Rage Winterchill, like all the encounters in the Battle for Mount Hyjal, is a pretty easy boss with several waves of fairly difficult trash mobs that come before him (similar to the General Rajaxx encounter in AQ20 Pre-BC). For more details on the entire encounter, look over the Bosskillers strategy here. I'll be sticking to primarily Tankadin notes in this post. It's overall a very easy encounter (we killed him the second time we made it through the trash to him, with 24 people, after coming straight from killing Kael'Thas).
There are 8 waves of trash before you fight Rage Winterchill. Their composition is as follows:
Wave 1: 10 Ghouls
Wave 2: 10 Ghouls, 2 Crypt Fiends
Wave 3: 6 Ghouls, 6 Crypt Fiends
Wave 4: 6 Ghouls, 4 Crypt Fiends, 2 Necromancers
Wave 5: 2 Ghouls, 6 Crypt Fiends, 4 Necromancers
Wave 6: 6 Ghouls, 6 Abominations
Wave 7: 4 Ghouls, 4 Necromancers, 4 Abominations
Wave 8: 6 Ghouls, 4 Crypt Fiends, 2 Abominations, 2 Necromancers
As you can see, every wave has at least some number of Ghouls, and those are what you will be tanking. They melee cloth for around 2-3k (we had Warlocks pulling aggro and tanking them without much trouble in some of our first attempts), you should easily be able to tank 3 or 4 of them at once, possibly more if your healers are on the ball. DPS will generally want to single target 1 or 2 mobs down and then AOE the rest (with the exception of waves 6 or 7 as the abominations should all be single targetted), so your job is to pick up a bunch of Ghouls and tank the hell out of them. On wave 5 feel free to tank a Crypt Fiend also. You can also pick up the skeletons that the Necromancers spawn if they manage to summon any.
One or two hunters should be pulling either a Ghoul or Abomination out of the group to get the NPC's in the back of the area in combat, make sure to let them grab it as it's tempting to taunt something you see running off away from the group. It's helpful to make sure they have a raid assist so they can mark which target they're grabbing with an icon.
We can't taunt mobs off of the NPC's, so make sure your warrior and druid tanks are watching them. They add a lot of DPS, and keeping as many of them alive as possible is extremely beneficial to clearing the final waves in time.
Once the last wave is dead, you should have a second or two to start drinking if necessary, and then Rage Winterchill himself comes.
If you are Main Tanking: He's as close to a tank and spank as BC encounters get. Your job is to hold aggro and not die. Be mindful of Death and Decay, it has a HUGE radius and will kill you very quickly no matter how much HP you have as its damage is a percentage of your max HP. Otherwise, tanking him is very simple. His Icebolt ability CAN hit you, but it shouldn't be a big deal as it only lasts a couple seconds and there should be a steady stream of heals coming on you anyway.
If you are not MT'ing: There's a couple things you can do to make yourself useful. You should drop combat easily before Rage Winterchill comes, if you like you can swap into healing gear. Keeping a judgement up on him helps to some degree, although mana is generally not an issue. No matter which gear you're wearing, you should be watching for him to target someone other than the tank and immediately switch to them and start a FoL. His Icebolt ability will kill just about anyone in under 2 seconds if they don't get heals, and even a tiny FoL from tanking gear could save their life. You can dispel Frost Nova if you want, but it's not really an issue as he does not cast Death and Decay while Frost Nova is up.
Jaina Proudmoore should NOT be pulled into aggro with Rage Winterchill, as his Death and Decay ability WILL kill her, thus failing the encounter and forcing you to start over. Other NPC's can be brought into combat with him fine (particularly the Riflemen as they'll stay out of melee), but DPS on him isn't much of a concern.
Overall a very easy encounter, with lots of fun for a Paladin tank. Enjoy!
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The danger must be growing, for the rowers keep on rowing!
