Hey guys I’m Mezzy and welcome to this warlords of draenor raiding guide. Today we’ll be taking a look at Blackhand in Heroic Blackrock Foundry. These tactics also apply to the normal version.
This is a 3 phase encounter and you will have to deal with the same abilities all throughout the fight. The way you deal with them changes as you go along.
In phase 1 the first ability you’ll have to deal with is Demolition. This will cause the ceiling to colapse. On the floor you will see swirls which indicate where the ceiling will fall, meaning you have to get out of these. There will also be 3 big red swirls. These will deal over 100k damage to anyone within 20 yards, meaning you have to move further away from these. After it has fallen it will leave behind debris piles where the big red swirls were. You will need these piles for the next ability: Marked for Death.
Blackhand will mark 2 players and after 5 seconds throw a knife at them. Anyone standing between the boss and the target will get hit by it. If a player gets hit by the knife they will receive a 45 second DoT. To prevent getting this, stand behind a debris pile if you get marked. The knife will hit the pile instead and noone will have to take any damage from it. Try to use the same pile, as you will have to deal with a mark during the next demolition phase. Should all 3 debris piles already be used before the second demolition phase, the first debris pile will spawn before the mark gets cast, so don’t panic.
The next ability you’ll have to deal with is Slag bombs. These are mines that blackhand will put on the floor, meaning your tanks will have to kite him around the edge of the room. If someone stands on it, it will explode in a 10 yard range, dealing damage and increasing the damage taken by 100% of anyone who got hit by the explosion.
In phase 1 the room will fill up with molten slag over time from all edges of the room. When the slag hits a mine it will also trigger the explosion. So not only will the tanks want to keep moving around the room, they will slowly need to move closer to the middle so that they do not stand in molten slag.
The final ability is Shattering Smash. Blackhand will cast this when he reaches 100 energy. With shattering smash he will deal a lot of physical damage, which is split by everyone that gets hit by it. It will knock them far back, clearing their threat and stun them for 3 seconds. In phase 1 only 1 tank at a time should get hit by the smash. If you’re about to reach the phase change at 70% health, have a priest lifegrip the tank when they get thrown away.
In phase 1 don’t be afraid to use a healing cooldown during demolition, and be sure to use aspect of the fox from hunters as well to make life easier. As long as noone gets hit by the marks and people dodge the demolition it’s an easy phase 1.
At 70% blackhand will smash the floor, breaking it and dealing a large amount of damage to everyone in the raid. Although you won’t see it in this video, we now have the raid group up in the middle at 70% and use a priest’s barrier to ease the transition to phase 2.
In phase 2 there will be 3 changes you need to deal with. First of all, Siegemakers will spawn from the gates around the room. Only one at a time will spawn, and after it comes out of the gate it will fixate on the closest player after a few seconds. We use 2 hunters to pick them up as much as possible. You will want the fixated player to run the maker through the mines to clear them up. The mines will also deal damage to the maker and give it the damage increase debuff.
Per maker you will have 3 sets of marked for death. You want the first 2 sets, which is a total of 4 knives to hit the maker. Meaning if you get the marked for death debuff you will want to have the siegemaker between yourself and blackhand. If the maker is still alive after the second set of knives hit it you will have to kill it as soon as possible with regular dps. This is because once the maker reaches 100 energy it will throw a mortar into the room, which will quickly cause a lot of fire to cover a part of the room. And you reaaaally don’t want that!
To reduce the chance of that happening we have everyone dot the maker up. There’s one more detail to the maker. It will start off with an armor buff reducing it’s damage taken by 90%. This gets removed once the maker gets hit by a mark or by a mine. Usually a mark will hit it before it reaches a mine, meaning you will need to do some extra damage to the maker. If a mine hits it before the first marks hit, the maker will take the full damage from the 2 knives, reducing the amount of damage you need to do as a raid to it considerably.
The 3rd mark for death set will have to be soaked by a tank, because at this point there should be no siegemaker around. Have your tanks alternate soaking the 3rd set of knives. They can soak the knives by standing right in the middle of blackhand.
So to recap, the following will occur: A siegemaker spawns, it will fixate on someone who will have to kite it through the mines, 2 players get marked for death and make sure the maker gets hit by the knives, a second set of marked players does the same. At this point the maker should be dead before he reaches 100 energy. After that the 3rd set of marked players don’t have to do anything as a tank will be soaking those knives. At this point a new maker spawns and the entire process repeats itself.
The last change in phase 2 is that iron soldiers will spawn in the rafters above you. These will keep spawning and shoot at random players. The shot they do hit anyone within 6 yards, meaning you will need a spread in phase 2. To deal with these you will want to send some dps and a healer up into the rafters to kill them off. Our group sends up 4 dps and a healer when we have more than 20 people to get rid of these soldiers as quickly as possible.
You get up in the rafters by getting hit by the shattering smash blackhand does when he reaches 100 energy. This is good because it means that more players will share the damage with the tank in phase 2 when the smash does happen. The assigned group for the rafters should go up at every smash, kill off the soldiers and then jump down. You can reduce the damage you take from the soldiers by silencing them when you are up there.
There are rafters on both sides of the room and you can’t run from one side to the other. This means you might not be able to clear both sides. Alternate the sides you get thrown to by putting yourself in an angle towards the side you need to clear relative to the smash. The smash shows a circle which can help you with that.
And then finally, if a tank accidentally gets the 100% damage increase debuff by accident, be sure to have the other tank taunt and let them take the smash.
If you can deal with both the smash and the siegemaker you’ll reach phase 3 when blackhand reaches 30% health. Again he will destroy the floor, dealing damage to the raid and you will fall down.
In phase 3 he now attaches the mines to random raiders and the marks will fly through anyone in the knive’s path. This means that if you get marked for death, you will want to move to the right of the raid so noone else gets hit. Also be sure not to stand on top of each other as you don’t want to get hit by both knives.
If you get a mine attached to you run it out to the left of the raid. The mine will explode after 3 seconds. When the mines explode and the boss does his smash, slag craters will be left behind, which will reduce the amount of space you have. To deal with this you will want to use the edges of the room for the smashes and mines and dps him down before you run out of space. The smash deals a lot of damage now, meaning you will want your entire raid to stand behind the tank so that everyone gets hit by the smash. This makes it very important to make sure you go out of the raid if you get a mine or a mark.
Once you get into position after you reach phase 3 you will want to use heroism. Use an aspect of the fox whenever shattering smash is about to land, and be sure to reposition yourself. Also be sure to not put yourself in a weird angle for the smash. If you do you might be thrown off the edge of the platform instead of back to the middle of the platform.
Blackhand will regularly cause the slag to erupt, which will deal raidwide damage. Be sure not to be standing in any slag, but that should go without saying.
This is a fairly easy boss mechanics wise for an end tier raid boss and it comes down to executing the few tactics that are in play. It was a really enjoyable fight so I hope you enjoy it as well and good luck!
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