Rank : Officer Posts : 644 Age : 38 Location : London
Subject: Dragon Soul Raid: Warmaster Blackhorn 25 Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:40 am
Blackhorn took some lessons from ICC. No more waiting on the enemy Gunship for you to make the first move. He's bringing the fight right at you and he's not afraid to jump on board for the grunt work. What he doesn't know is this flight was booked in advanced and we don't have room for him or his baggage.
L2R Difficulty Ranking = 3/5 Phase 1 will take more time to learn and execute than phase 2. It is a fight where players must stick to their roles and trust their fellow raiders. An average guild can expect to spend 1-4 days learning and executing this encounter.
About the difficulty ranking: L2R ranks the difficulty of different fights based on an average of how difficult the different aspects (tanking, healing, and dpsing) are as well as the fights overall movement and situational awareness requirements. These stats are weighed on a scale of 1-5 and the values are averaged together to form the L2R Difficulty Ranking you see above. The rankings assume you are attempting the fight at the inteded gear level at the time it was most relevant.
Raid Makeup
•Tanks = 2 •Healers = 5-7 •DPS = Balanced DPS
Abilities
Phase 1 The Skyfire - Sky Captain Swayze helms this massive gunship equipped with numerous cannons and a pair of harpoon guns for its defense. The gunship is sturdy but not indestructible, and if it sustains too much damage the pursuit of Deathwing will come to an untimely end.
•Harpoon Guns - Alliance engineers equipped the Skyfire with two repurposed harpoon guns, seized during its prior service in Northrend. Harpoon gunners spear the enemy's Assault Drakes and reel them in to bring them within reach of ranged attackers on the deck. The drakes strain against the line, eventually breaking free and returning to a safe distance. After a pause to reload, the harpoon gunners then spear their target anew. Goriona - The massive twilight drake that is the mount of Warmaster Blackhorn himself.
•Twilight Onslaught - Deals 2000000 Shadow damage to enemies within a 10 yard radius of the destination, with the damage divided evenly among all enemies. Twilight Assault Drake - These Drakes strafe across the deck of the ship, deposit their fierce riders onto the deck, and then retreat to a safe distance to bombard the gunship.
•Twilight Barrage - Deals 300000 Shadow damage to players within 5 yards of the point of impact and increases their Shadow damage taken by 50% for 15 sec, stacking. If no players are struck, the Skyfire instead suffers the full brunt. Twilight Elite Dreadblade
•Blade Rush - Surge toward a distant enemy, dealing 92500 to 107500 Physical damage to all enemies along the way. •Degeneration - Carves a swath of ruin, dealing 76000 to 84000 Shadow damage to all enemies in front of the caster, and afflicting them with dark energies that deal 6000 Shadow damage every 2 sec for 1 min. Twilight Elite Slayer
•Blade Rush - Surge toward a distant enemy, dealing 92500 to 107500 Physical damage to all enemies along the way. •Brutal Strike - Deals 150% weapon damage and causes the target to suffer 6000 Physical damage every 2 sec for 1 min. Twilight Sapper - Sleek infiltrator drakes airdrop goblins strapped with powerful explosives onto the deck of the ship. These Sappers will rush to breach the gunship bridge and detonate their destructive payload.
•Detonate - Detonate a large explosive, dealing 243750 to 256250 Fire damage to enemies within 8 yards, damaging the Skyfire's machinery, and killing the caster.
Phase 2
Warmaster Blackhorn
•Devastate - Sunder the target's armor, dealing 120% weapon damage and applying the Sunder Armor effect. •Disrupting Roar - Scream fiercely, dealing 61750 to 68250 Physical damage to all enemies, and interrupting the spellcasting of enemies within 10 yards for 8 sec. •Shockwave - Deals 95000 to 105000 Physical damage to enemies in a 80 yard cone in front of the caster, stunning them for 4 sec. •Vengeance - Increases damage proportional to missing health Goriona - After depositing her master on the deck of the Skyfire, Goriona hovers along the Skyfire and rains destruction down on the players. Once Goriona has suffered sufficient damage, she will break off and flee, abandoning her master on the Skyfire.
