There are 7 different boss encounters in the new firelands raid. From appearances all the fights provide very different and difficult boss encounters.

Each fight has a lot going on it it, and all of the abilities will be able to be found in the brand new Dungeon Journal launching with 4.2. Therefore the fight descriptions here are more about the basic mechanics and strategy of the fight and not the exact details.

Beth’tilac

The first encounter is a great looking fight that pits you against Beth’tilac, a giant spider-like creature. The most interesting mechanic in the fight is that it is a mutli-layer encounter, where Beth’tilac moves up and down from her web above to the ground below. At certain points you must ensure you are not on the same layer as she is or you will die from her abilities.

In addition the fight is broken up into two main phases. In the first phase you must break the raid into two groups, one to deal with spider adds that spawn and the second to hold Beth’tilacs attention on the web above.

The group dealing with the adds must keep up with the spawn rate so that Beth’tilac will not have any to consume and heal. The priority order on adds should be spinners, spiderlings, and then drones.

Beth’tilac must be engaged or she spews fire all over the raid, and the adds must be fought and killed or she will consume them and heal herself. However, when her fire energy drops to zero she will start casting a devastating AOE spell, at which point everyone on the web must quickly find a hole to drop through to the ground or they will die. Once the AOE is finished players in the boss group can go back up to the boss.

The second phase will start after the third AOE is cast and then you must DPS Beth’tialc down as fast as possible. While this is going on the tanks must trade agro back and forth whenever they get the healing debuff Widow's Kiss.

Lord Rhyolith

Next up we look at Lord Rhyolith which is a fight that has a brand new and very cool looking mechanic. The mechanic is that the boss can be steered around his platform by damaging his legs. To assist in this a balance bar comes up at the bottom of players' screens to show which way he will turn. DPS can make him turn by damaging either his right or left leg which shifts his balance in that direction.

Throughout the fight DPS needs to work on damaging his two legs, moving him around the room so that he walks over active volcanoes that spawn. Each time he stomps on one it removes buffs from him allowing players to hurt him faster. In addition to getting him to volcanoes players need to ensure he does not reach the edge of the island in the room or he will suck up the magma there and spew it at players killing them.

While this is going on the tanks need to pick up two different types of adds that spawn in the room. The first is a large single add that does an AOE damage spam that must be tanked away from everyone and ranged down quickly. There are also smaller AOE type adds that have to be grouped up and burned down quickly. Each of these small adds has a timer on them and if they are not killed before it expires they blow up causing damage related to their remaining health to everyone nearby.

The fight continues with DPS working on adds, the boss, and guiding him around until he gets to 25% health. At that point the fight enters a burn phase, literally. The boss erupts into fire and damage increases, so players need to down him quickly.

The mechanic in this fight could be viewed as gimmicky, but hey, it’s new, it’s cool, it’s different, so I’ll take it with a huge smile on my face. Three months from now, it will probably be old and a pain in the backside to have to do again, but for now, kudos to Blizzard for something new.

Alysrazor

Alysrazor is an awesome looking fight where you must deal with a flaming Phoenix like bird and the adds that she spawns. The fight is essentially two phases and involves a lot of movement, coordination, and near perfect execution while learning it.

Throughout the fight it is important to stay away from Alyzrazor's front arc any time she is on the ground as she does a heavy hitting frontal cleave. Also, throughout the fight she will molt firey feathers that players can pick up. When you do the feathers grant buffs, each increasing movement speed by 30%, the first also allows you to cast while moving, and the third allows you to fly.

In the first phase the group gets split into two, with the two tanks staying on the ground and several DPS going airborne once they collect enough feathers. On the ground each tank needs to pick up a voracious hatchling that will spawn from an egg that Alysrazor drops. They do not have agro but instead imprint on whoever is nearest when they hatch, so a tank needs to be by each one. They must be DPS’ed down and lead to worms each time they enrage which they will eat, causing them to calm down. While doing this DPS also needs to kill other adds that spawn throughout the fight.

