Warmaster Blackhorn Encounter Guide: Strategy, Abilities, Loot

• Use peronsal defensive cooldowns when soaking a Twilight Barrage (Small Soak).
• Quickly swap over to any Twilight Sappers that drop in and kill them before they damage The Skyfire.
• Ranged DPS should always hit any Twilight Assault Drakes that come in their range, even if they are only flying by overhead for a brief second.
• Casters must be at least 10-yards away from Warmaster Blackhorn during Phase 2, or Disrupting Roar will silence you.

• Try to deal damage to adds early-on in the fight, before things start getting chaotic; every bit helps on progression.
• Coordinate defensive cooldowns so you always have 1-2 activated for each Twilight Onslaught (Big Soak) and Disrupting Roar.
• Casters must be at least 10-yards away from Warmaster Blackhorn during Phase 2, or Disrupting Roar will silence you.

• Make sure to quickly face the Twilight Elite Dreadblade away from the raid as Degeneration is a frontal-conal attack.
• Save personal defensive cooldowns for when Warmaster Blackhorn has higher stacks of Vengeance.

• Phase One
• Goriona
• Twilight Onslaught
• Twilight Sapper
• Detonate
• Twilight Assault Drake
• Twilight Barrage
• Twilight Elite Dreadblade
• Blade Rush
• Degeneration
• Twilight Elite Slayer
• Blade Rush
• Brutal Strike
• Phase Two
• Warmaster Blackhorn
• Vengeance
• Devastate
• Sunder Armor
• Disrupting Roar
• Shockwave
• Siphon Vitality (Heroic)
• Goriona
• Twilight Flames
• Consuming Shroud (Heroic)
• Twilight Breath (Heroic)

Warmaster Blackhorn is the sixth boss encounter in Dragon Soul, and plays out very similarly to the Gunship battle in Icecrown Citadel. Just like the previous encounter, here you will be defending your own ships health pool against various threats, all while repelling multiple enemies attempting to board your ship.

The encounter can be started at any time by speaking with Sky Captain Swayze on the deck of the ship; selecting his dialogue option will begin the encounter, so be sure that everyone is on the ship and ready to go. Throughout the entirety of Phase 1, your job is to defend the ships health pool and kill the enemies attempting to board your ship. Warmaster Blackhorn does not engage you directly, instead he will fly around the battlefield on his dragon Goriona and bombard the ship with Twilight Onslaught until Phase 2. To make it to Phase 2 you will need to defeat 3 waves of adds, each consisting of: 2 ×Twilight Assault Drake, 1 × Twilight Elite Dreadblade, and 1 × Twilight Elite Slayer. Staying ahead of the adds early on, while still doing all of the required mechanics, is the real challenge of this encounter.

If you want to get some early damage off and try to get ahead, have your ranged DPS start the encounter standing up by the Skull Icon located on the top right corner of the image shown above. If ranged DPS are standing here as soon as the encounter begins they will be able to instantly start damaging a nearby Twilight Assault Drake, either killing it or getting it low health and covered in damage-over-time spells. This is a great way to get ahead early on, especially when learning the fight.

Starting off we'll look at the ship itself, "The Skyfire". The Skyfire has a health pool which is displayed once you have started the boss battle; several enemies will begin assaulting your party with the intention of destroying your ship! The two main abilities to worry about here are Twilight Barrage (referred to as the "Small Soak"), and Twilight Onslaught, (referred to as the "Big Soak"). The Twilight Assault Drake adds will constantly bombard the ship with Twilight Barrage as long as they are allowed to live and fly around the skies. Twilight Barrage is a projectile missile that will target a random area of the ships deck (indicated by a small, swirling, purple circle), and slowly travel to the targeted area, exploding upon reaching it. If no players are in the area, The Skyfire will take damage, losing a moderate amount of health; this can be avoided by having 2-3 players run into the purple indicator and take the damage instead, having it evenly divided between all players in the area. It's entirely possible to solo soak one of these Small Soaks by using a personal defensive cooldown, so don't be afraid to pop something and protect The Skyfires' health pool as much as possible. On heroic difficulty, Twilight Barrage will debuff all players hit, increasing their Shadow damage taken by 50%. Just be aware of your debuffs and do not soak either the Big or Small Soaks while you have this debuff.

Twilight Onslaught is used by Goriona every 35 seconds, and is essentially an improved version of Twilight Barrage, with a couple of key differences. The main difference between the two spells is that Twilight Onslaught will alwaysdeal damage to The Skyfire, making it a necessity to get as many players inside the "Big Soaks" purple indicators whenever they appear. You will also need to use 1-2 raid-wide defensive cooldowns when soaking Twilight Onslaught as it deals significantly more damage than Twilight Barrage. Lastly, before we dive into the adds, be aware of the large patches of fire that constantly spawn and spread throughout The Skyfires' deck. These fires will automatically be put out by the crew of The Skyfire over time and can not be removed by players at all, meaning you must simply avoid the flame patches until they get taken care of.

