Originally Posted by
Lore
Welcome to the Tankspot Dragon Soul raid guide. My name is Lore, and in this video we'll be showing you how to defeat Morchok, the first boss in the Dragon Soul raid instance. You'll need 2 tanks and about 5 or 6 healers. Any mixture of DPS should be adequate, although ideally you'll want at least 7 ranged.
This is an extremely simple and straightforward encounter, and shouldn't offer too much of a challenge to an appropriately-geared raid group, as long as you know what you're doing. So, let's get to it.
Phase 1 - Abilities
Although Morchok is technically a two-phase encounter, you'll be spending the majority of the time in phase one. His first ability is called Stomp. This is a large AOE that deals about two and a half million damage, split between everyone within 25 yards of the boss. Note that the two players who are closest to him will take twice as much damage as everyone else.
He'll also occasionally throw out a Resonating Crystal. This looks like a little red bubble on the ground, and attaches itself to the 7 closest players. After a few seconds, it explodes, dealing damage to those 7 players. The farther away they are from the crystal, the more damage they'll take.
His final ability in phase 1 is a debuff he'll place on the tank called Crush Armor. It does pretty much exactly what it sounds like - reduces the tank's armor by 10% per stack. This debuff lasts 20 seconds.
Phase 1 - Strategy
Once you've pulled the boss, you'll want to position your raid to mitigate as much damage from Stomp as possible. That means stacking the raid directly behind him, at maximum melee range, while the tanks stand as close to him as possible to make sure they're the two chosen for the extra damage. You'll also need to assign 7 people to soak the Resonating Crystals -- ideally, these should be ranged DPS. Whenever a crystal spawns, those 7 players should immediately run over and stand on top of it. Don't be fooled by the beams - those will switch to the soakers as soon as they're the closest targets. Finally, the tanks should keep an eye on each other's stacks of Crush Armor, and swap aggro at 3 stacks.
Phase 2 - Abilities & Strategy
Every so often, Morchok will swap into a brief phase 2. He'll start by pulling everyone in the raid to him, dealing some light damage and stunning you for a moment. He'll then summon a bunch of Falling Fragments along the edges of his pathway. These block line of sight, which is important for dealing with his other ability, Black Blood of the Earth. This deals a constantly-increasing amount of nature damage to anyone standing in it, and will quickly spread away from him, but is blocked by any fragments it runs into.
So, dealing with the Black Blood is pretty simple. Just run and hide behind one of the fragments. Ideally, everyone should run in the same direction, but getting out is more important.
As soon as the Black Blood dissipates, phase 1 begins again. You can move him back to the center if you like, or just keep him wherever he ends up and adjust accordingly. From there it's just rinse and repeat until the encounter is finished. He does have a slight enrage at 20% health, which causes him to attack 30% faster and deal 20% more damage with each hit, but as long as your healers are ready for it and tanks use their cooldowns appropriately, that shouldn't be much of an issue.
Like I said, Morchok is not a very complex encounter and shouldn't be much trouble as long as everyone's on the same page. It's just a matter of handling a couple very simple abilities and burning him down. The dungeon journal says he's the "most powerful elemental still under Deathwing's sway". If that's the case, Deathwing better have something better lined up.
If you'd like more information on this or any other Dragon Soul encounter, head over to Tankspot.com and click the Movies link at the top of the page. Thanks for watching, and good luck.
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