Siegecrafter Blackfuse Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

Table of Contents

• +1. General Information
  • 1.1. Health Values
  • 1.2. Enrage Timer
  • 1.3. Raid Composition
• +2. Loot
  • 2.1. Pets
  • 2.2. Armor
  • 2.3. Weapons
  • 2.4. Amulets, Rings, and Trinkets
• 3. Overview of the Fight
• 4. Class-specific Advice
• +5. Fight Structure
  • 5.1. Room Layout
  • 5.2. Conveyor Belts
• +6. Abilities
  • 6.1. Siegecrafter Blackfuse
  • 6.2. Adds
    • 6.2.1. Automated Shredders
    • 6.2.2. Conveyor Belt Adds
• +7. Strategy
  • 7.1. Tanking
  • 7.2. Conveyor Belt Assignments
  • 7.3. Main Platform
• 8. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• +9. Summing Things Up
  • 9.1. Tanks
  • 9.2. Healers
  • 9.3. DPS
  • 9.4. Everyone
• 10. Learning the Fight
• +11. Heroic Mode
  • 11.1. Differences From Normal Mode
  • 11.2. Strategy
    • 11.2.1. Conveyor Belt
    • 11.2.2. Electromagnets
    • 11.2.3. Crawler Mines
    • 11.2.4. Missile Turrets
    • 11.2.5. Laser Turrets
    • 11.2.6. Automated Shredders
• 12. Concluding Remarks
• 13. Changelog

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Siegecrafter Blackfuse in Siege of Orgrimmar. It is targeted at anyone who desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

Siegecrafter Blackfuse is the twelfth boss in the Siege of Orgrimmar. This is an extremely complex encounter, during which your raid will have to not only fight against Blackfuse, but also contend with a large number of the boss' gadgets and devices.

The encounter against Siegecrafter Blackfuse is a single-phase fight. Your raid will face not only Blackfuse himself, but also several types of adds.

There are two conveyor belts, one located at each end of the room where you fight Blackfuse. At regular intervals throughout the fight, several inactive adds will be brought it on the north-western conveyor belt. Your raid members can move up on the conveyor belt and attack these adds, but only one can be killed, as the remaining ones become immune when one dies. Soon after that, any adds that were not killed will appear on the north-eastern conveyor belt, where they cannot be attack, and from where they use their abilities against your raid for a certain amount of time.

Videos:

• PTR Preview — a short overview of the boss, based on PTR testing, which is extremely useful for getting a rough understanding of the fight.
• Video Guide — a video guide of the boss, based on live-realm experience.

On our forums, we are maintaining threads with class-specific advice for each of the fights of Siege of Orgrimmar. So, make sure to check them out, and if you have things to share, do not hesitate to contribute!

Class	Forum Threads
Death Knight	Blood Frost/Unholy
Druid	Balance Feral Guardian Restoration
Hunter	All specs
Mage	All specs
Monk	Brewmaster Mistweaver Windwalker
Paladin	Holy Protection Retribution
Priest	Discipline Holy Shadow
Rogue	All specs
Shaman	Elemental Enhancement Restoration
Warlock	All specs
Warrior	Arms/Fury Protection

Your raid starts out the fight on a large circular platform, located within a much larger room. This platform is where Siegecrafter Blackfuse is located, and it is surrounded by lava. Most of your raid will be confined to this platform for the duration of the fight, where you will fight Blackfuse and some of his adds.

There are two conveyor belts in the room, located alongside the north-western and north-eastern walls respectively. Because of the lava, players cannot run or jump up onto these conveyor belts, but the north-western conveyor belt can still be accessed despite the lava. Players can reach this conveyor belt through a system of transport pipes (a la Super Mario). These pipes are located on the platform, next to the conveyor belt, and players can simply jump inside the pipes in order to be transported to the conveyor belt.

Players who use the transport pipes are debuffed with Pattern Recognition, which prevents them from using the pipes to get to the conveyor belt for 60 seconds. There are two pipes, but there does not seem to be any limit to the number of different players who can use the pipes, or who can be on the conveyor belt at the same time.

