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Comment by Ninjazombie

Karsh Steelbender is the third boss in Blackrock Caverns. Before you can engage him you will need to kill the two Conflagrations patrolling around the room. As you will see, when they get close to the cooled obsidian alloys, they will become molten and will be able to move. What you want to do is pull the conflagrations back down the hallway until any alloys that are following are cooled again. You can slow down the alloys to make it easier. Once that is done the boss is easy. He has a buff on him that reduces all damage he takes by 99%. To fix this you will need to kite him into the pillar of flame in the middle of the room. For each second he is in the flames he will deal an AoE fire damage to everyone. This increases with each stack. He will also deal more 1000 fire damage each melee hit increase by the stacks, but for each stack he will take 10% more damage. This buff only last for a short time, so the tank will be moving in, letting the buff stack, move out, wait til it drops, then repeat. Whenever it does drop off him, a wall of flame will shoot up from the grates circling the middle of the room. A good stack size to get to is 4-6, more if your healer can handle the damage. Other than that it is a straight forward fight.

Comment by 344016

The first thing you'll probably notice when you get into the Twilight Forge area is the two circling patrols and the quicksilver bumps on the ground. Whenever one of the elemental patrols goes by a quicksilver bump, it’ll turn into a molten looking mob called a quicksilver. When one of the adds are up and in combat with you, they’ll put a stacking AoE debuff that will quickly start to suck. To get around this, just pull the elementals up the ramp and out of the range of the quicksilvers and you should be fine.

So this fight basically revolves around the bosses armour buff, and the forge. When the boss has his armour on, he takes 99% reduced damage. To get rid of this, just drag the boss into the forge and the armour will shatter. Now, the longer he is in the forge, the more damage he takes. He also does a strong AoE to the party and will start to hit the tank increasing harder the longer he stays in the forge. Sure, the DPS increase is neat, but the tank damage and AoE are MUCH more important. What you’ll want to do is dip just inside the forge long enough to get his armour off, and then get out ASAP. Eventually, a wall of flame will come up around the outside edges of the forge and the bosses armour will come back. At this point, it’s just rinse and repeat pretty much.

Karsh also has two abilities that are fairly minor that I forgot to mention. At 50%, he’ll summon a couple of adds that just need to be picked up. They didn’t hit too hard from what I’ve seen, so don’t worry about those. If you need to, pop a defensive cooldown, otherwise you should be fine. Last thing to watch out for is that he’ll summon lava pools under people, very simple mechanic, don’t stand in it.

Comment by Drunkenvalley

TL;DR from a tank's perspective? Pull him quickly into fire. He glow hot white. You pull him out of fire. Repeat when he stops glowing.

Comment by BaronYiffington

NORMAL MODE:

Very simple fight.

Tank drags boss into the flame pillar in the middle of the room. This debuffs the boss, allowing him to take more than a tiny bit of damage. This, however, causes large amounts of AoE damage to the group, as well as making the tank take more damage with each auto attack.

The tank should hold the boss under the fire until he has six or seven stacks of the debuff, then pull him out.

Rinse, repeat, loot.

Comment by 647913

Did this last night. I found i got stuck in the pillar if I went straight through it. Don't know if this was a glitch or intended. A variation on others is to have another "tank" class dps in the group, i.e. ret pally, run around to the other side of the pillar when his debuff is about to drop off and taunt him. Bossruns into the pillar to get him, tank taunts back, boss runs back through the pillar adding more stacks. rinse repeat win.

Comment by 194702

On heroic the adds seems to drain mana from our healer when they melee him. :(
And they are immune to all types off CC/slows...

Comment by 197116

Heroic Mode:

SLOWLY stack the debuff on the boss ideally one to 2 stacks at a time. When he gets around 6 of them, DPS cooldowns, heroism etc and burn, while tank should refresh stack one last time for a total of 6-7 stacks. At this point let the stacks drop, and do not start any more stacks until all adds are dead.

All dps can focus on the adds, while the tank holds the boss. We chose not to utilize the adds pools, so we killed them away from the middle. Once all the adds are dead, the tank begins the cycle again by stacking the debuff slowly back up to 7, before resetting it if needed.

The key is not to get too many stacks, but also you can not reset too often as you will get too many adds.

Comment by cywang86

The adds spawn when the debuff drops from the boss.

