This post is meant to serve as a method for "giving back" to the EJ forum community. While there are countless BWL strats out there on the Internet, we kept coming back to the EJ forums because the quality of information far surpassed anything else out there. There's also something to be said for dialogues rather than the standard "boss abilities + positioning map + fight timeline" strats.

So with that said, this post encapsulates the tidbits of knowledge for each fight in BWL that stood out and seemed to carry more weight than other pieces of "strategery". This post is not a compilation of every strat you need for every fight in BWL. It's just a recap of specific tips that worked very well for us. If you're a guild that's working through BWL for the very first time, you'll find value here.

Side note: for those who've followed our progress, we first killed Vael on July 28th. 36 days later (this Sunday), we took down Nefarian (blue/black drakonids) after only 10 total attempts, 3 last weekend and 7 this weekend. Also had TL Chrom this weekend so it was pretty momentous for us. First boss kills are a rush, for sure!

Without further ado (note that we're alliance so some of this may not apply to horde):

1. Razorgore:

* No real killer tips 'n' tricks. Seriously. Just learn a strategy and execute. Healers pop a GFPP at the beginning

2. Vael:

* Stoneshield pots on the tanks. This was a Gurgthock suggestion and made a very big difference in our attempts. (We now use them in every fight where tank longevity is even close to an issue.)

* Another Gurgthock suggestion: don't mess around with trying to figure out some sort of "tank rotation" using timing as your crutch. Just throw tanks 2-4 (or 5, if you realllly are unsure of your DPS) all in there soon after the first tank starts and let it sort itself out. Seriously. :) Of course you can get pretty complicated with this (gear/build differences amongst your tanks will make a serious difference) but at the end of the day, someone is getting aggro next. Heal them.

* DPS check: if you can get Rags to 30% before Sons spawn, you'll definitely use 4 tanks on a flawless kill and 5 tanks if there are issues. If you can get Rags below 20% before Sons spawn, a perfect kill will be in the 3 tank range, albeit using almost all of the time given to 3 tanks. We started serious attempts on Vael when we could get Rags to 13-14% before Sons (no flasks) and now that we can down Rags before Sons we can kill Vael in 2 tanks (3 if something goes strange).

3. Broodlord:

* Sticking a dedicated priest on each tank to bubble/GH works great. All other healers just "follow the aggro".

* Wanding until 80% makes this fight damn stable.

4. Firemaw:

* Bloodrage is an excellent way for the MT to sit and bring a boss straight to them. Bloodrage + bandage = even more uber. The boss will come like a heat-seeking missile.

* Dampen magic provides a very nice edge. Put it on all melee / ranged DPS.

* Having your MT pop a GFPP when they get a nice (15 or so) stack of debuffs clears the debuff stack.

* NECB (Natur EnemyCastBar) really comes into play for the first time in the game here (at least for us). Use it to watch for the shadowflame and bubble right before the shadowflame hits, rank 4 GH right after. Also use it to watch/time the wing buffet.

5. Tech Packs:

* 1-2 mages with a dedicated healer can circle-strafe and easily AOE the goblins.

* Don't be afraid to split your DPS. After warlocks are down, put melee on a spellbinder and ranged on the Overseer. (Hey, all this stuff might be obvious after running something 10,000 times but for first-timers through, this is a good discovery to make quickly.)

6. Ebonroc:

* Position MT in the corner by the curving ramp.

* Have a hunter pet pull. Immediately thereafter, tank should begin bloodrage. Ebonroc will come straight to the tank.

* Have I mentioned that if your tanks don't have SS you're nerfing your raid DPS? More aggro generated by tanks = more "safe" DPS from your raid. Consequently, bosses die faster.

* Let the tanks gather aggro through the first Shadow of Ebonroc debuff. DPS can wait...just keep healing up.

* Once you're through the first Shadow of Ebonroc, it's time to DPS all out. Just hammer Ebonroc - the sooner the fight is over the better as it gets hard for the tanks to maintain a 100% average of taunting Ebonroc off the cursed tank every time it happens. Ebonroc healing himself sucks.

