The pocket guide to Molten Core

See World of Warcraft for other pocket instance guides.

Molten Core is an instance underneath Blackrock Mountain. It is intended for groups of 40 level 60 players.

Other sources of information

The Warcraft Strategy guide
The famous (and incomplete) Conquest hints

Mods

Blizzard's raid interface, even post the 1.6 patch, is crapulent. You want to be running CT_RaidAssist. Everybody should, if only to make sure the healers have useful data. The raid leaders definitely should, to make sure that Living Bomb targets get notified.

I've also found Scrolling Combat Text to be invaluable, because it puts important event information in the center of the screen, where I'm most likely staring.

Maps

Atlas in-game map

Quests

Before you enter the Core you should finish the Attunement to the Core quest. This is given by Lothos Riftwaker, who stands right next to the window that allows easy access to the Core. You'll need to work your way through most of Blackrock Depths to the other entrance to the Core, deep inside. See The pocket guide to Blackrock Depths for a walkthrough.

Don't jump through that window unless you're in a raid.

To get to Ragnaros, you have to summon & defeat Majordomo. To summon Majordomo, you have douse those burning runes we've seen on the ground. There are 8 runes, one for each boss (Lucifron excepted). Dousing the runes requires special water. To be able to pick this up, you need to complete a quest series with Duke Hydraxis. He's on an island off the coast of Azshara.

Since you can only hold 1 water at a time, it's best if your guild has > 8 people finish the quest and grab water.

Here's the quest series:

Stormers and Rumblers
Poisoned Water
Go to Eastern Plaguelands and kill water elementals and collect foozles from them. Also, go to Silithius and kill earth & air elementals. The duke of the water elementals apparently doesn't like other elemental types.

Eye of the Emberseer
Kill the Emberseer in UBRS and loot an item from him.

The Molten Core
Kill one each of Ancient Core Hound, Firelord, Lava Surger, Molten Giant.

Agent of Hydraxis
Get honored with the Hydraxian Waterlords. You'll become honored quickly after a few MC runs.

Hands of the enemy
Kill Lucifron, Gehennas, Shazzrah, and Sulfuron and loot a hand from each.

A Hero's Reward
Final step, pick a reward.

Group composition

Since you're running CT_RaidAssist, group makeup isn't critical for most of the raid. However, on certain fights you'll want to use groups to assign tasks to people. Be ready to shuffle groups around often. Here are some general tips for any raid, however:

• One warlock per group (imp health bonus).
• One paladin/shaman per group (auras, totems).
• Pair priests with druids for innervating goodness.

Trash mobs

If you've never been here before, the first pull might shock you. MC is an order of magnitude harder than Upper Blackrock Spire. (The coming introduction of Zul'Gurub into the game might provide a gentler ramp-up.) Your raid leader must have good organizational skills. Your players must be able to listen to, understand, and execute on tactics requested by the raid leader. You must know how to have a tank generate & hold aggro while everybody else refrains from taking aggro. Everybody has to be disciplined. If you're not, you'll wipe over and over on your way down the slope.

Molten Giants come in pairs, always. Designate two tanks. Have one tank (and supporting healers) pin one giant some distance away from your raid. The other tank should bring the other giant a bit closer so your DPS can destroy it first. The giants have an AoE ability knockdown + damage, so you'll want to keep them away from your casters. Don't let an over-shooting hunter pull aggro.

The second pull is usually a Firelord. There are three mobs on the other side of the bridge ahead of you. The two on the right usually come together, and if the one on the left is still there, they'll take it along as well. So pull the one on the left first.

The Firelords aren't hard; even a dual Firelord pull isn't too hard. They pump out Lava Spawns periodically. You can tell when they do because there's a ground effect spell visible. Half of your DPS must switch to and kill the lava spawn immediately. If you don't, the spawn will split into 2 lava spawns. And again. And again. If you get two Firelords, as you might sometimes on the right-side pull, don't panic. Bunch them up, so your mages can Blizzard and knock all the spawns down at once. Focus fire on one of them, while a mop-squad handles the lava spawns. Kill one, wipe out lava spawns, kill the other. You can switch to your fire resist gear if you like when fighting the Firelords.

