Balrog

[Emerald]

http://b.imagehost.org/t/0872/balrog.jpg (http://b.imagehost.org/view/0872/balrog.jpg)

STAGE 1 Easy peasy clear left side fountain then right. All go to rune at centre and pop hop, destiny hope,
scrolls etc.

STAGE 2 Balrog becomes active. The 3 most important parts of this stage are ENRAGE which the burglars
need to put on the balrog all the time, the EYE which looks like a big white eyeball on your
buffs, if you get the eye then you must run to position 1 or 2 and hide from the balrog's sight until the
eye disappears, if you do not then the balrog whips you into the water and you die and everyone laughs at
you. Lastly the elf, whos health cant reach zero.

Main tank and another go to the lever room 1 on the right, tank aggros and runs back to rune while the
other person enters room and pulls the lever then comes back to help dps the mobs. This is the easy room
as it has only 1 worldeater and a few darklings.

Lever room 2 is a bit more tricky as it has 4 worldeaters all about 9k health. Tank aggros alone and runs
back to rune, loremasters and burglars stun and root as many as you can before they reach group. Try to pull
1 at a time to group and dps them down.

As the group is killing the last worldeater 1 person runs to lever and waits next to it. Once the elf is fully
healed the raidleader will shout to pull lever, everyone then runs to position 1 and hides. The person who just pulled
lever runs to position 3 (careful not to get locked in room as door closes). Doing this will avoid his roar and hope wipe. Minstrels can still heal elf from position 1, once she is full stop heals and wait for the elf to gain aggro. After a time the balrog will roar, raidleader then shouts to move and everyone runs to position 3. We wait for another roar then leader shouts again to move and everyone runs into everseer room.

TBC

[Emerald]

http://a.imagehost.org/t/0103/everseer.jpg (http://a.imagehost.org/view/0103/everseer.jpg)

STAGE 3 As we enter the everseer room Group 1 goes left and Group 2 goes right as darklings will have spawned straight away. As we are killing them the main tank, a designated champion and burglar will be on the everseer.
Champion is to CLOBBER all the time and burglar ADDLE. This will interupt his aoe skill, the animation of this skill is when he crouches and if it isn't interupted he jumps up hitting everyone in line of sight with either a nasty wound clock or fear clock. The fear clock if not removed hurts and will root you to the spot, the wound clock is the killer, it does a massive amount of damage, even with full health there is still a chance of dying. Ranged can avoid this aoe by hiding behind a pillar (shaded squares) when he crouches.

Groups who are killing darklings must not let them reach the portals as they will spawn worldeaters, once they are dead everyone attacks everseer until darklings respawn (about every minute roughly) then the same groups break off and go to their designated side and kill them, leaving the tank, champ and burglar on everseer.

Repeat until he is dead.

Everyone groups up at side of door to balrog out of line of sight. Pop rift gloves now if anyone has them and as we are doing this someone pulls lever 1, 2 then 4 and the door will open.
We wait until balrog roars twice before running in and engaging him (if the elf is really low on health then after 1 roar).

[Emerald]

STAGE 4 Tank gets agro and turns the balrog away from the elf and pulls him away from the rune but stays in healing range. Minstrels heal the elf to full, loremasters anti-stun tank, everyone else stands on rune until tank is happy with agro. Once happy everyone begins slow dps on balrog and debuffs him. There is a spot near his leg where melee wont be caught with his frontal attacks or tail whips, if you can find this then it lessens the strain on the minstrels. Also note that if your health drops quite low dont stand there waiting for a heal, retreat to rune and only go back once recovered.

At around 125k health a minstrel goes towards melee and places hopeful heart so that it covers them and the tank.
At 110k health mark he will baleful roar stripping hope from people. Any melee who lose hope retreat immediately to rune and wait until hope is up again before attacking again.

Between 110k and 55k (roughly) the balrog will put disease or an eye debuff on anyone in his frontal cone area, so if everyone is positioned correctly it should only affect the tank. The loremasters should always keep an eye on tank at this phase and cure as soon as the tank gets the disease debuffs (the animation from the balrog is that he is sick on the tank).
Hunters also should spam purge poison on tank as it will clear the eye debuff, which is an instant kill. He will keep doing this to the tank throughout this phase, so hunters and loremasters must be alert to cure the tank.

At (roughly) 55k health we get to the jumping phase (baelful roar here usually also). As soon as he jumps (call out in teamspeak so people know to run) everyone including the tank has to get out of the water, when he lands he does an aoe which kills anyone caught in it. You can run and jump up at the sides or to the rune, doesn,t matter as long as you are out.
Once he lands the tank immediately runs back in and positons him again, if too slow he can baleful roar and strip hope again. If any of the melee has lost hope stay out of water and do not attack balrog until a loremaster has anti stunned you so that you do not cower when he jumps.
He repeats this cycle until we get his health down to about 12k.

At 12k health he will baleful roar again, strip some people's hope and try and decapitate the elf. Anyone with a taunt use it (applies to champs and tanks mostly).
Captains use in harms way and last stand, burglars try get a conjunction on him and everyone else go full dps on him.
If a champ or tank gains agro then light up a cigar and enjoy the moment cos he is going down.

[Emerald]

Just a little note now that we are getting to the balrog now.

When we are pulling switches inside everseer room, loremasters antistun as many people as possible, priority being main tank and minstrels, then melee, hunters are too far back to get hit at jumping phase so dont really need antistun.
Until we get the chain link and +3 hope from it then the loremasters job will be antistun all the time with a few debuffs thrown at the balrog and curing disease on main tank when he gets it.

