Ragnaros 25 Man

[Mjöl]

Name: Ragnaros
Phases: 3 Phases
Setup: 2 tanks, 6/7 healers, 16/17 Dps
Enrage Timer: 18 Minute, last phase has a soft enrage
Hitpoints: Ragnaros has in 25man normal 201 Mil. Hp Encounter finishes when he reaches 10% hp
Sons of Flame Adds - 166000 Hp
Lava Scion Adds - 2 Mil Hp
Molten Elementals Adds - 199.000 Hp
Living Meteors - 124,5 Mil Hp

General:
Complex, 3 Phases, 2 transition phases.
Phase One: 100% to 70%
Transition 1 lasts until all spawned adds are dead, but no longer then 45 seconds
Phase Two: Until Ragnaros has 40%
Transition 2 lasts until all Sons of Flame are dead, but no logner then 45 seconds
Phase Three: Until Ragnaros has 10%

Ragnaros is stationary the entire time.

Phase 1:
Ragnaros melees for 45.000 all 2 secs, also in phase 2 and 3.
Sulfuras Smash:
Smashes his hammer, on the platform at a location marked by a fiery ground effect.Anyone standing there when hammer hits will be killed. After teh smash, 3 Lava Waves spawn and travel in different directions. Anyone who will have contact with the lava wave will take massive damage and likely die, since it also places a dot. This ability is done around all 40 seconds.
Wrath of Ragnaros: He targets 3 player, damage them moderate and knocks them (and any other player in 6 yard range) back.
Hand of Ragnaros: Knocks all Players in 55 yards of him back and deals moderate damage. he casts taht around all 25 seconds.
Magma Trap: A trap flys thru the air to a random players location deals a large amount of dmg and knocking back players within 8 yards. The trap stays then for the entire encounter or until detonated. All 25 seconds.
Magma trap Eruption: Happens when a trap explodes, large amount of dmg.
Magma Blast: Large amount of damage on his main aggro targeet if hes not in melee range.
Burning Wound: Stacking debuff placed by Ragnaros on his main aggro target. Deals 6000 dmg all 2 secodns for a duration of 20 seconds.
Therefor use 2 tanks to taunt him of if the stack gets too high.
Burning Blast: Causes targets who have Burning wound (tanks) to deal extra dmg.
Splitting Blow: at the end of the phase at 70% ragnaros will smash his hammer on the platform. The ablitiy has a 8 second cast time, so should be simple to avoid.

Strategy
Positioning

There are two things to keep in mind when choosing player positions for Phase One:

Keep casters and healers outside of a 55 yard range of Ragnaros, in order to avoid the knockback from Hand of Ragnaros interrupting them. Casters can continue to perform attacks, while healers can still heal melee players and tanks, because the massive hit box of the boss enables them to attack Ragnaros from some distance away.
Keep everyone spread out at least 6 yards apart to avoid Wrath of Ragnaros causing any collateral damage.
Do not stand too close to the outer edges of the platform, as Wrath of Ragnaros can knock players into the lava, killing them.

Melee DPS as well as the tanks should stay as far away from Ragnaros as possible (while, obviously, remaining in melee range). This way, the healers will be able to stand 55 yards or more away from Ragnaros and still heal them.

In addition to this, you will of course want to have your tanks in melee range, and spread your healers out evenly so as to cover the entire area of the platform (especially in 25-man difficulty).


Execution

As a preliminary mention, because of Burning Wound, your two tanks will have to taunt the boss off of each other in order to allow for the stacks to drop off. Tanks should be taunted off of when they reach around 4-5 stacks.

There are two main concerns for your raid during this phase: Sulfuras Smash and Magma Traps. Dealing with these two abilities properly will make for an easy first phase.

Sulfuras Smash, will cause Ragnaros to face a random raid member and after a few seconds, smash the platform with his hammer. The targeted area is indicated by fire on the ground. Anyone caught in the impact zone will be instantly killed, so naturally, players will need to avoid it. In addition to this, the impact zone will continue to deal fatal damage to anyone who moves there, for around 10 seconds after the Smash occurs.

The three subsequent Lava Waves, which travel outwards from the impact zone, left, right and back, must be avoided. All raid members, including the tank, will need to position themselves in the gaps that form between them. Failing to do so will likely result in massive damage taken, as well as an uncomfortable knockback. The resulting DoT should be dispelled immediately by the healers.




