Kor'kron Dark Shaman 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, Cloaks, Rings, and Trinkets
• 3. Overview of the Fight
• 4. Class-specific Advice
• +5. Abilities
  • 5.1. Darkfang and Bloodclaw
  • 5.2. Kor'kron Dark Shaman
    • 5.2.1. Earthbreaker Haromm
    • 5.2.2. Wavebinder Kardris
• +6. Strategy
  • 6.1. Darkfang and Bloodclaw
  • 6.2. 100-65% Health
  • 6.3. 65-50% Health
  • 6.4. 50%-25% Health
  • 6.5. Sub-25% Health
• 7. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• +8. Summing Things Up
  • 8.1. Tanks
  • 8.2. Healers
  • 8.3. DPS
  • 8.4. Everyone
• 9. Learning the Fight
• +10. Heroic Mode
  • 10.1. Differences From Normal Mode
  • 10.2. Strategy
• 11. Concluding Remarks
• 12. Changelog

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Kor'kron Dark Shaman 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.

The Kor'kron Dark Shaman is the seventh boss encounter in the Siege of Orgrimmar. Your raid will face two Shamans in a twins-type of fight. The bosses share health, and the fight becomes more difficult and more complex as the bosses' health drops lower.

The Kor'kron Dark Shaman are two twin-style bosses, Earthbreaker Haromm and Wavebinder Kardris, who share health and engage your raid at the same time. At the start of the fight, in addition to facing the two shaman, your raid will also face their mounts, Darkfang and Bloodclaw. Due to their low health, the mounts will die quickly, leaving your raid to fight the two bosses.

The difficulty of the fight escalates as you progress. Initially, each boss only has one ability. However, as their health decreases, additional abilities become available to them. The bosses each gain a new ability upon reaching 85%, 65%, and 50% health. Moreover, upon reaching 25% health, the bosses will gain a buff that increases their damage and haste by 25%.

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

Darkfang and Bloodclaw each have the same two abilities.

• Swipe is a frontal cone attack that deals Physical damage in a small cone.
• Rend is a stacking bleed effect.

In addition to the abilities we mention below, the two shaman have a shared ability. When reaching 25% health, they buff themselves with Bloodlust, increasing their damage done and haste by 25% until the end of the fight.

Earthbreaker Haromm's basic ability is Froststorm Strike. This deals high Frost damage to Haromm's tank, and affects them with a stacking debuff that causes them to take 25% increased damage from Froststorm Strike for 30 seconds. This debuff stacks. This ability requires a tank switch.

When reaching 85% health, Haromm gains Toxic Mist. This is an undispellable 30-second DoT, cast on random raid members, that deals Nature damage every 3 seconds. With each tick, the player also gains a stack of a debuff that increases their Nature damage taken by 10%. This debuff wears off at the same time as the DoT. The damage of Toxic Mist goes through all immunities.

When reaching 65% health, Haromm gains Foul Stream. This ability targets an area on the ground, in the shape of a long, wide line. The area is marked with a green effect, and a few seconds later, any players standing there take high Nature damage. Haromm casts Foul Stream roughly every 30 seconds.

When reaching 50% health, Haromm gains Ashen Wall. This summons a wall of stationary Ash Elementals that attack players who are in their melee range for very high amounts of damage. The Elementals cannot be tanked or killed, and they last for a very long time (possibly indefinitely). The ability is cast roughly every 30 seconds.

Wavebinder Kardris' basic ability is Froststorm Bolt. This is an uninterruptible nuke that Kardris regularly casts on his tank. It deals a very high amount of Frost damage.

When reaching 85% health, Kardris gains Toxic Storm. This ability summons a cloud that moves slowly around the arena, dealing damage to any players who are under it. Moreover, the cloud regularly creates Toxic Tornadoes, which also move around the arena, dealing damage to any players they touch, and knocking them up slightly. The ability is cast roughly every 30 seconds, and each cloud lasts for about 90 seconds, meaning that it eventually leads to spacial constraints.

