Extinguishing The Flame, a Firelands Tanking Guide for Warriors Part 1: Trash

In this guide, I will mostly be covering the tanking tips and techniques for tanking firelands trash. I will be covering this from a warriors perspective as I play a warrior tank but the tanking tips should be applicable to all classes. When you first enter firelands, there are 2 vendors waiting for you, one rep rewards vendor and one heroic rewards vendor, teasing you with the gear they have just out of your reach. Well fear not, going through this guide will net you all the sweet loot from them over time. 

Molten Lords

The Molten Lords are the first kind of trash that you will encouter in the firelands. Its appropriate as your Tier 12 is actually based off Molten Lords! If you take a closer look at your Tier 12 shoulders, you will actually see the face a Molten Lord. The unique thing about this mob is that its one of the two kinds of trash that offers rep with the Avergers of Hyjal all the way up to exalted. 

So that’s a picture of him. Doesn’t he look friendly. Tanking him, you only really have to worry about 2 things, his stacks of melt armour and his flame stomp. You have to be cautious that you don’t get knocked off the ledge from his flame stomp. This is especially true with the very first Molten Lord you encounter as the bridge you are on is narrow enough that you can get knocked off in one stomp. Always align him to the direction of the bridge to avoid this. During our first pull, I faced him to the side and he flamestomped me off the bridge. I was lucky enough to heroic leap back onto the bridge before I fell too far into the nothingness. The same could not be said about my melee group that was hanging on his back! Charge and Intercept works wonders in closing the gap when he flame stomps you.

As for the stacks of melt armour, it reduces your armour by 10% and deals 10k fire damage every 2 seconds for 15 secs. This effect stacks so you need to set up a tank swap. Vigilance works wonders here if the tank you are taunting off of has too high a threat and the molten lord turns back to attack him instead. He seems to stack this debuff at a very unpredictable rate. I’ve had time where I reached 4 stacks within 5 seconds of engaging him and I’ve had times where I only reached 4 stacks after a good 20 secs. A good setup would be the MT takes 4 stacks and then the OT taunts. Swap as soon as the debuff wears off the MT.