Molten Core

Part A: Pre-Raid

Mandatory Requirements:

CTRaid Assist – Important for casters who will need to know when someone is affected by an ailment such as; magic, curse, disease or poison.  Since seconds can be the deciding factor in success or a wipe, these casters need to be able to view the information of all raid members.

Ventrilo - Communication is key, and it is required that everyone has it.  Go download it today.  Please make sure that it is running correctly before ever joining the raid.  If you have any questions pertaining to Ventrilo setup please feel free to contact Tornpawn or Griffiths.  If you are going to be using speakers instead of headphones please be sure that the sensitivity setting is off so that the “echo” problem does not delay our start of Molten Core.

Suggestions for Raid and Party composition:

I) Suggested Class amounts and roles

            Warriors - 5 to 6

            Warriors are absolutely necessary for absorbing damage on all creatures in Molten Core.  Their primary role is tanking.

            Suggested Equipment:  The best setup available to maximize total health and armor

            Priests - 5-8 depending on druids (preferably dwarves)

            Priests follow standard raid activities.  However, mana must be conserved as much as possible.  Healing should be timed carefully and focused on warriors.

Priests will not engage offensively and will be secondary dispellers of magic debuffs.          

            Suggested Equipment:  Intelligence and heal spell maximizing gear.

            Druids - 4 to 6 depending on priests

            Druids fluctuate between primary and secondary healers.  Their main job is to innervate those that need it (therefore restoration spec is highly recommended)

and provide healing for classes not actively taking damage.  Druids do not perform in any offensive manner.

            Suggested Equipment:  Intelligence and heal maximizing gear

            Rogues - No more than 4 rogues

            While damage amount is high, rogues do not provide necessary functionality that other classes do.  They are essential for managing a few creatures, but overall are not too important when creating a raid.

            Suggested Equipment:  Damage maximizing gear

            Mages - 6 to 8

            Mages play primary damage roles as well as vending machines.  Varying parts of the instance require mages to perform in certain manners, but it is necessary to have multiple capable mages.

            Suggested Equipment: Intelligence and mana maximizing gear

            Paladins - 5 to 8

            Contrary to typical instances, paladins in Molten Core play primarily roles of healing and debuffing.  Cleansing for fear and any other magic as well as support healing is paladins' primary focus.

            Suggested Equipment:  Stat maximizing gear

            Hunters - 3 to 4

            Hunters play a normal role in Molten Core.  They act as damage dealers as well as pullers in most cases.  It is necessary to have at least 2 hunters to fight Magmadar.  They are the only class capable of using "tranquillizing shot" which becomes essential during the Magmadar encounter.

            Suggested Equipment: Damage maximizing gear

            Warlocks - 3 - 4

            Warlocks' roles in Molten Core are primarily support and debuff.  Warlocks should be using imps at all times for the "blood pact" ability (43 stamina bonus).  Soulstone is a must have for Molten Core.  Banish is also handy to have.

            Suggested Equipment: Mana maximizing gear and MANY soul shards

II) Party Composition

            Party composition may change throughout the instance.

            Standard party composition is broken down into:

                        1 primary healer (priest or druid)

                        1 warrior

                        1 mage

                        1 secondary healer

                        1 of any class that is not necessary in other parties

            This provides what should be adequate healing for all members as well as curse and magic removal if necessary.  All members gain access to all class assistance abilities.  Party makeup should fluctuate as is necessary.

            During some encounters, parties may be broken down according to class.  I.E.  One party of mages, one party of paladins, one party of priests, etc.

 Items

There is not a set list of items, but many provide great assistance to a raid.  One item that may become absolutely necessary is a repair bot.  It is doubtful that any given Molten Core raid will succeed 100% of the time, therefore the raid should be equipped with one of these in case repairs are needed.  Other potential items include goblin jumper cables for those who can use them, major heal potions, major mana potions, restorative/purification elixirs, and bandages.

Looting

Treasure is a very important issue, especially when a purple item drops.  Loot rules should be established before the raid even begins.  Under the "Point Attendance" system, players who participate the most will be rewarded most often.

This will be explained further in the future.

Part 2: Entering Molten Core

Completing the quest:  Attunement to the Core

Here it is recommended that all attending members complete this quest if they have not done so already.  The quest giver can be found at the bottom of the chain that leads towards the entrance of Black Rock Depths (BRD).  To complete this quest, the player must find an object outside of the Molten Core entrance and bring it back to the quest giver.  To accomplish this, a 10 man party (including at least one warlock with a lot of soul shards and one paladin) will be sent to BRD to make its way to the MC entrance and begin summoning members to the entrance.

Phase 1

-The 10 man party enters BRD and makes its way towards the fire elemental boss that walks in circles around the large anvil.  This is achieved by jumping through a window before the tunnel that is blocked by a large column, then following the large road away from the landing point.  Beating the boss is optional, but recommended as it is fast and easy.

-Very carefully, the party must jump down into the lava filled area and stand on the small areas of land that protrude from the lava.  Once all members have done so, the party will make its way around the wall towards the open area, staying on land at all times.  Once a large cliff at the end of the ridge is reached, the party will begin jumping across the lava to a large island across the way.  A paladin should go first as he/she can protect himself from the lava and provide healing to others crossing.  The party should not engage the fire elementals on the island until all members are there and restored.  Staying on the small tip where you first landed will not draw aggro.

