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Blast Furnace
The Blast Furnace is the last encounter in the Slagworks wing of Blackrock Foundry, behind Grully and Oregorger.  This is a three phase fight that’s all about handling large numbers of different adds.  The actual boss (The Heart of the Mountain) is not present in the first two phases of the fight, and we’ll only face him in the final phase, which is a very intense DPS race that will greatly strain the healers.

During the first phase, the boss is inside the Blast Furnace, and we’ll be working to get him out.  During the second phase, he’ll be protected by a number of adds, which we’ll have to kill before we can reach him.  Finally, in phase three we’ll face him directly.

Phase One

This phase lasts until we disable two Heat Regulators located on either side of the Blast Furnace.  They can’t be attacked and damaged normally — we have to use bombs to disable them.  When both regulators have been disabled, we’ll enter Phase Two.

Phase One Boss, Mobs, and Abilities

The Boss: We can’t engage the boss during this phase, but he’ll still do fire damage with Blast.  The time until his next Blast is indicated by his energy bar.  He also has a heat resource, which determines how quickly his energy regenerates.  The longer he spends inside the Blast Furnace, the higher his heat will be, and the faster he’ll cast Blast.

* Between 0-24 Heat, Blast is cast every 25 seconds.
* Between 25-49 Heat, every 15 seconds
* Between 50-74 Heat, every 10 seconds
* Between 75-100 Heat, every 5 seconds

So we want to get him out quickly!

Phase One Adds and Mini-Boss

There are three types of adds during Phase One, and a mini-boss called Foreman Feldspar.

There are three types of mobs:

Furnace Engineers

These spawn throughout Phase One.  They spawn rarely and one at a time.  They a have 4 abilities:
* Electrocution: sort of a chain lightning.  Targets one person, jumps to two other people within 5 yards.
* Repair:  interruptible spell that repairs a Heat Regulator for 3% of its health.
* Bomb:  Attaches a bomb to a random raid member.  Players with a bomb get an extra action button which lets them detonate their bomb.  If it isn’t manually detonated by the player it will detonate on its own after 10 seconds.  When the bomb is detonated, it deals damage to all players in a small radius, and ALSO damages a Heat Regulator if one is located nearby.
* Drop Lit Bombs:  Causes the engineers to drop a number of bombs when they die.  They become armed when they drop and detonate on their own if not picked up.  Bombs dropped in this way can be picked up by raid members, who can use them just like regular bombs.

Bellows Operators

These spawn throughout Phase One.  They don’t need to be tanked and they have only one ability.
* Loading:  Each time they use this ability they increase Heart of the Mountain’s Heat by 2.

Security Guards

These also spawn throughout Phase One.  The use only one ability, but priests who can mind control them will be able to access a second one.
* Defense:  they place a shield on the ground which protects their allies in a small area.
* If a priest mind controls one, they gain an ability called Slay Elemental.  This can be used against Slag Elementals, but there are no Slag Elementals in Phase One.

Foreman Feldspar has three abilities:

* Pyroclasm: interruptible ability, targets random raid members.
* Rupture: Void zone at the location of a random raid member.
* Hot Blooded: Fire Damage aura that persists as long as he’s alive, damaging anyone within a certain radius (about 20 yards).

Phase One Strategy

Our goal is to control all the mobs in the fight while raid members use bombs from the Furnace Engineers to destroy both Heat Regulators, thus triggering Phase Two.

The Blast Furnace is very large, and the Heat Regulators are located on opposite sides, so it is advised that we split the raid in two equal teams.  Each team should have a tank, half the healers, and half the DPS with a mix of melee and ranged on both sides.  Each team should handle half the room so there are players in close proximity to each Heat Regulator.  If we have an uneven number of healers the extra one should go to the side with Feldspar.

At the start of the fight, the half of the raid with Foreman Feldspar in its half should focus and kill him as quickly as possible, interrupting his Pyroclasm, avoiding Rupture void zones, and healing through Hot Blooded.

Once Feldspar is dead (and before, for the other half of the raid), prioritize killing the Furnace Engineers.  Players should spread out at least 5 yards to prevent Electrocution from jumping to to more targets.  Interrupt Repair casts too— none should be allowed through.

Players who get the Bomb should run up to the Heat Regulators and detonate their bombs there.  When the Furnace Engineer dies bombs should be picked up, carried to the Heat Regulators, and detonated.  But don’t detonate all at once or you’ll blow each other up.  Take turns, quickly.  Interrupt the Engineer’s cast of Repair.

Kill the Bellows Operators to prevent them from increasing the Heat level of Heart of the Mountain.

Finally, kill the Security Guards and make sure they’re not in range of other mobs when they cast Defense.

Adds that spawn in the middle should be handled on the fly.

There is no need to for a tank swap during this phase.