On both sides of The Skyfires' deck there is a Harpoon Gun, which is entirely operated by the NPC crew members of the ship. Periodically these NPCs will shoot a Twilight Assault Drake in the sky with the Harpoon gun and "reel" them in close to the ship, allowing melee DPS to attack the Twilight Assault Drake. Killing these drakes is the raids highest priority, so you will want your raid to move from side-to-side of the ship (between the two Harpoon Guns), always fighting on the side of the ship that has a Twilight Assault Drake harpooned. Simply put, the more Twilight Assault Drakes that are alive, the more Twilight Barrages that the raid must soak; always prioritize these to the point that Ranged DPS should swap to a Twilight Assault Drake whenever they are in range, even if just for a second whilst they fly past.

Your tanks will need to quickly pick up both the Twilight Elite Slayer and Twilight Elite Dreadblade when they board your ship, and then move them to whichever side of the ship that currently has a harpooned Twilight Assault Drake. Both the Twilight Elite Dreadblade and Twilight Elite Slayer use Blade Rush, targeting a random player and charging to their location after a shot time, dealing high Physical damage to all targets hit along the way. Watch for the red indicator that will show the charge pathing that the mob will take and be sure to quickly move out of the way. Here we will take advantage of the fact that Blade Rush works in a similar way to a Warriors Charge, and has a minimum range. This means you can have most of the raid stack up very close to the adds and avoid having to move for Blade Rush at all. Simply have a few Ranged DPS stand outside of the stack as shown here (you will need people outside of the main stack regardless to soak Twilight Barrage). These people will be "baiters" for the Blade Rush, allowing most of the rest of the raid to stack together in one spot and not need to move at all.

Both the Twilight Elite Slayer and Twilight Elite Dreadblade also have a stacking debuff that they apply to their tank, but unlike Blade Rush, these debuffs are different. Twilight Elite Dreadblade uses Degeneration, which is a frontal-conal attack that deals moderate Shadow damage to all targets hit, and debuffs everyone hit with a stacking Shadow damage-over-time (DoT). Keep these faced away from the raid at all times, even when moving, to prevent Degeneration from hitting anyone besides the tank. The Twilight Elite Slayer uses a similar ability, Brutal Strike, which deals Physical damage and applies a stacking Bleed DoT. Brutal Strike is also a single-target ability, rather than a frontal-conal attack, meaning these can be turned around and moved with ease. As both the Degeneration and Brutal Strike debuffs last 1-minute and quickly stack up on your tanks, your tanks will need to swap which add they are tanking each time a new one spawns. This will keep their stacks of each debuff relatively low and give them time to drop-off entirely.

The last add to mention for Phase 1 are the Twilight Sappers; these Sappers will land on your ship at seemingly random times and make a b-line straight towards the command center of your ship. If they are allowed to reach it, they will Detonate their explosives, dealing damage to The Skyfire equal to 20% of its' max health. In addition, any players near the explosion will also take damage when it detonates. Killing the Twilight Sappers is a top priority; they should be stunned, slowed, Death Grip'd, etc. to give you time to nuke them down.

To recap the add kill priority for Phase 1:

1. Twilight Assault Drake (Ranged DPS should always focus these if they're in range to hit, Melee DPS focus if they are harpooned);
2. Twilight Sapper (Can ignore 1-2 if the extra damage can be used for a cleaner transition into Phase 2, as well as if The Skyfire is healthy enough);
3. Twilight Elite Dreadblade;
4. Twilight Elite Slayer.

Phase 2 starts once all six Twilight Assault Drakes have been defeated; clean up any remaining adds and kill the final Twilight Assault Drake to force Warmaster Blackhorn himself to join the fray. After dropping Warmaster Blackhorn off on The Skyfires' deck, Goriona will also join in the fight, attacking players from the air. On normal difficulty, she will simply stay in the air attacking random players until she reaches 20% health, meaning that only Ranged DPS will be able to attack her. Goriona will periodically target a random player with Twilight Flames, launching a fireball at them that deals high damage in the impact area. In addition, a purple flame patch will appear at the impact location, dealing moderate damage every second to anyone that remains in the area. Have all Ranged DPS attack Goriona in the air, trying to bring her to 20% health as quickly as possible to stop her aerial assault and focus entirely on handling Warmaster Blackhorn.

Warmaster Blackhorn himself has 4 major abilities for us to worry about: Devastate, Disrupting Roar, Shockwave, and Vengeance. Tanks will be dealing with Devastate and the subsequent Sunder Armor debuff, which reduces armor by 20% per stack; tanks should aim to swap every 2 stacks of Sunder Armor. Disrupting Roar is a raid-wide AoE damaging ability that interrupts all spell casters within 10 yards for 8 seconds; casters should simply make sure that they're always more than 10 yards away from Warmaster Blackhorn.