Make your way down the curving slope, killing things as you encounter them.

Lava Surgers are plain obnoxious. They will periodically target somebody and rush toward them, knocking down everybody in the vicinity like bowling pins. There's nothing you can do about this. Your DPS just has to chase them and kill them. You can banish them if you get two, or if one aggros while you're fighting something else. Lava Annihilators are similar, but their knockdown is smaller, and they do less damage. You should be able to wipe out the Annihilators without trouble.

Ancient Core Hounds are on an 18-minute respawn timer. You must assign somebody the task of timing them, so you'll know when you're about to see one repop. This matters most on your first trips to the Core, when you're likely making slow progress down toward Lucifron. They are difficult only when you get unexpected aggro from one. If you're scheduled to see one, don't pull your next mob. Wait for it and kill it. Standard tanking techniques work: Your main tank takes it, hold aggro, points it away from the raid. Your DPS whaps on the puppy's butt until it dies. See the Conquest guide for more information about the Hounds. They come in several varieties, some more annoying than others. Some have an AoE curse, Withering Heat, that you might want to dispell on your meleers right away.

At the bottom of the ramp, bear left, toward the bridge. Note that Lava Surgers can easily knock you off into the lava. Consider pulling them to the near side of the bridge, rather than fighting on that narrow spit of land. Watch out for Ancient Core Hounds coming up from behind you!

Interlude: flame imps

On the other side of the bridge, you have a cave with groups of Flame Imps in each nook. They respawn quickly, so once you start moving through the cave you have to keep moving. AoE the heck out of them. If you get a rock elemental while fighting the flame imps, banish it until the imps are gone. I found as a meleer that if I tried to fight the flame imps, all I'd get for my pains was a lot of damage. So let your mages & warlocks do their thing. Shield them, pile HoTs on them, spam heals on them... but still expect to have to rez them afterwards.

Move forward steadily into Magmadar's cave. When you reach the cave, move south into the safe pocket at the bottom. Breathe deeply. Rebuff. Repair if you had a hard time reaching this spot. (Trust me, you'll eventually be able to kill your way down there with only a death or two in the whole raid.)

The core hound packs are a slightly technical fight, but nothing too difficult. The thing to know is that they will re-ignite and come back to life after a 10 second timer if there's a living core hound next to them. So you need to kill them all at once. The technique is: assign one tank to each core hound. The tanks pull their hounds and hold them, lined up facing away from the raid. The DPS then smacks the hounds, changing targets as necessary to keep them all damaged about the same amount. When they reach 10%, your casters let loose with AoE and finish them all off at once.

Their notable ability is Serrated Bite, which can stack to do a heck of a lot of bleed damage.

Lucifron

Lucifron is your first MC boss. He has two guards, whom you'll need to kill first.

There are some flame imps in a cave to the left that you'll probably want to clear first for safety. You don't want to aggro them accidentally during the fight. Once you kill them, you have 10 minutes until the repop. So buff up, kill them, then immediately execute on your Lucifron plan.

Here's the general outline of the fight. Your main tank and a support crew hold Lucifron up the slope, out of range of the main raid. (Use parties to assign these tasks. Stick your Luci crew into groups 1 & 2, for instance.) A second tank holds one of the guards in place near the main raid, while a third tank pulls the remaining guard down to be killed. The guards will sometimes mind-control a player. Dispell it. Otherwise, they're not hard. The raid kills the first guard, then the off-tanked one, then runs up to pile on Lucifron. Sound simple? There's one twist.

Lucifron has two abilities of note: a Curse that doubles the mana/energy/rage cost of abilities, and an AoE debuff called Impending Doom. The debuff is pretty much Call of the Grave, doing 2000 damage after 10 seconds. Lucifron's Curse might not sound nasty at first, but it will cripple your raid if you leave it there.

