Blackwing Lair: Ultimate Boss Guide

[Matt]

Razorgore


Setup

We split the raid into 4 teams. Each team occupies one corner. Usually
team A is groups 1 and 2 who go west
team B is groups 3 and 4 who go north
team C is groups 5 and 6 who go east
team D is groups 7 and 8 who go south

Each team gets
1 Hunter
1-2 Warriors
2 Priests/Druids
1 Paladin
1 Warlock
1-2 Rogues
1-2 Mages

A spokesperson for each team on TS announces spawns in the corners.

PHASE I (EGGS)

[iDPS
A mage or rogue in each team is appointed Main Assist, Mages, Hunters and Rogues in the team will help kill his target. His target are all Orc Mages in the corner. They have to die ASAP until eventually only Legionaires and Dragonkin remain)

Warriors
The warrior(s) in each corner sunder (build aggro on) each dragonkin and legionaire in their corner and kite it between the two platforms (running up the stairs and jumping down in the middle front exploits the no-jump pathing of the mos and gets distance between warrior and his heat. Piercing Howl helps too. Eventually all 55 mobs will be following the warriors and if all goes fine, they wont even take damage.

Healers
The healers in each team keep their warriors always shielded and HoT'ed. Optimal position for them to be is the front corner of the platform on their side. From there they always have a LoS to all team members and especially the warriors roaming their corner currently (usually its 2 tanks you have to keep track of, yours and the one of the team accross the room who follows the same path as your warrior). Also if they get hit, they can easily get some distance by jumping down the edge and running. Priest should use the CTRA aggro-gain announcer to be able to cast fade before the mob hits them.

Paladins
Paladins are the orb controllers. They place themselves below the orb right from the start and destroy eggs as fast as possible. They should not take damage during the egg phase at all. Once all eggs are down, the primary orb user will have a lot of aggro from Razorgore and he will come straight after him. We use that to position razor immediately in a good spot and to bring him to the MT tag-team.

PHASE II

The MT tag team builds aggro on razorgore. Every now and them Razor casts a frontal AoE conflag that temporarily wipes all aggro on the current tank, swithing it to the offtank. Position of the 2 tanks is 90° (not 180°).

All DPS stands behind Razorgore to avoid the conflag.

The 2 teams with the highest Mana after the Egg phase begins healing the MT while the other 2 regen. In case mana is too drained to form teams quickly, all healing shall be focused on the MTs while DPS heals itself with bandages. Note that razorgore teleports players that are out of his AoE range for a while.

[Matt]

A guide for Vaelastraz the Corrupt in Blackwing Lair.



General Info
Vaelastraz the corrup is the 2nd boss in Blackwing Lair right after Razorgore the Untamed. Before the fight, Vaelastraz is sound asleep and everyone can roam freely in the room. The fight is started by talking to him. After a brief cut-scene the fight begins. Vaelastraz will now stay awake for exactly 60 minutes before he dies and despawns for 12 hours. While he is awake it is no longer possible to roam freely. Vael will attack anyone within 20 yds of his "middle". Since he's huge and ranged cant be made out accurately, as a general rule the raid should stay outside the inner "courtyard marked by the columns.

Abilities

Everyone in the room will receive this buff when the fight starts:

Essence of Rend
Restores 500 mana per second.
Restores 50 energy per second.
Generates 20 rage per second.
3 minutes remaining

Random ranged members of the raid as well as Vael's main target will get:

Burning Adrenaline
Damage done increased by 100%.
Attack speed increased by 100%.
Reduces max. health by 5% every second. --> down to 18% after 20 sec.
Deals 4375 to 5625 damge to nearby allies upon death.
20 seconds remaining.

Fire breath:
AoE fire that hits everyone in an approximately 90° arc in front of him for ??-?? fire damage.

Cleave:
AoE physical that hits everyone in front of him for 1500-3000 physical damage.

Tailwipe:
AoE knockback that hits for 500-700 physical damage. Hits everyone in an 90° arc to the back of Vael.

Aura:
Damage aura that hits everyone for 300-700 fire damage per tick.

Burning Adrenaline
BA is lethal. We use a mod to announce the burning one of his buff/debuff, so he can action accordingly --> run away from your allies (min 30yd) and resume DPS (which is largely increased). DPS only for ranged classes of course. If the MT has BA he turns Vael slightly to the right in order to make room for MT2, then dies in that spot. More on that later.

