Cata - Blackrock Caverns

[zipzip]

Hey all-

I have 3 fresh new 80s on my team (including the tank), so my gear is terrible and I don't have the luxury of blasting through anything. As such, I thought I'd share my strat for boss #1 in case anyone else either (1) has some newer characters, or (2) is new to multi-boxing and needs some simple tips. I'm hoping that what I practice today will also help me down the road when I try to come up with easy routines for heroic modes.

~~~ This is from a 3 ranged/caster dps perspective...below I'll list possible tips for a melee group ~~~
There are two abilities that will wipe you with Rom'ogg, but fortunately these can be avoided using two simple key bindings (which you may already have bound).
-Strafe left (or right, if you prefer)
-Walk backwards

**Quake**
A few seconds into the fight you'll see the first troublesome ability cast: Quake. When this is cast, simply have your team (tank doesn't need to, but it doesn't hurt) strafe a couple steps to the left. That's it! Then get back to DPSing.

Unless you have great DPS, you will likely see this 2 or more times. Everytime it is cast, just walk a couple steps to the left ASAP.


**Chains of Woe / The Skullcracker**
Now, the skullcracker is the ability that will actually wipe you, but chains is what sets it up. When chains is cast, everyone is brought into melee range and needs to dps the chains down. The convenient aspect of this part of the fight is that when everyone is brought in they are all facing the chains in a circle-like formation.

To avoid certain death, dps the chains and then simply walk backwards until you are out of range of the incoming skullcracker. You'll have to test it out to get a feel for how far backward you need to go. Because everyone is facing in toward the chains, when you walk backwards everyone will still be facing in to dps the boss.

That's it!

When you see quake: strafe a couple steps.
When you are sucked in for chains, kill chains and walk backwards.


happy boxing,
zip


ps.
Regarding Melee:
Obviously you don't have the luxury of walking backwards and then starting to dps, so instead of strafe I would do a (walk backwards)->(follow) routine for both abilities.

Quake:
Walk backwards...when the quake finishes, hit your follow key to bring them in again.
Chains/Skullcracker:
Walk backwards...when skullcracker finishes, hit your follow key to bring them in again.

[BrothelMeister]

Yea, googling a video for the first boss was necessary as I just didn't realize the mechanic involved with killing the chains.

[remanz]

I tried tanking the adds on Boss 2, but they hit so hard, what kind of gear does your tank have?

As far as tanking teh beams instead, I'm running DK+4 Rets, so its a real bitch since they are not ranged casters :X

2nd boss, you can either brute force it, ignoring the beams, OR, you can block 1 beam with DPS. with tank is ok, but best with dps since the beam boosts damage. So need some position on it if you block 1 beam. I say 4-5k dps on x 4 dps is needed to brute force it.

Blocking 1 beam will delay the 2nd add coming out. Adds hit hard, so bubble if you need. and WOG keeps tank up. My DK is not badly geared.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/frostwolf/jostx/simple
and I have about 5k dps on 4 paladins. Note that with 1 paladin blocking the beam, his damage is like 7-8k dps.



For the 3rd boss, once you understand the mech , it is not too terrible. The boss has a damage shield that is 99% reduction. When he has the shield and in normal color, you can't damage him. Drags him through the middle lava waterfall, his shield gets burned, and he turns orange. You can damage him. The longer he stays in the waterfall, the more debuff stack he gets. For every stack he gets, he will AOE in melee, also boosting his damage. So you just drag him through, damage, and repeat when the orange debuff wears off.

like many mentioned, no more than 2 stacks when you drag him through lava waterfall. This is especially true for us melee. Every stack he get, he AOEs melee hard. He doesn't hit that hard without the buff. Just Keep you tank up and drag him around.


The 4th (dog) is easy. Brute force and heal. Remeber to pull the little dogs one by one. Don't attack boss + little dogs together. The heroic video is misleading where he tanks boss + dogs together.

Last one, I need army of dead here. I don't know how others did it. Army of dead, such a wonderful skill lol. It gives you time to dps boss and the boss not attacking you. DPS hard, By the time the boss kills all ghoul, he is half dead. then I just drag him around a bit, burn some defensive CD on tank. collect loot.

Note that you can't skip the bosses I think as there is a guy named Raz helping clear the adds along the way. If you skip a boss, Raz won't come out. and there are pack of adds you can't clear by yourself.
