[PvE Guide] Quick Tips for Blackrock Foundry Bosses

[shaithis]

MAKE SURE to read the rest of the thread in conjunction with the OP, many great comments here already that I do not presently have time to consolidate into one post.

Also, very relevant to this post is this awesome collection of WeakAuras for BrF, note that you should go in and further tweak them to add sound effects, etc, also I believe that Rupture (Furnace) was missing.

OK, well this started as a reply to Shadohw's excellent sticky thread, but got way bigger than I was previously expecting, so I am going to go ahead and make it into a separate thread. These tips are coming from my experience running heroic pugs this weekend and from reading various forum posts all over the interwebs. I am 7/10 kill 9/10 experience heroic, and normal blackhand to 2% after many wipes. Feel free to ask other questions and add your own tips, let me know if there is anything I missed and I will consolidate / answer as I have more time, need to go catch up on some work for next few hours though. I will continue to update with my experience as well, should be getting into Mythic by following week.


General Tips / Advice

Gruul - Subt, CloS inferno slashes to help heals, use step for smashes (don't use after shatter as you run the risk of getting instagibbed by overwhelming blows), OK to leave your stack for SHORT time periods in between slashes if you cannot backstab. Take Cheat Death for the guaranteed save if you bomb mechanics or if mechanics bomb you. Feint your own shatters. This is a very high-uptime fight so it may be worthwhile tinkering with MfD over Anticipation (dump CP before running out).

Additional notes and community input - do not use shadowstep here as you may get hit by overwhelming blows, move right or left from your stack instead, can generally continue to DPS boss right up to the shatter. Also, it is possible to CloS immune petrifying slam as long as you cast it right before the animation, once you are knocked up it's too late. See rest of thread for more details, would advise not doing this for progression (CloS inferno slashes instead).

Oregorger - Subt, take Burst of Speed and MfD for crates, glyph Hemo, Feint his wall smash raid damage, Cheat Death will save you once per pacman phase, can CloS explosive shards but just strafe with group, save it for running thru pools in phase 2. Watch timer on phase 2 so you don't waste Find Weakness uptime. Don't spam BoS like you're in an arena match, just use every 4 secs or as you need it.

More input 2/18/15 - for those of you who will be new to MfD as of this fight, the ideal time to use the first one is for an extra Evis for your clone, from there try to be extra careful with your combo points, try not to Vanish or Dance with >3. All the damage you will gain on crates will make up for a few wasted CPs here or there, though, just make sure to open with Hemo, then evis, let people behind you kill it while you put SV up on next, MfD evis, repeat.

Furnace - Subt (!), glyph Hemo, talent Feint, this is a single-target fight disguised as a cleave fight. Combat is fine on normal though. Very important to make press extraaction1 macro to manually detonate bombs on you so you don't stand around looking pretty waiting for them to tick down. Note that most mobs are stunnable, KS with internal bleeding does shitton of damage and is probably better than PotW unless half the raid has you on assist.

Additional notes and community input - rupture and volatile file are removed by cloak. Interrupt Feldspar, use step kick macro or just make sure that you end up on the side where he is tanked, watch nameplates. Firecallers are top priority target for KS. Feint blasts to help healers, can add boss as focus and watch his energy bar, feint when it gets close to 100%.

Arnold - Combat or Assn (ideally combat if you're multistrike geared), glyph CloS and Killing Spree. Use area between conveyor belts to move around instead of running against traffic. If combat, be mindful that you want to be smart about BF, when one of them jumps up you probably want to keep it off until they are all the way back down (maybe turn on for a few moments if you see red arrow close to you - the other is about to hop in). With practice you should avoid having BF on cooldown for when mechanics stop and both of the bosses are cleavable. Always CloS before Spree, the Spree glyph is important because you don't want to be stuck in middle of nowhere if KS takes you to where one of them was hopping around on its last tick.

Additional notes and community input - Protip is to stand in the area between four plates as much as you can so you don't have to move a lot to get safe. Don't forget that merely touching the plates after they are down will result in full damage taken, don't be that guy who tops avoidable damage meters.

