Sugge's [Mage] Guide to Blackrock Foundry [Heroic/Mythic]

[Preheat]

Awesome guide.

Not sure if it's been suggested, but you might consider changing Living Bomb on Hans and Frans to Blastwave.

[Sugg3]

Awesome guide.

Not sure if it's been suggested, but you might consider changing Living Bomb on Hans and Frans to Blastwave.

Why?
I'm open to any suggestions but try to atleast bring some evidential data if you're going to make a statement concering talent choices.

[Wilderness]

Well, BW sims ahead of LB on a 2-target fight and those conditions are 2 targets stacked the whole time, which isn't the cast on H&F. With BW you can always use your charges when both are stacked, but with LB you either won't be using it when only 1 is up, or you'll have explosions that won't hit 1 of them, further dropping it down.

[Preheat]

In this thread they break it down: http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=750" target="_blank

In two target cleave with stacked targets BW sims higer, also like wildersness said you can try to save the charges for when they are both out. In the event that you are about to cap charges and only one is out then BW is still higher, seeing as it sims higher for single target as well as 2.

[Dutchmagoz]

Worth mentioning that greater invis drops both penetrating shot and the blood ability on iron maidens.

Also on mythic, don't use greater invis on the shadow debuff, it removes it before applying the damage reduction, so you'll die if you don't have a shield.

[Sugg3]

Worth mentioning that greater invis drops both penetrating shot and the blood ability on iron maidens.

Also on mythic, don't use greater invis on the shadow debuff, it removes it before applying the damage reduction, so you'll die if you don't have a shield.

Absolutely, I've totally forgotten about this and it will be fixed in the morning.

[Bashlow]

Is there anything in particular that we have to keep in mind with the +5 itemlvl change which is expected to be released today in the afternoon apart from the general brf items vs hm items weigthing? Didnt want to Post this in the spec related threads, please move if Not placed here correctly

[Embers]

Ask Mr Robot already has the change calculated if you load your character there. But it also increased my 4/4 Hexweave boots from 680 to 685.

[Rosvall]

On Gruul, using Ice Block with Glyph of Ice Block before petrify comes of cooldown prevents petrify from being applied to you.

1) 1sec left on petrify being able to be cast
2) Ice block
3) Cancel iceblock, giving you 3 sec of magic prevention
4) He slams people in the air

[jimme]

Awesome guide.

Not sure if it's been suggested, but you might consider changing Living Bomb on Hans and Frans to Blastwave.

Completely agree with this one. I'm getting much more out of blastwave on this fight. When there isn't only one german in play, chances are they will have jumped away from each other which means that they seldom get anything but their own explosion

Also as a general note, I think you are underestimating Evanesce, it is a really good talent.

Gruul:
Use to avoid slices. Witth a Evan->G-invis-Evan rotation, you will never take any slice dmg.

Oregorger:
While I use Icy Floes here, it gives you the freedom to go into dangerous lanes to kill crates, or simply just stand still as he is barreling down on you.

Hans Frans:
Stand out to take more solo bodyslams to help the raid. Evan does the same thing IB and G-Invis does. Can also be use to stand in stampers.

Flamebender:
Works to avoid molten torrent, which means you can take 3 in a row and never move. I never tried, but might also work for face-tanking dogs without them going for someone else.

Kromog:
Use it to stand out and keep dps'ing during his pillar hide phase to avoid the "call of elements?" cast.

Thogar:
Stand still while kiting bombs.
Use for the tight lan run at the end.
Stand in train (allthough this isn't that useful).

Iron Maidens:
Stand in bombs and detonation sequence and take no dmg, while getting that combustion up.
Use on penetrating shot and solo it to take no dmg, that way you can take 3 in a row should it happen.
Use it to kite rapid fire during detonation sequence/bomb phase.
Might work if you use it when boss is casting convulsive shadows on you, to not get it at all. Haven't tried, will next time.

Disclaimer: It's obviously most relevant when playing fire since I have a tendancy to use scorch when moving as fire anyway.

[Sugg3]

Also as a general note, I think you are underestimating Evanesce, it is a really good talent.

The problem with Evanesce it is in the same tier as our much needed Icy Floes.

Gruul: Sure, for this fight it is totally doable with the Ice Block trick, but.. I can guarantee you that it will still be a DPS loss due to movement aspects of the fight. i.e. Flares, Smashes and Cave In's and possibly also to move into some ground healing effects. I would not recommend using Evanesce if the healing is fine.

Oregorger: Not recommended to use Evanesce, movement gives you the viability to both dodge and while allowing you to DPS.

Han's & Franz: If your guild really needs you to solo soak at some point use another DR instead. Not recommended to use Evanesce.

Flamebender: Not recommended to use Evanesce, movement here gives you the ability to, walk out of Lava Slash, kite wolfs and position yourself accordingly (to stand OoR of weapons and also to keep the 8y range).

