Iron Reaver Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic+Mythic Modes included)

Table of Contents

• +1. General Information
  • 1.1. LFR Difficulty
  • 1.2. Normal, Heroic, and Mythic Difficulty
  • 1.3. Enrage Timer
• 2. Overview of the Fight
• +3. Summing Things Up
  • 3.1. Tanks
  • 3.2. Healers
  • 3.3. DPS
  • 3.4. Everyone
• +4. Ground Operation
  • 4.1. Abilities
  • 4.2. Strategy
    • 4.2.1. Tanking and Positioning
    • 4.2.2. Handling the Mechanics
• +5. Air Operation
  • 5.1. Abilities
  • 5.2. Strategy
    • 5.2.1. Tanking and Positioning
    • 5.2.2. Handling the Iron Reaver
    • 5.2.3. Handling the Firebombs
• 6. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• 7. When to use the Legendary Ring
• 8. Learning the Fight
• +9. Mythic Mode
  • 9.1. Differences From Normal/Heroic Mode
  • 9.2. Strategy
    • 9.2.1. Ground Operation Phases
    • 9.2.2. Air Operation Phases
• +10. Loot
  • 10.1. Armor
  • 10.2. Weapons
  • 10.3. Amulets, Cloaks, Rings, and Trinkets
• 11. Concluding Remarks
• 12. Changelog

Introduction

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

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.2.

Iron Reaver is a boss encounter in the Hellfire Citadel raid instance. The encounter against Iron Reaver is a two-phase, multiple target fight during which your raid will mostly have to focus on having good positioning, and on avoiding various abilities by reacting quickly.

This guide is written and maintained by Azortharion, a top Hunter with 6 years of raiding experience, who currently raids in Ðanish Terrace, a world top 20 guild.

For the Looking for Raid version of the fight, we provide you with a special LFR guide. This will tell you everything you need to know in order to complete the encounter, in a quick and concise way.

This main part of this guide covers both the Normal and Heroic versions of the encounter, as far as mechanics and general strategy is concerned. The only difference between these two modes is found in the tuning, with Heroic being more difficult.

When we speak of extreme situations (such as the difficulty of a soft enrage timer, or damage from a certain source being too high to survive), we mostly refer to Heroic mode.

In addition to this, we have a specific Mythic mode section, where we present all the differences between Normal/Heroic and Mythic, as well as the strategy to defeat the Mythic encounter.

We do not currently know what the hard enrage timer for this encounter is.

The encounter against Iron Reaver is a two-phase fight, during which the two phases alternate back and forth on a fixed timer until the boss dies.

The first phase is called the Ground Operation Phase. At this time, the boss is located on the ground. The boss has an Energy bar that increases over time, indicating the time remaining until the phase change. Each Ground Operation Phase lasts 140 seconds.

The second phase is called the Air Operation Phase. During this phase, Iron Reaver takes flight and engages your raid from the air with some new abilities, as well as with some abilities from the Ground Operation Phase. During this phase, your raid must also content with a type of add. This phase lasts around 60 seconds, and the time until the end of the phase is also indicated by the boss' Energy bar, which slows depletes as this phase progresses. When the boss runs out of Energy, she lands and the Ground Operation Phase restarts.

In this section, we will very briefly summarise what the players belonging to each of the three roles have to do during this fight. This is by no means meant to provide sufficient information to master the encounter, and it is only supposed to give you a very rough idea of what to watch out for.

• During the Ground Operation Phase, perform a tank switch when the Iron Reaver's tank is targeted by Artillery, and have the targeted tank run as far away from the raid as possible.
• During the Air Operation Phase, help DPS players kill Volatile Firebombs.
• In Mythic mode, detonate Reactive Firebombs during the Air Operation Phases by right clicking them, while using a defensive cooldown.

• During the Ground Operation Phase, healing cooldowns will be needed for every Pounding.
• During the Air Operation Phase, stay in range of as many raiders as possible, as there is a lot of potential for mistakes.
• In Mythic mode, beware of the damage raid members will take during the Air Operation Phases, following Firebomb casts.

• During the Ground Operation Phase, DPS the Iron Reaver.
• During the Air Operation Phase, DPS the Volatile Firebombs.
• In Mythic mode
  • During the Ground Operation Phases, kill Volatile Firebombs.
  • During the Air Operation Phases, kill the Firebombs in the following order of priority:
    1. Quick-Fuse Firebombs;
    2. Burning Firebombs;
    3. Reinforced Firebombs.

