What I Learned from BFFB

First off, a definition. BFFB stands for Blood Furnace First Boss, but it's also something of an interesting experiment in instancing style, and part of Qadash's gearing up process. It started of as this particular ret pally asking people if they wanted to do Blood Furnace. But who really wants to do Blood Furnace? The event before the second boss is terrible, and nobody really wants to do it if they don't have to. All he needed, though, was the [item]Libram of Avengement[/item] from the first boss.

It turns out that people who wouldn't be up for a full Heroic can be convinced to do the first boss relatively easily. In fact, it kind of became a thing with our guild. When Qadash asked if anybody was up for BFFB, people knew what it meant, and were interested. Some of the same people went along multiple times, most notably me and Maevie a holy specced paladin.

So, over the course of many runs with many different group makeups, we eventually got Qadash the loot he wanted. In the way of Shepherd Book from Firefly, though, I didn't really care where I was going, as the journey is the worthier part. It was fun doing BFFB every day with people I know and like. It also allowed me to take a look at group makeups and how they affect tanking. Sometimes we had CC, and sometimes we didn't. We always had melee DPS, but sometimes we didn't have ranged DPS. Sometimes we had the ability to see through the stealth of the rogues, sometimes we didn't. You get the idea.

Things I learned, in no particular order:

• Windfury is amazing for threat. In a previous post, I chronicled one run that consisted of two enhance shammies, two pallies, and myself. Having no CC, I was baffled as to how I held threat on all the mobs. Then in a later run, which also included a shaman, but had some CC, I realized that it was Windfury. It is simply insane for threat.
• Concussion Blow is great for multitanking especially after 2.4.3. If you take a look at the patch notes, you'll find that a stunned target basically ignores all threat generation while it's stunned. So if you have too many mobs to handle, stun one of them, focus on the others, and come back to it when the stun wears off (and hopefully your DPS have burned down one of the other targets). This is a technique I used several times in BFFB runs.
• Crowd Control is a limiting factor. While helpful for content that needs it (like Magister's Terrace or Shattered Halls), it is really limiting if you have any ability to hold threat on all mobs in a given pull, especially if it ends up anywhere near the mobs you're actively tanking. It makes tab-targeting a pain, it even makes click-targeting a pain sometimes, as sheep have a tendencey to wander. To mitigate some of this annoyance, you should expect a CC'd target to be CC'd as long as you need it to be. Don't worry about breaking it (as a tank), just inform the CCer that it will need to be resheeped, or retrapped, or reseduced.
• Chain pulling is especially important when tanking casters. Why? Spell Reflection. You can't pull a caster to you unless you have somebody else interrupt their spell. If you use spell reflection, however, you don't have to worry about that caster switching targets to your healer. You just need the rage to do it as soon as you pull. Bloodrage won't do it for you. You either need to get hit, or you need to already have the rage, and by the time you get hit, it might already be too late. Chain pull to conserve rage.
• There is such a thing as overtanking. If you're chain pulling, and you don't have rage at the pull, you are likely overtanking. When the last mob in a pull hits 10 or 15 percent health, take a look at your threat. If it's still a decent amount above your DPS, then stop using rage. This will give you a rage buffer, in case your healers and DPS have to drink between pulls, and it will also give you the rage to do a significant amount of burst threat right off the pull, so your DPS can start right in without fear of aggro.

So, there's my list of things I learned from BFFB. Pretty good for the first one third of an instance, huh? A shout goes out to Qadash for putting these runs together. They were tons of fun. I might even start suggesting it.

For the rest of you - give this kind of run a shot, especially if you're in a casual guild, or just a guild that isn't terribly motivated about Heroics. Pick an instance that has a quick first boss, and grab a badge.