Upper Blackrock Spire Guide

With Phase 4 of Season of Discovery, new loot has been added into Upper Blackrock Spire to help players prepare for raiding. Below you can find a full list of all of the new loot and each boss they drop from.

Item
Emberfury Talisman
Truestrike Shoulders

Item
Dustfeather Sash
Crystallized Girdle

Item
Serpentine Skuller
Starfire Tiara

Item
Flame Walkers
Handcrafted Mastersmith Girdle

Item
Warmaster Legguards
Band of Rumination
Battleborn Armbraces
Eye of Rend
Feralsurge Girdle
Dal'Rend's Tribal Guardian
Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge
Blackhand Doomsaw
Bonespike Shoulder
Felstriker

Item
Tristam Legguards
Bloodmoon Cloak
Blackmist Armguards
Blademaster Leggings
Frostweaver Cape
Ironweave Boots
Seeping Willow

Item
Tooth of Gnarr
Spellweaver's Turban
Painweaver Band
Brigam Girdle
Draconic Infused Emblem
Blackblade of Shahram

Upper Blackrock Spire is actually a dungeon within a dungeon. The entrance is inside the entrance to Lower Blackrock Spire, which can be found inside Blackrock Mountain. Once you enter Lower Blackrock Spire, the first door on your left is the entrance to Upper Blackrock Spire. The door is locked by default however, and at least one person in your group will need to have the Seal of Ascension to open it.

At least one person in your group will need the Seal of Ascension to open the door of the dungeon. To acquire the seal, you first will need to get a Unadorned Seal of Ascension from the trash mobs in Lower Blackrock Spire. Once you have it, find Vaelan inside LBRS. Once you have his quest, you will need to pick up three gemstones from killing three bosses in the dungeon.

• Gemstone of Spirestone from Highlord Omokk
• Gemstone of Smolderthorn from War Master Voone
• Gemstone of Bloodaxe from Overlord Wyrmthalak

Once you have all three stones, you can turn in the quest to Vaelan. He will give you a chest containing some items that you will need for the next quest. You then will need to go to Dustwallow Marsh and find Emberstrife in his cave. You will need to fight him, so bring along a group to help you. Fight Emberstrife, and once he is at 25% health you will use your Unforged Seal of Ascension. At 10% health, stop attacking and use your Orb of Draconic Energy. This will mind control Emberstrife. Once you have him under control, use his Flames of the Black Flight spell to forge the seal. Now that you have the seal, you can enter UBRS.

There are not tons of dungeon quests to pick up, but the ones available involving UBRS are extremely important, so it is worth making sure you keep up with when you might want to do them.

The quests are all outlined in our separate dungeon quest guide for this instance.

Upper Blackrock Spire has a relatively linear path. However, there are a few parts that are not intuitive. In the first room of the instance, you will need to clear out all of the trash before the next door will open. In the hatchery with all the eggs, you will want to run to the back right of the room from the door you came in to climb the debris up to the second floor. On that second floor, go around to the doorway, and clear out the trash that is necessary. Through that door, you will want to hug the right wall all the way to the big pit that Warchief Rend Blackhand is standing in front of. Jump into that pit to start the event that leads to the next boss fight.

The trash in UBRS can be overwhelming if you are not careful. Most of the trash consists of groups of orcs, meaning they are susceptible to spells like Sap and Polymorph. If your group is newer and less geared, use more control spells to fight less of each pack at a time. UBRS also has lots of pats and groups that are quite close to each other within rooms, so always pull back and be very careful about where and how you are pulling groups.

In particular, you should watch out for the first pulls that you do leading to the next room after the hatchery. Several of the melee orcs that you will pull can charge and knock back, so make sure that ranged are positioned well to not get knocked back into the hatchery below. If you do, you might break some of the eggs and pull extra mobs, which could result in a wipe.

Lastly, watch out for the Blackhand Summoners in the first room of UBRS. Interrupt their summons so that they do not summon additional enemies.

There are 7 main bosses in Upper Blackrock Spire, all of which have a high chance to drop a blue item once killed. There is also a very valuable rare boss that occasionally spawns, Jed Runewatcher. Due to some items from specific bosses being quite valuable, groups occasionally will form to target specific bosses, such as casters only wanting Jed Runewatcher or melee only wanting Warchief Rend Blackhand.

