Hey guys I’m Mezzy and welcome to this warlords of draenor raiding guide. Today we’ll be taking a look at Operator Thogar in Heroic Blackrock Foundry. These tactics also apply to the normal version.
The operator encounter is mainly an environmental and add encounter. But before we get to that, let’s go over Thogar’s abilities.
The first is Enkindle which is a stacking dot on the tank, increasing the damage taken from Enkindle by 35% for 25 seconds. This requires a tankswap after the second stack.
The second ability is Prototype Pulse Grenade, which is a grenade you simply need to move out of or take damage.
His final ability is Berated, which will increase the damage, movement speed and haste of adds, and also decrease their casting speed. There’s nothing you can do about this ability, but it does indicate the importance of killing adds when they appear.
So the challenge of this encounter is that you’re fighting on 4 train tracks, and trains will ride over these, killing you if you get hit. Some of the trains will pass right through, but some will stop and bring adds to deal with. Not only that, but the trains are solid, which means that if they spawn adds you will not be able to move through the trains to the other side of the room. You will have to kill all adds from a train before the train moves away.
I will explain how these work, but after the recording of this video one guild member informed me of the addon Thogar Assist, which will warn you well enough in advance on which tracks the trains are coming from, and if they’ll bring along any adds and which types. So this is an addon you might want to look into.
Moving forward we’ll give each track a number. The track closest to the boss is track 1, the next one is 2, and so forth. The track closest to the raid when you enter the room is track 4.
The doors on the sides of the room will open up before the trains actually come through them, this means that you can watch which tracks the trains will ride over and you can move off those tracks.
Although adds will continue to spawn throughout the encounter, at the 2 and 6 minute marks fully sized trains will bring adds on tracks 2 and 3. This makes you have to split up your raid into 2 groups, to stand on tracks 1 and 4 to kill off the adds and make the trains on tracks 2 and 3 leave again. This also means that one of the two groups will have to take the boss with them, so a tank swap right before the split happens would be good to start from 0 stacks on the tank who takes the boss.
In practise dodging the trains is quite easy, especially due to the cue from the doors opening. The only thing you would otherwise be unaware of is the split on the 2 and 6 minute marks.
So which adds will you have to contend with?
The first type of add is the Iron Gunnery Sergeant. These will spawn on tracks 1 and 4, and stay on top of the train. This means only the ranged can take these out. The gunnery sergeant will fire Delayed Siege bombs, targeting a specific player. These will follower the player around until they land, meaning they should kite it away from other players. After it lands it will do damage and after 30 seconds it will explode in a 9 yard radius.
The two cannon fodder adds are the Crack Shots and Raiders.
Crack Shots deal physical damage to their target, and will throw grenades if no one is in melee range.
Raiders will but a bleed dot on their target and throw grenades if no one is in melee range.
There are two more types of adds, and these are both important to kill as soon as possible. With the first one being the most important.
Firemenders cast an interruptible AoE heal, which will need to be interrupted. And once again throw grenades if no one is in melee range. These have to die as soon as possible.
Men-at-arms deal lots of aoe damage to the entire raid and have a Reckless Slash, charging to the location of a random raider and dealing damage to everyone within a 7 yard range. Simply have a slight spread to deal with this.
If you prioritize the adds, avoid the trains, stay out of grenades and can spread your raid into 2 groups for the 2 and 6 minute marks then you’ll have no trouble dealing with this boss. To recap this encounter:
– Tankswap on 2 stacks of Enkindle
– Move away from grenades
– Always prioritize adds
– Prioritize firemenders, interrupt them and then kill men-at-arms
– Ranged players need to kill the Gunnery Sergeants
– If targeted by delayed siege bomb, kite it away from the rest of the raid, prefferably to the sides
– Full length trains will come at the 2 and 6 minute marks
– This means the raid has to be split into 2 groups, one will fight on track 1 and one on track 4.
If you liked this raiding guide, please comment, subscribe and click the like button! If you would like to keep up with when new videos come out but you don’t have a youtube account you can follow us on twitter or facebook, at twitter.com/bbmezzy or facebook.com/wowweekly. Also be sure to check out our website wowweekly.net where you can find written content as well. For now I’m Mezzy and I’ll see you again next time.