[VIDEO] HEROIC Spine of Deathwing - Zumzar Arcane Mage PoV *post-nerf*

[Zumzar]

Greetings all,

This is our first kill of HEROIC Spine of Deathwing *post-nerf* (10-man) as a guild.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RynoUcJJqdE



Guild: The Machine of Sylvanas-EU (Horde).

Kill date: 2nd of February, 2012.

PoV: Zumzar - Zumzar. Armory at http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...umzar/advanced

Mid-fight chat drama: From 01:12 to 02:20. Funny shit when looking back on it! Not so funny whilst it was going on.

We used 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 dps for this.

After loosing a majority of our players throughout DS (including a legendary staff), we didn't manage to kill HEROIC: Spine pre-nerf, even though we were really close. Nevertheless, on our first night after the 5 % + 15 % nerf, we managed to kill him after a total of 100 attempts.

This is a very interessting fight, and by far - in my opinion - the most challenging fight this tier. It requires heavy damage on the Tendons.. or wait, it REQUIRED heavy damage on the Tendons pre-nerf, and now bringing down the Tendons doesn't really require an effort. Nevertheless, the fight is still quite the challenge, and we were very relieved when we finally killed it.

The fight is tactically very complex, but listening to the Ventrilo conversation throughout the video will help you a lot. If we start from the beginning our goal is to get 2 Blood spawns before we get a roll. This ensures we don't need to hold back much on Steve - which is what we call Amalgamations, due to their hard-to-pronounce-mid-raid-for-a-danish-raidleader name - before we have 9 Bloods available.

We have 2 dps assigned to breaking the Grips (Mage and Boomkin), and we also choose to kill the Corruptions prior to every tendon-phase, rather than timing it and leaving them alive. I was personally asigned to making sure these Corruptions were killed not too early, and not too late. This is why you see my single-target prioritizing Corruptions over Steves at certain points throughout.

When an armor plate flies off our goal is to:
1. Kill all alive Corruptions
2. AoE Bloods
3. Let Steves soak as many Bloods as possible, and then force a roll, whilst using defensives cooldowns to stay alive

When forcing rolls, remember to NOT step into the Fire before you actually have to. There's no reason to stand in there taking damage, when you don't have to, so help the healers out as I do @ 05:04

When the 2nd armor plate falls off, our Paladin tank is killing off a few Bloods close to the 3rd armor plate, to make sure we have enough Bloods for Steve. After that point, he starts kiting the Bloods, whilst the raid kills Steve as fast as possible. When Steve dies, we nuke the Tendon as always. We choose to not use Bloodlust for thise Tendon, due to the nerf of the Tendon's HP, and instead used Bloodlust to help healing and dps on the very last Steve of the fight.

From a Mage stand point this fight is really challenging, as there's so many things you can do to optimize your Tendon damage. I did the following, apart from the obvious reforge etc.:

1. Making sure I have 4x AB
2. Switching to Molten Armor prior to every Tendon phase (switched to Molten Armor glyph as well instead of AM). I switch back to Mage Armor when the nuke phase is over.
3. Using Mana Shield + Mage Ward for the last tick of Steve's explosion for a spellpower increase through Incanter's Absorption.
4. Using Presence of Mind prior to Tendon popping up, so the first Arcane Blast I cast is instant and so I get 15 % increased chance to Crit on my 2 first ABs.
5. Using Fire Blast on the very last 0.5 sec of the Tendon's uptime. If there's not enough time to cast an AB, I'll use FB.
6. Using the following macro for quickly targeting the Tendon, as you can actually target it before its nameplate shows up. This macro only works if you have NOTHING targeted, hence why I press esc prior to Tendon popping up:

/tar boss2
/stopmacro [noexists]
/use Bottled Wishes
/cast Mana Gem
/cast Arcane Power
/cast Berserking
/cast Arcane Blast

You can probably tell from the video, but I use an Arcane Power (w/o gem) as the very first Steve spawns. The rest of my APs are pretty obvious.

Also, for those of you interessted I used Will of Unbinding and Bottled Wishes for this, and I do NOT *cry* have the Legendary staff!

Ventrilo: Yes, for the entire fight.

WoL from the kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/w...=12641&e=13371

DPS on Tendons: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7...3208&target=26

My UI in 1920x1080 (Updated 10th of January, 2012): http://www.gamefront.com/files/21171....3_Updated.zip

Songs: The songs are listed at the end credits, in order of appearance.

www.the-machine.wowstead.com

Feel free to comment
Zumzar

[tenub]

May I humbly ask, why?

[Zumzar]

May I humbly ask, why?

I have been posting my videos with descriptions, tips etc. for all of Cataclysm, and so far (a large part of) the community on MMO have been finding them very useful.

[Unitos]

Awesomeness!

[Azatos]

May I humbly ask, why?

Zumzar's amazing "pseudo strats", or at least that's what I consider them (because he plays the way I want to)....are nothing new. It's not like this is some kind of OMGWTF CONQUEST GUILD STRAT, he's giving some of us some pointers and tips that helped him and his guild, and can maybe save other people some time/stress/etc.

