Nerfed! You are the bomb!

At the moment my guild is at the 5th boss in Molten Core, Baron Geddon. This isn't an incredibly hard boss but you do have to pay attention to your surroundings and EVERY other player in the raid. This is my short little guide to this encounter. Hopefully it makes things easier for your next run.

Baron's bag-o-tricks

Ignite Mana*:
Burns 400 mana from nearby enemies every 3 sec. For 5 min. Each point of mana that is destroyed also damages the target from which it is consumed.

Inferno:
Surrounds the caster with an inferno that periodically inflicts Fire damage to nearby enemies for 8 sec. Each Pulse of the flame increases in damage and does up to 2000 DMG a pulse after 9 pulses.

Living Bomb*:
Throws a bomb at an enemy. After 8 sec., the bomb explodes, inflicting 3200 Fire damage to the target and its nearby allies.

Melt Armor:
Reduces the armor of nearby enemies by 1000 for 1 min.

The encounter:
The main issue a lot of guilds have is with Living Bomb and Ignite Mana. I can't count the number of times that a kill was about to happen when BOOM, someone set us up the bomb.

The strategy that I grew up with involves 2 main groups melee DPSers (blue) and casters/ranged (red). The boss is tanked in front of the 2 groups, but far enough away so that the Inferno won't wipe out them out. There is also a bomb lane(white)which the person inflicted with Living Bomb must run to. After getting into position the fight is pretty straight forward.



The single most important thing to remember is that IF YOU ARE THE BOMB RUN TO THE BOMB LANE! He casts Living bomb ever 25-30 seconds and if you are the bomb you have 8 seconds till you explode. Run to the bomb lane and hug against the wall so when you explode you'll catch the wall and avoid fall damage. Needless to say going AFC even for even a second during this encounter could cost the life of your raid. Remember Bomb = bomb lane, bomb - bomb lane = death, death = no lewt, simple huh!

The only exception to this rule is if the main tank is the bomb. If this happens make sure that he is far enough away from the groups as to not wipe the raid, and ALL healers do your job and keep the poor guy alive. A shield right before the explosion wouldn't hurt.

Tactic for the Melee DPSers.
This is simple! Baron has a spell called Inferno in which he sends out 9 rings of fire. With each ring the amount of damage increases, the final ring does a whopping 2k damage. When you are kicking the shit out of Baron watch for the first ring of fire, then run to the blue dot on the map above. Try not to get hit by more than one, the healers need their mana for the main tank. After the final ring count to 3 so the tank can get full aggro again and rush in and commence kicking the shit out of Baron.

Ranged DPS and Casters.
Healers heal the main tank, Decursers decurse the mana ignite. and DPS do what you do best.

For the ranged DPSers, the best strategy is to go all out when the main tank has 5 sunder armors on Baron, but try not to pull aggro. So no nukes mages. When he starts to cast Inferno go with all white DPS, meaning hunters only auto shot, casters use your wands. He wipes some but not all aggro from the main tank... So the last thing you want is for him to come charging into the caster group.

Decurse damn you!!
At the planning stage of the encounter decide who will be decursing. Decursive is your best friend here. You should prioritize your decurse list for this encounter so that it doesn't include the people without mana. This is so very important because healers without mana are useless and the raid wipes. Read more about it here

Tip to Ranged:
There is a sweet spot that casters can enter where you are still in range, but you're out of range of his Mana Ignite. Don't count on using this as a tactic because guess what, the Baron will move and you'll be out of luck. Just thought I would throw it out there for you.

Fire Resist Gear.
If you're not main tank don't go all out because you won't need it. Main tanks should pop on the dark iron gear and attempt to hit the 250 mark with FR. Other then that if you stick to the strategy above you shouldn't get slapped around by Baron.

OMGZ LEWT!