Iron Juggernaut Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

Table of Contents

• +1. General Information
  • 1.1. Health Values
  • 1.2. Enrage Timer
  • 1.3. Raid Composition
• +2. Loot
  • 2.1. Armor
  • 2.2. Weapons
  • 2.3. Amulets, Rings, and Trinkets
• 3. Overview of the Fight
• 4. Class-specific Advice
• 5. The Fight Area
• +6. Assault Phase
  • 6.1. Abilities
  • 6.2. Strategy
• +7. Siege Phase
  • 7.1. Abilities
  • 7.2. Strategy
• 8. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• +9. Summing Things Up
  • 9.1. Tanks
  • 9.2. Healers
  • 9.3. DPS
  • 9.4. Everyone
• 10. Learning the Fight
• +11. Heroic Mode
  • 11.1. Differences From Normal Mode
  • 11.2. Strategy
• 12. Concluding Remarks
• 13. Changelog

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Iron Juggernaut in Siege of Orgrimmar. It is targeted at anyone who desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

Before the very gates of Orgrimmar, your raid will have to face Iron Juggernaut, the sixth boss of the instance. The large boss alternates between two phases, one where it is mobile, and a shorter phase where it is stationary. Defeating this boss allows your raid to finally enter Orgrimmar.

The fight against the Iron Juggernaut is a purely single-target encounter. There are two alternating phases, and the phase changes are timed, fixed, and completely independent from any actions your raid takes.

• The Assault Phase lasts for 2 minutes. This is the phase in which the fight starts. During the Assault Phase, Iron Juggernaut is performs melee attacks and he is mobile.
• The Siege Phase lasts for 60 seconds, and during this phase, Iron Juggernaut is stationary and does not melee.

The fight does not become progressively more difficult in any way, and the two phases simply continue to alternate until your raid wipes or until the boss dies.

Videos:

• PTR Preview — a short overview of the boss, based on PTR testing, which is extremely useful for getting a rough understanding of the fight.
• Video Guide — a video guide of the boss, based on live-realm experience.

On our forums, we are maintaining threads with class-specific advice for each of the fights of Siege of Orgrimmar. So, make sure to check them out, and if you have things to share, do not hesitate to contribute!

Class	Forum Threads
Death Knight	Blood Frost/Unholy
Druid	Balance Feral Guardian Restoration
Hunter	All specs
Mage	All specs
Monk	Brewmaster Mistweaver Windwalker
Paladin	Holy Protection Retribution
Priest	Discipline Holy Shadow
Rogue	All specs
Shaman	Elemental Enhancement Restoration
Warlock	All specs
Warrior	Arms/Fury Protection

You fight Iron Juggernaut in a large enclosed area outside the gates of Orgrimmar. The area is large enough that it is possible for players to be out of range of healers (we would guess that the area is perhaps even as much as 150 yards in diameter, although it is not a perfect circle). The fight area also has many obstacles (fences, poles, small mounds of earth, crates, siege engines) which can cause line of sight issues. We advise players to be very mindful of their position relative to the healers throughout the fight.

During the Siege Phases, as we will see later on, random players will regularly be knocked back extremely far away (basically, until they hit an obstacle). This can cause great problems with healing range, so we advise you to try to position yourselves optimally so that there are obstacles not far behind you to stop your flight. If and when an ideal tanking location is established, we will update the guide.

The Assault Phase is the first phase your raid will have to face when starting the fight. This phase lasts for exactly 2 minutes (indicated by the boss' increasing energy bar, which serves no other purpose than to show players how long is left in the phase). After 2 minutes, the boss immediately goes into the Siege Phase, without any sort of transition phase. Likewise, when returning to the Assault Phase later on, there is no transition phase of any kind, and the switch is seamless.

During the Assault Phase, Iron Juggernaut uses several abilities against your raid.

