Heroic Blackhand with 13-ish people.

[Qraziness]

Copied the format from the "How to Make a Useful "Why Are We Wiping on this Boss" Thread" thread

1. Heroic Blackhand, specifically with 11-13 people. Some people have taken breaks and whatnot in the middle of our progression leaving us at pretty much the point where we need another healer but cannot sacrifice the DPS.

2. 2 Tanks Prot Warrior and Guardian Druid. 3 healers H Pally, Disc/Holy Priest, Resto Shaman. 6-8 DPS WW Monk, Enhance Sham, S Priest, 2 Hunters (no idea specs, but they both have pets), 2 Mages 1 is for sure Arcane and balance Druid.

3. 100+ wipes over 4 weeks. 2 weeks we spent 1 night each after farming the rest of the raid, 2 weeks we have devoted 2 full nights on BH.

4. Phase 2 is where we have all of our trouble. We were initially(when we had 20-ish people and could use 5 healers) trying to burn P2 down without doing balconies, we have since changed to doing balconies.

5. Generally players seem to just be dying to incidental dmg. For instance even though we have 2 people going up for balconies last night a Hunter went form about 75% to 0% just from the balcony dmg but tanks are taking so much that healers are having a hard time keeping up with everything.

6. We have tried having the WW (me) soak the 2 spears that a tank would otherwise have to since the siege is dying before them, using Zen Med, but the DoT ticks for more than 100k and its worse on me than a tank. We have started trying to stack loosely in the center of the room to hopefully mitigate some AOE dmg with more AoE healing. We are currently having hunters stay opposite Blackhand to pick up tanks and kite them over bombs while tanks strafe the outside of the clump of raiders. An S Priest and Boomkin are doing Balconies every smash. I was wondering about adding another person just for smash dmg and not balconies, but you are stunned while in midair and when I did it for instance, you cannot Transcendence back down, or charge or w/e.

7. I hesitate to share logs, however I will do so.
AMR infographic/data from 5/11 http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/combat...f6076/overview
WCL raid logs https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/aQ8HvNRgCfDJVMGz

Unfortunately the newest logs from this week are not up yet, and we raid again tonight. These 2 are I think prior to us swapping our strat to do the balconies although we may have changed to doing them for this night already.

Any ideas/tips/sympathy greatly appreciated

[Radish Spirit]

We have tried having the WW (me) soak the 2 spears that a tank would otherwise have to since the siege is dying before them

Why not use your 2nd tank for this?

We handled Siegemaker/Impales like this:

1) Use first set of Impales + Bomb to break armor plating.
2) DPS Siegemaker down to ~30%. Stop DPS.
3) Use second set of Impales to kill Siegemaker.
4) For third set of Impales, targeted players move together and offtank absorbs the Impales.

Even if the tanks are helping in the Balcony, they should have plenty of time to come back down and get in position for the Impales.

If you're having trouble keeping your tanks alive once they have the DoT, try cycling some external CDs.

I'll look at logs and say more shortly.

Here's our last kill: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Gw7pK2dWb1FPNCTc

[Qraziness]

Even if the tanks are helping in the Balcony, they should have plenty of time to come back down and get in position for the Impales.

If you're having trouble keeping your tanks alive once they have the DoT, try cycling some external CDs.

This is what we are having the most trouble with. I tried the Zen Med thing once before we ruled that out as a viable strategy. It seems that we don't have a powerful enough CD available for after the 2nd or 3rd Siege dies. It's roughly at this point that someone dies. Either a tank, or a DPS followed generally by another 2-3 DPS.

Honestly the group is mostly of the opinion that we have just the right number of people to not be able to do the fight without absolutely perfect execution. Something my guild is definitely not known for. Specifically we really want to have another healer, but it seems like 4 healers for 12-13 people is rather unrealistic as far as the DPS requirement? We were bringing 5 for 15 people a couple weeks ago and we at least saw P3 a couple times where we actually had mostly everyone up and could put some real effort into learning it. That was BEFORE we started doing balconies though and a couple people have left for work/family reasons for the time being, so we have less people available now.

[Caruktna]

Hi,

So... here are a few comment that could be usefull: (general and from attempt 15 -longest-)

Phase 1:

- Dont stand in mines. People need to stay away from them. A priest and a mage got hit 9 and 5 times respectivelly in all attempts. Then need to watch where they are stepping.

- Impales: non tanks them too much. That cannot happen... you NEED to get behind derbis/tank. Its the most important mechanic in the encounter and one you need to dominate. The priest didnt follow the mechanic and ate one. Thats a huge amout of dmg for healers to catch up to.

