Blackrock Foundry Notepod

[Kulldam]

Operator Thogar

All aboard the rape train WOOOO WOOOOO!!

This encounter is very much an add-based fight and is almost entirely about managing incoming trainloads of various add groups within short time periods before the next trainload arrives and steamrolls over the raid.

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Addon

Per Tree's post, @everyone should install the Thogar Assist addon: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/thogar-assist

It seems to be the better maintained and put together of the two addons for this fight (and also looks nicer, which is an added bonus).

Trains & Tracks

The primary gimmick to this encounter is of course... DE TRAIN! DE TRAIN!

There are (4) parallel tracks running through the encounter area and frequently throughout the encounter, trains will pass through along a track and quickly exit the area, or the train will stop and release a number of mobs to be dealt with.

Normally I'd dig in and write down the key events of the trains, but since that's already been done for us and is presented in such a lovely addon above, there's really no need.

Group Splitting

On approximately one (and technically a half) ocassions during the fight (at roughly 2 minutes in), (2) add trains will appear simultaneously in the two central tracks and spawn adds out from the opposing sides.

Solution: The raid must be split accordingly to deal with each set simultaneously. One tank will retain Thogar of course, so that side should have the majority of healing.

Notable Train Adds

Gunnery Sergeants are likely the most critical and will remain on top of the train, firing Delayed Siege Bombs and a specific, targeted player for a few seconds. These bombs detonate after 30 seconds dealing moderate damage to anyone within 9 yards.

Solution: Individual player(s) targeted by the Gunner should move out of the raid, along either opening door wall to drop Bombs out of position of most of the raid, allowing them to explode safely. Worth testing: Will stepping onto a Bomb preemptively cause it to explode and if so, can immune or 90% reduction players purposefully do so to a large clump of Bombs?

Cauterizing Bolt is an interuptable heal cast by Grom'kar Firemenders.

Solution: @Melee DPS in particular should be prioritizing these mobs when they appear in packs. Firemenders spawn in pairs along with others in that pack type, approximately once 90 seconds into the encounter and again around 3 minutes later. Interrupts to stop the casts are ideal, though the heal once applied lasts 10 seconds and can be Purged via offensive magic dispels. Worth testing: Stunnable?

Operator Thogar

Enkindle is the primary @Tank-swap mechanic and applies a stacking DoT for 25 seconds, dealing 10,000 Fire damage every second.

Solution: This ability looks to be used every ~12 seconds, so tanks can swap every 2 stacks without much trouble.

Pulse Grenades are thrown at random ranged players and deal heavy Nature damage for 20 seconds in that impact area. They also draw players toward that location.

Solution: Ranged/healers should try to remain near max range from melee and be quick to move out if a Grenade is thrown nearby.

[Boggyb]

Oregorger:
-The range of his roll is greater than the width of the hallway. In this terrible diagram, I was approximately at green, the boss was at blue and going the direction of the orange arrow, yet I still died.
-Might we consider splitting the raid into groups of 5ish and having each group cover 1/4th of the room? That would theoretically maximize efficiency and if a healer is with them, ensure people don't die to being out of range of a healer.

Beastlord Darmac:
-Can we tank him in the middle once we have one remaining mount? I was having issues with being out of range of the tanks without stacking close to people.
-Hand of Protection seemed to prevent the damage pinned people were taking, but it did not free them.

[Dyeus]

-Might we consider splitting the raid into groups of 5ish and having each group cover 1/4th of the room? That would theoretically maximize efficiency and if a healer is with them, ensure people don't die to being out of range of a healer.

At the risk of saying something blatently obvious, the piles in the middle don't line of sight. It's entirely possible to stand in the middle of room and just pivot around corners as needed, just swapping back and forth between 2 spots (except melee, obviously). Ranged might have a hard time targeting the crates (macros would help), but there's no reason healers couldn't do that and just play whack-a-mole with their raid frames.

Blast Furnace:

You said this in the initial post, Kull -

Finally, the tanks are further south than the Regulator position, holding their Security Guard mobs away a bit (as well as the single Foreman that may be need to be tank swapped at some point due to high Melt Armor stacks). However, the primary reason to keep Guards away is because of their frequent use of Defense Zone.

(emphasis added)

Except I'm running into information that the Guard's Defense Zone does not apply to the Regulators even if they're sitting in it. Video here of a Heroic Blast Furnace kill on live. Note how they just stack everything on each side up, then kill Regulator > Engineer > Guard, with plenty of time to focus the boss. Information stolen from this thread, but there might be more in here worth reading/watching.

[Kulldam]

Except I'm running into information that the Guard's Defense Zone does not apply to the Regulators even if they're sitting in it. Video here of a Heroic Blast Furnace kill on live. Note how they just stack everything on each side up, then kill Regulator > Engineer > Guard, with plenty of time to focus the boss. Information stolen from this thread, but there might be more in here worth reading/watching.

Heh yeah I came here to post exactly this same information. There seemed no reason to assume Defense zones didn't work on Bellow Operators of course so I planned our strategy around that. Clearly if that isn't a concern though, we can gain quite a bit of DPS from cleave if nothing else.

It won't exactly speed up Phase 1 for us, but it will speed up the transition going into Phase 2 which helps a good deal.

Additionally, I've also noticed that while Heat continues to rise in Phase 2 as we witnessed ourselves, it will dissipate again once Phase 3 begins (until Frenzy at 30% HP). Therefore, if we can manage to keep Heat below 100 prior to the end of Phase 2/entering Phase 3, that's a SIGNIFICANT savings on required healing.

