Baleroc

Baleroc, the Gatekeeper, is a fire elemental boss of the Firelands raid instance. He uses two Volcanospike swords as his personal weapons.

World first heroic kill on 25-man achieved 7.7.2011 by Method - EU-Xavius.

Background

 * "Baleroc stands before the gate to Sulfuron Keep, amidst a river of combustion that serves as the Sulfuron moat. The bridge to Ragnaros’s blistering chamber can only be crossed by those who find a way to put an end to this towering elemental monstrosity. 

Adventure Guide
''Baleroc earned a reputation as a merciless combatant during the elemental wars of ancient Azeroth. Now that he is confined to the Firelands, Baleroc's sanity has dwindled. Few elementals dare disturb him, fearful that they will become victim to his battle lust.''

Abilities
In all difficulty settings, Baleroc has a hard enrage timer of 6 minutes.



Tanking
Baleroc is a 2-tank fight with an Blaze tank and a Decimation tank.

The Decimation Blade mechanic motivates you to have one tank who has a little over 250K health so that he can survive Decimation Blade. The other tank will gain stacks of Blaze of Glory which will eventually cause him to have much more health.

The Decimation tank should start the pull and stack Blaze of Glory until he has just over 250K health. At this point the Blaze tank can wait for safe time (not during an impending Decimation Blade) and taunt off the Decimation tank.

If the Blaze tank were struck with Decimation Blade late in the fight he would suffer much more than 250K damage, causing unnecessary load on the healers. Conversely, if the Decimation tank were struck by Inferno Blade, he might not have enough health to survive the Incendiary-Soul-augmented damage. This tank swap might remind raiders of the Chimaeron Break/DA tank option.

When Baleroc empowers his blade, it will be random whether he chooses Decimation Blade or Inferno Blade (note: the first blade will always be Inferno Blade), but you do have a warning to give you time to taunt. Once his blades are empowered they are in that mode for 12 seconds. This means that the Decimation tank can take a total of 3 strikes that do >240K damage. This damage cannot be reduced by cooldowns, absorbs, or blocks, but fortunately it can be dodged or parried. Unfortunately this is not reliable, so healers still need to get him back >90% health during the 5 seconds between swings. If the healers are having difficulty doing this reliably the Blaze tank can taunt until the Decimation tank is restored. This is a desperate tactic because the healers then have to heal up the Blaze tank from near death, and in the late stages of the fight it is not unusual for the Blaze tank to have more than a million health.

The random nature of the blades and the chance to avoid Decimation Blade does, along with the rapidly ballooning healing output, does mean that losing the Decimation tank late in the fight is not necessarily an instant wipe. The Blaze tank can survive a single Decimation Blade, and healers can often (though with difficulty) manage to heal through the vastly increased damage if they've been stacking Vital Spark properly, and it's possible to randomly get Inferno Blade (instead of Decimation Blade) repeatedly. In addition, if a tank is resurrected, he retains his stacks of Blaze of Glory, so it is possible for him to resume his role.

Shards of Torment
Baleroc drops Shards of Torment: 1 in 10-man, 2 in 25-man. The shards will spawn on the closest non-tank to Baleroc, generally one of the melee, so it is a good idea to have the melee stack up at a particular location before each shard spawn to ensure a predictable location.

If no one is near a Shard of Torment, it inflicts Wave of Torment upon the entire raid. Do not let this happen. When players are in range of a shard the closest one gets stacked with Torment. Torment must be taken by DPS. Healers and especially Tanks never ever want to get Torment, because the Tormented debuff that follows halves their healing performed and will cause the Tank to take deadly damage from Inferno and Decimation Blade.