Remember that Sulfuras Smash can have varying locations on the platform. The above image is merely an example.

Magma Traps will have to be manually detonated by designated raid members, as otherwise they persist indefinitely and would severely limit your raid's movement space.

Specific players should be assigned to detonate Magma Traps, and they should do so only when the raid has sufficient health to survive the damage (around 80,000 Fire damage). The following classes are ideal for the task, due to their ability to avoid taking fall damage:

Mages, thanks to Blink and Slow Fall;
Priests, thanks to Levitate;
Warlocks, thanks to Demonic Circle: Teleport.

Balance or Restoration Druids can also detonate traps, and save themselves from fall damage by shifting into Cat Form, though this is less than ideal. Melee classes should not be asked to perform this task as the traps can be very far away from Ragnaros.

Make sure that no one detonates Magma Traps unintentionally by being knocked back into them by Hand of Ragnaros or Wrath of Ragnaros.

Once your raid can avoid Sulfuras Smash and trigger Magma Traps accordingly, the rest of the phase simply requires that your healers can keep up with the various sources of unavoidable damage (Magma Trap Eruption damage, Wrath of Ragnaros, Hand of Ragnaros as well as tank damage).

Once Ragnaros reaches 70% health, he will cast Splitting Blow, planting Sulfuras on the platform and submerging. This marks the end of Phase One, and the start of the First Transition Phase.


First Transition Phase

As the First Transition Phase begins, you will notice a few things happening. Firstly, Ragnaros will disappear as he submerges in the lava, where he will remain until the end of the phase. Secondly, fiery effects on the ground indicate the locations where adds are about to spawn.

These adds (8 of them spawn in both 10 and 25 man difficulty), called Sons of Flame (165,000 health in 10-man and 665,000 health in 25-man) will spawn at varying locations from Sulfuras (Ragnaros' hammer) and will ignore all aggro while trying to make their way to it. Your raid must kill them before they reach the hammer, as this will deal a massive amount of raid damage.

Before we delve deeper into the phase, we need to take a look at its mechanics.


Abilities

Splitting Blow: Ragnaros' hammer is planted into the platform. Anyone coming within 6 yards of it will take massive amounts of Fire damage per second. Additionally, Splitting Blow summons 8 adds called Sons of Flame.
Sons of Flame: these are adds with relatively low health. They do not have aggro tables and their only action will be to walk towards Sulfuras. Their only mechanic is Burning Speed, a buff which increases their movement speed drastically in relation to the amount of health that they have. The more health the Sons have, the faster they travel. This is relevant because of the next ability.
Supernova: this is a massive raid-wide damaging ability which is triggered whenever a Son of Flame reaches Sulfuras.
Lava Bolt: is the only source of unavoidable damage. Ragnaros will simply deal fire damage to random raid members.

Strategy

The entire point of this phase is to kill the Sons of Flame before they reach Sulfuras. If your raid fails to stop any Son of Flame, healers will need to use any available cooldowns at their disposal to prevent raid members from dying, though this will be very difficult. Abilities like Aura Mastery, Divine Guardian or Rallying Cry are best for this.

The tricky part is that the Sons travel very quickly when they have full health, and their speed decreases as they are damaged. Therefore, your DPS needs to be split wisely among them so that no Son remains at full or high health for long.

To make matters slightly more complicated, Sons will spawn at varying distances from Sulfuras, meaning that the Sons which spawn closest will need to be damaged (and killed) first, but others should not be ignored either.

Sons of Flame are susceptible to knockbacks, stuns and some slows (although most slows do not work), so do not hesitate to make use of such abilities.

In addition to dealing with the Sons of Flame, your raid members will want to avoid getting too close to Sulfuras, and of course, your healers will want to heal the random raid damage from Lava Bolt.

It is optimal, at least in 25-man difficulty, to have particular raid assignments for both DPS and stuns/knockbacks, to ensure that no Son of Flame is unattended to.

When all the 8 Sons of Flame are dead, the phase will end and Ragnaros will re-emerge, starting Phase Two. Note that if 45 seconds from the start of the phase have passed, Ragnaros will re-emerge and trigger Phase Two even if there are Sons of Flame still alive.