Flamebender - Spec-neutral, go Combat if guild needs more cleave, otherwise Subt, Assn if you must (it's a great fight for it, but the spec is still way undertuned), Feint glyph and talent, be mindful that wolves will swap around so you will not be cleaving / DPSing the same one during the entire phase, this IMO makes this a strong encounter for Assn as you will have Rupture / poisons rolling on all three targets. As Subt, delay dance / vanish usage for wolves if they spawning soon, also resist urge to take Hemo glyph, just pool CP and open with Rupture on wolves. As combat, CloS before every Spree, try to drag out Medium Insight a tad if you are going to hit Deep Insight just before wolf phase. Keep Feint up during Firestorm. Don't be afraid to run over fire lines, they don't do that much damage.

Additional notes - I am finding that I like Subt more than combat for this fight, cooldowns line up very nicely with mechanics. Here it's actually worthwhile to wait a few seconds on your first dance, which will give you the second one in time for wolves; refresh rupture on boss, backstab a few times, then walk to the first wolf you see, rupture > dance, and step to the other wolf if the first gains Fixate; now you have bleeds / poisons on three targets for a short time with added benefit that, when the fixate wolf switches to overheated, it will generally still have a few seconds of rupture on it. Given the ease of pulling this off, I haven't felt the need to take Hemo glyph.

Kromog - Subt fight, Cheat Death, CloS glyph, consider Feint talent and glyph also if you're comfortable not dying during hand phase. Very important - STAY AT MAX RANGE from boss and get out / in during Slams, this is the Texas damage that people keep taking randomly until they realize how to stop it. Don't stand in Onions, can feint their damage. Make sure raid knows that whoever gets to a hand first does not move, try to get in the middle of everyone so you can cleave many hands (priority is SnD > Rupture on your hand > CT damage on all hands with FoK as builder obv). If you place yourself in the middle of nowhere, you are not going to have a good time. Save Step cooldown for getting back to boss after hand phase, and for the following - if you MISS a hand, immediately Feint, CloS on knockup, pop health tonic, pray, and shadowstep to a hand on the way down. GL on trinket, lost a warforged heroic one to a huntard (EDIT- TWICE NOW!) gg.

Additional notes and community input - second dance comes up for first hand phase, burn it to get out fast so that you can position better to FoK > Evis spam to get out tanks, healers, etc, don't just go mongo on FoK CT to pad meters get those tanks out and feint the Stone Breath if you are slow. Also, for onions, try to get between them and boss whenever possible as their movement paths are not predictable, when in doubt Feint!

More input 2/18/15 - after playing Subt a few times for this fella, I am liking it less, cooldowns just don't really line up that well, plus the huge hitboxes on the hands make it super easy to cleave a ton of them, and KS can be used as a last resort teleport if you get knocked up for some reason. Just be careful about using KS on the boss, good time to do so is AFTER a slam + onions start moving, converse is a VERY BAD time... Actually I have now performed a full reverse on this after dozens of wipes with guild group, the only issue with cooldowns is really the first dance, which you can either blow on your hand (in practice this is dangerous if there is heavy raid cleave dropping hands) or just save until the boss, of course this means that you will need to delay your second SR as well, so not super-efficient but still manageable to do big damage. Going to review logs of top Subt rogues on this fight later to determine what they are doing, not entirely pleased with 86% bracket. ALSO, I have verified that it is relatively straightforward to survive a knockup, shadowstep down immediately, CloS, keep Feint up, very doable.

Darmac - Combat, take MfD and Feint glyph, potentially Spree glyph. Stick to boss, consider 'stepping to packs of adds if some tard stuns them out of cleave range, as chances are that the boss will make his way back to them if tanks are good. Keep Feint up during Wyvren and final phase unless you are feeling real baller. You can cheese some cleave by positioning so that you are between boss and spears, clearly you want to get between boss and packbeasts while they are up. GL beating those boomkin, flapflapflapflapflapflapflap (i beat a 655 one but I think that he spent half the fight afk).