When reaching 65% health, Kardris gains Foul Geyser. Kardris channels Foul Geyser for 8 seconds, dealing damage to any players around him and summoning many adds called Foul Slimes. The Foul Slime adds can be tanked, and they have an aura that constantly deals Nature damage to any players within 3 yards of them. Foul Geyser is cast roughly every 30 seconds.

When reaching 50% health, Kardris gains Falling Ash. This ability targets a large area on the ground, marking it with a red effect. About 15 seconds later, a fiery projectile will land in this area, dealing lethal damage to anyone inside it, as well as a moderate amount of raid-wide Fire damage. The ability is cast roughly every 30 seconds.

The strategy for defeating the Kor'kron Dark Shaman is quite straightforward. Most of the abilities of the bosses are purely reactive in nature, so your raid members will need to handle them accordingly while dealing damage to the bosses. We will go into details with regards to each stage of the fight, in the sub-sections below.

Generally speaking, the bosses should be tanked together at all times, near the outer edge of the fighting area. Your ranged raid members should be in the center of the fighting area. This will make it possible to cleave the bosses, increasing raid DPS. Once Ashen Wall starts being used, the bosses will need to be moved whenever a wall is created at their location.

The tanks will need regularly perform a tank switch to account for the stacking debuff applied by Earthbreaker Haromm.

The first step, at the pull, is for your raid to get rid of Darkfang and Bloodclaw. Have each tank pick up one of the two mobs (as well as one of the bosses each), and have them tanked facing away from the raid (and from each other). Darkfang and Bloodclaw have low health, so by having your DPS players focus them, they will die quickly (before the bosses reach 85% health). After they have been killed, you can focus on the bosses.

Initially, the bosses simply deal damage to their tanks, requiring a tank switch.

When the bosses reach 85% health, they begin using their first special abilities.

Haromm begins casting Toxic Mist on random raid members. The healers have to respond to this ability by doing extra healing on affected players, but other than this there is nothing else to handling Toxic Mist.

Kardris begins casting Toxic Storm, and summoning Toxic Tornadoes. Since these move around, your raid members will have to always be aware of their surroundings, and they will have to avoid them at all times. As the fight goes on, the number of tornadoes present will increase, causing your raid to have less and less space. This acts a soft enrage timer.

At 65% health, Haromm begins casting Foul Stream. This ability deals very high damage to any players it hits, and, once more, your raid members will have to be prepared to react quickly to their surroundings. All players have to do is move out of the affected area quickly.

Kardris begins casting Foul Geyser at 65% health. This ability is the most problematic one in the entire fight. The resulting Foul Slimes cannot be tanked effectively in melee range due to their very high damage aura present within 3 yards of them, so they will need to be killed immediately, or kited. We advise you to kill them if your raid DPS is good enough for this. Melee players should move away from Kardris when Foul Geyser is being cast, and they should use any abilities they can on the resulting adds. Ranged DPS players should go all-out on DPSing the Foul Slimes. Given the fact that they do not all spawn together, it is possible to kill some before the others spawn, meaning that the damage of the aura can be kept somewhat under control. Healers should pay attention to the health of melee players when this happens, and they should not hesitate to use cooldowns.

If your raid opts to kite the adds instead, tanks who can reliably generate solid threat at range, so Brewmaster Monks, are good for this task. Alternatively, you could have them kited around by a ranged DPS player, such as a Hunter or a Mage.

At 50% health, Haromm begins casting Ashen Wall. Like with most of the other abilities in this fight, players will simply have to immediately move away from where the wall is placed. It appears that Haromm summons these adds at his location, and if this turns out to be the case on live severs, you will want to tank Haromm near the outside of the arena after he reaches 70% health. This is because, as we said, the Ash Elementals appear to last indefinitely, so they will impose an increasing space restriction on your raid the longer the fight goes on. For this reason, you should try to organize the Ashen Walls as efficiently as possible. By kiting the bosses around the outer edge of the fighting area whenever an Ashen Wall is placed near them, as we suggested above, you should be able to manage throughout the fight.

