Restoration Shaman HC Spine Reforging

[Kestaa]

Hello there, This week my 10m will be working on HC Spine of Deathwing. My Healing Comp will be H paladin (who likes to gear heavy mastery) Resto druid and I the Restoration Shaman. I had a few questions about the spec and reforging set up I want to go with.

The first few questions I had were regarding reforging.
I have been reading quite a few posts from other shamans that have downed this boss and my questions are as follows

1.) When you first started progressing on this fight did you all prefer spi > 916 > Heavy mastery > crit or SPI > 916 > Crit > mastery?
I know there are a few debates going on about crit vs mastery on this fight and im interested in feedback about what YOU did. I obviously have not done any attempts but I feel that mastery will be a powerhouse on the 3rd plate vs crit.

2.) If you did opt into Crit > Mastery what was the crit % that you all picked (i.e. 25% and then moving on to another stat such as mastery or more spi) or did you just stack crit on crit on crit?

3.) Same question about mastery. In previous fights before i tried out the 2005 haste break-point I felt like 16 -18 mastery was a pretty nice number. I am hoping a few resto shamans who tried this set up could comment about what number they felt was 'right' for this fight.


I can not post links yet however my character is Kestaa Us-Tichondrius.
ALSO! If any Restoration shamans have any advice or play style tips / comments for this fight id be grateful to hear from you all

---------- Post added 2012-02-09 at 12:29 AM ----------

I posted the below in the R Shaman main sticky as well but maybe it will seek better traffic here.

I wanted to hear some opinions on a Heroic 10m Spine spec. Specifically the +hit build and the option of picking up Focused Insight on this fight vs a non +hit build (The time spent using TC warrants the 2 points in Elemental Precision I would imagine). Also would Blessing of the Eternals / Ancestral Resolve be a good optionfor this fight seeing as Ghost wolf is not needed at all. I was thinking Ancestral Resolve would be nice for progressing on the fight, but in the long run..?

In short I'm kind of looking for a Elemental Precision (2) > Blessing of the Eternals > Ancestral Resolve > Focused Insight discussion for spine.

[Blindlad]

First of all, I'd check the advice in the existing thread:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ealing-H-Spine There was already some good disucssion about the differences of these approaches.

Healing setup me+disc priest(mostly smiting)+resto druid
1) I've dabbled with both, spent most of our progression with spi(max) > 916 > Mastery(~1500)=Crit(~1500) since I was generally getting the debuff off people on full hp and on dispell duty. While mastery is effective on the last several minutes of the fight, you actually have to get there first. Crit provides more mana, more contribution to tendon and raid dps. However, we actually killed it with me being full mastery (just because I didn't reforge after clearing everything else that day). Both setups are viable on all of the fight overall.

2) I didn't have HoU (even an LFR version), so I ended up with about 1300 rating in both mastery and haste after reforging.

As for general advice:
- if you're dispelling, don't do so too early during tendon burn, you can start with about 7-6 secodns left on the debuff. Do start at once on barrel rolls though, to get the debuffs onto the tanks asap.
- Try to keep healing rain up through the entire fight. It's a nice buffer for anything that may happen.
- Coordinate your regen phases with the other healers and try to work out a "rotation" of sorts. For me that usually was during and after tendon burn on amalgation.
- Unleash Elements is your friend early on before aoe healing has to kick in.
- Spirit link is the best possible cooldown on barrel rolls and you can have it on each one. Because of the way it works it tends to remove searing plasma from people, so your other healers can almost instantly top the raid once the roll is over.
- If you aoe bloods at any point, try to coordinate being full mana at that point and to have people prestacked with ancestral vigor.

As for builds:
You do want a 2/3 Elemental precision build for better regen and better dps.
I've experimented with pretty much everything, starting from 2/2 Cleansing waters for dispelling (which was a very decent mana saving talent on that fight), Focused insight, 2/2 Ancestral resolve. Overall, I found them to not be worth it and just left a more conventional spec (1 resolve, 1 blessing of eternals, really handy for the 3rd plate)

[Redtusk]

Blindlad stated the stat prios etc. above, so I'll skip that part.

What I do is to instantly place Mana Tide and SWG just as we land on the Spine. That way no CDs go to waste and you can use them later on.
This is the spec I'm using, i found it to do a tremendous difference in comparison to a non-tc spec: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary

As Blindlad also menchioned, save your SLT (if possible) for the rolling phases. It just completely gets rid of the Searing Plasma debuff and that is a huge help on plate 2 and 3 especially.

You should always look for an oppertunity to squeeze in a LB where you can, I run with the same setup as you do, and the druid and paladin both seem to be pretty much full on mana all the time (Mana tide, thank you very much).

For regen I use HoU and DMC:T, make sure you keep your HoU stacks up, cause on Spine, you can feel every single point of spirit.

