Beastlord Darmac
Above: Beastlord Darmac: Much more flying fur, much less Captain Picard.
The first boss in the third wing of the World of Warcraft Blackrock Foundry dungeon is Beastlord Darmac, who sics his favorite creatures on you throughout the battle. (We’ll pause for a moment here to give you time to make the inevitable Star Trek: The Next Generation references.)
Darmac has three Prime Beasts in his room, and which one you fight at any given time is up to you. As he drops in health, he’ll unleash the one he’s closest to, and you have to kill it before moving on.
Cruelfang, the wolf-like warg, gives Darmaca howl that increases his damage and the ability to jump to a random player, putting a damaging bleed effect on everyone in the area (and everyone he jumps back to). Dreadwing the flying Rylak, shown in the image above, has a fiery breath that hurts and drops fire on the ground; a random-target conflagration debuff that causes fire damage in the area and makes players wander confused; and gives Darmac a spray of shrapnel that damages everyone caught inside it when he’s dismounted. Ironcrusher the elephant-like Elekk gives him a room-wide damaging earthquake, a stampede, and a damaging debuff for tanks.
Darmac also throws spears at people and calls little beasts to come help that players must kill. Towards the end of the fight, he gains the bleed, the earthquake, and the shrapnel all at once.
Operator Thogar
Above: Operator Thogar is … surprise! … another Orc. We’re sensing a theme.
So you thought fighting on conveyor belts was bad in the Hans’gar and Franzok encounter? Just wait: Operator Thogar is bringing the trains. You’ll be dodging those high-speed bullets of death on four different tracks throughout the fight. They’ll also stop to deliver more evil guys for you to kill, like a twisted Orcish Amtrak. The trains that drop off the new guys hang out until those additional mobs are dead, which means if you take too long, you’ll get smooshed by the next moving train.
(Wowhead has a really nice breakdown of where and when the “delivery” trains appear in its guide to this fight.)
The Operator himself hits hard and throws grenades on the ground that suck characters into them and deal damage, but most of the challenge of the fight is dealing with the trains and the orcs they deliver quickly enough to kill the boss. It’s much more challenging than you realize, since those passenger trains always seem to be in the way when a moving train one comes through.
The Iron Maidens
Above: You’ll have to shred or be shredded in the battle against the Iron Maidens. (No, the guy in the mohawk is not a Maiden.)
Gar’an is the admiral of the Iron Horde naval fleet, and you face off against her and her lieutenants, Marak and Sorka, in this battle. This fight and the last one against Rend Blackhand saw the least combined beta and public test realm testing, so we have less information than for the other encounters.
Sokra and Marak will sometimes jump to the deck of a nearby ship, preparing to annihilate you with the big guns from afar. It’s up to you to stop them by using loading chains to pull yourself aboard, defeating a powerful deckhand on board, then sabotaging the main cannon’s ammo before it warms up and one-shots players. Smaller bombs from the cannon appear to hit throughout the fight.
You must defeat all three must at roughly the same time, because whenever one hits 20 percent health, they all enrage (their health is separate).
Gar’an has an aimed shot, similar to the ability Aim from the Paragons of the Klaxxi in the Siege of Orgrimmar dungeon. In order to keep her from killing her target, others must stand between her and that character, splitting the damage. She also has a targeted rapid fire, which players must run out of the raid. You’ll also have to avoid fire cast by turrets at the end of the fight.
During the battle, Sokra will dash to a random player, damaging that character and any standing nearby. She’ll also use the ability Dark Hunt, which causes her to target a player and then teleport to them, doing a high amount of damage to that one person.
Marak has powerful attacks in melee range that can split and damage other players, and a cone attack targeted on a random person that strikes a huge blow to the character closest to her (hopefully a tank) and injures everyone in the line.
Git Er Raid has a nice video of what this fight looked like early in beta testing.
The final battle: Rend Blackhand
Above: My very first time visiting Blizzard headquarters, I got to use the developer ability Death Touch to kill Rend Blackhand before he was released in game. It appears he’s going to get his revenge.
Rend Blackhand is a familiar figure to longtime players of World of Warcraft, as he was a frequently painful boss to fight in the Upper Blackrock Spire dungeon for smaller groups very early in the game.
This fight is totally different, and even more painful. So far most of the raid testing and videos go something like this:
“All right, that ready check was good, pulling in 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … . owowowowowow WTF we have piles of bombs here … that graphic on the floor is tiny, the debris falling from the ceiling is actually huge … what do you mean, the platform disappears? … wait, the tank damage gets WORSE from here?” and so on.
The fight takes place on three levels of in Blackhand’s Crucible. When he reaches 70 percent and 30 percent health, the floor drops, dumping the players down to the next level and into new things to look out for.
At the start in the Forge, Blackhand throws bombs at people and causes debris to fall from the ceiling, which hurts more the closer you stand to it. Players will need to use those piles later to hide from Blackhand, who will throw a spear at players with the Marked for Death debuff; the debris piles block the spear.
He’ll also knock back the primary tank and all melee players, stunning all of them and forcing the next tank (who hopefully was standing away) to pick up the fight. And the platform you stand on will slowly shrink under encroaching magma.
On the second level, the Warehouse, you have all of the above mechanics plus adds.
Siegemaker tanks will fixate on players, firing mortars that make spreading fire on the ground. They have armor that can only be reduced by Blackhand’s own spear, and they can be hit by his slag bombs. Iron soldiers attack the raid from the balcony in increasing numbers, firing explosive rounds, and must be killed before they do too much damage.
On the third level, the Iron Crucible, you get everything above plus a whole lot of fire.
Blackhand’s knockback makes craters that have to be avoided, hurting all characters in the vicinity when they’re created. He can impale a line of players with his spear, knocking one or all of them off the platform altogether. Slag craters erupt, and Blackhand attaches his slag bombs to player characters now, making them blow up.