Spine of Deathwing Heroic - Maximizing Tendon DPS

[damz2969]

Hi again, thanks a lot for all the helpful feedback man, it's very appreciated.

So, we did some more tries on this yesterday, and I definitely improved a bit, seeing we got the tendon down in 2 burn phases for the first time, yay! Unfortunately we didn't log that exact try, but after that we started bloodlusting on the first one as well to get more consistent tries, so we could start to practice on the second plate.

Anyway, I hit the 1 million mark on every try where I managed to execute my plan somewhat correctly, and across two burn phases I hit about 1,8 mill on proper tries. That is when we sometimes killed the tendon 5 sec early on the second burn though, so for the full duration I'd imagine I'd hit on avg 1 mill per burn. I must say I am decently satisfied with that for now, but of course I'm still looking for ways to improve.

I also took a second look at how to set up the spell breakdown, and it seems I figured it out, so here are two of my best tries, I had to give DI to the ele shaman since we made the boomkin spec feral.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...35&s=338&e=408

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...&s=3723&e=3781

I compared it with you and Beyz' logs, and here is what I found. I think my incinerate damage, pet damage, and corruption damage seems fine now. Note I decided not to pet swap, as it would a lot of the times screw things up more than it would help, so I stick with the felguard for now. I will focus on perfecting the rest of my cast sequence before I consider implementing the pet swap too. However, I noticed a huge gap in my Immolate and Immolation damage. I think the reason for my low immolation damage might be that I'm using it too early, as you can tell from the graphs. I will try to hold onto it slightly longer today.

The Immolate damage I have no clue about though, you were nearly doubling my damage there. Could the legendary staff play such a huge role? From your explanation of your macros and what I can see from the logs, (with CoD I suppose you mean Bane of Doom?), I don't think you're starting off with an incinerate cast for the Shadow and flame, am I right in this? If so, have you come to the conclusion it is not worth it, or do you just assume it isn't, or what is your reasoning behind this? I also couldn't seem to get time for the second Hand of Gul'dan / Shadowflame : /

As for the gearing, I also realized the 4 set is a big bonus, and I'm trying to get a hold of it. I'm actually the raid leader and part of the loot council, and I've passed on the 4 set for others thinking I didn't need it as much, something I regret on now. We've also been unlucky and have gotten a lot of protector tiers (oh ye, love the 10 man loot drops). Anyway, I got 3 pieces now (1x410, 1x397, 1x384), so just need one more. We'll be grouping up for LFR next week, as well as do 10-12 man BH25 run, so hopefully both me and the spriest will get the 4 sets for next week. I used MWC for the first half of the raid yesterday and was bothered by the fact I didn't have it back for the second go, so I swapped for Bottled Wishes. However, I will try your method of using them both and pre-using MWC.

[rijn dael]

Re shadow and flame -
I run with another warlock, I apply CoE, in theory he applies Shadow and Flame - I don't think he actually does a lot of the time though. Grr. When he isn't there, I tend to still skip it, mostly because even best case it only impacts me in that makeup - everyone else uses dd (arc mage, spriest, etc). It is up soon enough for direct casts - it only really impacts dots by being delayed, and delaying potentially loses much more than 5% dot damage (doom tick alone averages about 5% of my damage done!)


Regarding immo/immoaura damage -
-That particular log includes lust - so the total ticks will be spiked more than your logs (if you are comparing to your earlier unlusted attempts).
-Legendary is about 10.5% gain - although rng might spike it anywhere between 5-20%, I wouldn't expect 100% procs from it on something hitting over 10 times in that range.
-I use immolation as I run / jump to the tendon just before it spawns. I potentially lose a tick or so (it ticks about every 0.7sec for my gear) - but shouldn't miss more than that.

4set -
I feel your pain on 10m loot - it was my biggest concern when I went 10m from 25 - but the social side has been so much better, oh well. Single raid size of 15man for panda please :-)
You aren't wrong at getting the spriest their 4set either - our spriest regularly fights our arcane for top overall by the time we get two plates down. Warlock 4set isn't quite as much of a gain, but you aren't going to kill it without everything you can get!

DI -
Depending on our makeup for the night, I frequently run DI on the feral - they crit nicely, and tend to run enough rakes prior to the tendon that you have a 3stack prior to the burn too (yay CoD). My only other available target is frequently the resto druid though.

