Five down, five to go

Well, last night my group downed our fifth Mythic Blackrock Foundry boss, Gruul. Our previous progression order was Beastlord Darmac -> Oregorger -> Hans and Franz -> Flamebender Ka’graz -> Gruul. Next up is Kromog, then Operator Thogar, and then I imagine Iron Maidens after that. Blackhand isn’t even on the radar yet. So far we’ve been downing 1 new boss a week (and reclearing previous ones), but I won’t be surprised if that slows down as we get to the tougher bosses.

As a bonus, I got the Mythic Meaty Dragonspine Trophy off the first Gruul kill. I’ve also had some other good luck with bonus rolls, getting a Mythic Warforged ring from Oregorger and Mythic Tier 17 chest from bonus rolls the previous week.

As you may have guessed, I haven’t switched away from Beast Mastery since 6.1 dropped. It’s not perfect on every fight, but it’s definitely not bad on any of them. Unbuffed, I actually have more multistrike than mastery, so Survival would be viable too if Blizzard decides to change things up again in the future. It wouldn’t surprise me at this point. WoD has been such a rollercoaster for hunters, but thankfully it’s been mostly quiet on the hotfix front for the past couple of months.

Beastlord Darmac

Beast Mastery’s strength here is oddly not its burst AoE but its single target DPS. I think Survival is far better for spreading around damage on this fight because you can just DoT all the spears and adds at the same time. Beast Mastery is inefficient for spears because of pet travel time, but there are exceptions if say 2-3 spears are clumped up.

However, in most cases I found it better just to stick to the priority target and lightly cleave onto the pack beasts. The end result is doing more boss DPS than anyone else in the raid, while others who are more suited for it can handle things like spears. When Pack Beasts come out I usually only have to throw out a single Multi-Shot before they die, except near the end where things are a bit more hectic.

The only real consideration I give to AoE is delaying Barrage for pack beasts (partially for the damage, and partially for the tank Misdirect). Oh, and you NEED the Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot on this fight. It is UNUSABLE without the glyph. They should have just made the glyph baseline because the ability is unusable in any form without it (it costs 50 focus now). It’s PvP’s fault. I’m just glad they aren’t so quick to nerf PvE damage in the name of PvP like they have in past expansions.

Oregorger

This fight is as easy as Beastlord. It’s basically heroic mode with the addition of the exploding fire walls, and I have my secret sweet spot where I avoid them all anyway. When you’re facing Oregorger’s spawn, it’s the back right corner — you can avoid all fire walls and have plenty of warning for Oregorger’s roll since he can only come from the one direction. In the rare case when Oregorger is rolling there while a fire wall chain reaction is happening, you can just Deterrence. I can also hit a huge amount of ore crates from this location — at least 8 with little movement.

As for Beast Mastery, this is probably its weakest fight in the whole instance. Pet travel time sucks! When Dash is on cooldown your pet basically does a leisurely walk between the crates (though you can get a bit fancy with Master’s Call for extra mobility too). BM does well for putting down the boss itself, of course. Especially after roll phases: save up your Frenzy stacks and Bestial Wrath to blow up the boss as phase 1 starts again.

Yes, I will happily sit for Hans and Franz.
Yes, I will happily sit for Hans and Franz.

Hans’gar and Franzok

Screw this fight! It’s annoying and it drops no hunter loot! You may get some pieces in normal or heroic, but once you’re geared enough for mythic all of these items are useless. Ironically, hunters are the best class for this fight because of casting on the move, yadda yadda, the shit every other class whines about.  😛

I’d like to say I have the fight fairly well mastered. I rarely die to dumb stampers, but this past week I had the most stupid brain fart ever. I thought it was dumb stampers next when it was really smart stampers, so I expertly disengaged to my designated dumb stamper location and proceeded to get splat by solo soaking a boss leap. At least I went splat before smart stampers started or else I would have activated like 4 of them. We had just wiped a lot and I was on autopilot. Plus there’s something mesmerizing about those conveyor belts…sometimes I have to blink a few times to refocus.

Beast Mastery is fine for it. You can do a lot of Beast Cleaving during the smart stampers (and the opener), you just have to make sure you are targeting the boss that isn’t jumping around so your pet doesn’t chase it around like a maniac.

I’d like this fight a whole lot more if he dropped useful hunter loot on Mythic. How cruel is it that both of our weapons are from the hardest bosses in the instance (aside from Blackhand)?

Flamebender Kag’raz

Beast Mastery does quite well on this fight. As long as people kiting the dogs keep them near the middle, Beast Cleave can usually hit them all. Kill Shot is also very useful for finishing off the last dog just in time.

My annoyance with this fight is the positioning. Sometimes you have good pulls where no weapons land near you, and other times you just want to Alt+F4 out of there. Either you have to worry about standing too close, or you have to stand so far that you get out of range.

Is the fight hard? No, it took the least amount of wipes out of all bosses, but it’s still a bit annoying for me depending on the RNG.

How to win at Blackrock Foundry

Gruul

Funny how almost every normal or heroic group I’ve been apart of starts on this boss, but it’s really not the boss you want to start with on Mythic. It’s a DPS check, a healing check, and a tank mechanics check. If more than 1 DPS dies in the fight, it’s likely a wipe (at least when you’re progressing).