•Twilight Flames - Deals 29250 to 30750 Shadow damage to all enemies within 7 yards. Positioning
Begin by choosing proper positioning. There will be many ways to do this, but the two quickest options are either a loose spread all around the ship or split the raid into three to four groups and let the groups spread loosely in a small area. The intention behind this is to make absorbing Twilight Barrages easier. In phase two melee can stack on the boss, but rangd must be careful not to stand too close or too far away. This will help avoid Dirupting Roar and give enough time to move out of Shockwave.
Strategy
Phase one is about two things. Protecting the ship from the multiple attacks it is taking and dpsing down adds quickly and efficiently. If the ship sustains too much damage, it will die and the raid will wipe, but if adds are not handled properly, the raid will be overrun. Drakes will consistently bombard the ship with Twilight Barrage and it is important that players run to blast area to absorb the damage. Each blast will need around 3 players to absorb it safely and this will keep the ship from taking the damage of the attack. For the most part, ranged dps and healers can worry about absorbing these, but if the blasts are closer to the melee are, don’t hesitate to let melee soak them. Players will need to know their dps priorities and this will be dictated by role. All players must focus on Twilight Sappers first. If this add reaches the bridge it will immediately take off 20% of the ship’s health. Players must focus this add down quickly and ignore anything else. After that, melee will prioritize Twilight Elites while range will focus on Twilight Drakes. Have each tank pick up one Twilight Elite and try to tank them near each other, but not on top of each other or facing the same way. They can cleave so keep that in mind with their positioning. Ideally, melee should be able to cleave these adds down easily. Throughout the phase, the harpoons will pull Twilight Drakes toward the ship for ranged dps to attack. Make sure ranged are focusing on the Drakes since they will not stay harpooned forever and will return to the sky if not killed quick enough. When there are no drakes available to attack, ranged should help melee dps down the Twilight Elites. On top of looking for Twilight Barrages to absorb, players will need to watch for the Twilight Elites’ Blade Rush charge. The Elite will target a random player and charge toward them. This attack deals high physical damage to all players in the path. The path can be predetermined by watching for the charge graphic on the ground. This appears as a line comprised of multiple red circles on the ground between the add and its target. As of our testing however, this graphic proved to be very faint and difficult to notice. Even if avoiding the charge seems hard, it is important to move after the add has charged to avoid the possibility of being hit by a follow-up cleave. Finally in phase one, anytime Goriona casts a Twilight Onslaught, all players should move into it. This blast will deal massive damage, but splits between all players. In order to keep the damage low, as many players as possible should be in the blast radius. Your raid may opt to leave tanks out to avoid cleave problems, but be ready to move away from charge after stacking up. Each time these massive blasts occur is a good opportunity for a raid cooldown. Barrier, Spirit Link Totem, and just about everything else is an optimal choice for easing healing during these. Once three waves of adds have been defeated, if the ship is still alive, Blackhorn will jump onto the deck to greet you and phase two will begin.
Immediately, ranged dps should go all out on Goriona; who will remain in the air shooting Twilight Flames at random players. Simply move out of these as they leave dangerous fire patches on the ground. Goriona will not stick around for the whole fight and instead retreats after taking too much damage. During this, Blackhorn will use Devastate on the tanks. This applies a sunder armor effect and will require the tanks to taunt off of each other. Melee are free to stack up behind the boss, but ranged should avoid standing too close as he will occasionally use Disrupting Roar; dealing moderate physical damage and interrupting spellcasting for all nearby players. In this same regard however, players cannot stand too far away because the boss will use shockwave. After turning to face a random player, Blackhorn will unleash a wave of force in a large cone that deals high physical damage and stuns all targets it hits. Players further away will have a much harder time dodging the effect as the radius will be greater. Due to the boss’ Vengeance, he will become stronger as his health goes down so all of his spells will begin to do more damage later in phase two. Be ready to use raid cooldowns again and healing cooldowns to make it through the last few Disrupting Roars. DPS should not hesitate to use damage reduction cooldowns in order to ease the healing they take.
This is a fight with a lot of moving parts, but becomes very easy when each player focuses on just their task. Though there is a fair bit going on, individually, players only need to handle 2-3 mechanics. Try to keep this in mind and just think about what you need to accomplish. If you found this guide helpful or informative remember to bookmark us at LearntoRaid.com, subscribe to us on youtube, and follow us on Twitch.tv and Twitter. As always we hope this guide was helpful and we’ll see you at the next boss.