• During the Ground Operation Phase
  • Avoid standing in front of the Iron Reaver when she casts Barrage.
  • Move out of the way of the Iron Reaver when it casts Blitz, if you are standing between its targeted raid member and it.
  • Avoid standing in Immolation fire patches around the room.
  • Spread out 8 yards to minimise Unstable Orb damage.
• During the Air Operation Phase
  • Move out of the raid and use a defensive cooldown when targeted by Artillery.
  • Avoid being struck by Falling Slam and Firebombs by moving out of the ground effect.
• In Mythic mode, avoid standing next to any Reactive Firebombs, unless you are assigned to detonate them.

Each Ground Operation Phase lasts 140 seconds, as indicated by the boss' Energy bar, which serves no other purpose. When the boss reaches maximum Energy, she enters the Air Operation Phase.

The Ground Operation Phase restarts each time the Air Operation Phase ends, until the boss dies or the raid wipes.

Before we can explain the abilities that the Iron Reaver uses, we must first explain a sort of passive ability called Immolation. Immolation is comprised of fire patches that persist on the ground for a long time, applying a stacking Fire damage DoT to anyone standing in them.

Immolation is peculiar because it is not something that Iron Reaver directly casts; it is a byproduct of one of her abilities. Moreover, Immolation Fire patches are influenced by several other mechanics during this phase (most notably being movable).

Aside from this, Iron Reaver uses the following abilities against your raid.

• Barrage is an ability that the Iron Reaver regularly uses. It targets a random raid member, faces them, and then shortly afterwards it fires a cone attack in that direction. This attack deals a massive amount of Fire damage and it leaves Immolation fire patches on the ground.
• Artillery is an ability that the Iron Reaver regularly uses against her tank. The boss marks the player, and then 15 seconds later, they take a massive amount of Fire damage. At the same time, the raid takes Fire damage too. The amount of Fire damage taken by other raid members depends on the distance to the targeted player (the farther they are, the lower their damage taken). This ability requires a tank switch.
• Unstable Orb is an ability that the Iron Reaver regularly uses. The boss applies a 15-second Fire damage DoT to a number of random raid members. For the duration of the DoT, these players as well as anyone else in an 8-yard radius around them take low Fire damage every second. It is possible for a player to be damaged by Unstable Orb from multiple sources (for example, both by their own DoT and by the DoT of another player located within 8 yards).
• Pounding is an ability that the Iron Reaver occasionally uses. It deals massive, raid-wide damage every 0.5 seconds for 6 seconds. While Pounding is being cast, Immolation fire patches are slowly pushed away from Iron Reaver.
• Blitz is an ability that the Iron Reaver occasionally uses twice in a row. A random raid member is targeted, and after 3 seconds, the Iron Reaver charges towards them. The boss grabs everyone between her and her target, taking them with her, dealing heavy damage to them, and pacifying and silencing them for the duration. The second Blitz charge always seems to have the boss double back to her tank. While charging, the boss pushes any Immolation fire patches out of her way. Additionally, players struck by Blitz are affected by a DoT with the same name.
  • Blitz (the DoT) deals low Fire damage every 0.5 seconds for 15 seconds. This effect stacks if a raid member is hit by two consecutive Blitzes.

The Ground Operation Phase strategy is quite straightforward. Your raid will have to avoid Iron Reaver's many abilities while doing as much damage to her as possible.

When the Iron Reaver's tank is targeted by Artillery, the other tank must taunt the boss off of them so that they may run away from the raid. They should run as far away as possible, up to 40 yards or so. When the boss actually fires the projectile at the tank, they should use a defensive cooldown to mitigate the damage.

As far as positioning is concerned, we recommend having an 8-yard spread around the room, ideally around the middle. This is to reduce the total amount of stacks acquired by the raid when Iron Reaver casts Unstable Orb.

Throughout this phase, you will constantly be confronted with Immolation fire patches. These are created by each cast of Barrage, and they persist for a long time. There is no great complexity to handling them, in principle. All raid members should avoid standing in them at all times.

It is important to keep in mind that each time the Iron Reaver casts Pounding, the Immolation fire patches will be pushed slightly away from the boss. Players should watch out for this and make sure not to be standing in the way of a fire patch.