Phase Two

Once the First Transition Phase ends, Ragnaros will re-emerge and pick Sulfuras back up. This phase is more complicated than Phase One, and will put a greater strain on everyone to perform properly. We will first detail the mechanics of the phase, after which we will explain the strategy.


Abilities

Ragnaros retains the following abilities from Phase One: Sulfuras Smash, Magma Blast, Splitting Blow as well as Burning Wound.

In addition to these, he will make use of the following abilities:

Engulfing Flame: Ragnaros will choose a third of his platform to engulf in fire. For this purpose, the platform is divided in three slices, from Ragnaros' position towards the exterior. Players in the affected part of the platform must move away immediately to avoid taking massive amounts of damage. Ragnaros will cast this ability roughly every 60 seconds, though this can vary mildly.
Molten Seed: Ragnaros places a Molten Seed at the feet of 10 players in 10-man difficulty and 20 players in 25-man difficulty. This causes 55,000 Fire damage to all allies within 6 yards. Ragnaros will cast this ability exactly every 60 seconds.
Molten Inferno: the locations where the Molten Seeds were placed will explode, dealing 135,000 Fire damage to all raid members. This damage decreases the farther away from the Molten Inferno the player is. In addition to this, each explosion will spawn a Molten Elemental.
Molten Elementals: Molten Elementals are adds spawned by the explosions resulting from Molten Seeds. These adds do not have normal aggro tables, and instead fixate on random raid members. They have low health and they do not melee hard.


Strategy

Tanks will still have to perform their swapping, because of Burning Wound.

The strategy for Phase Two is more complicated than that for Phase One, and will require very good awareness and reaction from your raid. There are three important things to watch out for here: Sulfuras Smash, Molten Seed and Engulfing Flame.

Sulfuras Smash should be handled in the same way as during Phase One: move out of the ground effect indicating where the hammer will fall, and stay out of the path of the subsequent Lava Waves.

Dealing with Molten Seeds, however, requires some more explaining. Your aims, in dealing with Molten Seeds and the subsequent Molten Inferno are the following:

Make sure no one is standing within 6 yards of a player who is about to be affected by Molten Seeds (so, essentially, spread out).
After the Molten Seeds have been cast, have the raid stack up as far away as possible from the locations of all the Molten Seeds.

There are multiple reasons why you want to stack up after Molten Seeds have been cast (and do so far from their locations). Firstly, the farther away you are from a Molten Seed, the less damage you will take when Molten Inferno happens. Secondly, stacking up will increase the efficiency of AoE healing. Thirdly, stacking up will enable your raid to AoE DPS the Molten Elementals which subsequently spawn (remember that they cannot be tanked, and will instead be fixated on random raid members).

In other words, you want your raid to spread out at least 6 yards apart, in as small an area as possible. Once the Seeds have been cast, everyone needs to stack together in a position as far away (and ideally equally far away) from all the Molten Seeds locations.

Your tank needs to remain in melee range of Ragnaros, so your stacking position should be, if possible (so, if not impeded by Engulfing Flame), in melee range. As you do not want your tank's Molten Seed too close to the stacking location (since it would deal almost the full amount of damage), your tank should move to the side of the boss, wait for Molten Seeds, and then move to a central location.


In 25-man difficulty, you can have your raid split into two such groups, one to the left and one to the right of the platform, and have the stacking location in a central position.

After the seeds have been cast, your raid should move to the designated stacking location. Once the Molten Infernos explode, your raid should remain stacked, so that all the resulting Molten Elementals will come together and be easily killed by AoE damage.

The trickiest part of this phase is when Molten Seeds are followed shortly by Sulfuras Smash. This appears to happen every other Molten Seed cast, and if your DPS is within normal values, it should only happen once. When this happens, your raid should stack up especially close to Ragnaros. This will ensure that no one is hit by Sulfuras Smash, and that the resulting Lava Waves (remember, they do not travel towards Ragnaros) do not damage anyone.

Another mention is relevant, regarding the above mentioned situation, which involves Engulfing Flame (which we detail below). Suffice it to say that, when Engulfing Flame covers the sector closest to Ragnaros right before this particularly delicate Molten Seeds, your raid should be just outside of the Engulfing Flame and be prepared to move in, close to Ragnaros, the moment that it disappears.