Additional notes and community input - you can and should use Shiv to remove his enrage, the WeakAuras I linked will give you a popup icon that will alert you of this. Use cloak to dodge Tantrum (elekk). Also, don't be a tunneler, make sure that you are stepping out for Rend and Tear, as it will start to raep you after 2+ stacks. You can ignore this mechanic more or less by using Step to jump to the boss right when it lands, don't get trigger happy and mash it as soon as it leaves your melee range.

Operator - Combat, take MfD and Sprint glyph, potentially Spree glyph, get ThogarAssist addon. Manage cooldowns and insight stacks intelligently to coincide with add phases, cleave off of Men at Arms when they are up, try to get the raidsplit side that will be holding the boss. If you get hit by train, -50 DKP for shaming the rogue class.

Maidens - Combat or Assn, possibly Subt for the added benefit during last phase and for the Bleeding Hollow boat phase, Cheat Death, glyph Feint. Try to get up on the boat, we have so many ways to be useful. Sprint to the boat, also sprint to the disarm console (it will be back up). The medic who casts Earthern Shield does so after every 2 casts of Lightning shit, so you and another melee should be able to cycle interrupts, use nameplates to see it start casting then switch targets, ideally turn off Blade Flurry here because damage on medic does not matter, and you know in your heart and soul that you are leet. For big fucker on boat phase, you have 2 seconds until the corrupted blood starts to raep you, so be careful. For fuckers who fixate on boat stage, I believe that you can tank it with Evasion but not 100% sure, just make sure that you are facing them, anyway cleave onto the rogue wannabe feller from the fixate fuckers as they will drop people otherwise, kite in small circle around boss if your evasion is down, also KS one every 20 seconds for big damage + control, pretty sure internal bleeding is still > PotW here but I suppose that both are fine. You will want to Feint as you are flying back to the party, make sure you are topped off as you may get randomly gibbed by mines, rapid fire or some other nastiness. I am curious as to whether the mines are mitigated by unglyphed CloS or not, anyone know?

Blackhand - Subt fight, glyph Feint, take Cheat Death for early progression, and Elusiveness once you are reaching Phase 3 consistently. Positioning is everything here, watch mines, and don't stand between arrow and MfD target. Try not to get sent to balcony in phase 2 cuz we die fast up there and don't have huge on-demand burst that does not ultimately hurt boss dps bigtime, job for fur and plate! Keep your dick on Feint basically the entirety of phase 3, and use it for phase transitions also. If you had to run out with bomb, do NOT stack with the group for the massive strike or you will get gibb'd (well, not with CD but chances are that you will get gibb'd shortly after from something else). It is better to stand in explosions with Feint than it is to stand in other people's bombs or the massive strike if you have Slagged debuff. Your raid should have assigned a specific direction in which to drag bombs, don't go the other way because you will be likely to get Impaled. When you are able to stack for massive strike, obviously you want to Feint it, also make sure that you do not get knocked into something bad, this goes for mines as well. In fact, save Step cooldown exclusively for getting back to the boss from midair, saved my ass many times when I was sent in the wrong direction over the cliff. Use Smoke Bomb during early phase 2 if you go up to balcony, and then in phase 3 as a raid cooldown for the massive strike towards end of fight.

Additional notes and community input - careful with step when he is throwing spears (arrows) as you may put yourself in position where you eat one or both. Keep step off cooldown if you are about to transition to phase 2, very small window of time right after floor drops where you can step to him so that you drop down to the middle of the room, instead of in that aggravating "just outside of step range" crap. Can vanish the sticky bombs on phase 3.



Bonus Roll - Worth or NO?

Gruul - easy NO, even if you don't have Meaty I would save the token unless you have tons, haste is not the best stat for cleave and this is an early boss that should die every week ezpz. Also no tier, no other fantastic drops.

Oregorger - big YES, BiS dagger for both Combat cleave and Subt, also an excellent ring, an OK hat that may or may not be an upgrade.

Furnace - drops tier legs, so YES until you get a token, also BiS neck but not critical, Gruul's is almost as good so I would stop after getting tier.

