Blackrock Foundry Heroic - Day 1

          Woah! Let me catch my breath ... Our weapons are still smoking from blood of orcs, gronns, gorens and one magnaron! But I am already here like a battle correspondent, bringing news from the very field!
          I have mixed feelings about new raid instance. As I was afraid environment is cave-, workshop-ish - brown, gray with fire sometimes - very dull. Boss models are even more disappointing. Gruul is the first and the last with unique model. The rest are orcs, oversized orcs - "malkoroks", female orcs, one goren and one "Kologarn". Who are those orcs, why they are here, why do we kill these orcs but not other orcs.
          For anyone who played in ICC and Ulduar, remember how much lore was behind each boss? Lets compare.
          Ulduar: Flame Leviathan (unknown, unique model), Razorscale (known as Thorim's mount, unique skin), XT-002 (unknown, unique model), Algalon (unknown, unique model), Thorim (well known, unique model), Mimiron (well known, unique model), Freya (well known, unique model), Hodir (well known, unique model), Vezax (unknown, unique model), Yogg-Saron (well known, unique model). In total 6/12 bosses that had some lore behind them, 10/12 bosses had unique model.
          ICC: Marrowgar (unknown, unique model), Lady Deathwhisper (unknown, unique model), Gunship (well known, unique model), Saurfang (well known), Rotface (unknown, unique model), Festergut (unknown, unique model), Putricide (unknown, unique model at p3), Princes (well known, unique skin), Blood Queen (unknown, unique model), Sindragosa (well known, unique model), The Lich King (very well known, major lore character, unique model). In total: 5/12 bosses were known before ICC, 9/12 had unique model.
          BRF: Gruul (known, unique model), The Blast Furnace (unique model), Kromog (unknown, "Kologarn" model), Blackhand (known, unique model). 2/10 bosses with lore, 3/10 unique models. See the difference?
          Now, where was I? Oh, yes! (c) The only thing that makes BRF awesome is boss mechanics. I have never seen anything like Oregorger rollings, Hans\Fran guys' conveyor lines. Some mechanics are well known, like Ka'grazs wolves' link, but in link with other boss' abilities the fight becomes unique. Kromog void zone mechanics are well known, but I have never seen such thing as clasping hands. We've defeated 7/10 in one day:
          1) Gruul - 5th try - 4,5/10 - This old gronn have not lost his skills and have learned some new tricks. I thought first boss should be easy as Kagrath was, but Gruul showed us with his hook that it wasn't so. Even despite the fact raid had 680+ gear we even wiped few times due to massive damage of Inferno Strike.
          2) Oregorger - 9th try - 5/10 - His "rollings" are so random - in first second you doesn't even see the boss, in 2nd second something hits you like a truck.

          3) Hans'gar and Franzok - 2nd try - 4/10 - Despite some new mechanics and several phases this boss doesn't seem too difficult. A lot of running required
          4) Flamebender Ka'graz - 4th try - 3/10 - Easy boss, mostly tank'n'spank. One needs to pay some attention to wolves HP.

          5) Kromog - 2nd try - 4/10 - We made world 193th kill and many my friends from other guilds similar with ours didn't defear Kromog. This is strange, because I didn't find anything particularly difficult there.

 

          6) Beastlord Darmac - 2nd try - 3/10 - We counted 7 phases - more than any boss in current content have. And amount of different boss abilities can be overwhelming at first, although only few from them are dangerous.
          7) Operator Thogar - 4th try - 4,5/10 - Very funny boss. It was fun and even scary when you see train rushing on you :) I think this one can provide some challenge for undergeared people, but for our gear it was quite easy.

          8) The Blast Furnace - 9 wipes, was not defeated - 7/10 - The Blast Furnace will be nerfed very soon, I bet my hand on it. 10+ mins fight - heroic boss cant be SO hard. 3 phases, each one is challenge, our healers was doing 60-80k HPS and even that was not enough. This boss is on par with Highmaul Mythic bosses in difficulty.

          To summarize - I was satisfied with BRF. So many new boss mechanics, Thogar with trains is my favorite. I hope we will finish Blackhand this week and start Mythic raids next week.

Ko'ragh Mythic 6\7M

 

Tactical requirements: average
DPS requirements: average
Overall difficulty: 8/10
Attempts: 43
World rank: 550
          This post supposed to appear here earlier, since our first kill was about two weeks ago, but I wasn't present on that kill. For me its the first kill, so I can post only now.
          Not many differences from heroic mode. Fire mechanics is easy to deal with. Mind control is easy to deal with. The boss just hits harder, actually, everything hits harder and more DPS is needed to defeat Ko'ragh. Its usual dont-stay-in-fire boss. In the end when 8+ bombs are falling to the ground it can be messy, but the fight should be over about that time. Fight is short, difficulty is about the same as on Tectus.
 

Blackrock Foundry raid on PTR

          Today we had a chance to try new raid instance before it opens. I even stealth-sneaked to several areas to see the bosses :D Though only one boss was available - Gruul-no-longer-Dragonkiller. Cruel orcs cut poor creature's hand. We even gave Gruul couple tries, before server got closed for maintenance. Boss itself is easy, we got him to 50% from 2nd try, there are several mechanics, but only one is dangerous - and it is only for tanks. For others it is usual DPS & "don't stay in fire" boss.

          But there was another thing that troubled me. I love lore and environment, I like to look on different areas, instances, zones. For example Elvynn Forest is still my most favorite area. Siege of Orgrimmar was very well made - it was very fun to fight under Vale, to fight in Orgrimmar itself, too bad the way to Garrosh very soon turns off to boring catacombs with anvils, molten metal and grille floor. From first view Blackrock Foundry looks like the very same orc citadel we saw dozen times already. From Blackrock Depths\Spire\Caverns and almost all TBC instances to Blackwing Descent and SoO - this pattern is the same - walls and spikes of black metal, molten lava and orcs. Granted, I understand it is FOUNDRY after all, and I didn't see whole instance yet - I just hope there will be something new.
         