• Fire Nova
• Flame Buffet

Pyroguard Emberseer will spawn at the end of the encounter. To start the encounter, several players will need to click and channel the Altar in the room. The even starts with several enemies spawning and running towards you, but these can be easily AoE'ed down without much trouble. After they all are dead, Pyroguard Emberseer will spawn. Pyroguard himself is quite easy, and just needs to be tanked where he spawns facing away from the group. The melee can hit him from behind while the ranged and healers stand away from the platform.

Item	Required Level	Slot
Wildfire Cape	56	Cloak
Flaming Band	56	Ring
Truestrike Shoulders	56	Leather Shoulders
Emberfury Talisman	56	Neck
Gauntlets of Elements	54	Mail Gloves

• War Stomp

Solakar Flamewreath is also part of a longer encounter. To start the encounter, have your group hug the far wall upon entering the hatchery and run to the left. Clear out all of the dragons that are there to start, but do not bother breaking the eggs since they will just respawn. Once the adds are dead, start the event by clicking on Father Flame and looting the item from it. The event consists of multiple waves of adds that will come at you before the boss eventually spawns. The key to surviving the waves is to not break eggs and to kill Rookery Hatchers since they will break eggs themselves. Besides that, just kill the enemies as they come, making sure to AoE the weaker whelplings if they spawn. After making it through the waves, Solakar Flamewreath will spawn. He just needs to be tanked away from the group so that everyone can avoid his stomp while the group finishes killing adds before killing him.

It is worth noting that many groups choose to skip this boss since it is one of the harder encounters in LBRS and does not have many valuable gear drops.

Item	Required Level	Slot
Crystallized Girdle	56	Leather Belt
Dustfeather Sash	56	Cloth Belt
Nightbrace Tunic	56	LeatherChest
Polychromatic Visionwrap	56	Cloth Chest
Devout Mantle	55	Cloth Shoulders

• Backhand
• Head Crack
• Strike

Goraluk Anvilcrack can be found at the western end of the room that you enter after the hatchery. As long as you clear out the trash before engaging him, it should be a simple fight. Just tank him facing away from the group and burn him.

Item	Required Level	Slot
Handcrafted Mastersmith Leggings	55	Plate Leggings
Handcrafted Mastersmith Girdle	58	Plate Waist
Flame Walkers	57	Mail Feet
Mastersmith's Hammer	55	Main Hand Mace

• Charge
• Heroic Strike
• Shield Bash

Jed Runewatcher can be found at the east end of the same room as Goraluk Anvilcrack, but is a rare spawn, meaning he will only be there sometimes. Jed is a very easy fight, and as long as you kill all the surrounding trash first, should pose no threat.

Item	Required Level	Slot
Briarwood Reed	55	Trinket
Serpentine Skuller	51	Trinket
Starfire Tiara	55	Cloth Helmet

• Gyth
  
  • Corrosive Acid Breath
  • Flame Breath
  • Freeze
  • Knock Away

Warchief Rend Blackhand will appear riding his dragon Gyth after the event. To start the event, your group just needs to jump down into the pit that Rend is standing in front of.

The event itself is quite easy. Just kill the enemies as they spawn and you should be fine. If you feel like you are getting overwhelmed at any point, you can always control some of the orcs out of each wave, but you most likely will not need to. The only thing to look out for is to make sure you focus Rage Talon Fire Tongues when they spawn since they can cast a large fire nova.

• Warchief Rend Blackhand
  
  • Cleave
  • Mortal Strike
  • Thunderclap
  • Whirlwind

After killing several waves, Rend will fly down on his dragon. The dragon Gyth needs to be faced away from the raid to avoid his breath, and he should be focused down first. Rend will ride on Gyth's back until 20% health, when he will hop off and fight himself. Kill Gyth first before switching to Rend. Rend casts a whirlwind occasionally, so melee need to make sure to look out for it. If you have cooldowns, Warchief Rend is a great boss to use them on.