Unstable Orb must be healed through. Spreading 8 yards from everyone else, as noted in the Positioning subsection above, ensures that anyone ever only gets damaged by their own Unstable Orb.

When the Iron Reaver casts Barrage, raid members must avoid standing in front of it. Out-ranging Barrage is not feasible, so instead players should aim to strafe right or left to move out of its path. Standing reasonably close to Iron Reaver makes this easier (given the cone shape of Barrage).

When the Iron Reaver casts Blitz, raid members must avoid standing between the targeted player and the Iron Reaver. Keep in mind that the Iron Reaver will Blitz back to its tank right away, so avoid moving in the path it has just traveled. This applies especially to melee DPS players, who should make no effort to chase the Iron Reaver during its first Blitz. As mentioned earlier, the boss clears a path through the Immolation when she uses Blitz, but this does not impact your raid's strategy in any way.

When the Iron Reaver casts Pounding, 3-minute healing cooldowns must be used. We recommend organising this within your raid group. The Pounding casts are timed so that there will always be a 3-minute healing cooldown up for it, provided that you do not use them all on a single one.

When Iron Reaver reaches maximum Energy, she flies up into the air. During the Air Operation Phase, she takes 95% reduced damage. This phase lasts around 60 seconds, after which time Iron Reaver lands and the Ground Operation Phase starts all over again. The time until the phase change is also indicated by her Energy bar in this phase, which depletes over time.

During the Air Operation Phase, Iron Reaver retains some of her Ground Operation Phase abilities, and she also gains some new ones.

• Immolation fire patches continue to be used in this phase, although there are fewer abilities that influence them now.
• Artillery also continues to be used, but instead of targeting Iron Reaver's tank, it now targets 3 random raid members.
• Fuel Streak is an ability that the Iron Reaver regularly uses. She flies across the room, leaving a long line of fuel on the ground. After a few seconds, the fuel is ignited and anyone standing in it takes heavy Fire damage every second. The fire line persists for a few seconds.
• Firebomb is an ability that the Iron Reaver regularly uses. It targets several small areas on the ground with a visual effect. After a few seconds, anyone standing within 5 yards of these areas takes heavy Fire damage. Additionally, 4 Volatile Firebombs adds spawn upon impact.
  • Volatile Firebombs are adds that spawn from landing Firebombs. They cannot be tanked, they do not move, and they have no abilities of their own. However, if they are not killed within 25 seconds, they explode, killing themselves and dealing heavy raid-wide Fire damage. This explosion also applies a stacking debuff that increases damage taken from Firebomb by 50% for 30 seconds. Additionally, players affected by this debuff (so, the entire raid) can push away Immolation fire patches by standing close to them.
• Falling Slam is an ability that the Iron Reaver uses at the end of the Air Operation Phase. The boss marks a large area on the ground (around a random raid member), and lands there about 6 seconds later. Anyone standing inside this area when the boss lands will take lethal Nature damage. At the same time, the entire raid takes a moderate amount of Nature damage. Each time the boss uses Falling Slam, the damage of Pounding is permanently increased by 20%.

Tanks have nothing to do during this phase (there is nothing to tank). They will simply help the DPS players, while avoiding as much damage as possible.

As far as positioning is concerned, we recommend the same general positioning as during the Ground Operation Phase (loosely spread out around the middle of the room). This is because the Air Operation phase can become very hectic, with many abilities that deal AoE damage and which must be avoided. For this reason, stacking up can cause a lot of problems, and the increased healing your raid would benefit from is not enough to offset these risks. In general, however, raid members are on their own in this phase, and they must simply make sure that they can avoid all abilities.

When targeted by Artillery, the chosen raid members must run as far away as possible from the raid and from other targeted raid members. Then, they must use a defensive cooldown to avoid being killed by the full damage of the Artillery landing on them.

For Fuel Streak, move out of the line of fuel before it is ignited to avoid taking damage.

For Falling Slam, avoid standing in the large ground effect. The entire raid still takes moderate damage, however, when the boss lands, but nothing except perhaps personal, defensive cooldowns should be needed for everyone to survive it. Since each Falling Slam increases the damage of Pounding by 20%, the fight will get progressively more difficult as time goes on. The boss must die before Pounding becomes unsurvivable.