On the conveyor belt itself, several things happen.

• Several damaging beams of fire, called Matter Purification Beams, are located along the belt. Coming in contact with them deals a massive amount of Fire damage to players, but because of the way in which they are positioned, they can be avoided.
• The conveyor belt is constantly moving forward, and this also causes players to move forward along with it. Players can "run against the current", so to speak, in order to slow the rate at which they are moving, and to prolong the time they can spend on the belt.
• Several adds come out onto the conveyor belt. We discuss these adds in a specific section, but for now we will mention that they are harmless, and that your raid members can kill an add of their choice, the remaining ones becoming immune when one dies.

When players are ready to leave the conveyor belt, they can do so by jumping into a similar set of pipes, located at the other end of the conveyor belt, which take players back to the platform. The Pattern Recognition debuff has no interaction with this set of pipes.

• Electrostatic Charge is a damaging ability that Blackfuse regularly uses on his tank. It deals a large amount of Nature damage, and applies a stacking debuff on the target. The debuff increases damage taken from Electrostatic Charge by 100% per stack, but also causes the player to deal 200% increased damage to any targets that have Reactive Armor (one of the adds has this buff). This ability requires a tank switch.
• Protective Frenzy is a buff that Blackfuse gains whenever one of his adds is killed. It lasts for 10 seconds, and it increases his attack speed by 100%.
• Launch Sawblade is an ability that Blackfuse uses every 10 seconds or so. It creates a sawblade (a sharp blade that spins in place) at the location of a random raid member. The sawblades deal massive Physical damage to any players who come in contact with them, knocking them back. The sawblades also damage one type of adds, called Automated Shredders, when these come in contact with them. The sawblades last indefinitely, but one of the adds has an ability that removes them (although your raid must perform a certain action for this to happen).
• Automatic Repair Beam causes Blackfuse to automatically heal any damaged Automated Shredders or Crawler Mines located within 35 yards of himself.
• Energized Defensive Matrix is a buff that Blackfuse gains if your raid fails to kill any of the adds that spawn in one wave on the conveyor belt. This buff lasts for 20 seconds, and it reduces the damage Blackfuse takes by 90%.

30 seconds after the start of the fight, and roughly every 2 minutes after that, Blackfuse summons an Automated Shredder add. These large adds have several abilities.

• Reactive Armor is a buff that reduces their damage taken by 80%.
• Death From Above is an ability that the Shredder uses regularly. It leaps up into the air and then lands, dealing a massive amount of Physical damage to players in a 15-yard radius. After landing, the Shredder is stunned for 5 seconds, during which time it takes 200% increased damage.
• Overload is a raid-wide damaging spell that the Shredder regularly uses. It deals a large amount of damage, and causes the Shredder to gain a permanent stack of a buff increasing its damage done by 30%. Players on the conveyor belt are not damaged by Overload.

It is worth noting that the Automated Shredders can be damaged by Blackfuse's sawblades, as well as by several other add abilities (listed below).

Every 40 seconds, a new wave of adds will enter the fight on the north-western conveyor belt. Three different adds will enter the fight each time, chosen randomly out of four total types of possible adds.

When on this north-western conveyor belt, the adds are deactivated or, in the case of one of them, disassembled. Essentially, this means that they do not do anything and they can simply be attacked and killed, although as we have mentioned, once one of the three adds on the conveyor belt dies, the other two become immune.

The adds that are not killed come out on the north-eastern conveyor belt a few seconds later. Once there, they are no longer deactivated, and are instead activated. Once on the north-eastern conveyor belt, the adds can no longer be killed. These adds remain on the north-eastern conveyor belt long enough to cast their ability once (they each have a single ability, and after using it they disappear). The exception to this rule are certain mine-like adds that jump down on the platform and need to be killed.

Below, we list the abilities of each of the four types of adds, as well as the name of the adds when they are on the north-western conveyor belt.

