Warmaster Blackhorn 10M HC

[Deleted]

Hello again,

Our group is having issues on Warmaster Blackhorn 10M HC, we've tried this boss now with lots of attempts, wipes, reviews, watched hundreds of hours of videos.

Our current raid setup:
1x Holy Paladin
1x Restoration Druid
2x Combat Rogue
1x Hunter
1x Fire Mage
1x Shadow Priest
1x Affliction Warlock
1x Blood DK
1x Protection Warrior

Some of our logs, we don't update these every progress run this was just a one off for not very long. We like to concentrate on the raid as much as possible.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-2fzr3jvyapa1ec69/

What we do
Before we start the fight we make all range DPS move to the top of the boat, once there we start the fight and they get damage out as soon as possible.

After the drakes have swooped away the range DPS drop down, sometimes the priest casts levitate on them so they don't take falling damage (Not really bothered about this). Once on the ground we kill the Dreadblade ASAP.

The melee adds are tanked together facing away from the raid. Once Dreadblade is dead, we move onto the drakes then back to the slayer. These adds are always down before the first sapper so that's good?

For onslaught we usually stagger our cooldowns, the first onslaught the paladin uses Aura Mastery + Wings, second onslaught the paladin uses Divine Favor + Holy Radiance, third onslaught druid uses Tranquility and fourth druid uses tree form.

For the barrages we have the ship divied into 6 quadrants, the 2 smallest (nearest the steering part) are taken by the healers. Players take the barrages in pairs, sometimes we have issues where one person will take it and one wont but that's just getting used to the fight?

Sapper is killed and death gripped/stunned no real issue there.

The Problem
The problem we are having is the onslaughts, barrages and fires. We've seen some videos online where they have 0 fires until the last onslaught, we struggle to get to first onslaught with 0 fires. Sometimes on the way to onslaught players get hit by a barrage and then die from the onslaught.

If you have any tips, hints or guides we could use please do comment, we've been trying everything under the sun!

[Whitney Houston]

You have a great comp but your raid needs some changes. The suggested tips below worked well pre-nerf, so I believe that they will be suitable for your raid too.

Stop casting levitate as you spend a longer time in the air not dpsing anything and the fall damage is negligible. Honestly I facepalm at priests who use this skill blindly outside of Ragnaros (and there are many other classes better suited for popping traps really). By the way, you can stand on the deck and still dot up all six drakes easily as they do the flyby.

The only avoidable damage to the ship are the twilight barrages so eliminate the source by focusing on drakes exclusively instead of the riders. I don't know why will anyone do so otherwise lol. The first two onslaughts can be soaked easily without the use of any healing CDs as long as the entire raid soaks it.

Your raid dps is too low which results in lots of barrages and fires. Each person should be doing 10k more dps easily. I know you might be feeling upset about this but I have an easy solution to that. Despite what a lot of guides seem to suggest, we found out that ignoring all barrages and focusing on burning down the drakes quickly was the superior strategy. You should only bother to soak if you can solo soak one nearby with some defensive CD. Only the hunter and aff lock can't solo soak iirc. No need for any funky quadrant or "does she or doesn't she" psychological mind games.

The toughest portion of the fight will probably be the last set of drakes with fires, onslaught and sapper all happening at the same time so you can lust here and gain an additional chance to see p2. We initially delayed the transition into p2 by letting the last drake fly off at low health with some dots, so that we could kill the riders before p2 started.

Focus, stay away from the real fires and you will have a kill shortly.

[Deleted]

We usually soak the first 3 onslaughts and then let our shadowpriest (and fire mage sometimes) soak the 4th. The initial onslaughts can easily be soaked with the entire group as the fire is usually not an issue. We drag the 2 mobs over to the drakes aswell to increase the aoe dmg as much as possible. We only soak barrages if it's certain that nobody will die, so pay attention if you decide to try and soak, either you go for it or you don't, you don't wait around and then think i'm gonna take that 2 seconds before impact. Certain classes can solo soak aswell, so use that. Ex sometimes our prot tank will leap over use his mirror trinket and then charge right back.

Also for the start of the fight the best opener is: Stand on right side, dot up the big drake as it flies by. Then run across to the ship to the left side and dot up the drake flying past there. Then move to the middle of the ship, target the other drake as it flies across and dot that up.

[Goyf]

Ignore barrages, except when people can solo soak them. Your DPS will be moving around less so they can do more damage. Make sure the drakes die first, so that they never fly away. Tank the melee adds directly on top of one of the drakes and have your two rogues focus that drake down, while having Blade Flurry on.