On a side note, Dread is already 8/8 so why would you care if someone else killed a boss AFTER you.

[Deleted]

What did you reforge for this fight?
I read different things everywhere from people who haven't killed it yet.
And what is your average damage per tendon?
Sorry to be a bother, and thank you for any information you can provide!

[Zumzar]

Reforging is the same for Spine as it is for all other fights as Arcane. Mastery > Haste till soft cap > Crit. The haste soft cap with 2x T13 is 1268, so I basically reforged out of ALL Haste, since getting 1268 Haste was easily achieveable. I ended up with ~2500 Mastery, ~1750 Haste and ~1100 Crit. I used Bottled Wishes and Will of Unbinding.

I did between 1.2 - 1.75 million damage per Tendon w/o Bloodlust, as you can also see from the logs I provided in the OP.

/Zumz

[Markao]

Thx for uploading your UI. It's great
One quick question...in the middle of the screen there are some informations in white, like currency, fps, mail, friends...
How do i turn that off?

Great video btw

[Daninkai]

Your strategy is very useful, however my own raid will have to come up with a different name for amalgamations. "Steve" is currently reserved for Guardian of Ancient Kings.

[Zumzar]

Thx for uploading your UI. It's great
One quick question...in the middle of the screen there are some informations in white, like currency, fps, mail, friends...
How do i turn that off?

Great video btw

Once again, please read the attached "HOW TO INSTALL" in my UI download. It clearly states how to fix it in that. Type /sldt and enable my profile.

---------- Post added 2012-02-07 at 03:17 PM ----------

Your strategy is very useful, however my own raid will have to come up with a different name for amalgamations. "Steve" is currently reserved for Guardian of Ancient Kings.

Haha! "Bob" is also very popular for naming mobs in my guild. Feel free to use it!

[Deleted]

with a cleartarget in your macro, you shouldnt need to press 'ESC' to clear your targets.
Also what happened if the Tendon spawned on the right side? Did your macro still worked or shouldve it have been boss3 then?

#showtooltip Bottled Wishes
/cleartarget
/tar boss2
/stopmacro [noexists]
/use Bottled Wishes
/cast Mana Gem
/cast Arcane Power
/cast Berserking
/cast Arcane Blast

[Deleted]

5. Using Fire Blast on the very last 0.5 sec of the Tendon's uptime. If there's not enough time to cast an AB, I'll use FB..

Use Arcane Barrage instead.

[DeathDefier]

Use Arcane Barrage instead.

Barrage has a travel time, fire blast does not.

[Soisoisoi]

How do you see Damage done only to Burning Tendons?

[Deleted]

He linked it: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7...3208&target=26
You go to Analyze - Damage done and select as target in the dropdown meny "Burning Tendons"
Or you go to Analyze - Damage done and type in the Expression Box under Friendly Fire: targetName = "Burning Tendons" like this: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7...=12477&e=13208
If you use the Expression make sure target is set to "any".

[Deleted]

Pre-pot for spine..? Really? :S

Also, some of those guys had quite an attitude. "Typing is part of my rotation" cracked me up xD

[Soisoisoi]

He linked it: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7...3208&target=26
You go to Analyze - Damage done and select as target in the dropdown meny "Burning Tendons"
Or you go to Analyze - Damage done and type in the Expression Box under Friendly Fire: targetName = "Burning Tendons" like this: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7...=12477&e=13208
If you use the Expression make sure target is set to "any".

Sorry I should of made it clearer - I meant on Recount/Skada, whichever he is using. He has it set to Damage done on Burning Tendons.

[Zumzar]

Sorry I should of made it clearer - I meant on Recount/Skada, whichever he is using. He has it set to Damage done on Burning Tendons.

I'm using Skada.

Right click -> Enemy Damage Taken -> Burning Tendons. They will, obviously, only show up after you've seen the fight once. After that, you can just show it every time.

---------- Post added 2012-02-10 at 07:50 PM ----------

Pre-pot for spine..? Really? :S

Also, some of those guys had quite an attitude. "Typing is part of my rotation" cracked me up xD

Pre-potting for Spine is kinda useless indeed. But it looks better!

---------- Post added 2012-02-10 at 07:51 PM ----------

Use Arcane Barrage instead.

Like the other guy said, FB has no travel time. Barrage does, meaning Barrage won't work.

---------- Post added 2012-02-10 at 07:55 PM ----------

with a cleartarget in your macro, you shouldnt need to press 'ESC' to clear your targets.
Also what happened if the Tendon spawned on the right side? Did your macro still worked or shouldve it have been boss3 then?

#showtooltip Bottled Wishes
/cleartarget
/tar boss2
/stopmacro [noexists]
/use Bottled Wishes
/cast Mana Gem
/cast Arcane Power
/cast Berserking
/cast Arcane Blast

If the right tendon spawned, then yes - it should've been boss3.. or is it boss1? Either one And yes, there are probably smarter ways to get around having to press esc.

[Soisoisoi]

I'm using Skada.

Right click -> Enemy Damage Taken -> Burning Tendons. They will, obviously, only show up after you've seen the fight once. After that, you can just show it every time.

Thanks. :3