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A molten giant boss with 2 pet dogs called Core Ragers for guards.

Core Ragers do a physical bite which also gives them a buff given they are close to golemagge when they bite. The buff increases physical damage by 500 and increases attack speed by 50%. Their second ability is a -50% to movement speed and 300 DoT in 2 sec intervals. If the dogs health drops below 50% BEFORE golemag himself is dead, they immediately heal back to 100% (refuse to die)

Golemagg has a few abilites.
- Anyone hitting golemagg at melee range will receive a stacking DoT that does 50 dmg and -250 armor per tick. Eventually goes up to 1000dmg per tick and -5000 armor. (this is apparently dispellable or can be countered otherwise)
- Throws 2000 fire damage on random targets that also add a DoT for 200 dmg per 3 secs (12 sec duration).
- When low on health Golemagg starts casting earthquake doing damage to all around him. He also attacks much faster (threshold unknown)
- when he reaches 10% health Golemagg casts some sort of spell that adds a certain amount of hate/aggro to all in raid but those who tank the core ragers...

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Golemagg is a simple endurance fight. He doesnt hit too hard, but the hp on the MT spike a lot so he needs to be constantly healed from two, better three souces (heal rotation groups). Dispelling isnt neccessary and he doesnt do any dangerous AoE or random target spells. To kill him, move the adds away so their "close to daddy"-abilities wont take effect. You cant kill the adds so just have them tanked. Once golemagg dies, the adds die too. Positioning as in the pic below. Allow the MT at least 1 min to gain aggro. Judgement of Light helps.




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Golemagg is just a big endurance fight. He also has two Core hound looking adds.


Golemagg has no major spells, besides a small fireball he shoots at people (RSTS) and the effect that lowers the targets armor, and does DoT, but as it stacks, the timer does not get reset, so after the first time the main tank is hit, the timer starts ticking down.

Golemagg setup:
Two groups who can be self sufficient, usually a Priest, Druid, Paladin, Warrior, and another class will do, should be on the two core hound adds. Do NOT kill these adds, because they will just respawn the instant you kill them. The tanks on the dogs should only be doing enough things to keep agro, which should only be taunt and using normal attacks (since no one should be attacking them, and the only agro on the list will be healing), with an occasional sunder armor to keep the agro from the healers.

As for Golemagg, its pure endurance like I said. Healers are able to drink up to 2 mana pots during this fight. Druids should be ready to Innervate if needed. This is a straight forward fight. Healers heal the main tank, drink pots the instant they will get the full effect, Mages cast, Hunters shoot (SL inside joke), and Rogues run up and tear him up. Like I said before, Main tank HP will spike a lot, but he should be ok with all the healers on him.

Setup

We split the raid into 4 teams. Each team occupies one corner. Usually
team A is groups 1 and 2 who go west
team B is groups 3 and 4 who go north
team C is groups 5 and 6 who go east
team D is groups 7 and 8 who go south

Each team gets
1 Hunter
1-2 Warriors
2 Priests/Druids
1 Paladin
1 Warlock
1-2 Rogues
1-2 Mages

A spokesperson for each team on TS announces spawns in the corners.

PHASE I (EGGS)

DPS
A mage or rogue in each team is appointed Main Assist, Mages, Hunters and Rogues in the team will help kill his target. His target are all Orc Mages in the corner. They have to die ASAP until eventually only Legionaires and Dragonkin remain)

Warriors
The warrior(s) in each corner sunder (build aggro on) each dragonkin and legionaire in their corner and kite it between the two platforms (running up the stairs and jumping down in the middle front exploits the no-jump pathing of the mos and gets distance between warrior and his heat. Piercing Howl helps too. Eventually all 55 mobs will be following the warriors and if all goes fine, they wont even take damage.

Healers
The healers in each team keep their warriors always shielded and HoT'ed. Optimal position for them to be is the front corner of the platform on their side. From there they always have a LoS to all team members and especially the warriors roaming their corner currently (usually its 2 tanks you have to keep track of, yours and the one of the team accross the room who follows the same path as your warrior). Also if they get hit, they can easily get some distance by jumping down the edge and running. Priest should use the CTRA aggro-gain announcer to be able to cast fade before the mob hits them.

Paladins
Paladins are the orb controllers. They place themselves below the orb right from the start and destroy eggs as fast as possible. They should not take damage during the egg phase at all. Once all eggs are down, the primary orb user will have a lot of aggro from Razorgore and he will come straight after him. We use that to position razor immediately in a good spot and to bring him to the MT tag-team.