[Rhyaehar]

Side note: when doing the conjunction on 12k, everyone go all out on DPSing him. Ignore that Skill window.

[Silirien]

I've been to Balrog with Silver Blades some times now, they do this fight in a slightly different way.

First difference is that they try to root/tank World Eaters and Darklings inside their rooms and pull leavers behind their back to avoid fighting them. This makes the first stage much shorter and helps in avoiding Eye Misfortnes (I've seen one Eye in all Balrog fights with Sb so far; no Eye-death, but a single use of Eye-skill!), but requires a high level of cooperation from players that are responsible for the rooms (and makes the Raid stay in combat mode after the Balrog is dead; this can be fixed by reentering the room though).

Second difference is the sole Balrog fight. They don't fight him at the rune for some reason, but from the side of the room. Balrog is tanked so that he faces the Everseer room, Glathriel - most of the time - stays behind him (near the Rune). This leaves the rest of the Raid in a very good position at his side, minimizing hope wipes, hits and most importantly - disease, as he casts the deadly disease as AoE aimed to his front. Please note that his disease is deadly and it consists of multiple effects (so one can't remove it using pots, only Lore Master's skill can do it). All other melee stay at Balrog's side, never standing st his front (just like in Raug's tactics).
Also, one of their Champions told me that their aggroing shout seems to be much less resisted than Guardian skills and they use at what they hope to be the last jump (around 10-6k) to make sure he ain't aggroing the Elf (and usually end up tanking him untill the end), just before they are to DPS him down (btw, this is the stage when Hunters are supposed to use Heart Seekers with.. uhm, with the stance that makes us miss less :roll: ).
Also, before every other jump, their tank taunts Balrog; I was told that he "moves his shoulders in a special way" before the jump and that is supposed to be the sign for the Tank to taunt. I haven't seen this move as I usually stay too far away.

[Silirien]

I have catched some of Balrog's buffs. They ain't that deadly, most of them, but it's nice to know what are we dealing with.

And, of course, a screen of The Eye (icon, so first timers should know what to fear and what to run away from and not to wonder how will the dreaded eyeball look like) and the actual eye-effect from the second phase. As we can see, insta-defeat. Something tells me i will leave LotRO being oculusophobic...

[center:240xxi2d]http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p59/vial_of_black_dye/lotro/balrogsbuffs.gif[/center:240xxi2d]

*note: Resilient Fortitude is a buff that stays up for atr least half of the fight, it refers to fellowship manouvers - it means, more or less, that we will probably get only one chace for conjunction. Slulfu Deception hurts Hunters, it's reccomended to change stances to Precision when he has it up.

Edit: changed the notes according to what tarinas pointed out.

[Derigar/Tarinas]

Just one slight addition, resilient fortitude is not technically a permenant buff as he puts it up quite far into the fight, unsure of the specific time but i'd guess about halfway (first chunk of the fight he is outright immune to FS moves anyway). Towards the end of the fight this buff goes away, although realistically this changes nothing as its generally very bad if someone triggers an accidental FM early and leaves him with the immunity at the 12k stage when its most beneficial to hit him with a FM.

To paraphrase; basically you don't want to trigger any FM's regardless of his status until about 12k when the burglar will manually do it, at which point everyone should ignore it anyway and just worry about trying to DPS his face off :P

[Raukothaurondir]

Not sure if this would work (he could be immune) but at 12k stage it doesnt matter who the balrog is hitting as captains will have god mode up, so maybe a burglar could try to enrage him after popping a conjunction on him.
Not tried this in kin runs, but if tanks die right before this stage then it may be worth trying it out.

[Derigar/Tarinas]

To be honest, i have been wondering if enrage would work as it would essentially be a guarenteed victory if it did, but having not seen any mention of that on other balrog guides i am sceptical (simply because if it works as intended it would give a 12/13 chance of beating him and that surely would be used by others).

[Emerald]

Found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJQ76QyVNl4

Difficult to see the enrage buff, but I think it is it. Captain has a skill which looks like it also but if you watch the skill bar he doesnt use it, yet the yellow icon with face appears on the balrog's bar. He also seems to walk around as if changing targets also.

[Emerald]

http://s286.photobucket.com/albums/ll10 ... og1_35.jpg (http://s286.photobucket.com/albums/ll101/Dralamir/Balrog%20kill%20with%20just%20a%20fellowship/?action=view&current=balrog1_35.jpg)

Impressive feat, also the enrage icon is on balrog as you can see tank has no power and wont get aggro back.

[Derigar/Tarinas]

You're right, the enrage icon is visible in both of those shots, so is probably worth trying it when the 12k baleful roar occurs e.g. something like when the roar occurs, go for the FM and the all out attack as usual and the burglar can try putting enrage on him while he is stunned (just incase he resists of course) as if this works, then the end of the fight will be a doddle :)

[Rhyaehar]

With regards to the "initial" eye during the lever room phase: This mechanic seems to have changed since B14 went live. Whereas before the balrog would pull you to him after about 10s of the EYE, causing an inevitable insta-death if your lever teams weren't quick enough, he will now just pull you to the RIGHT side of the room, making you land on the right hand ledge, and you will survive. Aggro then switches to whoever is second on his list, usually the elf-girl, but you will survive and can run back and grab aggro.
This could be due to the bugged knockbacks, but..