• Flame Vents is a frontal cone attack that Iron Juggernaut regularly casts. In addition to dealing high Fire damage, this spell also applies a stacking debuff on affected players, increasing their Fire damage taken by 10% per stack, and causing them to take moderate Fire damage every second. This spell requires a tank switch.
• Borer Drill is an ability that Iron Juggernaut uses roughly every 20 seconds. The boss causes several earth spikes to travel along the ground in several directions, dealing high Physical damage to any players who are hit by them.
• Laser Burn is a nuke that deals high Fire damage to random raid members, and that also leaves a Fire damage DoT on these players. It is unavoidable.
• Mortar Cannon is a shadow crash sort of mechanic. The boss targets a random ranged raid member, and he fires a projectile at their location. The projectile lands 3 seconds later, dealing very high Fire damage in an 8-yard radius. The boss casts this ability roughly every 12 seconds.
• Crawler Mines are small adds that Iron Juggernaut spawns in random locations behind him. The adds spawn in groups of 3, roughly every 20 seconds. These adds cannot be killed, they do not attack, and they do not need to be tanked. The adds remain stationary where they spawn, and, 6 seconds later they explode, dealing very high raid-wide Physical damage. This explosion can be prevented if a player stomps a mine into the ground (by right clicking it while in its melee range). Doing so causes that player to take an extremely high amount of damage (1,250,000 Physical damage) and be knocked up into the air.

Iron Juggernaut should be facing away from the raid at all times, since his frontal attack, Flame Vents, must be avoided. Tanks should perform a switch when the current tank has 3-4 stacks of the debuff applied by Flame Vents.

The raid should be positioning in an arc behind the boss, spread out 8 yards apart (so that as few people as possible need to move in order to avoid the damage from Mortar Cannon). When Mortar Cannon is cast, the players in the affected area (marked by a large red circle) should move away quickly.

Players will have to be very careful to avoid the earth spikes from Borer Drill. Their movement can be quite erratic, so players will need to be reactive.

Healers will have to react to the damage from Laser Burn, which is unavoidable (and the DoT of which cannot be dispelled), but given the overall damage in this phase (provided that Mortar Cannon and Borer Drill are being properly avoided), this should not cause problems.

Finally, your raid should designate a player to detonate the Crawler Mines each time they spawn. The ideal player for this job is the tank who is currently not tanking the boss, since their very high health, as well as their damage reduction capabilities make it easy for them to survive. Alternatively, you may be able to use players with immunities for the task, but given the frequency of the Crawler Mine casts, we are not sure that this will be feasible.

The first Siege Phase starts 2 minutes after the start of the fight, and it lasts for precisely 60 seconds (this is also indicated by the boss' energy bar which, during this phase, decreases steadily). When the Siege Phase ends, the boss enters the Assault Phase.

During the Siege Phase, Iron Juggernaut uses 6 abilities against your raid. He continues to use Crawler Mines just like before, and he has some new abilities.

• Seismic Activity is a constant raid-wide damaging aura that is present during this phase. It deals a moderate amount of Physical damage every second.
• Shock Pulse is a spell that Iron Juggernaut often uses. It knocks all raid members back a very great distance.
• Demolisher Cannons is a nuke that Iron Juggernaut often uses. It deals moderate Fire damage to random raid members, and to any other players in a 6-yard radius. It is unavoidable.
• Cutter Laser is a damaging laser beam that Iron Juggernaut uses to chase a random player for 10 seconds. At the point of impact, the laser deals a high amount of Fire damage every second.
• Explosive Tar are damaging and slowing void zones that Iron Juggernaut creates. While these void zones do low damage, they explode if they come in contact with a Cutter Laser, which causes them to deal high raid-wide Fire damage.

During this phase, Iron Juggernaut is stationary and he does not need to be tanked.

During the Siege Phase, Iron Juggernaut will remain fixed in place at the location where he was at the end of the Assault Phase.

Tanking is not required during this phase, so your tanks should simply try to DPS the boss and handle the Crawler Mines. Ranged raid members should be spread out around the boss to minimise the damage taken from Demolisher Cannons.

All players should position themselves in such a way that if they are targeted by Cutter Laser, they have a path to run through without dragging the Cutter Laser through any Explosive Tar void zones. Ideally, the laser beam should be kited in such a way as not to interfere with the positioning of the other players, all while making sure that the player being chased does not end up in a position where they are likely to be knocked back unfavourably (more on knock-backs below). It should go without saying that players should avoid standing in any of the Explosive Tar void zones.

