if there /is/ aggro, it's just that ice spike, which can be avoided.
- it's possible to "slip" on the white icy patches in the area, so if you're trying to heal the tank, don't stand there for too long :P
During the submerge phase:
- everyone can dps on the boss (called "Frozen Core") unless you need to regen mana or bandage yourself
- the fight can get buggy, where he's supposed to "submerge" (i.e., disappear) but remains there while the Frozen Core appears. Attack the frozen core, pretend he's submerged and not standing right there, and follow the raid warning that he'll be re-emerging soon.
Final note: if you fail, he de-spawns. So you only have as many tries as people in your group have the quest item. (I'm not sure if it's a daily quest, since I only did it on Saturday--if so then yay!) Winning gets you a choice of fire festival tabard, and other goodies.
Arr... care for a pint?