Comment by Archijslv

Heroic tactics:
1) Tank drags the boss through the middle and gets him 1 stack;
2) As the stack is running out, the tank drags him through middle again and gets him 2 stacks.
3) Keep doing this until boss has around 5 stacks. And yes, I know that its hard to get him 1 (or 2 (you will probably get 3 at start)) stack through 1 run, because of the buggy hitbox and so on, but keep trying.
4) Let the 5 stacks run out, some adds appear.
5) DPS take the load off the tank by taking adds off him, in our group every DPS got one add, we dragged them to the door and killed them there, so the molten lava pools dont give the boss stacks.
6) Go to step one.

This is done in questing greens and some blues one the first day of expansion. We kept trying for 1.5 hours but did it eventually, hope you make it too, good luck.

Comment by killertofu615

5.0Mil health on heroic.

Spawns adds that drop flame patches on the ground which cause the quicksealver debuff on him.

Requires adds to be killed at regular intervals to maintain quicksealver without causing too many debuffs and causing the aoe to stomp the group.

Very difficult on healers.

Dps must dps adds down quickly

Comment by pixLpirateN

HEROIC:
The mechanic of this boss took us a while to understand.
You're not supposed to get a lot of adds, the adds come when the boss loses his debuff which increase damage and damage taken.

This is an encounter which is extremely rough on the tank; the boss must first get 1, max 2 debuffs from the lava. The DPS burn as hard as they can. Before the debuff runs out, the tank takes the boss into the lava to refresh the debuff with 1 or 2 more stacks. Keep this up until you reach 6-7 stacks. After that it's hard for the tank to stay alive so you'll have to let the debuff drop. Adds will now spawn which will make pools of lava when they die so try to range these to death whilst having the tank moving. Melee DPS stay out for this part.
After the adds are dead and the pools of lava are under control the tank can take the boss for another 1-2 stacks of the buff and DPS keeps burning boss. Usually only takes one spawn of adds to take care of this but a very good tank too - especially since the boss moves really weird and sometimes stops, runs and whatnot.

Comment by oink

HEROIC MODE
I tried to make these one-line-copy-pasteable so you can use them ingame :)

Karsh Steelbender
Have the tank dip him in the lavafall for 1-2 stacks, pull him out for 4-5 seconds, dip him in for 1-2 more stacks, rinse and repeat. The trick is to never let the debuff fall off or he spawns adds. He cleaves so stay behind him.

Comment by Nikolis

We've found that when the adds spawn during the heroic encounter, if they enter the lava spout, they have a chance of evading and despawning the boss. This happens rather frequently, and I suggest taking the fight a bit slower and killing the adds as soon as they spawn to avoid this rather very frustrating bug.

Comment by 663932

Just did this boss, by chance, very easily.

We brought the boss into the fire over and over for 1-2 pulses, never letting the stacks fall. We ended up with about 15 stacks, but our DPS was so high at that point that it never became a problem. Last few seconds were rough, but not a problem with bloodlust.

In short, if you're having problems with adds, try and have tank get 1-2 stacks at a time, never dropping debuff, and DPS go all out. If you have another class that can heal, have them help top off towards then end after blasts.

Was very easy this way and 1 shotted by chance. Give it a shot.

Comment by rockerboo

Little trick for the tank, the middle grate area is the flame point, not the firewall about 1 yard in. Also focus on the bosses hitbox and just try and get him to grace over the edge of the grate.

Edit: Hitbox no longer gets smaller when on fire.

Comment by knowhope

Best way we found out is to try to avoid adds spawning at all. To do that, you need to make sure he never lose his molten armor ever during the fight.

Get him in and out for one tick whenever there are about 5 sec left on the debuff and pop defensive and offensive CD's at about 7 or 8 stacks.

There is no point to try and reset the stack as the adds leave lava mark on the ground that makes him melt quick and you will end up at the same amount or even higher of melt armor when they are dead.

Comment by diablow

Dear god... Something that wasnt mentioned in any of the comments that i saw was that you need to not re-melt his armor til adds are dead. wiped so many times on this then it came to me in an instant and was completely obvious. One shot everytime past that.

Comment by 154178

Heroic

The fight is essentially the same as normal, but when the debuff stacks from putting him into the fire fall off, 3 adds come. This means if youre clever you can stack the debuff slowly, adding only 1-2 every 8-10 seconds, when it gets too high - probably around 10 you let it fall off, keep the boss out the fire, DPS kill the 3 adds and then you start all over again. The adds drop pools of lava when they die, so the tank needs to keep the boss away from them until theyre all dead then if he wishes he can use them instead of the fire in the middle.