*Mortal Strike makes tank's jobs easier.

7. Flamegor:

* Teach your hunters to own this fight. If the raid force is taking damage, your hunters aren't doing their jobs. Flamegor will frenzy every 8 seconds and then cast Fire Nova (AOE, 550 damage!) when enraged. Tranq shot him every time, and your raid won't take damage.

* Having a Titans on your tank for all three Drakes makes a huge, huge difference. First weekend trying Firemaw, we didn't Flask. Bad idea. Next weekend, we cleared all three drakes (and made good progress on Chrom). Just Flask your MT - suck it up. Titans + Stoneshield pots do more to stabalize boss encounters than any other two things you could do (at this point of progression, that we've seen).

As an aside on Titans, we use them on: Broodlord (3-4 tanks get them), all three drakes, Chrom and Nef. A well run bank equals speedy progression.

8. Chrom:

* Doorway positioning is hand's down the best from a learning perspective. We downed Chrom the second weekend we attempted him and the next weekend, took him down with TL. Gurthock's suggestions on raid positioning are spot-on for both alliance and horde:

(1) Put all melee, OTs and OT healers behind Chrom. They will hide behind one of the doorway columns for breaths.
(2) Everyone hiding against left-side wall.
(3) MT just past the doorway on the Flamegor/Ebonroc room side.

* On TL, you really MUST teach your entire raid except hunters, OTs and OT healers to stay out and eat the TL. Reducing everyone's aggro is a must.

* Conceptually, just think of the OTs as "momentary diversions". They don't have to run far right after TL. If they do their job of generating aggro correctly, Chrom will lock right onto one of them (the other is just insurance in case one goes down) and turn around to eat them just as soon as TL goes off. OT healers just have to take 2 steps and can stand there healing for the 5-6 seconds necessary. Then Chrom swivels back to the MT and you rinse/repeat.

* OT healers (alliance) are 2 paladins, 1 priest, 1 druid. Pick very skilled players that won't foolishly die. Those four, if skilled, will capably decurse all melee and heal the OTs just fine.

9. Nefarian:

So we took down Nefarian just one weekend after our first Chrom take-down. This fight ended up being exceptionally easy. No boss in BWL stopped us for long (never more than one weekend) but Firemaw actually caused the most wipes.

* Throne AOE is by far the best way to learn/execute phase 1. Seriously. Our first weekend of attempts, we tried Assist + AOE at the doorways. In 3 attempts, the best we could do was 17 drakonids down, and that was with plenty of mayhem and a general lack of coordination. This weekend (first takedown!) we tried throne AOE straight-away and immediately got to Phase 2 with no one dead. Seriously, the difference was that stark. And yes, we had blue/black drakonids.

Layout:

(1) Healers/ranged DPS all the way at the top of the throne ramp.
(2) Near the bottom of the ramp, the Nefarian tank stands idle. Their only job during Phase 1 is to drag any errant drakonids back to the "hot box".
(3) Rogues position themselves just beyond the bottom of the throne ramp, facing the square directly in front.
(4) The square is known as the "hot box". All of your warriors except the MT stand here. (Put 5 of them in the same group in your raid).

Execution:

(1) Upon initation of phase 1, a warrior (one with improved battle shout) in your "hot box" group starts spamming battle shout.
(2) Drakonids will lock onto this warrior and pile up in the hot box.
(3) Start AOEing soon thereafter - everyone AOEing onto the hot box.
(4) Healers keep the tanks up. Set up a rogue with a tank target and they main assist blues (if you get them). Hunters follow the rogue target. Warlocks do the same (if necessary).
(5) Rogue duties are simple: single target DPS blues and keep any wanderers from heading up the ramp.
(6) Anyone MC'd by Nef has to announce it immediately (esp. a warrior) so it can be dispelled.

Seriously, chances of any more than 1 wanderer are very low, and they go right back down due to your rogues and the MT sitting there ready.

