Heroic Spine of Deathwing guide for Shadow Priests

[Nineburg]

I figured I would post this since we have multiple Shadow Priests in the guild. Lately I've been doing alot of reading on forums and have been asking quite a few Shadow Priests in other guilds how they were doing their rotations on Heroic Spine of Deathwing. Finally, I have come to a conclusion for an almost perfect rotation on Spine Heroic:

Stat Priority
Mastery
Intellect
crit

Opening sequence for first Tendon burn

Put SWP on EVERYTHING you can right before the amalgamation gets to 0 health and continue to do so while the Amalg is casting Nuclear Blast

When the Amalg blows up and the plate starts to shake, cast AA and use your pot depending on which plate it is

Start Spamming this Macro

/cast Archangel
/target boss2
/cast mind spike

When the Tendon emerges Mind Spike it three times

Use your Shadowfiend

Next, cast Mind Blast, which will at this time be an instant cast spell, and pop your Bottled Wishes at the same time. You can use this macro if you need to, although it isn't neccisary

/use bottled wishes
/cast mind blast

Next Mind Spike however many times until your Mind Blast is up

It is important on your second Mind Blast you use this macro to ensure you proc with it

/cancelaura mind melt
/cast mind blast

Canceling Mind Melt will ensure that you get an orb proc for your Mind Blast. If you cast a Mind spike followed by an instant Mind Blast the orb proc will be used up on the Mind Spike, so you would crit for Mind Blast but you wouldn't get the orb proc. The macro will ensure that a you get the proc from Mind Blast because 1.1 seconds is enough of a time window for a shadowfiend to hit no matter what.

Now, continue to Mind Spike untill your next Mind Blast is up. Here it may differ from time to time whether or not you need to use the macro.

If there is more then 1.1 seconds left on the plates cast time, on your third Mind Blast, use the macro

If there is less then 1.1 seconds left on the plates cast time, on your third Mind Blast, you should just instant cast Mind Blast, to ensure you can fit it in the time period instead of not being able to finish the cast.


Note: If you are an engineer you can use your gloves for the last few seconds of the burn.

Amalgamation Phase

This is where it gets a little tricky. You have to make sure, depending on your raid dps on the tendons, to have your shadowfiend up for EACH tendon burn. By doing this you keep swp on the amalg and mind flay it keeping the dot up.

If the raid needs alot more dps on the amalg, you can throw Vt and DP on him, but the majority of the time you need to be just mind flay spamming.


Opening sequence for second Tendon burn

This will be the same as the first burn, the only exception being swd available

The spell cast priority will be:

Mind Blast
Shadow Word Death (of course sub 25 percent only)
Mind Spike

[Chashu]

Good stuff OP.

I would mention the use of stopmacro command for the AA macro. You wouldn't want to pop AA before you can even target the tendon.

Also for the Amalgamation phase, it's very important for a guild that's progressing on this fight to get these adds down in under 90seconds. The longer it takes for the Amalgamations to die the more bloods that your raid will have to deal with in the end, which really makes or breaks the fight. My suggestion is that if your raid's Tendon Damage is high enough, getting the first burn down to about 40% each time (approx), focus more on getting the adds down by using your normal rotation. For the second burn you'd simply follow your normal rotation using just AA and trinket if it's up and of course SW:d. Fighting for that Fiend CD is a gamble if you're trying to burn the Amalgamation in a timely fashion to secure that kill.

[Tihr]

We have a topic like this already here.

[Belrankh]

Thanks Nineburg. Very in depth guide. Going to start working on 25 man spine on Tuesday. Great info will definitely save some learning time.

Belrankh

[Drye]

A few things. Mastery is > int for tendon burn. It's a 1.6 to 1 ratio in favor of mastery. And the other thing is that rotation/macro will not yid the largest result. I'll post more on this when I get home but the rest looks fine for now.

kk, so this is the macro I've been using:

/tar boss2
/stopmacro [noexists]
/use 14
/cast mind spike
/cast [target=boss2] mind spike
/tar boss2

and this after my second MS as explained after:

/cast Shadowfiend
/cast [pet, nomodifier] Shadowcrawl
/cast Berserking
/cast Archangel

The macro you made cast AA with no target avail. So the second you hit that it casts AA. This one allows you to spam it w/o a target and not waste and cd usage. Now if you cast it as early as you have, you will not get the AA dmg buff for the last MB which is where most of your dmg comes from.

