Madness Blood DK Tanking

[Zurook]

Yesterday, I finally got a Madness kill, however, I am struggling on deciding which cooldowns to use and when for impales. We 2 tank with myself and a paladin. 3 heal with paladin, shaman, druid, and 5 DPS. I have completed the fight, but I died on one of the platforms because I found myself with no cooldowns available to make the damage less from impales. I was wondering what other Blood DKs are doing on this fight.

[Esarael]

You should always, always have Bone Shield up for an Impale and you should save runes for when the cast is about to begin. Creating a nice and big Blood Shield for then Impale goes off is a very good way to mitigate its damage.

Other than that, if you're doing Ysera first, you can use Dream on platform 1, Icebound Fortitude on platform 2, external cooldowns on platform 3, and Icebound Fortitude again on platform 4.

External cooldowns depends a lot on your raid composition. You can have your Holy Paladin Hand of Sacrifice you, and your fellow tank throw a Divine Guardian if that isn't enough (though he might want to save it for an Elementium Bolt landing). Any Warrior in your group can also do Rallying Cry (though, again, he might want to save it for an Elementium Bolt landing).

You can also simply have one of your Paladins Hand of Protection you once the cast has begun; if you taunt the Mutated Corruption near the end of its cast and then cancel the HoP, Impale's damage will be fully avoided and it will not attack other players in melee range. This is especially useful when you don't have Nozdormu, because it usually means an Elementium Bolt is landing more or less at the same time an Impale is going off.

[swelt]

I can comfortably take every impale with VB (unglyphed) + boneshield. On the final platform, I throw in IBF as well. I normally take the 2nd impale on each platform which coincides with the elementium bolt, and on those platforms where the bolt lands, I'll use AMS. (The ability to AMS the bolt is a good reason to be the tank that takes the 2nd one). I am running double stam trinkets.

[Zurook]

thanks for the advice guys. I was wondering if I had to unglyph VB possibly and I always have bone shield upand tried to time death strikes to help. Just seemed I was taking huge damage and was not sure if I could do anything to help more. Thanks for the advice!

[ananoon]

I one-tank this on my blood DK. The extra dps from our warrior tank going fury is very helpful in getting the mutated corruption down before the second impale. We do green > red > yellow > blue. I only end up taking a second impale on the last platform usually, because we don't have the haste buff slowing our dps a bit, and everyone needs to run to the front of the platform before the bolt hits.

We have a holy paly that gives me hand of sac on the first impale. That combined a decent sized blood shield before it hits is enough to mitigate most of the damage. If we get a second one, we have a holy priest guardian spirit me. For this one, I take the full hit, and death strike quickly after the hit for some big heals and massive blood shields. I also pop VB (glyphed) right before the impale hits so I can get healed up quickly from beacon, hots, etc... after the hit.

If I get a second impale, IBF + a big blood shield is usually enough. An external CD might help as well. For the last platform, I make sure to summon my ghoul in advance of the impale for a quick heal via ghoul sac right after the hit. The bolt usually hits right around when the second impale is going to happen, but AMS mitigates almost all of that damage.

[Bigbad]

In the blood legion hc madness kill you see when rignaros pops cds in raidchat, might be helpful

[Ishau]

Don't forget, you have a Holy Paladin healing you. Never be afraid to shout out at him to give you a Hand of Sacrifice if you are worried about our cooldowns.

I play a Holy Paladin myself, and it actually works out that because of my Hand of Sacrifice and the fact we only take 1 impale per platform our tank does not have to use a single CD on any tenticles.

[Vittorio]

There are two options. 1 is to single tank the fight so that the Mutilated Corruption dies before the second impale. Remember that your DRW gives you an additional 20% avoidance. So make sure you save your RP and runes for a healthy Blood shield and 60RP for DRW before the impale. You can use a priest for pain suppression or guardian spirit every other platform, using IBF on the alternating ones. What we did on the platform right before head phase is have a ret pally soak the second impale during the elementium bolt. What we'd do is I would stay up next to the Mutilated corruption about 3 seconds longer than the group that was stacking away from the bolt coming down with the paladin so that he'd get aggro/impale and I still had time to run back and stack with the group. Then we'd pop divine hymn while the bolt was being dps'd on the platform.

Also, it's good to save your 4 piece VB CD for raid during that time that everyone is being hit so hard by the bolt's AoE on the ground.

If you're 2 tanking it there's no reason you can't pop IBF every time for impales. Or use the Valor trinket and alternate that with IBF. AMS should always be up for that as well as your DRW and if you've glyphed VB, you'll have increased heals received by 15%.

Since you don't have a priest healing you should be 2 tanking it. Priest heals are OP for this fight. Good luck.