• Activated Missile Turrets use Shockwave Missile against your raid.
  • Shockwave Missile creates three damaging waves of "seismic energy". The first wave strikes a small area around Siegecrafter Blackfuse, with subsequent waves, each about 15 yards wide, striking farther and farther out, until the edges of the platform are reached. Each wave has an orange warning animation that gives players about 2-3 seconds to move out of the affected area. Players standing in an area that is affected by a wave take a very high amount of Nature damage. Automated Shredders also take damage from Shockwave Missile. After one cast of Shockwave Missile, the Missile Turret despawns from the north-eastern conveyor belt.
  • When on the north-western conveyor belt, the Activated Missile Turrets are called Deactivated Missile Turrets.
• Activated Laser Turrets use Superheated against your raid.
  • Superheated is a laser beam that follows a random raid member, leaving damaging void zones at the point of impact. Players who stand in these void zones gain a stacking DoT that deals a small amount of Fire damage per second for 7 seconds. Automated Shredders also take damage from Superheated void zones. After chasing a player with the laser beam for 10 seconds, the Activated Laser Turret despawns.
  • When on the north-western conveyor belt, the Activated Laser Turrets are called Deactivated Laser Turrets.
• Activated Electromagnets use Magnetic Crush against your raid.
  • Magnetic Crush pulls all players and sawblades towards the Activated Electromagnet over the course of about 10 seconds. Players can resist this effect by running in the opposite direction, but all the sawblades will inevitably make their way to the Activated Electromagnet, being removed from the fight. Any players or Automated Shredders who come in contact with sawblades that are being pulled by an Activated Electromagnet take damage from them. After one cast of Magnetic Crush, the Activated Electromagnet will disappear.
  • When on the north-western conveyor belt, the Activated Electromagnets are called Deactivated Electromagnets.
• Several Crawler Mines jump down from the north-eastern conveyor belt, fixating on random raid members and moving towards them.
  • When a Crawler Mine reaches its target, it casts Detonate!, self-destructing and dealing a large amount of Fire damage to all raid members, knocking them up in the air.
  • For the first minute after spawning, the Crawler Mines are debuff with Break-in Period, which renders them vulnerable to root, snares, and stuns. After 1 minute, Break-in Period is replaced by Ready to Go!, which removes the previously-mentioned vulnerability and increases the Mines' movement speed.
  • When on the north-western conveyor belt, the Crawler Mines are called Disassembled Crawler Mines.

We will first summarise the strategy for the fight, before going into more details in subsequent sections.

• Have your tanks perform a tank-switch on Siegecrafter Blackfuse and the Automated Shredders, while making sure to keep the boss at least 35 yards away from any adds to avoid them being healed. The Automated Shredder tank will be killing this add.
• Assign certain players to go to the north-western conveyor belt each time a new wave of adds spawns there, and have them kill one of the three adds in the wave.
• DPS Blackfuse while avoiding the damage from the adds, including those adds that enter the fight on the north-eastern conveyor belt.

The ideal location to tank Blakfuse in is at the edge of his platform, right next to the north-western conveyor belt. Tanking the boss at the edge means that the waves from Shockwave Missile will be easier to avoid, and tanking him at this particular edge gives your raid the greatest possible distance from where the Crawler Mines spawn (they spawn next to the north-eastern conveyor belt).

Blackfuse's tank cannot also tank the Automated Shredders, since they would be healed by the Automatic Repair Beam aura if they were to come within 35 yards of the boss. This means that Blackfuse and the Automated Shredders must be tanked by different tanks, who must always be at least 35 yards apart.

A tank switch must be performed on Blackfuse, due to the Electrostatic Charge debuff. Normally, the damage that a tank debuffed by Electrostatic Charge does to the Automated Shredder should kill it by the time the next Shredder spawns, meaning that your tanks can switch their targets without fear of bringing Shredders too close to Blackfuse (since they would switch when no Shredders are up, and the tank who does not have Blackfuse can pick up the new Shredder when it spawns afterwards).