Another thing to note is, when the boss is taken into the centre, fire shoots up round the edges, this can be used to kill the adds, allowing you to somewhat just zerg the boss down - which is what is eventually going to become the usual strat when gear levels increase.

Comment by Twinsteel

Heroic Mode
The slow-stacking method is pretty choice, but you have to let the stacks fall sometime else you run the risk of popping people inadvertantly due to AOE (and/or draining mana too fast). Let them fall around 6 stacks.

Best way I found to handle the adds was to have dps pick them up and drag them into the grated area. Tank can stand wherever he wants holding the boss in the interim. DPS should be able to tank/mostly self-heal through add phase.

P1: Stack slowly, deal damage, blow CDs at 6 stacks
P2: DPS pulls adds away from boss, kills in grated area to leave lava pools

Tank can then use central pillar or lava pools at his discretion to reactivate P1. Takes about 3 iterations, dps and cooldown dependent.

Comment by 188376

Handy trick for tanks to slowly stack the debuff:

Imagine there's a square around the center ring. Start the fight by pulling him in such a way that he JUST clips the side of the fire - do not start by pulling him all the way through, that's 4 stacks right there and then.

Tank the boss in one of the corners of the imaginary square. When the debuff gets to 3sec remaining, leg it to another "corner" (I use 3 sec to play it safe, sometimes he likes to stop moving for a bit). This way the boss will chase you and in the process clip the edge of the fire again, putting exactly one stack on. It is SO much easier than trying to pull him in and out of the fire.

When it gets to the desired number of max stacks (depends on the healer, most I've run with are OK with 8, some are good with 10 or more), sit outside and pull him away a bit to let people know you intend to let it drop. From then, the DPS will pick up the adds (they only melee for about 4k on plate) and burn them EVENLY in one spot away from you. Try and make sure they die at roughly the same time to avoid fire damage and to limit the spread of the lava.

During this time DO NOT MELT THE BOSS.

Once all the adds are dead, go back to step one and repeat.

The key to this fight (at least with current gear levels) truly is to ensure the debuff stacks as slowly as possible. When I tank it, the boss is usually dead after 1 add phase because DPS has so much time to go nuts on him, sometimes two add phases if DPS is lacking.

Comment by 726613

I was in a PuG having some difficulty with this last night - here is how we ultimately succeeded, and got the achievement to boot.

1. Tank has to add one stack at a time by clipping the boss' hit box in the lava flow - not running straight through. He needs to wait as long as possible before adding a new stack and refreshing the debuff. This allows your group maximum time to DPS in the early going while AOE damage it at a minimum. The tank also needs to keep an eye on party health, and judge that if the healer is losing the ability to keep up, let the stacks drop off and deal with adds.

2. DPS is huge on this fight. They have to be at or over 10k or you're going to have a very tough time getting him down before the healer goes OOM. They also need to deal with adds, by moving them onto the grates and killing them there. In addition, they must time cooldowns for max DPS (around 7stacks) and self-healing whenever possible.

3. Heals has to be prepared for an exponential ramp-up in damage. For the first few stacks, it should be no problem. However, around 7-8 stacks, it starts to get very challenging to keep up with the AOE damage as new stacks are added to the boss.

Overall, I think this fight is a nice balance of gear check and coordination. As "average" DPS creeps up into the low-mid teens, I expect this fight to be pretty trivial.

Comment by Deepthought

He seems to be bugged currently. When I tried to pull him out of the fire waterfall, he kept teleporting me back infront of him, refusing to move and constantly AoEing the party.

Comment by 654830

After 16 wipes trying to find out his tactics, we ended up killing him without doing anything, leaving his 99% damage reduction buff on. Took 2 hours.

Only reason healer didn't go oom was because she was pally, meleed the boss for mana.

Comment by 10950

This is how we did this on heroic:

As the adds come into the fight when Steelbender looses his debuff and as they leave behind lava when they die we decided to kill them out of the platform.

So we slowly stacked the debuff up to an amount of about 7 or 8. The count may depend on how good your healer/tank combination feels ;) Every time one debuff is added Steelbender casts one wave of fire aoe-damage, so do not let him stack the debuff too quickly.