Using this method, Phase 2 will come rediculously fast (I mean that) so your MT needs to head over to the Phase 2 spot pretty quickly (along with his healers, who we send out 2-3 at a time).

* MT needs to start Bloodrage + bandaging earlier rather than later (so they don't miss the aggro reset at the beginning of Phase 2). Starting it when you get the CT Raid warning (Phase 2 in 10 seconds.) is a good idea.

* GSPPs for rogues during phase 2 are great. So are limited invulnerability pots for phase 3 (warlocks/mages).

* Great advantage to throne AOE - all constructs are in a big pile, close by for phase 3. DPS and warriors just turn their attention to the nearby big pile and are ready to go when they rez.

*Don't underestimate the amount of healing you'll need on your MT. We put 3 priests, 3 druids, 3 paladins and didn't regret it due to class calls interrupting healing, etc.

* Have 2 mages back up your druids on decursing duty. Veil of Shadows must be removed from the MT the instant you see it.

I'll be happy to provide any more insights I can - for other guilds currently working through BWL the little things you don't know often matter far more than the big things you do.

For the record, I MT for my guild, and I don't think this timing is going to be very good for you at all. I can get aggro on Nef the second he lands with a very small amount of action, and if a healer lays a big heal on someone, lose it immediately. I've seen it a number of times, and seems to clearly indicate that aggro starts when he is targettable. We single-target DPS on nef, so of course the tanks' approach to his landing is slightly different, but I would offer this modification:

Have the tank, with no target, spamming slam under Nef's spot until he lands, then possibly BR and go through a high TPS rotation until out of rage to make sure any stray heals are covered. Let the OT eat first fear so the MT can focus on building hate. Profit. OK well except for the OT part as you seem to be Alliance...

You'd be surprised how many Alliance guilds have no dwarf priests.

Just for clarification's sake, I wasn't writing it as a question. You give very good advice; perhaps superior to ours, but what we did worked very well for us. Dead Nefarian resulted.

I wonder how the first red/blue combo will turn out for you. :/

I'll let you know. Nothing would lead me to expect the experience to be anything other than more profit.

No snippiness intended; in fact, we'll try what you wrote. The distinction I was trying to make is that we are paranoid about timing - so we intentionally start aggro generation early. That's all. :)

I assume you mean in regards to the high Fire/Frost resist on those two? Even when we had Black/Red (medium/high fire resist) my Rain of Fire did full damage as often as not. All told I was at probably 85% of max Damage on that combo. In general, I've found that Rain of Fire seems to deal with resistance much better than other spells. For example on Core packs in MC will heavily resist Hellfire, but not Rain of fire. Or is my experience odd? (I have no penetration gear either)

To the OP - thats a nice list of tips, and its interesting we had about the same pace as you, just started 2 weeks earlier.

The group and AE strategy works just fine regardless of color combonations. Sure, Blizzard is not that great on blues and flamestrike/hellfire/RoF are weakened on red/blacks some but it isn't really that the caster AE is doing all the work, it is just that it is more efficient when everything is clumped up. Don't forget that the AR/BF rogues, multishotting hunters, spam-tabbing locks and WWing warriors all benefit from having targets galore in one area.

We do it in the middle of the room, not at the throne and have done so since day one.

My one quibble would be your Broodlord advice and it's something I've seen over and over in many situations. "Wanding until 80% makes this fight damn stable" you mention and I just don't know why this keeps coming up. Wands have zero aggro reduction (for classes that can get aggro reduction) and do poor damage. In aggro-sensitive situations you are almost always better off doing a bit of real damage and then sitting on your thumbs rather than plinking away with low damage and high damage-to-aggro wands. Now, that all said, I lay into Broodlord about ten seconds into the fight (once stray whelps are dead) and go not quite flat out but certainly at a medium burn. The faster he dies, the more stable the aggro is. Take that for what it's worth but it isn't like I haven't done the fight many, many times.