The goal behind this is that if the drakes die before flying off then there won't be enough barrages to severely impact the boat's health.

Also, have the warrior tank the first and third wave of adds while the DK runs around the ship solo soaking barrages. If he glyphs AMS he should be able to take two barrages in a row without receiving the debuff. As the Blood DK of our group I typically soak 6 or 7 barrages per attempt by myself. Glyph of Bone Shield will help him get around the boat faster, if he needs it.

For Onslaughts it doesn't look like you're factoring in tank 4 piece. The tanks don't need survival cooldowns during this point in the fight, so have the warrior Rallying Cry one and Shield Wall a couple others. Also, have the DK unglyph Vampiric Blood and use them on the Onslaughts.

The fire is random. Sometimes we have none going into phase 2, sometimes 90% of the ship is covered. Just remember to watch out for "fake fire". Pay attention to where the gnomes are pouring water and go stand in it after they leave that spot. The fire will disappear.

EDIT: Following the post above me... if you use this strat of ignoring barrages you will not be able to solo-soak onslaughts.

[Deleted]

Thanks for all your helpful tips!

So we need to focus on killing the drakes first before moving onto the melee adds.
We need to stop focusing on the barrages as much and let people solo take them with a defensive CD.
For the first two onslaughts don't pop a CD.
Let the DK and Warrior use a defensive CD during onslaught aswell.
Stop splitting the raid into groups/quadrants and take what you can.

Okay thanks alot, ill let the group know!

[Goyf]

To be clear, the reason for focusing down the drakes is that they are the ones that impact the ship's health, not the melee adds. The faster the dragons die, the fewer barrages that are thrown out, so the ship takes less damage. If you kill each drake before they fly away and manage to solo soak 5-6 barrages the ship should be on about 15% health going into phase two.

Also, if you find yourself struggling with the second or third set of adds, don't be afraid to use Bloodlust to kill them quickly. Assuming your DPS isn't shit, phase two is a cakewalk.

[Deleted]

To be clear, the reason for focusing down the drakes is that they are the ones that impact the ships health, not the melee adds. The faster the dragons die, the fewer barrages that are thrown out, so the ship takes less damage. If you kill each drake before they fly away and manage to solo soak 5-6 barrages the ship should be on about 15% health going into phase two.

Also, if you find yourself struggling with the second or third set of adds, don't be afraid to use Bloodlust to kill them quickly. Assuming your DPS isn't shit, phase two is a cakewalk.

Got it many thanks

[Deja Thoris]

This was a copy / paste from a thread yesterday. I tried to change things a bit to make them more applicable to you

Simple keys to success for this fight:
- Have one tank pick up both elites and tank them near a dragon to make dps easier.
- Kill drakes in one harpoon. If they fly off you've failed the dps check (this means you may need to change your target prio)
- Tank not on adds soaks at least 2 small barrages solo
- You have a good team for soaking small barrages. mages and spriest can all take one easily. Make sure they do this at the minimum. You only need to soak 4/6 to be safe. You can soak at least 6 trivially with DK's / cauterise and dispersion. Keep it simple. Tell your healers and others to avoid the barrages like the plague and don't make teams to soak, it just ends up in one person dieing because his buddy let him down.
- Deathgrip the sappers. (they arent an issue for you so meh)
- Soak the big onslaughts with 8/9 people. The only person who has an excuse for not getting in it is the tank with the elites. The damage is shared between people in the onslaught +1 (the +1 is the ship) If you have one person in it the ship takes huuuuuuge damage. If you have 9 in it it takes about 1/10th of the amount.
-GTFO immediately after the onslaught because a charge is coming to mow you down.
- You neglected to mention tank 4 sets as part of a cooldown rotation. Work them in to reduce stress on your healers.

If you can tick off the points above then getting to p2 is imminent which means a kill should follow shortly.

After every wipe do a 30 second post mortem. Did the drakes die within one pass? Did people soak a barrage as they were assigned to? Did someone fail to get in an onslaught? Did a sapper get though? This isn't about blame, its about seeing what went wrong so you know where you need to improve. This fight isn't about faceroll dps, its about execution and 10 people doing the little things right. If a charge is coming then break off that cast so you can run and avoid it and so on. Execution > all for this fight imo.

Good luck.

Edit* I can only echo the bit above about p2 being easy. We lost 2 dps because of a brainfart where an idiot tank (me!) didn't notice the dragon land and pick it up. We killed it at enrage with short 2 dps. It was our first kill and our first time to p2 so compared to p1 its a cakewalk.