The purpose of this guide is to illustrate how to solo Baron Geddon in Molten Core as a paladin. All the advice here assumes you are level 70 in WoW 3.0. This guide also assumes you are already familiar with How to Solo Garr.
Outside Preparation
Before you even step into the instance to attempt to solo Baron Geddon, there are a few things that must be taken care of first.
1. Gear. Gearing for this fight is all about massive amounts of fire resist. You will want to be very close to the resistance cap of 365. About 330 FR should be good enough however. To hit this you can use some of the recommended pieces below. You will most likely be using FR aura in addition to the gear to push you up above 300. You should at least use the 5 items in the list here since they are epic which provides more itemization points. The stamina on these items is nice as well to provide a buffer for unexpected damage bursts. After using these items you will still want one or maybe two more items with FR. Use this resistance guide to find what works best for you.
Recommended Epic Quality FR Gear
[Inferno Tempered Leggings]
[Inferno Tempered Gauntlets]
[Inferno Tempered Boots]
[Inferno Tempered Chestguard]
[Phoenix-fire Band]
The rest of the gear slots are filled with spellpower items. This can be done with mostly badge of justice, ZA quality items or pvp gear. The main reason for this gear and not retribution gear is that these items have spellpower which will increase healing more drastically. The main idea with gearing up is that there is no hard cap of spellpower or FR needed. The trick is to find a good balance between the two. As opposed to FR gear, spellpower gear can differ drastically with what players have access too. I usually run with about 800 spellpower.
Your weapon is the only piece of gear that should be a melee damage item. It is recommended to use a 2 handed weapon for the following reasons.
A. He goes down much faster.
B. The armor from a shield is useless.
C. Although elemental attacks can be blocked now, his melee is your least worry and you will spend a lot of time casting anyway.
[The Blade of Harbingers] is a good weapon that is easily obtainable. Savagery is the best weapon enchant for this purpose due to attack power to spell power conversions. Also don't forget to put spellpower oil on your weapon.
2. Spec. Here is the Recommended Spec. Let me explain a few of the talent choices going down the tree. Mostly you just pick up damage and crit talents along the way but a few talents of note are...
A. Improved Blessing of Might - This is the preferred blessing to use during the fight so pick up the improved version.
B. Improved Judgements - Judging as often as possible is a necessity for mana.
C. Art of War - You will be healing a lot during the fight. This talent owns when it procs saving lots of time. And in addition it is further made better by all the crit talents picked up lower in the tree.
D. Judgements of the Wise - You will need this to keep a mana intake. Otherwise you will go OOM quite fast.
E. Sheath of Light - For more spellpower and the hots of course.
F. Divine Purpose - His pulse aoe and mana burn should use the spell hit table so this talent should will help with both of these.
G. Spiritual Focus - Too much pushback can spell disaster here not only from melee hits but also from the pulse aoe.
H. Healing Light - To help with the frequent healing needed on this fight.
As a side note with this spec, killing corehounds and surgers is no problem. They go down in about 3 minutes.
3. Macros. There will rarely be a moment where you are sitting doing nothing, so macros should be used to target yourself and cast heals and decurse without having to retarget.
A. Self FoL - /cast [target=player] Flash of Light
B. Self Cleanse - /cast [target=player] Cleanse
Of course as with anything in WoW, keybind where possible.
Inside Preparation
First you need a place to fight that satisfies two conditions.
A. You must fight in a place that is free from pats. He simply cannot be killed in enough time to avoid respawns. Surgers respawn in about 28 minutes and core hounds in about 18 minutes.
B. The ceiling must be very low! You will become the bomb every single time. In a fight as tight as this you cannot afford massive fall damage.
Unfortunately after much searching, the best spot found so far is the exact same spot where Garr is soloed in that exact same corner. Hence before you do this you must kill Garr first. When Garr is dead you must clear a path to that spot where you can kite Baron Geddon. The picture below shows which mobs have to be killed.
So the mobs you must kill are as follows...
A. The surger that patrols the hallway between Garr and Baron Geddon.
B. The corehound that patrols that same hallway.
C. The two corehounds that patrol back and forth in Garr's room.
It is recommend to kill these mobs one at a time to keep it easy.
