So on reviewing everything I could find, there's no mention anywhere of energy rates changing between normal and heroic. So I'm either misremembering, or it was changed in the last month.
In any case, the accepted standard seems to be sending the first 2 sets of daggers into the tank, then eating the third. Killing the tank with the second set or a few seconds later to pre-empt the fire bomb.
There's a bunch of different methods people to use to soak the third set. Having the offtank eat them (which requires them to not be in the stands of course), a priest or someone with a pally bubble, various things (you can pick a target by sending both marked people to the same place, then the dagger tank putting themselves between the marked people and the boss). None of these prevent the dot, only the initial damage. So healers need to put a lot of extra healing on whoever soaks them for 45 seconds afterwards.
The tanks spawn every 50 seconds, and always spawn at the furthest gate from the boss. Which explains why I couldn't seem to find the damn spawn pattern >_< Generally people seem to kill 3 tanks, then pretty much ignore the 4th, burning the boss and kiting the tank for a dagger shield, letting it firebomb if needed, pushing to phase 3.
Merged Lairiel's post to consolidate info and discussion.
We've got the healing to eat a set and survive the DoT, especially if the rest of the raid handles the mark well.
Here's the Fatboss video, which goes into more detail:
In the comments they say Normal mode allows for 3 hits into the Siegemaker before a mortar. For Heroic they suggest a plate wearing player use an immunity to avoid the initial knockback and stand in the middle of Blackhand's hitbox to eat the Mark. Other juicy tidbits include using Life Grip to pull tanks out of the air and out of fire after the smash in P1.
My Informant that has cleared Heroic said the same thing. Hit each Siege Tank with 2 Impales and soak the 3rd. Should DPS it to 30%-ish before the 2nd Impale hits. We may also need to be sending more melee into the stands. We had just 2 going? Need to burn down those snipers fast. Also the Mortar Fire is super duper bad. Here is a link to his latest kill, if you are interested.
Sounds like we mostly need a good plan to handle the 3rd set and then to Do Things Right.
"good plan to handle the 3rd" - put raid marker in the middle, marked players gather on that marker, off-tank or DSP with hand of protection soak initial damage. 100% predictable.
Bonus:
"good plan to handle siege tanks" - position boss in such a way that siege tanks spawns in predictable places. At the beginning of p2 move boss to south, tank will spawn at north. Do not dps until 1st Impale, dps to 35%, kill with 2nd impale.
"good plan to handle balcony"
ignore 1st smash, 2nd smash- group without healer goes to the 1st balcony (there will be 2 groups of mobs), 3rd smash - group with healer(prefer monk) goes to 2nd balcony (there will be 2 group of mobs), ignore 4th smash if possible. Use personal CDs at 2nd balcony.
Extra bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50OsHwytHKk
This is just for fun but still - tank execution is really good one. Look at tank-kites synergy on p2.
Also you may look at lifegrip in action (p1 smash).
The other thing there was they lifegripped the tank before he went flying into the molten ring. Honour is a lifegrip pro. That will save Anvil and me from some ticks.
After reviewing some tank logs, I think we are overcomplicating the Impaling throws. Tanks can take two impaling throws at the same time with only normal CDs. There is no need to use Hand of Protection or Divine Shield, although those are useful if it is a paladin tank taking it and he is not actively tanking. Just using minor CDs in the logs I reviewed, the 2 Impaling throws combined hit for less than 200k total. With two stacks and no mitigation, the DoT will tick for about 120k every 3 seconds but the tank will usually have mitigation. A DK or Paladin tank usually has a massive amount of self-overhealing.
1. Defencive CDs.
One of the biggest differences between a kill and a wipe when you are not out-gearing the content is defensive CD usage. So I take a look at the logs (for both personal and raid defensive CD usage).
we are not using at all:
Rallying Cry
Amplify Magic
Vampiric Embrace
Smoke Bomb
Personal CD usage is extremely low:
Unending Resolve - 0
Dispersion - 1
Icebound Fortitude - 0
Barkskin(Diziet) - 1
and so on...
