There are lots of fights in Highmaul I found to be certain class favorable. As we approach BrF I would love to be able to take bosses I am weak against and do better in certain aspects, I know I suck.
I found this very helpful and am looking into it further, anyone know more/use this already?
Be on time, in other words BE EARLY! Let's get this night off to a great start.
We will NOT, I repeat, NOT be doing the new world boss Rukhmar. The ilvl of gear he drops is less than that of Heroic Highmaul. So if you have an item there that is better stat'd than your Heroic 670, find time during the day to do it, or Wednesday. If someone in guild is forming a raid for it prior to our start-time, that's fine so long as you complete it before raid start time. But if you are not in raid AND ready to go for pulls, you will be sitting. We will not hold up M Highmaul or BRF progress to wait for you to do a world boss that you can do at any point throughout the day.
Our plan of attack for the first few weeks will be as follows.
Tuesday night we start at Highmaul ONLY for Mythic Kargath (this will depend on if we have enough people and the right group comp). We will then immediately go to BRF and will focus on Wing 1 "Slag Works".
Wednesday night we will move to Wing 2 "The Black Forge".
Monday night will be up in the air, depending on how we finish up by end of the night Wednesday.
This is subject to change based on our progress each night. But this is how we are planning it at this time.
Just note that our focus WILL be on NORMAL difficulty. This is to get us used to the new fights and mechanics in a difficulty that we outgear, thus making it easier to gauge how well we can handle the fights if we were to bump up to Heroic. This does NOT mean we won't do any Heroic BRF fights. If some of the fights are retarded easy on Normal (which we expect a few will be), then we will find time to do them on Heroic. It might be Monday's agenda to do Heroic, we will have to wait and see.
Bear with this schedule for the first week or 2 of release so we can get a feel for where we're at, and where we need to put our focus.
As for Mythic Highmaul, it is still our intent to continue it in conjunction with BRF. We just have to, again, get a feel for how our raid progress is on a fight-by-fight, instance-by-instance basis. If we hit a wall on Heroic BRF, we can switch back to Mythic Highmaul to work on some of those encounters. Doing Heroic BRF will make Mythic Highmaul much easier and put us more evenly balanced, gear-wise, for the encounters. It's very similar to how it worked back in MoP for the first raid tier. Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Springs released after Mogo'shan Vaults and once they released, we pretty much dropped focus on MSV, then when we hit a wall in HoF or ToeS we went back to MSV, and overall it worked out well for the raid, and we expect this will do the same.
As for gear, yes, we are well aware that Normal BRF only drops 665 ilvl gear and Heroic HM drops 670. "So why are we wasting time when the gear is worse?!" The gear isnt necessarily worse. Just because an item is 5 ilvl lower than what most of us have does not make it worse, take a look at the secondary stats and see if they are better prioritized than what you have and take that into consideration. Trust me, I don't plan on us staying in Normal BRF for very long, its just to get us accustomed to the encounters so we can have an easier time on Heroic, and maybe replace some of the really shitty stat'd gear with some better stat'd gear, even if it is slightly lower ilvl than what some of us may have.
We encourage you to take and utilize the Normal BRF gear, especially if it is better stat'd for your class/spec. To help encourage this, we will NOT be charging you EPGP for Normal BRF drops. It will still be master-looted, but we will be doing roll-offs between those that want the items that drop. We want this gear to go to use, especially if it has your 2 best secondary stats when the item you have equipped has your 2 worst secondaries.
Be sure to read ahead the BRF RAID GUIDES that are created on the site to get familiar with the encounters. I will be finishing Wing 3 and Warlord Blackhands guides before BRF goes live.
This, if nothing changes, has been the easiest boss to do on the PTR. If the Fatboss preview isn't enough to fully sate you, this is a more recent kill video from the PTR. I recommend turning the sound up and listening. Also keep in mind, their gear was scaled to ilvl 650.
Didn't see any guide videos for it, but here's a video with a kill. Though they kinda cheesed the encounter on beta with unsquished gear. They have a bunch of wipes too so you can see some of the mechanics happening. If you just want to see the kill pull, skip to like 16:30.
Most of this is just avoid the damage, watch the vid to recognize the stuff.
One twist is the Rune of Grasping Earth, get in those, 1 player each, they do some nature damage to you, but make you immune to physical damage. That lets you avoid the Thundering Blows, massive damage that throws you up into the air. But, you also have to kill the hands to release you afterward, and help release the tanks and healers asap.
Start off, kill Aknor, range spread out to avoid stacking the Drop the Hammer damage. Unless you want the follower, in that case, 3rd tank, away from raid.
With Ka'graz, first thing will be fire lines (Lava Slash), they'll hit their target and explode, but if it damages other targets, they get additional fire lines.
