Kromog Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic+Mythic Modes included)

Table of Contents

• +1. General Information
  • 1.1. Normal, Heroic, and Mythic Difficulty
  • 1.2. Enrage Timer
• +2. Summing Things Up
  • 2.1. Tanks
  • 2.2. Healers
  • 2.3. DPS
  • 2.4. Everyone
• 3. Overview of the Fight
• 4. Abilities
• +5. Strategy
  • 5.1. Tanking Concerns
  • 5.2. Rune of Grasping Earth and Thundering Blows
  • 5.3. Other Abilities
    • 5.3.1. Avoiding Damage
    • 5.3.2. Unavoidable Damage
• 6. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• +7. Mythic Mode
  • 7.1. Differences From Normal/Heroic Mode
  • 7.2. Strategy
• 8. Learning the Fight
• +9. Loot
  • 9.1. Armor
  • 9.2. Weapons
  • 9.3. Amulets, Cloaks, Rings, and Trinkets
• 10. Concluding Remarks
• 11. Changelog

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Kromog in Blackrock Foundry. It is targeted at anyone who desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

Kromog is a boss in the Black Forge wing of the Blackrock Foundry raid instance. This is a simple, single-target, single-phase encounter against a stationary boss. It will mostly test your raid's ability to avoid ground effects.

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. There do not seem to be any soft enrage mechanics in the fight.

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.

• Stand on top of each other (to split the damage of Fists of Stone), and perform a tank switch to handle Warped Armor.
• Make sure to always be in melee range of Kromog, except when Slam or Rune of Grasping Earth is being cast, in which cases you should act as the rest of the raid. In both cases, make sure to return to melee range immediately when the abilities are over.

• Be prepared to heal the damage coming in from the various avoidable and unavoidable sources. Particularly, be ready to heal the raid-wide damage caused by Slam and Stone Breath.

• When Rune of Grasping Earth is cast, begin DPSing the Grasping Earth hands, but do not kill them off until the boss finishes casting Thundering Blows.
• In Mythic mode, make sure to kill off all 3 Stone Pillars before the end of the Rune of Trembling Earth cast.

• When the boss casts Rune of Grasping Earth, move so that each raid member is located on top of a small orange rune, with no rune having more than one player on top of it. Players with damage immunities can stay out to give the rest of the players more runes to work with.
• Avoid the sonic discs from Reverberations, the cone attack from Rippling Smash, the giant stone hands from Rune of Crushing Earth, and move away from the boss when Slam is being cast.
• In Mythic mode
  • When Kromog is casting Rune of Trembling Earth, move to avoid being hit by the small spikes.
  • When Kromog casts Call of the Mountain, line of sight the boss behind one of the Stone Pillars.
  • Move away from the Stone Pillar that is targeted by Rippling Smash.

The encounter against Kromog is a single-target, single-phase fight. The boss is stationary throughout the encounter.

The fight is very straightforward, and your raid will mainly have to avoid various ground effects. The only unusual element of the fight is that at certain moments in the encounter, raid members will have to willingly move into a damaging ground effect, because doing so protects them from the lethal damage dealt by another one of Kromog's abilities.

We have released a video preview of the encounter against Kromog, based on our (Heroic) Beta testing. You can watch this video to get a good idea of how the fight works, but keep in mind that some things can still change before the fight goes live.

Kromog is stationary throughout the fight. Whenever there are no targets in his melee range, Kromog will channel Stone Breath, which deals a moderate amount of Physical damage to all raid members every second. In addition to this, he uses the following abilities against the raid.