Arnold - easy NO, the belt is OK, the hammer is great, but it won't be mainhand half the time and there are plenty of good slow weapons all over the place, so less priority than Oregorger, also no tier. Unless you have lots of people ahead of you for the hammer, have some 645 mess and can't be bothered to PUG H Kargath / Twins, I would not waste a roll here.

Flamebender - drops tier chest, so YES until you get a token. The shoulders are OK but not better than tier, dagger not worth unless Oregorger one just not dropping and yours is terribad (pre-Ko'ragh heroic, pug him first for the week). Ring is OK but not BiS, you may get one or all of these drops before you roll or loot a tier so it won't be the end of the world either way (unless you get gold!)

Kromog - drops tier helm AND our BiS trinket for both combat and subt, so big YES until you get both! Also drops BiS bracers which you may get at some point as icing. His cloak is not great but may or may not be an upgrade for yours.

Darmac - NO, does not drop tier, both leather pieces are very good but will be replaced by tier eventually, hope you win /random or loot council for them and save bonus rolls for other bosses.

Operator - drops tier shoulders and BiS belt, so YES until you get the tier, hopefully you will get the belt too. Wrists are not ideal but can do in a pinch.

Maidens - drops tier gloves and BiS cloak, BiS boots, and a very good helm, so YES until you at least get the tier, potentially keep rolling if your boots and cloak are really bad (but those are not huge stat weight slots so may be better to hoard the seals for weapon / trinket / other tier).

Blackhand - big YES, drops all tier, the BiS offtier slot (pants), a BiS trinket, and a decent sword, bonus roll on this fool every kill.

To summarize the above, good candidates for bonus rolls are Oregorger, Furnace, Flamebender, Kromog, Operator, Maidens and Blackhand, bad candidates are Gruul, Arnold and Darmac. Note that we do NOT get seven bonus rolls per week, sooo next step is to develop a priority list. The following is what i would use if you need all of the key drops (dagger, trinkets, all tier), once you get at least one of the critical pieces from each boss I would move back to the end of the queue. Kromog = Blackhand > Oregorger > Furnace (until you at least get Blackhand legs) > Maidens > Flamebender > Operator. Note that Furnace takes precedence over Maidens since legs give more stats than gloves, feel free to swap these around if you already have good legs and/or 4pc tier.

By the way, don't be a dick and wait on bonus rolls for tier that just dropped until you see whether your guild will slip you one that just dropped, set bonuses are a big deal for everyone and it will help your guild more if you proc one via bonus roll so they can potentially complete another member's set, etc. Also, note that this is purely from Heroic perspective; if you are still progressing in normal and maybe doing a few heroics on the side, make sure to save tokens equivalent to the number of heroic bosses that you plan to drop, and to use on each one, even the three that are not optimal. Finally, before anyone asks, yes I was using Subt stat priority since it shares itemization (for the most part) with cleave combat, and you are playing Subt for the encounter that requires the most out of you and the raid.




WIP - Needs Verification

Kromog, if it is possible to survive the knockup without fail with smart use of our abilities(YES it is possible, see comments in thread for more info), it will likely be better to NOT get caught in a hand so that you can have perfect positioning for subsequent cleave. I see people posting about using talented Feint + glyphed CloS to survive the raidwide damage, but not sure if frame of reference is normal or heroic. I got knocked up once on heroic and the damage output was very significant at that level, looking for more input here.

Maidens - does Evasion actually work vs Fixate? Does CloS mitigate mines, glyphed or unglyphed? (YES, unglyphed)

Blackhand - does DfA on snipers send you to platform (NO) / return you to Blackhand if used in midair? Could potentially be a dps gain over SR for the fight if you are forced to go on balcony, as you can simply pick a time during which you will not have FW up on boss instead of having to plan around Strikes.

[Thra]

Nice guide.

Got H Kromog last night, during which I got knocked up 2-3 times to try out certain mitigation techniques. I couldnt survive, with talented feint + Glyphed CoS or Cheat Death + Feint + Glyphed CoS.