Imperator Mar'gok Mythic

          No, we didn't get him yet :P
          But we are working on it. For past two weeks we are trying to break through this encounter. Imperator is really the hardest boss of current content, difficulty is similar to once Heroic Garrosh. I don't remember when we saw 15 min fight last time. And during this long 15 minutes you need to focus constantly - one mistake usually leads to wipe.

 

 

          Problem is this boss has high requirements to individual skill - EVERY participant in the raid must know his task perfectly. Because from my previous experience, every guild (except Method and Paragon probably) has some players better than average guys - people who don't usually fail, average guys - 2nd category, and people who fail constantly. On Normal or Heroic guys from 1st and 2nd group carry those who fail, but this last category of people being quickly separated on Mythic bosses. On Mythic bosses it is guys who does not fail usually carry those average guys - not because they like it, but because there are usually only few such good players. And this is actually fine - all people have different skill level, but once again, on Mar'gok this does not work. That's why we have so few kills right now.

 



          We have more than 120 wipes for now, and I don't know will we get him before Blackrock Foundry opens. But we will do our best - for sure :)

 

 

The Butcher Mythic 5/7M

Tactical requirements: low
DPS requirements: very high
Overall difficulty: 9/10
Attempts: 58
World rank: 683
Awesome boss! Ol'good Patchwerk fight :) These fights usually are tactically easy and very short but after combat you can feel your hearth trembling even more than after long Brackenspore/Imperator fights. When you overgear this boss this becomes short but boring tank and spank fight, but for the first kill when you squeeze yoursekf gor evety tiny bit of DPS, pushing buttons like mad, wipe over and over and feel a scream growing inside you when you see last percents of boss' HP fading. Awesome!

DPS requirements for the Butcher are VERY HIGH. We barely made it using all available gear, crafts, upgrades, even 50 stat runes! After several tries we understood our DPS is not enough, so we went to AH and spend all our gold to all available upgrades and runes - that is the price for victory, but I would gladly pay it over again for all the fun I got yesterday :)

p.s. I was sooooo sad when the guy who make our logs said he recorded all wipes but kill try >.< Though my guildmate made me a present today - he recorded a movie, I can even hear our nerdscreams! :D Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weRdBJA7DJ4
p.p.s. Mages are top again! :P

 

#worldofwarcraft #warlordsofdraenor #warlords #wow #mythic #butcher #thebutcher



 

Tectus Mythic 4/7M

 

Tactical requirements: high
DPS requirements: average, high on p3
Overall difficulty: 8/10
Attempts: 131
World rank: 814
          Even the mountains can fall! Finally Tectus is down! Yeah, that was hard. A bit easier than Brackenspore, but still very hard. Unlike Brakenspore this fight is much shorter and phase 1-2 (this is 3-phased fight) are easier - you just DPS the boss\adds and move from spike, but the last phase is a terrible mess - fire is everywhere, small spikes are everywhere, and as soon as big spikes start to spawn all room becomes one big line of sight zone leading to instant wipe. Phase 3 is very short - about 40-50 seconds - you need to aoe burst adds like mad - and either you kill them fast enough or environment will overwhelm you.
          From the DPS chart you can see mages are top on this encounter - especially Fire mages due to crazy aoe. But I must say Fire is the worst and most random spec in the game. It is terrible - when you cant use your Combustion because damn Pyro does not double crit for a minute you start to boil with rage. There is no such random spec as Fire - imagine you got good Ignite and then think: "Shall I use my Combustion or I need to wait for bigger Ignite?" Or another situation - for example this moment on Tectus when you need to apply your heavy Combustion to all adds, but alas! Your Pyro does not crit :) Welcome to 20k aoe DPS world. I can make new slogan for a mage: "Non-crit Pyros and Power Crystal - play a mage&make your butt hurt!" :)
          Now the Butcher! WTB triple spec for Arcane :P

#worldofwarcraft #warlordsofdraenor #warlords #wow #mythic #tectus

Brackenspore Mythic 3/7M

Tactical requirements: high
DPS requirements: high
Difficulty: 8,5/10
Attempts: 125
World rank: 581
          I was told Brackenspore required about 100 attempts to defeat - well, it took us a bit more. To be honest we were not close to kill. Yesterday we had just a few attemps when the boss had less then 30% HP. Every second wipe was in 70-80% of boss HP when someone died on the very first wave\mushroom. Sometimes people failed to interrupt a cast, sometimes healers failed to heal a mushroom. Raid was about to be over when we changed setup a bit, removed people who failed, sacrificed our faithful healer shaman, and finally managed it :)
          Though I am very sad about mage DPS in this fight. 24k in 667 gear seems low for me. Problem is this encounter is all about running - from waves, mushrooms, to healing mushrooms, from mind mushroom. Very ofted as soon as you start to burst mind mushroom spawns exactly on you. And Blizzard needs to do something about Ice Lance cleave range, because atm it is awful. IL can cleave only if mobs stay EXACTLY on each other, what is usually quite not possible.
          Overall boss is very hard. Fight lasts for 8-9 minutes and you need constantly watch for dozen different things. For healers it must be even harder.
P.S. And the movie! :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl9UYXlwoYA&feature=youtube_gdata

P.P.S. On later thought: I was checking my Dark Souls 2 posts and looked at amount of tries I spend on every boss. Then I compared that number to amount of Brackenspore tries ^^

#worldofwarcraft #warlordsofdraenor #warlords #wow #mythic #brackenspore