Phase 2:

- Dont get in front of the Sieges...

- You need to send more people upstairs to deal with the adds. At 2:30 you have way too many adds on both sides of the balcony, and only 1 tank going up. you need a dps.

- Tarene got marked and didnt went behind the siege (2:42), your healers SHOULD NOT be kitting the sieges! thats a hunters job!

- At this point, the adds on the balcony are killing you, look at Zaea, he is doing fine, but getting way too much damage from balcony. That plus a dead healer is not good. Most of the damage you are taking comes from the balconies. You need to sort it out. Also, you need to spread 6 yards on phase 2 because the balconies do splash dmg (so stacking is not much of a good idea).

It would be great to see newer logs with another strat (killing balconies)

[Broccoliz]

We have our tank jump down immediately after being smashed to the balcony. We do not send up a healer. For 20 people, we sent up 3-4 dps, so for 11-13, you should be fine sending 2-3. I would send your enhance shaman and your WW monk as they both have strong defensive CDs and self heals (allowing them to not need a healer so healer can focus on the more intense ground). Make sure they are not staying up longer than 10-15 seconds or the DoT can really start to hurt. (PRO TIP: During p1 smash, your boomkin can glyph into flap and flap to the first balcony, taking care of the first wave by himself.)

All range should be loosely stacked behind the SIEGEMAKER, not in the center (only reason to be mid is to avoid luring the siegetank - hunters should be kiting the siegetank - not going up on balconies).

Two rounds of mark should go into a SIEGE, then third set of marks needs to be soaked by the OFF TANK. No one else can handle the DoT, it's just not gonna happen without ooming your healers. So, OFF TANK soaks the two marks, TANK gets smashed up, so OFF TANK begins tanking the boss. This hurts a bit, BUT, your SMASHED UP TANK should hop down immediately and regain agro so that the only damage the bleeding tank is the bleed, not melee hits. This makes it pretty much unnoticeable to your healers (I am one... and I barely notice.)

After 3rd smash, we hop down hero burn boss, pop a healer CD at about 33% so everyone is fully topped off. (So, a third SIEGE will spawn - all marks still need to go into the siege, but there should be no DPS on it and essentially it should be ignored so you can continue dumping marks into it. The three rounds of marks will destroy it just in case you get a 4th SIEGE.)

P3 is a joke once you learn "left" bomb and "right" mark. If you are struggling with p2, hero p2. It helps morale to see p3 and a kill usually soon follows.

On whether or not to add another healer.... as long as you can burn the boss before a 3rd demolition in p1, your DP is good. If you add a healer and can't burn him before the 3rd demolish, do not add a third healer as your DPS is not good.

Last I guess for kiting - it's very very simple. See wherever the bombs are? Kite it to the bombs. I don't care if that's a moon shaped, a donut shaped, a bacon shaped, path.... I don't care how many raiders are between you and the bomb... kite the siege to the bombs, everyone else will move accordingly, and GG. It is up to your TANKS to poop the bombs at reasonable spots for your kiter to move to. The TANKS determine the path (by dropping the bombs), not the kiter. The kiter will go wherever the bombs are.

[Qraziness]

To be honest I can't say for certain the OT isn't letting the smashed tank retake Blackhand after soaking. I would imagine that they are. I'm melee so I just punch things lol. We did have quite the debate about who to send up on balconies though, and we found that I (WW Monk) and the Enhance could not effectively kill things in the amount of time we had up top before we had to drop or die. Many times I stayed just long enough to kill something and drop with 2-3% HP only to die from splash AOE when I dropped. The concensus was that the S Priest and Boomkin have better burst and range so they don't have to run around up top, also their DoTs are strong enough that in 2 trips up they can clear a side without any trouble. We weren't able to do that unless the tank stayed up with us.

Also, I wish I had logs from last night to link, as they are certainly more relevant and it did feel as if we made legitimate progress. If they are put up tonight, which I will specifically ask that they are, I will post them. But anyways, some of the problems you guys mention, basically people eating spears and stepping on mines aren't really much of the issue anymore. It happens sometimes, but certainly not every attempt. Mines are rarely triggered, at least in Melee. Spears seem to be handled well, but then again you get people getting targeted as they get smashed up, and that is a crock of shit.

[Radish Spirit]

This is what we are having the most trouble with. I tried the Zen Med thing once before we ruled that out as a viable strategy. It seems that we don't have a powerful enough CD available for after the 2nd or 3rd Siege dies. It's roughly at this point that someone dies. Either a tank, or a DPS followed generally by another 2-3 DPS.

