Halls of Lightning Guide

The higher level counterpart to the Halls of Stone, the Halls of Lightning are another Titan stronghold thar requires a flying mount to access.

Quests:
Both quests for this instance come from King Jokkum in Storm Peaks.  “Diametrically Opposed” has you defeating Volkhan, the second boss of the instance, while “Whatever It Takes!” has you killing Loken, the fourth and final boss.

Boss Strategies:

General Bjarngrim
Bjarngrim patrols around the walkways early in the instance with two adds, as those who you must fight clearing to him.  The General’s Charge ability increases the damage of both of these adds, so upon engaging, they should be killed first and quickly before moving on to Bjarngrim himself.  Bjarngrim functions as a warrior, and switches between three stances and uses abilities to complement them: Battle Stance increases his attack speed by 25% and allows a Mortal Strike attack, which reduces healing as the normal Mortal Strike, and Slam, which is simply more damage on the tank.  Berserker Stance increases damage caused by 25% and  allows him to use Whirlwind, which should be moved out of, and Intercept on a random group member, which stuns them but isn’t much of a threat overall.  Defensive Stance reduces all damage taken by 25% and opens up Spell Reflection, which performs exactly as it sounds like it would, and a simple Cleave.  He can also use Ironform at any time, which increases his armor and grants immunity to Bleed, Poison, and Disease effects.  Bjorngrim has a lot of abilities for his stance changing, but they’re all essentially the warrior abilities and not very new or difficult to adjust to, so the only challenge for this fight is the healer able to heal through the relatively strong damage he puts on the tank.

Volkhan
A giant engineer of sorts, Volkhan is responsible for the production of many of the mobs you’ve been fighting, and his forge plays a large part in the battle.  Volkhan himself has no real abilities besides a melee strike, but he will periodically run to his anvil and form some Molten Golems, which are semi controllable but sometimes drop aggro.  Molten Golems slow down as they take damage until they eventually stop moving completely when they “die,” but they remain standing and visible.  When enough golems are frozen, Volkhan will perform a Shattering Stomp, doing small damage to the whole group but most importantly shattering every Brittle Golem, doing heavy AoE damage around every one of them.  To deal with this, DPS should kite all of the golems to around the same out-of-the-way area before leaving as soon as they become immoble, so no one is around the golems when they shatter.  As long as no one is insta-killed by a shatter there’s not much else to the encounter.

Ionar
The third boss is a huge lightning elemental.  In his primary form, he has two main attacks besides a melee swing: Ball Lightning is a simple nuke that is randomly targeted and knocks the target back ten yards, and Static Overload places a DoT on a random target that also ticks to all allies within 8 yards.  After the duration is over, there is an additional explosion that damages the afflicted and, again, anyone nearby.  To deal with this, everyone needs merely to spread out so only one person is ever damaged by the Overload.  Every 25% of his health Ionar will Disperse into four Sparks of Ionar, which are invinvible, move slowly, and constantly tick an AoE around them; at this time, everyone needs to run away and avoid them until the Sparks eventually converge back into Ionar and the process repeats.  The only challenge here is spreading out for Static Overload and running away from Disperse, making it a fairly easy, but fun, fight.

Loken
The final boss of the instance forces you to juggle your range to him.  As soon as you engage him you’re affected by an aura that deals damage based on your proximity to Loken: the further you are, the more damage you take.  As such, all group members need to stay in melee range to Loken while DPSing.  The trick is that Loken occasionally does a powerful point blank AoE around him; so, everyone needs to be paying attention so they can quickly run away from him to avoid the AoE and then run back in to avoid excess damage from the aura.  As long as you know what to do, and everyone pays attention to his casting the AoE, Loken is more a pushover than anything.