Blackrock Caverns

[Aliena]

Hello and welcome to TankSpot's Guide to Blackrock Caverns! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you all you need to know about the new five-man instance released with Cataclysm.

Blackrock Caverns is located in Blackrock Mountains, a little ways down from Blackrock Spire. You're faced with five bosses in this instance. The first boss awaits you just a little way after starting the instance, in the Chamber of Incineration. His name is Rom'ogg Bonecrusher and he's a big old level 82 elite ogre. Make sure to clear the room of trash before you engage him!

Rom'ogg puts a mortal strike ability on your tank that reduces healing effects by 25% and also has a quake ability he uses on everyone in melee range, but the damage on that is low so you don't have to worry about it much. His signature ability is The Skullcracker - Rom'ogg will periodically pull every party member into melee range, put something called Chains of Woe on them and channels his Skullcracker ability.

To avoid it, your DPS needs to kill the Chains of Woe and everyone needs to move about 15 yards away before his channel ends. Everyone remaining in close range will get hit and potentially die.

After you defeat Rom'ogg, you release Raz the Crazed. Don't worry, he's on your side and he'll help you clean out a big part of the trash to come. Let Raz run ahead and clear whatever trash is left.

The second boss awaits you a little ways down from the bridge in the Halls of Awakening, her name is Corla, Herald of Twilight. She's also a level 82 Elite and comes with a twist. As you approach her, you'll see that she has two minions. As soon as you engage her in combat, the dragon overhead will channel a beam to those two stationary minions, giving them a buff. When their buff reaches 100 stacks, they turn into enemy dragons that will join in the fight. To avoid this, have two of your party members interrupt the beams.

They'll take the stacks instead, so make sure not to let it stack up to 100. If you have to, cycle people in and out. Corla herself doesn't do very much. She has a dispellable fear that she'll place on a random party member and an aura that buffs the minions should you let them evolve into dragons - but again, the point is not to let that happen.

Raz will help you clear some trash on the way to the third boss again, but quite a few trash packs await after Corla. Eventually you'll reach a fiery hallway with frozen slimes - this is the Twilight Forge, where you fight Karsh Steelbender. Before engaging Karsh, clean out the fire elementals one by one. They hurt and apply a stacking fire resistance debuff, not something you want up during the fight. The slimes can be completely ignored.

To fight Karsh, you have to use the environment to your advantage. After engaging him, everyone should run to the middle ring around his forge (not the grid, occasionally fire will spout of it during the battle). You'll notice he has a buff called Obsidian Armor, making him virtually invulnerable unless you drag him over the center of the forge, melting his armor in the process.

Don't keep him in the center for too long though - 5 seconds is a good medium to shoot for - since for every second he spends in the center, he'll apply stacking AoE fire damage to everyone in your party. Do a little dance with him, 5 seconds in the fire, 5 seconds out of it, rinse repeat, and he's an easy opponent.

Again quite a bit of trash after Karsh, but eventually you'll reach an optional boss in a side hallway called Beauty's Lair. Vanilla WoW players will catch the reference in this fight. Beauty comes with 4 adds called Buster, Lucky, Spot and Runty. Runty is hiding all the way in the back of the Lair, and for good reason! Don't attempt to kill him, as this greatly enrages Beauty. You'll regret it.

The other three adds can be pulled ahead of the battle though, and once you take them out you're left with Beauty. She hits fairly hard and has a Berserker Charge, that knocks the target back and inflicts damage. She also has an AoE fear, so if you have tremor totems or fear wards, this is a good battle to use them. She throws out some fireballs that you should move out of, but it's a very easy fight if you leave Runty alone.

The last boss is a little ways out from Beauty, located in the Scar of the Worldbreaker. His name is Ascendant Lord Obsidius, and while all that sounds intimidating, he's really all bark and no bite. Have someone kite them around, as they inflict a mortal strike ability. If your tank tanks all three, you won't really be able to heal him. They don't deal much damage, but occasionally Obsidius will change places with one of his minions, resetting the threat table in the process.

Alternatively, you can share threat by having your DPS keep high threat on the minions and having them pull them off your tank when he needs a heal. This really depends on how geared and organized your group is. Lastly, Obsidius has a debuff called Twilight Corruption - this is a magic dot and can be dispelled.

After he dies, you've completed Blackrock Caverns. Congratulations!

[Reev]

I didn't know about the beams until last night. I killed her through the dragon adds every time before that. :P Much easier if you do the beam thing.

[Martie]

The two adds of the last boss don't follow threat according to the buff they have. I never had an issue tanking all three, but I was fairly well geared for them.

[Reev]

The two adds of the last boss don't follow threat according to the buff they have. I never had an issue tanking all three, but I was fairly well geared for them.