The biggest challenge during this phase is making sure that no players end up getting knocked-back too far by Shock Pulse. As such, your raid should seek to position itself so that all players have an obstacle a short distance behind them (whether it be the edges of the fighting area, or another obstacle). If players get knocked back too far, they will end up out of healing range, and they may well be knocked back again (and again) before they can make it back to the raid.

Healers will have to contend with the constant raid-wide damage of Seismic Activity, which is even more difficult to heal when you factor in the many knock-backs that the boss casts. This is the ideal time to use defensive raid cooldowns.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp at the start of the fight, in light of the fact that the fight does not become progressively more difficult as it goes on, and also because there are no particularly problematic moments. Using Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp at the start allows all DPS players to benefit from it the most, since all their cooldowns are available.

In this section, we will very briefly summarise what the players belonging to each of the three roles have to do during this fight.

• Perform a tank switch on Iron Juggernaut (to handle the Flame Vents ability), and tank him facing away from the raid (only during the Assault Phase).
• Detonate the Crawler Mines (if you are assigned to do so).

• Beware of the random raid damage caused by Laser Burn.
• Beware of the very high damage the tank who is detonating Crawler Mines will take.
• Be prepared for the raid-damage from Seismic Activity and Demolisher Cannons during the Siege Phase.

• DPS Iron Juggernaut.

• Avoid ground effects ( Borer Drill, Mortar Cannon, etc.).
• Make sure you are not in a position to be knocked back too far (during the Siege Phase).
• If targeted by Cutter Laser, do not kite it into Explosive Tar void zones.

By far the biggest hurdle for your raid to overcome is the issue of positioning. While most of the other abilities used in the encounter are mere variations on common raid mechanics, the knock-backs can be extremely disruptive to your raid's learning experience and overall performance.

As we have already stated several times, you will need to find out where it is best to position the boss, with regard to the obstacles that your raid members can make use of to prevent being knocked back too far. Keep in mind that certain obstacles that appear to work actually do not work (your character simply passes through them), while others are too low for them to be effective (your character flies over them), so you will need to experiment a bit.

The Heroic Mode for Iron Juggernaut presents two additional mechanics, but the execution of the fight feels very similar to Normal mode.

In addition to the boss having increased health and dealing increased damage, there are two new mechanics you need to deal with in Heroic mode.

• During the Assault Phase, the boss uses Ricochet every 15 seconds. This creates a sawblade that moves around quickly (mostly around the location of ranged raid members), dealing damage to any players it comes in contact with.
• During the Siege Phase, the boss uses Mortar Barrage, constantly dealing very high damage in random areas of the ground, next to him (note that these do not target the location of raid members). The affected areas are marked by red circles, just like the ones affected by Mortar Cannon during the Assault Phase.

Despite having to deal with two new Heroic abilities, the fight execution remains almost unchanged.

The best way to deal with the sawblades created by Ricochet is to have ranged raid members spread out slightly, so that any one sawblade does not damage more players than absolutely necessary. The sawblades move around so quickly that avoiding them is really difficult, but players should try anyway. The damage done by the sawblades must simply be healed through.

Since the explosions created by Mortar Barrage target the ground (and not raid members) near the boss, and since their number is so great that moving around to avoid them all is difficult, an unusual strategy has been devised which makes this phase quite easy. As soon as the phase starts, your raid should stack up together in such a way that the first knock-back will throw everyone at the edge of the fighting area, up against a wall (to avoid further knock-backs), and far from the boss himself. The raid should then remain in this location for the entire duration of the phase, using raid cooldowns to survive the damage. Players who are targeted by Cutter Laser will need to be quick in moving out of the raid. While doing this strategy, your raid will not do any DPS whatsoever to the boss, but this is not a problem, since the enrage timer of the fight is a non-issue. The benefit of the strategy is that no one needs to worry about avoiding Mortar Barrage.

This concludes our raid guide for Iron Juggernaut. We hope you have found it helpful. Please do not hesitate to post any feedback you may have on our forums.

• 26 Nov. 2013: Made some improvements to the Heroic mode strategy.
• 15 Nov. 2013: Added Heroic mode strategy.
• 16 Sep. 2013: Made several updates.
  • Added 25-man health values.
  • Added a link to the video guide.
  • Added that Crawler Mines continue to be used in the Siege Phase.
• 29 Aug. 2013: Added Summarising Things Up section.

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