I may try to setup a mic and call for raid CDs but if possible I prefer not to(strong accent:) )
2. Slag bombs
I filtered out cases when 1 player is already dead.
This looks like tank problem, not moving out of bombs fast enough.
3. Balcony.
It is hard to analyze since we are not stable in p2. Also it is still hard to say how much dps we need. But. 1st balcony comes at around 2:00 with 45 sec CDs. And at elast 3 balcony till p3. We usually missing one (usually first) and not doing enough dps.
Big problem, need lot's of improvements.
Mutagen - what is he doing up there?
Luvalot - miss few.
Vexaes - miss a lot of balconies.
Severs - miss a lot of balconies.
1st Death.
1. Sanzaru, Shattering Smash for 500k. It means Slag bomb debuff.
2. Trathis , Slag bomb.
3. Severs, Impaled
4. Severs, Impaled
5. Severs, Demolition
6. Sanzaru, Shattering Smash for 500k.
7. Mutagen, Molten Slag - ?????
8. Luvalot, Massive Demolition.
9. Aanvin, Slag bomb.
10. Stonestorm, Molten Slag - ????? How are you even doing this????
11. Aanvin, Impaled.
12. Aanvin, Molten Slag (means low health before smash, no externals).
13. Trathis , Massive Demolition. No defensive CD.
14. Sanzaru, basically no heals(only my hots+Hobugz heals) and no externals for smash
15. Severs, falling. Was hit by smash.
16. Trathis , Massive Demolition. No defensive CD.
17. Aanvin, no heals. Weird one.
18. Sanzaru, melee hit. Basically raid was overwhelmed by soldiers and damage was nuhealable. Vex miss all balconies, Luvalot do 680k to soldiers while next one did 200k. Totally miss 2nd smash.
overall - we are learning and improving, but there is still a lot to do on a way to perfection:).
Yay it worked. So the general idea is to keep the mines in that green zone, never letting the boss hang out in the red. We want to keep that clear for the healers as much as possible, so they can reach everyone. We can pick up Demos that come out and run then to the right side (or left if we want to go clockwise) and keep the boss and Demos moving around in the same direction.
That first mine set is pretty important too. Getting a demo to a mine before the first impale makes a 2000% difference in impale damage taken. It means 2 Million more damage we can put towards the boss rather than the Demo. So making sure that first set especially is placed as close to the middle, while still being to one side to allow a predictable demo is pretty key.
I've also seen folks plan out the exact smash locations, in combination with the rotation, placing the first at the eastern, 3 o'clock position, second at 6, third at 9, 4th back at 3 , 5th at 6, and apparently then the transition happens as they didn't have the 6th marked. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that map was flipped from this one =P So it's likely those are all backwards. >_<
Hey Dikka, thanks for the analysis. Your voice is always welcome on Mumble, strong accent or not. Cooldowns for a clean P1 will let us go into P2 with room to practice the mechanics there.
I'm surprised you found me up on the balcony, I haven't been up there except maybe on a wipe. We do need to get that sorted (and get enough time in P2 for the balcony group to get some practice). Clearing some Iron Soldiers will make healing easier. I've heard various tactics, some send a healer up, some send self-reliant DPS only and have them come back down before their health drops too low.
I'm having huge issues trying to Lifegrip as Shadow, maybe because I was having a bad night in general Monday night. I'll see if I can get some LFR or normal practice in as Shadow, I think all my experience with this fight has been healing.
Oh I have that macro, it's finding the right time to hit it while running out of stuff and avoiding marks. The window to hit it is pretty small, too early and I get punted into Molten Slag along with Sanz, too late and Sanz is out of range. I may be able to 'open the window' a bit by positioning along the punt path. My biggest issue is tunnel vision while playing Shadow, I have much better raid awareness while healing due to much more experience and mobility, the last two expansions have made Disc much more mobile while Shadow remains immobile. Monday night I started pruning DBM warnings so I can focus on the Smash instead all the other info the boss mod dumps on us.