Blackfuse's tank will have to be prepared with a defensive cooldown whenever an add dies, since the boss buffs himself with Protective Frenzy when this happens.

The Automated Shredder tank must watch out not be get hit by the add when it casts Death From Above. Also, it is somewhat useful to have the Automated Shredders take damage from the various add abilities that damage them, but this is certainly not mandatory.

A new wave of adds spawns on the north-western conveyor belt every 40 seconds, but due to the Pattern Recognition debuff, any one player can only travel to the conveyor belt every 60 seconds. This means that you will need to assign two different teams to handle the conveyor belt alternatively.

Players on the conveyor belt do not take any damage (unless they fail to avoid the Matter Purification Beams, in which case they die anyway), so there is no need to send any healers there. There is no need for tanks, either, so you should only assign DPS players to the conveyor belt.

In 10-man, it is enough to send 2 DPS players to the conveyor belt to assure that the desired add is killed before reaching the end of the belt. In 25-man, 4 players will do the job.

Finally, there is the question of which add your raid should kill on the north-western conveyor belt. There is no simple answer, since each raid group may have difficulty with different abilities, based on its strengths and weaknesses. That said, we believe that you should mostly kill the Disassembled Crawler Mines, since they are the most disruptive to your raid. You will have to regularly (at least once every 3 waves) allow a Deactivated Electromagnet to make it over to the north-eastern conveyor belt, since you need this add's Magnetic Crush to remove the sawblades from the room.

On the main platform, your raid members will have to essentially DPS Siegecrafter Blackfuse while surviving the many abilities used by the boss and the adds.

Your raid members will have to stay away from any sawblades that Blackfuse creates through Launch Sawblade. These sawblades will limit the amount of space your raid has, so that is something you will have to account for. Whenever an Activated Electromagnet casts Magnetic Crush, make sure that you are not standing between the Electromagnet and any sawblades, since they will hit you when they come in contact with you.

Players will have to avoid being hit by Automated Shredders when they cast Death From Above. The Automated Shredders' Overload simply requires that your healers react accordingly to the raid damage. The damage of the Shredders increases the longer they are alive (since their damage increases each time they cast Overload), but this should not be a problem as long as your tanks perform the tank switches correctly.

Next, your raid members will have to handle the Activated Laser Turrets intelligently. Players who are targeted by the laser beam, and who are therefore leaving behind Superheated void zones must take the beams in areas where they will not interfere with your raid's positioning, and they must especially pay attention to the current location of the sawblades. Specifically, it is important not to lock players in between sawblades and Superheated void zones.

A particularly difficult part of the fight is when Crawler Mines jump on the platform. Players who are fixated upon by these adds must kite them around, and they must be killed before they reach their targets. Your raid should take advantage of the Break-in Period debuff that the Crawler Mines have for the first minute after they spawn, and stun, snare and root them while killing them quickly. Even though the Crawler Mines have low health, it is still important not to kite them next to Siegecrafter Blackfuse, since his Automatic Repair Beam will heal them.

Finally, your raid will have to avoid the damage caused by the Activated Missile Turrets' Shockwave Missile. Given the fact that each wave gives players ample time to avoid it, this ability is not really very problematic. If players stand about 15 or 30 yards away from Blackfuse when this ability is about to be cast, then they should be very close to the edges of the waves. We would also note that Hunters' Deterrence works to prevent damage from this ability.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp at the start of the fight, to benefit from the fact that all your raid members' DPS cooldowns are available, and also because no other more suitable moment exists throughout the fight.

In this section, we will very briefly summarise what the players belonging to each of the three roles have to do during this fight.

• Perform regular tank switches on Siegecrafter Blackfuse and on the Automated Shredders. Take the Shredders at least 35 yards away from Blackfuse.
• Watch out for the increased damage Blackfuse deals for 10 seconds after an add is killed.

• Beware of the increased tank damage whenever an add dies (Blackfuse gains a buff called Protective Frenzy).
• Beware of the raid damage caused by Overload.