Your mages & paladins must be in support roles during this fight. They must turn themselves into decurse/cleanse bots. (It'll be good practice for the Gehennas fight!) The curse must be removed from your healers immediately, or they'll run out of mana. You can leave it on your meleers without much worry, though you'll probably also want to decurse your main tank. And of course removing Impending Doom will give your healers a break and keep more people alive. Support roles are just as important as DPS. If you have a paladin who insists on doing leet pally DPS in this fight instead of cleansing, you have a paladin who maybe needs a nice vacation from running Molten Core with you.

Lucifron will drop a tome of Tranquilizing Shot in addition to a pair of purple set items. Give this to a reliable Hunter who'll be raiding with you often. You need several hunters with tranq shot to fight the next boss...

Magmadar

The good news: When you kill Magmadar, the ancient core hounds stop respawning. Yay! The bad news: Killing him on your first trip, when you probably have only one hunter with tranq shot, will be hard.

This is almost a straight, boring tank-the-boss-while-dps-kills-it fight. The one twist is that periodically Magmadar will cast an AoE fear. If you're running a mod like CT_RaidAssist, you'll get warning of the upcoming fear, so your meleers can get away from Magmadar. You want to keep your main tank un-feared, and also the healing for your main tank. There are lots of ways to do this; I'm sure several have come to mind already while you're reading this. If you're Alliance, you might have Dwarf priests with Fear Ward. If you're Horde, Shamen have some totem or other, I've heard.

Most importantly, warriors on both sides have Berserker Rage. They can stance-dance to pop that ability right before the AoE fear times in. Have your warrior practice this! CT_RaidAssist will give you the 5 second warning on incoming fear. Healers should pop HoTs onto the tank to help him through the transition, since he'll be taking much more damage while he's in Berserk stance than he did in Defensive stance.

It might help to have a healer rotation, one group in while the other group stays out of fear range and meds up. Swap after each AoE fear cast.

The tranquilizing shots suppress Magmadar's frenzy mode. Hunters with the shot ability should take turns cooling him down. He does a lot more damage to the tank while in frenzy mode, which can strain your healers' mana resources. This is why it's harder to fight him with only one hunter having the shot.

Meanwhile, your other melee DPS avoids the flame gobs that Maggy spits, stands behind him or to his sides, and whacks at him. A single greater fire resistance potion per meleer will help a lot. Also, if your melee classes have fire resist gear, they should put it on for this fight.

Gehennas

Gehennas is back over the bridge and downhill from it. You'll need to clear more trash mobs on your way down. The Molten Giant pairs will now mix in a Molten Destroyer for variety. You'll probably want to kill the higher-level Destroyer first when you face the pairs. Clear all of the area near Gehennas before you attempt him, because you're going to want some space to work in.

The Gehennas fight is superficially similar to the Lucifron fight: he has two guards, whom he must be separated from. The guards die first, one at a time, then the main raid turns its attention to wiping out the boss. However, the details differ. Gehennas has two notable abilities: a fire AoE attack (which you must run from), and a curse that drastically reduces the effect of all healing. The curse, obviously, must be removed immediately from anybody you want to keep alive. The AoE fire can be easily avoided by paying attention & moving if it's hitting you.

There's a nook just north and around a corner from Gehennas. Set up your primary DPS in that spot. Split off two full groups of Main Tank + Healers + Support to worry about Gehennas. Have your hunters stand with the Gehennas groups. The remainder of the raid is either DPS, or Triage. The Triage team stays in the nook through the whole fight, decursing & then healing. DPS is responsible for moving away from Gehennas if they're cursed and back to the nook to get patched up. The Main Tank support groups should ignore everybody except the MT.

The pull goes a lot like the Lucifron pull: main tank holds Gehennas in place, the 2 assistant tanks pull the guards back to the main raid. The guards do a short-range AoE stun that can complicate the pull, so use ranged annoyances to move them most of the distance. The DPS groups focus fire on one guard, then the other, then move on to Gehennas. (The guards are, if anything, easier than Lucifron's guards.) Smack him until he falls.

• Move away from the rain of fire.
• If you're cursed and injured, run back to the triage area.

There! You've killed Gehennas and collected purple loot!

Garr

Clear your way south to Garr's area.

Garr is the most technical of the fights you've seen so far. If you've got a balanced group, with five warlocks, you're happy. If you're short on warlocks you'll work a bit harder.