In the air, DPS can fly after Alysrazor avoiding flaming clouds that cause damage, and flying through hoops of flames which grant buffs. All the while dealing damage to Alysrazor.

Once the boss has used up all her flame energy she creates a vortex that sends players to the ground and creates fiery tornadoes that must be avoided. This is the start of phase 2 which is a burn phase. The tornadoes don’t last for long and if you have a 30% speed boost from a feather, they are easy to avoid. Once they expire Alyszaror will drop to the ground having spent all her energy. DPS the boss as hard as you can, while the tanks grab two adds that spawn to help her regenerate her energy, any interrupts help here, but priority is on the boss.

Once she gets 50 energy she will re-ignite and start cleaving the group while she continues to regenerate energy. A tank has to grab her and face her away from the group at this point. Once she reaches 100 energy she will knock everyone back dealing fire damage and take to the skies starting phase one again.

Expect this fight to take a while to master as there are a lot of abilities being used and a lot of damage being thrown around. No individual ability is that hard, but putting everything together makes for a very interesting fight where everyone has to be near perfect to get the boss down.

Shannox

Shannox is an interesting single phase hunter based boss that has not one, but two nasty pet dogs. During the fight Shannox has several abilities, but the most critical to be aware of are the traps that he constantly sends out against random players in the raid. He has a crystal prison trap which locks players in place until freed and an immolation trap which does AOE fire damage. If you see one coming at you, get away quickly.

Shannox also has a nasty frontal cleave, so no one but the tank in front please. Worse yet, the cleave inflicts a stacking bleed so tank changes may become necessary over time. He also throws his spear out into the room causing damage to anyone nearby when it lands. One of his dogs will then return it.

One of the dogs, Rageface, has no agro table and must be constantly hit by big attacks to force it to switch targets. When it chooses a target it races to a random player and starts attacking and will not switch until hit with a huge single hit. Ranged should focus on this dog and go full out. The other dog, Riplimb needs to be tanked and has a frontal cleave and a stacking bleed debuff.

Lastly Shannox’s pets will cause additional damage if they are alive when his health drops below 30%. Inversly, if the dogs are killed Shannox enrages and causes additional damage.

The ideal method to beat this fight appears to be splitting DPS between all three elements. Get the dogs to about 5% each and the boss to 35%. Then down the dogs and burn the boss afterwards. While the bosses damage will go up if you kill the dogs, it is easier to deal with than the randomly placed damage Rageface can cause if left alive.

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Baleroc

This is an interesting twist on a healer intensive DPS race. How many times have you wished as a healer that your tank had more health? Well be careful what you wish for!

Baleroc casts an ability on the tank called Blaze of Glory that is a stacking buff/debuff that raises the tank's health by 20% and makes them take 20% more physical damage. Each time he casts that on the tank, he also gains a buff to himself that increases the fire damage he causes by 20%.

Throughout the fight crystals will spawn in the room and someone needs to get to them quickly or they spam AOE damage on the full raid. Standing near a crystal inflicts a stacking DOT that deals shadow damage. Any healer that heals a target with this DOT gains a vital spark which increases their single target healing dramatically. Anyone with the debuff can not be near another crystal for 1 minute.

The fight therefore is a race to DPS the boss down while managing the crystal DOTs and healer buffs. All Healers will need to heal players in the raid to gain the healing boost they gain in order to be able to heal the tanks who will stack to insane health pools (as in 3-4 million!). Tanks will need to swap to manage buffs and allow healers to catch up when they are hit with some of the big damage abilities, like Decimation which hits for 90% of your current health.

Overall the mechanics are interesting, but shouldn’t be too difficult to overcome, especially with smart healing and tanking.

Majordomo Staghelm

Majordomo was a fight about managing adds the first time we encountered him way back in Molten Core. This time the fight with him is very different. Essentially it is a two phase fight as he shifts between a cat form and scorpion form, each with their own abilities.

The twist here is that you control when he switches. Anytime the raid splits up he shifts to cat form, anytime you group up he switches to scorpion form. However, each time he shifts forms he causes 10% additional damage for the rest of the fight.