Then summons spinning weapons, it's just a void zone to stay away from the entire fight.
At 30 energy, there's a meteor type ability (Molten Torrent), run into melee to split the damage.
At 50 energy, 2 wolves spawn, one will be tankable, one will fixate on someone, they alternate too. They also have a beam between them, anyone crossing it gets a DoT. Both wolves also must die within 8 seconds of each other. And both wolves must die before Ka'graz reaches 100 energy.
At 75 energy, random ranged will get damaging debuff to all within 12 yards (Blazing Radiance), so stay away from people.
At 100 energy, Ka'graz and the wolves will channel aoe damage Firestorm, afterwards, lobs lava at the range.
Essentially, the fight is 2 bosses, and through the stages, one of them jumps away, activates a conveyer belt mechanic, we fight one boss for a while during that, then he returns, we damage both bosses at the same time again, then other boss jumps away activating his conveyor belt mechanic, then later jumps back into the fight, repeat.
First conveyer belts bring the flaming pop tarts, don't be hit by them.
The boss jumping back to raid also means aoe damage, don't be near the guy with the arrow on his head.
Second conveyer belt ability is the dance of not being stamped by the machinery.
First phase, adds. Tank adds, kill adds, don't stand in front of adds, don't stand in fire of adds, grab bomb or get debuffed as a bomb (via Engineers), become the bomb, run to a Heat Regulator (2 of them 1 on each side), blow up the Heat Regulator. Interrupt adds that try to repair/heal the Heat Regulators. Divide raid in 2 to be responsible for each one.
Second phase, 4 primal elementists must be killed but they have a shield. Shields brought down by Slag Elemental dying and exploding near them, they random fixate on players, must kite and kill near Primal Elementists, then blow it up (melee don't be near that). Also, raid aoe damage and other adds to deal with. Firecallsers sends out random debuff makes you explode, so run away if you have it, interrupt healers. Security Guards can protect their allies, so kill them, also apparently MC'able and can kill/debuff elementals if need be.
Third phase, kill the Heart of the Mountain, some massive raid wide aoe going on here. Tank swap mechanic too. Fire patches on the ground to not be in. Pop Hero and go.
Short version, tanks have to be the closest players, and they'll do their classic tank swap dance. Avoid puddles (mostly ranged), avoid exploding shards (mostly melee), and interrupt the Blackrock Barrage (raid wide damage) as much as possible.
That's phase 1, until he runs out of mana, his main abilities consume it. Phase 2 he rolls around damaging players, avoid that. But the goal is to start attacking crates to reveal the ore inside for him to gorge on to refill his mana to restart Phase 1. Try to get out of this phase ASAP.
Short version. 2 stacked groups, boss does Inferno Slice, fire damage that splits among all it hits. But also, Overwhelming Blows, a smash the tank and all around him damage attack. All on the tanks to only move into a group during Inferno Slice, and away from a group during Overwhelming Blows.
Next up, Petrifying Slam, just like back in Burning Crusade, get knocked back, spread out and don't kill other people.
Then there's a phase where he just cause cave ins and raid wide damage. And it repeats back and forth between above abilities and this.
Well, the fight is a basic be weary of adds fight. But it's like the 3rd boss in Skyreach, little birds (Phoenix) will random fixate on players. They hit them, they explode leaving a pile of ash. Should the explosion be on another pile of ash, they revive. So potentially, an endless stream of adds can spawn if the raid doesn't do it right. If Blizz learned their lesson, they'll cap the number of adds that can be up, if not... BOOM!
Anyways, other parts of the fight is frontal cone attack, don't be there. Also some raid wide unavoidable damage so the healers have some work.
Hard copy of BRF raid strats
Lilpuddinpop — Mon, 02/02/2015 - 20:35http://imgur.com/a/L1zje
Why are we wiping on Boss X?
KeithC19 — Mon, 02/02/2015 - 10:19There are lots of fights in Highmaul I found to be certain class favorable. As we approach BrF I would love to be able to take bosses I am weak against and do better in certain aspects, I know I suck.
I found this very helpful and am looking into it further, anyone know more/use this already?
http://blog.askmrrobot.com/2015/01/combat-infographics/
But, WarcraftLogs also has
saedo — Mon, 02/02/2015 - 11:08But, WarcraftLogs also has something similar for a couple weeks now, here's that same log there: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Hhmjpwva4V2D8KxX#view=execution
This was a log uploaded
saedo — Mon, 02/02/2015 - 11:06This was a log uploaded yesterday: http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/combatlog/9c828fc6-cc28-44b8-a0fc-32222391...