When the Iron Reaver casts Firebomb, raid members must avoid standing in the ground effect that it creates. DPS players must quickly switch to the Volatile Firebomb adds and kill them before 25 seconds pass.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp at the start of the encounter, since this is when all players will have their DPS cooldowns available, and especially because there are no other, more suitable moments during the encounter.

DPS players should use their Legendary Ring on cooldown. In Mythic mode, the the second usage should be saved for the Quick-Fuse Firebomb spawns, as these spawn just shortly into the Air Operation Phase, which starts after 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

Healers should use their Legendary Rings for Pounding casts, as often as possible.

Tanks should use their Legendary Ring for Artillery casts. In Mythic mode, it can be a good idea to save casts for the Reactive Firebombs during the Air Operation Phases.

A large part of the fight against Iron Reaver revolves around avoidable mechanics. Therefore, learning this fight is all about making sure not to take unnecessary damage due to incorrect positioning.

The layout of the fight means that by the time your raid reaches the Air Operation Phase, they will already have mastered most of the mechanics that can cause problems, so this should normally lead to a natural learning process for the encounter.

The Mythic mode of the Iron Reaver encounter is similar to the Normal/Heroic versions of the encounter. Several new types of adds attack your raid during the Air Operation Phases, and other regular mechanics become more difficult to deal with throughout the fight. All of this leads to a much more challenging encounter.

Aside from all mobs having more health and dealing more damage, there are several other changes to the Mythic mode. We detail them below.

• Firebomb is now used during Ground Operation Phases. Each Ground Operation Phase will see 3 waves of Volatile Firebombs spawning, which work exactly the same as the Volatile Firebombs your raid has to deal with during the Air Operation Phases in Normal/Heroic mode.
• Firebomb continues to be used during Air Operation Phases, but the ability is now somewhat different. Firebomb casts no longer spawn 4 Volatile Firebombs, but instead they spawn a number of each following types of Firebombs. None of these Firebombs can be tanked, and none of them have any abilities of their own. All Firebombs explode if they are not killed within a certain amount of time (as explained below), and when this happens, all raid members receive a stack of a debuff called Firebomb Vulnerability, which increases damage taken from Firebomb by 50% for 30 seconds.
  • Quick-Fuse Firebombs explode if they are still alive 12 seconds after spawning, dealing moderate raid-wide Fire damage. 4 Quick-Fuse Firebombs spawn each time Firebomb is used.
  • Burning Firebombs explode if they are still alive 40 seconds after spawning, dealing heavy raid-wide Fire damage. 3 Burning Firebombs spawn each time Firebomb is used. Moreover, any players who attack the Burning Firebombs receive the Flame Vulnerability debuff.
    • Flame Vulnerability is a stacking debuff that increases Fire damage taken by 15% per stack for 6 seconds.
  • Reactive Firebombs explode if they are still alive 30 seconds after spawning, dealing lethal raid-wide Fire damage. They have a high amount of health, but they can be killed by having a raid member right click them, which causes them to leap on top of the bomb. This deals massive Fire damage to that player and anyone else in a small radius around them. 3 Reactive Firebombs spawn each time Firebomb is used.
  • Reinforced Firebombs explode if they are still alive 85 seconds after spawning, dealing lethal raid-wide Fire damage. They have an extraordinary amount of health. 1 Reinforced Firebomb spawns each time Firebomb is used.

There is a beam of light that precedes the spawn of each Firebomb, the color of the light warning players of the type of Firebomb that will spawn.

• Yellow lights indicate a Quick-Fuse Firebomb.
• Blue lights indicate a Reactive Firebomb.
• Red lights indicate a Reinforced Firebomb.
• Yellow lights indicate a Burning Firebomb.

The greatest strategical difficulty of the Mythic version of Iron Reaver is dealing with the high number of different Firebombs in the Air Operation Phase, while still dodging Iron Reaver's Air Operation Phase abilities (which deal extra damage, as is usual for Mythic mode).

For the Volatile Firebombs that spawn in the Ground Operation Phases, deal with them as you would the ones in the Normal/Heroic mode Air Operation Phases, by killing them as quickly as possible.

For the various Firebombs in the Air Operation Phases, we recommend splitting DPS players into small groups around the room. This is to ensure that all the Firebombs can be reached, particularly the Quick-Fuse Firebombs ones. Firebombs tend to spawn closer to the middle of the room, so there is no need to go to the edges.