Frontal damage/MTs
We need to work something out to prevent Vael's fre breath from killing the dps (just like onyxia)... now if they MT could be kept alive this would be no problem. However we have to feed up to 6 tanks to Vael before he dies.

The whole idea here is to make it impossible for vael to face the DPS by placing the 6 most hated chars (warriors) into strategic positions that direct his flame breath away from the DPS if a Tank dies and another one has to take over

Picture guide


Vael has 3 limited AoE and 1 Aura type damage abilities. The damage zones are shown in the picture above. Note that he has a blind angle just over his rear legs.

Pulling Vael is done by one warrior that runs through him from the wall opposite the throne. By that he turns him and makes sure he doesnt move. 5 seconds afer initial aggro the offtanks move in and fight for aggro. 10 seconds after initial aggro all dps begins.

Positions during the battle are as shown above with raid entirely in the blind angle. All tanks are on one side. When Vael is at 20% Warriors activate Recklessness and Execute for maximum damage. At 10% all Rogues and Hunters stop DPS for 10 seconds. Rogues use feint and vanish whenever available. If it is resisted they stop all backstabs until they can cast a successful feint again. Hunters have to be carefull with dps after a good aimed shot crit. Feign death whenever available is mandatory.

If a ranged char gets BA, he will immediately run away from his allies to one of the green zones (around the columns). Once he arrives there and is still alive he resumes DPS which is greatly increased. If possible he stays clear of Vaels Flame breath and within 40yd of a priest, but never at the expense of safety for the raid.

When the current Main Tank gets burning adrenaline he stays in position. The offtanks get ready to get aggro and immediately turn vael back to the tank positions. During the transition vael must not move. So it is important for tanks to always stay within melee range of vael. Occationally on the transition healers might get a tailwipe and a short gap in the MT healing occurs. To bridge that we have 2 priests flashhealing the MT.

Note: An observation in regard to Vaels flame breath was, that he only does it when his target is stationary. So should you ever see yourself targetted by Vael, start to strafe right away in order to turn Vael away from your allies.

Healing
Everyone takes damage, so the best solution is Prayer of Healing, which means 8 priests, one fore each group. If less than 8 are available, use druids with chaining renew+regrowth on all of their partymembers. But the easiers setup is 8 priests.

Then setup 2 druids or 2 more priests + 1 Paladin to chain heals exclusively on the current Tank so that at all time he has 1x PoH, 1x HL and 2x HT incoming on him. All priests who PoH, will also occationaly send a Flash Heal to the MT.

Buffs
5 Warriors will be dedicated tanks and buffed as usual. The surplus tanks will get BoS and join rogues for DPS. All other DPS will get BoS too as well as all healers. Rogues do not get Blessing of Might (to limit their DPS and crits so tanks can keep up) --> Essence of rend buffs damage, but not taunt/sunder armor.

[Matt]

(the illustration is not accruate about the size of firemaws hitbox (its actually bigger) and thus the offtank position. I will add a screenshot to make it clearer soon.)

Wing Buffet
Frontal AoE, reduces Aggro every 30 seconds (announced by CTRA)

Shadow Flame
Frontal AoE for 4000-5000 dmg (ignors all armor and resistances). Causes a strong DoT without Onyxia Scale Cloak.

Flame Buffet
Strong DoT Aura with LoS check plus non-dispellable debuff that increases fire damage taken

PLAN:

Positioning is critical and the fights is a wipe if the correct position of firemaw cannot be established very quick. Also everyone in raid has to understand how the line of sight works here. Understanding the illustration 100% is required for all players. Understanding the principle even more since it will be applied to all followup dragons in BWL.

Melee attacks until the flame buffet debuff stacks too high and they need healing. When that happens they move to the melee-safe-position and bandage up.

Ranged dps stays on the Line of sight to firemaw and cross it to the safezone when the debuff stacks too high... bandage

Healers position themselves so they only have LoS (Line of Sight) to the tank but not Firemaw. Avoiding the debuff (Flame buffet) on healers is critical.