Interesting enough, Muta once lifegripped me right before the smash. I got pulled away, stood next to Muta for a half second, and then got smashed. That got me thinking, I should try bubbling right before the smash. I want to try this on LFR. Two outcomes:
- I keep aggro, go flying with a bubble
- Aggro drops, Anvin gets the smash (along with the rest of the melee)
I think Sanzaru and I should probably stop playing with our dps specs and go full defense. At least, that's what I plan to do on Monday. Increased tank DPS does not substantially make the fight easier like it does on some other fights. On the other hand, Blackhand does enough damage that we both died just from his melee hits several times.
Btw, nice work without me there Severs. We can probably just skip the Iron Maidens on Monday. After we clear blast furnace we can skip directly to blackhand with the quest. Maybe do one normal pull even.
Replying to myself here. My experiment with going full defensive in my gearing and my talents was pretty meh. I didn't die outside of mistakes, so that part was successful, but I lost a lot of dps and we ended up needing more dps. In reviewing the logs, the amount of damage I took and healing I needed was actually no better than when I ran with my dps gear. So, next week look for me to be back to unleashing my big bad stinky breath on the boss and increasing my dps by 5-10k.
I'm not sure about this picture - wouldn't that top "market" person just fall off the edge?
BTW
Huge BH nerf incoming:
Blackhand
[Requires a realm restart.] Slag Bombs' explosion now damages players in a 6 yard radius (down from 10 yards) on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Incendiary Shot's damage has been reduced by 25% on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
Blackhand's Shattering Smash now deals 25% less damage during Stage Two on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
I second Dikka's question. Was anyone able to confirm the direction of knockback during phase 3? I didn't get a chance, but my expectation would be that you fly in the direction of the throw, putting those positions way too far to the right to be survivable.
If it IS based on your facing, that's different, but it would be the first time I've seen that in Wow.
The image is perhaps just being generic, suggesting that Marks go right and Bombs go left. I agree with the idea. If we really want to test it badly, we could do a Normal kill, that would give us the chance.
The nerf is welcome, I admit. :) Blackhand is starting to feel a tad overtuned when we can one-shot everything else and wipe over and over to him. This does leave most of the challenge there in phase 2, but reduces some of the mostly unavoidable damage from the balconies and Smashes. Still need to avoid standing in Mines and handle Siege Engines properly. It won't be a cakewalk, but we can handle it!
On both of the last two dungeons, I found that the large uptick in difficulty to the last boss to be challenging and frustrating. I guess it kept us from just farming BrF for the past month and kept us engaged, but it also felt like there was very little space left to improve our chances through gear (even with the gear buff!).
Yeah, I just grabbed the first image that remotely looked like what we've been talking about and trying to do.
I suffered (do you know how hard it is to actually try to get MfD in LFR with all the melee and tanks eating them?) through an LFR to confirm that at least in LFR facing doesn't matter for MfD in any phase.
I edited the image to match my conception of good and bad Marked For Death, with too far to the right getting you thrown off the edge.
So on reviewing everything I could find, there's no mention anywhere of energy rates changing between normal and heroic. So I'm either misremembering, or it was changed in the last month.
In any case, the accepted standard seems to be sending the first 2 sets of daggers into the tank, then eating the third. Killing the tank with the second set or a few seconds later to pre-empt the fire bomb.
There's a bunch of different methods people to use to soak the third set. Having the offtank eat them (which requires them to not be in the stands of course), a priest or someone with a pally bubble, various things (you can pick a target by sending both marked people to the same place, then the dagger tank putting themselves between the marked people and the boss). None of these prevent the dot, only the initial damage. So healers need to put a lot of extra healing on whoever soaks them for 45 seconds afterwards.
The tanks spawn every 50 seconds, and always spawn at the furthest gate from the boss. Which explains why I couldn't seem to find the damn spawn pattern >_< Generally people seem to kill 3 tanks, then pretty much ignore the 4th, burning the boss and kiting the tank for a dagger shield, letting it firebomb if needed, pushing to phase 3.
Merged Lairiel's post to consolidate info and discussion.
We've got the healing to eat a set and survive the DoT, especially if the rest of the raid handles the mark well.