Once spread out, we recommend killing the Firebombs as quickly as possible in the following priority:

1. Quick-Fuse Firebombs;
2. Burning Firebombs;
3. Reinforced Firebombs.

We recommend that tanks mostly deal with Reactive Firebombs by using a defensive cooldown before leaping onto the Firebomb. If no tanks are nearby, we recommend that a DPS player uses stronger defensive cooldowns, and does it instead. In any case, all players except the one who will detonate the Reactive Firebomb should stand away from it, since the detonation deals some AoE damage.

Players attacking the Burning Firebombs must beware of the stacks of Flame Vulnerability that they are building up, and they should stop attacking if this gets too high. Players who attack more rarely but deal more damage with their attacks are better suited to killing these bombs.

Finally, we recommend saving short DPS cooldowns for the Quick-Fuse Firebomb spawns.

In this section, you will find the loot table for Iron Reaver. The section is divided in 3 subsections: armor, weapons, and the rest (neck, back, finger, and trinket items).

Item Name	Armor	Slot	Secondary Stats
Pilot's Pauldrons (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloth	Shoulders	Haste Mastery
Liquid-Cooled Mantle — LFR	Cloth	Shoulders	Mastery Multistrike
Pedal-Pushing Sandals (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloth	Feet	Multistrike Haste
Double-Padded Slippers — LFR	Cloth	Feet	Haste Critical Strike
Fel-Steamed Leather Tunic — LFR	Leather	Chest	Haste Mastery
Insulated Wirer's Gloves (Heroic, Mythic)	Leather	Hands	Versatility Critical Strike
Rivet-Studded Leggings (Heroic, Mythic)	Leather	Legs	Mastery Versatility
Spiked Irontoe Slippers (Heroic, Mythic)	Leather	Feet	Critical Strike Multistrike
Shrapnel-Studded Boots — LFR	Leather	Feet	Mastery Mastery
Double-Polished Chain Pauldrons — LFR	Mail	Shoulders	Versatility Multistrike
Pulley Chain Wristwraps — LFR	Mail	Wrists	Mastery Haste
Torch-Brazed Waistguard (Heroic, Mythic)	Mail	Waist	Multistrike Critical Strike
Die-Cast Ringmail Sabatons (Heroic, Mythic)	Mail	Feet	Versatility Critical Strike
Stamped Felsteel Chestplate (Heroic, Mythic)	Plate	Chest	Critical Strike Mastery
Hot-Rolled Iron Bracers (Heroic, Mythic)	Plate	Wrists	Multistrike Versatility
Roughly Soldered Wristclamps — LFR	Plate	Wrists	Mastery Haste
Assembly Worker's Legguards — LFR	Plate	Legs	Versatility Critical Strike

Item Name	Type	Main Stats	Secondary Stats
Demonhorn Buckler — LFR	Shield	Intellect	Versatility Versatility
Felforged Aegis (Heroic, Mythic)	Shield	Intellect	Critical Strike Multistrike
Spiked Torque Wrench — LFR	1H Mace	Agility	Critical Strike Versatility
Iron Skullcrusher (Heroic, Mythic)	1H Mace	Strength	Critical Strike Haste

Item Name	Type	Main Stats	Secondary Stats
Voltage Regulation Diode (Heroic, Mythic)	Amulet	Intellect	Spirit Haste
Unfired Ejection Parachute — LFR	Cloak	Agility	Critical Strike Mastery
Commander's Seat Cushion Cover — LFR	Cloak	Strength	Multistrike Haste
Ironthread Greatcloak (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloak	Agility Strength	Bonus Armor Haste
Flanged Gasket (Heroic, Mythic)	Ring	Strength	Haste Versatility
Iron Reaver Piston (Heroic, Mythic)	Trinket	Intellect Haste	Critical Strike
Crackling Fel-Spark Plug — LFR	Trinket	Intellect Mastery
Fel-Spring Coil (Heroic, Mythic)	Trinket	Agility Mastery	Critical Strike

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

• 30 Jun. 2015: Added Mythic mode strategy.
• 29 Jun. 2015: Added link to our LFR guide.
• 22 Jun. 2015: Confirmed the duration of the two phases.

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