I skipped the 3rd boss first. Then at the last boss, there is a pack of casters with the boss. I aggro the casters boss will come at me too. If I didn't skip the 3rd boss, Raz would come and own those casters, leaving only the boss + his 2 shadow adds.

[KAC]

I am currently running a DK tank and 4 Disc Priest setup. I have found that this combo gives insane aoe damage through Holy Nova and diseases plus blood boil. The group is also very mobile and the healing power is beyond easy. Blizz really nerfed my Holy Nova heals but the dps is still there which is key. My way of doing things is with the least amount of keys and spells used. I will run a dungeon until I aquire every upgrade possible for the entire team then move on. I find that trying to do instances that can be completed with some luck at lower lvls a big waste of time since you will be doing the instance over and over again anyway at later lvls. Gear is a big difference maker now on with what I do.

BRC...all trash DK pulls with deathgrip Holy Nova AOE and diseases plus bloodboil from tank no CC at all they all die with about 40% mana usage.

1st boss: Preists spread before fight. Dps begins holyfire smite(which also heals my tank everytime it hits for 25-30k)shadow pain and dev plague. I cast prayer of mending on all my preists and PWS them, I never use PWS on my tank ever for any fight. Chaqins of woe is cast I use one macro: target chains cast smite. The chains break I run group out spread priests rinse and repeat.

2nd boss: I do not bother with trying to stop the evolution. Like I said I try to do things with the least amount of individual group movement at all. I all out dps the boss army of undead holyfire smite, shadowfiend. I cast death and decay and then target one opf the adds before it changes. I pop VP for the initial damage burst cast smite and then just kill the adds then Carla. I was doing this boss with 48k hp buffed at 80 I'm now 81 and have 63k hp buffed its not even a challenge anymore. Holy Nova and penance keep tank and the whole group healed coupled with Prayer of mending.

3rd Boss: Priests never move. Positioned right on edge of the grate anywhere you like. The initial pull is when the boss is on the farside of the flame pillar so he runs thorugh it coming to you to start the fight. Apply dps and dots as soon as the wall of flames goes up I penance my tank run the boss right around the pillar of fire and pull him back towards the preists for another application of dps. POM and PWS eat all the nova damage and a couple of holy nova bursts the priests are now at 100% health again. I then smite for the initial dps which heals my tank for about 30k. I rinse and repeat this while I drink a beer. This guy is a total joke.

4th boss: Beauty is a breeze toss the three dogs. Back up dps on against the left side lava ledge(you cannot fall in) stack them up. I apply fearward,pom and pws tank pulls all out dps. The knockback only pops you right down where you were stacked for the most part. The fearward eats her fear and being an undead DK i can pop my racial to eat the first one. Tank and spank using follow if she gets off a fear to bring group back together. This one is easy.

5th boss: I have yet to die on this boss ever. My group makeup pretty much defeats the mechanics of the adds locking out the healer. Holy nova is a dps spell but heals the whole group and smite is also a dps spell that heals the whole group as long as you are standing 10 yards or closer to the mob. I just smite him to death only using SWP and Dev plague to speed it up this is truly a bore and the easiest boss in the instance for me anyway.

I did this dungeon a total of 7 times and hit lvl 81. I just did it an 8th time today after coming home from work and Im 33% into 81. I have one more wand to get from carla and two more beauty bones from the beauty beast. Depending on how many more runs it takes for them to drop ill most likely be 82 and probably halway through that. My group is ilvl 266 for my preists and 277 for my tank. The difference between doing this at 80 and 81 is HUGE. Sure you can do it with crap gear but you will pull your hair out so why bother. Gear up with some old heroics and buy all the 264 badge crap you can. I now do the dungeon in about 45-50 mins. I have to hand it to blizz on this new stuff. I don't even want to imagine what these are like on heroic. It is good to see that some of the other dungeons have been downed using shamans and pally tanks. I have another team that is 3 shams 1 druid and 1 pally. The fact that shamans have no aoe instant heals and need to be stationary to cast LB must be a royal pita to do this. Disc preists in shadow gear is truly ridiculous with 40k mana pools that seem to never end and a tank that doesn't need mana!

Good luck to all and have fun with those wipes....!

