I don't know if a similar thing is true for alliance, but for horde using tauren warriors tends to make LoS issues easier because of their model size. Using a gnome tank might add unneeded difficulty, for example.

Ok, so:

1. Rogues max max max FR gear.

2. Tanks max FR (315).

3. Hunters/mages/warlocks max FR.

4. Pallies/priests/druids NO FR.

??

Red is your MT. Dark red is your OT. There's a small lip that someone mentioned where your melee DPS (yellow), OT healers (blue, behind Firemaw), and OT (dark red) can go to and wait out debuffs. When your OT goes to take a buffet, the OT healers can take a few steps to the right and heal from there.

The green lines indicate LoS.

The MT healers (the blue dots with green lines to the red MT) should never get any debuffs as they are clearly out of Firemaw's LoS. Your ranged DPS (purple) can easily take a few steps towards the right and hug the wall to wait out debuffs.

I hope this makes sense and I apologize for the shitty MS Paint drawing. :)

I say this with a lot less experince (in a relative sense) than a lot of people on this forum, and my guild does this fight in an odd manner. It is, however, a very simple and repeatable one which involves nothing more or less than proper positioning.

Please forgive me if I repeat information you already know.

We fight him in the doorway from Supression to his room. Here is a (horrible) diagram:

XX|
----
|
|
|
|
| FM OT
----
| MT
--- -------
| | | OH
| | --------
------ -----------

R
RDPS



Sorry I suck at ascii art.
MT == Main tank
FM == Firemaw
OT == Offtanks (2, on this in a moment), melee dps
R == MT healers, duck point for range dps
RDPS == ranged dps
OH== Offtank healers, duck point for melee dps

The Gear:
MT in full FR with a lot of HP (flasks often do not suck while learning)
OT in heavy FR with a lot of HP (usually not flasked even for learning)
DPS (ranged and melee) in heavy FR, Ony cloaks.
Healers in standard healing gear (less brave in ony cloaks).

The Pull:
MT pulls him, simple as that. 2 healers may have to eat a few flame buffets to ensure the MT isn't killed instantly, but since they won't be in LOS of firemaw for the fight, whatever.

The Fight:
Pretty simple. Where the raid healers stand they can get LoS pretty easily on the MT while trivially avoiding it on firemaw. The ranged dps run in, tag firemaw a few times, then duck out, keeping in mind he does -zero- damage if you're not in LOS, and so some of our ranged dps have entirely forsaken FR. Due to some positioning wierdness shadowflame has killed ranged dps recently, so I'd suggest ony cloaks, but these come at much lower priority than melee/mt/ot. Physical dps runs in and out similarly, while the offtanks stay in LoS (it helps a lot to have a 3rd offtank ready to swap in if the flamebuffets stack too high on the OTs).

The MT healers need to make sure the MT is fully healed before a shadowflame. The OTs are the wingbuffet eaters- when Wingbuffet is incoming, both offtanks taunt. The momentthat they are hit by it, the MT tags with a taunt (most recent taunt overwrites previous) and firemaw does not even budge. The offtank/melee healers can trivially top up melee and offtanks while never stepping into LoS themselves.

No strategy is without it's issues. One possible problem is if the OTs miss/misstime enough wingbuffets that they get aggro- then you're healing a MT without as good gear (possibly?). This one's pretty easy to solve- the MT can buld up threat and the OT eats a WB, firemaw tends to jump right back to the MT. Moderately often, firemaw will shadowflame in close conjunction with wingbuffet- melee just needs to get to thier bandage corner (where thier healers live), but you'll lose people as they learn this. The biggest (and thankfully rarest) issue is when the MT's taunt is resisted, and firemaw decides that he just 'can't reach' the main tank. While normally even after tossing the oTs like leaves in the wind and chasing them, he'll turn back around and return to the MT, every once in a while he'll turn around and port the MT. This isn't as big an issue as it sounds- the OT/melee healers just flip over into MT healers, eat the flame buffets and butch up while the MT hauls ass back to his (very easy to find) tanking positioning.

Overall, I like this strategy a lot, and it has been adopted by a friend's guild (they oneshotted him after I hopped into thier BWL and showed them what I was talking about, after a night of wiping, and I don't belive they've wiped to non-lag issues since).

As with a number of fights in BWL, suit to taste- there are dozens of way to approach various fights. This one relies on dps being mostly self-sufficent, MT healers trusting the OT healers, on the ball OT healers, on the ball OTs, and a very on the ball MT.


Good luck, and grats on Vael and Brood! Don't get discouraged if you wipe occasionally on Vael, he's pretty random till you get a good handle on him.