A few mobs that are optional but may make the kiting easier are...
A. The corehound with the long patrol from Garr's room to close to the entrance of MC. If you do not kill him just keep an eye out for him when you kite Baron Geddon.
B. The single pull mobs in front of the molten destroyers in Garr's room. This is only if an annihilator spawns there. If it's a fire elemental stay away!
Lastly, if you die and have to run back this can cause a problem with the short respawn rate on the hounds. So be mindful of how long you have before respawns. Use the in-game stopwatch if needed.
Pull and Kiting
Now you should have a clear path from Baron Geddon to the corner in Garr's room. Baron Geddon can be solo pulled with a body pull without getting any of the groups in his room, but it must be done cautiously. Once you pull him follow the route outlined on the map.
As you kite him down the tunnel stay to the sides. You will inevitably become the bomb during the kiting process, so reduce all the damage you can be being on top of the incline. Don't hesitate to stop and heal if necessary. Bring him all the way to the first X on the map watching for the long corehound patrol if you did not kill him. Once you get to that spot Baron Geddon must be kited across the room to the corner behind Garr's rune. Make sure you get Baron to the waiting spot with you before you dash across the room. You don't want him cutting corners and pulling the adds on the sides.
Now you are ready to take him to the corner, but keep in mind that your kite path here has a huge ceiling. The safest thing to do is to run across right after the bomb has gone off. Also if you happen to get the bomb during your run across the room just bubble out of it and keep going. When you reach the wall with him by you, pull him over to the infamous corner where you solo Garr.
The Fight
1. Positioning. Once you are in the corner and Baron Geddon is with you, do not move! Yes you heard me, stay there! The reason for this is two-fold.
A. This fight is intense and you will be mashing buttons almost constantly. The last thing you want to have to worry about is moving also.
B. The core hounds that patrol Garr's room that were killed previously will respawn. A bad move can pull one and then it's game over.
But doesn't his pulse hit for a lot you say? That's what the FR gear is for. With almost capped FR the first pulses are very neglegible and the final 2 only hit for about 1k. In addition his mele hits and the mana burn debuff are also affected by FR. His mana burn is a binary spell and will be resisted the majority of the time.
Another important note regarding his position is that he will be moving around during the fight when you are in the air. Because of this he can end up outside of melee range. If you stay in the same spot he will come back. On one attempt I was able to get him into the corner where he was stationary the entire time but have never been able to duplicate that.
2. Strategy. The main thing here is that healing and judging takes priority! I recommend healing up to full even if you're only at 3/4 health. Bomb damage coinciding with the last aoe pulses can be disasterous. When healing use FoL instead of HL or else you will have serious mana problems. If you are at low health and have to cast a few FoLs in a row to get full, learn to weave judgements in between heals when the cd is up to help mana. Other than that just use normal damaging abilities. Again, judgement should be the top damage priority to keep the mana intake high. The difference between judging light and wisdom doesn't seem to matter that much, however SoV is a nice seal to use since you will spend some time healing and not attacking.
Pay attention to your debuffs and decurse whenever you get mana burn. Also if you use FR aura there will be small amounts of pushback due to not having concentration aura. Just heal ahead of time and you will be fine. In additon, take advantage of art of war procs when healing! They are golden especially when you are blown in the air.
Towards the end of the fight there are a few things to note. First when he reaches 35% you should put hammer of wrath in your damage rotation preferrably. Next when he reaches 2% he does an emote saying "Baron Geddon performs one last service for Ragnaros...". At this point he will explode and damage anyone in melee range. Rather than risk dying from the explosion just bubble through it. If for some reason you die during the explosion he will still be alive and you have to start over after all that work. After the explosion just finish him off. One item of note is that after the explosion all he appears to do is melee.
Profit
Points of Note
1. The removal of crushing blows in 3.0 is very beneficial.
2. The change to spell pushback mechanics is very beneficial.
3. On the latest attempt with the newest strategy the fight lasted about 30 minutes from pull to kill.
4. There is no hard requirement for glyphs or portions but definitely using them will make it easier.
5. A video of the kill on live servers is here.
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