PHASE II

The MT tag team builds aggro on razorgore. Every now and them Razor casts a frontal AoE conflag that temporarily wipes all aggro on the current tank, swithing it to the offtank. Position of the 2 tanks is 90° (not 180°).

All DPS stands behind Razorgore to avoid the conflag.

The 2 teams with the highest Mana after the Egg phase begins healing the MT while the other 2 regen. In case mana is too drained to form teams quickly, all healing shall be focused on the MTs while DPS heals itself with bandages. Note that razorgore teleports players that are out of his AoE range for a while.

General Info
Vaelastraz the corrup is the 2nd boss in Blackwing Lair right after Razorgore the Untamed. Before the fight, Vaelastraz is sound asleep and everyone can roam freely in the room. The fight is started by talking to him. After a brief cut-scene the fight begins. Vaelastraz will now stay awake for exactly 60 minutes before he dies and despawns for 12 hours. While he is awake it is no longer possible to roam freely. Vael will attack anyone within 20 yds of his "middle". Since he's huge and ranged cant be made out accurately, as a general rule the raid should stay outside the inner "courtyard marked by the columns.

Abilities

Everyone in the room will receive this buff when the fight starts:

Essence of Rend
Restores 500 mana per second.
Restores 50 energy per second.
Generates 20 rage per second.
3 minutes remaining

Random ranged members of the raid as well as Vael's main target will get:

Burning Adrenaline
Damage done increased by 100%.
Attack speed increased by 100%.
Reduces max. health by 5% every second. --> down to 18% after 20 sec.
Deals 4375 to 5625 damge to nearby allies upon death.
20 seconds remaining.

Fire breath:
AoE fire that hits everyone in an approximately 90° arc in front of him for ??-?? fire damage.

Cleave:
AoE physical that hits everyone in front of him for 1500-3000 physical damage.

Tailwipe:
AoE knockback that hits for 500-700 physical damage. Hits everyone in an 90° arc to the back of Vael.

Aura:
Damage aura that hits everyone for 300-700 fire damage per tick.

Burning Adrenaline
BA is lethal. We use a mod to announce the burning one of his buff/debuff, so he can action accordingly --> run away from your allies (min 30yd) and resume DPS (which is largely increased). DPS only for ranged classes of course. If the MT has BA he turns Vael slightly to the right in order to make room for MT2, then dies in that spot. More on that later.

Frontal damage/MTs
We need to work something out to prevent Vael's fre breath from killing the dps (just like onyxia)... now if they MT could be kept alive this would be no problem. However we have to feed up to 6 tanks to Vael before he dies.

The whole idea here is to make it impossible for vael to face the DPS by placing the 6 most hated chars (warriors) into strategic positions that direct his flame breath away from the DPS if a Tank dies and another one has to take over.





Vael has 3 limited AoE and 1 Aura type damage abilities. The damage zones are shown in the picture above. Note that he has a blind angle just over his rear legs.

Pulling Vael is done by one warrior that runs through him from the wall opposite the throne. By that he turns him and makes sure he doesnt move. 5 seconds afer initial aggro the offtanks move in and fight for aggro. 10 seconds after initial aggro all dps begins.

Positions during the battle are as shown above with raid entirely in the blind angle. All tanks are on one side. When Vael is at 20% Warriors activate Recklessness and Execute for maximum damage. At 10% all Rogues and Hunters stop DPS for 10 seconds. Rogues use feint and vanish whenever available. If it is resisted they stop all backstabs until they can cast a successful feint again. Hunters have to be carefull with dps after a good aimed shot crit. Feign death whenever available is mandatory.

If a ranged char gets BA, he will immediately run away from his allies to one of the green zones (around the columns). Once he arrives there and is still alive he resumes DPS which is greatly increased. If possible he stays clear of Vaels Flame breath and within 40yd of a priest, but never at the expense of safety for the raid.

When the current Main Tank gets burning adrenaline he stays in position. The offtanks get ready to get aggro and immediately turn vael back to the tank positions. During the transition vael must not move. So it is important for tanks to always stay within melee range of vael. Occationally on the transition healers might get a tailwipe and a short gap in the MT healing occurs. To bridge that we have 2 priests flashhealing the MT.

Note: An observation in regard to Vaels flame breath was, that he only does it when his target is stationary. So should you ever see yourself targetted by Vael, start to strafe right away in order to turn Vael away from your allies.

