Blackrock Foundry Warlock Style - Normal, Heroic, & Mythic

[spikeysquad 50]

So this new way of being pro-active, planning ahead for fights and writing stuff down seems to be working better for me. I am not making so many silly mistakes either so here are the next bosses. Basically this is my rambling (might be a better place for it) but I would be grateful if anyone has something to contribute.

 

Hans & Franz:

 

Had 13 quick wipes so far. Opener getting better but basically is one HoG ok? Bosses take a while to get together so if I wait for that and do 2 HoGs with a gap in between still (perhaps that's the issue actually) I am not in Meta until 10 seconds into the fight. 2 Corruptions give a lot more fury than a ST fight. Anyhow, this I can sort with more attempts (it took me too long to realise that I should wait on HoG for both targets!).

 

Just to check do both SF and SB have travel times? It seems like they do but I'm still having issues doing a proper pre-cast and then not pulling the boss first on another fight. There's such a difference in dps with double procs or not though so I want to sort out the timings properly without causing issues for the raid group.

 

So have been looking at a bunch of high ranked logs and it seems for Smart Stampers there's no true pattern of whether people ToC or use instants. So I tend to think if I have 2 instants to use go ahead and if not ToC? Seems like you advise against ToC though Soulzar and just use what you have/redot early maybe?. 

 

On a lot of logs (but not all) people seem to be favouring CW over HoG. Does the number of targets make a difference to the decision process? Or it's the same boiling down to whether one is disappearing soon, fury level and procs etc.

 

Is reapplying Doom, for Imp procs, on the disappearing brother worth it?

 

From what I gather this should be a slightly shorter fight than Ore (6:56) so were talking 6:30 maybe. So it will either be a 4 or 5 DS fight.  Definitely want one for that normal stamping phase Soulzar which is 2:30 mark perhaps. Any other suggestions?

 

Ok enough for now, hopefully though I will do a little better this time. If you made it this far you get my admiration!

[HeadBeeGuy 11]

Both SB and SF have travel times. I personally use SF for my precast because I'm used to how long it takes to cast and travel. Just look at how long the cast time is on your tooltip and make sure to start casting about 1/2 a second early (ex: my SF cast time is ~3.5 sec, so I prepot at 5 and start my precast at or very slightly after 4). It doesn't have to hit the boss before your tank does. As long as it leaves your hand before the tank engages you should get double trinket procs. What is your main tank and what ability do they use to pull? Do they actually pull when the countdown ends or are they a bit behind? It may be less of a problem with you and more of one with your tank. You should talk to them about coordinating for your (and the rest of your casters') precast.

I see a lot of people saying that CW is a dps gain on 2 or more targets, but I haven't looked into any of the math behind it. Unfortunately I can't she'd any light on mythic Hans/Franz, but we should be getting there soon hopefully. Lol.

[Soulzar 42]

My H&F opener:  Precast Soulfire, 10m Doomguard, corruption both bosses and immediately jump into meta for Cata>3CW. You should be able to get that all in before your first 10s procs drop.

 

After that you will need to move shortly for the first stamper if your group doesn't push into hot plates super fast, which you likely won't on progression.  You will have Soulfire charges from the chaos waves and I generally refresh corruptions and toss 1 or 2 out and pray for another 4p proc.  You may consider using your 10m cooldown when you use Hero at 60%. Its probably a better time to use it during progression.

 

I put my Portal at our primary smart stamper start location.  Refresh dooms as soon as the second guy comes back as Cata is delayed slightly due tot eh interrupt cast and movement.  You will be reapplying doom via cata shortly anyway, but due to pandemic effect its not terrible timing.  You generally need bled a bit of fury at this point anyways.

 

When moving for the first stamper i pop DS and CW bomb, then cast Cata the second we get to new stamper, it will go off and then your moving again.  With luck you will get a few more 4P procs to dump more CW in DS, if not you will have lots of Soulfires.  Once darksoul has ended, i start banking fury again so i can go into the 60% crazy phase with as much banked as possible.

 

ToC usage for me is dictated mostly by the stamper patterns.  Some of them, you can very safely stand on the middle section and side step them and be casting soulfires.  Others, while you CAN be on the very edge and just stutter step back and forth, the millimeter between fail and win.. is just not worth it.  So for the more Diagonal patterns, i'll just jump on the belt with everybody else and ToC.  The sustained dps difference is minimal, compared to the sustained living.

 

Cata after this point I kinda Yolo.  When I can get it in I do.. but don't really have it mapped out.  You can do teh second smart stamper phase exactly the same way as the first.