F-RNG Tuesday Agenda
Mehguy — Sun, 02/01/2015 - 01:03Be on time, in other words BE EARLY! Let's get this night off to a great start.
We will NOT, I repeat, NOT be doing the new world boss Rukhmar. The ilvl of gear he drops is less than that of Heroic Highmaul. So if you have an item there that is better stat'd than your Heroic 670, find time during the day to do it, or Wednesday. If someone in guild is forming a raid for it prior to our start-time, that's fine so long as you complete it before raid start time. But if you are not in raid AND ready to go for pulls, you will be sitting. We will not hold up M Highmaul or BRF progress to wait for you to do a world boss that you can do at any point throughout the day.
Our plan of attack for the first few weeks will be as follows.
This is subject to change based on our progress each night. But this is how we are planning it at this time.
Just note that our focus WILL be on NORMAL difficulty. This is to get us used to the new fights and mechanics in a difficulty that we outgear, thus making it easier to gauge how well we can handle the fights if we were to bump up to Heroic. This does NOT mean we won't do any Heroic BRF fights. If some of the fights are retarded easy on Normal (which we expect a few will be), then we will find time to do them on Heroic. It might be Monday's agenda to do Heroic, we will have to wait and see.
Bear with this schedule for the first week or 2 of release so we can get a feel for where we're at, and where we need to put our focus.
As for Mythic Highmaul, it is still our intent to continue it in conjunction with BRF. We just have to, again, get a feel for how our raid progress is on a fight-by-fight, instance-by-instance basis. If we hit a wall on Heroic BRF, we can switch back to Mythic Highmaul to work on some of those encounters. Doing Heroic BRF will make Mythic Highmaul much easier and put us more evenly balanced, gear-wise, for the encounters. It's very similar to how it worked back in MoP for the first raid tier. Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Springs released after Mogo'shan Vaults and once they released, we pretty much dropped focus on MSV, then when we hit a wall in HoF or ToeS we went back to MSV, and overall it worked out well for the raid, and we expect this will do the same.
As for gear, yes, we are well aware that Normal BRF only drops 665 ilvl gear and Heroic HM drops 670. "So why are we wasting time when the gear is worse?!" The gear isnt necessarily worse. Just because an item is 5 ilvl lower than what most of us have does not make it worse, take a look at the secondary stats and see if they are better prioritized than what you have and take that into consideration. Trust me, I don't plan on us staying in Normal BRF for very long, its just to get us accustomed to the encounters so we can have an easier time on Heroic, and maybe replace some of the really shitty stat'd gear with some better stat'd gear, even if it is slightly lower ilvl than what some of us may have.
We encourage you to take and utilize the Normal BRF gear, especially if it is better stat'd for your class/spec. To help encourage this, we will NOT be charging you EPGP for Normal BRF drops. It will still be master-looted, but we will be doing roll-offs between those that want the items that drop. We want this gear to go to use, especially if it has your 2 best secondary stats when the item you have equipped has your 2 worst secondaries.
Be sure to read ahead the BRF RAID GUIDES that are created on the site to get familiar with the encounters. I will be finishing Wing 3 and Warlord Blackhands guides before BRF goes live.
Jeez Saedo
KeithC19 — Fri, 01/30/2015 - 11:25You act like you do a lot of work on your own time to help the raid. <3
Found another vid that has
saedo — Fri, 01/30/2015 - 10:13Found another vid that has someone talking through the mechanics of all 4 of the PTR bosses.
Hans'gar and Franzok
saedo — Thu, 01/29/2015 - 14:40This, if nothing changes, has been the easiest boss to do on the PTR. If the Fatboss preview isn't enough to fully sate you, this is a more recent kill video from the PTR. I recommend turning the sound up and listening. Also keep in mind, their gear was scaled to ilvl 650.
Cool mechanic
Lilpuddinpop — Thu, 01/29/2015 - 22:34Pun intended
Good of you to convey it.
saedo — Fri, 01/30/2015 - 01:11Good of you to convey it.
Blackhand
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 14:12Didn't see any guide videos for it, but here's a video with a kill. Though they kinda cheesed the encounter on beta with unsquished gear. They have a bunch of wipes too so you can see some of the mechanics happening. If you just want to see the kill pull, skip to like 16:30.
Iron Maidens
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 13:45Final boss in Iron Assembly (3rd Wing)
Operator Thogar
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 13:36Second boss of Iron Assembly (3rd wing)
Beastlord Darmac
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 13:28First boss of Iron Assembly (3rd wing)
Kromog
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 13:12Final boss of Black Forge (2nd wing)
Most of this is just avoid the damage, watch the vid to recognize the stuff.
