Iron Qon

Iron Qon is the tenth boss encounter in the Throne of Thunder. It is a tank and spank with numerous environment awareness mechanics.

Adventure Guide
''Legends speak of the brutality of Qon and his quilen champions. The fearless mogu commander was dubbed "Iron Qon" by the Thunder King for his unrelenting resolve to claim victory after victory for the empire regardless of the cost.''

Encounter Design
''Qon is one of Lei Shen's elite personal guard, and a master of mounted combat. An original concept for this fight was inspired by the Three Kingdoms warlord Lu Bu, a fierce warrior renowned for his skill in fighting with a spear from horseback. Though Qon does have some very cool and unique mounted attack animations, in the end we found it more interesting to explore gameplay via the different abilities of his mounts instead. Thus, the encounter involves Qon switching among different magical quilen, each of which is empowered with vicious elemental attacks, creating a four-phase encounter that is almost like four separate intense fights rolled into one.''

Spells and abilities

 * The Quilen Champions - Iron Qon battles atop his finest Quilen champions.

Ro'shak, the Molten Flare

 * Ignite Spear: Burning Cinders - Ro'shak spits molten lava at Iron Qon's spear, causing magma to burst forth from the ground, inflicting 27/25/50/27/55,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Fire damage initially and then stacking 10/15/15/18/15,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Fire damage every 1 sec to players who remain within the effect.
 * Calling the Stormcaller: Quet'zal – In Heroic difficulty, Quet'zal attacks players alongside Ro'shak. He casts Lightning Storm on random players from above.
 * Ignite Spear: Burning Cinders - Ro'shak spits molten lava at Iron Qon's spear, causing magma to burst forth from the ground, inflicting 27/25/50/27/55,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Fire damage initially and then stacking 10/15/15/18/15,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Fire damage every 1 sec to players who remain within the effect.
 * Calling the Stormcaller: Quet'zal – In Heroic difficulty, Quet'zal attacks players alongside Ro'shak. He casts Lightning Storm on random players from above.
 * Ignite Spear: Burning Cinders - Ro'shak spits molten lava at Iron Qon's spear, causing magma to burst forth from the ground, inflicting 27/25/50/27/55,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Fire damage initially and then stacking 10/15/15/18/15,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Fire damage every 1 sec to players who remain within the effect.
 * Calling the Stormcaller: Quet'zal – In Heroic difficulty, Quet'zal attacks players alongside Ro'shak. He casts Lightning Storm on random players from above.

Quet'zal, the Stormcaller



 * Strike Spear: Storm Cloud - Quet'zal calls lightning down on Iron Qon's spear, causing a rolling storm cloud that electrifies players for 75/100/200/110/220,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Nature damage. This effect stacks, and players who receive 3 stacks become fully electrified and are stunned for 20 sec.
 * Breaking the Ice: Dam'ren – In Heroic difficulty, Dam'ren attacks players alongside Quet'zal. He freezes and shatters random players from above.
 * Strike Spear: Storm Cloud - Quet'zal calls lightning down on Iron Qon's spear, causing a rolling storm cloud that electrifies players for 75/100/200/110/220,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Nature damage. This effect stacks, and players who receive 3 stacks become fully electrified and are stunned for 20 sec.
 * Breaking the Ice: Dam'ren – In Heroic difficulty, Dam'ren attacks players alongside Quet'zal. He freezes and shatters random players from above.

Dam'ren, the Frozen Sage

 * Freeze Spear: Frozen Blood - Dam'ren strikes Iron Qon's spear with ice, freezing the ground around it. Coming into contact with the frozen ground inflicts 60/100/200/110/220,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Frost damage instantly and slows the player's movement, melee, ranged, and casting speeds by 25%. This effect stacks while standing within the area of frozen blood.
 * Spark of the Molten Flare: Ro'shak – In Heroic difficulty, Ro'shak attacks players alongside Dam'ren. He casts Unleashed Flame on the largest clump of enemies he can find. If he cannot find a clump of enemies, he instead casts it on a random target.
 * Freeze Spear: Frozen Blood - Dam'ren strikes Iron Qon's spear with ice, freezing the ground around it. Coming into contact with the frozen ground inflicts 60/100/200/110/220,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Frost damage instantly and slows the player's movement, melee, ranged, and casting speeds by 25%. This effect stacks while standing within the area of frozen blood.
 * Spark of the Molten Flare: Ro'shak – In Heroic difficulty, Ro'shak attacks players alongside Dam'ren. He casts Unleashed Flame on the largest clump of enemies he can find. If he cannot find a clump of enemies, he instead casts it on a random target.
 * Freeze Spear: Frozen Blood - Dam'ren strikes Iron Qon's spear with ice, freezing the ground around it. Coming into contact with the frozen ground inflicts 60/100/200/110/220,000 (LFR/10/H/25/H) Frost damage instantly and slows the player's movement, melee, ranged, and casting speeds by 25%. This effect stacks while standing within the area of frozen blood.
 * Spark of the Molten Flare: Ro'shak – In Heroic difficulty, Ro'shak attacks players alongside Dam'ren. He casts Unleashed Flame on the largest clump of enemies he can find. If he cannot find a clump of enemies, he instead casts it on a random target.