After 7 debuffs we let time out the debuff an Damage Dealers dealt with the adds. Steelbender could be easily tanked in the meantime. DDs finished the adds outside the platform, because we wanted to avoid the lava spots in order to minimize damage on group. As done so DDs returned to the platform and our tank started to stack the next series of debuffs.

We finished Steelbender in the second debuff round, but I am sure you can do another add-round to reduce damage on your tank. I think this tactic is quite safe and adjustable according to your equipment-level

EDIT: Important point about the lava that the adds leave behind. Our tank said that Steelbender gets the debuff if he walks through these lava spots. So taking them down outside the ring is once more adviseable ;)

Comment by 741931

Great Alternative Strategy
Heroic: Karsh Steelbender

The other day I was stuck on this fight as my Main DK Tank and after thinking about all the mechanics the idea of having an OT sounded like a great plan. After learning some other boss mechanics that aren't even listed here we fine tuned it and it worked.

1. MT tank the boss, drag him through middle fire and let it stack about 5 times, drag him out of it and wait a few seconds then drag him back in for another 5 or so stacks without letting the original stacks fall off. When the stacks fall off 3 adds will appear. The OT needs to grab these and move them away from the boss.
2. DPS all the adds down on the other side of the room in some open space leaving the lava pools away from the boss. At this time the MT isn't taking much damage and neither is the OT really, it is a lot easier on the healer.
3. Once all adds are down drag him through middle again and get 5 stacks, then out, wait a few seconds for heals to catch up, then back in again for 5.
4. You repeat this pattern until dead.
Some things to remember is you need him to have 10-12 stacks and you need good dps, the one thing that isn't mentioned here is that in Heroic, once his debuff falls off 6 times he enrages. So you need to do enough DPS in 5-6 rotations that he goes down or is super close to going down and burn him the last little bit.
Strategy works fantastic every time if you have the right group makeup for it

Comment by 550929

December 21, 2010 hotfixes:

Dungeons & Raids
Blackrock Caverns

* The duration of the Superheated Quicksilver Armor debuff on Karsh Steelbender is now 17 seconds, up from 12 seconds. The encounter was too hard to tank and went against our intended fight mechanics. The display for this buff may not properly update until a client-side patch is applied.

5 more seconds before the tank has to refresh the stack will make this fight a lot easier for decent groups. In heroic dungeon gear it was already possible to only let the stack fall off once; with this change strong groups will start being able to kill him before letting it fall off at all.

If your tank is bad, not much will change.

Comment by 742614

I got tired of reading threw all the post here but most have it all Wrong. First thing you have to know is adds come when his debuff falls off. So dont let the debuff fall off. When i tank this i pull him get him with 2 stacks fight for a few seconds drag him in for a stack and back out. Rinse repeat never leaving him in for more than 1-2 stacks but never letting his stacks drop. Reason for doing 1 to 2 stacks is the stacks hit hard and cant strain the healer. 1-2 stacks is easier for a healer to heal at a time. We do the fight with no adds ever spawning and no pools of lava to avoid. Important to tank him close to the fire spout so you can drag him accross the side of it and not threw the middle of it. seriously 1 stack is all you need to put on him at a time. Before end of fight we usually have about 20 + stacks on the boss. Everyone is at almost full hp and healer has alittle less than of mana. If you have a BL use it anywhere between 10-15 stacks fight goes easy.

We wiped for 2 hours seriously before I figured this out. Enjoy and i'll take all the bumps =)

Comment by sirios

Tips for Heroic mode:

Basically the tank's moves in this fight are really important for it's progress. As a tank i found it hard some times to pull the boss in and out of the lava because he would stuck every now and then and even if i was 10y away from him he wouldn't follow me. This made the fight hard because the stucks kept raising since he wouldn't follow. In the last run i did although, i found an easy way to get 2 stucks each time and make him follow me. I was tanking him near the lava and when the stucks were about to drop i was running in the exact opposite spot in the other side of the lava. So don't get him in-out, in-out of the lava but instead go all the way through it to the other side. The time he needs to cross it is just the time needed for him to get 2 stucks of the debuff.

Comment by 526550

Heroic mode,
If you are a good tank, kite the boss through the fire in the middle

get 1 stack

if you get 1 stack continuously without letting it fall of no adds spawn

adds only spawn when the moltent armor debuff falls off

Try it

Comment by collector

ok so I didn't feel like reading all the comments to find out if anyone had noticed this yet, but.. The Tankspot video is WRONG. He will never spawn adds nor will the ring around him shoot up in flames if you never let his stacks reset. It does not happen randomly. This is also a good way to get the achievement on Heroic. Just run him through quickly before the stacks reset, he will gain 1-3 stacks each pass. Getting the achievement is actually the easiest way to defeat him. At 15 stacks the aoe he does is only a one time tick for around 30k, easily healable. It will just become a huge tank and spank. Happy hunting!