Basically what you want to do is spam this twice get to MS off cast fiend, then mindblast with 3 orbs, ms 4 times wait that .5 seconds to MB so you have 3 orbs ms 3 times mf 1 tick and mb once. With this rotation you get 3 MBs with 3 Orbs each.

What you want to do is go to wowreforge.com set mastery to 10 haste to 1 crit to 5 and hit/spirit to 9 this will give you the best dps for tendons possible. The dps over the rest of the fight will be low but you should easily be doing 140+k a tendon. For trinkets the best results I've gotten were moonwell chailce/bottled wishes these two can be easily interchanged depend on what you have at your disposal and heroic NFC. To keep NFC you want to dot like 4-5 bloods before you kill the Amalg. This way with sw rolling on the mobs it keeps your mastery stack up the whole duration and it keeps the possibility if you ever get a spike w/o orbs to possible proc orbs.

[Nineburg]

Good stuff OP.

I would mention the use of stopmacro command for the AA macro. You wouldn't want to pop AA before you can even target the tendon.

Also for the Amalgamation phase, it's very important for a guild that's progressing on this fight to get these adds down in under 90seconds. The longer it takes for the Amalgamations to die the more bloods that your raid will have to deal with in the end, which really makes or breaks the fight. My suggestion is that if your raid's Tendon Damage is high enough, getting the first burn down to about 40% each time (approx), focus more on getting the adds down by using your normal rotation. For the second burn you'd simply follow your normal rotation using just AA and trinket if it's up and of course SW:d. Fighting for that Fiend CD is a gamble if you're trying to burn the Amalgamation in a timely fashion to secure that kill.

Yes, this I agree on, after a while once a shadow priest progresses they will start to realize it's not as important for them to have shadowfiend up for EACH tendon burn. Believe it or not, I only ended up popping 4 shadowfiends the entire fight on our kill to focus more on getting the amalgamations down. This way I used my full rotation, used divine/hope hymns, and mind spiked corruptions, but untill they get to the point where their dps is actually good enough as a group to get it down that low on the first pop, shadowpriests should be focused on having a shadowfiend up every single time.

[FieryBull]

A few things. Mastery is > int for tendon burn. It's a 1.6 to 1 ratio in favor of mastery. And the other thing is that rotation/macro will not yid the largest result. I'll post more on this when I get home but the rest looks fine for now.

No matter how I simulate it, I've never been able to obtain results where mastery is stronger than intelligence. How and where did you obtain such results?

[donnieg]

How are you supposed to wait 4 global cds (3x spike and fiend as you suggest) and still get three mind blasts in 19 seconds right? Please tell me I am missing something.

[Arlee]

How are you supposed to wait 4 global cds (3x spike and fiend as you suggest) and still get three mind blasts in 19 seconds right? Please tell me I am missing something.

You pop sf/aa, cast MB, cast MSx3(4), MF (or cancel aura), MB, cast MSx3(4), MF (or cancel aura), cast MB. So you do the MB before the first set of Mind Spikes.

[Drye]

No matter how I simulate it, I've never been able to obtain results where mastery is stronger than intelligence. How and where did you obtain such results?

Kilee and a few others did the math in this forum post on h2p, it also has the trinket list for spine.

[Chashu]

A few things. Mastery is > int for tendon burn. It's a 1.6 to 1 ratio in favor of mastery. And the other thing is that rotation/macro will not yid the largest result. I'll post more on this when I get home but the rest looks fine for now.

kk, so this is the macro I've been using:

/tar boss2
/stopmacro [noexists]
/use 14
/cast mind spike
/cast [target=boss2] mind spike
/tar boss2

and this after my second MS as explained after:

/cast Shadowfiend
/cast [pet, nomodifier] Shadowcrawl
/cast Berserking
/cast Archangel

The macro you made cast AA with no target avail. So the second you hit that it casts AA. This one allows you to spam it w/o a target and not waste and cd usage. Now if you cast it as early as you have, you will not get the AA dmg buff for the last MB which is where most of your dmg comes from.

Basically what you want to do is spam this twice get to MS off cast fiend, then mindblast with 3 orbs, ms 4 times wait that .5 seconds to MB so you have 3 orbs ms 3 times mf 1 tick and mb once. With this rotation you get 3 MBs with 3 Orbs each.

What you want to do is go to wowreforge.com set mastery to 10 haste to 1 crit to 5 and hit/spirit to 9 this will give you the best dps for tendons possible. The dps over the rest of the fight will be low but you should easily be doing 140+k a tendon. For trinkets the best results I've gotten were moonwell chailce/bottled wishes these two can be easily interchanged depend on what you have at your disposal and heroic NFC. To keep NFC you want to dot like 4-5 bloods before you kill the Amalg. This way with sw rolling on the mobs it keeps your mastery stack up the whole duration and it keeps the possibility if you ever get a spike w/o orbs to possible proc orbs.

