Iron Council (aka the Assembly of Iron) seems to be one of the easier boss encounters in Ulduar, but it still requires some smart play. The way I've tanked it is quite the druid workout, which I always enjoy.
- Kill Steelbreaker, then Runemaster Molgeim, then Stormcaller Brundir
- Tank Stormcaller Brundir far away
- Kite bosses out of Rune of Power
- Interrupt Stormcaller's Lightning Whirl
- Be ready with Rebirth and Innervate
There's three bosses you can kill in any order. The easiest way seems to be Steelbreaker, then Runemaster, then Stormcaller. On 10 man you should only have two tanks, so have the feral take Steelbreaker and an offtank take Runemaster and Stormcaller. On 25 man you have three tanks, again put the feral on Steelbreaker. Any tank can tank any boss, by the way, I just like being on the thing that dies first so I have choices later.
Positioning matters a bit. You don't want anyone to be within 30 yards of Stormcaller Brundir and his Overload explosion. So have his tank drag Stormcaller far away, you'll need a spell interrupt to get him moving. You also want Steelbreaker somewhere near to Runemaster Molgeim, so that Molgeim can slide a Rune of Power under Steelbreaker occasionally. It's not clear what the range on this is, it may well be the whole room.
Once positioning is set the fight is pretty simple to tank. The Steelbreaker tank needs to watch out for two things. If a Rune of Power is placed under Steelbreaker, then move the boss away until the buff falls off him. Try to leave him so that melee can stand in the rune but the boss isn't. Second, keep a worried eye on the 3 second cast Fusion Punch ability. The moment that's cast on you, a Paladin or Priest needs to dispell it off you. I call it out on Vent when tanking.
Once Steelbreaker is down you move to Runemaster. In 10 man go ahead and taunt him off the Stormcaller tank and split them apart. In 25 man the Steelbreaker tank can just go cat form and DPS. Look out for the green runes on the ground and run away.
Finally when Runemaster goes down the whole raid gets on Stormcaller Brundir. He has a very deadly ability called Lightning Whirl that needs to be stunned or interrupted. In our kills the Stormcaller tank handled these interrupts while Runemaster was still up; it's somewhat easier because Stormcaller is stunnable. But when Stormcaller is the only target left he can't be stunned and it helps to have someone else interrupting. The Steelbreaker feral tank is the perfect choice: Maim is easy to use and your DPS is going to be low in tank gear, so take the hit for the team and just sit there waiting on interrupts. (Note that the Stormcaller tank has to re-aquire aggro after Lightning Tendrils, it's an aggro reset.)
The fight is challenging when things go wrong. Be on the lookout for opportunities to battle rez or innervate. It's particularly easy right after one boss goes down and you have nothing on you. The fight can go long, as much as 12 minutes on ten man (apparently no enrage despite what DBM says), so you may want to innervate a healer twice. Also be ready to pick up a boss if one of the tanks dies.
The fight is also more challenging if you do the kills in another order. If you leave Runemaster for last, he summons exploding random-aggroed adds that you have to kill while running away. Leaving Steelbreaker up is the hard mode. Once one add is dead Steelbreaker will gain a Static Disruption ability which puts a debuff on the tank which causes Fusion Punch to one-shot you, so you need to rotate tanks. And if he's last alive then you get to Meltdown, where he blows up everyone in 20 yards every 25 seconds; fun!
Comments