Vengeance is a passive buff, increasing Warmaster Blackhorns damage dealt by 1% for every 1% of his missing health. This will make him start hitting very hard the further into Phase 2 you get, especially with Disrupting Roar. Avoid damaging Warmaster Blackhorn too much at the start of Phase 2 in order to keep his stacks of Vengeance as low as possible, reducing the raids damage taken, whilst you deal with Goriona. Warmaster Blackhorn will use Shockwave on a random player, turning to face them while casting Shockwave, displaying a visual attack indicator (swirls on the ground) where the attack will land. As Shockwave is a conal attack it will be easier to dodge the closer that you are standing to Warmaster Blackhorn, be sure to stand as close to him as possible while avoiding to 10-yard interruption on Disrupting Roar.

Spread out to avoid having too many players clumped up for the Twilight Flames, and be ready to move out of the way of any Shockwaves that are in your direction. Ranged DPS should prioritize standing near Goriona and damaging her down quickly to get her to leave the area. Once Goriona flees at 20% health, have the raid stack together near Warmaster Blackhorn, with the Ranged Casters and Healers staying at least 10-yards away to avoid the Disrupting Roar silence. The raid should be ready to instantly move together as a raid, either left or right depending on the call, whenever a Shockwave targets the stacked group. While this strategy requires most of the entire raid to move on nearly every single Shockwave cast, being stacked together for AoE healing is crucial to surviving the Disrupting Roar when Warmaster Blackhorn is low health as he will have high stacks of Vengeance.

If you are doing this encounter on heroic difficulty, Phase 2 will drastically change. During Phase 2 on heroic, Goriona will land at 80% health and must be tanked and faced away from the raid as she will periodically use Twilight Breath. She will also frequently debuff a non-tank player with Consuming Shroud, which absorbs healing received and deals damage to nearby allies based on the amount of healing received (a 10,000 heal will deal 10,000 damage to every raid member). You should already be stacked, so just AoE heal the raid through this and do not use single-target heals on the players debuffed by Consuming Shroud. When Goriona lands she must be focused down, if not Warmaster Blackhorn will use Siphon Vitality on her, stealing her health to heal his own and dealing damage to the entire raid equal to the health stolen, effectively wiping the raid.

Have your two tanks pick up either boss and face the bosses away from each other. The tanks will need to still perform a taunt swap on Warmaster Blackhorn due to Sunder Armor debuffs, but now both tanks will need to swap their tanking duties between both Warmaster Blackhorn and Goriona. The raid will remain spread out early on, similar to normal mode, until Goriona reaches 80% and lands on the deck. At this point the raid should quickly stack up behind her and use all major offensive cooldowns to burn her down as fast as possible. You will still need to move as a raid to avoid Shockwaves, as well as avoid the silence from Disrupting Roar. When Goriona reaches 20% health, she will fly away and the raid can then contend with Warmaster Blackhorn himself, who remains the same as he was in normal difficulty, only having increased damage.

4.

Warmaster Blackhorn Loot

Normal Heroic

Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.

4.1.

Normal Difficulty Loot

Item
Janglespur Jackboots
Shadow Wing Armbands
Belt of the Beloved Companion
Goriona's Collar
Starcatcher Compass
Blackhorn's Mighty Bulwark
Timepiece of the Bronze Flight
Ataraxis, Cudgel of the Warmaster
Visage of the Destroyer
Crown of the Corrupted Conqueror
Crown of the Corrupted Protector
Crown of the Corrupted Vanquisher

Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.

4.2.

Heroic Difficulty Loot

Item
Janglespur Jackboots
Shadow Wing Armbands
Belt of the Beloved Companion
Goriona's Collar
Starcatcher Compass
Blackhorn's Mighty Bulwark
Timepiece of the Bronze Flight
Ataraxis, Cudgel of the Warmaster
Visage of the Destroyer
Crown of the Corrupted Conqueror
Crown of the Corrupted Protector
Crown of the Corrupted Vanquisher

Achievement	Description
Fall of Deathwing	Defeat the encounters leading up to the Fall of Deathwing in the Dragon Soul raid.
Dragon Soul Guild Run	Defeat the bosses in Dragon Soul while in a guild group.
Heroic: Warmaster Blackhorn	Defeat Warmaster Blackhorn in Dragon Soul on Heroic Difficulty.
Deck Defender	Defeat Warmaster Blackhorn on Normal or Heroic Difficulty without allowing any Twilight Barrages to damage the Skyfire.

Warmaster Blackhorn is just one of the eight encounters present in the Dragon Soul raid of Cataclysm. If you would like to learn more about the others, please see our other pages for the raid below.