I also went Combat for Kromog, our raid had strict instructions that Tanks + Melee get runes in the middle. Good for BF, was hitting 6+ hands at all times.

As for the 'onions' after slam. Their paths are not predictable. Once you see them starting to form, you NEED to move ASAP to an empty spot. Running in towards the boss I found was best way to avoid random pathing of them.

[Deleted]

For Blackhand you should mention that cloak removes the slagged debuff, and cloaking it off saves healers a considerable amount of mana especially during phase 1 and will save your life during phase 3 if you have to stack.

For Oregorger if you are sub, during the 2nd phase you should multidot the boxes. start on one put up a rupture and hemo, shadowstep to the next and put up another, and keep going down the line paying attention to cd's and trying to minimize actual running. If you pull it off perfectly your dps shoots up considerably during that phase, it is risky but it is a way to increase dps while actually being useful.

[FenrizZJ]

great guide! will def read up on it before our next raid.

need to improve my dps on Oregorger, was close to last place as Sub thanks to doing nothing in p2.

edit: oh and i got the HWF Beating Heart

[Thra]

need to improve my dps on Oregorger, was close to last place as Sub thanks to doing nothing in p2.

Is your raid group following a single person? Or everyone just working to dodge him?

My raid followed a single person, but I just watched boss and took off down lanes with 2-3 crates and burst'd on them. If lane had 3-4 crates I would ShD + Hemo. You can also dps the boss when he stops after hitting a wall, I would run through him and get behind and dps til he started to look the way he was going next, then move on again.

[Deleted]

Nice guide.

Got H Kromog last night, during which I got knocked up 2-3 times to try out certain mitigation techniques. I couldnt survive, with talented feint + Glyphed CoS or Cheat Death + Feint + Glyphed CoS.

Took ~250k damage with only elusiveness feint on thundering blows(22p heroic) last night, 300k <30%

[Squirl]

WIP - Needs Verification

Kromog, if it is possible to survive the knockup without fail with smart use of our abilities, it will likely be better to NOT get caught in a hand so that you can have perfect positioning for subsequent cleave. I see people posting about using talented Feint + glyphed CloS to survive the raidwide damage, but not sure if frame of reference is normal or heroic. I got knocked up once on heroic and the damage output was very significant at that level, looking for more input here.

Maidens - does Evasion actually work vs Fixate? Does CloS mitigate mines, glyphed or unglyphed?

Kromog - Feint (no Elusiveness) + PW:S (and w/e other random heals) + ShS was enough for me to live comfortably on Heroic.

Maidens - I assume you're referring to the fixate on the ship? If so, yes. Evasion prevents the bleed stacks. Another tip for avoid them is to send a Hunter up and have him Frost Trap right on top of the boss. This allows all melee to kite the adds around the boss without getting hit and without losing uptime.

[Thra]

Took ~250k damage with only elusiveness feint on thundering blows(22p heroic) last night, 300k <30%

Wonder what the hell I was doing wrong then. Thanks for info

[zyZ]

if you shadowstep to blackhand mid air during transition, you will die from fall damage

[KiwifruitOCE]

Kromog, if it is possible to survive the knockup without fail with smart use of our abilities, it will likely be better to NOT get caught in a hand so that you can have perfect positioning for subsequent cleave. I see people posting about using talented Feint + glyphed CloS to survive the raidwide damage, but not sure if frame of reference is normal or heroic. I got knocked up once on heroic and the damage output was very significant at that level, looking for more input here.

I've spent a lot of hours doing this fight on heroic (yay pugs). The best strat I've found for it is playing combat and using glyphed cloak/talented feint one global before knockup, then using killing spree with blade flurry on a hand. You won't get knocked up and you get to do a shit load of cleave (you can't bladeflurry killing spree when you're grabbed). With deep insight up you're looking at around 150k dps each hands phase if you time your insight correctly.

The only downside is you can kill your raidmembers if you kill their hand too quickly. Target a healers hand first to avoid this.

[Deleted]

Well this kinda saved me alot of time of writing mine up again.

A couple things.

