A Dwarf’s Guide to Ulduar – Ignis the Furnace Master

This article is part of a series of Ulduar guides that focus on rogues and other melee classes. You can find the links to the other guides in the introduction post.

This guide is not a general strategy guide for the encounter. While you may find some overview, it’s only here so the melee classes know what is going on. If you need a full strategy guide, you can check out Tankspot’s Project Marmot, as they have lots of awesome strategy videos.

Of course, if you have any comments (including, but not limited to different strategies and differences from 10 to 25-man versions), feel free to use the comment form below and post them. I’m only a dwarf and I can make mistakes.

Also, feel free to repost this to your guild’s forums if you find the guide useful, just be sure that you abide to the Creative Commons license and provide my name as an author and a link to my site.

Ignis the Furnace Master

Ignis is second of the optional bosses after Flame Leviathan. Just like Razorscale, you don’t need to kill him if you want to get to the Tier 8 dropping bosses quicker. It’s also one of the few fights that not only aren’t melee unfriendly, but are also annoying to casters. That’s a nice change, isn’t it?

Before you get to the boss, you have to deal with some mobs. These are the first real “trash” mobs you will encounter in Ulduar, and man, they are so pissed about us calling their kind “trash” for so many years.

Molten Colossus

It’s a bit weird having a strategy for something else than the bosses, isn’t it? Well, taking down these guys is much more easier if you know how to do it, so look at the picture linked below first.

The colossi do a long range AoE earthquake that not only deals damage, but also interrupts casting. It can be only avoided by being out of their line of sight. Tanks will have to pull them a bit more to the center of the corridor to still be in range of heals. Ranged dps and healers will stand around the corners and try not to have more than one of the mobs at once in sight. Melee dps? Well, if you’re a melee dps here, you should stand on top of the tanks and hope that your healers like you (or stand with the ranged and shoot/throw some stuff at mobs, chicken). ;] Additionally, if you’re a rogue, save your cloak for when you get the pyroblast debuff – it’s the second most annoying ability there.

After killing the colossi, your raid will gain a debuff (or two debuffs in the 25-man version) called Unquenchable Flames. This ticks for 8% of your HP, and then after 5 seconds jumps to another raid member. It cannot be cleansed, cloaked, dispelled or ice blocked (Blizzard hotfixed it a while ago to make sure of this) – the only way to deal with it is to run into the water before Ignis.

Blizzard removed the above debuff few weeks ago (I think in one of the 3.1.x little patches), so it’s no longer an issue to deal with.

More monsters

There will be six four (again, that changed with the removal of Unquenchable Flame) more packs of mobs before the boss, but fortunately they aren’t as deadly. The Forge Constructs are just your usual trash that do a charge on a random player once in a while, but the Magma Ragers are a bit more tricky. They have an ability called Superheated Winds – when you see them casting that, move away quickly. This ability creates a tornado that will deal damage (3k per tick) and knock you back, similar to what the tornadoes at Zul’jin in Zul’Aman did. They will not move randomly like the Zul’Aman ones, though. Instead, they lock on to a random player and follow him for a while before disappearing – that player has to kite them away. Don’t run into them, avoid your raid members, and most importantly, don’t get between a wall and a tornado.

Before fighting Ignis, don’t forget to run into the water to dispel the Unquenchable Flames.

Ignis the Furnace Master

The boss himself is a very easy fight from melees point of view. Unless you have no caster dps at all, all you going to do is stand at the back of the boss and attack him until he’s dead. I will talk a bit about his abilities, though, so you will know what’s happening around you.

Flame Jets

First ability that the boss will use during the fight is the Flame Jets. This will deal some damage, put a damaging dot on the players, and also interrupt and lock the spellcasting, so your healers and dps need to be aware of that and stop casting anything just before. For melees this is just a minor annoyance – if you’re a rogue, feel free to remove the dot with your Cloak of Shadows just to save some effort for your healers. Flame Jets can also be resisted, so a Fire Resistance Aura from your paladins will be useful.

Scorches

Ignis will cast a Scorch every 20 seconds. This ability leaves a huge flaming area on the ground in front of him, which will deal heavy damage to everyone standing in it. There are a few two strategies, and where they differ is the placement of the fire patches. In my guild, we’re using the strategy pictured below.

There is also an alternate positioning strategy which has three Scorch positions on one side. It does not really matter which one you will use – they both should work well.

Constructs

Every 30 seconds Ignis will summon an Iron Construct. They have to be offtanked and dragged/stunned/rooted in the Scorch patches to get 10 stacks of the Heat debuff and become Molten. Then the offtank will drag them into one of the water pools on the sides, when they become Brittle for 15 seconds. In this 15 seconds you have to deal 5k damage with a single ability to shatter the construct and destroy it. Destroying them also removes the stacks of the Strength of the Creator buff Ignis gains when they are active. The buff increases damage done, so you don’t want to have more than 2 adds alive at the same time.

Shattering the Molten Constructs is the job for your moonkins, mages or warlocks. While it is possible for melee classes to deal 5k damage in a single blow, the mob will explode when you do that. This deals about 18k – 22k damage, and should be avoided if you can.

One last thing to watch out with the Constructs – they clear their aggro list when they become Molten. Your tanks will probably pick them up, but be sure you are careful with using AoE abilities near them.

Slag Pot

Once in a while, Ignis will charge a random raid member and place them in the Slag Pot he carries on his belt. This will do significant damage and will kill the player if he’s not healed through (Cloak of Shadows saves you from some damage, but it does not free you nor last long enough – it’s better to save it for Flame Jets). If you are still alive after 10 seconds in the pot, you are released under the boss with a haste buff for 10 seconds.

The loot

After a while of dealing with his abilities and constructs you will finally kill him. The best item you can get from him – [Cindershard Ring] – comes from the 25-man version, along with the [Flamestalker Boots].

10-man version got the short end of the stick here and the interesting drops consist of the [Gloves of Smoldering Touch], a sidegrade to Tier 7.5 gloves with haste instead of hit rating.