Games - Firemaw

	Games - Firemaw

Firemaw is the fourth boss in Blackwing Lair, a forty man raid instance dungeon in the MMORPG World of Warcraft. Firemaw is one of the three black drakes that inhabit the depths of the lair. Although the encounter is not overly technical, Firemaw's behavior is the most erratic of all the bosses in Blackwing Lair. Firemaw roams the room immediately after Broodlord Lashlayer's gate.

The Encounter

Firemaw is the first boss in Blackwing Lair who uses Shadow Flame, and therefore requires an Onyxia Scale Cloak. Shadowflame hits the wearer of the cloak for between 4,000 and 6,000 shadow damage. Players unprotected by a cloak will take approximately 20,000 damage (and therefore generally die instantly). Firemaw, like the other two drakes, uses an ability called Wing Buffet which causes a moderate amount of physical damage, punts the target backwards a considerable distance, and most importantly reduces threat on the target.

Firemaw's biggest challenge is his fire aura. Each time a party member is afflicted by his aura (which ticks every 3 seconds), he takes fire damage and is afflicted with a 20 second debuff that increases fire damage taken. This debuff can be resisted, but it can also stack. It is not uncommon for a tank to acquire as many as 40 of these debuffs during the encounter. This requires extensive healing. It is important for the tank to indicate his debuff status to his healers as they begin to stack so they are prepared to compensate for the huge damage taken every 3 seconds. In the event of a gigantic debuff stack ticking immediately paired with a Shadowflame, even high HP tanks can often not withstand the burst. In addition, because this is a fire resistance fight, the tank will sometimes resist all of the damage or take very little and sometimes take huge damage, which fools the healers into thinking he does not need spam healing.

Strategy

Almost every guild who successfully kills Firemaw exploits the line of sight opportunities in Firemaw's room to keep the majority of the group out of Firemaw's fire aura's effective radius. The standard Firemaw strategy is to put the main tank in the small alcove immediately to the left after passing through Broodlord Lashlayer's gate. Firemaw is positioned in the middle of the gate. The healers create a diagonal line which passes through the main tank and the right edge of Broodlord's gate, which allows them to heal the tank without taking any fire damage from Firemaw's aura. A second tank and 2-3 healers is positioned in a small nook through Broodlord's gate on the right. The second tank only comes out of this nook into line of sight when Firemaw is about to perform Wing Buffet. This is important. If a second warrior taunts him at the right time, Firemaw will hit the offtank with the Wing Buffet and the main tank will keep his full threat. (This strategy is also required for Ebonroc and Flamegor as well, both of which perform Wing Buffets). The main tank must not be allowed to take too many Wing Buffets, or he will lose enough threat that a healer will drag him into the protected room. The fight almost always becomes too uncontrolled to continue when Firemaw is loose in the healer camp.

DPS go in and out of line of sight, ducking out of it when they take too many fire debuffs. They heal themselves with band-aids, or one or two healers are assigned to top them off, while they wait the twenty seconds for their debuffs to disappear before going back in.

Firemaw is tethered (like the bosses in Zul'Gurub), which means any attempts to kite him into other rooms or areas results in Firemaw deaggroing and resetting. This feature is useful for saving time and repair costs in the event that a wipe appears inevitable -- surviving players can escape down to Vaelastrasz's room to try again. Edit: This does not seem to be correct anymore (as from Mars 2006) Seeing he followed me all the way down to Razorgores room.

Loot

Firemaw has a chance to drop tier 2 gloves for all classes.

In addition, he can drop all of the common drake loot which Ebonroc and Flamegor can also drop. Some of this includes:

Drake Talon Epaulets, DPS plate shoulders
Claw of the Black Drake, a fiftyish DPS fist weapon
Taut Dragonhide armor, various high stamina leather pieces
Drake Fang Talisman, a DPS trinket with high attack power

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Firemaw ]

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