• DPS Siegecrafter Blackfuse when no Crawler Mines are alive, otherwise DPS them.
• If assigned to do so, go to the north-western conveyor belt and DPS the designated add.

• Avoid the numerous ground-based abilities in the fight.
• If fixated upon by Crawler Mines, make sure not to let them reach you, and not to kite them within 35 yards of Blackfuse.

In this encounter, your raid will be under a lot of pressure right from the start, with many abilities being used against you all at once. Since most of these abilities require awareness and good reflexes in order to be avoided, you will have no choice but to pull the boss as many times as it is needed for all raid members to get used to these abilities.

As a raid leader, you should look to see which of the adds that comes in on the north-western conveyor belt is most difficult for your raid to deal with and have that one killed each time.

The Heroic mode of the Siegecrafter Blackfuse encounter is heralded as one of the most difficult Heroic modes of the instance, arguably more difficult than most fights that precede it. While there are not many changes to mechanics (and practically no entirely new mechanics), the execution of the fight is very challenging.

All the mobs in the fight have increased health, and their abilities and melee attacks deal increased damage.

In addition to this, the biggest change to the fight comes in the form of a buff that is applied to one of the weapons that survive each wave on the north-western conveyor belt. One of the surviving weapons will become Overcharged, which means that when it re-appears on the north-eastern conveyor belt, its mechanics will be different (more dangerous). We will go through each of the different weapons' Overcharged states below.

• Overcharged Electromagnets now alternate pulling and pushing players and sawblades, instead of simply pulling them to the magnet. This back-and-forth continues while the Electromagnet is active, but before it despawns it will still remove all of the sawblades, as in its non-Overcharged version.
• Overcharged Crawler Mines now spawn two larger Crawler Mines in addition to some regular, small ones. The large Crawler Mines act exactly like the smaller ones, except that when they die, they split up into two small Crawler Mines each.
• Overcharged Missile Turrets now successively summon three Missile Turret NPCs on the platform, instead of casting Shockwave Missile. Each of these NPCs will cast Shockwave Missile continuously until it is killed. When one Missile Turret is killed, the next one spawns (new Missile Turrets always spawn to the right of the previous one, when looking towards the outside of the platform), until you have killed all 3 turrets.
• Overcharged Laser Turrets no longer follow a player with a laser beam, but instead they now create three concentric rings of fire on the floor of the platform. These rings of fire do not touch, however, leaving several safe areas for raid members (the very center of the platform, the outer edge, as well as another safe ring around half-way between the center and the edge).

There are two rules that govern the Overcharging of weapons. The first is that Overcharging is done based on a priority system, which is as follows:

1. Electromagnet
2. Crawler Mines
3. Missile Turret
4. Laser Turret

The second rule is that the same weapon cannot become Overcharged twice in a row.

There is one other small change to the mechanics of the fight. On the north-western conveyor belt, the walls formed by the Matter Purification Beams no longer have a fixed gap in them. Rather, the gap regularly changes position, as one of the beams is always inactive. Each inactive beam is only inactive for a very short time (about 5 second), after which time it immediately re-activates and a new beam deactivates.

While the overall strategy of the fight does not change, several small aspects of it do differ in Heroic mode.

The most important aspect of the Heroic mode strategy is properly dealing with the Overcharged versions of the weapons. Your raid can determine the order in which the weapons will overcharge, to an extent, since the composition of each wave of weapons on the conveyor belt is fixed. We will list the compositions of all 12 waves below (wave 13 marks the enrage timer of the fight).

1. Wave 1: Crawler Mines, Missile Turret, Laser Turret
2. Wave 2: Crawler Mines, Missile Turret, Laser Turret
3. Wave 3: Electromagnet, Missile Turret, Laser Turret
4. Wave 4: Crawler Mines, Missile Turret, Laser Turret
5. Wave 5: Electromagnet, Crawler Mine, Missile Turret
6. Wave 6: Crawler Mines, Crawler Mines, Laser Turret
7. Wave 7: Crawler Mine, Missile Turret, Laser Turret
8. Wave 8: Electromagnet, Crawler Mines, Missile Turret
9. Wave 9: Crawler Mines, Laser Turret, Laser Turret
10. Wave 10: Crawler Mines, Missile Turret, Laser Turret
11. Wave 11: Electromagnet, Missile Turret, Missile Turret
12. Wave 12: Crawler Mines, Electromagnet, Laser Turret
13. Enrage

Note that within each wave that has the same composition, the order in which the weapons enter the conveyor belt is different, but this is not really relevant.