You can't have the same tank soak every set, there isn't enough time for stacks to fall off. Here's the flow of our Phase 2:

1. Tank A grabs boss in middle of room. Let him drop one set of bombs, then move to the SE for 1st balcony.
2. At smash, Tank B taunts boss and moves back toward the middle of the room. After another set of bombs, move to the SW for 2nd balcony.
3. Meanwhile, Tank A is returning from balcony in time to soak 3rd set of Impales.
4. Smash follows shortly after 3rd Impales. Tank A taunts again and moves back towards middle.
Repeat from Step 1.

This accomplishes a couple things: a) Bombs in the middle of the room not near the boss can be used by the Siegemaker kiter to debuff the Siegemaker without getting too close to the boss/melee group. b) Picking up new Siegemakers is easier, because the raid is almost always on the southern side of the room so Siegemakers come out at predictable spots. c) Balcony group always knows where to be for smashes. We put marks down at the SE and SW side as soon as we drop down, and these are the two smash locations.

Honestly the group is mostly of the opinion that we have just the right number of people to not be able to do the fight without absolutely perfect execution.

Not sure group size has a lot to do with this. That basically just describes the fight. It is incredibly tightly tuned. If DPS get hit by an impale, it's not just extra damage - it upsets the entire flow of the fight because that's a ton of damage that the Siegemaker was supposed to take and did not. Then you get mortar fire and... wipe.

There's just very little room for mistakes. Our first kill took us 99 pulls - more than every other boss combined. I don't think it's uncommon.

[Dracodraco]

10-15 people is easy enough either way you cut it. We were selling BH boosts for a few weeks, 10 main raiders/high geared alts for 5 people (so 10 people doing a 15 man encounter).
You have a boomkin, so have him solo every balcony. Adds only have like 120K health, starfall and dot them and jump down. All he should be doing that phase is running to balconies.
Everything else has already been covered.
If you have a well geared DK available someday (+680 ilvl), consider going with 3 tanks. Let the DK solo all balconies (diseases + invincible tank upstairs does just as good a job as boomkin), and let your 2 other tanks rotate who takes marks and tanks boss. Neither will take the burst from smashes (DK solo), which means they can spend cds lowering dmg for healers. Also have a third tank for P3 if someone gets knocked off; It's a bit slower, but a lot safer.

[Qraziness]

You can't have the same tank soak every set, there isn't enough time for stacks to fall off. Here's the flow of our Phase 2:

1. Tank A grabs boss in middle of room. Let him drop one set of bombs, then move to the SE for 1st balcony.
2. At smash, Tank B taunts boss and moves back toward the middle of the room. After another set of bombs, move to the SW for 2nd balcony.
3. Meanwhile, Tank A is returning from balcony in time to soak 3rd set of Impales.
4. Smash follows shortly after 3rd Impales. Tank A taunts again and moves back towards middle.
Repeat from Step 1.

This accomplishes a couple things: a) Bombs in the middle of the room not near the boss can be used by the Siegemaker kiter to debuff the Siegemaker without getting too close to the boss/melee group. b) Picking up new Siegemakers is easier, because the raid is almost always on the southern side of the room so Siegemakers come out at predictable spots. c) Balcony group always knows where to be for smashes. We put marks down at the SE and SW side as soon as we drop down, and these are the two smash locations.

Some really solid advice that I think we can adapt to our raid. Again i'm melee and my face is pretty much in ole Handjobs testes all night, so i'm not terribly aware of how the ranged group is handling things, but i'm pretty sure this isn't it. I haven't noticed too much discussion on how/where to position everyone and with comments to the effect "so and so was out of range and I couldn't heal them" it seems like we are in need of some extra thought along this particular line of reasoning. It makes a terrible amount of sense to put the tank between the boss and the ranged group. I can only see arrows when someone gets Marked, but I do know that they are pointing in opposite directions pretty often. Very seldom are those arrows near to each other until the spears go out.

Anyway, there is some discussion on my guild forums already about how/where to change up our strat for this evening. Sadly it looks like I won't be in attendance tonight, but hopefully I can be there. I'm really hoping our discussions yield results.

Thanks a ton for the help so far. Any additional thoughts are more than welcome.

[Broccoliz]

Range getting picked for mark is why we tend to stick with sending melee up. It is perfectly normal to not kill every soldier up there. DoT everything you can, kill 1-2, rinse repeat. Boomies and spriests are both very OP at DoTing so not bad choices (boomkin can solo as stated before) but if you keep hearing the "I got mark + smash" excuse you need to do something different as that is always going to happen and you can't do much about it. If you get mark, you need to refrain from going into the smash that round and a backup DPS needs to go. You can NOT get smashed + soak a mark, just not gonna happen.