• Warped Armor is a stacking debuff that Kromog applies to his tank. This reduces the target's movement speed by 15% and increases their Physical damage taken by 20% per stack. This ability requires a tank switch.
• Stone Breath is a channeled ability that deals a moderate amount of raid-wide Physical damage every second. In addition to using this ability when there are no players in his melee range (as explained above), Kromog also uses it roughly every 30 seconds.
• Fists of Stone is an ability that Kromog often uses. He deals a massive amount of Physical damage to his main target, which is split between that target and the nearest target to them within 15 yards.
• Slam is an ability that Kromog uses to deal a massive amount of Physical damage to the entire raid. The damage that this ability does is reduced the farther away the target is from Kromog.
• Rippling Smash is a sort of cone attack that Kromog regularly uses throughout the fight against random raid members. He will target a random player and cause a wave of rumbling earth to travel towards them, dealing a very high amount of Nature damage to any players who come in contact with it.
• Rune of Grasping Earth is an ability that Kromog uses regularly throughout the fight. He summons a large number of orange runes on the ground. A few seconds later, a hand will spawn on each rune, and if there is a player standing on that rune, it will grab the player and hold them in place, dealing a very small amount of Nature damage to them every second. There are a few important mentions regarding this ability.
  • Only one player per rune can be grabbed by the hand. If there are multiple players on a rune, only one will be grabbed.
  • The hands are actually attackable and killable NPCs called Grasping Earth. They will continue to hold their target in place and damage them until they are killed.
  • While players are being held by a Grasping Earth, they are immune to Physical damage and they cannot be knocked up.
  • This ability has a crucial interaction with Thundering Blows, explained below.
• Thundering Blows is an ability that Kromog always uses shortly after using Rune of Grasping Earth. The boss will deal a massive amount of raid-wide Physical damage over 5 seconds, and any players who are damaged by Thundering Blows will also be knocked up very high into the air, and they will take a lot of fall damage. This ability will effectively kill any players who are not held in place by a Grasping Earth throughout the entire cast of Thundering Blows.
• Rune of Crushing Earth is an ability that Kromog uses regularly throughout the fight. He creates two large stone hands on the floor of the room, some distance apart. After a short amount of time, the two hands will come together, dealing a very high amount of Nature damage to any players come in contact with them, also stunning these players for 5 seconds.
• Reverberations is an ability that Kromog uses regularly throughout the fight. He creates a number of sonic discs that move throughout the room, dealing damage to enemies that they come in contact with. The discs disappear after a short time.
• Shattered Earth is an ability that Kromog uses regularly throughout the fight. It deals a moderate amount of Nature damage to 4 random players.
• When reaching 30% health, Kromog will go into a Frenzy. This increases his damage done and attack speed by 20%, and it causes his abilities to be used more frequently.

The strategy for the encounter against Kromog revolves largely around avoiding the damage caused by the various ground effects of his abilities. In addition to this, an important part of the fight is correct management of the Rune of Grasping Earth/ Thundering Blows combination.

There are several abilities in this encounter that are of great importance to the tanks. To begin with, the tanks will have to regularly perform a tank switch to handle the Warped Armor debuff. Additionally, both tanks will have to stand on top of each other in order to split the damage caused by Fists of Stone.

In addition to these two tank-only mechanics, the tanks have to keep three other abilities in mind.

• The tanks have to always be in melee range of Kromog, as otherwise the boss will cast Stone Breath against the raid, which must avoided.
  • There is an exception here, namely that when the boss begins casting Slam, the tanks should also run away from the boss. This is because standing too close to him when Slam is cast will cause them to take extreme amounts of damage. The tanks simply have to make sure to run back into melee range as soon as the Slam cast is over. Alternatively, the tank can remain in melee in range for Slam, provided that they use strong defensive cooldowns to survive.
• Like the rest of the raid, the tanks will have to move out of melee range to correctly handle the Rune of Grasping Earth/ Thundering Blows combination. We explain this in the following sub-section.

The central element of the fight is correct handling of the Rune of Grasping Earth/ Thundering Blows combination. As soon as the boss casts Rune of Grasping Hand, all raid members must move into the orange runes that the boss creates. This exact locations of the runes are not determined, so players will have to adapt on the spot so that each player has their own rune. Generally, if players are not too clumped together in one part of the area, it is possible for everyone to get in their own rune, even if they have to take a few seconds getting to a free one.