            To cross the lava, jump repeatedly while moving forward.

-Once all party members have crossed safely, they should make their way towards the slope leading upwards and destroy the fire elementals on or around the bridge.  The green portal is the entrance to Molten Core.

Phase 2

-Once the party has arrived, all members should seek out the molten core fragment for the quest then, with the exception of the warlock and 2 others, all members should enter the instance.  The raid leader should begin changing party members around so that the warlock can summon those who have not completed the quest.  The person being summoned should enter BRD, accept the summon, obtain the Molten Core fragment, then enter the instance and notify the raid leader that they have done so.

-It is important that members do not leave the instance after they have entered.  The quest involving the fragment should be turned in after the raid decides to end.

Part 3: To Lucifron!

Making your way there

Phase 1

-To reach Lucifron's area, the raid will follow the path out of the starting area, and follow it down towards the edge and then into the caves.  Monsters in Molten Core respawn slowly, so time is not as important as survival is.  Every creature should be pulled separately of all others.  It is possible to take 2 monsters at once but is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT.

Note: The cliffs are a lot higher up then they seem.  Members should be careful not to fall over the side, or they may not be able to be resurrected.

Encounters:

Molten Giants:  A molten giant is big and red and easily killed.  Once pulled, the designated tank should gain aggro to near as much as possible.  At that point, all raid members should attack using LOW AGGRO abilities!  If anyone besides the main tank pulls enough aggro so that they are attacked, a raid can end in disaster.  This is true at all times.  That aside, priests and druids should just keep on healing and there shouldn't be any problems.\

Fire lords:  Fire lords look like giant fire elementals.  These can be among the most deadly creatures first encountered in the raid.  The main concern here is usually the ability to spawn small monsters that do several things.  They can use a very high damage DOT on you, can shoot you for direct damage, or will come right towards you to attack directly.  After several successful actions, the firespawn will SPLIT IN HALF, creating another version of it and repeating the process.  To counter this, the mages must use extensive AOE (blizzard) spells to kill the spawns quickly while everyone else focuses on the fire lord.  AOE spells should start the instant a spawn is seen.  Rogues should also focus on spawns.  If a spawn leaves the AOE area at any time, it must be pulled back, whether by a warrior or by the person it aggrod on.  If the spawns are not killed quickly enough, the raid will fail.

Ancient Core Hounds: These resemble the beast found in Upper Black Rock Spire (UBRS).  They're a fairly straightforward fight, the same as the giants.  Once a warrior holds enough agro, the rest of the raid should use low and then high agro attacks.  Ancient core hounds have unique abilities that are randomly found in each one.  Noted abilities so far are a large AOE war stomp/stun spell, and a large AOE fear spell.  The fear spell can be worrying as it may bring a player close to the edge of the cliff.  One other thing about ancient core hounds is that they respawn every 15 minutes.  Patrols are dealt with fairly quickly however.

Lava Surgers & Annihilators:  They look like big earth elementals.  Surgers possess no special abilities other than rushing forward, bouncing random party members up into the air, and then returning to its original target.  While fighting these, the raid should be spread out but avoid getting near cliffs.  Annihilators aren't too difficult.  Once max aggro is achieved, just nuke them into oblivion.  The nice thing about these is that they can be banished, so a raid that accidentally pulls one too many doesn't have to worry too much.

Imps:  High damage, low life.  They come in LARGE groups.  Mages should just AOE constantly and imps go down relatively quickly.  It should be noted that even diligent healing may not save a mage.  Expect a death or two at first.

Core Hounds: These can be tricky but aren't overly difficult.  The hardest part is ensuring that they all die at EXACTLY the same time.  If they don't, they come back to life.  One annoying aspect they have is their "serrated bite" ability.  This can cause a DOT damage buff on the target that can reach upwards of 13500 damage.  It cannot be removed.  The recommended course of action is to have 1 warrior tank for each dog and control his/her abilities to ensure that the creature's health stays relatively close to the others while mages use Blizzard.  If one's health difference becomes dangerously noticeable, it is recommended that only hunters or rogues switch targets and that they should only focus on one until its life is once again similar to the others.

Fighting Lucifron

             I.                     Two hunters will be assigned to each of the guards.  One hunter will mark one of the guards that the raid will attack first. The designated paladin will pull Lucifron to the raid party and run back with his shield up. 

            II.                   The main tank will peel Lucifron off of the paladin and take him to the 2 o’clock position.

           III.                  The other two hunters will pull their guards to their 5 and 6 o’clock positions and allow the back up tanks to grab each of the guards. 

           IV.                 Everyone but the tanks will then commence taking down the marked guards until both are down and then focus on Lucifron.

During all of this, Lucifron will be casting magic and curse debuffs that will need to be removed from party members as soon as possible.  One of his curses has the effect of doubling all skill costs, which will severely hinders casters efforts to heal and do damage.  Paladins and mages should be the ones focused on removing these debuffs as the priests should be concentrating on healing raid members.