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The Razorgore fight in Blackwing Lair (BWL) is an odd fight for parsing because getting a good parse on the fight is as much about your guild’s strategy as it is about your own performance.
This guide runs you through how the fight works and what you need to do for that 99 Razorgore parse.
Video version of the below guide right here:
Why is my guild’s strategy so important for Razorgore parsing?
Kill speed is always a factor in how well you can parse on raids, but Razorgore in BWL is a particularly short fight. Most casual guilds are able to kill him in under 40-50 seconds, while good guilds kill him below 20 seconds and top tier guilds in sub 15 seconds.
This short fight length means DPS numbers get inflated by short cooldowns and every second of the fight is even more important than other fights. Just missing out on 3 to 5 seconds of dps uptime in a Razorgore fight can easily turn what would have been a good 99% parse into a 90% parse.
This is where your guild’s strategy comes into play, so let’s go over roughly how the fight works first and how we use it to our advantage to parse higher.
How the Razorgore fight works
- You have the raid kill adds that spawn while you have a team working on mind controlling razorgore via the orb, and killing the 30 eggs in the room.
- Phase 2 starts when the final egg is broken.
- Razorgore will always have massive threat on the person who broke that final egg.
- Razorgore will cast ‘conflagration’ sometime before 15 secs into the fight. This will CC your MT and anyone else in front of Razorgore for 10 seconds.
- Threat will swap to whoever was highest on threat that wasn’t hit by conflagration
Note: Phase 1 does not count towards your Razorgore boss parse damage.
The ‘ideal’ Razorgore strategy
Obviously there’s always going to be variations in strategy from guild to guild, but most guilds that parse well on Razorgore will do something along these lines (and your guild should too):
Phase 1 – Adds + egg breaking phase
This phase does not count towards your Razorgore parse and as long as your guild is keeping up with killing all the adds it doesn’t matter what strategy you’re using here. Some guilds split into 2 groups, some 4 groups and some just have the entire raid roaming around killing adds. Anything is fine as long as you’re killing all the adds relatively quickly and keeping up with spawns.
Your job as a rogue here is just do dps and kill adds quickly so they don’t disrupt the egg destroying team.
End of phase 1 – big pumper parse prep time
Your OT for the fight should be building up a full rage bar before you start phase 2. His entire job is to be the threat god who will be spamming high threat rotations on Razorgore as soon as P2 starts.
Your job is to be ready and be standing behind Razorgore ready to dps hard as soon as phase 2 starts. You will not get aggro and do not have to be worried about pulling threat before Conflagration gets cast, because the MT should be breaking the final egg to gain a massive threat lead headed into P2.
Start of phase 2 – Go nuts (but stay below OT threat if he’s not a threat god)
As soon as phase 2 starts you want to pop your free action potion (to avoid stun) and go nuts on dps. There’s no aggro worries because Razorgore threat will be focused on the MT who broke the final egg. As long as you are behind Razorgore you do not need to worry about getting hit by his frontal aoe.
Your only worry if you’re not in a high end guild with a godly OT, is staying below the OT on threat. If you are in a guild with good tanks though, threat should not be much of a concern for phase 2.
Uptime is super important for phase 2. Notice in the photo above how my guild is all starting dps right as soon as phase 2 starts? When I’m doing log reviews, uptime here is often the difference maker between good and bad Razorgore parses.
What should my dps rotation be for Razorgore?
This changes highly depending on your kill time and there are a few ways you can cheese Razorgore rotations a bit, but let’s cover standard rotation first.
Standard opener
The typical strategy of backstab > 1 pt snd for dagger rogues or 2 ss > 2 pt snd for sword rogues is fine. You’ll follow this up by popping blade flurry and adrenaline rush and going into standard backstabs/ss into 5 pt eviscerate and remember to use thistle tea and goblin sapper charge if you have it.
For most rogues in good guilds the fight will be over by this point. If not and if you are in a slower guild you may have to refresh slice and dice. Just be careful not to waste energy by refreshing slice and dice right before the fight ends (eg. a 4 pt SnD 3 seconds before the fight ends is never worth it).
It’s very important that you get every dps cooldown in for Razorgore, as the fight is so short that any missing damage drops your average DPS down by a large amount.
Tricks for cheesing higher Razorgore parses
1 – Pre-pop ‘free action potion’ if fight length is below 30 secs
If your fight is below 30 secs, you can just pre-pop free action potion before the fight begins (since it will outlast the fight anyway). This makes things a little less hectic for you during the actual fight.
2 – Use onyxia pet book for free damage
The onyxia pet book counts as a weapon and can be swapped in/out manually. Swap the book in 30 secs early, pop the pet just before P2 starts, then swap it back out for your regular offhand weapon. This gives you a bunch of free extra DPS during the fight.
You can make a macro to do this easier. This is one I recommend (swap ‘Brutality Blade’ for the name of your actual offhand weapon):
/equipslot 17 Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire
/use Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire
/equipslot 17 Brutality Blade
This macro works by pressing once to swap in the pet book. You press a second time (after 30 seconds due to pet book CD), and it will use the pet book and swap back in your weapon.
3 – For super quick kills pre-pop AR/BF
If your kill time is below that 17ish second mark, you can start considering pre-popping AR/BF. Both these dps buffs lasts 15 seconds, and it will have wasted uptime during the fight if your fight length is that quick, so you must as well start pre-popping them.
4 – Build up a 2-3 pt SnD on P1 trash before P2 start
This one can be a little tricky because trash dies super fast for good guilds, but you can build up combo points on the trash right before P2 starts, then enter into P2 with slice and dice already up.
I recommend if you try this you aim to get it by using SS to build up quick combo points (even as a dagger rogue) on the large wyrmkin adds right before P2 starts. The Wyrmkins typically last longer die to having more HP. You can even tank the adds yourself by going to where they spawn and popping evasion while you build up combo points.
Just be careful not to get caught out of positiong for phase 2 start. You still need to be ready, standing behind Razorgore for P2 before it begins (do not miss out on uptime on Razorgore p2 just to try cheese the SnD start).
5 – Use ‘living action potion’ instead of ‘free action potion’ (only works for super top tier guilds with insanely fast kill times)
If your guild is a super top tier guild killing Razorgore in that sub 15 second mark, you can consider swapping out FAP for Living action potions. Instead of popping your FAP potion pre-fight, you’d reactively use living action potion only if/when Razorgore gets his stun off.
This works before guilds with super fast kill times sometimes kill Razorgore before he even gets to use his aoe war stomp stun. The advantage of this strategy is if you manage to kill Razorgore without getting stunned, then you get to save your potion timer to use LIP on Vael.
Conclusion
Basically the entire fight revolves around your guild stacking up behind Razorgore and dpsing hard right at the start of phase 2. So if your guild isn’t already doing this, you should convince them to start doing it.
Your OT has the most important job because he NEEDS to be pooling rage to be a threat god and to make sure aggro swaps to him after the MT gets hit by the conflagration.
Enjoyed this guide and want to support Classic Roguecraft? Head over to twitch.tv/snomie and hit that sub button to support the free content I create. I also create extra subscriber only video tutorials and guides every week (check them out in the extra sub only channel in the Classic Roguecraft discord)