No one should be out of range, because literally everyone should be following around the siegemaker (or in melee/tank case, be moving in front of the siegemaker / the siegemaker is always heading towards the melee group where the bombs will soon be). If anyone gives the "so and so" was out of range excuse again, it's because "so and so" or the healer was not behind the siegemaker like they should be.

Positioning is extremely easy p2... be by the giant siegemaker... GG

And again, the dot on stands ticks HARDER the longer you are up there. You should be jumping down at 30% health, no more, because the dot is about to ramp up and take you down to 0 very quickly. Living is more important than MAYBE killing one more soldier.

[Deleted]

- At this point, the adds on the balcony are killing you, look at Zaea, he is doing fine, but getting way too much damage from balcony. That plus a dead healer is not good. Most of the damage you are taking comes from the balconies. You need to sort it out. Also, you need to spread 6 yards on phase 2 because the balconies do splash dmg (so stacking is not much of a good idea).

Yeah I just looked at a few random logs and you take 3m(~33%) more "splash damage" than My 18m first kill because your not killing enough on balcony and your all stacked on top of each other [DBM puts a big radar up that turns red if somebody is in range]

[Dracodraco]

Range getting picked for mark is why we tend to stick with sending melee up. It is perfectly normal to not kill every soldier up there. DoT everything you can, kill 1-2, rinse repeat. Boomies and spriests are both very OP at DoTing so not bad choices (boomkin can solo as stated before) but if you keep hearing the "I got mark + smash" excuse you need to do something different as that is always going to happen and you can't do much about it. If you get mark, you need to refrain from going into the smash that round and a backup DPS needs to go. You can NOT get smashed + soak a mark, just not gonna happen.


No one should be out of range, because literally everyone should be following around the siegemaker (or in melee/tank case, be moving in front of the siegemaker / the siegemaker is always heading towards the melee group where the bombs will soon be). If anyone gives the "so and so" was out of range excuse again, it's because "so and so" or the healer was not behind the siegemaker like they should be.

Positioning is extremely easy p2... be by the giant siegemaker... GG

And again, the dot on stands ticks HARDER the longer you are up there. You should be jumping down at 30% health, no more, because the dot is about to ramp up and take you down to 0 very quickly. Living is more important than MAYBE killing one more soldier.

There's no way that getting picked by impale should ever force you to not get sent up by a smash, by the way. On Heroic he only smashes every 45 seconds (it's every 30 on mythic), which coincides with the fact that he throws out Impales every 15 seconds. Essentially, everytime he gets to the third impale in a set, it's time for smash. That just so happens to be the impale that one of your tanks has to soak, which means that your <insert class with a great excuse here> can literally be standing in the melee (tad exaggerated, but you get the point, melee would probably be risky) and get ready for the smash to go up. Unless you do 3x sets of impales into a demo, there's just no way you can ever miss the balcony on heroic. You get 5 seconds to run into the circle after it's gone out, and you can place yourself literally two yards away.

As for "not normal to kill off all the adds", I disagree. Killing 1-2 at a time you might aswell not be killing any and save the dps for burning the boss. Either you go up to slaughter, or you don't go up at all. If you mean 1-2 per person, that's fair enough, but then you need to send 3-4 people up so everything DOES die. Leaving stragglers up is just bad for everyone.

[Broccoliz]

You may disagree, but it works for my team so you can't say it's not viable. Just throwing out options so he has options, I find each team does it differently. It's a waste to sit up there, and OP appears to be losing people to it. Solution? Stop sitting up there. Dot, kill 1-2, jump back down. Stragglers barely hurt us, our healers are capable of healing and we loosely spread. Way easier for us to spend less time on the stands, thus less time in p2. It all balances out.

[Qraziness]

Very good advice guys! So, we know what are problems are, in general. And again I had to link logs from the 11th because no newer ones were posted yet. I was only in for half the night tonight, but from what I saw we were getting it down. We finally stuck with a strategy of, as soon as P2 starts, tank heads to the nearest wall and ranged hangs out near mid. A hunter stands near the gate and picks up the focus from Siege. At this point everyone sorta collapses in behind it and follows along behind the tank as the hunter heads directly for the mines and the tank takes boss around the edge of the room to the opposite side. Boomy was going up top alone and I was blowing Zen Med to eat smashes if people looked low, which I honestly have no idea if that was beneficial or not. It was working fairly well towards the end of the night and we actually got in a solid P3. By that I mean we only had 1 death right as P3 started but we were so excited about it we totally screwed up bombs and killed a tank almost immediately.