[DravenCarey 3]

So this new way of being pro-active, planning ahead for fights and writing stuff down seems to be working better for me. I am not making so many silly mistakes either so here are the next bosses. Basically this is my rambling (might be a better place for it) but I would be grateful if anyone has something to contribute.

 

Hans & Franz:

 

Had 13 quick wipes so far. Opener getting better but basically is one HoG ok? Bosses take a while to get together so if I wait for that and do 2 HoGs with a gap in between still (perhaps that's the issue actually) I am not in Meta until 10 seconds into the fight. 2 Corruptions give a lot more fury than a ST fight. Anyhow, this I can sort with more attempts (it took me too long to realise that I should wait on HoG for both targets!).

 

Just to check do both SF and SB have travel times? It seems like they do but I'm still having issues doing a proper pre-cast and then not pulling the boss first on another fight. There's such a difference in dps with double procs or not though so I want to sort out the timings properly without causing issues for the raid group.

 

So have been looking at a bunch of high ranked logs and it seems for Smart Stampers there's no true pattern of whether people ToC or use instants. So I tend to think if I have 2 instants to use go ahead and if not ToC? Seems like you advise against ToC though Soulzar and just use what you have/redot early maybe?. 

 

On a lot of logs (but not all) people seem to be favouring CW over HoG. Does the number of targets make a difference to the decision process? Or it's the same boiling down to whether one is disappearing soon, fury level and procs etc.

 

Is reapplying Doom, for Imp procs, on the disappearing brother worth it?

 

From what I gather this should be a slightly shorter fight than Ore (6:56) so were talking 6:30 maybe. So it will either be a 4 or 5 DS fight.  Definitely want one for that normal stamping phase Soulzar which is 2:30 mark perhaps. Any other suggestions?

 

Ok enough for now, hopefully though I will do a little better this time. If you made it this far you get my admiration!

 

Yea as mentioned both SF and SB have travel times. If you tend to accidentally pull early, I recommend standing at max range and casting your soulfire when the groups pull timer gets to 5 seconds. Since SF is usually a 3.5 sec cast time that gives it 1.5 seconds (assuming no error on your end as to when you started the cast) before it lands. Usually this is the perfect amount of time before tanks pull. You can fill that 1.5 sec window by que'ing up a shadow bolt cast as well (since your SF is in the air, you're not in combat so you definitely dont want to throw out an instant cast like a DoT/HoG). Once the pull starts you go about whichever opener coincides with your choice of talents (don't be afraid to use Demonic Servitude, it is VERY competitive to cataclysm - under perfect play cata will come ahead but DS leaves a nice margin of error that is pretty forgiving for mistakes). 

 

As far as ToC usage during smart stampers it's going to depend on a bunch of factors. For one, it depends on how fast your group can push out of that phase. Assuming it takes your group a decent while (5+ movements per phase) I'd encourage you treat it like any other portion of the fight - continue hard casting. Hard cast your SB and SF (if you've got procs and you're in meta) while tossing out HoG/CW as you get 2+ stacks. Because each smart stamper phase is followed by a different transition phase I can only suggest based on what has done well for me: on first smart stampers continue to blow all your CD's since it wont last very long. After the second smart stampers DO NOT cast your soul fire unless you're going to cap out on molten core charges. Continue to build fury and MC charges since immediately after the second smart stampers will be dumb stampers. Now, I'm not sure about your group but for my group (and the way I handle dumb stampers) you'll likely want to drop all other CDs (doomguard, 2nd potion, all your fury/MC charges with Dark Soul) and burn the crap out of them. My group uses Heroism at this point as well. If your group does the same then I would recommend going into this phase with as much burst dps as you can manage. I personally avoid the conveyor belts because I'm comfortable dodging the dumb stampers while standing on the divider between the belts. If you're not sure what I mean by that you can check out the Hans and Franz guide I have on my YouTube channel (link in my sig). 

 

Comparing HoG to CW if I'm not mistaken as long as your targets will be around to take the full duration of both stacks of shadowflame then HoG is a bigger single target boost to your DPS. However, you have to be flexible with this description and take into consideration what procs/buffs you have active. If you've got 10 seconds on trinket procs and you can get the full duration of a two stack shadowflame in that'll be the bigger dps boost (since shadowflame is technically a dot and dots update dynamically with your buffs). However, if you've got 3 seconds left on those buffs (provided its just about anything other than a haste buff) if you try to double stack HoG your shadowflame is only going to benefit from the buffs in the first 3 seconds of the DoT (after that your procs will fall off presumably). So in a situation like that, its wisest to cast chaos wave (which "snapshots" your current buffs/procs) as it will provide the biggest boost in DPS from being a fully buffed cast.