Why would you use your trinket so early and why would you use your AA so late? Trinket (valor trinket) duration is 15s, same as your fiend. AA is 18s. And I don't know if many of you working on spine or have killed spine noticed this that sometimes you can't even target the tendon until it's already at 20s left on timer. We'd all like to say it's 23 seconds, but in truth there are times where it isn't and I've also noticed where when it reaches 1s left, you can't even hit it with instants. I'd personally suggest doing AA + 2spikes, then Fiend + Valor Trinket, Berserking then 3orb MB. Or since berserking is only 10s, I'd pop it after your first MB. Unfortunately I'm alliance so I don't have berserking, and I don't have engineering for the gloves so I won't know for sure which is better GCD wise. But doing it this way makes sure you're able to use your buffs for the full duration, effectively, from start to finish. Also, I don't know about others but I'm only able to get 3 MB in each time and they all hit for 3orbs, crit, AA and trinket buff. I haven't been able to get 4. The only hit that won't get the AA dmg buff are the 1-2 MS at the end. But if you do things correctly all of your MB should hit with AA+Trink+Crit.

[Drye]

I'll post more when I get off work but spamming the macro allows you to target it at 21 seconds so it works out fine, also I use moon well chalice over the vp trinket. I prolly should have posted that. Also you are Only able to get 3 MBs off its impossible to do 4, I'm not really sure where you got that from my post. Everything else lines up perfectly so.

[Chashu]

I'll post more when I get off work but spamming the macro allows you to target it at 21 seconds so it works out fine, also I use moon well chalice over the vp trinket. I prolly should have posted that. Also you are Only able to get 3 MBs off its impossible to do 4, I'm not really sure where you got that from my post. Everything else lines up perfectly so.

I probably only got that when you mentioned popping AA so early to not get an AA buffed MB. But that's also assuming that when you say early you meant as early as when the tendon can first be targeted.

If you're using the Moonwell instead of the VP trinket then where you use your trinket makes sense. However lets say 21 seconds to burn, if you're popping AA as late as you are, you aren't letting 2 MS get hit with AA, as opposed to 1 at the end. At least for me, only my last MS doesn't get the buff.(Considering GCD's,cast, etc.)

[Drye]

I'm in the process of making a time line right now to show you exactly what I'm talking about. It will prolly help everyone else understand as well.

[Arlee]

I'm in the process of making a time line right now to show you exactly what I'm talking about. It will prolly help everyone else understand as well.

can you make it animated?? that would be neat!


But no really that is a great idea

[Chashu]

can you make it animated?? that would be neat!


But no really that is a great idea

We demand an animated video that details every second of the burn!

[Drye]

http://i.imgur.com/BnziP.png


Macro A:

/tar boss2
/stopmacro [noexists]
/use 14
/cast mind spike
/cast [target=boss2] mind spike
/tar boss2


Macro B:

/cast Shadowfiend
/cast [pet, nomodifier] Shadowcrawl
/cast Archangel

The dark blue being shown can either be a 1tick mf depending on your ms or a hard casted MB, either works.
I'm really tired and tbh didn't put hardly any time into, just thought I'd give everyone a sense of time for the tendons. I also took zerking out of the rotation/macro if you do have zerker you can get an extra MS in after the first MB. Doesn't really matter anymore that the fight is such a joke.

[Chashu]

For the most part you're still able to at least squeeze one more MS in at the end. Again what I was trying to point out is that you have 2 MS without AA instead of just one at the end. Your MB will still be hit with AA if that's what you're worried about. Because AA is 18 seconds, you have 2s of it left over based on your Timeline which can equal about 1 more MS maybe 2 if your latency and GCD is good.

[Drye]

I originally made the timeline with 18 seconds just to see how it would work out, but after last nights spine you easily start casting on the tendon at 21 seconds, if you pop AA at exactly that time, your last MB will not be affected by AA. I prolly should of just made the timeline 21 seconds to avoid all the confusion and I might remake it after class/work today but it just doesn't work out if you AA at the start of the tendon.

[YankeePhan1234]

Not to sound like a douche, but DPS on tendons isn't even a problem anymore, in addition to the 5% nerf they hotfixed the tendons so they have 15% less health also. We got our first tendon to 30% on the first try with no lust and a DPS DCd.