Hellbreach LFR Tank Impressions

Hellbreach is the first wing of Hellfire Citadel, with the Hellfire Assault encounter, the Iron Reaver, and Kormrok.

I was paired with a wildly overgeared tank who unfortunately had a superior attitude, which made soem fights - particularly the last one - a little trickier and less of a representative impression.

Initial Trash:

There's a pretty huge courtyard you'll start in, and there's lots of trash to clear, giving you a preview of the adds you'll fight in the Hellfire Assault encounter. This is going to be a bit like the Valley of Strength in Siege of Orgrimmar - lots of little pockets of trash that you might miss if you aren't paying attention, but with 25 people blasting away, someone will probably pull all of them.

The courtyard is where you'll do the first two major encounters.

Hellfire Assault:

This is an add fight without any actual boss. You'll get streaming adds coming in constantly, either charging toward you or getting launched in those big iron capsules.

For a tank, this is all about just grabbing everything you see and staying out of fire. The berserkers are the only ones with a real wrinkle, as they'll stack a debuff on the tank. However, they usually didn't live long enough for it to matter. There are also some casters who might need interrupts.

The fight is won by taking ammunition from siege engines to the two massive cannons on either side of the raid's entrance. The siege engines are not tanked, but if you see the grinder one coming toward you, move the raid out of its path, and if the mortar ones come, you may have a big line of fire you'll need to dodge.

Iron Reaver:

There's not really any trash before the Iron Reaver, and you'll fight it in the same courtyard. There are two phases here - a ground phase and an air phase. The Reaver takes 95% less damage while in the air, so you'll really only be focusing on it when it's on the ground.

A BIG WARNING: when you first pull the boss, it will come down hard in a big circle that more or less insta-kills anyone except perhaps tanks, even on LFR. Don't let it land on you.

The ground phase will involve various forms of AoE, but the main worry for tanks is Artillery. When one tank is targeted with Artillery, the other tank needs to taunt, and the first tank should run far away before the debuff expires. When it does, they'll be hit for a massive amount of AoE damage - be sure to use anti-magic cooldowns to reduce the pain from this one.

When the reaver goes into the air, you'll need to help the DPS kill the bombs that the reaver drops before they explode. There will be green fire on the ground that stacks up a DOT on you, so be sure to watch where you step.

When the air phase ends, the reaver will drop once again with one of those big circles underneath it (it's quite big, so get away from it) like at the beginning of the fight. The phases alternate.

Trash after Iron Reaver:

Once the reaver is dead, you'll get into the citadel proper. It seems the raid branches out after this, but for LFR, you'll want to head down the corridor to the right to go to Kormork.

The major trick to the trash here is that there are typically two melee adds who will jump away and drop all threat. Be sure to taunt these guys back asap.

When you get to Kormrok's area, you'll need to kill several adds, including a magnaron in each of the three corrupting pools, as well as one in the center.

Kormork:

This fight I'm definitely going to have to look into some more, but essentially, Kormrok's abilities change depending on which pool he has most recently jumped into. I don't know exactly why, but you'll apparently want to rotate him between the three pools.

(Further research done:) Kormrok will not return to a pool until he has done all three. You can choose the order he does them in by moving him close to a pool he hasn't used yet in a cycle.

The orange pool (where we started) gives him explosive powers. He'll put a rune somewhere on the ground that a DPS will need to step on to take the damage for the team.

Tanks will want to tank at one end of the pool or another, as Kormork puts an explosive charge on them that roots them in place. The other tank will need to drag the boss (and the raid with it) away from the first tank to save people from the big burst of AoE damage.

The green pool will cause the boss to occasionally spawn gripping hands, like Kromog. Tanks will get hit with a powerful DOT called Crush, which is when you should swap.

The purple pool, when Kormrok is empowered by it, will occasionally send big globs of purple ooze that needs to be dodged. Tanks will have a debuff called Swat and should swap on it. Swat includes a knockback, but the damage caused by "Impact" is inversely proportional to the distance you're knocked back, meaning you'll actually want to make sure you don't have your back to a wall.