So for those following my guild's progress, 2 weeks ago we were asking about Vael. We downed him. Then we went and one-shot Broodlord the first time we saw him. That was followed by 14 wipes on Firemaw on Sunday. We got him down to about 54% on our best attempt.

I know most of you think of BWL and just yawn, but this is the first time we've seen this content so it's damn exciting!

So we've read the Inner-Sanctum guide (here: http://wow-inner-sanctum.org/Web/for.../ShowPost.aspx), but otherwise don't really have a lot of knowledge about this fight.

I'd love it if the community could throw out the KEY elements they feel are unavoidable to this fight. In otherwords, what must a guild learning this encounter ALWAYS do?

We found that Gurgthock's recommendation of Stoneshield pots on Vael was very, very helpful. Seeking similar advice on Firemaw.

If you're still learning Firemaw, flask your tanks.

Make sure your tanks have something like Natur EnemyCastBar to see the Wing Buffet countdown. Timing is essential, and seeing a visual indicator of when to have your OT taunt and take the buffet is vital during the learning process : http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/a...mycastbar.html

I like your guild name.

Firemaw takes a few tries to figure out, the hardest things to learn are healers getting proper LoS, Melee dps have to know when to when to run out, and having off-tanks know when to taunt Firemaw to "eat" wing buffet.

Since you are still learning, have the dps heal themselves, so mana can be saved for healing tanks.

Good you found Inner Sanctum, they have written good guides.

Where is it falling apart for you? I would assume you have the positioning correct if you are getting him to 54%, so something else is causing you problems.

Stacking debuff possibly? Make sure your MT and OT have max fire resistance, usually if the MT pops a firepot when he stacks too high he can wipe the debuffs clean. Have your offtank run out of LOS when he gets stacked up to about 10 or more buffets on him. Are your melee running out of LOS in time to clear their buffets as well? Are the caster's making sure to get out of the doorway to clear buffets and avoid the shadowflames?

Explain a bit where things are going wrong because we can only make assumptions based on the percent of where you wipe. Sounds just like execution.

The enemy cast bar mod is *incredibly* helpful for this fight. Firemaw stalled us for longer than any other boss in BWL I think, and even after beating him was still one of those bosses you always dreaded. With this mod, it's all a lot easier now.

Also, have your DPS just go all out to the max in FR gear. This isn't like Vael, where theres a balancing act. As far as we can tell, its a case of the more FR gear you have, the more damage you will do, flat out.

I think the biggest problem we're having is the LOS issue with healers-on-the-current-tank and Firemaw still getting LOS on the healers and debuffing them.

If you look at the Inner Sanctum guide, technically the current tank should be able to maintain a position where the healers can hide around the doorway, maintaining LOS on the tank but keeping themselves hidden from Firemaw.

In practice, we didn't execute this very well. Tips relating to this?

This is fantastic advice. I think we'll use both.

1. Mod for tanks so they time their taunts.

2. Really push FR across all classes.

If you are really desperate go get the UBRS fire buff. Back when my old guild was first doing it, we went and used it to compensate for the gimped melee DPS in fire gear. You'll wantto eventually ween yourself off it if it works for you, but you will see substancial DPS gains.

As far as your LOS issues. For the most part the MT should never move during the fight. The healers should easily be able to get themselves into a spot safe of LOS while being able to heal the MT before you even pull. If for any reason the MT gets moved a few healers are going to have to go into LOS for a few seconds to keep him up til he can get repositioned. This really only happens if Firemaw positions bad or the MT gets hit weirdly by a wing buffet. Unfortunately I cant see the inner sanctum strat from my work but I assume its the tried and true one most people use.

For OT healing, there is a little sweet spot between the alchemy lab table and the lip of the door healers can stand to heal the offtank. Its like a step of different between LOS of the tank and Firemaw and has to be figured out after the pull, but its not too hard to find.

This is yet another fight that it's just rare that you recover from the MT dieing, and even if you do, you probably burned a lot of mana in the process. The problem we had was the MT surviving the Shadowflame over and over. Our solution was to just have several people start casting a heal right when the "incoming shadowflame" warning appears, and time it best you can. Also have 1 priest be the designated shielder for the shadowflame too.

As a healer, I also liked it when someone announced that the flame buffet and shadowflame were about to overlap. This means your offtank is about to take a huge hit, so healers in the lab can start their heals early.

Other than that, it's just a matter of your tanks getting good at eating the buffets, and the next tank being able to step up if any OTs die.

Wow...we've gotta find this spot. Also...why wouldn't you put all your healers here?

Not all your healers, just the OT/melee dps healers. The majority of them are inthe suppression room healing the MT.

On a side note, when I was working with my old guild on Firemaw I was not aware of the spot in the lab room to heal the OT, so we had one group designated to run in and out of LOS in the doorway to heal the offtank. We kept that strategy til the day I left, but I loved being in the "suicide" group that ended up eating more shadowflames than anyone when Firemaw positioned weird.

Could someone perhaps post a pic of the room, identifying where the OT healer spot is in the lab?

I'd say after vael, Firemaw is the hardest boss in BWL. There's just so little room for error on that fight. My guild got him down about 2 month ago, he went down consistantly after that. But one night, the server decided it didn't like us. Poor latency will fuck up this fight more so than any other(at least in my experience, up to Huhu). Vael isn't as susceptable because most of the time you're casting the same spell over and over.

Other than that, it just takes practice. The biggest problem, from my point of view(dps warrior, occasionally OT on this fight), is that the healers on the melee side aren't to adept as to who is bandaging. I've started bandaging, and then 5s later someone heals me for 3k, kinda pisses me off. The other problem is that the OT can stay out too long. We rotate OT's during the fight, but even then, they sometimes stay out there for up to 8 debuffs. When the debuffs last only 20s, and he buffets come every 30s, I think that's plenty of time to get out to let them fade.

The first thing you need to do is fix the tanking spot. If positioned properly, your healers should never be taking the fire debuff. Some of this could be the healers, but if they are making proper use of their strafe button they should be able to adjust, as long as the tanks position is correct.

I know we use the gate just through the doorway to tank firemaw, but it isn't really that easy to test LoS since firemaw keeps wandering through the instance. Our move lately has been to pull firemaw with the trash (unintentionally claim the hunters), which invariably ends up in the first wipe of the instance.

If your tank is undergeared, definately use a flask. We had a slightly ungeared tank get nearly one-shotted by the shadowflame. Also on our first kills we had a ton of trouble with healer mana. We didn't heal any DPS, and most of us were using a number of potions.

Also, as was suggested, GFPP's are your friend. If the tank gets a big stack, once there are ~8 seconds left, just pop a potion and the debuff will reset.

Good advice, we'll use this. Probably start with Stoneshield pots and then have them pop GFPPs as needed. Sounds like Distilled Wisdom for healers might not be a bad idea, as will assigning strict targets (you heal this tank and no melee, etc).