[DRAGON SOUL] Spine of Deathwing

[Tan]

Yeah yeah, i'm jumping the gun but better too soon than too late:

HC SPINE aka. One hell of a back pain!

Differences from normal are:

* Every Amalg killed is moar pain.
* 3H as one of the H will be a designated dispeller (+ 1 back-up H)

* Blood Corruption Death on random player dispelled ASAP. (debuff lasts 15sec)
Upon dispelling -> jumps to another random player.
After 3-4 dispels -> debuff turns into Blood Corruption Earth.
When timer on Blood Corruption Earth expires, debuff turns into Blood of Neltharion. This is a good buff. Both tanks need this buff first.
Both debuffs (death and earth) jump to players "on the other side of the spine than the player who has it".

* Amalg with stacks deals more dmg. This means, MT tanks Amalg away from the Armor Plate, OT tanks all the bloods at the Armor Plate. When Amalg is about to die, MT drags Amalg to Armor Plate for an immediate stack of 9 bloods.
All the bloods in the last phase need to be kited to avoid huge dmg on OT.

* More pew pew and more dmg.

[Erian]

This is a fight about controlling the following buffs/debuffs. Everything else is pretty much the same.

I'd go into this fight with 2H and a 3rd H or OH dedicated to dispelling. It's probably easiest if the dedicated dispeller also has a good range of healing instants; so druid or priest. use an appropriate glyph, e.g. priest glyph is such that every dispel also heals target.

For dispellers. Make sure you know which icon corresponds to which debuff, and get rid of icons which show the standard debuffs. This is icon overload. There are three icons you need to see:

(1) Blood Corruption Death (dispel immediately, wipes raid after 15 secs and quick dispel is good for other reasons)
(2) Blood Corruption Earth (do not dispel unless target also has Blood Corruption Neltharion; show stacks)
(3) Blood Corruption Neltharion (same icon as above) (never dispel)

Strategy is for whole raid to end up with (3).

So ... (1) gets dispelled and bounces to someone else. This continues until it bounces into (2). After a while (2) turns into (3) which is what we want. Ideally we want the whole raid to get (3). Therefore if someone already has (3) and then gets (2) as well, dispel that (2) and it becomes a (1) on someone else. Etc.

From vuhdo etc hide icons:

Grasping tendrils (someone in the hole)
Fiery Grip (not a dispel concern)
Searing Plasma
Degradation (can't be dispelled)

[Templaar]

Searing Plasma

I'd only hide this if you're dispelling; if you're on healing duty you will need that info.

[Erian]

Yea I wondered about that, but decided it wasn't the primary concern. Last night I was using renew/PoM/Lightwell etc on players with damage, and so feel that seeing that debuff isn't essential for the dispeller.

Other notes: if the dispeller gets gripped, there needs to be a backup dispeller. Guessing that there are no new debuffs during the intense aoe damage phase, so big aoe heals like tranq and DH still probably usable.

[Moolly]

The healing itself is not a problem. Even if we did not have the icons for the people targeted it would not be an issue. I think the only issue would be if one of the healers was targetted or the person doing the dispelling. To be able to see who it is means we can adjust where necessary.

Moolly poolly

[Erian]

My old guild Evo has just cleared 8/8hc. Once they got Spine down, they killed last boss on second raid there, so looks like spine is our only major obstacle to a clear. I have alts spare (lock, for example that I don't raid on but is 8/8 normal) that can be invited to the end of a raid to preserve a raid lockout, if needed.

[Erian]

Excellent read with tips for all:

http://typehforheals.com/2012/03/30/her ... deathwing/

Felt like very solid progress last night, with all of us learning more about our roles. Important not to get too bothered about the occasional silly mistake as we are learning. dps and healing will naturally go up the more practised we get.

For the healer/dispeller there is a hell of a lot going on, but there is only one point at which it's tricky: handling multiple instances of the debuff at the same time as moving for a roll. There are time implications for both. /follow does work, so for these phases in future it might be worth /follow someone reliable and concentrate only on dispelling.

I cannot yet see the final phase (Blood of Neltharion) on vuhdo, so was having to try to remember in head where to move the buff. Have to fix this, have looked around and was trying different settings last night. Also note to self: increase icon debuff size for phase 1 debuff.

[Tan]

We're stuck on getting that little more dps to get the first Burning Tendon down.

We did change a few things though to make it a little easier for the healers. Putting this down for future reference:

1. Amalg-tank will tank this in the middle, while the Blood-tank keeps the bloods at the plate. So when the amalg is about to die, the Amalg-tank runs to the plate to get all 9 bloods at once.

2. We wait for the last Fiery Grip to start for the Amalg-tank to get his 9 bloods. As soon as the Fiery Grip starts, the Amalg-tank will get his fix. This will get us 2 more dps to get the Burning Tendon down (no Fiery Grips during the Burning Tendon phase).
Rinse repeat for second and third plate: wait for the Fiery Grip to get this out of the way.

Though even with no Fiery Grips, we're lacking dps for the Burning Tendon, so please,
read up on your class specifics to squeeze out that little more single target deeps!

As long as we're not getting that first Tendon down in one go, we will stay stuck at the transition to 3rd plate.

[Caireann]

So I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, but is anything being done to make heroic spine beatable after the nerf to dispels that are going out? Considering how rapidly you have to dispel on it, it seems impossible with the new dispell reductions.
When the pre-Mists patch goes live, Blood Corruption on the Heroic Spine of Deathwing encounter will transform into the positive type after a single dispel.

I wonder if we might still get some chances even after the patch at Wed - it looks like it won't be as hopeless with dispelling at least.

[Kharybdis]

My main concern is if we'll be able to do enough damage to kill that tendon in one go, since the ranged/relic/whatever slot is going the way of the dodo and I have no idea how will the damage output change for all classes