Kardris begins casting Falling Ash at 50% health, and this ability is very easy to deal with. Players have around 15 seconds to make sure that they are not standing within the marked area on the ground, which is more than enough time. When the fiery projectile of the ability lands, the entire raid will take a moderate amount of Fire damage for which the healers must be prepared. We strongly advise using a defensive cooldown each time this happens.

When the bosses reach 25% health, their damage increases by 25%. This part of the fight will be the most difficult one, because your raid will be running low on space (due to the Ashen Walls and the increasing number of Toxic Storm clouds) and probably also on mana. Defensive cooldowns are best used here, but aside from this, the strategy does not change.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp either at the start of the fight, or when the bosses reach 25% health and cast Bloodlust.

Generally speaking, the start of the fight is the ideal moment for Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp because your raid DPS benefits the most from it when everyone's cooldowns are available. That said, given the fact that the boss' Bloodlust phase may prove to be very difficult, that may actually be a more suitable time. We will need to see what the tuning of the fight is like on live realms before we can make a clear judgement.

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

• Pick up the bosses and their mounts at the start of the fight (a boss and a mount for each tank), and face the mounts away from raid members until they are killed.
• Perform a tank switch on the bosses.
• Tank the bosses together so your raid can cleave them.
• Move the bosses away from Ashen Walls.
• If assigned to do so, keep aggro on the Foul Slimes and kite them in such a way that they do not pass through the raid (since they have a damaging aura around them). Do not attempt to tank them in melee range for more than a few seconds.

• Heal the damage done to random raid members by the Toxic Mist DoT. Beware that its damage ramps up as the DoT reaches the end of its duration.
• Heal the unavoidable raid damage caused by Falling Ash.
• Use defensive raid cooldowns when the bosses drop below 25% health.

• Focus DPS on Darkfang and Bloodclaw at the start of the fight. Once they are dead, switch to the bosses.
• Cleave and multi-DoT whenever it is a DPS gain for your class, since the bosses share health.
• When Foul Slimes spawn, ranged DPS players should kill them immediately.
• If assigned to do so (ranged DPS player only), kite the Foul Slimes in such a way that they do not pass through the raid, until they are killed.

• Move out of the areas affected by Foul Stream and Falling Ash.
• Move away from Ashen Walls.
• Avoid standing under the clouds from Toxic Storm. Do not come in contact with the resulting Toxic Tornadoes.
• Do not be near Wavebinder Kardris when he channels Foul Geyser.

Since most of the abilities in this encounter are reactive, your raid members must first learn how to properly react to them. In the case of abilities that must be avoided by moving out of them ( Foul Stream and Falling Ash), the issue is simple. In the case of others, such as Toxic Storm and Ashen Wall, raid members will need to get acquainted with the best ways to avoid these spells, something that comes with practice.

Aside from making sure that players avoid all abilities that may damage or kill them, the other important issue to learn in this fight is how to handle the Foul Slimes. Whether you are having your tank handle them, or if a DPS player is kiting them, it is important that you iron out the kinks in your execution. After that, defeating the boss will simply be a matter of putting in the progression time.

If you feel like your raid needs more time to practice certain boss abilities "in peace", then you can stop DPS on the bosses before their next set of abilities unlock, allowing your raiders to focus only on the problematic mechanics. For example, if you feel like you want to practice handling the Foul Slimes for extended periods of time, make sure not to bring the bosses to 70% health. This will enable you to practice handling the Slimes without interference from Ashen Wall and Falling Ash.

The Heroic mode of the Kor'kron Dark Shaman encounter is very similar to its Normal mode counterpart. There are two additional mechanics, but these do not change the fight very much. That said, the tuning of the fight can turn it into a pretty intense battle.

In addition to the mobs doing increased damage and having increased health, each of the two bosses gains a new ability when they reach 95% health.