Finally, your raid will have to contend with Engulfing Flame. As described above, this will cover a third of the room in flames, and anyone standing in the flames will take severe damage. The below image illustrates the possible locations for Engulfing Flames.
Ragnaros Engulfing Flame


There is no great strategy for handling the succession of these abilities. Your raid members should simply be quick to move away from the path of Lava Waves or from Engulfing Flames. In the situation where Engulfing Flame affects the part of the platform nearest to Ragnaros, the tank and any melee DPS should simply step back to avoid the damage. The tank will only be out of Ragnaros' range for a few seconds, so Magma Blast should not cause any problems.

The interaction between Engulfing Flame and Molten Seeds is not too problematic, and your raid should simply keep an eye out for when Engulfing Flame happens while the raid is stacked. In this case, your raid should simply move slight back, if the Flames are close to Ragnaros, or forward (towards Ragnaros) if they are covering the center.

Once Ragnaros reaches 40% health, he will cast Splitting Blow, planting Sulfuras on the platform and submerging. This marks the end of Phase Two, and the start of the Second Transition Phase.

Second Transition Phase

The Second Transition Phase is identical to the First Transition Phase, with a single exception: a new type of adds, called Lava Scions will spawn.

Abilities

In addition to all the First Transition Phase abilities and mechanics, your raid will have to deal with two Lava Scions. They have relatively high health, and melee for a moderate amount. Their only mechanic is Blazing Heat.

Blazing Heat is a debuff that the Lava Scions place on random raid members. Around 5 seconds later, the debuff causes the affected player to leave a trail of fire under their feet, which deals a rather large amount of Fire damage each second to anyone standing in it. Furthermore, if either the Lava Scions or the Sons of Flame are touched by the trail of fire, they will be healed for 10% of their health each second.

Strategy

The strategy for the Second Transition Phase is identical to that of the First Transition Phase, with the following mentions:

Your tanks will pick up and tank the Lava Scions for the duration of the phase.
Players affected by Blazing Heat will move to the edge of the platform, out of the path of any Sons of Flame, where they will continue moving so as not to take damage from the trail of fire under their feet.

Keep in mind that only the Sons of Flame must be dead for Phase Three to start. Any Lava Scions alive will not affect this.

Your DPS should, as during the First Transition Phase, focus down the Sons of Flame, while ignoring the Lava Scions. Your raid will kill the Scions during Phase Three, though any cleaving or DoT damage your raid can do to them during the Second Transition Phase is welcome.

If your raid's DPS is high enough (to the point where you will have killed off all Sons of Flame before the 45 seconds are up), you can opt to leave 1 or 2 Sons at low health (and stunned/slowed) and use the remaining time to deal damage to the Lava Scions.

In any case, when all Sons of Flame are dead or 45 seconds have gone by, Ragnaros will re-emerge and you will enter Phase Three.

Phase Three

Once the Second Transition Phase ends, Ragnaros will re-emerge and pick Sulfuras back up. We will first detail the relevant mechanics of the phase before discussing the strategy.

Abilities

Ragnaros retains the following abilities from Phases One and Two: Sulfuras Smash, Engulfing Flame, Magma Blast as well as Burning Wound.

In addition to these mechanics, Phase Three presents an entirely new mechanic, called Summon Living Meteor.

Roughly every 50 seconds, throughout Phase Three, Ragnaros summons adds called Living Meteors. The location where a Living Meteor is about to spawn is indicated by flames on the ground and anyone within 5 yards of the location will take a large amount of Fire damage. Living Meteors do not have aggro tables, fixate on random raid members and cannot be effectively killed (due to their high health). They must be kited by whoever they fixate on, as contact with the Meteor deals fatal damage. More precisely, if a player comes within 4 yards of a Living Meteor, everyone within 8 yards of the meteor takes 500,000 fire damage (instant death). The effect is called Meteor Impact. Note that the Meteors cannot be kited indefinitely, and they will eventually catch up to their target.

Fortunately, Meteors have a buff, called Combustible. While this buff is active, an attack made on the Meteor will cause it to be knocked back several yards in the direction which the attacking player is facing. Knocking a Meteor back causes it to lose its Combustible buff for 5 seconds, and also causes it to pick a different target to fixate on.


Strategy

Tanks will still have to perform their swapping, because of Burning Wound.

Additionally, it must be mentioned that the absolute top priority at the start of Phase Three is to kill any remaining Lava Scions, as Blazing Heat would cause a lot of problems for your raid, otherwise.

