Blackheart the Inciter: I hate you.

So I was pondering what to put in here next, and due to the Shadow Labs run last night, I figured I'd throw up my .02 on this big buttheaded brute (not the words I initially used to describe him... they were a bit more... colorful o.O)

When I first encountered Blackbutt, it was when Fio and I were baby 70s. No Primal Mooncloth set yet, so my +healing/ mana/5 was a bit lacking. But I was excited to get my first Karazhan key frag and excitement (and caffeine) can do wonders ^.^

The first few pulls and first boss in Shadow Labrynth, very easy, IMO. Being a Fear Ward priest, the big Doomwarden's were not as hard as they are when you don't have Fear ward. Ambassador Hellmaw is also much easier with a Fear Ward on the tank, but not impossible.

So Hellmaw is a broken piece of demon goo on the ground, now its time for the next room. "This place sucks. I hate this next part." This from my Fio. He had been in SL before me, had made it to the last boss, Murmur, before the healing in his party really messed things up. (It was a shadow priest who decided to DPS instead... which got the tank killed. Messy, messy messy.)

This room, had 4 and 5 pulls. Oh my. Our group consisted of 1 CC. Sheep. That was it. After a few laughable tries at the pulls with just the sap, we decided a different tactic. This is where the NEKKID PRIEST was born. We discovered that if I stripped down to my skivves, got away from the party and Mind Controlled a mob, let them kill it, then they all come angrily at me and smush me, we could mill the insanity pulls down to threes. (DISCLAIMER: I don't recommend the above tactic unless you're 1) bored, 2) desperate like we were 3) or have about an hour or two to waste on top of the time the instance takes). The good news is I have perfected the death run back into SL.... -.-

So, an hour or so later... we're clear for Buttface. If you're not familiar with what he does, it's a few things: He does an AoE knockback that hits for about 1.5K on a clothie, and hits hard. The other retardedly annoying thing he does is Incite Chaos. This is a 12 second Mind Control where everyone in the party takes the lessons they learned in the Murkblood School of Fighting and starts beating on each other. Blackhead just sits there and laughs, not attacking, so that's a bonus... sort of. Suffice to say, we wiped three times on him, and only achieved victory via pure luck. During our attempts, Ventrillo was not a safe place to be. My father was in the Navy. I know how sailor's cuss.

That was the first time I encountered AssHat the Retard. I still don't like the fight, but I have some tips that will hopefully conserve some mana for you. Running out of mana was my biggest issue there, especially during the MC, but there is some mitigation.

First, realize that they've nerfed most of the ways to stay out of the fight. If you have a hunter in your party, don't depend on their frost trap to keep you out of the fight. There's either a bug or something equally annoying that makes the hunter or his pet just start attacking you.

Also, trying to spam a dreamless sleep pot the millisecond before the MC goes off is pretty much luck, and you'll more than likely be knocked out of it immediately ( I think the feral druids are bugged, I kept getting hit by ours from across the room.)

What you must do is make sure you're far enough away from the tank to not get hit by the knockback. After each MC, DON'T HEAL ANYONE.

Let me repeat: DO NOT HEAL ANYONE.

The MC is an aggro wipe. Make sure everyone knows to not even bandage unless they are the tank. Any healing done and you're Buttface's first target. He likes to blow all the cooldowns in the MC, so your fade is going to be at 20 seconds or so, and then you're smushed, have 15 seconds of free heals, and then you're on the floor conversing with the dust bunnies.

Once the tank has aggro back, give him a little bit more time. Blackhead doesn't hit tanks that hard, and at this point, you'll probably be scrambling to keep everyone else up.

Also, if you haven't already, get rid of Holy Nova. Its a mana sink in MC fights. It really is. I just recently respec'd to get rid of Light Well and Holy Nova, and while it was annoying that I was MC'd into casting Mass Dispel instead, it's not instant cast, so there's a chance someone in your party will interrupt you.

Other than that, just pray he doesn't kill someone. Also, as a last bit of advice: yes, sometimes some one can run back in time to help with the fight if it's still going on, but I don't recommend it. We did that once, and Blackbutt aggro'd on the person who walked back into the instance after his MC... and he reset. We still killed him, but we had to do it twice practically.

So, that is the grr-ness of Blackbutt the Bitchwalla.