They follow whoever the last person to hit them was. Additional damage to them won't generate additional threat, so anything hitting them will act like a taunt.

[uglybbtoo]

On Rom'ogg:

Originally Posted by Aliena
To avoid it, your DPS needs to kill the Chains of Woe and everyone needs to move about 15 yards away before his channel ends. Everyone remaining in close range will get hit and potentially die.

The hit is 40K+ it is almost a certain 1 shot death for any DPS and is even threating to tanks.


On Corla:

As a warrior tank I specifically ask dps not to intercept the beam as most of them stuff up the stacks and get transformed. The adds are trivial except the big strike they do which DBM announces as soon as it does tab find the one doing the strike and interrupt it as a warrior you have multiple interrupts or if you have shockwave off CD just launch it to interrupt. If DPS get transformed you now have 4 adds and her and 1 dps left to actually make the kill it's far worse than the adds transforming.


Ascendant lord:

The easiest way by far is to have one melee use there aoe attacks to keep the adds on them or get pets to tank them. The damage is relatively light and if they are getting low on HP they can run around.

The whole tank kiting them around means the melee dps gets nerfed heavily because they are always chasing we found it more dangerous than tank just standing there and nuking him and one or more peeps using aoe to keep the adds off the tank.

[Laoch27]

wondering if the people at tankspot would be awesome and get us a vid for heroic mode? that third boss just pwnd our group and were all not too under-geared looked at buffs debuffs and tried some different strats nothing worked healer ran out of mana got boss down to about 20% every time then wipe

[Papapaint]

wondering if the people at tankspot would be awesome and get us a vid for heroic mode? that third boss just pwnd our group and were all not too under-geared looked at buffs debuffs and tried some different strats nothing worked healer ran out of mana got boss down to about 20% every time then wipe

Heroic modes are coming, but don't forget that we're leveling and gearing up too!

[Grakzul Slaughtbringer]

Thanks for this guide it helped me a lot for my first run in Heroic Blackrock Caverns. Although I did not know the dungeon, I found it quite easy but I had very, very hard times with the third boss.
My UI is set with X-Perl and although it shows the buffs/debuffs of my target, it doesn't show the timer on those spells. So I was unable to move the boss correctly inside/outside the flame zone, so we had to deal with the adds. So I removed X Perl for this fight, and even with this problem fixed, it took me a while to perfectly understand how to move the boss. This fight is quite frustrating in the beginning because if the tank makes a mistake, everyone will die. But I'm glad we made it !

[Bradius]

I am having a lot of problem positioning Karsh(3rd Boss) as well. its like trying to move a retarded truck around and I cant seem to move him in and out of the burning fire column fast enough. any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[Destruyen]

this is how i kite him through to get stacks.



i tank him where the star is and strafe through the fire the way the arrow is pointing around 4-5 seconds left on his buff. he will gain 2 stacks this way so you need to clear stacks around 12 by not kiting him through the fire and kill the adds. don't try tanking the adds yourself. the group should be around the blue square and all dps should focus/aoe down the adds. they don't have much hp so no one should die. this also keeps the boss from gaining extra stacks from the lava pools the adds leave on the ground when they die. once the adds are dead and everyone is somewhat healed up start running him through the fire again, he should die before you have to drop stacks for more adds.

don't laugh at my paint skills.....

[Starbuck]

We hit a dead end last night on Karsh. Thanks for tip about adds, I tried to tank them as well and that didn't work. Will change that.

How do you manage to kite him through the fire without him stopping and doing aoe? When he casts he stands still and it takes a while for him to start move again. He does at least three stacks before I get him to move. This killed us all the time.

*$

[Fixins]

I don't understand the third boss all that well. Karsh's Obsidian Armor - I think that in the beginning he already has three stacks but what I'm confused on is when to drag him through the center. I think that you're suppose to when the timer for Obsidian Armor is almost out but I'm not 100% on that. Can anyone clarify this for me?

Also, are the stacks on him good or bad? I understand that leaving him in the fire too long causes a mass AoE but do the stacks that Karsh receive help the party?

[bombsaway]

Would also like to hear about peoples ideas on the third boss. I feel like getting through was a fluke after the numerous failures I experienced prior. I first ran in this beast at my local LAN shop that I found by reading online reviews. Do you guys ever use angies list for that kind of thing, to review places before you go check them out?

[Clothar]

You just need to get the tank to quickly run him through the pouring lava in the center of the room, and do so every 5-10 seconds to refresh the debuff he gains that reduces his armor and allows you to damage him. Without the debuff, he has a 99% damage reduction buff. As long as you don't let him stay in the pouring lava too long, any average healer should have no problem with outhealing the AoE.