Group 1 setup is MT1 + MT2 + MT3 + Warlock + Paladin. Group 2, 3 and 4 are heal teams A and B with pala + druid + 2x priest if possible. Healing only on Tanks, the fight is long, rotation is needed and DPS has to bandage.

Tanking Variant I
(Works for all 3 Dragons the same)

The dragons are tauntable. This opens up a beautiful way to keep him positioned and avoid all aggro-loss on the MT during Wing Buffet: 3 Seconds before the Wing Buffet, an offtank will taunt the Dragon while standing 90° off the Main Tank.

This forces the Wing Buffet on the Offtank who looses aggro back to the Main Tank once the effect of the taunt fades (3 sec). In other words: the offtank attempts to catch the bullet. It is important that the offtank's taunt is cast no longer than 3 seconds before the Wing Buffet. If 2 Offtanks are available they coordinate to cast the taunt staggered (Second taunt is cast about 2 seconds after the first) to cover any inaccuracies of the running timers.

Whoever is in the Wing Buffet's AoE gets knocked back 30-40 yards and has to run back immediately. Usually to the safe-position.

Required setup is three tanks, one main and two offtank. Both need to be warriors. They position themselves as indicated in the image above at a 90° angle. The offtanks stand in their safe-position most of the time to avoid the debuff. Once the Wing Buffet timer is running out, they move into their Taunt Position close enough to the Dragon to make sure that if aggro switches to the taunting tank, the dragon will not move, just turn to him (this is critical).

Tanking Variant II

This is an alternate pattern for Firemaw.

The Main Tank stands in the far left corner of the closed gate that leads to the lower trap-room and one offtank stands at the opposite side of the gate. Both are standing with their backs to the corner so a Wing Buffet wont knock them out of position.

The Offtank will build aggro together with the Main Tank and make sure he is at all time second on the Dragons hate-list. That way, whenever a Wing Buffet hits the Main Tank, the Offtank is there to briefly tank Firemaw until the Main Tank can taunt him back.

This is made possible because DPS is very slow in this fight and Healing of the Main Tank spread over many individual healers.

To make this work, a group of 2 priests has to be positioned accross the tank positions behind firemaw. There is a column to provide a LoS safezone for them. They just pop out of their safespot when the Wing Buffet timer is running out to burst heal the Offtank until the Main Tank has regained aggro.

For additional safety, a second Offtank can be added. They both build aggro and after each 2nd Wing Buffet one of them goes to the safespot to let the debuff wear out.

[Matt]

The procedure:

Lashlayers aggro range is rather large (40yds) so he has to be "pulled" from the 2nd to last alcove on the right. This is done when all Hatchers are dead and no taskmasters are around.

Upon pull the raid moves to the gate and the tanks get BL locked down in the alcove right of the gate.

While the tanks get a stable setup going in the corner (offtanks 90° off the MT), raid kills the last whelps that got aggroed during the pull.

DPS starts after around 30 seconds and stays very slow throughout the fight.

Tanking
One tank moves to the gate and pulls BL to the corner in the last alcove. The other 2 move to BL's right side and do their share of taunting. Around every 30 sec, BL will use an ability that reduces aggro on all characters in front of him. This should be only one tank. So when this happens, one of the 2 tanks on his side gets aggro. He then turns BL back towards the corner while the previous MT joins for regaining aggro at the side.
(Thanks to Bastila for some valuable pointers here)

DPS
Since BL wipes large parts of his aggro every now and then (knockback), DPS cant go all out. At least not ranged DPS. BoS is a great help, so is feint, FD, fade etc. Overall DPS should be slow and steady... meaning no big crits etc.

Healers have to be extra carefull, so DPS-classes should get to a safespot and bandage whenever needed. A healing rotation involving all available healers also greatly helps to balance the threat generated by healing over as many players as possible and keep it low on individuals. Melee DPS can dodge all damage by only attacking for 10 seconds after a knockback.

A paladin should stay out of combat and rez people, which is also a nice aggro wipe that might be required by healers.

Specials
At random intervals (20-30sec), BL does a mortal strike that ignores armor and hits the current aggro holder for 5000+ damage. Nothing can be done about that. So the player needs to be rezzed or healed. Note also that mortal strike adds a debuff that reduces all healing effects by 50% for 4 seconds. Shield your tank first thing after a MS.