Iron Qon's Last Stand
Having lost his prime quilen mounts, Iron Qon faces you himself. In addition to his previous attacks, he gains new abilities.

Strategy
In all phases, each tank should taunt off the other when their stacks of the Impale DoT fall off, at which point the other will have about 2-3 stacks. Other raiders should avoid clumping, and dodge thrown spears throughout the fight.

Phase 1: Ro'shak, the Molten Flare
The primary task of this phase is keeping Ro'shak's energy below 100 to prevent a Molten Overload, which will likely wipe the raid. Random casts of Molten Inferno will help with this (-10 energy), but the main method is to trigger Unleashed Flame, which releases 30 energy at once. The boss gains about 5 energy / sec, for a total of 8-10 seconds between Flames (along with an Inferno or two). Predetermined teams must rotate responsibility for attracting Flames due to Scorched, a stacking debuff increasing fire damage taken for 30 seconds. Thus, in the 30 seconds it takes to drop stacks, the raid can expect 3-4 new Unleashed Flames to go out. To attract Unleashed Flame, a team clusters together while the boss has at least 30 energy. When the next team takes over clustering (once their own debuffs expire), the now-Scorched team spreads out.

There are several approaches to dividing teams. Using the smallest possible teams (3, 3, and 4 in 10-man, and 5 teams of 5 in 25-man) means frequent team rotation and higher initial Unleashed Flame damage to each player, but fewer debuff stacks at once and less clumping of players. Big teams (2 teams of 5, or 2 teams of 12 & 13) are simpler, lower in individual damage (before the debuff starts piling up), higher in total debuff stacks, and more clumped up. Clumping and debuff stacks make the raid more vulnerable to other AoE, require more total healing, force more people to dodge thrown spears at once, and sometimes require melee to attack from the front (so as to cluster with tanks). Still, well geared raids frequently "go big" for its simplicity, and can often burn the boss down before requiring the ranged group to cluster for any Unleashed Flames at all (avoiding the spear dodging issue). Raids looking to maximize DPS and conserve healer mana tend to go with the first approach.

If melee players are currently trying to clear their Scorched debuff, they must take care not to get near the tanks and trigger an Unleashed Flame out of turn. If there's a high enough number of melee-ers in the raid (3 or 5 for 10- or 25-man), they must be extremely careful not to get too close to each other when they're not on clustering duty.

Additionally, fire will erupt from the thrown spear throughout the phase, creating a crisscrossing web of fire lines that inflict a stacking DoT for 15 seconds. Players should avoid crossing the lines when possible, but performing the clustering duties takes priority. The phase ends when Ro'shak is dead.

In summary: Swap tanks, rotate clustering in teams to reduce energy, dodge spears, and don't cross the lines.

Phase 2: Quet'zal, the Stormcaller
Phase 2 is marked by Quet'zal's most dramatic ability: Windstorm. All players will be pulled to the center of the room, tornadoes will circle around it, and everyone will take an overwhelming effectiveness debuff and continuous damage while they remain in the storm. One side of the room to run to should be pre-designated, often the entrance. Players must exit the storm in that direction as quickly as possible without getting hit by any tornadoes. Warlock portals will help with this, and healers should be given priority so that they can heal from the edge of the storm while others make their way out.

Once again, lines of lightning will erupt from thrown spears throughout the phase, creating a crisscrossing web throughout the area. These Storm Clouds will deal a hefty amount of damage and apply a 20 second debuff that will stun you for 20 seconds if it reaches 3 stacks. No player with 2 stacks should ever cross a Storm Cloud line. While avoiding Storm Clouds, players must also free anyone hit by Arcing Lightning as soon as possible, as the target cannot receive healing until they are rescued. This is accomplished by simply interacting with them from melee range. Arcing Lightning will also apply a 30 second DoT that spreads to adjacent players; both the target and their rescuer should avoid other raiders until it expires. Finally, all players should dodge the wandering tornadoes left over from Windstorm. Killing Quet'zal ends the phase.

