These guides were based on SoM strategies from memory, combined with SoD PTR testing. They are being actively updated with changes from the launch of Season of Discovery's BWL.
(last updated 9/29/24)
BWL is a weekly lockout (resets Tuesday). It's tuned for 20 players, but accepts up to 40 players. Loot does not change based on player count, which means the more players you bring, the more likely you are to kill each boss, but the less loot each player will receive on average.
In SoD, BWL has five additional difficulty modifiers you can enable. Once enabled, they can be disabled in that lockout, but if you disable one that you've enabled, you cannot enable it again for the rest of that lockout.
These difficulty modifiers are 'Trials' of the 5 dragonflights: Red, Blue, Green, Bronze, and Black. Most of these modifiers add an additional mechanic to each encounter that is the same across all encounters. These trials can be enabled by talking to Victor Nefriendius at the start of the raid.
- Red: Every time you get hurt, small chance to gain a stacking debuff. "When injured, burn for 400 fire damage every 3 seconds until healed above 90% of your maximum health. Direct heals remove 1 stack." Basically, just make sure you keep your raid topped up with Efflorescence, Vampiric Embrace, etc.
- Blue: "Randomly afflicted with Arcane Bomb, which will deal heavy damage split among all those affected." AoE bomb, needs to be soaked by having players run to the target.
- Green: "Randomly affected by powerful nature magic, dealing damage to nearby players and leaving a pool of poison." Chosen player runs out of the raid, drops it away from raid, then returns.
- Bronze: "Time will randomly slow down and speed up". Affects movement speed. This can be meaningless, or it could kill you at critical moments on some fights, when combined with other trials.
- Black: Enables additional boss-specific mechanics, see Black Changes sections in boss guides below.
Each week, there will also be a specific trial that is considered the 'bonus' trial for that week. Having it enabled for all fights will give you additional rewards (on top of the per-trial bonus) once you kill Nefarian.
Upon killing Nefarian, up to three additional chests may spawn, alongside Nef's loot:
- Chromatic Stash/Supplies/Hoard: If you have at least 1 trial active, this chest will spawn with 2, 4, or 5 items depending upon if you had 1, 2, or 3+ trials active for all fights in the instance. There is no additional reward in this chest for having 4 or 5 trials active. If you have 3+ trials active, weapons in this chest will also have the Shadowflame cosmetic appearance.
- Shadowflame Cache: If you have the weekly bonus AND 3+ total trials active, this chest will spawn with 4 items and some Elementium Ore. Weapons in this chest will also have the Shadowflame cosmetic appearance.
- Favored Riches: If you have the weekly bonus trial active, this chest will spawn with 2 items.
So for instance...
- If the weekly trial is Blue and you have Blue, Bronze, and Black enabled for the whole instance, you will get all 3 chests, and the first chest will have the maximum of 5 Shadowflame items in it.
- If the weekly trial is Blue and you had Blue, Bronze, and Black enabled for most of the instance, but turned off Blue for Nefarian, you will only get the first chest, and it will only have 4 non-Shadowflame items in it.
- If the weekly trial is Blue and you have Red, Green, Bronze, and Black enabled for the whole instance, you will only get the first chest, which will have the maximum of 5 Shadowflame items in it.
Razorgore is an atypical fight, as the first phase is actually a holdout mission against attack waves of trash. One player needs to be mind controlling Razorgore himself and using his abilities to fight trash and destroy eggs. As the mind controller, there are 30 eggs spread randomly around the room that must be destroyed (with an ability on Razorgore's action bar). You must also protect Razorgore from the adds; if he dies to them, it's a raid wipe. Once all of the eggs are destroyed, the adds will stop spawning and Razorgore will turn hostile, and you'll need to kill him instead.
The encounter begins by pulling the trash pack standing around the mind control object on the left side of the room. Immediately upon pulling this trash, your designated mind controlling player needs to take control of the object and begin using Razorgore to destroy eggs.
As soon as a player begins mind controlling Razorgore, they will receive a debuff that prevents them from mind controlling him again for 45 seconds.
While it's important to kill the waves of adds as they spawn, your most important job in this fight is to keep the adds away from the mind controlling player. If the player gets attacked, the MC will break early, and the original MC will probably still have their debuff active, so you'll want a second MC target to take over.
