World of Warcraft players can tackle the new Blackrock Foundry large-group raid dungeon today, but what they find inside might feel a little familiar.
The whole Warlords of Draenor expansion for the überpopular massively multiplayer online role-playing game carries the “everyone versus the evil orcs” theme, much like the last big dungeon in the previous expansion, Mists of Pandaria.
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Blackrock Foundry is the second big raid dungeon released for last fall’s Warlords of Draenor expansion for World of Warcraft. It requires players to have armor at level 635 or higher to enter on Raid Finder difficulty (higher levels are left up to the discretion of the group, which usually requires much, much better gear).
This week, players can work on all bosses in Normal and Heroic difficulties for the new dungeon. Next week, überdifficult Mythic opens Feb. 10, and the week after, the first wing of the less-difficult Raid Finder difficulty opens Feb. 17, enabling players to find random groups to attack the first three new bosses.
Each week after that, three new bosses will open up on Raid Finder, until on March 24, that version of the final boss will launch.
Read on for our look of each of the new dungeon’s 10 bosses below.
Gruul, the not-so-Dragonkiller
Above: Gruul makes his not-so-triumphant return (pre-turn?) in Blackrock Foundry.
Longtime players will recognize Gruul, a giant cyclops-like gronn. He was the climax of the small two-boss raid dungeon Gruul’s Lair in the Burning Crusade expansion. He was the top boss then, called Gruul the Dragonkiller. In Warlords’ alternative timeline, he’s a slave, a pawn of the Iron Horde orcs that are the enemies of this expansion.
The original Gruul fight was notable because he refused to drop the trinket everyone who killed him seemed to want (spoiler: It’s back) and because it was an early fight where many players routinely killed their characters by standing in Bad Things.
Players will have the choice of taking their 10-to-30 character raid groups to Gruul or Oregorger first; both must be slain to get to Blast Furnace.
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Some of the fight is virtually the same as it was in Burning Crusade: Gruul petrifies a number of players in the raid, gradually slowing them to a stop, and then Shatters them, exploding them and damaging teammates that are standing near them.
Gruul attacks a large cone of players in front of him with Inferno Slice, which all players must split the damage of (so that it doesn’t kill the characters that are tanking him.) He also has Overhead Smash, which targets a random person and makes a line in the floor, knocking them back and causing damage.
The fun part is when Inferno Slice and Overhead Smash happen at nearly the same time, or when Gruul chains a bunch of smashes together for a Destructive Rampage. As a player, that tends to feel something like this: slice-smash-smash-smash-smash-squish-squish-stomp-ow.
He’ll also periodically cause high, stacking damage to players standing close to and in front of him (Overwhelming Blows), which is mostly to give tanks something to do, since they’ll have to trade off to keep stacks from getting to high and move Gruul after Inferno Slices so it doesn’t hit the raid.
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Oregorger the Devourer
Above: Oregorger the Devourer is a rock-eating goren, one of the coolest new creatures in the Warlords expansion.
Oregorger is a goren, a new type of monster in the Warlords expansion that moves around by rolling up like a combination of a pill bug and a bowling ball. I was delighted to discover we’d be getting a goren boss; it almost (but not quite) makes up for the fact that we never did get a raid boss for Warcraft’s most iconic annoying monster, the Murloc.
You know if it’s a goren boss that he’s gonna rock and roll, and Oregorger lives up to that expectation. He launches spines and explosive shards, and he sprays acid at people that tanks must move to absorb. But when he runs out of mana, he will roll around the paths inside his area, looking for ore to eat and smooshing anyone he runs across.
Players have to stay out of his way and help him in this quest, crushing crates of ore to reveal the Oregorger-style buffet inside. This allows him to refill his mana and return to the first phase, which is way more manageable than a giant rolling wrecking ball.
The Blast Furnace
Above: This is the Heart of the Mountain, which looks a little like a cross between the classic raid boss Ragnaros and the little elemental that guards me from my garrison’s forge.
The final boss in the first wing of Blackrock Foundry is actually a multiple-mob fight: the Blast Furnace, featuring Foreman Feldspar and the Heart of the Mountain.
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Your job is to release the Heart of the Mountain in order to kill it. You’ll do that by blowing up heat regulators next to the furnace with bombs that the trash mobs throw at random players and drop on the floor when they die. Players either take the bomb they’re thrown (or pick one up from the floor) over by the regulators, where they blow up. Anyone else standing around will also take heavy damage.
Foreman Feldspar is out and causing trouble during this phase, attempting to repair the regulators, dropping fire on the ground, and beating up on tanks.
In the second phase, you’ll be killing the primal elementalists that are keeping the Heart from attacking you (and other mobs that assist them). Yes, that does seem counterintuitive, but it’s difficult to loot something that’s still alive.