Phase Two

Once both Heat Regulators have been disabled, we’ll enter Phase Two.  Heart of the Mountain comes out but can’t be attacked as it’s being protected by four Primal Elementalists.  Once these four adds are killed the Heart of the Mountain will be attackable and killable, which starts Phase Three.  Any adds still up from Phase One will remain in the fight until killed.

Phase Two Mobs and Abilities

The Heart of the Mountain continues to cast Blast.  He’ll have as much Heat as he finished Phase One with.  He’ll continue to gain Heat from the slag pool beneath him, which can’t be prevented.  As in Phase One, he’ll cast Blast more frequently the hotter he is.

Phase Two Adds

There are four types of adds in Phase Two:

Primal Elementals

They spawn at the start of Phase Two.  They have two abilities:
* Damage Shield:  immunity shield.  Only way to remove it is to bring a Slag Elemental to 0 health (technically 1 health) within 8 yards of the Primal Elementalist.  This will trigger the Slag Elemental’s Slag Bomb which will remove the Damage Shield for 15 seconds.
* Reactive Earth Shield:  self buff that heals them when it expires.  It can be dispelled.  Only cast when their damage shield is up.

Slag Elementals:  adds that spawn throughout Phase Two.  When they’re brought to 1 health they become dormant, during which they are stationary and harmless, and can’t be killed.  They have an energy bar that is empty, but once they become dormant each Blast cast restores 25 of their energy, and when they reach 100 they become fully energized.  When that happens, they are healed to full and once again begin to attack the raid.  They have three abilities:

* Fixate: self explanatory
* Burn: interruptible spell cast on fixated person
* Slag Bomb: ability they use when they reach 1 health and go dormant.  It removes the Damage Shield of any Primal Elementalists in an 8 yard radius.

Firecallers.  4 abilities:

* Cauterize Wounds: interruptible spell that heals target for 20% of their health.  They use this to heal other adds.
* Lava Burst: interruptible spell on a random raid member.
* Volatile Fire: 10 second debuff.  When it expires it explodes and deals a lot of damage to players an 8 yard radius.
* Erupt:  ability that fully energizes a dormant Slag Elemental

Security Guards: same as in Phase One.  They have two abilities: defense, and Slay Elemental.  Slay Elemental can be accessed by a priest who mind controls one.  It can be used against the Slag Elementals, causing them to take 50% increased damage for 20 seconds.

Phase Two Strategy

Our goal in this phase is to kill the four Primal Elementalists.  Slag Elementals need to be brought to 1 health in close proximity to them, and our DPS will have to focus on the Primal Elementalists while their Damage Shield is down.  So when someone is fixated by a Slag Elemental, they need to move on top of a Primal Elementalist, and DPS needs to bring the Slag Elemental to 1 health.  Don’t finish the Slag Elemental off until it is in position.  While it’s alive, its casts of Burn can be interrupted, but his is not a priority (interrupts are better used against the Fireballers).

As soon as the Slag Elemental removes a Primal Elementalists’s Damage Shield, DPS needs to switch to that Elementalist and kill it off.  The shield is only down for 15 seconds but this should be enough time to kill it.

Then we need to repeat this process for the other three Primal Elementalists.

We need to watch for the Primal Elementalists’ self-heal, called Reactive Earth Shield, and dispel it before it has a chance to heal them.

In addition to this we’ll need to handle the two other types of adds in the fight.

The Security Guards are low priority.  They should just be multi-Dotted or damaged when there are no Slag Elementals or Fireballers active, if this every happens.  They must still be tanked far away from the other adds to avoid having a shield cast on them though.

Priests can use Dominate Mind on the security guards to make use of they Slay Elemental ability, which helps deal with the Slag Elementals.

Firecallers are very dangerous and are a high priority.  We need to interrupt all casts of Cauterize Wounds, the heal ability.  Lava Burst should also be interrupted but only if there are enough interrupts available to service all the Cauterize Wounds casts.  Erupt cannot be interrupted, but it can be stunned, so it’s important to prevent these from going through, to avoid waking up more Slag Elementals than we can handle.

Whenever raid members are affected by Firecallers’ Volatile Fire, they need to move 8 yards away from other raid members before it expires.

Phase Three

This phase starts when all four Primal Elementalists are dead.  Any adds still alive from Phase Two will stay in the fight until killed.  During this phase we can finally attack Heart of the Mountain.  There are no other adds during this phase.  The Heart of the Mountain has the following abilities:

* Blast:  This is the same Blast as before.  At the start of Phase Three he becomes superheated, which means that Blast will be cast every 5 seconds.
* Tempered and Heat are two tank debuffs that work in conjunction with each other:  Heat is a stacking fire DoT on the tank, while Tempered increases the damage taken from Heat.  Tempered ONLY increases Heat’s damage when the target has more stacks of Heat than they do of Tempered.
* Melt:  void zone cast at location of a random raid member.  Grow in size for a few seconds then remains in place.