Someone explain this to me. Last time I killed firemaw after having read something to that effect here we had the MT drink a GFPP when his debuff stack got high. It certainly didn't "clear the debuff stack". So wtf do you people actually mean when you say this?

Assuming this works (never tried it), I would venture the guess that a "absorb" doesnt refresh the timer, so enough resist + absorb would get the timer reset.

I always thought that an Absorb was a hit though and in turn had all the consequences of the spell other than the damage.

I tried the fire pot trick way back when and watched it totally not work. We were going to implement a wrinkle to move the MT out if the debuff got too high, and then one of the officers said "you know, I've never heard of having to do that...let's just kill it faster."

And we did. The end.

PS: sometimes I still die. Tauntable drakes ftw.

EDIT: Someone beat me to it.

For what it's worth, the GFPP works because (I think!) it hastens the end of the debuffs. It mitigates "the rest" of the damage on the stack.

It def. has worked for us. We'll have the tank up to almost 20 debuffs and if he takes it at the right time, it'll cancel out that stack and he'll start getting another one.

Whatever you do, ALWAYS make sure announce in a great booming voice any nature and arcane vulnerable Draconoids.

Its a good way to make things...interesting for your druids, shamans and hunters and consequently the priests.

Yeah, pull 3 big guys, and shout Nature on left, Arcane in the middle and Shadow in the right! And you'll see like 6 red rows in your combat log and lots of angry warriors filling your raid-chat. 4 out of 5 priest pops shadowform, druids pop ZHC and fill you TS / Vent with "omg 5k crit!" shouts and shamans shoot lightningbolts...

And warriors cursing WTB alliance with nospelldps paladins ;)

Firemaw and Flamegor are easy mode if you use the same strats. Basically have the MT eat the wing buffet and have the OT in 2nd position in threat. Then the MT taunts and gains his aggro and the drake sticks to him. Way better strat than taunting off the wing buffets from the MT, IMO. Every Firemaw/Flamegor fight is a one shot, even if you have new tanks in the raid learning the encounter, easy mode.

If you spam click tranq shot before your rotation is up you will be able to tranq the moment he frenzies negating any chance of a fire buff (excluding lag of course).

QFT. Completely gimps any skill required for this fight. I hate the fact you can't tranq mobs until they're frenzied! Needs to be more interesting!

It also severely gimps your raids dps. Not only are your tanks constantly eating an aggro-reduction, but your dps has to stay below an OT, who has suboptimal threat-generation since he isn't taking the damage the MT is, and thust not gaining as much rage. If you have halfway competent warlocks or fury warriors, they'll be at the aggro-ceiling long before the fight is over. And believe it or not, you are also gimping your rogues and hunters, since they suddenly need to feint/vanish/FD more, which *gasp* cuts into dps. From our first ebonroc/flamegor kills, where taunting wasn't great, and our tanks weren't as good at building threat as they are now, we noticed a pretty nice increase in dps cross the board. Our rogues have gone from 2 (yes 2, lol) to no vanishes etc.

Not as much an issue on Firemaw as the other two drakes ofc, but still, how you can say this is a is beyond me. It might be easier on your two tanks, but seriously, if your tanks can't communicate well enough to taunt off wing buffets, you'll hit serious problems later on anyway.

Sorry for the slightly offtopic and not very polite rant, but this kind of advice really annoys me...

We have warriors that don't wear Ony cloak taunt the wing buffets.

Not on purpose, but it happens every other week. >_>

Taunting the Wing Buffet definately makes the fights easier, my old guild used 2 warriors to accomplish the job (extra prevention of missed taunts) And I can honestly say those fights went a lot easier than with 1 OT.

Comparing % on rag before sons isn't really the best indicater, as guilds that are heavily stacked on mages will usually do very good dps on rag, but not do well on vael, were as combat daggers really shine on vael, but isn't really that good on rag.

If vael is a problem it might be a good idea to stack up on rogues as they gain more than any other class due to energy mechanics and their amounts of instant strikes. Warriors aren't half bad either due to him beeing in execute range for a long time, but they still dont come close to rogues on vael.