If you're looking for a World of Warcraft Instance Guide for Hellfire Ramparts, you've come to the right place!
Hellfire Ramparts is the first instance that you will find in the Burning Crusade. It isn't that difficult, and is quite fun actually. There are three bosses in Hellfire Ramparts, which is often times better known as "Ramps."
While you may attempt Ramparts at lower levels, it is very difficult to do Ramparts with a group of level 58's. While one level 58 or 59 in the group won't drag you down too much, it is generally recommended that your group be mostly at least level 60, as your 60 skills really end up helping a lot. Then again, I have ran Ramps plenty of times with groups like 63, 62, 60, 59, 58 and we've been fine. It is better that your low levels be DPS than the healer or the tank.
Crowd control is very important in Ramparts, and it is suggested that you take at least two strong crowd control (like Rogue Sap or Mage Polymorph) with you. Marking the mobs helps a lot, as well.
Most of the pulls in Hellfire Ramparts are pretty straightforward. You enter Ramps and take out a few guards and a guy who patrols across a bridge. You then go around a corner, and there are a few more pulls. For these pulls, you should either crowd control the casters and archers, or kill them first.
Eventually, you will come upon a monster named Bonechewer Beastmaster. He patrols back and forth around a small area. Before pulling him and his hounds, clear the area around him. He is essentially a mini-boss, though he doesn't drop any good loots. =(
After clearing the area around him, pull the Beastmaster. Everyone must immediately start DPSing the Beastmaster as fast as they can - ignore his dogs. If you kill him quickly enough, he won't summon three extra hounds. If he does, your group will likely wipe unless you are either very good or very lucky.
Just ahead of the Beastmaster, there are a few more pulls. Then you'll see the first boss, who patrols back and forth.
First Boss: Watchkeeper Gargolmar
This boss comes with two adds (Watchers) who will hill him at certain times during the fight. The adds don't have much health, nor do they respawn. We will normally polymorph one of them and immediately kill the other. You could also sheep both, or kill both right away.
Gargolmar is a pretty straightforward fight. He will periodically charge the person furthest away from him, it is helpful if this is someone with a good chunk of health, like a warlock for example. Beyond that, you pretty much just tank him and DPS him down. After killing him, kill the add that you sheeped.
After the first boss, you continue wandering the hallway, pulling mobs. By now you are up to 5-6 pulls, so maintaining aggro and DPS using focus fire to kill mobs in an order is very important. Keep killing the casters and archers first, or crowd controlling them.
Eventually you'll come to a set of steps. Up these steps is one of the most difficult pulls in the instance. It's a bunch of casters, all of which can fear. It is usually best we have found to pull them out to the steps, due to the fear. They can be sapped, polymorphed, feared and trapped - anything helps. Generally we burn them down pretty quickly with DPS.
After that pull, there are a few guards, and you will find yourselves on a platform in the open air - right on top of one of the Hellfire Ramparts themselves, perhaps. Take care of the pulls out here, get the chest to the left, and continue on. From here, the road forks - to the right is the second boss - to the left, the last.
Second Boss: Omor the Unscarred
I must admit that I may be biased, but I have never had trouble with this boss. The primary thing to worry about during the fight is to have a good DPS such as a good rogue or mage taking out the felhounds that he periodically summons. If the felhounds get on the healer then its game over.
Besides that, he has a curse that he casts on players once in a while that does shadow damage over time to them. This can be removed on normal mode. It is an aura that will do damage to nearby party members as well. Shadow Resist buffs are very helpful for this fight.
Tank him where he stands, DPS him down, and then make your way back to the center platform. Take the left road this time, towards the giant dragon hovering in the air.
Third Boss: Vazruden & Nazan
A giant dragon and a dragonrider. WARNING! The boss fight begins as soon as you kill the final two guards standing in front of the platform you will fight him on.
Once you kill the guards, Vazruden will land and start running towards the party (he's the dragonrider). The tank must immediately pick him up. DPS needs to start as soon as possible, and DPS should pretty much go all out on this guy as he needs to die fast.
Soon after Vazruden drops, Nazan will come down near the center of the open air platform. Nazan is the giant netherdrake. A tank with fire resist gear on helps, as does a fire resist aura and fire resist or protection potions. The tank needs to IMMEDIATELY ignore Vazruden (who should be very close to dying by the time the dragon drops) and pick up Nazan. The tank faces the dragon away from the raid and tanks him in place.
The rest of the raid should spread out as soon as they finish killing Vazruden. Firebombs will drop out of the sky and spread on the ground, which seems to be the #1 reason that people die during this fight. At all costs, stay off the bridge, as it will cause the fire to funnel and there is a good chance that you will die.
Nazan is very much a normal Onyxia style dragon fight, hence avoid the fire at its head and stay away from its tail. Beyond that, Nazan is pretty straightforward. Once in a while the tank will need to move the dragon to avoid a firebomb falling out of the sky.
As long as your raid avoids the fire, stays away from the firebombs and the dragon's tail, you should be fine. There are a few problems that you might encounter:
1. Vazruden doesn't die fast enough once the dragon drops and we can't handle them both.
In this case, your best bet is to come back with better DPS. Your DPS most likely simply isn't good enough to do this final boss yet. Don't fret it if you can do the rest of the instance but not the final boss - he's nearly twice as difficult as the rest of the instance.
2. The tank keeps dying to the dragon's fire breath.
There are a couple of possible solutions here. First of all, the tank might not be high level enough or not have great gear. If this is the case, it can usually be remedied by getting some green fire resist gear off of the Auction House, or of course finding another tank. As a corollary, the problem might not actually be your tank, but it might be the healer. The healer should spam heals on the tank for most of the fight, keeping up HoT spells as well. The raid should have healing potions, and the healer should have mana potions. This problem may of course be solved by finding a new healer.
Heroic Mode
On heroic mode, most of the same crowd control methods work. The mobs hit much harder though and can one or two hit cloth wearing classes easily, so aggro control is much more important.
Omor the Unscarred is much more difficult as his aura does much more damage and can't be dispelled. Because of this, it is recommended that the tank have around 200 Shadow Resist (though you can do it with lower). Of course, Shadow Resist buffs help a lot.
The last fight with the dragon becomes nearly impossible unless the main tank has at least 150 fire resist. This is unless of course you have some very sick gear indeed. Regardless, the fight is still easier with the fire resistance. None of the fights are that much different on heroic, the bosses just hit harder and thus the resistance becomes necessary.
I hope you liked this guide and more importantly, enjoyed your first run through Hellfire Ramparts! For more World of Warcraft Instance Guides and Walkthroughs, check back soon!