• Earthbreaker Haromm gains Iron Tomb. Iron Tomb creates a tomb (a solid, stationary object that blocks movement and lasts until the end of the fight) at the location of a random raid member. When the tomb is created, all players in a 3-yard radius take a very high amount of Physical damage, and they are knocked up slightly. Aside from this initial effect, the Iron Tomb does not do anything.
• Wavebinder Kardris gains Iron Prison. Iron Prison is a debuff that is applied to a random raid member. The debuff lasts for 60 seconds, during which time it is harmless. However, when it expires, the affected player takes 100% of their maximum health as Physical damage (although this is not reduced by armor).

Both abilities are used every 30 seconds.

The strategy for the fight remains similar to that for Normal mode, but a few changes have to be made to account for the Heroic-only mechanics, and for the very high damage of certain abilities.

To get the easiest part out of the way, we will talk about how to handle the Iron Prison debuff. Since the damage from Iron Prison is not reduced by armor, players will not survive it even if they are topped off. This means that, in order to survive, they will need not only to be topped off, but also to use defensive cooldowns or to have a Power Word: Shield (or other damage-absorption effect) placed on them when the debuff is about to expire.

Handling Iron Tomb only requires that your raid is spread out at least 3 yards apart, so that as few players as possible are affected by the damage a tomb does when it spawns.

As far as the overall strategy for the phase is concerned, there are multiple options that have proven to be viable in certain situations. Despite this fact, we will only present in detail the strategy that we feel is most accessible to raid groups who are at the start of their progression on this encounter.

The abilities of the two bosses are limited by a maximum range. This means that, for instance, Earthbreaker Haromm cannot cast an ability on a raid member who is too far away. In Heroic mode, the most difficult part of the fight is dealing with overlapping abilities. The result of this is that the easiest strategy is to separate the two bosses, tanking them as far apart from one another as possible. This will almost guarantee that each boss will only cast their abilities on the raid members near them, making everything much simpler.

You will need to use 3 tanks for this fight, since Haromm requires a tank switch, and with Kardris' tank being so far away, 2 tanks cannot perform this task alone. We recommend that your raid assigns 2 tanks and a number of healers (1 in 10-man and 2-3 in 25-man) to Haromm, tanking him in a location that is far from Kardris (up on the hill is a popular location). For the entire fight, these tanks will perform a tank switch, while they are kept alive by the healer (or healers, in 25-man). These players will only be confronted with Haromm's abilities, which they should be able to handle with relative ease. On the other side of the fighting area, the rest of the raid will be fighting Kardris. Regarding the Foul Slimes, we advise you to simply have players with good AoE damage kill them as soon as they spawn.

Other alternative strategies involve having the bulk of the raid attacking Haromm instead of Kardris, kiting the Foul Slimes instead of killing them, or even tanking both bosses together and cleaving them, but these strategies present a higher difficulty and a higher risk, so we do not advise them.

The damage of Falling Ash is very high in Heroic mode, making it practically mandatory to use a defensive raid cooldown each time this spell is about to be cast.

This concludes our raid guide for the Kor'kron Dark Shaman. 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 a few improvements to the Heroic mode strategy.
• 22 Nov. 2013: Made a few fixes to the Heroic mode strategy.
  • Corrected an error that stated that the damage of Iron Prison is reduced by armor.
  • Corrected an error that stated the Iron Tombs block line of sight.
  • Added more variation for the strategy options (namely how to tank the bosses, and how to split the raid).
• 21 Nov. 2013: Added Heroic mode strategy.
• 20 Sep. 2013: Fixed the guide to correctly state that Falling Ash projectiles land 15 seconds after the ability is cast, and not 30 seconds as previously stated.
• 19 Sep. 2013: Added a link to the video guide.
• 17 Sep. 2013: Made several updates.
  • Added 25-man health values.
  • Edited the guide to account for the fact that bosses now gain new abilities at 85%, 65%, and 50% health (instead of 90%, 80%, and 70%).
  • Improved several strategic suggestions (especially boss positioning and Foul Geyser handling).

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