Here's the Fatboss video, which goes into more detail:
In the comments they say Normal mode allows for 3 hits into the Siegemaker before a mortar. For Heroic they suggest a plate wearing player use an immunity to avoid the initial knockback and stand in the middle of Blackhand's hitbox to eat the Mark. Other juicy tidbits include using Life Grip to pull tanks out of the air and out of fire after the smash in P1.
My Informant that has cleared Heroic said the same thing. Hit each Siege Tank with 2 Impales and soak the 3rd. Should DPS it to 30%-ish before the 2nd Impale hits. We may also need to be sending more melee into the stands. We had just 2 going? Need to burn down those snipers fast. Also the Mortar Fire is super duper bad. Here is a link to his latest kill, if you are interested.
Sounds like we mostly need a good plan to handle the 3rd set and then to Do Things Right.
For Science!
"good plan to handle the 3rd" - put raid marker in the middle, marked players gather on that marker, off-tank or DSP with hand of protection soak initial damage. 100% predictable.
Bonus:
"good plan to handle siege tanks" - position boss in such a way that siege tanks spawns in predictable places. At the beginning of p2 move boss to south, tank will spawn at north. Do not dps until 1st Impale, dps to 35%, kill with 2nd impale.
"good plan to handle balcony"
ignore 1st smash, 2nd smash- group without healer goes to the 1st balcony (there will be 2 groups of mobs), 3rd smash - group with healer(prefer monk) goes to 2nd balcony (there will be 2 group of mobs), ignore 4th smash if possible. Use personal CDs at 2nd balcony.
Extra bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50OsHwytHKk
This is just for fun but still - tank execution is really good one. Look at tank-kites synergy on p2.
Also you may look at lifegrip in action (p1 smash).
The other thing there was they lifegripped the tank before he went flying into the molten ring. Honour is a lifegrip pro. That will save Anvil and me from some ticks.
I never seen any1 actually doing it like that but may help us.
After reviewing some tank logs, I think we are overcomplicating the Impaling throws. Tanks can take two impaling throws at the same time with only normal CDs. There is no need to use Hand of Protection or Divine Shield, although those are useful if it is a paladin tank taking it and he is not actively tanking. Just using minor CDs in the logs I reviewed, the 2 Impaling throws combined hit for less than 200k total. With two stacks and no mitigation, the DoT will tick for about 120k every 3 seconds but the tank will usually have mitigation. A DK or Paladin tank usually has a massive amount of self-overhealing.
Here is a big overview of our Balckhand attempts.
1. Defencive CDs.
One of the biggest differences between a kill and a wipe when you are not out-gearing the content is defensive CD usage. So I take a look at the logs (for both personal and raid defensive CD usage).
we are not using at all:
Rallying Cry
Amplify Magic
Vampiric Embrace
Smoke Bomb
Personal CD usage is extremely low:
Unending Resolve - 0
Dispersion - 1
Icebound Fortitude - 0
Barkskin(Diziet) - 1
and so on...
I may try to setup a mic and call for raid CDs but if possible I prefer not to(strong accent:) )
2. Slag bombs
I filtered out cases when 1 player is already dead.
Trathis 1.48m
Vexaes 1.18m
Severs 1.04m
Luvalot 870.0k
...
This looks like tank problem, not moving out of bombs fast enough.
3. Balcony.
It is hard to analyze since we are not stable in p2. Also it is still hard to say how much dps we need. But. 1st balcony comes at around 2:00 with 45 sec CDs. And at elast 3 balcony till p3. We usually missing one (usually first) and not doing enough dps.
Big problem, need lot's of improvements.
Mutagen - what is he doing up there?
Luvalot - miss few.
Vexaes - miss a lot of balconies.
Severs - miss a lot of balconies.
1st Death.