 

As for whether or not to refresh your dots on the brother that's disappear: YES! It is most certainly worth refreshing those DoTs as the mobs continue to take damage when they're "out of the fight" (which means you can still potentially generate imp procs off them!). You can see that in this log, I've restricted the time window to only the period of time where Hans'gar leaves the fight after the first smart stamper phase (using the Replay function that was from 0:27 to 1:11), however, you can clearly see that for the entire time he was gone Hans'gar continued to take damage from my Doom and he was taking ticks of my Corruption for the first 13 seconds!

 

Hans'gar's "Downtime": https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/gBG8fTAaqhm7FK1V#fight=2&type=damage-taken&hostility=1&source=31&target=10&start=522172&end=566401&pins=0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24damage%240%240.0.0.Any%24139097600.0.0.Warlock%24true%2476973.0.0.Boss%24false%24146739%5E0%24Separate%24%23909049%24damage%240%240.0.0.Any%24139097600.0.0.Warlock%24true%2476973.0.0.Boss%24false%24603

 

Additionally, by manipulating the parameters on warcraftlogs, you can see that I landed multiple Doom critical ticks at 0:52 and 1:07

 

Doom Crits: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/gBG8fTAaqhm7FK1V#fight=2&type=damage-done&start=522172&end=566401&view=events&source=10&target=31

 

Which coincides with the times when my Wild Imp #6 and Wild Imp #8 started dealing damage:

 

Wild Imp #6: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/gBG8fTAaqhm7FK1V#fight=2&type=damage-done&start=522172&end=566401&source=29.6

 

Wild Imp #8: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/gBG8fTAaqhm7FK1V#fight=2&type=damage-done&start=522172&end=566401&source=29.8

 

Pretty neat stuff if you ask me!

 

Lastly, for the times you might wanna use dark soul: on the pull, during "dumb stampers" provided your guild is trying to burn this as quickly as possible, and the final 25% burn. That will leave you with 1-2 opportunities to use it as you wish (assuming its unglyphed and depending on the time it takes for your group to down the boss). As always you should use these spare charges during any period where you have a large number of molten core stacks to dump - preferably during periods of low movement (the hot plate phase can - potentially - provide a good opportunity for this depending on your luck. If you don't feel comfortable trying to hold it until a period of lower movement you can always just blow them when you have the highest number of trinket/weapon/ring procs active.

 

Hope this helps!

[spikeysquad 50]

Thank you Headbeeguy, Soulzar and DravenCarey for the replies. Nice to see some others around here than just my long winded posts everywhere! Anyhow this post is a reply to all 3 and is in a rather random order.

 

Yeah I definitely don't want my spell to hit the target before the tank :P I do know about the timings but I think that I need to leave 0.5 seconds like you suggested Head rather than anything longer. I am pretty sure it is mostly the tank's issue on the pre-cast and that they sometimes are hitting their key at 0 rather than hitting the boss then but at other times it is pulled early by someone else or the tank or timed nicely. I have been more hesitant recently to prevent "ninja pulling" (other guildies have done the same) and hence we miss out more often than not. 

 

I actually use SB (and Doomguard) to pre-cast now days so I did want to check that it does have a travel time as well rather than just being an animation thing of it flying through the air. Anyhow, I will have a chat with our (paladin) tank when he gets online and see what he says. Thanks for the advice.

 

I read a lot of posts and there is definitely a lot of controversy and maths over the whole HoG/CW thing and I am still not sure there is an agreed upon answer. I like the guidelines on the Summonstone site but that doesn't actually clarify if it changes with more targets. Somewhere else says CW on 2+targets unless you need the fury and hence my question for this fight. Anyhow, that decision of which spell generally is still something I am working on understanding and optimising.

 

Thanks for all the extra info Soulzar. Has given me a much better idea now of how to approach the fight and when to have a burn phase. Yeah we only get 2-3 plates for the first smart stamper phase so we are saving BL for the original stamper and hence I'll get full on resources here. Sorry I probably should have said again that I will be going DemServ, at least for progress anyhow. I agree it is much better to be safe than sorry and will probably be going on the belts instead of staying on the middle. Being all stacked I even had trouble dodging the poptarts last raid or I would go too far off and onto the belts and go shooting down the room (I'm sure that they move faster on mythic). 

