Blackhand Clarifications

[Xirek]

Okay mates, it's time for everyone's favorite topic, good ol' Blackhand. Our team has recently had some folks straight up un-sub and we're trying to just get this bastard down before the opportunity for AoTC runs out. The clock is ticking and now every night counts for us. Everything else has clicked but there's just something about this fight that seems to just jam folks up. I'm hoping you can help with some answers.

How Many To Bring to the Party?
There has been a number of debates regarding what is the optimal # of healers per players in this encounter. I've seen the basis of "1 healer per group of 4", and I've seen others saying bring an extra healer because of the metric tons of damage going out. We didn't really run into these issues when we were working Imperator Mar'gok so it's a bone of contention among leadership since nobody can really get a better answer than "go with what feels right".

• 15 Raiders - includes 3 healers traditionally for other Heroic content
• 20 Raiders - includes 4 healers traditionally for other Heroic content

Phase 2 Key Points
I'm curious as to what the majority enjoy using as a strategy in that phase (excluding abusing the power of certain classes to face-tank a demolisher). For our group we pick BH up and move him counter clockwise with Sieges coming opposite him and then following his path. Still feels chaotic to me.

• Where do you move Blackhand for the very first slag drop in P2? Hold him in center? Move to the north? Corner by balcony?
• Which way are you taking the Siege when it spawns opposite Blackhand at that point?
• What is your general kite pattern and where are your ranged players? Center? Running directly behind the siege?
• How many in the Balcony? Who goes? Healer or no healer? (We have Ret x 2, Feral, Wind-W, Rogue, DK to choose from)

How Much DPS Average is Enough?
Finally, what do people feel is an acceptable as ranged to be able to fight Blackhand Heroic? Trying to get a feel for the cutoff so that we can really make some solid progress with only the people truly capable to make such progress. Any class specific advice or tricks to be aware of?

Here is the comp that we are basically working with:

• 2 Fire Mages
• 2 Marksmen Hunters
• 1 Beastmaster Hunter
• 2 Demo Warlocks
• 1 Shadow Priest
• 2 Elemental Shaman

Thanks as always MMO-C, your advice and info is always appreciated by those with questions.

[Deleted]

1. You need the healing if you don't do things right, it's as simple as that. If your balcony's stay relatively clean, players know how to spread and don't fail the spears you can easily 3 heal this fight. As a more general rule of thumb i suggest bringing the extra healer, as things tend to go wrong.

2. Generally speaking, imho the best strategy is that boss stays relatively in the middle of the room and the demo goes in circles around it. Ranged evaluate their own situation and stand in a spot they know they can reach the demo from. Most important part imo is that the first 2 demos need to die before the third marks, so that the tanks soak up the third marks. This is important because you don't have anyone "painting" mortar shots in HC/normal, and if you let the demos cast the mortar you run out of space. I don't agree with this melee --> balcony, but Ret and rogue should be decent, because they can use their CD's, it will be a quite clear overall dps loss though.

3. If your raid comp can pull roughly 33k ST the boss will die 100%, if your dps do less than 27k it's almost certain that the boss will not die, your comp seems awfully flawed though. I know that heroic has some flexibility when it comes to specs and classes, so take these more like suggestions towards more dps rather than ultimatums.

Fire mages are a no go, they should play arcane, fire is in no shape or form competitive with the ST dps of arcane.
If your hunters have the 4 set, BM should do more dps than MM, also BM stampede provides ludicrous burst for p1&3.
Affliction is more useful than demonology on this particular boss fight, unless you have your warlocks do some of the balconies, but the difference is minor.
Shadow priest is decent if he can pull the numbers, they can do some amazing things on BH thanks to the demo multidotting.
Elemental shamans are good, if they can perform nothing particularly wrong with the spec/class.

General rule of thumb for blackhand is that the more ranged dps you have the merrier, assuming that they don't fail spears/mines and do enough dps to justify their spot.

Also bare in mind that my dps evaluations are based on what it required us to kill it on the first week, it's possible that the boss will die even with people doing sub 27k dps. It's quite obvious though that anyone who can do ~30k dps and stay alive should always be welcome to your setup.

[Rygore]

Coming from a raid lead/ranged officer that got our kill ~5 or 6 weeks ago:

The easiest way to look at how many healers to bring is: If you are meeting your dps requirements (p2 happens before 3rd demolition, seigemakers reach ~40% health for second marks to kill) then an extra healer is fine. If you reach a point where you are not making mistakes and have a healer that finds they have little to do, you can switch them to a dps instead.

We would usually keep boss centered for the first set of slag bombs (so there is a bit less of a run for the first siegemaker to run them over) and then kite him around the outside of the room. The sieges are kited back and forth through the middle of the stage, and there is generally a line of bombs set up so that they only make one or two passes before they die. As for stands, we had our melee group eat the smash, and everyone (except tank) would kill whatever adds were in their immediate vicinity before jumping down. If a lot of adds were up on any given smash, we had our ret pally or ww monk take care of a few extra but as the group got better there was little need for it.

For DPS: this was our very first kill https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/avpGVcPZNQrjTCkX . Most of the raid was around 30k for most of the fight but it ended with only 5 or so players alive so the end DPS was a bit lower. With the amount of time everyone has had to get gear and the ilvl buff to BRF most players should have no problem pulling this off. And, while comp is particularly important at this point, it seems... very odd to have 2 marks hunters and 2 fire mages for this single target fight. They will get a lot more out of this fight by switching to BM and Arcane, but whether or not they are willing to, or whether or not you ask them to is up to you. Fight is still very doable if they don't want to switch.