Tip: The current mind controlling player is still a valid target for the random effects caused by Green and Blue trials. Ensure you have players ready to move to them as needed to soak a Blue trial bomb, and ensure you have a second player ready to take over the MC if the current MC gets targeted for the Green trial acid spray.
Whomever is mind controlling Razorgore when he breaks the last egg will begin phase 2 with a massive threat lead on the boss. It's important to ensure that, regardless of who was doing the MC for the first 29 eggs, the final egg is broken by the main tank, because Razorgore is taunt immune.
Tip: Razorgore begins with an empty threat table, save for the final mind controlling player, so if you have a Hunter as the final MC and they immediately feign death as phase 2 begins, Razorgore will reset and you'll have to do the entire encounter over again. Wait for the tank to attack the boss before feigning.
As an actual boss, Razorgore's only real mechanics are an AoE fireball volley (which can be easily outhealed), and Conflagration. Conflag is casted on the player with the most threat, so all tanks should be building threat and ready to pick up as needed.
The SoD Black trial mechanic (borrowed from SoM) for this fight is that once 10 eggs are broken, an Unstable Chromatic Drake will spawn. It must be offtanked until it dies. While still alive, it will spit various elemental effects around the room, including sleep clouds, fire walls, and chrono zones. The latter will boost the haste of any players standing inside, but watch out because they also boost the haste of enemies.
The Drake can be killed while eggs are still up, but you have to juggle damage between the spawning adds and the Drake so you don't get overwhelmed by either. Ideally the Drake dies just before Razorgore becomes attackable, but if both co-exist for a bit it's not a wipe, just stack and cleave.
Vael is a dragon fight, so the boss will do breaths (tank keeps boss turned away, raid fights from his side), tail swipe, etc. However, Vael is a very unique fight - as soon as the fight begins, Vael will cast a buff on the entire raid that essentially gives you infinite resources - full mana, rage, and energy.
The main mechanic of this fight is that periodically, Vael will cast Burning Adrenaline on a player. Once they receive their first stack of Burning Adrenaline, they will begin accumulating stacks every few seconds. Each new tick will do successively more damage to you. However, Burning Adrenaline also grants you more damage and faster attack/cast speed with each additional tick.
The real risk here is Burning Adrenaline's final mechanic - upon death, a player with Burning Adrenaline will explode, dealing a large amount of damage to all surrounding allies. The amount of damage done scales with the number of stacks detonated, and it also can cause a chain reaction of cascading explosions if it kills other players with BA.
The strategy for this fight is to have different stack locations depending on your role and situation. As your situation changes, you'll need to move to your new positions. Cardinal orientation has the entrance along the south wall and the throne to the east. The main tank begins the fight on the east of Vael, turning him to face the throne. All other raiders begin the fight to the south of Vael - melee are right on Vael's south side (his right), and casters + healers are stacked about 20 yards south of Vael.
NOBODY DPSes the boss until the tank has received BA. The tank stays in place for the duration of their BA. It's important to ensure the tank gets the first BA because if they don't have BA, they will not be able to hold threat against BA'd DPS. If a BA'd DPS out-threats the tank, they will die, because Vael is not tauntable.
When a player receives BA, they need to immediately move to the designated BA stack position for their role:
- For melee DPS, this position is to the north of Vael, simply mirroring their southern counterparts. Run directly through Vael to reach this position. BA'd Melee will need to stack together and watch their health, judging their healer's capability to keep them alive. As you start teetering towards the edge of unsafe, run north to die.
- For ranged DPS, this position is to the west (left) of your original stack. Spread out from each other, but maintain a separation of at least 10-15 yards, and stay further than that away from the non-BA stack. You don't need to watch your health - as long as you're spread out, you won't explode each other, so just blast away.
- For healers, this position is to the east (right) of your original stack. This moves you out of range of the BA'd casters but keeps you in range of the tank. When BA'd your primary job is to keep the tank alive, since they'll be getting to dangerous stacks around this time.
- Secondary tank(s) are stacked with the melee and simply DPS. Vael isn't tauntable, so the only way for a secondary tank to take over is if they have BA and are second on threat when the MT dies.