CoD (yes I mean doom - 6 years as 'Curse of Doom'.. it isn't going to change in my head :P)

MWC - yeah, I reliably get double MWC off, but I do pop mine when the amalg hits about 30% (we aoe bloods down at 30% - noone but tank dpses them before that point). I tend to pop meta (and dg first time) often 5-10sec before tendon spawns too because MWC is going to run out - but it guarentees MWC on both attempts - much more gain overall .
Sadly it still doesn't guarentee Meta will be off cooldown though.. last raid I had a full 3 minute meta cooldown. !%!#^!#@$%!@%!@%!@%. !#%!

GL

[Deleted]

Finally it's down, jesus f christ it's a crappy fight

Took us 3 pulls this week, and we had wiped A LOT on it previous weeks...
I was sat out last week because RNG of Metamorhopsis due to ID procs, and this week I had the luxury of 4 metamorphosis on our kill...

Made total of 4.9M damage to tendons, which is pretty good I think with only 4 metas.

Used only felguard as pet, trinkets were Bottled Wishes and heroic Insignia of the Corrupted Mind.

I popped metamorphosis and immolation aura seconds before the amalgamation was going to burst, teleported to tendon after burst.
After the burst I spammed a macro where i had target for the tendon, CoE, use for my trinket, Soulburn, petattack, Demon Soul and Blood Fury.
Then when I used the GCD for that macro(I was able to spam it before the tendon is up), Immolate, BoD, Corr, Shadowflame, HoG, Soulfire(instant from SB), and spammed Incinerate till the end of the burst, didn't even try to get another HoG or Shadowflame. Ah and of course Soulfired when Decimation up
And of course I used Felstorm right when my pet was in range.

Maybe not the best and optimal rotation and executing that burst phase but it was simple enough for me and provided just enough DPS

Oh and I used Doomguard on first platform, and pot on 2nd. Forgot to use DG on last platform because I was so excited

[damz2969]

Grats on the kill Einomies! 4,9 M seem fine.

We gonna do some more tries on this now too, I finally got my 4 set as well as our spriest, so hopefully we'll do sick damage on it now!

Edit: I got the LFR version of Insignia of the Corrupted mind, and I replaced it with WoU, it felt better as I did more damage most of the time, but I don't have any real evidence to back it up. I'm also really unsure about the MWC vs Bottled Wishes, but for now I've been sticking with Bottled for more reliability. MWC probably gives more damage when used (especially when popping doomguard aswell), but the 2 minute cd makes it quite unreliable. Alternatively you could do like the others and just use it way too early to get it back for the next tendon, but it might not work every time (mistime it or the amalgamation gets slightly delayed or whatever), and it's more to keep track of (something I don't need, cause I'm raid leading and I'm bad and I can't do everything perfect, derp).

I'm not sure about this - but I believe the extra haste from bottled and from insignia also helps slightly to get more incineration casts off to have a higher chance of getting meta back up within 1,5 min, and meta should heavily outweight any trinket procs for extra damage on the tendons. Also, moonwell is rather useless if you don't have them both off cd anyway.

I chose not to start off with an incinerate cast. I didn't notice much difference, but I still suspect it being more beneficial to actually start with it. @Rijn Dael, you said arcane mage, sp etc doesn't get affected by it too much(?), but by the time you get it up (if you go CoE-Immolate-BoD-Corr-Shadowflame-HandofGuldan-Incinerate), is 7 GCDs which by the time the others should have gotten a lot of casts in. I can't see how the 5% crit for everyone can't benefit more than 1GCD delayed dots. The difference is probably quite minimal though.

[Aeiri]

I don't have the luxury of having the haste trinket yet, especially when our boomkin/mage don't have it either save for a LFR version, but I was hoping for opinions on the following option. I won't get a chance to test it till we go back monday.


Pop MWC early(need to work on timing). Pop Meta before it runs out, then use the Valor trinket + Demon Soul together on tendon. This will get around the 20 second lockout on double on-use trinkets since Meta snapshots mastery.

Going to be a little annoying trying to time it right though.

[damz2969]

I don't have the luxury of having the haste trinket yet, especially when our boomkin/mage don't have it either save for a LFR version, but I was hoping for opinions on the following option. I won't get a chance to test it till we go back monday.

I don't actually know if the LFR/Normal version of Insignia is actually better than WoU/HC VPLC or other trinkets, I guess it depends how well you manage to line up the ICD. I don't think it is a big deal not to have it, so you probably shouldn't worry about it.

Pop MWC early(need to work on timing). Pop Meta before it runs out, then use the Valor trinket + Demon Soul together on tendon. This will get around the 20 second lockout on double on-use trinkets since Meta snapshots mastery.

Going to be a little annoying trying to time it right though.