In summary: Continue tank swapping, run out of Windstorm, dodge tornadoes and spears, free Arcing Lightning players, and don't cross the lines.

Phase 3: Dam'ren, the Frozen Sage
Phase 3 has no signature ability, simply a number of things to avoid and reposition for:
 * Dam'ren will shield himself from 2 out of the 4 directions, requiring any damage dealers to hit him from an unshielded side. It may be worthwhile to wait it out rather than stepping into the fire, however.
 * The "fire" in this case is one last criss-cross of lines emanating from thrown spears, in this case Frozen Blood, which will stack a 25% movement and action speed reduction up to 100%, as well as dealing damage. Abilities such as Burst of Speed that remove movement-impairing debuffs are effective here, though players should still beware of the damage Frozen Blood trails will deal.
 * Periodically, a player will be hit with Freeze, and will then "shatter", dealing raid-wide damage. Healers should ensure the raid is topped off.
 * Dam'ren reflects damage. It shouldn't be much to deal with, but make sure not to use damage cooldowns at low health.
 * The boss can be kept near the entrance for the entire phase, to aid in dodging the remaining tornadoes, which prefer the center of the room.
 * The final phase begins when Dam'ren is killed.
 * Continue tank swapping and dodging spears, and don't cross the lines.

Phase 4: Iron Qon's Last Stand
Iron Qon will stop throwing spears and start dealing increasing amounts of raid-wide damage in this phase. The raid should clump together for AoE healing as there is no need to dodge anything but slow-moving tornadoes. The most damage comes from Fist Smash, a 7.5 sec Physical AoE; Ignited Cyclones add to this amount. Bloodlust and other cooldowns should be used for the final push, when his Rising Anger has stacked up a few times. Once again, he can be kept near the entrance to help avoid tornadoes. Some of these will be Frozen, taking down the health of anyone touched extremely quickly. Avoid them while hammering the boss to his death.

Heroic mode
The fight plays the same way as normal mode, but every mount of Qon retreats at 25% health, and he gets aided by an inactive quilen during each phase:

Phase 1: Quet'zal targets random players, spawns a tornado, then becomes active a few seconds later, dealing damage to players and knocking them up in the air. Players must simply move from the tornadoes while keeping their stacks of Unleash Flames in mind.

Phase 2: Dam'ren summons Frost Spikes under random players, which hit for 150k frost damage and knock the players up a few seconds later. Players should simply try to move from them, though getting him by them once isn't that deadly.

Phase 3: Ro'shak will simply use Unleash Flames on player clusters. The raid must simply use the same stacking rotation as phase 1 and heal though the damage.

As soon as the last Quilen reaches 25% ALL the Quilen will join the fight along Iron Qon. The raid should simply hero and burn Ro'shak first (to cut the Unleashed Flame damage), then Dam'ren (because of his Dead Zones disrupting dps) and last Quet'zal, who simply casts Arcing Lightning. The Quilen use the abilities listed above and have normal threat tables. As soon as all three Quilen are dead Iron Qon will start to cast Fist Smash with several stacks of Rising Anger and your raid should simply keep burning him and stay alive until the end of the fight, as his damage towards the end will be massive.

Related Achievements

 * Pinnacle of Storms
 * Heroic: Iron Qon
 * Can't Touch This
 * Throne of Thunder Guild Run

Quotes

 * Aggroed Manchu
 * yell
 * yell


 * Aggroed Weisheng
 * yell
 * yell


 * Manchu Killed
 * yell


 * Weisheng Killed
 * yell


 * Aggro
 * yell


 * Dam'ren
 * yell


 * Quet'zal
 * yell


 * Ro'shak
 * yell


 * Quilen Killed
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Phase 2
 * yell


 * Killing a player
 * yell
 * yell


 * Wipe
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell


 * Unused quotes
 * Turn back now, strangers. You face the army of Iron Qon!
 * Enough of this! Come now, weaklings. You have earned your reward... you may now face the Iron Qon!

25-man Normal

 * (1080p) - Mage, Boss voice, Vent

Trivia

 * Iron Qon is voiced by Patrick Seitz.
 * In the patch 5.2 trailer he is seen alongside other mogu when delivering the coffin of Lei Shen to his tomb.
 * Quet'zal's name is most likely derived from Quetzalcoatl, the Mesoamerican feathered serpent deity, who was often associated with the wind.