[Matt]

Wing Buffet
Frontal AoE, reduces Aggro every 30 seconds

Shadow Flame
Frontal AoE for 4000-5000 dmg (ignors all armor and resistances). Causes a strong DoT without Onyxia Scale Cloak.

Shadow of Ebonroc
Non-dispellable short-duration curse on the current aggro holder that heals Ebonroc if he can do damage to him. Each hit on a cursed player heals him for 25k HP its not a wiper if the healing rotation is good, so its just a matter of getting in the groove with the taunting.

PLAN:

Group 1 setup is MT1 + MT2 + MT3 + Warlock + Paladin. Group 2 and 3 are heal teams A and B with 2x druid + 2-3x priest + 0-1x Paladin if possible. Healing only on Tanks, the fight is long, rotation is needed and DPS has to bandage.

Tank 2 and 3 get in position in the alcove as show above. A hunter pet pulls Ebonroc to them. Tank 2 gets aggro and both tanks build aggro for one minute (not caring about the curse).

After one minute aggro building, Tank 1 gets in position 90° off Tank 1 and 2 on the other side of Ebonroc. DPS starts when Tank 1 is in position.

When Ebonroc casts his curse on Tank 2 or 3, Tank 1 taunts Ebonroc immediately to avoid damage on the cursed tank. Just after that, the aggro-tank that doesnt have the curse taunts and tanks Ebonroc to let the curse wear off.

As a safeguard the offcenter positions can be augmented by an additional tank each.

Wing Buffet
(Works for all 3 Dragons the same)

We ignore the wing buffet in this fight, since its a taunt frenzy anyway.

[Matt]

(the illustration is not accruate about the size of ebonrocs hitbox (its actually bigger) and thus the offtank position. I will add a screenshot to make it clearer soon.)

Summary: Same as Firemaw, with frenzy that can be dispelled with tranq-shot.

Wing Buffet
Frontal AoE, reduces Aggro every 30 seconds

Shadow Flame
Frontal AoE for 4000-5000 dmg (ignors all armor and resistances). Causes a strong DoT without Onyxia Scale Cloak.

Frenzy
Strong 360° AoE with LoS check. Can be dispelled with a Tranquillizing Shot from a Hunter.

PLAN:

Positioning is critical and the fights is a wipe if the correct position of firemaw cannot be established very quick. Also everyone in raid has to understand how the line of sight works here. Understanding the illustration 100% is required for all players.

Melee attacks until their health drops too much (50%). When that happens they move to the melee-safe-position and bandage up.

Ranged dps stays on the Line of sight to firemaw and cross it to the safezone when they get low on health to bandage

Healers position themselves so they only have LoS (Line of Sight) to the tank but not Flamegor. Avoiding the AoE on healers is critical.

When the frenzy is announced, a hunter quickly step into LoS and uses his TQ shot.

Group 1 setup is MT1 + MT2 + Warlock + Paladin + Whoever. Group 2 and 3 are heal teams A and B with pala + 2x druid + 2x priest if possible. Healing only on Tanks, the fight is long, rotation is needed and DPS has to bandage in a safespot.

Tanking
(Works for all 3 Dragons the same)

The dragons are tauntable. This opens up a beautiful way to keep him positioned and avoid all aggro-loss on the MT during Wing Buffet: 3 Seconds before the Wing Buffet, an offtank will taunt the Dragon while standing 90° off the Main Tank.

This forces the Wing Buffet on the Offtank who looses aggro back to the Main Tank once the effect of the taunt fades (3 sec). In other words: the offtank attempts to catch the bullet. It is important that the offtank's taunt is cast no longer than 3 seconds before the Wing Buffet. If 2 Offtanks are available they coordinate to cast the taunt staggered (Second taunt is cast about 2 seconds after the first) to cover any inaccuracies of the running timers.

Whoever is in the Wing Buffet's AoE gets knocked back 30-40 yards and has to run back immediately. Usually to the safe-position.

Required setup is two tanks, one main and one offtank. Both need to be warriors. They position themselves as indicated in the image above at a 90° angle. The offtank hast to make sure he stands close enough to the Dragon to make sure that if aggro switches to him, the dragon will not move, just turn to him (this is critical).