1. Sanzaru, Shattering Smash for 500k. It means Slag bomb debuff.
2. Trathis , Slag bomb.
3. Severs, Impaled
4. Severs, Impaled
5. Severs, Demolition
6. Sanzaru, Shattering Smash for 500k.
7. Mutagen, Molten Slag - ?????
8. Luvalot, Massive Demolition.
9. Aanvin, Slag bomb.
10. Stonestorm, Molten Slag - ????? How are you even doing this????
11. Aanvin, Impaled.
12. Aanvin, Molten Slag (means low health before smash, no externals).
13. Trathis , Massive Demolition. No defensive CD.
14. Sanzaru, basically no heals(only my hots+Hobugz heals) and no externals for smash
15. Severs, falling. Was hit by smash.
16. Trathis , Massive Demolition. No defensive CD.
17. Aanvin, no heals. Weird one.
18. Sanzaru, melee hit. Basically raid was overwhelmed by soldiers and damage was nuhealable. Vex miss all balconies, Luvalot do 680k to soldiers while next one did 200k. Totally miss 2nd smash.
overall - we are learning and improving, but there is still a lot to do on a way to perfection:).
Yay it worked. So the general idea is to keep the mines in that green zone, never letting the boss hang out in the red. We want to keep that clear for the healers as much as possible, so they can reach everyone. We can pick up Demos that come out and run then to the right side (or left if we want to go clockwise) and keep the boss and Demos moving around in the same direction.
That first mine set is pretty important too. Getting a demo to a mine before the first impale makes a 2000% difference in impale damage taken. It means 2 Million more damage we can put towards the boss rather than the Demo. So making sure that first set especially is placed as close to the middle, while still being to one side to allow a predictable demo is pretty key.
I've also seen folks plan out the exact smash locations, in combination with the rotation, placing the first at the eastern, 3 o'clock position, second at 6, third at 9, 4th back at 3 , 5th at 6, and apparently then the transition happens as they didn't have the 6th marked. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that map was flipped from this one =P So it's likely those are all backwards. >_<
Hey Dikka, thanks for the analysis. Your voice is always welcome on Mumble, strong accent or not. Cooldowns for a clean P1 will let us go into P2 with room to practice the mechanics there.
I'm surprised you found me up on the balcony, I haven't been up there except maybe on a wipe. We do need to get that sorted (and get enough time in P2 for the balcony group to get some practice). Clearing some Iron Soldiers will make healing easier. I've heard various tactics, some send a healer up, some send self-reliant DPS only and have them come back down before their health drops too low.
I'm having huge issues trying to Lifegrip as Shadow, maybe because I was having a bad night in general Monday night. I'll see if I can get some LFR or normal practice in as Shadow, I think all my experience with this fight has been healing.
"I'm having huge issues trying to Lifegrip as Shadow" - practical advice - make a macro with a tank name :)
Oh I have that macro, it's finding the right time to hit it while running out of stuff and avoiding marks. The window to hit it is pretty small, too early and I get punted into Molten Slag along with Sanz, too late and Sanz is out of range. I may be able to 'open the window' a bit by positioning along the punt path. My biggest issue is tunnel vision while playing Shadow, I have much better raid awareness while healing due to much more experience and mobility, the last two expansions have made Disc much more mobile while Shadow remains immobile. Monday night I started pruning DBM warnings so I can focus on the Smash instead all the other info the boss mod dumps on us.
"made Disc much more mobile while Shadow remains immobile" - same with resto druid and balance droids
For your specific issue I may recommend
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/dbm-voicepack-vem
Setup it only for Smash only, turn it off for everything else. At least this is what I do. Works for me.
But in any case - LifeGrip is somewhere at the bottom of the list of things we need to improve :)
Interesting enough, Muta once lifegripped me right before the smash. I got pulled away, stood next to Muta for a half second, and then got smashed. That got me thinking, I should try bubbling right before the smash. I want to try this on LFR. Two outcomes:
- I keep aggro, go flying with a bubble
- Aggro drops, Anvin gets the smash (along with the rest of the melee)
Here is the answer!
http://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/10821-blackrock-foundry-protection...
Well, sort of. It says you can bubble-taunt the smash but it might have other negative effects.
I was curious about p1 not p3. I'll worry about p3 after I stop worrying about p2. :)
I think Sanzaru and I should probably stop playing with our dps specs and go full defense. At least, that's what I plan to do on Monday. Increased tank DPS does not substantially make the fight easier like it does on some other fights. On the other hand, Blackhand does enough damage that we both died just from his melee hits several times.