Comment by 251609

Heroic Mode:

If you allow the stacks to build more gradually, pulling him into the fire so that just his foot touches and pulling him back out, you can add stacks 1-2 at a time. This gives dps more time and saves the healers mana. Repeat to 10-12 stacks, then let the stacks fall off. If it gets too high (we found 12 or more) the healer cannot keep up (15 stacks is the achievement btw). With reasonable dps though the fight should be over at around 10 stacks, IF you have lower dps you will have to let the stacks fall off, adds will spawn, hold him at zero stacks until the adds are dead and then repeat. When they die, the adds will spawn pools of lava at their feet, which contribute to the stacks on the boss. DPS and healers should DPS the adds away from the boss, while the tank stays focused on the boss. Should be dead by the time you get to 7-8 stacks on the second buildup.

Comment by collector

comments getting deleted, GG wowhead, just because the tankspot video is wrong... the fire spurts and adds will not occur if you do not let the stacks reset. just run the boss straight through the fire every 5-10 seconds, right before the stacks reset. You get the achieve and no adds or fire spurts and it's a rather fast tank and spank. IMO just delete all other posts. happy farming.

Comment by 414443

A great tip for Warrior tanks on this fight:

Charge THROUGH the lava flow to the boss to initiate the fight.
Have your healer on the other side of the lava flow opposite from you.
INTERCEPT to your healer.
Have your healer run around the lava flow so they are again opposite you.
INTERCEPT to your healer again when available/necessary.
Rinse and repeat until dead.

This strategy will make it so that the tank takes minimal damage, the group takes no damage, but the lava flow still does its job for boss purposes.

Comment by anubalabeloralon

Not sure why those green post all say down adds asap.
Basically there should be no adds or just 1 wave if you do it right, heroic or not.
When his amour is almost gone, immediately stack it up by 1.

Comment by mudd

Don't bother with the ad tactics, they're not needed.

The ads will only come if he loses the debuff (Superheated Quicksilver Armor) - so just keep lightly dipping him into the centre shaft of lava and out. You can do this easily just like in normal.

The extra ads don't come and you get the achievement this way too.

Comment by SaynaTheSpiffy

Fun Fact: Quicksilver, also known as mercury, is a real metal that has a melting point around room temperature and a freezing point at −38.83 °C (around -37 °F). So basically, this fight takes place in a freezing-cold room around a pillar of fire that is a normal temperature.

Unless, of course, we are meant to understand that his armor is normally made of liquid metal and we are running him into a pillar of flame that heats his armor to boiling at 356.73 °C (674.11 °F).

It's also a very toxic metal.

Comment by JadedWisdom

I'm surprised no one has said it yet. "I think he can bend steel..."

Comment by 11267

If you're new to tanking this boss:

Don't pull him clear through the beam; he'll heat up 4-6 times in rapid succession and barbeque your group.

And don't pull him into the beam and then try to change direction and pull him out; sometimes he'll stand for an agonizingly long time before following you in the new direction.

The cleanest technique I've found is to pull him across the edge of the beam, in a straight line, so that just half his body is inside it. Don't back up; strafe it quick and straight and don't stop until he's good and clear of the beam. Then swing him around 180 degrees so you're ready to do it again. It's smooth and predictable and he'll pick up 1-2 stacks each time.

Get him moving when about a third of the debuff timer is left.

Comment by 611596

What's his aggro sound script? Searched everywhere and couldn't find anything.

Comment by muffe

Superheated Quicksilver Armor - "Feel the burn!" An obvious reference to Jane Fonda's workout videos.

View in 3D Links

Karsh Steelbender <Twilight Armorer>

Blackrock CavernsRom'ogg BonecrusherCorla, Herald of TwilightKarsh SteelbenderBeautyAscendant Lord ObsidiusKarsh SteelbenderBlackrock Caverns

Heroic		Mythic
Deadly		Important
Tank		DPS
Healer		Interruptible
Magic		Curse
Poison		Disease
Enrage

Karsh Steelbender <Twilight Armorer>

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