Heroic Madness of Deathwing

[Valaras]

Well, since there is no thread up for that let me start one by posting my guild's video guide. Yes I know you could say I'm shamelessly promoting myself but really, we only do those for fun and to help people out, not to try and make money out of. Do share more tips or ask questions here!

[Theotherone]

We took our first real shots at this tonight and are getting to Phase 2 in good shape, but just can't seem to get the bloods down before they get to DW and heal him up. Our dps is hunter, rogue, shadow priest, arms warrior and pally. Tanks are dk and warrior and healers are pally and two shammies.

Any trick to getting these bloods down. We drop earth bind totems and a frost trap, but they don't seem to help.

[reasonyousmile]

- make sure the bloods are perm-slowed
- make sure everyone is prioritizing AOE on the bloods since you get back the Spellweaving buff in P2


once the bloods are out of the trap/totem range, they'll speed up and you're dead. they have to be slowed the whole way. you could have one of your warriors spec into Piercing Howl, since that puts a timed debuff on the bloods instead of slowing them within a certain range.



it's important that everyone uses AOE instead of single-target abilities, since Spellweave will proc more. if you do it right, it's Spellweave that's going to do all the work for you, and not the amount of damage done by your AOE abilities themselves.

you want to generate as many individual hits as you can - this includes DOTs. each DOT tick can proc a Spellweave hit.

examples:
- all warriors: get Blood & Thunder, spread Rend, Heroic Leap, cleave as rage allows (prot: also use shockwave; arms: use sweeping strikes+TC+Cleave, pop Reck+Bladestorm on 2nd set of bloods, 3rd set repeat as 1st set)
- your rogue should just FoK spam (blade flurry? not sure if ours do that combo)
- priest mind searrrrrrrrrrrr, forget about dots (the GCDs to put any up would be wasted since they have to manually DOT)
- DK drop Death & Decay in the bloods' path (not on their spawn point), spread diseases immediately, then blood boil like mad
- retpally SoR, divine storm, holy wrath (pretty sure, just wowheaded some knowledge)
- hunter multishotmultishotmultishotmultishotmultishotmulti shotmultishot

[Theotherone]

Thanks, the Spellweave point makes sense now; that's what the guys in the Fat Boss video meant. I was speaking with our hunter last night and he was saying that he was surprised at the amount of health the adds had, but now I understand what's going on. If we can control those adds we have it, the healers pretty much have full mana bars by that point, so no one is going down.

Thanks again.

[Fetzie]

The last phase is all about getting those blobs down before they reach the boss. If you can get that right three times in a row, you'll kill him.

[Theotherone]

Thank you all, we got this tonight.

[tawnos]

My understanding was that a single rogue could slow the adds with crippling poison and fan of knives spam, but is that not sufficient? It seems like it would do a reasonably good job of proc'ing spellweave as well (not sure if blade flurry for combat would be superiour dps, but even if so I assume fan spam would be reasonably comparable).

[Theotherone]

One of our Rogues went Assassination for the fight to talent into the crippling poison application talent. One rogue may be able to do it, but we were taking no chances we had Frost traps down, both rogues spamming FoK and whatever other slow we had. I don't fully recall as I was just healing with abandon watching green bars.

It's one of those points in the fight where you've been at it for 12 minutes or so and if you mess it up, it's a wipe; and you have to do it three times. More slows the better.

[Exiledknight]

My understanding was that a single rogue could slow the adds with crippling poison and fan of knives spam, but is that not sufficient? It seems like it would do a reasonably good job of proc'ing spellweave as well (not sure if blade flurry for combat would be superiour dps, but even if so I assume fan spam would be reasonably comparable).

For the last 15% or so all that matters is that they are slowed from spawn to dead(if they are there is no way they reach his head), the damage isnt a huge issue so just go redundant here and have everyone who can slow do it.

[tawnos]

From all the videos it looks like people are coming reaaaaly close to letting bloods hit him (including the one linked above). Is it just that you can let a couple hit, or why does it seem the bloods are always right on top of deathwing when they die in videos?