Gruul - Never ever ever shadow step the boss otherwise you risk getting hit by overwhelming blows. You can just move left or right depending on your stack to deal with petrifying.

Darmac - You can use shiv to de -enrage cruelfang. When it jumps for rend and tear Step to it just as it lands to avoid the bleed and gain the speed to run back into melee while dodging the 2nd bleed. Tantrum is nature damage you should cloak it when you can.

Kromog - You will have Dance up for the first Grasping earth phase so just tunnel a Dance into it. Dont just sit there and spam CT get people out fast help others around you. FoK as builder and Evis hard. Holy shit cloak the breath and feint it otherwise that thing hurts alot.

Hans an Frans - As long as there isnt 2 stampers or hot pockets side by side you can just stand on the edge and not be moved while taking no damage. The best way to handle it is to stand in the middle of 4 plates and just take smallest steps. Tbh just survive this phase. You can run around with the boss if you want just dont die to it Dead dps is 0 dps.


Furnace - You can cloak both Rupture and Volatile Fire off you if you need to. Sub spec works just as well for this fight. Allows you to have very good burst for the elementalist as well as very good boss dps. Pretty sure 1 person can interupt Feldspar by themselves but just have him on focus and watch for his casts when you can. Step Kick macro is very good for this. Use Kidney Shot in conjuction with Internal bleeding when ever you can on Firecallers. Try and cover each blast with a feint it is very easy to see when it is coming as the bosses energy will reach max.

Maidens - Yes since the damage is fire from the mines you can cloak it. Always go combat here. Since 4pc combat is so strong you will want to go it over Assass.
If you are going up on the ship Uk'rogg actually has a very large hit box you can drop alot of puddles around the boss in 2 rows almost but the best way is to kite from one end to the other anyway.

Blackhand - If you shadowstep almost immediately after the floor drops you can drop straightdown rather than across the room this will let you dps the boss straightaway.

That is about the short version of it anyway xD.

[Deleted]

It's actually possible to cloak the Petrify on Gruul as long as you manage to cloack the initial hit. Best way to do it is to watch for the animation.

[Galufio]

Thanks, couple of additions:

Maidens
- you can vanish the beam ofc
- you can vanish bombardment (or whatever its called) but it will leave the circle in melee even if you run out before vanish, better just to run out and then SS back (circle is slow)
- yes, unglyphed CoS works against bombs

Blackhand
- you can vanish bombs on p3 - bomb just disappears from you and nothing happens (idk about CoS)
- SS boss right after every slam on p3 for 100% uptime

[Shibukai]

Does anyone know if Evasion works on Oregorger's Rolling Fury (Physical Dmg)? I tried it once and it didn't seem to work.

[Deleted]

It's actually possible to cloak the Petrify on Gruul as long as you manage to cloack the initial hit. Best way to do it is to watch for the animation.

Awesome, this is actually really handy to know as Petrify is the only thing that can interrupt your dps, so if this works it's essentially a 100% dummy fight.

[Deleted]

Thanks, couple of additions:

Maidens
- you can vanish the beam ofc
- you can vanish bombardment (or whatever its called) but it will leave the circle in melee even if you run out before vanish, better just to run out and then SS back (circle is slow)
- yes, unglyphed CoS works against bombs

Dont vanish the rapid fire. It seems to re target anyway. Vanished it and it just moved towards our ranged stack.

[shaithis]

Hey Shadohw! Feel free to take back over this, I actually will likely not have time to edit everything together into a comprehensive guide until Friday at the earliest, spent way too much time yesterday trolling forums and now have to catch up on a project...

[Galufio]

Dont vanish the rapid fire. It seems to re target anyway. Vanished it and it just moved towards our ranged stack.

Yep, it seems to re-target random target then. As I said it's better just to run out and then SS back halfway for max uptime.

[Deleted]

Nice guide.

I wouldnt recommend anyone to use stuns on Furnace though, having the shields in mind.

[Kuroii]

I actually would recommend go Sub or Assn for Flame bender i feel like the single target is good because its mostly a 2 add fight