Garr has 8 minions. You can't kill them all, because he goes into a major snitfit if they're all dead. In fact, he's boosted every time one dies. You can't tank them in a standard way, because he blows them up periodically. So you want to banish them, and keep them fairly close to Garr. In outline: banish what you can, kill what you can't, kill Garr, kill the remaining minions.

There are, of course, complications.

Garr has a nasty, nasty AoE movement slow. He also periodically eats buffs. You will lose all your buffs in this fight. Don't worry about it. You can rebuff afterward. The minions explode when they die, doing AoE damage to everybody near them, and blowing them into the air. (The fix for this is obvious. Don't be near them when they die. Take them to 10% then finish them off with ranged damage.)

This fight is made or broken on the pull. Get the pull right, and you'll be fine. We assign hunter/warlock pairs to minions, then assign a warrior to each of the remaining minions. The groups spread out around Garr. The hunters pull their targets toward their warlock buddies. The warlocks pop on Curse of Shadows then banish their minion. Warlocks will spend the entire fight watching their banished minion and keeping it down. Sending their blueberries in to tank the banished mob can help them avoid aggro death on un-banish.

Meanwhile, the warriors pull their assignments back away from Garr. The main tank runs in to Garr to do his or her usual thing. The main raid then moves from minion to minion, killing them until only the banished ones are left. Then they move in and pile on Garr, who is pretty much a wuss with a lot of hitpoints. After Garr dies, take down the remaining minions one at a time.

Oooh, loot. And there's a bonus reward: the Lava Surgers stop spawning now!

Interlude: lava packs

And now for some really nasty fights. Move east through the tunnel toward the room where Geddon roams and Shazzrah lurks. In that room, between you and the bosses, are groups of trash mobs usually called lava packs. These consist of two Lava Elementals, one Flameguard, and one Firewalker. Put on your Fire Resist gear for these fights.

Banish the rocks. Get the fiery boys under control, pointed away from the main raid. Kill the Firewalker, then the Flameguard. Dispell the fire resist debuff as you can. Then kill the rocks as they pop out of banish. Then rez all your dead, and prepare to do it again. You have two pulls of these guys before you can try Geddon.

Baron Geddon

Why is it that Barons are always bad guys? Baron von Bomburst, the Red Baron, Baron Rivendare— these minor German nobility are never good news. Baron Geddon is no different.

There are a few things to know about Geddon:

• Fight him in Garr's room, where you have space to move around.
• He casts Ignite Mana, which manaburns your casters. Dispell it from them; ignore it on rogues and warriors.
• He periodically stops, stands still, and sends out Inferno pulses. These are waves of AoE fire damage, each more than the last, winding up at 2000 a pulse. Run away! Run away! Even with high Fire Resist reducing the damage, you can't live through much of that.
• He periodically casts Living Bomb on a player, who will explode in a few seconds. The player often lives through it, while taking out everybody around him. Don't kill your buddies!

The key to this fight is not killing yourselves with the Living Bomb. You must notice when you have the bomb and you must get away to a clear area to explode. You'd think this was easy, but many people just don't pay attention to what's going on. CT_RaidAssist can help, because raid leaders can send automatic notifications to the victim.

Otherwise? Have a hunter pet-pull him back to Garr's room. Wear your Fire Resist gear; drink a fire protection potion. Have the raid arranged in a semicircle around the tunnel, leaving lots of room behind for Bombs to run to. Tank him. When the tank has aggro, dps gets busy. Everybody runs away during pulses. Everybody stays alert for Living Bomb and moves straight AWAY from the raid when they get it. If you run to a wall near a low ceiling, you can reduce the height you get blown to, and increase the chance that you'll survive the fall.

If your priests are alert, they can save bomb victims by shielding them just before the explosion, or healing them as they fly through the air.

It's a fun fight. Enjoy it, and enjoy your loot.

Shazzrah

Shazzrah is a pushover in comparison to Geddon, but the fight is quite different from the previous fights.