This fight is not all that difficult - each individual has fairly basic instructions - it's just that these instructions are precise, and are different for each role. The real difficulty of this fight is making judgement calls about when to push or when to back off and die safely. If you play this fight too safe, you actually won't have enough damage from BA'd DPS to kill the boss, but similarly, if your BA'd DPS play too aggressively they can kill all of your DPS early and cause a wipe.
When Black is active, whomever has BA with the highest threat will be rooted in place. The strategy mentioned above is basically designed around having a static tank anyway, so this shouldn't really be much of a difference.
If running Black, the only way to ensure a clean tank swap is if the primary tank dies in position with the secondary tank already having BA and being second on threat (since Vael is not tauntable). Once the primary tank dies and the secondary tank has threat, the entire raid will need to pivot to adjust. Because of how risky this maneuver is, you should do your very best to ensure your MT never dies in a Black pull. Maximize external CD usage and keep a BA'd healer on them, if necessary.
He's no longer a complete loot piñata! Now he's just mostly one.
Broodlord needs to be tanked against a wall, with the tank facing the wall (so the boss is between the tank and the wall), with the melee DPS wedged between the boss and the wall, facing away from the wall. During the first 50%, he has four simple mechanics:
He Cleaves, so don't stand in his front (hence why melee are behind him).
He casts an AoE knockback called Blast Wave which deals fire damage and slows any targets hit by it. This is why the melee have their back to a wall - so they don't lose uptime.
The third ability is called Knock Away - he throws a tank into the air and drops threat from them. Offtanks must be constantly building threat, holding the second-from-top position on the threat table so that they're able to take over after this threat drop, since Broodlord is not tauntable.
His final ability is Mortal Strike - however, unlike in most cases of Mortal Strike, tanks can't swap for it, since Broodlord is not tauntable and they'll be having their threat dropped by Knock Away. This Mortal Strike only reduces healing by 50%, so instead of swapping, just heal and defensive CD through it.
At 50% health, he will teleport to the far side of the room and begin casting Blast Waves rapidly until re-engaged. At this point, he is now immobile, and needs to be tanked in-place. You'll need to slowly work your way back to him. Tanks should move in first, as rooted enemies will melee people below the top threat if the top threat isn't in range. Melee will need to suffer through blast wave knockback for the duration of the encounter.
Finally, a real challenge! In Era, Firemaw was widely agreed upon to be the hardest boss in the instance. The hardest boss crown might be contested in SoD - but regardless, Firemaw is definitely still tough.
He has a number of mechanics:
- Flame Buffet: Periodically, Firemaw will apply stacks of Flame Buffet to everyone in line of sight of him. Flame Buffet deals a burst of damage upon application, and increases fire damage taken by 150. This stacks, with you taking successively more damage each stack. The only way to cleanse this is to break line of sight and have it fall off after 10 seconds. Having fire resist gear will help you resist applications of Flame Buffet whenever they go out, and having enough of it will actually allow you to stay 'in' all the time.
- Wing Buffet: Firemaw will do a knockback in a cone in front of him, sort of like a breath. It deals a little bit of damage but more importantly, it drops threat. Tanks will need to alternate picking up the boss after each cast of Wing Buffet.
- Shadow Flame: Conal breath in front of Firemaw. Tanks must wear an Onyxia Scale Cloak or else this ability will kill them. Defensive CDs (both internal and external) and priest bubbles will help them survive.
In SoD, there's a new mechanic too:
- Static Electricity: Each time you take damage (melees on tanks, but for most raiders this aligns with Flame Buffet stacks), you will also receive a stack of Static Electricity. When you have 10 stacks of Static you will 'discharge' your accumulated stacks, damaging nearby players. Once you've reached 8 or so, you should run to the designated "discharge zone", which is still within sight of Firemaw to ensure you receive 10 stacks and 'discharge' while not bombing the raid. The damage dealt by this discharge is survivable, but it can cascade if too many bombs hit too many players at once. Static charges do not go away when Flame Buffet stacks are dropped.
There are two strategies for positioning on this fight. The first one is what most guides I've seen online call for - Firemaw is positioned in his original room, tucked into the gateway leading down to the lower suppression room, with the tank backed into that corner. Melee then sit behind him, using a nearby pillar to drop buffet stacks as needed. Healers and ranged all stay in Broodlord's room and use the pillars on the left and right of the doorway to break line of sight as needed. Ranged and the tank+ranged healers share one discharge zone, while melee and the melee healer have their own in Firemaw's room.