[Slats]

It certianly doesn't take me 40 minutes to do 1 run of BRC. I do find not having any instant aoe healing on the move really hurts. I'm looking forward to 85 and 83 to see how Spiritwalkers Grace and healing rain x 4 go.

What sort of DPS are you pulling on your Priests? I imagine having 4x PS would make up for it being low but I'm curious.

[Bloodcloud]

- Entered instance
- wiped on the FIRST trash mobs, until I figured that they do fire AOE (thus -> fire-res totem helps a lot
- tried the ogre, I thought it was just a named quest mob -> wrong, I realized that when the earthquakes and chains came out (will macro the target chains)
- since it was late already I tried to skip it and continue.
- two lvl 61 trash mobs at next door where doable.
-then there are 6+ trash mobs coming all together at me and i needed some screen clean to remove all the blood of my team from my screen. -> WIPE, WIPE, WIPE

how do you deal with those guys ? just AoE them ?

(AOE: got lock, mage, shammy, DK AOE + PW: Barrier)

Oh and I am equipped with at lest 2T10 on all chars. (Tank has already the first Hardened Obsidium Boots , Hardened Obsidium Gauntlets, Hardened Obsidium Belt )

[Bloodcloud]

hmm, oki after some research : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eff6O6YVkJg

That trash should be killed by a scripted event NPC.

So no skipping the first boss

and in the vid they don't know about breaking the beams and they brute force and SPAM heal through it, so thats a way it could work as well.

[Sbrowne55]

I just did the first two bosses to see , and they're definetely tough for now.
I'm running a meele team of feral with 2 resto. Healing is a mana sponge now.

First boss took me some time, as my meele team is nicely stacked around boss for his chain then insta 80k cleave.. I just had to be on the chain ASAP when it popped and move away. I moved a bit to avoid quakes too, they deal quite a bit of damage for undergeared toons. After that he was cake.

Second boss is alot harder for meele teams. But what I did was drag the boss to one of the adds, blocking the beam and burned the newly formed add down when it pops, move out of the way after it drops and kill the next add. Then finish the boss off. Quite easy once i figured it out. 2 adds up was a instant wipe. The whole beam thing makes no sence, it really doesn't look like you're in its way lol, it's far too high up for my toon to actually be in its way... glad someone noticed it lol.

[crowdx]

I cleared this one last night. I farmed the bosses a little through the instance and so by the time I got to the last boss I had some nice drops from the previous ones.
It definitely got easier with the Cata upgrades

[Tyval]

I had quite a few wipes as I worked my way through this one. One thing it showed is I had gotten lazy and sloppy, I'm switching over to green gear when stats are similar enough even if a bit lower to reduce repair costs hehe.

First Named) even though I knew i needed to move out of the earthquake i would still wipe as I wouldn't react fast enough at times . So I'm hoping all the regular instances get my skills improved and better so I'm ready for heroics .

Second Named) another couple wipes, I got mind controlled one time as I stood in the beam too long. I finally did the block one beam at the start with my tank to slow down an add forming, nuke the crap out of the boss, and then hold agro on the adds while I dps the last bit of the boss, My skill level on this fight doesn't bode well for heroic I think... but hopefully will improve.

Third Named). Another couple wipes. One time I setup my team too far away so was without heals for too long when moving boss through fire. Another time didn't get the guy out of the fire (must have just been touching edge). I also wiped on one of the fire elemental trash first time through. Subtract out my foolishness and not a hard fight .

Fourth Named) Not sure if it was mentioned, I didn't see it above , DON"T 't kill all the trash doggies. Leave Runty up. He gets an enrage buff if they are all killed and you can't kill him.

5th boss, I just dps'd through, not really hard but also a bit scared about the heroic version.

Figure I will go through and farm this a few times tonight before I move on to the other starter dungeon. I dinged 81 when turning in the final quest for the zone, so I'm guessing it will be noticeably easier now.

Oh one other issue I've had, my mage is pulling agro from my tank, never had to worry bout that in Wrath. I think part of the issue is I my main macro on my pali uses the AoE attack, so will make one for bosses using Crusader Strike. Maybe that will help.


One question I had.

On the third named do folks run through the fire letting boss hit from behind to get through faster, or back through the fire? Seems not good to give your back to a named (especially in heroic mode) but found back through was kind fo slow. Maybe need to cut the corner better.