I do think that fight is certainly within our reach as it stands with a few more tweaks and optimizations, though whether it's worth pursuing on Sunday over other new bosses I'm skeptical. One example tweak (other than the tanking position change) I thought of near the end of our attempts is to use a healer or two as part of the assigned bomb team. This would free up a bit more DPS to be attacking stuff rather than running around to activate bombs. A small gain to be sure, but it all helps.

Another tweak that relates to something mentioned in the initial strategy layout:

As long as the Engineers are not allowed to cast Repair, there is no downside to allowing an Engineer to live a bit longer while we focus down a Bellower.

After seeing it in action tonight, it seems clear that the above is certainly true, and therefore means we have no real need of having DPS focus on the Engineer first at all (since we know when Repair is attempted due to it running away). The additional benefit is also related to another point in the initial strategy:

The "extra" Bombs generated by the random target cast from Engineers DO NOT appear to come out of the total (3) pack when the Engineer dies (that is, it's entirely possible to acquire 4+ Bombs from a single Engineer if the randomly targeted players react quickly enough).

We confirmed this to be the case, and therefore it means that leaving an Engineer alive longer may actually be a net gain in speed. That is, while an Engineer is active, it increases our "DPS" to the Regulator due to extra bomb creation on random ranged players.

While it's not plausible due to the mechanics of cleave and positioning, imagine a scenario where we kept the first ~2 Engineers on either side alive but low health, letting them cast Bomb on random players to run into the group. Then when the respective side has reached 50% HP on the Regulator (thus requiring 6 more Bomb Explosions), we quickly kill of the (2) Engineers, using their guaranteed 6 Bombs to do the trick.

Again it's not plausible due to lost DPS from not cleaving and thus not accidentally killing them early, but in theory there's only benefit to doing that sort of thing.

Another idea I had but I'm unsure about whether it would work, is essentially having the entire raid focusing on dealing with one side first. We could have a small handful of ranged DPS that can be tasked with killing the opposing Bellows Operator, but otherwise we could have the entire raid on say the left side, with all the mobs tanked underneath the left Bellows Operator.

I can't confirm it, but first and foremost I question whether a newly spawned Bellows Operator on a side that has no Regulator active would continue to increase Heat. Regardless of that really, the key benefit to this would be far better overall DPS with the same overall rate of killing each Regulator (assuming we didn't "waste" explosions but being too far away when Engineer sets died). This would cause the Foreman to die much sooner (likely before Phase 2 in fact).

The unknown is whether an Engineer from the right side, for example, is drawn back to his right side Regulator when attempting to Repair it (and if so, can he be stunned/gripped/snared enough to prevent him from getting away from the group?)

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Anyway, an interesting fight and some food for thought as we look to try it again in the near future!

[Kulldam]

Oregorger:
-Might we consider splitting the raid into groups of 5ish and having each group cover 1/4th of the room? That would theoretically maximize efficiency and if a healer is with them, ensure people don't die to being out of range of a healer.

That seems like a solid idea for sure, though overall the best help in that phase is just having people survive/avoid the roll mechanic (which comes from practice/study I assume).

Beastlord Darmac:
-Can we tank him in the middle once we have one remaining mount? I was having issues with being out of range of the tanks without stacking close to people.

As long as it doesn't hinder tanks' ability to pickup smaller add sets, I don't see why not!

[Vikrum]

List of MC'able mobs for BLAST FURNACE and what abilities they have.

Security Guard:

4 - Intimidating Smash: forces a slag to fixate on the guard.
5 - Slay Elemental: removes the shield and makes them take 50% more damage.

Firecaller:

3 - Lava Burst: Hits for peanuts and sucks.
4 - Cauterize: has a long CD and only heals players for 10% of the normal amount that it does on NPCs (per its tooltip)
5 - Eruption: revives elementals.

Engineer:

4 - Taze: Moderate spammable 40k damage
5 - Throw Bomb: Throws a bomb on a player that they can use on the furnace (this is really helpful)

[Idtrapdat]

List of MC'able mobs for BLAST FURNACE and what abilities they have.

Security Guard:

4 - Intimidating Smash: forces a slag to fixate on the guard.
5 - Slay Elemental: removes the shield and makes them take 50% more damage.

Firecaller:

3 - Lava Burst: Hits for peanuts and sucks.
4 - Cauterize: has a long CD and only heals players for 10% of the normal amount that it does on NPCs (per its tooltip)
5 - Eruption: revives elementals.

Engineer:

4 - Taze: Moderate spammable 40k damage
5 - Throw Bomb: Throws a bomb on a player that they can use on the furnace (this is really helpful)

Do you know what the CD of each ability is?

[Idtrapdat]

While it's not plausible due to the mechanics of cleave and positioning, imagine a scenario where we kept the first ~2 Engineers on either side alive but low health, letting them cast Bomb on random players to run into the group. Then when the respective side has reached 50% HP on the Regulator (thus requiring 6 more Bomb Explosions), we quickly kill of the (2) Engineers, using their guaranteed 6 Bombs to do the trick.

This seems like a great idea, but one thing I didn't notice is how long the bombs last on the ground after the Engineer dies. If we killed them quickly together, would we have time to gather up the 2nd set of bombs dropped? Maybe have another group pick them up and we chain 6 people?

[Takaoni]

I don't think so. It was pretty uncomfortable getting the base 3 + the random extra through.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 2

[Deph]

Beastlord Darmac:
-Can we tank him in the middle once we have one remaining mount? I was having issues with being out of range of the tanks without stacking close to people.

Yeah, means adds need to move to get to us but not such a big deal. - If we try to get too far from that door they'll probably end up on a starfalling boomkin though XD

If it's just me going out of range from time to time that's really no biggy, since I'm rolling out of his bleed AoE and not taking damage at that moment.