Btw, nice work without me there Severs. We can probably just skip the Iron Maidens on Monday. After we clear blast furnace we can skip directly to blackhand with the quest. Maybe do one normal pull even.
Anvin, if you are available sometime this weekend for LFR practice on Blackhand, let me know.
We will have all the quest items, we still need to turn it in. Can't get to the quest guy to turn it in until we kill the Maidens. Whoops! :)
Yes, Severs did a great job last night!
For Science!
Replying to myself here. My experiment with going full defensive in my gearing and my talents was pretty meh. I didn't die outside of mistakes, so that part was successful, but I lost a lot of dps and we ended up needing more dps. In reviewing the logs, the amount of damage I took and healing I needed was actually no better than when I ran with my dps gear. So, next week look for me to be back to unleashing my big bad stinky breath on the boss and increasing my dps by 5-10k.
few things.
Most important - Iron soldiers (balcony)
Damage taken from smash (means how often go to balcony):
Severs 15
Aanvin 13
Hobugz 12
Sanzaru 8
Vexaes 10
Luvalot 9
There was 21 casts.
Damage done over all attempts:
Aanvin 4.02m
Vexaes 3.67m
Luvalot 2.17m
Severs 2.17m
Sanzaru 1.39m
Best(longest) attempt:
Vexaes 1.41m
Aanvin 866.0k
Lucia 623.4k
Sanzaru 620.6k
Mutagen 405.2k
Severs 307.2k
Really bad. Melee is either missing or not doing enough damage.
Other obvious improvement.
2. Damage taken from slag bombs (most of our wipes), top 10:
Severs 3.78m
Hobugz 3.09m
Sanzaru 1.60m
Luvalot 1.54m
Vexaes 1.24m
Radamanthas 1.03m
Lucia 968.7k
Stonestorm 870.7k
Aanvin 757.8k
Lairiel 692.9k
3. Also lots of damage comes from siegemaker - cmon.
I'm not sure about this picture - wouldn't that top "market" person just fall off the edge?
BTW
Huge BH nerf incoming:
Blackhand
[Requires a realm restart.] Slag Bombs' explosion now damages players in a 6 yard radius (down from 10 yards) on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Incendiary Shot's damage has been reduced by 25% on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
Blackhand's Shattering Smash now deals 25% less damage during Stage Two on Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
Ooo, that Will be a big help.
I second Dikka's question. Was anyone able to confirm the direction of knockback during phase 3? I didn't get a chance, but my expectation would be that you fly in the direction of the throw, putting those positions way too far to the right to be survivable.
If it IS based on your facing, that's different, but it would be the first time I've seen that in Wow.
The image is perhaps just being generic, suggesting that Marks go right and Bombs go left. I agree with the idea. If we really want to test it badly, we could do a Normal kill, that would give us the chance.
The nerf is welcome, I admit. :) Blackhand is starting to feel a tad overtuned when we can one-shot everything else and wipe over and over to him. This does leave most of the challenge there in phase 2, but reduces some of the mostly unavoidable damage from the balconies and Smashes. Still need to avoid standing in Mines and handle Siege Engines properly. It won't be a cakewalk, but we can handle it!
For Science!
On both of the last two dungeons, I found that the large uptick in difficulty to the last boss to be challenging and frustrating. I guess it kept us from just farming BrF for the past month and kept us engaged, but it also felt like there was very little space left to improve our chances through gear (even with the gear buff!).
Yeah, I just grabbed the first image that remotely looked like what we've been talking about and trying to do.
I suffered (do you know how hard it is to actually try to get MfD in LFR with all the melee and tanks eating them?) through an LFR to confirm that at least in LFR facing doesn't matter for MfD in any phase.
I edited the image to match my conception of good and bad Marked For Death, with too far to the right getting you thrown off the edge.
Ahh excellent, thank you for suffering for us =)
Good to confirm. Hoping to be well enough to practice thursday.