The strategy for Phase Three revolves around avoiding Lava Waves and Engulfing Flame in the same way as during phases One and Two respectively, while carefully handling Living Meteors.

Whenever a Living Meteor is about to spawn, all players should move away from the designated location. The player being chased by the Meteor should then kite it, while making sure that it is not guided close to any other raid members.

Once the Meteor is close, the player should attack it, in order to knock it back and reset its fixate target. It is imperative to make sure that the Meteor does not get knocked back into other raid members, and that everyone is prepared to possibly become fixated upon.

The continous spawning of Living Meteors during Phase Three will result in a soft enrage mechanic. Because of this soft enrage, Phase Three is the ideal time to use Heroism, Bloodlust or Time Warp.

[Kurrelgyre]

The pictures in this guide are useful (for me anyway) to explain what each ability looks like and where you should stand etc.
http://25man.com/firelands/ragnaros

[Kurrelgyre]

I think the learning went really well last night on Ragnaros. Looking forward to more progress tonight.

Couple of key points that I picked up :
Lava Wave
This is really easy for melee to avoid - just move forward so you are on the front edge of the platform near the lava.
The wave never hits you here, and you can continue to dps. Just remember to move forward again after a knockback.
Guess it is trickier for ranged so not sure how you guys are doing it back there.
Stats for lava wave here if you want to check how you did and compare against tonight (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-f2rmn4s9100iutlv/spell/100292/?enc=bosses&boss=52409)

Sons of Flame
These seemed to be going pretty well by the end of the raid.
Vinkle's death grip was very useful on our (Left) side as an emergency measure
Glyph of Holy Wrath (http://www.wowhead.com/item=43867/glyph-of-holy-wrath) very useful for pallies here as it allows your Holy Wrath to also stun elementals. Don't know if this is an option for Pally healers also ?
I think the key to this phase is keeping your eyes open. If you add is well under control, or is a long way from the hammer, then see if there is anything closer that is a higher priority - then go back to yours once that is dead. Once you get them to 50% they go very slow and give you a chance to look around.

Molten Seed Phase
This seems to be the phase of the fight that we are currently learning - although we had a few good tries towards the end of yesterdays riad where many were still alive.
Key thing is to ensure that no-one is standing in the central red area until the seeds have exploded. Wait on the left and right side (well to the side as the seeds have quite a large radius when they explode) until you hear the countdown AND see the seeds appear, then run into the middle and have some AoE fun.
Then move back to your side, rinse and repeat until next phase.

Was a very good evening though. When you compare it to how long it took us to get through the first 3 phases of Lich King it suggests we can get this boss down pretty quickly.

[Asyncritus]

http://www.icy-veins.com/ragnaros-dps-strategy

Very nicely layed out guide for DPS complete with pictures and movement arrows for Ragnaros' main abilities in the different phases. Please read!

[Kurrelgyre]

That guide seems to be much closer to the tactics we are using than the 25man one.
Probably best to ignore the 25man.com link and stick to Mjol's post above - and Async's link.
If there are any differences then Mjol's post wins !

[Mjöl]

The Majority of the guides here of Firelands i made are actually based from icy-veins.

In other words, the tactic there in the link is the tactic i posted here - minus some adjusments i made, but thats mostly just formulation.

[Kurrelgyre]

Image that hopefully will clarify what Laraht was talking about with add spawn points when hammer strike is on left or right (Borrowed from http://insurmountableodds.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7256299).
We have got pretty good at this over the past two weeks - but a few more adds seemed to get through last night, and it will get more critical now we are into the next phase with big adds too.

Image B is the case where hammer lands in the middle - and fits nicely with our 4 groups per side.
eg. Me and Mjol are group 4 - and we take the add marked with a number 4 in this picture.

Where it is less clear (to me at least) is when the hammer lands on the left or right.
For example, in image A, with hammer on the left, there are only 2 spawns to the left of the hammer - and 6 to the right.
If we stick to our numbers (which I think is what was suggested) then Mjol+I should stay on the position marked '4' in the diagram, which is now to the right of the central corridor.

Anyway, this diagram might be useful if we want to clarify who is on what position in raid.

[Asyncritus]

A useful read, especially for any new folks seeing Raggy this week.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/11/09/shadow-priest-ragnaros-guide/#continued