Phase Three Strategy

We’ll probably have a lot of adds left over from Phase Two.  We need to kill these as fast as possible, starting with the Fireballers, then Security Guards.  The Slag Elementals stick around too — they become dormant at 1 health and get re-energized by Blast, as they did in Phase Two, so there’s no point in trying to kill them off.  Just focus on keeping the fixated players alive.

The entire raid except for the tanks has only one ability to worry about:  Melt, which leaves a very large void zone behind that persists for a long time.  We need to position these properly.  We should stay close to the edge of the room, and once a void zone is up we should stay near its edge to have them overlap.  The room is very large, though, so it’s unlikely we’ll run out of space.

The damage during this phase is very intense because Blast is being cast every 5 seconds, plus extra damage from Slag Elementals.  The healers will need to use all their cooldowns to keep everyone up.

The tanks will have to handle the Heat and Tempered debuffs.  I looks complicated, but the tanks just need to taunt off when the current tank has three stacks of Heat.

We’ll use Bloodlust during Phase Three.
I've been researching tips and tricks for this fight:

(1) Whole raid kills Feldspar first, then splits into two and goes to the two sides to handle the adds there.

(2) Whole raid goes to one side first, burns all the adds there, then goes to the other side and burns the adds over there, all while cleaving Feldspar.  Feldspar would be at around 20-30% after the first side and would die during the run to the second side.  There would be 2-3 bellows operators up on the far side by the time the raid got there, but they were quick to cleave down.  Once the adds on the second side are down the raid splits into two and the two halves go to their respective sides to handle subsequent waves of adds.

(3) Group everything in the middle, Bloodlust, use 15-20 seconds to DPS Feldspar (the start burst) and cleave the adds.  By the end of the burst Feldspar is at 40-50% health and all the adds but the Bellowers are dead.  Then the group splits.

Note: some raids use three tanks for this fight, with the third tank on Feldspar.

Note:  some raids use Bloodlust on the initial pull to burn down the adds.  They say the damage during phase 3 isn't bad enough to save Bloodlust to the end.

Pros and cons of different kill target priorities in Phase 1:

* Rush down the bellowers:  means less Heat, but have a slower Phase 1 and possibly an extra Bellower.
* Rush down the engineers:  pushes Phase 1 faster, but means more cleaning up for Phase 2.
* Rush down Feldspar:  gets rid of him and his damage but have a lot of catchup to do in Phase 1.
* Cleave them all down: maximizes DPS but have to deal with everything for much longer in Phase 1.
Notes from last night:

We tried various permutations of killing Feldspar first; killing the left then right Bellows Operators first all together; putting ranged on the right Operators with melee on the left and prioritizing the Bellows Operators, then Feldspar, then the second spawn of Operators; and having a dedicated add team of two to handle Engineers and Guards.  All of these strategies made Phase 1 last longer and we'd get overwhelmed with adds, usually around the 3rd or 4th wave of Operators.

In the end, the strategy that worked best was the original one:  divide the raid in half and have each half tackle their Operators and blow up their Heat Regulators.  We dropped Feldspar down our priority list until he was still quite healthy going in to Phase 2, but with this strategy the adds from Phase 1 were more controlled going into Phase 2.  This strategy got us reliably into Phase 2.

In Phase 2 we got two Elementalists down on our last and best attempt.

The question now is whether we should just keep Feldspar up through Phase 2 and focus on getting the Elementalists and Firecallers down, or spend some time getting Feldspar down, which means accumulating a number of Firecallers.  Phase 2 actually feels pretty healable, so we can keep Phase 2 going for a while.

Just some thoughts!

I'd say we'll probably need to maintain adds control as top priority. Use as much AE and Cleave as possible (to clear off remaining engineers and keep slowly draining Feldspar and such), but ensure the adds are dropping in a timely fashion (so a few people that prefer or need to go single target are still very useful). Essentially, whatever results in the highest DPS from the raid as a whole is probably the right call. In particular, we will need to clear off remaining adds before we can really turn to burn down the Heart in P3, so we need to keep those add numbers down.

Firecallers > Security Guards > Slag Elementals > Feldspar > Elementalists

I don't think we'll be able to time the P2 -> P3 transition as easily as we can manage the P1 -> P2 transition, so we should assume a fairly fresh wave of adds will be up at that point. When we're on our last elementalist and expecting to make that transition, 1 tank needs to pick up nearly all of the remaining adds, so the other is free to pick up the Heart. Then we have to burn down those adds (probably near the boss to get at least some cleave damage going) so the tanks can start their debuff stack swaps.