However, seeing as how for 2 weeks we haven't seen P3, we are pretty stoked to get in some more Blackhandjobs next week. Which will be really really weird because we will be missing a tank. Anyways we will see how it goes. If I get newer logs i'll post them so you can check those out. We still had a couple people taking spears every now and then, but nothing like it has been before. Seems like people are getting it. Although I did notice that my fellow melee and the tanks blew me up a couple more times than usual. But I can forgive that :P

[Radish Spirit]

It's a waste to sit up there, and OP appears to be losing people to it. Solution? Stop sitting up there.

The other solution is to send a healer to balconies which, if your healers are capable, is totally viable.

If you look at logs, OP is also losing people to Explosive Rounds and as in his post above is losing people at the P2-3 transition, which very often happens when people are low from ER damage.

Obviously you can rush-job the balconies and still make it work, but I really don't think it's the optimal strategy. Especially not for a team with a functional Boomkin.

OP, don't forget your Warlock can land on the balcony on the way down from Phase 1 and clear the entire first wave of adds on his/her own. This helps a ton basically allowing you to skip the first balcony entirely (adds will be dead already).

[robyanhuz]

It's a waste to sit up there, and OP appears to be losing people to it.

[Lunice]

You have a Warlock and Balance Druid (seen in your logs) so you could try what works well for my guild.

We have a Warlock (me) Demonic Leap on to the first balcony (left side) after the fall from phase 1, and clear the first adds solo. Just pop Dark Soul, Shadowfury as the adds come out (they all come from the same place) to hold them together and Chaos Wave x3 (with 4pc) and they will die instantly. Tank can solo the smash (will probably need a CD) so all DPS can focus the boss until next Smash.

For 2nd smash, we have our Monk healer and me (Warlock) go up on the 2nd balcony (right side) and kill everything there, but send our Boomkin to the opposite balcony to solo that side (left side).

For 3rd smash, we switch places and our Boomkin goes to the right side balcony alone to solo, and I (Warlock) goes to the left side balcony (there shouldn’t be any adds on it if Boomy was successful) and wait for the adds to spawn and repeat Shadowfury, Dark Soul, and Chaos Wave x3.

Have tank solo 4th smash and keep everyone else down to push boss into phase 3.

This works well for us, at least, and means balconies are a complete non-issue for phase 2.

[Radish Spirit]

Have tank solo 4th smash and keep everyone else down to push boss into phase 3.

Just a very tiny nitpick, but an un-shared smash can hit very hard - like 475k+. Timed badly with an Explosive Round or tick of Impale and it can practically be a one-shot even for a relatively well-geared tank.

Even if you're planning to skip the balcony, we found it was still best to share with at least one person for safety's sake. I guess you could use a CD for it, but it's pretty simple to just split it.

[Dracodraco]

Just a very tiny nitpick, but an un-shared smash can hit very hard - like 475k+. Timed badly with an Explosive Round or tick of Impale and it can practically be a one-shot even for a relatively well-geared tank.

Even if you're planning to skip the balcony, we found it was still best to share with at least one person for safety's sake. I guess you could use a CD for it, but it's pretty simple to just split it.

Which is why all good tanks time the smashes with some active mitigation/CD. I rune tap every one as a DK and barely get tickled down to 70% HP, Warriors can either barrier or block it (fairly sure it's blockable dmg), druids have insane healthpools + regen to heal up after, Paladins time SOTR, and monks are stagger/guard machines. It should never be a concern that the tank is dying, if your tank is even halfway competent.

[Radish Spirit]

Which is why all good tanks time the smashes with some active mitigation/CD. I rune tap every one as a DK and barely get tickled down to 70% HP, Warriors can either barrier or block it (fairly sure it's blockable dmg), druids have insane healthpools + regen to heal up after, Paladins time SOTR, and monks are stagger/guard machines. It should never be a concern that the tank is dying, if your tank is even halfway competent.

All very true, but still a pointless risk in my opinion. Sharing the smash with 1 other person literally has zero effect on the fight flow. You're out of the fight for maybe 3-4s. Share it with a healer and you don't even lose DPS...

Even with a mitigation CD up, a 600k raw hit at the wrong time is not ideal and there's simply no reason not to share it.

But, you know. Do what you want. If solo soaking it makes you feel like a big man then do that.