[Aggathon]

even with good DPS it's likely a couple bloods will get close, if not hit. really you just don't want Deathwing healing over a 5% mark because then bloods will spawn again and there is an enrage timer, so more bloods = bad.

[tawnos]

OK well that makes a bit more sense and none of the videos explained whether it was a 'get most of them and the more the better' situation or a 'get all bloods dead or your computer will explode' situation.

So another question from reading the official forums - I didn't realize the impale damage was so much higher. I know in 10's you cheese at least one of the impales with dps immunity abilities (vanish, invisibility, dispersion, deterrence) but what all is required for the impale you have to eat with a tank? Am I reading the damage wrong, because it seems like even with a tank 'big cooldown' you need something else to survive even now, and at 0% debuff I'm not even sure how it was survivable without a dk tank and some luck with blood shield stacking. Even with the debuff the third platform seems problematic and I can't see how a raid could have 2tanked this without running out of externals.

[Tengenstein]

Tank CDs, trinkets (stay of execution is great) and external CDs PW:Bs, Pain Supressions, Hand of sacrafice, Safeguards, and a Stonking big Health pool. and making sure a demo shout equivalent is up for every impale.

[Fetzie]

I used to use
Platform 1: Divine Protection (20%), Dream (50%), WoG shield (60k), Stay of Execution
Platform 2: Divine Protection(20%), Guardian of ancient kings (50%), WoG shield, Stay of Execution
Platform 3: Divine Protection(20%), Ardent Defender(20%), WoG shield, Pain suppression(40%), Stay of Execution
Platform 4: Divine Protection(20%), Guardian of Ancient Kings(50%), WoG shield, Stay of Execution

[tawnos]

So demo shout et al will cut 10% off? Is there anything else that reduces the damage? My understanding is that armor doesn't. That should mean a base of 529k in 10m and 756k in 25m with the 30% debuff. Definitely much more difficult to deal with than the videos seem to imply.

[Fetzie]

Not really. 560k damage (800k reduced by 30%).

-10% AP debuff
-10% taken from priest/shaman
-10% (or is it 15%) from talents

leaves you with 408k

50% CD reduces it to 204k damage

If you can't survive that, you shouldn't be tanking heroic madness.

[reasonyousmile]

multiple CDs, both personal and external, are a must. we used to delay DPS on some platforms so that tank CDs could be available on the next one. however, arranging CDs in advance will help a lot.

as a warrior in our 25m raid, i'd use Shield Wall and the Stay of Execution trinket on every Impale, plus an external Hand of Sacrifice from our Pally tank. with those CDs standard, the remaining CD rotation for me looked like this:

1st Impale: +Dream
2nd Impale: +Pain Suppression (helpful disc priest)
3rd Impale: +Last Stand
4th Impale: +Pain Suppression (helpful disc priest)


i don't recall what the pally tank would do, but i'd have the Safeguard talent and Intervene him of all his Impales to give him the 30% damage reduction. he'd get a Sac from our Holy Pally too, but the rest was up to him.

just note that the damage can't be avoided or blocked - no Pally Bubble, no Priest Guardian Spirit, no Rogue Evasion.

[Tengenstein]

however it can be useful if you have a rogue eating an impale to have him pop evasion as everyone runs out of melee range to ensure the Corruption doesn't global him with a melee hit before the impale.

[tawnos]

Not sure the 'if you can't survive that' type of comment is really productive on these forums but good to have numbers for extra effects. So looks like for 10m:

840k base (from dungeon journal) * 0.7 (nerf) = 588k * 0.9 (AP debuff) = 529.2k * 0.9 (talents, though it looks like its 8 and 9% for dks and bears) = 476.28k.

The 10% from the shaman/priest talent doesn't seem reliable and would require forcing through a crit heal? Or are there talents that make this something that can be relied upon without having to game a proc?

[reasonyousmile]

what's your raidcomp?