You need to clear 1 more lava pack to reach Shazzrah, the one that's out of sight behind the rock straight in front of the entrance. Do it, then return to Garr's room, leaving 1 hunter behind to pull. Arrange yourself more or less the same way you did for Geddon, and stay spread out through the fight. Load your main tank up with arcane resistance if you can.

• Shazzrah is very resistant to arcane magic.
• It'll cast a self-buff that reduces the magic damage it takes. Dispell this.
• It'll cast an AoE curse that increases magic damage taken. Dispell this as you can, but especially from the main tank.
• It'll periodically do some Arcane Explosions. Clumped-up cursed players will die quickly, so stay spread out.
• It has an AoE counterspell. Stay spread out.
• It blinks periodically, reducing aggro and switching to a new target.

The blink makes the fight interesting. When Shazzrah blinks, the player with aggro must run back to the main tank. Everybody else must cease shooting, casting, healing, bandaging, or doing anything that generates aggro. If people are not paying attention to aggro, the raid leaders might enjoy this macro:

/target Shazzrah
/assist
/rs %t has aggro! Run to <main tank's name>!
/target Shazzrah

Meleers will find this fight a bit boring, because really the best thing for them to do is give the healers a break by running around and bandaging. Or doing a little damage by firing their bows or guns. The only thing they'd accomplish by meleeing Shazzrah is another death, so they shouldn't bother. Ranged people can have fun and let it rip.

Sulfuron Harbinger

Return to Geddon & Shazzrah's room, and clear packs as necessary to head up the ramp. You'll start to get better at it with practice, though you might still lose a couple of players every fight. At the top of the ramp, stop to wave hello to Golemagg, who is very very tall. Then ignore him for now and continue down to Sulfuron. Clear his room entirely before facing him.

Sulfuron doesn't really do much of anything notable; he has a mildly damaging cleave. His four priest minions, however, do. They heal each other, and they cast a nasty, nasty Shadow Word: Pain. Keep it dispelled.

The basic outline of the fight: The main tank occupies Sulfuron while his minions are killed one at a time. Then the raid kills Sulfuron fairly easily.

Spend a few moments arranging groups. You need 1 support group for the main tank (lock, pally/shaman, 2 healers, MT). You then need 4 off-tanking groups, which should consist of warrior, hunter, a healer or two. Everybody else should consider themselves to be DPS.

Have the DPS gather facing the right end of Sulfy's platform. Assign each of the warrior/hunter pairs a minion, going from right to left. Pick an order for the minions to die. (Doesn't matter what order, but you might go in order from weakest to strongest for your off-tanks.) The main tank group heads in and tanks Sulfuron more or less where he stands. The first hunter/warrior pair pulls their minion over to the DPS area to die. The others pull theirs out of range, to the left. One by one, the off-tanks take their minions over to the DPS group to die. (They will die quickly.) Then everybody piles on Sulfuron.

Enjoy the loot.

Golemagg the Incinerator

Golemagg is a very boring-looking giant. He's huge, yeah, but he looks exactly like all the other red giants you've been slaughtering for hour upon hour in the Core. Snore. He does have a pair of puppies, however, who liven up the pit he waits in. I'm not sure what he's doing there in that pit. Waiting for you to farm him, it seems. So let's get to farming him!

The first thing to know is that you can't kill the dogs, so don't try. You will instead off-tank them through the whole fight while all of your DPS is concentrated on Golemagg. The second thing to know is that Golemagg has a promixity buff for the dogs. So you'll be tanking them away from him. You can either pull them forward up the slope to you, or pull him forward and push them back to the wall. Set up two self-sufficient off-tanking groups: warrior, priest/druid, paladin/shaman, maybe a warlock for the imp buff. Keep those off-tanks up!

That leaves Golemagg. It's a long fight, so be prepared to endure. You might want a healing rotation. Have some mana potions at the ready. He has two abilities worth mentioning: a fireball he shoots at a randomly-chosen secondary target, and a DoT/armor debuff that stacks. The DoT effect is only applied to people who are attacking him. Your meleers should consider pulling back and waiting out the timer when it stacks to 3 (150 damage per tick). Your main tank can also do that (have other people hold off when he or she does to avoid aggro problems).