Finishing P2 quickly means fewer Slag Elementals up, and lower heat, so if those are part of our future P3 wipes, we can choose to focus Elementalists a little earlier, and do a larger AE pile of adds -- just need to ensure the add piles don't get large enough to kill the tanks.
New thoughts based on some attempts last night:

We might try using Bloodlust on the pull - we were going ~8 minutes on our good attempts, so it'll probably be up again just when we need it in P3. We didn't do this last night, but it'll probably help. We may even want to try burning Feldspar again with the full raid (Guards held off to the side, Engineers pulled in and everything on top of an Operator for Cleave/Splash) during the Bloodlust, then split to kill off the other Operator (even if Feldspar isn't dead yet) after it ends. However, I think the split is still a better option for us.

If we split immediately, split initial mobs as: Security Guards x2 + Engineer to one side, Feldspar + Engineer to the other - this allows for extra DPS time on Feldspar, and gives the other group something to kill after the Operators drop. We seemed to be able to consistently do almost (but not quite) enough bombs on the first Engineer, then transition just after killing the second Operator. We might want to try leaving the Engineer up 1 bomb longer and see if we can do transition with only a single Operator kill, but I suspect the second Operator will drop in anyway.

Focus down remaining Engineers and then any Firecallers that join - this reduces running-around time, so it increases DPS time. Increased DPS time is good. Hit Feldspar with Cleave/Splash, and then target him when those guys are dead. However, we can't wait on Feldspar dying to start working on the Primal Elementalists, or we'll have too many Slags Elementals running around.

Firecallers need to drop as quickly as we can manage - melee should focus on them, and probably on specific ones (with splash/cleave as available) to get each individual one out as quickly as possible, reducing the number of Volatile Fires up at a time. Once people are stuck constantly running out with Volatile Fires, we've lost. That should also mean more people out there to stop the Cauterize casts. Melee can work on Feldspar or Guards when the Firecallers are all dead.

Ranged should focus on helping with the initial burn on Engineers, and then on Slag Elementals once they're spawned in and in position. When they drop one and a shield breaks, everyone (ranged and melee) turns and burns down the Primal Elementalist. Save up CDs (we may want some peopel to use second potions here as well) to ensure they always drop in a single pass.

As Guards build up, we may need to call for AE after Elementalists to help get some down, but we still can't allow Firecallers to build up while we do this, and we want to move on as quickly as possible so hopefully we don't need to do this much.

We rotate between those three tasks (Split focus targets, Primal Elementalist, do some AE) until P3.

Yeah, still no idea. Probably burn down normal adds while pulling the boss to the far-back corner, then slowly kite around the room as we drop Melts until he dies.
This is kind of interesting to watch: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Xmj...iew=replay

At 4:39 in Phase 2, we down our first Primal Elementalist. Until about 6:00, there is a lot of running around. At 6:00, 2nd primal elementalist starts taking damage. That seems like a long time. We were slow at getting the shield down on that one. At 6:48 its stops taking damage, and at 6:58 is healed. That was basically all she wrote. Considering that the Elementalists spawned at 2:00, that was a long time for us to be in phase 2.

I think we should focus more on Feldspar in order to get him down in phase 1 or earlier in phase 2. As long as we can control adds and engineers, that should help us in phase 2. Give the side with Feldspar more healers and more DPS to burn him, while maybe switching some DPS to engineers.
Have Mana Tide, Will Travel
I suggest leaving Feldspar to Phase 3 and trying to get through the first two phases as quickly as possible. The adds are what's really killing us and if we spend 45 seconds on Feldspar it is letting them build up too much. I also suggest single-target dps for the most part on the adds, as there shouldn't be more than a few up at a time, but if our single target dps slips it means again we are letting the adds build up too much. 2 adds at full health is better than 5 at half.
Just some notes and tips I found:

- One strategy is for the whole raid to go after the Bellows Operators one at a time together and split when the Operators are both down; Bloodlusting here is very helpful.
- Bellows Operators and Primal Elementalists are NOT affected by the Security Guard shields.
- Kill the Operators before going into Phase 2; if you cleaved onto Feldspear during Phase 1, he should be at low health.
- Slag Elements don't die; they go dormant at 1% and are brought back after 4 Blasts (25 energy/blast) or by the Firecallers.
- Slag Elements can be ignored throughout the fight; they don't do a lot of damage and are only useful for bringing down the Primal Elementalists' shields.
- During Phase 2, it's best to NOT AoE; just burn down the Slag Element next to the targeted Elementalist, then burn down the Elementalist when the shield's down.
- To control adds during Phase 2, go after a Elementalist, then you'll kill all Firecallers and some Guards, and finally repeat this method until all Elementalists are down.
- Firecallers' Cauterize Wounds will heal their allies to 20% of their health; it's very important to interrupt them when possible!

I hope some of these tips will help you if your having trouble with the Blast Furnace! Smile

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