The other strategy is the one Odyssey used in SoM. Firemaw is tanked directly in the doorway between his and Broodlord's room, with the tank and assigned tank healer staying in Firemaw's room. Melee then is positioned behind Firemaw, in the doorway, and retreats around the corner into Broodlord's room to drop buffet stacks, and shares one big discharge zone with the ranged for static charges.
The upside to the second strat is that healers have a bit of an easier time with positioning, with ranged and melee healers being able to take over for each other as needed, whereas with the first strat, ranged healers cannot easily pivot to heal melee if a static bomb goes off in their DPS zone. Also with the first strat, the tank healer is in a really tight position, prone to breaking LoS during each taunt swap - whereas with the Odyssey strat, the tank healer has the easiest job in the world. The Odyssey strat also allows healers to easily cover melee taking damage in the discharge zone, whereas the meta strat means only the melee healer can cover them.
In both strategies, the offtank should stand perpendicular to Firemaw, and whenever Firemaw is about to cast Wing Buffet, have the OT taunt them so the Wing Buffet is directed at them and doesn't reset the MT's threat.
Be sure to run decent fire resist for this fight! Paladins should all be on Fire Aura, and you should have your Ony Cloaks enchanted with the Hydraxian +30 FR enchant. The more FR you have, the less frequently you'll receive Flame Buffet and Static Electricity stacks, which means the less frequently you'll have to run out of combat and wait for stacks to drop.
MTs should run as much FR as they can within reason, since it's hard for them to reset Flame Buffet stacks, but with the Odyssey strat you can have the OT hold threat temporarily in the MT's position while the MT runs around the corner to drop stacks. Just ensure you do this outside of any Wing Buffet window or things could get messy.
10 seconds into the fight, Firemaw will cast Fulmination, which is a raid-wide 500 nature damage. From that point on, he'll cast it again every 30 seconds. Just heal through it. Don't forget that since this is raid damage, this is another way (alongside Flame Buffet) to gain Static charges.
This one is completely different from Era, and is identical to SoM, but it's not overly difficult. It's just a 2-boss version of Four Horseman from Naxx. The bosses must be tanked in opposite sides of the room. Ebonroc casts Brand of Shadow and Flamegor casts Brand of Flame. These puts stacking debuffs on all players in a 50-yard radius around them that causes you to take exponentially more damage each time it stacks. These stacks will cause 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, then 8000 damage for 1-6 stacks, respectively. The only way to drop stacks is to get far enough away from each respective boss.
For the raid, get to 3-4 stacks of one debuff, then switch to the other boss until you've got 3-4 stacks of the other debuff (by which time the first debuff will have fallen off), then switch back, rinse and repeat. To help divide damage, you might want to have all melee start on one boss and all ranged start on the other. Split healers accordingly so there are always a couple healers covering the raiders on each boss.
Tanks can get up to 4-5 stacks but must still swap. A third tank will allow the tanks to juggle stacks. When you pull, have both main tanks on each boss with the third tank standing out of combat. Then, when the Ebonroc tank hits 4 stacks, have the third tank move in to Ebonroc and taunt, have the old Ebonroc tank move to Flamegor and taunt, then the old Flamegor tank moves to Ebonroc and picks him up once the current Ebon tank's stacks get too high, rinse and repeat.
Both bosses must die at roughly the same time, or they begin reviving with a small amount of HP and must be put down again. Be sure to call for DPS to slow their damage as needed.
Red light, green light
Periodically, the bosses will cast Stop!, which is like a "red light". It lasts for 5 seconds. While you have the debuff you MUST stop moving, or else you will take 500 shadow damage every 0.5 sec that you're moving. After it falls off, there will be a lull, and then the bosses will instead cast Go!, which is the exact opposite - for 5 seconds, you must keep moving or else you'll take 500 shadow damage every 0.5 sec that you stand still.
If running Black, I'd advise swapping at 3 stacks, since a Stop! happening mid-swap could cause you to gain another stack. Having 3 and gaining a 4th stack is not fatal, but having 4 and gaining a 5th stack can be.
This fight is more similar to Era than SoM. Unfortunate, because I sort of wanted to show folks how cool this fight was in SoM! Oh well.