To make this work, two healers (freferably druid+priest) have to be positioned accross the tank positions behind firemaw. There is a column to provide a LoS safezone for them. They just pop out of their safespot when the Wing Buffet timer is running out to burst heal the Offtank until the Main Tank has regained aggro. Note it is possible to stay in sight of the offtank while being hidden from the dragon in the same way the MT healers are. The sweet spot here is very small though but its there.

[Matt]

(Note there are many places in BWL where chromaggus can be successfully fought. The round ramp, the staircase between supression rooms, in the gate to the octagonal room he originally stands are all viable spots. The setup follows always the same principle in is probably most easily understood in this spot)

Chromaggus is different for each instance ID. His abilities are however derived from a fixed pool. He chooses 2 afflictions (debuffs) and 2 aspects (breaths) that remain unchanged until the instance resets.

Afflictions
(Unlimited Range, unaffected by LoS)
Brood Affliction: Black (Curse) --> ??
Brood Affliction: Red (Disease) --> ??
Brood Affliction: Bronze (Hourglass) --> 4 second stun at random intervals for 10 minutes
Brood Affliction: Blue (Magic) --> Movement Slowed
Brood Affliction: Green (Poison) --> DoT

Aspects
(360° AoE, affected by LoS)
Black - Ignite Flesh - Strong DoT
Red - Incinerate - 3675-4275 fire dmg
Bronze - Time Lapse - Frozen in time! Health reduced by 50%, and Wipes any threat generated.
Blue - Frost burn - Attack speed reduced by 80%. Approx. 1400 dmg
Green - Corrosive Acid - 875 to 1125 dmg every 3 sec. Armour reduced by 3938 to 5062

Tactic remains the same for all combinations. EXCEPTION: Time Lapse

Tanking
Chromaggus can be tanked by a single tank (phew!).

Positioning
Positioning is done as shown in the illustration, all DPS groups get a paladin for healing but are expected to bandage. Its important that the DPS-safes are all covered with dispelling for magic/curse/disease/poison. Healers in theory dont need an extra cleanser since they can handle all by themselves (druid for curse and poison, priests for disease and magic) but nevertheless a paladin at at the healer spot is a good thing. Bronze cant be dispelled.

DPS
At all times, chroma is vulnerable to a certain school of magic. He constantly changes it so we have to check for it over every now and then. Aside from exploiting the vulnerability, its also important not to overnuke so the MT can keep aggro.

Time Lapse
This requires an offtank to build aggro on Chroma. When the breath is announced, the offtank runs to his safe. After the MT gets "stunned", the offtank gets aggro and immediately runs chroma back to the tank spot where he hands over aggro to the MT again. The offtank will get a personal healer (paladin) that keeps him at full health to survive the 6 seconds time lapse. The paladin shall not build any more aggro than absolutely neccessary so Chromaggus will always go after the offtank.

Since the offtank cannot outaggro the MT healers and DPS, everyone in raid but the offtank and his paladin have to become affected by time lapse. This means: Hide for the damaging breath as usual, but stay in(get into) sight of Chromaggus for the Time Lapse breath.

[Matt]

(Sorry, this got a bit complicated. The "Safe" areas only refer to the Bellowing Roar. The Shadowflame angle is approximate.)

P H A S E - I
After talking to Nefarian, Drakonids spawn from two entrances in the room. For each instance id two brood afflictions are randomly chosen for them. Each entrance spawns one type. The Drakonids will continue to spawn until 42 of them have been killed. Then Nefarian lands --> Phase II.

Nefarius himself runs around the room during this phase, casts shadowbolts and sheeps players.

P H A S E - I I
Nefarian (bid dragon) lands.

Nefarian Shouts

Nefarian tries to **** each class to maximum effect, this is what will happen:

Priests - Must not heal, otherwise the target will get a stacking debuff with each heal that lands (lasts 20-30 seconds)
Druids - Stuck in catform
Rogues - Will be ported to Nefarian and cannot move
Mages - Random polymorph of other raidmembers into giraffs/cows/etc. (Ice block can counter this, also LoS)
Warrior - Stuck in Berserker Stance
Warlocks - Spawning infernals
Hunters - Ranged weapon in use will break (unequip before each class call)
Paladins - Nefarian becomes immune to melee damage
Shaman - Hostile totems

Apparently these happen one at a time... remotely similar to Bloodlord Mandokir's "I'm watching you"

Bellowing Roar
Simple AoE fear. Can be countered by Fear Ward and Berserker Rage. LoS check.

