What makes Heroic Blast furnace much harder than Normal?

[sarym13]

Okay so I pug my raids. Do the fights on Normal so I get a hang of it, and then switch to heroic.

Every fight I do so far on Heroic is fine except for Blast Furnace (and Blackhand, but that's another story). I usually 1 shot it on Normal with my pug groups. Really not that difficult for Normal from what I experience. But reading posts and seeing peoples kill counts it seems Heroic Blast Furnace is just a huge difference in dificulty. Haven't even got to try it yet on Heroic as for I keep getting denied (my Ilvl is 670. I always see 675+ Requirements in the Premade)

What I want to know is, what makes this fight harder than its Normal difficulty? I know all Normal / Heroic fights are the same, it just hits harder and more health, but is this really the same for Blast Furnace?

[dean771]

Normal can be done with most of the raid cleaving of random targets/aoeing, while heroic especialy at ilvl 670 needs a prety good ballance of cleave/aoe and single target burst

[AzeofSpadez]

I completely agree with you and I guess it has to do with the fact that if every single Primal Elementalist (Or several) get their shields back that puts an enormous strain on the healers since the damage of blast goes up so much.
On Normal not only do you have a bigger "chance" of killing the Elementalists in time due to the lower health but also the blast damage is way lower.

One Elementalist regaining its shield on Heroic is "bad", two is "extremely bad" and three is essentially a wipe in the long run.
Not to mention that other fuckups can be made as well of course like people stacking with volatile fire.

About the item level... The thing is that even though I'm quite certain that a full 20 man group of really skilled players could do Blast Furnace on Heroic with 660-665 what you're playing is a PuG and as we all know that means random people and random people can fuck up quite a bit and therefore you want their item level to be as high as possible in order to "counter" their potentially bad performance.
Oh and also, if the leader of a PuG-group is smart he will set a minimum item level in the Premade Group-system which will actually block anyone below that item level to even see the listed group so the people that want 675+ are really probably just people wanting to get boosted without having the item level themselves.

[Deleted]

I'm not saying this for everyone but a lot of pug raiders get carried, so while they have healthy ilvl's (some good rng luck on rolls) they may not meet the requirements in terms of general class knowledge and ability to perform their roll. Therefore you see a lot of groups ask 675-680 for Blast Furnace. They may have the gear but may not have essentially have it upstairs, it is a very demanding encounter.

If you mess up on a shield and not get it down in one attempt or you transition to P2 just when new operators spawn you may as well just wipe and save time as your chances of killing it decrease, as mentioned it will put strain on the healers.

[shaithis]

It is a long fight with many dynamics and there is a lot of wipe potential across the board. Just reaching last phase is a big deal, and then you have to deal with even more wipe potential. All of this makes it difficult to pug, also difficult for average guild (carrying multiple scrubs because they're frens etc). Just keep wiping and eventually you will get it (when the slow learners catch up).

[Deleted]

It's a fight that requires a lot of control and management. If not controlled properly, it becomes a clusterfuck which is very difficult to powerheal through, especially at ilvl 675 or lower.

Phase 1: people have to loot the bags asap and do the bombs, tanks have to watch for defense shields and react to them
Transition 1 to 2: people need to regroup (preferably with fox aspect) and ideally have no Operators up (or have them at low enough HP)
Phase 2: hardest one to control tbh. Dumb AE cleave doesn't work well, you have to single-target nuke prio targets. Also spread with the volatile thingy.
Phase 3: this one is quite easy if you don't have "that guy" that will always place melt in the damn raid

It's a hard fight to pug because one "that guy" makes it twice as hard as it needs to be. Two "those guys" means you're not killing it regardless of gear.

IMO it's the hardest boss in HC BRF prior to Blackhand. Its placement in the boss list (5th or so) doesn't matter at all because it is wing-end boss which is supposed to be harder than others. It's like Dark Animus in ToT, except it doesn't block you off from faceroll encounters that happened after it.

[Deleted]

Our guild just got our first kill this week at 678 avg ilvl, and whilst we're pretty casual, we're not a bunch of hopeless noobs - it's just a hard fight. Things that you can miss on normal but not on hc include:
1) You need to transition at not much more than 40 heat, or it becomes unhealable by the end of P2, which means you can't really miss any bombs, or slack on the target switching.
2) You need to get the elementalists down in a single shield burst (maybe 3/4 in one burst and the 4th in two is just about viable), which means that
3) you need every single firecaller heal interrupted, and every single reactive shield dispelled, so they don't heal.
4) the tank damage at the beginning of P2 is horrible, just horrible, and there's no way to avoid this if you're getting the transition in time as per point 1) above.

[KaPe]

As far as mechanical changes go, I believe that Elementalists shield down phase lasts shorter, which makes it more difficult to burst them down with a single slag elemental.

That, and "more health and damage" is usually enough to make fights more difficults, and it's especially true on bosses with adds and various self-buffs. Heat regulators have more hitpoints = you need more bombs = you get more adds and more Heat. Bombs hurt more (I think?) = people can actually kill themselves if they just rush the regulators and blow up 3 times at once. Same with chaining Volatile Fire in phase two, in addition to boss already doing more damage thanks to higher Heat. Could be issues with someone setting off Melt (or that thing in P1, whatever it's called) in middle of the raid - it actually does damage here.

[overdose]

Elementalists have more health and a shorter burst window by I think 10 secs, making it much harder to burst in one window. This change makes the whole fight a lot harder, due to increase raid damage if you dont finish in one window, and a much larger emphasis on burst single target on elementalists.

[Deleted]

I think what people don t realise is, that its way more important to kill the first and second elementarist "first try", then the 3rd and 4th, because until you come to kill the 3rd elementalist there will be plenty of pretty low slackelementals around. So you should defenitely keep cds for the first one and probably pots for the second. Maybe you could also use bloodlust on one of the first 2, since the last phase is not THAT hard compared to stay in p2 with 100 heat and adds overrunning you.

[Notdev]

Its just much more highly tuned, and damage on high priority targets is far more important, where in normal you can get away with just cleaving/aoeing everything.

Phase 1 is roughly the same but takes more bombs to push to p2.
Phase 2 is where the difference is hugely noticable. The elementalists are very tough to burn down in one go. We had to rotate people popping CDs/potions in week 1 when we did this as a 679~ group to get them down in one go. Youll have a far harder time to do so in a 670-675 ish pug that is less coordinated.

Elongating phase 2 by a lot also makes phase 3 harder because there will be more slag elementals up making things tougher on healers.

[pankind]

Skada. Recount. That is what makes people bad on furnace, normal you can get away with it, heroic doesn't allow it with the gear being used to attempt it. That is why all the heroic pugs tend to wipe when transitioning to the 2nd phase. Too much shit is alive still.

[FobManX]

BRF is really more of a priority single target fight than an AOE fight. If everyone in your raid just tries to spam AOE you will wipe repeatedly.