Before pulling the boss, distribute Hourglass Sand amongst all raiders. It drops from the trash between Firemaw and Chromaggus.
Chromaggus is pulled by activating the lever in his room, at which point the gate opens and he runs into the center of the room. His encounter begins immediately when he reaches the center.
Every 18 seconds, Chromaggus will Frenzy, increasing his attack speed by 150% for 8 seconds. This will need to be tranq'd by a Hunter.
Chromaggus has an Elemental Shield that makes him resistant to all but one school of magic (Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, Shadow). Throughout the fight, this shield's vulnerability will change, making him resistant to the old school but vulnerable to a new one. He only takes 25% damage from schools of magic he's resistant to, but takes 1200% damage from schools he's vulnerable to. Mages must keep Detect Magic up on the boss at all times to reveal which vulnerability is active, just like with the trash prior.
At 20% health, Chromaggus will Enrage, buffing his damage and increasing his attack speed by 50%. This will persist until he's killed.
The first of Chromaggus' two primary mechanics are Brood Afflictions. Chromaggus will periodically put debuffs on random raid members which must be dispelled. These are themed after the five dragon flights, and are as follows:
- Brood Affliction: Black: Curse, increases Fire damage taken by 100%.
- Brood Affliction: Bronze: Periodically stuns for 4 seconds. Can only be removed by using Hourglass Sand.
- Brood Affliction: Blue: Magic, burns ~50 Mana every second, increases cast time by 50% and reduces movement speed by 30%.
- Brood Affliction: Green: Poison, deals 250 damage every 5 seconds and reduces Healing taken by 50%.
- Brood Affliction: Red: Disease, deals 50 damage every 3 seconds. If the player dies while afflicted with this, they also heal Chromaggus for +150k HP.
Always keep the main tank fully dispelled. If someone reaches 3 debuffs, dispellers should prioritize them over everybody else (except the tank).
If a single raid member gets all 5 debuffs at the same time, they will be transformed into a hostile Chromatic Drakonid and must be offtanked for the rest of the fight. Killing a Chromatic Drakonid will heal Chromaggus for +150k HP. Letting someone reach 5 stacks is not a guaranteed wipe, but it's very likely to cause one, and two Drakonids is almost assuredly a wipe.
Chromaggus will periodically cast breaths on the raid. Unlike dragon fights, these breaths hit all players in a 360 degree around Chromaggus, but they can be line of sighted behind cover.
- Ignite Flesh: Deals ~800 Fire damage every 3 seconds. Lasts 1 minute. Can stack if not LoS'd.
- Time Lapse: Frozen in time (stuns). Health reduced by 50%. Lasts 8 sec.
- Frost Burn: Deals frost damage, drains mana, and reduces attack speed by 400% for 15 sec.
- Corrosive Acid: Deals ~950 damage every 3 sec. Armor reduced by 4500. Lasts 15 sec.
- Incinerate: Deals 4200 Fire damage.
At the beginning of the fight, Chromaggus will pick two of the above breaths. He will cast one breath roughly every 30 seconds, but will alternate back and forth between his two chosen breaths for each cast.
Here's an example from one log:
Tip: He will continue using these two breaths for your raid instance until the next weekly instance reset. His pick is unique to your raid ID, meaning other raid teams in separate instances during the same week will get a different pair.
Chromaggus is typically tanked in the doorway between his room and the Twin Drakes'. Have the tank grab him and pull him until he's right in the doorway, with the tank staying in the Twin Drakes' room. Melee should then enter Chromaggus' room and stack tightly behind him. Casters should stay off to the side, with most healers grouped with them. There should also be a healer floating around the melee stack to cover their healing as needed. These positions allow all players (besides the main tank) to run behind cover for the various breaths to LoS them. Healers should be positioned to heal the MT whilst still being behind cover, similar to Firemaw.
On top of the normal alternating breaths described above, roughly once per minute, Chromaggus will do a volley where he fires off all five breaths in quick succession. The timing of this volley is inconsistent - usually the first happens around the 40 second mark, and successive ones happen on average every 60 seconds after that.
Tip: The order he casts these in will be unique to your raid ID, which means he will continue casting them all in the same order for each subsequent pull.