Tail Whip
Stuns briefly. (damage? duration?)

Cleave
Frontal physical AoE (not yet exactly sure about its AoE angle, seems to be somewhere between 90 and 120°)

-75% healing curse
Dispellable -75% healing curse on the current aggro-holder. Has to be dispelled

P H A S E - I I I
At 20% Nefarian resurrects the previously killed drakonids as undead.

--- Our current tactic -------------------------------------------------

PHASE I

We split raid into two independent teams. They are camping one spawn point each. Rogues and Warriors of each team stand right in the gate to the cave where the Drakonids spawn. Via /assist they focus all damage on one after another and kill them as fast as they spawn. The warriors in the teams will mainly use cleave/retaliation/sweeping strike/whirlwind whenever available to get as much aggro on them as possible. Mages/Warlocks keep the are under constandt blizzard/fire rain. No more than 4 drakonids should be alive at one time. Those who get shadowbolted by Nefarian during this phase have to be healed quickly. Usually Nefarius pesters the team at the spawn point near the room entrance.

(we usually have 3 warriors on each side)

(in case of red drakonids warlock AoE has no effect on them, so we have mages in one team, warlocks in the other)

PHASE II

3 Priests and 3 Druids together with MT1 (fearwarded) go grab Nefarian and position him correctly while the rest of the raid kills the remaining Drakonids (spawns stop when Nefarian lands)

From here on its a straight forward fight. Every now and then a AoE fear and a class shout.

Warlock: as soon as the infernals spawn they have to be killed ASAP to prevent them from going rogue on casters.

Priests: the moment the shout goes off, all priests have to immediately cancel their channeled heal, sit there and do nothing until the debuff wears out. If a heal lands, the targetted player gets a stacking DoT DoT each time a heal lands. Renew and shield can still be cast.

Druid: the druid shout doest do anything bad to druids, they are just stuck in cat. However this naturally takes away a lot of healing.

At all times, especially just before a fear, the MT should have a full set of HoTs on him to bridge the heal-less time.

Last but not least the rogue shout: This one just ports the rogues in front of Nefarian in a stun lock. If they get hit by Nefarian's Shadowflame or a couple of cleaves they die. To counter this, Nefarian is always positioned at an angle (see illustration) and in case of a rogue call immediately turned to the alternate position.

Last but not least nefarian casts a -70% healing curse on the MT. Has to be dispelled immediately (druids job).

Mages: Since the mage class call can mess up the tanking and healing quite severely if not dispelled asap, we keep mages in a position without LoS to the MT and Healers (see illustration)

PHASE III

The Drakonids we killed before rise back to life in the exact spot they were killed before. At 22% all mages and warlocks get in position near the spawn points to kill off the bone constructs immediately with AoE. A hunter sets up a frost trap in the middle of the bone pile on each side to slow the initial movement of the spawns.

Mages keep the spawns in nova-lock (using a limited invulnerability potions to get away). Ideally the mobs are all locked down until they are dead. As soon as the first mobs are immobilized Fire Rains and Blizzards are used to kill.

Once the main packs are dead, the spawns that managed to escape are killed and the fight resusmes as normal for the last 20%

--- MODS -------------------------------------------------

The following mods simplify the fight quite a bit:

1) is an addcounter. This add counts deaths of teh drakonids. it uses the CTRA channel to sync with the othe rplayers to provide accurate figures. One player per group should have this mod installed and set tinto reporting mode by typing: "/nef report".

http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=2642

2) is an improved announcer for all special abilities. This one has to be on the MT. iT is turned on by typing "/nefarian on". Most notable "improvement" is the class call warning a few seconds before it actually goes off... this gives everyone (especially hunters) time to prepare for a call.

http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=2662

[amrican93]

Cool Matt.

[Amedis]

http://shaunconnery.dmusic.com/

Best. Strats. Ever.

BTW, Shaunconnery is a T2 Warrior on Tichondrius. Really cool guy, and funny as hell haha.

[acetoxy]

bwl is so hard.... at 5am

[Elites360]

good job!!!