The stacks of Torment cause increasing shadow damage. The shard "tank" wants to let Torment stack as high as possible before running away and letting another DPS "tank" the shard. The high stacks of Torment allow healers to stack Vital Spark faster. Each shard will apply a total of 24-25 stacks of Torment, so either 2 dps taking 12 stacks apiece (topping out at 48000 shadow damage per second to the shard tank) or 3 dps taking 8 stacks apiece (topping out at 32000 shadow damage per second to the shard tank) is recommended. An alternate strategy is to have one dps with a large damage reduction cooldown (a Retribution paladin with Divine Protection glyphed is a good candidate due to the short CD) take 15-18 stacks, with another dps taking the remaining 8-10. This allows healers to gain an extremely large number of Vital Spark stacks from that shard phase.

Once a player has stopped tanking a shard, they will lose their Torment stacks after 1-2 seconds and gain Tormented instead. Tormented significantly increases shadow damage taken, meaning it would be a really bad idea for a Tormented player to get any Torment stacks until the Tormented has fallen off. This means that DPS will have to take turns tanking the shard. However it is important to note that the Torment channel does not refresh the Tormented debuff. This only happens if you gain, then lose the Torment debuff. Tormented lasts 40 seconds. If using 3 DPS per shard (8 stacks each), this means a minimum of 5 dps will need to be in the shard rotation, as the Tormented debuff will fall off again just as the first player needs to take it from the 5th.

This Tormented debuff also means it is extremely important that the Decimation Blade tank doesn't accidentally take a tick of the shard and gain the debuff, as Decimation Blade will one-shot that tank with it up.

On Heroic mode, Tormented will spread to all nearby players. Because of this, extra care needs to be taken that Tormented Players are stacked away from other players (but not too far, due to Countdown), that the tank(s) never get Tormented, and that healers get it as little as possible.

Healing
Healers can be divided into two teams. One team will heal the boss tank while the other team heals the shard tanks suffering from the Torment debuff.

Using direct heals (not AoE or HoT heals) on a player with Torment stacks Vital Spark.

When a healer with Vital Spark casts a heal on a player with Blaze of Glory (either of the boss tanks) then it converts spark stacks to Vital Flame, increasing healing done to the Blaze of Glory player.

After 15 seconds the Vital Flame will convert back into Vital Spark with the same number of stacks it had previously.

Once the Vital Flame ends the healing teams should swap duties. The ones that were previously stacking Vital Spark by healing Torment victims should start healing the boss tanks and activate their Vital Flame. The ones that were healing the boss tanks should start healing Torment victims and stack more Vital Sparks. Alternatively, to reduce target swapping and ramp-up time on healing, healers can stay on the tank for two Vital Flame cycles, then swap off for two. This results in healers swapping every 30 seconds rather than every minute. Since the shards last approximately 28 seconds apiece, this swap lines up well with them and can be used as a rough gauge of swap timing.

Countdown
If you are a Countdown victim, move to the other player and hold still until the debuff falls off. If you fail to do this, or move too slowly, (or run away too soon), you will both explode and do massive damage to most of your teammates. If one player has Tormented, it is possible with perfect execution to avoid spreading the debuff; however, this can be almost impossible in actual circumstances (for instance, due to latency). Backup healers and soakers must be prepared to take over in case a healer or shard soaker receives Tormented as a result of Countdown.

Enrage
On all difficulties, Baleroc has a hard enrage timer of 6 minutes. Notably, his enrage does not immediately wipe the raid, and it is possible with kiting and a good string of avoidance to kill him after his berserk.

Solo strategy
Pop CDs on the pull. Get far away from the Crystal of Torment. Baleroc's hitbox is a good distance indicator, as the crystal should be on the opposite side of Baleroc's hitbox from the player. The pulsing Wave of Torment does far less damage than the stacking Torment debuff. The heroic-only Countdown mechanic never comes in to play, as there is only one player to target.

Related Achievements

 * Firelands_(achievement)
 * Firelands Guild Run
 * Heroic: Baleroc
 * Share the Pain

Quotes

 * Aggro
 * yell


 * Shards of Torment
 * yell


 * Baleroc Readies his Inferno Blade!
 * yell


 * Baleroc Readies his Decimation Blade!
 * yell


 * Berserk
 * yell


 * Killing a player
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell

Trivia
Baleroc is voiced by Richard Epcar.