In scorpion form he has a frontal fire based cleave that splits damage between all targets that it affects. Each time he attacks with this he gains a stack of Adrenaline allowing him to attack faster with his normal attacks. Once he changes into a scorpion for a third time he can also place a DOT on a random player in the raid. That player has 10 seconds to get away from the raid before they explode causing damage to anyone around them.

In cat form he will leap at random players and summon a flaming cat add. These adds need to be burned down quickly. Each add that is summoned grants Majordomo a stack of Adrenaline allowing him to summon further cats faster. Once he changes into a cat for the third time he gains that ability to summon 2 fire orbs. Someone must stay in range of these orbs or they cause raid-wide damage, however, the person nearest will suffer a stacking DOT. Rotate through being closest to an orb taking 4-5 stacks of the DOT before someone else moves in.

Essentially the raid needs to keep Majordomo in each phase as long as they can before either grouping up or splitting up to cause a shift. The exact point that each shift should occur at will depend on your raid. A good starting point is about 8-10 stacks of adrenaline when in Scorpion form the first few times, and 4-6 for the third and later times. In cat form any time there are more than 3 adds up at the same time, it is time to force a change. Early on you may be able to manage more as they will despawn when he shifts form, but later on they can stack and cause too much damage too quickly to risk more.

The mechanics in this fight are once again very different from anything we have seen before. The ability to control the changes and a different kind of soft enrage timer will make this a very interesting fight to learn. Initially I can see many groups wiping as they accidentally get too close together or too far apart and cause accidental form switches.

Ragnaros

This is the fight that everyone is looking forward too. For many of us old time raiders, Ragnaros was the boss we remember most as he was where we all struggled the most so early in WoW.

As the final boss, he has a huge number of abilities and effects so this is just a quick run through to get you familiar. Check the dungeon journal when it goes live for the full ability and effect list.

Ragnaros has multiple phases just like he did the first time around. You must deal with him for a while, avoiding fire smashes from his hammer, and huge knock backs. You also need to deal with magma traps that he throws out that will stay there until activated.

In this phase have set people dealing with the traps and healers need to keep on top of the whole raid as they are set off.

At about 70% Ragnaros will submerge and summon adds. The adds move towards his hammer which he left behind and must die before they reach it. The adds slow down as they take damage, so this phase is about managing DPS between them to ensure they all slow down enough to be killed before they reach the hammer. Once all of them die, Ragnaros returns to the fight.

The next phase is much like the first but all players need to be on one side of Ragnaros. He will cast out molten seeds on multiple players that explode after 10 seconds dealing damage and summoning an add. As soon as they are thrown, players move to Ragnaros’s opposite side to avoid the AOE damage. When the adds spawn everyone groups up and AOE’s them down.

At 40% Ragnaros again leaves the fight summoning more Sons of Flames that have to be dealt with. In addition a large lava add is spawned that must be tanked away from the raid. Kill the Sons as your priority and then the Lava Scion. However, when the Sons are dead Ragnaros rises once again.

In this last phase clear off the Scion first and then deal with Ragnaros. In this phase he gains two more abilities. He can set large areas of the platform on fire, and everyone needs to avoid the flames. He also summons a meteor that will target and follow a random player. If it reaches that player it will kill them and anyone along the way that gets within melee range. Ranged DPS needs to focus on the meteor as any damage done to it will push it away. Burn Ragnaros down through his last 40% health and start celebrating.

The Ragnaros fight is very similar to the original fight but with enough new mechanics thrown in to make it fresh and exciting. After all the difficulties killing him the first time all those years ago, I can’t wait for another shot at him.

Messiah's Last Words

While we have seen a few of these bosses before, other than Ragnaros the fights are vastly different. The new fights all have very cool mechanics and several have new types of mechanics that need to be mastered to defeat the bosses. This is the type of content that makes World of Warcraft and Blizzard what they are. Now if we could just get this kind of new content each and every month! .

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