One twist is the Rune of Grasping Earth, get in those, 1 player each, they do some nature damage to you, but make you immune to physical damage. That lets you avoid the Thundering Blows, massive damage that throws you up into the air. But, you also have to kill the hands to release you afterward, and help release the tanks and healers asap.
Flamebender Ka'graz
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 12:57Second boss of Black Forge (2nd wing).
Start off, kill Aknor, range spread out to avoid stacking the Drop the Hammer damage. Unless you want the follower, in that case, 3rd tank, away from raid.
With Ka'graz, first thing will be fire lines (Lava Slash), they'll hit their target and explode, but if it damages other targets, they get additional fire lines.
Then summons spinning weapons, it's just a void zone to stay away from the entire fight.
At 30 energy, there's a meteor type ability (Molten Torrent), run into melee to split the damage.
At 50 energy, 2 wolves spawn, one will be tankable, one will fixate on someone, they alternate too. They also have a beam between them, anyone crossing it gets a DoT. Both wolves also must die within 8 seconds of each other. And both wolves must die before Ka'graz reaches 100 energy.
At 75 energy, random ranged will get damaging debuff to all within 12 yards (Blazing Radiance), so stay away from people.
At 100 energy, Ka'graz and the wolves will channel aoe damage Firestorm, afterwards, lobs lava at the range.
Hans'gar & Franzok
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 12:42First boss of The Black Forge (2nd wing).
Essentially, the fight is 2 bosses, and through the stages, one of them jumps away, activates a conveyer belt mechanic, we fight one boss for a while during that, then he returns, we damage both bosses at the same time again, then other boss jumps away activating his conveyor belt mechanic, then later jumps back into the fight, repeat.
First conveyer belts bring the flaming pop tarts, don't be hit by them.
The boss jumping back to raid also means aoe damage, don't be near the guy with the arrow on his head.
Second conveyer belt ability is the dance of not being stamped by the machinery.
Blast Furnace
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 12:31Final boss of Slagworks (1st wing).
First phase, adds. Tank adds, kill adds, don't stand in front of adds, don't stand in fire of adds, grab bomb or get debuffed as a bomb (via Engineers), become the bomb, run to a Heat Regulator (2 of them 1 on each side), blow up the Heat Regulator. Interrupt adds that try to repair/heal the Heat Regulators. Divide raid in 2 to be responsible for each one.
Second phase, 4 primal elementists must be killed but they have a shield. Shields brought down by Slag Elemental dying and exploding near them, they random fixate on players, must kite and kill near Primal Elementists, then blow it up (melee don't be near that). Also, raid aoe damage and other adds to deal with. Firecallsers sends out random debuff makes you explode, so run away if you have it, interrupt healers. Security Guards can protect their allies, so kill them, also apparently MC'able and can kill/debuff elementals if need be.
Third phase, kill the Heart of the Mountain, some massive raid wide aoe going on here. Tank swap mechanic too. Fire patches on the ground to not be in. Pop Hero and go.
Oregorger
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 12:13Second and Optional boss of Slagworks (1st wing)
Short version, tanks have to be the closest players, and they'll do their classic tank swap dance. Avoid puddles (mostly ranged), avoid exploding shards (mostly melee), and interrupt the Blackrock Barrage (raid wide damage) as much as possible.
That's phase 1, until he runs out of mana, his main abilities consume it. Phase 2 he rolls around damaging players, avoid that. But the goal is to start attacking crates to reveal the ore inside for him to gorge on to refill his mana to restart Phase 1. Try to get out of this phase ASAP.
Gruul
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 11:59First boss of Slagworks (1st wing)
Short version. 2 stacked groups, boss does Inferno Slice, fire damage that splits among all it hits. But also, Overwhelming Blows, a smash the tank and all around him damage attack. All on the tanks to only move into a group during Inferno Slice, and away from a group during Overwhelming Blows.
Next up, Petrifying Slam, just like back in Burning Crusade, get knocked back, spread out and don't kill other people.
Then there's a phase where he just cause cave ins and raid wide damage. And it repeats back and forth between above abilities and this.
Ruhkmar, Potential Destroyer
saedo — Mon, 01/26/2015 - 11:22Ruhkmar, Potential Destroyer of Servers
Well, the fight is a basic be weary of adds fight. But it's like the 3rd boss in Skyreach, little birds (Phoenix) will random fixate on players. They hit them, they explode leaving a pile of ash. Should the explosion be on another pile of ash, they revive. So potentially, an endless stream of adds can spawn if the raid doesn't do it right. If Blizz learned their lesson, they'll cap the number of adds that can be up, if not... BOOM!
Anyways, other parts of the fight is frontal cone attack, don't be there. Also some raid wide unavoidable damage so the healers have some work.