 

Ah Draven SF at 5 seconds is a sure way to pull first (at least in my guild). Sometimes I cannot go at 4... It only has to finish casting anyhow so at least in my situation an extra 1.5 would be too extreme. HoG also has a travel time though I believe a little shorter than SF so it would be ok to cast early (except for this as it would only hit one target).

 

Many thanks for the DoT information on the missing brother. Seems like an early recast may be worth it but I'll have to look a little closer as it perhaps depends on how much is left.

 

I feel much better informed now and I am grateful.  

[Liquidsteel 279]

Are you standing at max range when you pull?

 

I precast Shadowbolt which has 2.x cast time and I prepot and cast at 4, using petattack on the Doomguard at 3.

 

You can always leave a small pause between casting Shadowbolt and using the Doomguard to not ninja.

[spikeysquad 50]

Yup pretty much always at max range and the last time I really tried to do this was on Oregorger and that definitely is (at least for me; for my pet slightly less so). Anyhow, now I am determined to fix this so I'll actually take more note of when the boss becomes active. I realised that I haven't actually bothered until now but after the first time I then started casting SB at 3 seconds then Doomy about 2-2.5. Guess what? I still managed to pull first on a couple of occasions so a few weeks back I just gave up and now do a SB pre-cast on 2, send in my pet and cross my fingers.

 

Last progression night I got procs 3/15 attempts (though technically should be getting none) hence hopefully that means that they weren't that slow that often so maybe things have improved. Oh and this wasn't just me that pulled first in the night in question and my DBM timings are fine as my partner also raids and they line up perfectly. Saying that though I have only really talked with 2 people so far and just looked through the logs and double procs are pretty non-existent for everyone but they should be consistently happening if we all weren't so scared!  Anyhow, still need to catch up with our main tank.  

Edited May 13, 2015 by spikeysquad

[Liquidsteel 279]

Are you casting Doomguard immediately after Shadowbolt? If so you will ninja. Follow my above advice and you'll have double procs 90% of the time.

The key is to leave a pause between Shadowbolt and Doomguard as otherwise you are ninjaing the boss with Doomie.

[DravenCarey 3]

Are you casting Doomguard immediately after Shadowbolt? If so you will ninja. Follow my above advice and you'll have double procs 90% of the time.

The key is to leave a pause between Shadowbolt and Doomguard as otherwise you are ninjaing the boss with Doomie.

 As Liquid suggests, you need some form of a delay. That's why I've adopted casting a shadow bolt after my soul fire (which I start casting at the 5 second mark from max range. It works every time :)

[Liquidsteel 279]

 As Liquid suggests, you need some form of a delay. That's why I've adopted casting a shadow bolt after my soul fire (which I start casting at the 5 second mark from max range. It works every time

Not sure if I'm a fan of this.

 

Casting Shadowbolt means boss will get pulled and you're still casting for another 1.5s. Trinkets will already have procced and you're sitting there casting an additional shadowbolt.

[spikeysquad 50]

Yeah perhaps that was my issue. Just to be clear are we talking the permanent pet with the 2.5 sec cast or the Service one? Or even perhaps both. Anyhow has been working fine in pugs tonight. Will check more in the guild raid tomorrow.

[DravenCarey 3]

Not sure if I'm a fan of this.

 

Casting Shadowbolt means boss will get pulled and you're still casting for another 1.5s. Trinkets will already have procced and you're sitting there casting an additional shadowbolt.

 

It really just depends on how well you time it. Usually speaking I lose about 1 second of trinket buff time give or take depending on how well I time it. Is it optimal? No (use a petattack macro to get the entire duration of your trinket procs). Is it a darn good safety measure that ensures you'll always get that double proc (despite late, or early, pulls)? Absolutely. I decide to err on the side of caution, and it has worked very well for me. As long as I pay close enough attention to the pull timer, this has gotten me double procs 100% of the time. Its a beautiful thing lol

[Liquidsteel 279]

It's no different to precasting and pausing for half a second, and doesn't lock you into a 2.2 cast.

 

I mean it's hardly a big deal but precast and pet attack do the same thing, you're just casting a long spell whereas I pause briefly before dropping Doomguard and beginning the opener.

 

When you have a 10s stacking trinket that extra 1 second matters a lot. It's the difference between getting out that CW + SF at 8-10 stacks and only getting one, or none.

[DravenCarey 3]

Yea you're absolutely right, there's no giant repercussion to it. I'll probably do exactly what you advocate and just wait. However, shouldn't you wait to summon doomguard until you're buffed by your dark soul (just so all its casts benefit from DS)? Or are you buffing dark soul as you drop the doomguard?