From how rijn dael explained, I think that is exactly what he is doing, and he said it was working great for him, so it is definitely viable. Having a chalice buffed Meta/DG + Bottled Wishes is probably be the best case scenario for maximum burst (maybe outweighed by a MWC+HC Insignia?), although as you said the timing would be a bit annoying to do correctly every time, which is the reason I haven't bothered with it cause I often screw up things like that.

I took a look at the rogue/mage forums and found an interesting macro, which I assume could be turned into a warlock macro too, something like this:

/cleartarget
/targetexact burning tendons
/cast [target=target,exists] Bottled Wishes
/cast [target=target,exists] Demon Soul
/cast [target=target,exists] Soulburn
/cast [target=target,exists] Curse of the Elements
/petattack

Apparently it should let you spam the macro before the tendon comes up, and only pop the CDs (that are off GCD ofc, Meta and Immo aura would have to be pre-cast) when the tendon becomes targetable, and start off by casting CoE or any other opening spell. This should make sure you pop your CDs almost perfectly. I suppose optimally you should cast DS with CoE (for a reduced GCD from the haste) and Bottled/Soulburn with Immolate, as the last two CDs only last for 10 and 15 seconds, giving you the highest possible uptime including your dots. Although that would require 2 almost similar macros which you would have to use consecutively without fail.

Does anyone have any experience or insight on this macro they would like to share?

[Khadjid]

Does anyone have any experience or insight on this macro they would like to share?

The macro should work fine, it looks horrible though. :P

Personally I would clean it up to something like this:

/cleartarget
/tar boss2
/stopmacro [noexists]
/use Bottled Wishes
/cast Demon Soul
/cast Soulburn
/cast Curse of the Elements
/petattack

[Logbc]

Pop MWC early(need to work on timing). Pop Meta before it runs out, then use the Valor trinket + Demon Soul together on tendon. This will get around the 20 second lockout on double on-use trinkets since Meta snapshots mastery.

Going to be a little annoying trying to time it right though.

This is what I've been doing. It's VERY tricky to get right but I started to get the hang of it on our 2nd night of progression. I started popping Moonwell when we stopped DPS on the amalg, Meta right before we called to pull it through and then Bottled Wishes, Demon Soul, and Soul Burn during the nuclear explosion. It's really hard to pull off consistently and it's really contingent on forcing good impending doom RNG. IMO this is the worst fight I think I've ever been a part of.

[damz2969]

The macro should work fine, it looks horrible though. :P

Personally I would clean it up to something like this:

/cleartarget
/tar boss2
/stopmacro [noexists]
/use Bottled Wishes
/cast Demon Soul
/cast Soulburn
/cast Curse of the Elements
/petattack

I think some people experienced some issues when they didn't specify the [noexists] for every spell/CD - but I will surely try your version of the macro to see if it works, as it does indeed look a lot better, :P thanks!

[Khadjid]

I think some people experienced some issues when they didn't specify the [noexists] for every spell/CD - but I will surely try your version of the macro to see if it works, as it does indeed look a lot better, :P thanks!

Line 3 should ensure that the entire macro stops if you do not have a target and you shouldn't experience any problems with it unless another boss2 shows up out of nowhere.

[damz2969]

Line 3 should ensure that the entire macro stops if you do not have a target and you shouldn't experience any problems with it unless another boss2 shows up out of nowhere.

You are right, but more specifically I now remember what the issue was. If they already had another target, they would pop their CDs regardless. I guess the /cleartarget line solves that problem though. Once again, thanks! Hopefully, it'll be useful to others as well.

[Deleted]

We just started wiping on Spine, and I have a little question : how many bloods are usually active during second and third tendons ? (in 10H)

[Surutcra]

After some time spent thinking and experimenting (I assume ~1'35" between first and second spawn of a given tendon, and ~2'00" between second half of a tendon and the next one) :
- I believe that the best trinket combo is Moonwell Chalice + Bottled Wishes.
- I believe the "classical" spec is best, because 0.5s Immolation cast does matter over a 20s period.
- However, higher incinerate DPET with glyph and the shorter casting time are enough a reason to make it you filler in my eyes.
- If you feel confident you can time your MWC "precast" precisely enough, you can drop Meta glyph for the Corruption glyph.
- If you have the time to do so, throw some immolations on bloods right before the tendon spawns as it might get you a Molten Core (incinerate) proc.
- If you are running with the Corruption glyph and get an instant shadow bolt proc that will expire after tendon despawns, you should probably keep it as your last spell to use instead of Fleflame.