Knowing that the weapons to be Overcharged are chosen based on a fixed priority system, it is possible, to an extent, to control what weapon will Overcharge next. We recommend that each raid creates a strategy that minimises the amount of times they need to deal with the overcharged weapons that they find most problematic. As such, there is no strategy that will work best for the majority of groups.

In the sections that follow we will talk a bit about each of the aspects that are different (or simply more problematic) in Heroic mode.

The first mentions must be made about how to handle the north-western conveyor belt. The idea is the same as in Normal mode, but since the DPS requirements are higher, you will almost certainly need to use 2 DPS players in 10-man and 4 or 5 in 25-man if you are to kill weapons in time (unless your DPS players' gear is extremely good). Players who go up on the conveyor belt should save their DPS cooldowns for the weapons, instead of using them on Blackfuse before going to the belt.

We would like to note that it is possible for Hunters to go up on the conveyor belt without going through the pipes. If a Hunter stands on top of a pipe, with their back to the conveyor belt, and then jumps up and uses Disengage, they will end up on the conveyor belt. This is extremely useful because doing so allows the same Hunter to go up on the belt for each wave, entirely bypassing the limitations imposed by the Pattern Recognition debuff.

The Overcharged Electromagnets will move raid members and sawblades back and forth, causing obvious positioning issues. There is not much to be said here.

Dealing with Overcharged Crawler Mines is fairly simple. The large Crawler Mines will need to be killed as quickly as possible, with using as little crowd-control on them as possible (so as to have it available for the subsequent small Crawler Mines). Since the mines do not all spawn at the same time, you should not concern yourselves too much with grouping them up for AoE attacks. Instead, simply treat them as single targets.

Unlike what we recommend for the Normal mode strategy (tanking Blackfuse on the opposite side of the platform from where the Crawler Mines spawn), it may prove beneficial to have him tanked on top of where the Crawler Mines spawn to allow for cleaving damage on the mines.

As soon as the Missile Turrets from Overcharged Missile Turret start spawning, your ranged DPS players should switch to them and kill them. Naturally, everyone should make sure to avoid getting hit by the Shockwave effects it creates.

The Overcharged Laser Turrets are by far the most problematic part of the encounter. While the Overcharged Laser Turret is fairly simple to deal with (do not stand in any of the fire it causes), this ability has other implications. Namely, for a good period of time before an Overcharged Laser Turret appears, you must be careful not to cover the safe zones with other ground effects. In particular, players must note kite non-Overcharged Laser Turret beams over future safe areas, nor must sawblades be placed there.

Given the fact that the Automated Shredders deal more damage in Heroic mode, their Overload ability can become quite problematic. For the 3rd and 4th Overloads of any given Shredder, you should use raid or personal cooldowns to ensure that everyone survives. In the event that your tank has still not killed the Shredder by the time of the 5th Overload, the damage will be extremely high, so strong cooldowns are mandatory (although you will still probably wipe if this happens).

This concludes our raid guide for Siegecrafter Blackfuse. We hope you have found it helpful. Please do not hesitate to post any feedback you may have on our forums.

• 18 Dec. 2013: Added Heroic mode strategy.
• 08 Oct. 2013: Added link to video guide.
• 17 Sep. 2013: Made several updates.
  • Added 25-man health values.
  • Updated the description of the Shockwave Missile ability.
  • Added a mention of the ideal tank positioning.
  • Changed our recommended kill target to the Disassembled Crawler Mines.
  • Confirmed that sending 4 players to the conveyor belt in 25-man is viable.

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