Since im a mage ill tell you what theyre supposed to do. You have FR gear on, and after the MT has a decent amount of aggro you strafe left and either cast arcane missles(uninterruptable) or frosbolt if you have fire ward/frost barrier up. After you have about 5 debuffs you strafe back and bandage if needed and wait for debuffs to go away. Rinse and repeat until hes dead.

I agree entirely with that. I've tried to balance my FR/dps set many times over many fights and Firemaw is still the only fight (well, other than latenight low-pop Ony runs) where I use full FR. Even sacrificing a ton of +damage gear for minimal FR gains is wise as ranged dps.

Wow, thanks for the positioning pics, and thanks to Oggie for the very comprehensive strat. I think, once again, the EJ forums deliver.

Another question: anything specific to rogues that I should know about?

Kite him to vaels room...

No really :), we do it every week and the positioning shown below works great for us. Only thing needed is 1x speed pot for MT for the pull.



Red = firemaw's final position
Yellow = MT
Darker Blue = OT
Lighter Blue = Healers in RG's room

The DPS (and a few healers) sit in vaels room behind one of the colums during the pull. The OT's and the MT/OT healers chill in there spots. The MT goes into the broodlords gate, when firemaw is visible on his patrol, the MT chugs the speed pot, aggros firemaw and head for the supression room. Here you just jump off onto the 2nd platform. This gives you plenty of time for the MT to reach his position as firemaw must path down and can't "jump" down through the supression room.

The one IMPORTANT thing to do in the pull however is DONT DO ANYTHING. No buffing, no stance changing, no eating/drinking/pots/totems/innerfire/ANYTHING. With the entire zone in combat and no aggro from the MT to firemaw, the slightest thing will make firemaw go to the raid and pwn them instead of following the MT to the tunnel between vaels room and RG's room. Just don't do ANYTHING and it works fine though.

The LoS here is idiot proof. You really just can't screw it up. Healers for the MT aren't ever in LoS, Healers for OT aren't either. DPS just runs out of LoS into vael's room to bandage.

General tips for firemaw:
315 FR on your MT and OT(we use 2 OT incase of taunt resist).
High FR on your raid EXCEPT your healers. Healers should be in full regen as they will never get hit by the fire debuff.
When you get the shadowflame warning, have your quickest reactionable priest PW:Shield the MT to absorb 1k dmg. Saves your tanks from death if they happen to not be topped off when a SF comes.
Firemaw has a "thrash" ability (alot like windfury) and that combined with regular melee, the fire damage, and shadow flame: he can put out some serious damage to your tanks. This fights all about healing here.



*edit*
Make sure your healers dont heal the MT when he arrives at his position to tank. Have the MT bandage or else firemaw will go pwn your healers instead of the MT. Also your healers need to be on their toes to heal the MT the second he starts taking damage. Tell them to angle their camera so they can see down the hallway while off to the side in RG's room.

Firemaw is tauntable, so there's an easy solution to too big Flame Buffet stacks right there: more than one tank. Other than that, your dps needs to learn to run and maybe put a healer or two on dps healing duty only healing those with bandage on cooldown.

PS: 8/8 Transcendence is so much fun on this fight. You can stand and solo heal all melee dps with rank 1 greater heal from 100% to dead :D

PPS: I LOL'ed at IS's guide to Flamegor. We just tank him in the corner at the ramp and have hunters that don't suck ass. Honestly he's easier than any of the trash in the zone if your hunters are not retards.

Good lord.

Also, uh, doesn't Firemaw leash on the steps leading down to the hatchery? He certainly does for us (when, hypothetically speaking of course, something goes wrong on Firemaw, we could always just jump off the ledge and he'd leash, letting most of the raid survive a bad pull).

Bandage - you might as well. You'll have some debuff to wait out. It also isn't a bad idea to bring a GFPP or two to use to reset your own debuffs, but for this to be worthwhile, you need to be wearing significant FR.

Max FR, *within reason*. It's worth picking up 19 FR by dropping from my libramed NS helm to my libramed Molten. It isn't worth picking up 3 FR by going from my Ony neck to my Ony key.

Expect to take one to two ticks of the debuff while running out; don't stay in longer than you should and die on the way back. Dead rogue's DPS is zero and all that.

(We actually use a positioning for Firemaw that's common on our server, but I've never seen anyone else use it - he's tanked in the Razor/Vael hallway, with MT/OT on the Razor side, MT/OT healers crosswise in Razor's room, and DPS/DPS healing in Vael's room LOSing with the pillar and the doorway edges. The pull is annoying, but the positioning is more forgiving, especially if you have tanks with varying model sizes. The downside is the need to reclear the entire suppression room. It works for us.)

edit: Er, wow, someone else who does the Vael/Razor Firemaw positioning. We use a hunter to pull and have the MT bloodrage at the right time to lock aggro to him - also, taunt-taunt from OT then MT gets Firemaw solidly into the middle of the hallway.