A few seconds after this, the Grasping Earth hands will pick up one player located on each rune, trapping them and protecting them from the effects of Thundering Blows. As we mentioned, however, these hands deal damage to players and keep them trapped indefinitely. So, as soon as the hands spawn, all DPS players must switch to them and begin attacking them. The goal is to kill all the Grasping Earth hands after the Thundering Blows cast has ended.

It is important that DPS players do not get carried away damaging the hands, because killing them prematurely will probably cause the players held by those hands to die to Thundering Blows.

Finally, players who have damage immunities can stay away from any of the orange runes of Rune of Grasping Hand and use their immunities to survive Thundering Blows, thus making it easier for other players to find a rune of their own.

The rest of the fight is really just a constant effort from your raid to avoid taking damage from the boss' other abilities, and to survive the sources of unavoidable raid damage.

There are three abilities that simply have to be avoided throughout the fight.

Rippling Smash is the cone attack that the boss uses against a random raid member. While it is difficult to tell exactly where the boss is facing, the ground effect moves progressively like a wave towards the location of the target, meaning that players have ample time to move out of its way.

Rune of Crushing Earth gives players several seconds to make sure that they are not located in between the two giant stone hands, and there really is no complexity to avoiding the damage from this ability.

Finally, the sonic discs created by Reverberations will just have to be avoided. This is more difficult than avoiding the previous two abilities, because there are many discs, and they move quite quickly, so depending on what else is happening in the fight, they can cause problems. Still, they do not deal very high damage, so having a few raid members hit is not a big problem.

There are three sources of unavoidable damage that the healers will have to be prepared for.

Shattered Earth deals single target damage to random raid members, and there is literally nothing that can be done about this ability except to heal the damage.

Stone Breath is cast several times throughout the fight, even when there are players in melee range of the boss. When this happens, the entire raid will take damage over a few seconds, so the healers should be prepared for it. We recommend alternating healing cooldowns for these casts.

Finally, the entire raid will take damage from Slam. However, unlike with the other two abilities, players have an active role in dealing with Slam. When Slam is cast, all players should move as far away as possible (within reason) from the boss. Casters and healers will usually be fine if they are at maximum range, but melee players and tanks in particular will have to make an effort to run away from the boss.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp when Kromog reaches 30%, since at this point he goes into a Frenzy, becoming much more dangerous.

The Mythic mode of the Kromog encounter is very similar to the Normal/Heroic mode, but there is a new ability that adds a new layer of complexity, and which requires a very high amount of raid DPS.

Kromog has more health and deals more damage, as is to be expected with any Mythic mode encounter. In addition to this, there are two new abilities that Kromog uses in a combination.

About 1 minute into the fight, and every 3 minutes after that, Kromog will cast Rune of Trembling Earth. This is a channeled ability that lasts for 25 seconds. Several things happen during this cast.

• During the cast, Kromog stops using any of his usual abilities, and he also ceases any melee attacks.
• Throughout the cast, earth spikes will erupt at players' locations, with a visual announcement about 2 seconds prior to their eruption. Players hit by these spikes take a moderate amount of Physical damage, and are knocked back slightly.
• During the first 12 seconds of the cast, 3 large Stone Pillars will spawn at 3 fixed locations. The timing of the spawns seems to be at 5, 9, and 12 seconds into the cast, but the order in which the 3 pillars spawn is random. The spawn locations are left, center, and right, as you are facing Kromog.
  • Stone Pillars are attackable stationary NPCs that do not do anything. When a Stone Pillar is killed, it will crumble slightly, but remain in place, blocking line of sight.
  • At the end of the Rune of Trembling Earth cast, any Stone Pillars that have not been killed will retreat back into the earth.

Immediately after the Rune of Trembling Earth cast finishes, Kromog will begin casting Call of the Mountain 3 times. Each cast deals a lethal amount of damage to any players within Kromog's line of sight, but standing behind one of the crumbled Stone Pillars prevents this. After each Call of the Mountain cast, Kromog will target one of the 3 pillars with a Rippling Smash, destroying it.

Outside of the Rune of Trembling Earth/ Call of the Mountain phases, the fight plays out identically to Normal and Heroic mode, and nothing in your raid's strategy changes.