He will cast all 5 breaths as part of this volley, regardless of whichever two he's chosen as his normal breaths. If a normal breath is timed to occur during one of these volleys, it may be skipped, or it may be queued up and come out a few seconds later, but it will not delay his future alternating breath. See below for an example, pulled from this log.
With the Black Trial enabled, in addition to the Breath changes, Nefarius will participate in the fight. He will occasionally give Chromaggus commands:
- Fetch!: This first occurs 20 seconds into the fight, and again every 40 seconds after that. When commanded, Chromaggus will grab a random player and hold onto them for a few seconds before releasing them.
- Roll Over!: Leading up to the 50% health mark, Nefarius will command Chromaggus to roll over, and around 50% he finally does. This causes the arena to shake and meteors to fall down, which must be dodged (like Golemagg).
Equip your goddamn Ony Cloaks before pulling!
Nefarian is a multi-phase boss. Like many other end-raid bosses in WoW, this encounter starts with trash waves. Once enough trash is killed, Nef will blanket the entire battlefield with a breath that kills anyone not wearing an Ony cloak. This breath does not hit the spot behind his throne - if you forgot your cloak, stay there after the pull until the breath is clear!
After breathing on the raid, Nef will land and phase 2 begins. He's a typical dragon fight - tail whip, frontal breath, etc.
Nef will cast Veil of Shadow on the tank periodically. This is basically Mortal Strike, except it can be decursed.
He also Fears, so Fear Ward the tank.
At around 20% he'll resurrect all of the trash that was killed in Phase 1, which will now swarm the raid as undead. Offtank should round them up, raid should cleave them down.
30 seconds into Phase 2 and every 30 seconds thereafter, Nef will pick a random class (any class available to that faction, not based on who's actually in the raid) and there will be a themed mechanic involving that class that affects the raid. In SoM (and identical in SoD), each Class Call also has an extra secondary effect, where weapons will come out of players of that class and begin casting spells on the raid. These mechanics are:
Druids: All Druids are forced into Cat Form for the duration of the call.
- Extra Black Trial effect: Entangling Roots will roam around the battlefield and ensnare anyone they come into contact with.
Warriors: All Warriors are forced into Berserker Stance and take 30% increased damage for the duration of the call. If the main tank is a warrior, this can be extremely dangerous and will require plentiful healing to keep them up. Be mindful of threat.
- Extra Black Trial effect: 2H swords will roam and Whirlwind the raid.
Mages: Forces mages to cast Wild Polymorph into random raid members, polymorphing them.
- Extra Black Trial effect: Staves come out that cast Arcane Explosion on the battlefield.
Priests: Direct healing spells will instead apply stacks of Corrupted Healing on their target, damaging them instead of healing them. Only direct spells apply Corrupted Healing - Renew and PWS are safe.
- Extra Black Trial effect: Staves will roam the raid and cast Mind Flay.
Rogues: All Rogues are teleported and immobilized in front of Nefarian. The tank must turn the boss or our stealthy lads will perish.
- Extra Black Trial effect: Daggers will roam the raid and Slice and Dice.
Hunters: Weapon equipped in your Ranged slot is instantly broken. Hunters must unequip their weapons prior to any Class Call going out, and re-equip after the Call starts. Bring backup weapons just in case!
- Extra Black Trial effect: Bows come out that act like turrets, firing laser beams in lines that are clearly coreographed.
Warlocks: Each Warlock will summon 2 hostile Corrupted Infernals. These will stun and do damage to the raid. They're weak, but immune to fire damage. Focus them down.
- Extra Black Trial effect: Staves will stand in place and cast AoE Death Coil projectiles that must be dodged.
Paladins: Forced to spam Blessing of Protection on Nefarian. Keep this ability on cooldown to ensure Nef doesn't get bubbled.
- Extra Black Trial effect: Hammers come out of Paladins that roam the battlefield and cast Consecrate.
Shaman: Nefarian starts gaining Corrupted Totems, buffing him with Windfury and Fire Nova. Kill totems ASAP.
- Extra Black Trial effect: Lightning balls will bounce around and cause arcs in a small area wherever they land. Avoid the arcs.
The only Black Trial change for Nefarian is the addition of secondary effects to each Class Call, noted above.
Once Nefarian is dead, additional chests will spawn near his throne with any bonus loot applicable to you mentioned at the start of this guide.