Casting sequence on the first half of any given tendon (assuming meta is up and MWC can be "precasted", which should be true), Felguard out at the beginning :

~ 25s before tendon spawn : MWC
- 3s MWC remaining (~8s before tendon spawn) : Summon DG (if available)
- 1s MWC remaining (~6s before tendon spawn) : Metamorphosis
- 1s before tendon spawn : Immolation Aura Macro
----- Soulburn
----- BW
----- Demon Soul
----- Immolation Aura
- At tendon spawn : Spam Tendon Macro
----- /target boss2, Soulburn, BW, Demon Soul, petattack, Poursuit (pet), Felstorm(pet), /cast Incinerate (in order to apply the 5% crit debuff early)
- CoE
- Immolate
- BoD (has just enough time to tick once this way, from what I've experienced)
- Corruption
- HoG
- ShadowFlame
- Summon Felhunter (instant thanks to earlier soulburn, should have enough time to get two bites in from now on)
- Incinerate until the end (+Felflame if not enough time for an incinerate in the end)


Casting sequence on the second half ot a tendon, assuming you were lucky enough to have meta back in time. Thanks to the MWC precast, you should now have it ready right when the tendon will spawn (with ~1'35 between two halves of tendons). You still have the felhunter out you summoned the first time, as Demon Soul should not be ready at this time :
- As soon as up (usually just before the tendon spawns) : MWC, then Metamorphosis
- Immolation Aura Macro
- Spam Tendon Macro
- CoE
- Immolate
- BoD
- Corruption
- HoG
- ShadowFlame
- Incinerate if still over 25% (then your raid is probably late on the tendon dps race)
- Instant SoulFire (from previously cast SoulBurn), Decimation should proc during the GCD following this instant cast, so you are free to spam Soulfire already.
- Soulfire untill the end + optional Felflame at the end.

If you did not get meta back, you can still use Bottled Wishes instead of the MWC+Meta combo, which remains better than any other trinket. Also, you should have BW bound on a key somewhere as it might become aviable during the tendon (as MWC ends). Similarly, you might get meta back after you chose to rather use BW on a second half of a tendon, and should be ready to use it ;-)

[Deleted]

I'm finally on this brick wall now ....

I am doing shit damage compared to everybody else, obviously.

I am doing as everybody else has been writing in the post, I am just low because I'm a warlock, right? Or are some of you actually competing with other classes?

[Deleted]

I'm finally on this brick wall now ....

I am doing shit damage compared to everybody else, obviously.

I am doing as everybody else has been writing in the post, I am just low because I'm a warlock, right? Or are some of you actually competing with other classes?

Doing, depending on the phase, 1M4 to 2M on one tendon burst, usually topping the meter. Some specs may perform better but we're far from not being able to compete !

ps : pongueur's guide feels pretty accurate, from what I have experienced. It's all about (as it always is in demonology's burst) perfectly tuned execution.

[Deleted]

I'm finally on this brick wall now ....

I am doing shit damage compared to everybody else, obviously.

I am doing as everybody else has been writing in the post, I am just low because I'm a warlock, right? Or are some of you actually competing with other classes?

My guild is working on this boss as well, although I'm on the bench (3 locks, only 1 used, big shocker). All I can say is, from the damage I've seen posted from our guild, and from the 10+ WoL parses we've discussed, warlocks are very seldom anything else than bottom 3 when it comes to tendon dps.

[Deleted]

Doing, depending on the phase, 1M4 to 2M on one tendon burst, usually topping the meter. Some specs may perform better but we're far from not being able to compete !

ps : pongueur's guide feels pretty accurate, from what I have experienced. It's all about (as it always is in demonology's burst) perfectly tuned execution.

o.O ??
Unless everything crits and everything procs wrath of tarecgosa, there's no way.

[Deleted]

Well he is demonology and I can confirm his numbers (we don't even have all the buffs in 10 man). I do around 1M as destro, but I put his damn CoE :P

[EvreliaGaming]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l...7727&target=35

This is from our first night of attempts. I was using Bottled Wishes and Moonwell Chalice, doing the rotation pretty much as has been described in this thread. The one thing I was doing differently was soulburning out the Felhunter just before the tendon popped rather than using Felstorm and soulburning him out after. So really, the only thing that should be different should be 100k missing from the Felguard, but slightly more from the Felhunter, right?

Someone care to point out why I could only manage 1.1 mil with doomguard? I don't have the Legendary, I hope that's not the only thing making a difference. Damage breakdown was 788k from me, 200k from Felpuppy and 80k from Doomguard. Seems like my personal damage was quite low. With MWC + Wishes + Meta + Demon Soul (felguard) up my personal damage is pretty consistently around 800k.

[Deleted]

Am I understanding this correctly? In 18-20 seconds you're doing 1400000 or 2000000 damage?