However, to properly handle Rune of Trembling Earth and Call of the Mountain, your raid will have to perform some very specific tasks, which we detail below.

1. When Kromog begins casting Rune of Trembling Earth, all players will have to constantly move to avoid being hit by the small stone spikes.
2. Your raid's DPS players will have to be prepared to kill all 3 Stone Pillars before the end of the Rune of Trembling Earth cast.
   • For this purpose, your raid leader will have to split the raid's DPS into 3 groups, and organise the cooldowns of these players in such a way as to optimise DPS to allow for all 3 Stone Pillars to be killed. This task is quite difficult, as the required amount of DPS is high, so at least some players will have to save their cooldowns specifically for this event.
3. When Kromog casts Call of the Mountain, everyone should take cover behind the Stone Pillars to avoid being hit by it.
4. Players who are standing behind the Stone Pillar targeted by Kromog's Rippling Smash will have to move away from it, and move to one of the remaining two Pillars.
5. Repeat the same process until the final Call of the Mountain has been cast.

Aside from this, there is really nothing else to this encounter.

By far the most important part of the fight to master is correct handling of the Rune of Grasping Earth/ Thundering Blows combination. Your raid members will have to get used to quickly being able to settle into a pattern of one player per orange rune. This is, unfortunately, not something that you can direct as a raid leader, because it happens too quickly, and you should be prepared that it might take several attempts for all raid members to master this task.

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

In addition, Kromog can drop tokens needed for the Head items of the Tier 17 set:

• Helm of the Iron Vanquisher (Heroic, Mythic);
• Helm of the Iron Protector (Heroic, Mythic);
• Helm of the Iron Conqueror (Heroic, Mythic).

Item Name	Armor	Slot	Secondary Stats
Earthripple Shoulderpads (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloth	Shoulders	Critical Strike Haste
Robes of Living Earth — LFR	Cloth	Chest	Mastery Versatility
Thundersmash Gloves — LFR	Cloth	Hands	Critical Strike Haste
Stonewarper Wraps (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloth	Hands	Mastery Versatility
Chestguard of Allegorical Shadows — LFR	Leather	Chest	Mastery Haste
Bracers of Shattered Stalactites (Heroic, Mythic)	Leather	Wrists	Mastery Multistrike
Slam Jammers — LFR	Leather	Feet	Multistrike Mastery
Rockbreaker Warcap — LFR	Mail	Head	Critical Strike Mastery
Erupting Mantle — LFR	Mail	Shoulders	Multistrike Haste
Earthgrasp Girdle (Heroic, Mythic)	Mail	Waist	Versatility Haste
Chestplate of Runed Earth — LFR	Plate	Chest	Critical Strike Versatility
Reverberating Bracers — LFR	Plate	Wrists	Multistrike Haste
Sabatons of Fractal Earth (Heroic, Mythic)	Plate	Feet	Mastery Multistrike

Item Name	Type	Main Stats	Secondary Stats
Axe of the Stone Geyser — LFR	1H Sword	Strength	Multistrike Haste
Earthbound Shield — LFR	1H Sword	Strength	Critical Strike Mastery
Kromog's Brutal Fist (Heroic, Mythic)	1H Sword	Strength	Mastery Haste
Kromog's Protecting Palm (Heroic, Mythic)	1H Sword	Strength	Versatility Critical Strike

Item Name	Type	Main Stats	Secondary Stats
Talisman of the Fomor (Heroic, Mythic)	Amulet	Intellect	Spirit Multistrike
Runefrenzy Greatcloak (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloak	Intellect	Haste Mastery
Cloak of Delving Secrets (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloak	Agility	Haste Mastery
Ring of Shattered Faults — LFR	Ring	Intellect	Haste Multistrike
Stonefist Band (Heroic, Mythic)	Ring	Agility Strength	Versatility Bonus Armor
Beating Heart of the Mountain (Heroic, Mythic)	Trinket	Agility	Multistrike on use
Stoneheart Idol — LFR	Trinket	Bonus Armor	Crit on proc

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

• 10 Apr. 2015: Added Mythic mode strategy.

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