Pumped Up!
Blackrock Foundry design is counter intuitive and caused many guilds to bang their head on harder bosses than they should have been attempting. Most raids you expect the difficulty to raise on an even curve as you move through the instance. The expectation from the player in a winged raid like BRF is that each wing will increase in difficulty. The last boss of the 1st wing (Blast Furnance in the Slagworks) should be easier than the first boss in the second wing (Hanz and Franz in the Black Forge). That’s not the way Blackrock Foundry works. Each wing has its own curve. The first boss in each wing (Gruul, Hanz and Franz, and Beastlord) are all about the same difficulty. The second bosses (Oregorger, Flamebender, and Thorgar) are all a step up from that. The final bosses in each wing (Blast Furnance, Kromog, Iron Maidens) are all more difficult.
The developers assume more gear has been won from the instance and even figure on some 2 piece and a couple of 4 piece set bonuses being in play by the time you get to wing end boss. Most guilds expected to go Gruul to Oregorger to Blast Furnance before moving onto Hanz and Franz. They ran into a wall at Oregorger or Blast Furnace. The better way to attack Blackrock is to do all the early bosses, then the second bosses and then work on the end bosses of each wing before opening up Blackhand. Gruul, Hanz and Franz, and BeastLord, then Oregorger, Flamebender, and Thorgar before finally knocking out Blast Furnance, Kromag, and Iron Maidens. Of course, everything has to be dead before you face off with Blackhand. The developers finally explained this in a blog. That was after we had put in much of Thursday night in a series of wipes on Oregorger. We continued to make progress throughout the night. We abandoned the 3 tanks strategy and went back to 2 tanks. Our main problem was no longer Acid Torrent. It seemed like our big issue was getting back into Phase 1 after the rolling phase. The leaders decided to stop banging our heads against Oregorger and moved over to Hanz and Franz.
I was pretty nervous about Hanz and Franz and it turned out my fears were warranted. The first rolling plates phase wasn't too bad, but the stamping plates were a big problem for me. I managed to Bubble my way out of trouble once, but the next time it was still on cool down and that was all she wrote. The rest of the team didn't have as much trouble until we got to the sub 30% suplex and our tanks went squish. On the next attempt, I did better and actually survived the stamping phase. When the Suplex hit, we BoPed one of the tanks sacrificing a Hunter in the process, but both tanks lived. On the stamping phase I tried moving to wherever it had just stamped and that kept me alive.
The next night we tried Beast Lord. This is a fun fight full of adds. I speced into Lights Hammer and did my best to switch from Seal of Truth over to Righteousness when the stampede formed. It took us a several attempts for the range to get good at dodging spears and for everyone to avoid fire. In the end, we put him down.
Thanks to my guild mate Tachi (@TachiPlays) for recording these fights.
The developers assume more gear has been won from the instance and even figure on some 2 piece and a couple of 4 piece set bonuses being in play by the time you get to wing end boss. Most guilds expected to go Gruul to Oregorger to Blast Furnance before moving onto Hanz and Franz. They ran into a wall at Oregorger or Blast Furnace. The better way to attack Blackrock is to do all the early bosses, then the second bosses and then work on the end bosses of each wing before opening up Blackhand. Gruul, Hanz and Franz, and BeastLord, then Oregorger, Flamebender, and Thorgar before finally knocking out Blast Furnance, Kromag, and Iron Maidens. Of course, everything has to be dead before you face off with Blackhand. The developers finally explained this in a blog. That was after we had put in much of Thursday night in a series of wipes on Oregorger. We continued to make progress throughout the night. We abandoned the 3 tanks strategy and went back to 2 tanks. Our main problem was no longer Acid Torrent. It seemed like our big issue was getting back into Phase 1 after the rolling phase. The leaders decided to stop banging our heads against Oregorger and moved over to Hanz and Franz.
I was pretty nervous about Hanz and Franz and it turned out my fears were warranted. The first rolling plates phase wasn't too bad, but the stamping plates were a big problem for me. I managed to Bubble my way out of trouble once, but the next time it was still on cool down and that was all she wrote. The rest of the team didn't have as much trouble until we got to the sub 30% suplex and our tanks went squish. On the next attempt, I did better and actually survived the stamping phase. When the Suplex hit, we BoPed one of the tanks sacrificing a Hunter in the process, but both tanks lived. On the stamping phase I tried moving to wherever it had just stamped and that kept me alive.
The next night we tried Beast Lord. This is a fun fight full of adds. I speced into Lights Hammer and did my best to switch from Seal of Truth over to Righteousness when the stampede formed. It took us a several attempts for the range to get good at dodging spears and for everyone to avoid fire. In the end, we put him down.
Thanks to my guild mate Tachi (@TachiPlays) for recording these fights.
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