Kromog: Absolutely worthless for Mythic. Too much movement, can prolly pull it off in HC but still, alot of the DMG for this fight is avoidable, making IF an obvious choice.

Thogar: Not for Mythic, can prolly pull it off in Heroic.

Iron Maidens: I'd rather just dodge the bombs using IF for the whole detonation phase then to just dodge ONE bombing. Don't think I need to point out the rest.

It's an interesting look you have on these choices. I'd say it's suboptimal for your DMG (no surprise) and only sometimes helpful for your healers. The most sense the use of Evanesce would be (for me) is on the Gruul encounter. And this condition is only true if the healing is lacking. Otherwise I'd suggest that you go for IF and deal some higher numbers then you would do using this talent.

Disclaimer: It's obviously most relevant when playing fire since I have a tendancy to use scorch when moving as fire anyway.

I think that you some to improve on here aswell. Fireball + IF is going to be both smoother and deal more damage then just a simple Scorch.

[Wilderness]

Evanesce can be a useful talent, but as Sugge pointed out, Ice Floes is simply way too strong and you'd really need to have specific reasons to use it (such as being part of an immunity group on Gruul). Outside of those kinds of scenarios, you are losing a lot of damage on many fights because of that. WoD scorch is not the same as MoP scorch; scorch right now is barely a damaging spell anymore, so you should avoid using it as much as possible.

[Caimion]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless you're part of a full immunity group for Gruul, using Evanesce or GInvis transfers damage from you to the rest of your soak group - which is dangerous for them and actually makes life harder for your healers, since there's one less person getting effective healing from the AoE heals. I still use GInvis to drop the DoT but the only use I can see for Evanesce is to stand in smashes.

[Komma]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless you're part of a full immunity group for Gruul, using Evanesce or GInvis transfers damage from you to the rest of your soak group - which is dangerous for them and actually makes life harder for your healers, since there's one less person getting effective healing from the AoE heals. I still use GInvis to drop the DoT but the only use I can see for Evanesce is to stand in smashes.

I've heard this quoted a lot. People made similar claims back then of this happening when soaking on Lei Shen. I haven't seen any evidence of it happening though, so I'd appreciate it if someone could show a log proving it.

[wolsku]

Ice Blocking/Evanesce doesn't split the damage, the problem it could cause is that on mythic on the soaking duty Gruul gains energy if not enough people soaks damage from the cleave which causes him to cast an extra cleave not planned on the rotation.

[Wilderness]

I don't know if it splits the damage or not, but it must count as hitting a person since we've used a group with 2 mages and 2 rogues just rotating CDs/immunities.

[Ayonjia]

Any plans on doing something like this for HFC?

[Sugg3]

Any plans on doing something like this for HFC?

Yes! I'm looking to first and all create a Heroic one during the first week of 6.2. And make it's more or less "complete". The structure of the guide itself is the only thing I have to figure out. Either I go for maximum padding on the damage meters, or utilizing the differnt Mage specializations mage kit to do YOUR job in specific as successfully as possible. Or maybe a mixture of both?

Also had the thought of keeping it more or less mainly for Heroic. Depends on how versatile the boss encounters will be on Mythic difficulty.

And to anyone wondering why the guide is not updated with Mythic Iron Maidens and Blackhand. It's two different reasons for the two different encounters:

1) For Blackhand specific, the strategy that you use in P1 and P2 differs quite alot. So I just thought that for anyone making it to Blackhand in 6.1. Will by the structure of your raid tactic, make the optimal decision in how to use Blinks in P1 for example (if you only have two foxes etc).

2) Iron Maidens, I just cba:d. I was slacking, I just didn't bother. I felt like the thread itself were no longer active, so I just didn't bother updating. I could probably update the Maidens encounter with about five to ten minutes of work. I just thought that now that 6.1 is over, the need for update is over.

If YOU guys would like to see a 6.2 Hellfire Citadel Heroic guide, please make sure to let me know what type of content you want.

Cheers Sugge

[Rabona]

For people like me, whose guilds didn't run PTR raids it would be nice just to have some cliffnotes on patchday regarding the bosses. Like what spec/talent setup you think is preferable and maybe how we as mages can cheese fight mechanics or other class specific tricks. Just something to start with, since a lot of the deeper stuff will come by itself when people start sharing their experiences with the bosses or discuss your ideas.

Of course more is always better, but personally I'd focus on the stuff you don't get from fatboss guides and the likes..

[Ayonjia]

Agree'd with above. I look here for the class specific mechanics information. Like What does evanescence just completely negate vs. a more standard "oh stay out of the fire" So even if this takes a while longer, I'm fine with waiting (and contributing my own experience of course)

So I guess that's a vote for mechanics cheesing more than dps meter padding. I can pretty well figure out padding by looking at world of logs and seeing top parse's dps targets/talents. Would prefer here to be "oh dude, you've gotta spell steal this, it's awesome" ;p