I enjoyed this fight though. It’s nice to have that one fight in the instance where you can mostly focus on executing your DPS rotation. There’s a lot to dodge, but for the most part you’re planted in the same area.

Beast Mastery is great for this fight. It has a tight 6-minute enrage which means 2 perfectly placed Stampedes. 6 minutes is the ideal BM fight length, so I wasn’t surprised to be able to pull off my Simulation Craft DPS on the first kill. I definitely had room for improvement (and better proc RNG), so there’s a lot of potential on this fight for destroying the meters.

Multiple raids in one tier kinda sucks

Am I the only one who dislikes the idea of multiple raids with different loot quality in the same tier? For me, Highmaul was almost made irrelevant overnight (and the 5 ilvl hotfix sealed the deal). I would have rather had a single 17 boss raid, or maybe like a 13-14 boss raid with one or two single-boss raids that had the same loot quality — basically like Wrath’s launch with Naxxramas plus Eye of Eternity and Obsidian Sanctum.

It is nice to be able to clear a raid quickly, but I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of this kind of tier.  I think it causes problems within groups too. You get some people who want to go back to get that one single good piece in the whole instance (for hunters it was the trinket), yet the majority of people need nothing or very little. Then if you actually go there, no one is really motivated to perform. Like our group getting owned by Mythic Tectus. We had the gear to stomp it, but no one wanted to be there. These bosses are still hard, but they give no reward. Who wants to do that? Why am I even wiping on this? For Temporal Crystals?

I’m not sure how long the next 5 will take, but I have a feeling we will have some time to get it done. It wouldn’t surprise me if tier 18 didn’t release until August or September.

How has your raiding been going?

 

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11 thoughts on “Five down, five to go”

  1. im with you, I HATE the split raids. they were shit when they came in cata and they have been shit ever since. the only reason i can think of them doing it is because of the different enviroments.

    we are 9/10h. the real life boss has been kicking our butts but we have just merged with another guild team so the almost full 30m so hopefull we have the number to cover now.

    i expect the ptr to fire up in the next few weeks. only time will tell but im more than happy atm. always stuff to do. 🙂

  2. How’s my raiding going?

    Oh, you know, chilling with my raid core that took THREE WEEKS to down Mythic Beastlord.
    /sigh

    Grats on your RNG god damnit. Jealous. So jealous.

    1. Hahahaha I am in the same boat as you literally, we started Oregorger on Thursday. I feel even more frustrated since all the good hunter loot it’s on the last bosses.

  3. Raiding has been going well in Draenor. We got Maidens on Heroic last week and started work on Blast Furnace. It’s been a fun expansion! We’ve grown from 12 to 17ish. Flex has made recruiting substantially easier. We’re going to stick with Heroic, not planning any Mythic. Maybe for fun a little later, but not seriously.

    I’m still running as Survival, I still enjoy it more than Beast Mastery. Also I enjoy Survival more. Glad we can both have fun the way we want!

    1. Oh yeah and the split raid? Split raids is fine, but not as separate tiers-within-a-tier. SSC/TK was a pretty good way to do it. I’m with you, not a fan of Highmaul being pointless already.

  4. My guild just downed Mythic Thogar this past Thursday and will be working on Iron maidens tonight, fortunately or unfortunately (however you want to view that) I will be busy. So far though I’ve really liked the bosses (except Kromog… all the restraint on holding cds for pillars.) Thogar kinda felt like hanz and franz 2.0 with similar situations and as you said the mesmerizing sight of the belt, in this case trains but still. So far this expac your blog and az’s have been the two go-to hunter sites either I’ve gone to or sent people to. Anyway gratz on your loot, me and the other hunter in our group have gotten little love from drops and bonus rolls but my caches appear to be blessed. I wish you good luck on Kromogg, Thogar and the rest of the tier.

    1. One other thing I do have to just throw out there, despite H&F dropping no hunter loot the shaman tier shoulder look-a-likes do score some points in my book!

  5. Killed our 3rd (Gruul) Mythic boss last night…..and guess what…the trinket dropped and it was mine :D.

    And we had Hans and Franz down to 5% before we wiped :S well hopefully 4 down next week 😀

  6. Really nice read ^^! My guild Kromog (hc) and Blackhand (nch) down yesterday. So two more bosses to go on hc before we cleared nhc and hc. I switched to Beast Master with 6.1, enjoy it way more then survival. Hope we get to keep this good balancing of the specs so we can choose ourselfs how we want to play. Inspiring to read your blog! 🙂

  7. Thanks for the tips, Bendak. Really, really helpful. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a sweet spot on Oregorger to find! 🙂

  8. I hate what Blizzard did to Highmaul. I liked the fights, but there’s no point in running it once you clear equal in BRF. Horribly itemized and much lower ilvl gear? A decent raid is now a complete waste of time.

    As for us, we cleared heroic BRF and are starting mythic. Ugh, Beastlord. So damn long, so little hunter gear. We probably would have downed it on Sunday had people not gotten speared. Oh well. To paraphrase Scarlet, tonight is another raid!

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