[Liquidsteel 279]

I use Dark Soul about 2-3 seconds after.

Summoning the Service Doomguard costs a GCD, plus it doesn't start attacking straight away. Finally it lasts 25s to Dark Soul's 20, meaning you have some leeway.

 

If you cast Dark Soul before or at the same time as the Doomguard, you waste a full GCD and waste 1.5s of Dark Soul uptime, which could have been better spent on one more CW / Soul Fire / ToC.

 

Mid fight I always go into a DS burn phase like so - HoG - Doomguard - Corruption - HoG - Meta - DS into Fury Dump.

[DravenCarey 3]

Awesome, thanks for the heads up :)

[Liarparadox 5]

Are you standing at max range when you pull?

 

I precast Shadowbolt which has 2.x cast time and I prepot and cast at 4, using petattack on the Doomguard at 3.

 

You can always leave a small pause between casting Shadowbolt and using the Doomguard to not ninja.

 

I'd test this  out in game myself, but the tanks I raid with are crazy inconsistent with pull timers (super annoying but whatever) so I think it'd just be frustrating for me. So here it is. 

 

I can't find the thread that made me stop doing petattack prepull, but basically a theorycrafter claimed it  screws up the double trinket proc because it registers as being in combat, even prior to the cast finishing. I'm seeing more say they use petattack in precast and it makes sense to me since If I cancel it before doom finishes cast I clearly am not in combat.

 

What's making me a bit hesitant is the "test" I did on a target dummy. I petattacked while I'm "pre-casting" SF and weak auras registers me in combat as soon as I press petattack, and prior to any SF cast finishing. Maybe that's just a weakaura's thing and i'm not actually in any combat. But it's a bit confusing to press the petattack button and immediately see weakauras screaming at me that I have 3 stacks of HG unused, corruption/doom have fallen off, etc...

 

So, just to confirm precast doomguard is safe without screwing up double procs yes?

[Liquidsteel 279]

Target dummies are weird, don't test it on them.

[spikeysquad 50]

I feel your pain Liar. My pre-casts are now perfect with one tank. With the other it is still a bit hit and miss so it wasn't all me.

 

So just wondering please what talents/abilities do people use for "face tanking" Flamebender dogs on mythic? Secondly, you mention the Eye Locky. Now I have used it before to place a portal but as it is now unstealthed I kind of assumed it would pull bosses? I have tested it out in the world before though and it never got aggro. Anyhow I was never brave enough to test it.

[Liquidsteel 279]

It sometimes pulls if you get too close, but it has a much smaller aggro radius than your actual character.

[spikeysquad 50]

Hello,

 

So being very AoE/cleave heavy (usually) does anyone know what tends to do more Kromog pillar damage between Demo DemServ, Demo DB and Destro CR? We should have 2-3 foxes and naturally a gateway so mobility should not be a huge factor. Then with that spec roughly how much boss damage are we losing? Not really sure how to find this information easily on WCL. 

[Curinir 4]

What we do in my guild is have two warlocks go demonbolt and one go cata for the hands. Demonbolt does far better pillar damage than just about every other class. What I do is drop a corruption and a HoG on the first two pillars, then DS and blow through four DBs on the last pillar. If you want, I can link some logs to our most recent kill!

 

Also, I haven't tried CR Destro on that fight yet, but I imagine that it would do fairly decently as well, using Havoc.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Curinir

[spikeysquad 50]

Thanks for the info Curinir. We've only had 2 pulls so I do not actually know where the issues will be yet but I definitely think that the burst ST will be best for the fight. I will give DB a whirl and see.

[Soulzar 42]

DB timings line up very well for this fight and does the burst dmg needed to get the 3rd pillar in time.  CR- Destro does very good hands dmg, very good boss dmg, and high cleave on hands.

 

If your raid is lower on classes that can burst the 3rd pillar, go Demo-DB, if not CR-Destro rounds out a bit better for the rest of the phases.

 

I played DB for progression, and CR-Destro the past few weeks to change it up.  both work great.

Edited June 15, 2015 by Soulzar

[spikeysquad 50]

Hey thanks Soulzar for the reply and it makes a lot of sense. We have had low attendance recently so haven't actually had the chance to try anything out yet (and probably will not either if 6.2 drops on the 23/24). I did some heroics as CR Destro and wow that just melts hands! But like I said that is unlikely to be a problem though SB could be nice on the outliers who are stuck in.