Fire resist gear will help. Also, fire protection potions will absorb quite a bit of DoT damage.

At 10% the fight changes pace. Golemagg casts an odd aggro buff on the dogs that boosts the aggro of everybody except the previous #1 target for the dog. Your off-tanks need to be ready for this. At 10%, pull all your healers in and let rip with the DPS.

Golemagg drops two tier 1 epic chest pieces and one other piece of epic loot. Tasty!

Majordomo Executus

Majordomo is the first truly difficult fight in the zone. If you've been struggling with earlier bosses, you might be scoffing at this claim, but after some practice you'll understand why he's more difficult. For the first time in the Core, everybody in your party needs to be doing their job. If one person screws up, the whole fight can cascade out of control to a wipe. So be on your toes, and expect to have to practice this a couple of times before everybody gets it.

Majordomo can't be killed himself. You'll offtank him for the entire fight. He has 8 minions: four Flamewaker Healers and four Flamewaker Elites. The healers can be sheeped until four minions are dead, at which point they can no longer be sheeped.

Here's the outline of the fight:

• Offtank Majordomo.
• Tank the four elites.
• Sheep three of the healers.
• Kill the leftover healer.
• Kill an elite.
• Kill three healers.
• Kill the remaining three elites.

Set up a group or two to support the main tank, who'll be on majordomo, and a second tank to assist him. Tank Majordomo near the firepit in the center of the room. Periodically Majordomo will teleport a target into the fire pit. That seems to be the player at #2 on his aggro list, so it's often the assistant tank. That's much better than having it be the main tank. And if the MT is the one teleported, the second tank can pick up the slack.

Set up four self-sufficient tanking groups for the elites, with a warrior and a healer and a half. Put the mages into their own group, with some healing and perhaps some backup maging, so they can coordinate sheeping the healers.

Set up all your DPS in the east corner of the room. The east area is the kill zone. Pick a main assist (maybe a hunter, or some reliable player) to choose targets for the DPS to pound on. Have a tank ready to assist the MA. On the pull, the tank and MA should pull the rightmost healer over to the kill zone. At 20% health, the MA should start looking around for the next target. The key to this fight is taking down the minions smoothly and quickly. The MA should have a fresh target ready to go before the current target is dead.

The MA should attempt to kill targets in the order outlined above, but he or she should exercise good judgment on the fly. If a healer is running around unsheeped, kill that right away. If you've lost a tank early, take down that tank's elite. If you know that one of your tanks is less geared-up or less experienced than some of the others, kill that tank's target first.

The other thing to know is that periodically Majordomo casts a shield on his minions. Sometimes it's a magic reflection shield. Mages have to hope that the MR shield isn't up when it's time to re-sheep. Careful not to sheep yourself! The other shield is a damage reflection shield. There's nothing as sad as a rogue who fails to notice this shield CB-eviscerating himself to death. Pay attention! Melee should disengage when this shield is up.

When all eight minions are down, Majordomo submits and mutters something about how you're going to have to face the real boss now. He then vanishes, leaving behind a chest full of some great stuff and some mediocre stuff you'll be DEing after a few runs. (Sad, but true.) Your priests and hunters will be drooling as you open it, though, because the items that start their epic quests might be inside.

Ragnaros

Defeating Majordomo gives you the ability to spawn Ragnaros. You have a couple of hours after you get Domo to make your way to Ragnaros's lair and fight him. If you choose not to, you'll need to redefeat Domo, this time with no chance of loot, to get access again. If you cleared the zone in one session (believe me, some day you will), you can just run back to the lair. If you have cleared in two sessions (a popular option), you might find it easier to suicide in the fire pit (with gear off) and ghost back to the instance entrance. Nobody fights lava packs if they can avoid them.

I highly recommend the Pacifist Guild's guide to Ragnaros.

plink : Tue, 16 Aug 2005 15:23:05 PDT

mattholimeau : Sat, 22 Oct 2005 02:41:23 PDT

salamanacler : Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:58:09 PDT

ceej : Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:31:16 PDT

salamanacler : Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:50:18 PDT