Healing
Everyone takes damage, so the best solution is Prayer of Healing, which means 8 priests, one fore each group. If less than 8 are available, use druids with chaining renew+regrowth on all of their partymembers. But the easiers setup is 8 priests.

Then setup 2 druids or 2 more priests + 1 Paladin to chain heals exclusively on the current Tank so that at all time he has 1x PoH, 1x HL and 2x HT incoming on him. All priests who PoH, will also occationaly send a Flash Heal to the MT.

Buffs
5 Warriors will be dedicated tanks and buffed as usual. The surplus tanks will get BoS and join rogues for DPS. All other DPS will get BoS too as well as all healers. Rogues do not get Blessing of Might (to limit their DPS and crits so tanks can keep up) --> Essence of rend buffs damage, but not taunt/sunder armor.

(the illustration is not accruate about the size of firemaws hitbox (its actually bigger) and thus the offtank position. I will add a screenshot to make it clearer soon.)

Wing Buffet
Frontal AoE, reduces Aggro every 30 seconds (announced by CTRA)

Shadow Flame
Frontal AoE for 4000-5000 dmg (ignors all armor and resistances). Causes a strong DoT without Onyxia Scale Cloak.

Flame Buffet
Strong DoT Aura with LoS check plus non-dispellable debuff that increases fire damage taken

PLAN:

Positioning is critical and the fights is a wipe if the correct position of firemaw cannot be established very quick. Also everyone in raid has to understand how the line of sight works here. Understanding the illustration 100% is required for all players. Understanding the principle even more since it will be applied to all followup dragons in BWL.

Melee attacks until the flame buffet debuff stacks too high and they need healing. When that happens they move to the melee-safe-position and bandage up.

Ranged dps stays on the Line of sight to firemaw and cross it to the safezone when the debuff stacks too high... bandage

Healers position themselves so they only have LoS (Line of Sight) to the tank but not Firemaw. Avoiding the debuff (Flame buffet) on healers is critical.

Group 1 setup is MT1 + MT2 + MT3 + Warlock + Paladin. Group 2, 3 and 4 are heal teams A and B with pala + druid + 2x priest if possible. Healing only on Tanks, the fight is long, rotation is needed and DPS has to bandage.

Tanking Variant I
(Works for all 3 Dragons the same)

The dragons are tauntable. This opens up a beautiful way to keep him positioned and avoid all aggro-loss on the MT during Wing Buffet: 3 Seconds before the Wing Buffet, an offtank will taunt the Dragon while standing 90° off the Main Tank.

This forces the Wing Buffet on the Offtank who looses aggro back to the Main Tank once the effect of the taunt fades (3 sec). In other words: the offtank attempts to catch the bullet. It is important that the offtank's taunt is cast no longer than 3 seconds before the Wing Buffet. If 2 Offtanks are available they coordinate to cast the taunt staggered (Second taunt is cast about 2 seconds after the first) to cover any inaccuracies of the running timers.

Whoever is in the Wing Buffet's AoE gets knocked back 30-40 yards and has to run back immediately. Usually to the safe-position.

Required setup is three tanks, one main and two offtank. Both need to be warriors. They position themselves as indicated in the image above at a 90° angle. The offtanks stand in their safe-position most of the time to avoid the debuff. Once the Wing Buffet timer is running out, they move into their Taunt Position close enough to the Dragon to make sure that if aggro switches to the taunting tank, the dragon will not move, just turn to him (this is critical).

Tanking Variant II

This is an alternate pattern for Firemaw.

The Main Tank stands in the far left corner of the closed gate that leads to the lower trap-room and one offtank stands at the opposite side of the gate. Both are standing with their backs to the corner so a Wing Buffet wont knock them out of position.

The Offtank will build aggro together with the Main Tank and make sure he is at all time second on the Dragons hate-list. That way, whenever a Wing Buffet hits the Main Tank, the Offtank is there to briefly tank Firemaw until the Main Tank can taunt him back.

This is made possible because DPS is very slow in this fight and Healing of the Main Tank spread over many individual healers.

To make this work, two healers (freferably druid+priest) have to be positioned accross the tank positions behind firemaw. There is a column to provide a LoS safezone for them. They just pop out of their safespot when the Wing Buffet timer is running out to burst heal the Offtank until the Main Tank has regained aggro. Note it is possible to stay in sight of the offtank while being hidden from the dragon in the same way the MT healers are. The sweet spot here is very small though but its there.

For additional safety, a second Offtank can be added. They both build aggro and after each 2nd Wing Buffet one of them goes to the safespot to let the debuff wear out.