Item	Required Level	Slot
Gyth's Skull	55	Plate Helmet
Dragoneye Coif	55	Mail Helmet
Tribal War Feathers	55	Leather Helmet
Pauldrons of Elements	55	Mail Shoulders
Dragonskin Cowl	55	Cloth Helm

Item	Required Level	Slot
Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge	58	MH Sword
Dal'Rend's Tribal Guardian	58	OH Sword
Felstriker	58	Dagger
Eye of Rend	58	Leather Helmet
Warmaster Legguards	58	Plate Leggings
Dragonrider Boots	58	Cloth Boots
Band of Rumination	58	Ring
Battleborn Armbraces	58	Plate Bracers
Spaulders of Valor	55	Plate Shoulders
Feralsurge Girdle	58	Mail Belt
Blackhand Doomsaw	58	Polearm
Faith Healer's Boots	58	Cloth Boots

• Berserker Charge
• Fireball
• Flamebreak
• Immolate
• Terrifying Roar

The Beast has more mechanics than most other bosses in the instance, which makes it more difficult. The main things to watch out for are the charge and fear. The Beast will sometimes charge a random target before returning to attack the tank again, and will also sometimes fear nearby players. Ranged and healers just need to be spread out at max range away from the boss to avoid getting feared as much as possible. He also will use a fire nova that knocks back, so the tank should tank with their back against a wall to avoid the knock back.

Item	Required Level	Slot
Finkle's Skinner	58	Dagger
Blademaster Leggings	58	Leather Leggings
Tristam Legguards	58	Mail Leggings
Spiritshroud Leggings	58	Cloth Leggings
Blackmist Armguards	58	Leather Bracers
Bloodmoon Cloak	58	Cloak
Frostweaver Cape	58	Cloak
Seeping Willow	58	2H Mace
Lightforge Spaulders	55	Plate Shoulders
Ironweave Boots	56	Cloth Boots

• Cleave
• Conflagration
• Flame Breath
• Flamestrike
• Pierce Armor
• Rage
• Thunderclap

General Drakkisath is by far the most difficult fight in the instance. General Drakkisath starts with two Chromatic Elite Guards, which are hard hitting elite mobs. There are two main strategies used for this encounter. The easiest strategy requires a Hunter, and is the kiting strategy. You start the pull by having your Hunter attack General Drakkisath, kiting him out of the room and back through the instance. The Hunter can keep Aspect of the Cheetah up, tagging General Drakkisath with Arcane Shot on cooldown to make sure he does not reset. While the Hunter is kiting, the rest of the group just kills the two adds with each tank picking up a separate add. Once they are dead, the Hunter uses Feign Death to drop aggro, and Drakkisath will return to the room where the group can kill him. Once the General is back, just tank him facing away from the raid and burn him down.

The other option without a Hunter is to just kill everything together. You can tank everything together, cleaving down the guards, and blowing all of your cooldowns at the start of the fight. If needed you can have a Warlock use Fear on one of the guards while the group kills the remaining guard and Drakkisath. This is doable, but much more dangerous than the kiting strategy. If you choose to do this, make sure to focus and kill the adds before killing Drakkisath.

Item	Required Level	Slot
Draconian Deflector	58	Shield
Painweaver Band	58	Ring
Tooth of Gnarr	58	Neck
Brigam Girdle	58	Plate Belt
Blackblade of Shahram	58	2H Sword
Spellweaver's Turban	60	Cloth Helm
Shadow Prowler's Cloak	58	Cloak
Draconic Infused Emblem	58	Trinket
Tome of the Lost	58	Off-hand

Additionally, General Drakkisath can drop all of the Tier 0 chest pieces.

If you are going in underleveled, Rogues and Mages are excellent choices due to their CC abilities against the many humanoid Orcs present in the dungeon. You can Sap / Polymorph one or more enemies in almost every single pull. This is primarily meant to be a level 60 instance, but 58+ is viable.

Upper Blackrock Spire is designed to be a 10-man instance. For your 10, you will want 2 tanks, 3 healers, and 5 DPS. Depending on how geared and confident you are, you can +1/-1 to those numbers as needed. At minimum you will want 1 tank and 2 healers, but 2 and 3 is a safer setup.

Once of the more important things to consider is gear. UBRS drops several high value items that many people will farm for. Specifically, Rogues and Warriors are after the Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge and Dal'Rend's Tribal Guardian combo while casters are all after the Briarwood Reed from the rare spawn Jed Runewatcher. If you are after one of these high value items, check with your group to make sure they are not reserved, or make your own group if you want to reserve one.