You’ll kill small slag elementals near the primals to remove their shields. Those small elementals randomly target a player, so their job is to go stand next to a primal and hope the rest of the group saves their bacon. Slag elementals explode when they die, taking down the primals’ shields and any players that happen to be standing nearby.
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When the shields are down, you’ll attack the primals and get rid of a buff that heals them by purging or dispelling it.
Players with priest characters have an extremely fun tactic in this fight: Security Guard trash mobs that spawn throughout the battle can do huge damage to the smaller slag elementals, but only if mind controlled by a priest in the group.
The final phase is burning the Heart of the Mountain itself, which mostly consists of players staying out of fire and pouring as much damage into the boss as possible before his room-wide explosions kill everyone.
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Hans’gar and Franzok
Above: Hans’gar and Franzok just want to pump — *clap* — you up.
The first bosses in the second wing of the new Blackrock Foundry dungeon are Hans and Franz — and no, that’s not a coincidence. It’s one of WoW’s many pop culture references, and you’ll hear plenty during this fight.
In the Siege of Orgrimmar dungeon from the last expansion, players fought a boss where some characters had to hop up on a conveyor belt to destroy machinery. In this fight, the whole raid is on the conveyor, and you are the ones that must avoid being destroyed.
Every so often throughout the fight, Hans’gar or Franzok will pop out to turn on the machinery. Hans’gar turns on the conveyor and puts superheated plates under characters’ feet. Franzok turns on giant overhead stompers that smoosh player characters caught underneath. In addition, Hans body-slams players (both bosses do when returning to the conveyor), shattering the other characters near the targeted one; and Franz interrupts spells and hits random players with damage from Skullcracker.
When one boss or the other leaves the area, the one left behind smashes the two characters tanking them together. And as their health declines, both Hans and Franz use their damaging abilities more and more frequently, making for a hectic, fun fight.
Flamebender Ka’graz
Above: Flamebender Ka’graz is (surprise!) an orc.
The next boss in Blackrock Foundry is Flamebender Ka’graz, an orc shaman with a slightly doofy expression and a really, really big sword. (Players everywhere whose shamans can’t wield swords at all may commence grinding your teeth now.) Her assistant, Aknor Steelbringer, joins her, and he will be the first boss that players kill. He has a smash that damages characters in front of him, and every so often he’ll randomly jump to a faraway player and cause massive damage to everyone standing around that character.
After you dispose of him, you’ll focus on Ka’graz, who gradually builds more energy as the fight goes on.
To start, she sends lines of fire running along the floor from herself to random people in the raid. Anyone who touches them starts a new line, doing extra damage. After a while, those will poof, but they’re fun to avoid in the meantime. She’ll also throw weapons at characters, where they’ll land and spin, doing fire damage for the rest of the fight.
Once she has 25 energy, she’ll start casting meteors at characters once every 15 seconds or so, which must hit multiple players so the damage is split and they survive. At 50 energy, she calls two molten wolves to join the fight, one of which chases a random character around, and the other must be kept facing away from the group in case it belches fire on the raid force. A chain of fire connects the wolves, and this damages anyone it touches. Once one stops fixating on players, the other one starts, and vice versa. Both must die at the same time.
At 75 energy, Ka’graz casts Blazing Radiance on a random player every 10-12 seconds, making them damage anyone close to them for as long as the debuff lasts. And at 100, she casts Firestorm, which damages everyone in the raid. If any wolves are still up, they channel Firestorm also — no bueno.
When that giant area of effect damage is over, the fight starts fresh, but Ka’graz will throw splashes of lava at players and give the tanks a damage debuff that forces them to switch every few stacks.
Kromog
Above: We’re pretty sure Kromog has feet. Maybe.
The final boss of the second wing is Kromog, another cyclops-like beast called a magnaron. His backstory is slightly odd — the Iron Horde stumbled across him, horrified, as they built out the Foundry, but then he started working for them. He reminds me a little of Kologarn in the Ulduar raid dungeon from Wrath of the Lich King, only because his massive size means you see nothing of him above ground but the waist up. The abilities he uses are quite different, though, and a lot of fun.
He hits tanks and melee players (and the rest of the raid, but with less damage) with Slam; sends a shockwave of damage running along the ground to a random player with Rippling Smash; hurls little yellow sonic rings flying in lines out from him that must be avoided; hits four random players with a debuff that does damage; breathes on everyone in the raid if no one is in range for him to physically hit; and smooshes players with stone hands that rise from the floor and clap together. It’s a hoot to see; YouTuber Fatboss did a really nice video on him early in the Warlords beta.
Later in the fight, Kromog casts a pile of runes on the floor. Each rune will, after a few seconds, spawn a hand that grabs the player standing on it. Only one player can use a rune, so every player must find their own to stand on. After the hands grab the characters, Kromog casts a room-wide ability that bounces players way up into the air, damaging them on the way up and killing them with fall damage on the way down.
When he hits 30 percent health, Kromog starts doing things faster and hitting harder, so players then race to kill him.
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.