If you're getting into World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King Classic expansion, then one of the big things that you'll be doing is the many dungeons. There's a good amount of them, each with some special mechanics that need to be handled. As such, our Halls of Lightning dungeon guide will cover everything about the dungeon, especially if you're doing it for the first time.
Halls of Lightning is one of the two dungeons up in the Storm Peaks, and is one of the last two leveling dungeons that you'll experience in Wrath of the Lich King Classic, and as such the difficulty ramps up a bit. This is done after Halls of Stone, the other dungeon in the zone.
While you're here, if you're looking to figure out what class and spec you want to play in Wrath Classic, be sure to check out our DPS tier list, Healer tier list, and Tank tier list. Also be sure to check out our speed leveling guide.
Halls of Lightning dungeon guide
Upon entering Halls of Lightning, you'll be met with a quest giver. Each of these quests are easy enough to complete as they only require killing mobs and bosses in the dungeon.
Head into the next room, and you'll be met with a pentagon shaped path, and you'll see the boss patrolling the pathways, with mobs on all of the corners of the paths. The boss cannot walk up to the first platform, so use that to your advantage.
He will cast an ability called "Charge Up" while out of combat, empowering himself and the mobs he's near. He will be charged until he gets back to the platform that he cast "charge up" on. Ideally you'll clear out all the adds as he's patrolling, and then wait for him to walk back to the location of his Charge up before engaging the boss.
General Bjarngrim
The first boss is General Bjarngrim. He has two adds that are patrolling alongside him that also need to be killed off quickly as they will heal the boss with the Renew Steel ability. This cast can be interrupted, but it's worth killing them off to take that mechanic out of the fight.
Bjarngrim will switch between three stances, Battle Stance, Berserker Stance, and Defensive Stance. This will buff his Attack Speed, Damage, or defenses by 25% respectively. He has some fairly basic abilities, the only really big one to worry about could be Spell Reflection. But once the Stormforged Lieutenants are killed off, the fight is tank and spank.
After the boss is downed, head to the right into the Iron Crucible. Hug one of the sides, killing the elementals. Head up the stairs, and clear out the trash to make it to the next boss.
Volkhan
The next boss is Volkhan, a giant forgemaster. There are a few abilities that you'll have to deal with from him during this fight.
- Temper: Volkhan strikes his anvil summoning two Molten Golems
- Heat: Volkhan heals a Molten Golem for 20% of it's maximum health.
- Shatter Stomp: When Volkhan reaches 25% health, he stomps the ground, doing physical damage and shattering all Brittle Golems.
For this encounter, you're going to be having to deal with all Molten Golems and the boss together. The ideal strategy for this is to tank him by his anvil. The tank needs to pick up the Molten Golems and they need to be killed off quickly. When you're about to get to 25%, the tank should move the boss away from the anvil to avoid taking all the splash damage from the Molten Golems, and then kill the boss. Next, head down the hallway on the side of the room, to get to the next boss.
Ionar
Ionar is the next boss in the dungeon. With this one, it's a fairly easy tank and spank fight, with a couple small things to keep watch on. There's three abilities to deal with here.
- Static Overload
- Ball Lightining
- Disperse
The first thing to note is the Static Overload. This will target a random player, and after 10 seconds, they'll explode and get knocked back. Ideally that person moves away from the group, and could even put their back to a wall to prevent their knock back. The other thing is that at 50% HP, Ionar will split into a bunch of sparks for 15 seconds. You just need to stay alive during this time, and get back to killing the boss after that time.
After the boss is dead, head down the hallway to the right. There will be a lot off enemies in this room, you can pick a side of the room to stick to and only kill the adds on that side. At the end of this room, you'll have to kill off the giants in the middle of the room and get ready for the last boss.
Loken
The final boss is Loken. He has two main abilities on normal and a third on Heroic.
- Pulsing Shockwave
- Lightning Nova
- Arc Lightning (Heroic)
For this fight, there's a couple very important things to deal with here. The Pulsing Shockwave will deal increasing nature damage the further you are from the boss, while also applying a 25% increased nature damage taken debuff. To deal with this, you'll need to stay fairly close to the boss. But you'll also have to be ready to move due to the Lightning Nova ability.
This will deal a massive amount of nature damage to anyone within 20 yards of the boss, so you'll have to move away from the boss when he casts that ability, or use a major healing cooldown.
For Heroic, he will cast Arc Lightning, which will cause a area of effect nature damage and shock. To counteract this, stay as close to the boss as you can, but spread out from your team so that the shock doesn't hit any additional players. Other than this, this is a simple tank and spank.
And that's the dungeon! As one of the latering leveling dungeons, it starts to introduce some mechanical ideas that are used in Raiding. Be sure to stay tuned to our other dungeon guides in Wrath Classic as well. That being said, while you're here, if you're interested in more Classic content, be sure to check out our guide for the must have addons for Wrath, as well as our guide to making your very own Death Knight.