[Kestaa]

Thank you both for your feedback!

As for general advice:
- if you're dispelling, don't do so too early during tendon burn, you can start with about 7-6 secodns left on the debuff. Do start at once on barrel rolls though, to get the debuffs onto the tanks asap.

I had a question about this. Can you clarify exactly how to get the debuff onto the tanks easily. Does it work the same way dispelling Necrotic Plague on HC Lich King worked (while dispelling it, it jumps to the nearest player if too close) Which leads me to my next question, if the debuff is cleansed with no one around will it not have the potential to jump to another player?


On a different note :

For regen I use HoU and DMC:T, make sure you keep your HoU stacks up, cause on Spine, you can feel every single point of spirit.

I went ahead and also read through the thread you referred me too Blindlad (thank you much) and one thing I observed is that no one has said much about the value of Windward Heart (any of the versions) on HC Spine. I have the normal version of Winward Heart and was contemplating trying it out with HoU since I do not have Jaws and the 2 min haste cd of Seal of the Seven Signs (although nice for tendon dps) is very difficult to control. I do have DMC : Tsunami which would be my third option.

Thank you again for your input

[Jinto]

The debuff always jump to the opposite side (left side of Spine to right or vice versa). So what you do is have the tanks on one side and the raid on the other and dispel prior to the roll.

[Kestaa]

The debuff always jump to the opposite side (left side of Spine to right or vice versa). So what you do is have the tanks on one side and the raid on the other and dispel prior to the roll.

Appreciate the clarification ^.^

[Prostyless]

For me resto shammy is very good on Spine just need to right positioning + know what spell when use

[Blindlad]

I had a question about this. Can you clarify exactly how to get the debuff onto the tanks easily. Does it work the same way dispelling Necrotic Plague on HC Lich King worked (while dispelling it, it jumps to the nearest player if too close) Which leads me to my next question, if the debuff is cleansed with no one around will it not have the potential to jump to another player?

The debuff always jump to the opposite side (left side of Spine to right or vice versa). So what you do is have the tanks on one side and the raid on the other and dispel prior to the roll.

It's definately not the same as necrotic plague and doesn't dissapear under any circumstances until the duration reaches 0. I don't see a point in getting rid of it though, since it actually helps the raid. I'm not exactly sure if it jumps between sides as Jinto described - our positioning made it hard to check that.

As for additional debuff timings: it appears after the amalgation does it's first melee hit on any target. That means you can actually barrel roll as soon as amalgations spawn out of killed corruptions and not receive any debuffs to dispell. What we usually did was delay the first roll to make absolutely sure that amalgations hit something before getting thyrown off to get all of the debuffs, but later on you should roll as soon as possible. I wouldn't advise to take care of the debuffs before the roll - that just delays the roll, which will make additional bloods spawn.

I went ahead and also read through the thread you referred me too Blindlad (thank you much) and one thing I observed is that no one has said much about the value of Windward Heart (any of the versions) on HC Spine. I have the normal version of Winward Heart and was contemplating trying it out with HoU since I do not have Jaws and the 2 min haste cd of Seal of the Seven Signs (although nice for tendon dps) is very difficult to control. I do have DMC : Tsunami which would be my third option.

Never seen a windward heart drop, so can't really comment on it's effectiveness based on experience. It should be ok if it automatically targets people low on HP, however, I would stay clear of any other non-regen trinkets on spine. Personally I ended up with JawsHC+Fall of MortalityHC.

[Flustered]

Honestly, my experience as the third healer has varied quite a bit from what other people seem to be implying. As a resto shaman you will be woefully ineffective for the first two plates. Everyone will be full health because no damage is going out, and two healers can keep the tank(s) topped off AND keep the plasma debuffs down to 2 without really losing any mana. The only times I had to heal at all during the first two plates were rolling/right after rolling to stabilize debuffs, 9 stack amalgs (which happens all at once, hopefully with the amalg at no more than ~400k hp), and when someone got gripped WITH plasma. The rest of the time I was lightning bolting, but we didn't even need my piss-poor dps to get tendons down in 2. Tendons shouldn't be a problem for anyone anymore.

Basically I'm implying that you should be reforging wholly for the third plate. This is the difficult part of the fight. Regardless of if you're tanking and killing bloods regularly OR having a tank kite them (both strats can work), your raid will suddenly start taking a LOT of damage. If you're tanking & killing, it's aoe damage from burst. Mastery is king, because the people who get plasma will suddenly drop really low really fast. If you're kiting, it's going to be stray bloods hitting healers. Mastery is king, because you're going to need to clear plasma debuffs off low health healers REALLY FUCKING FAST.

I also can't stress enough how important it is to get healing cooldowns planned out and executed properly. You need to have a cooldown for every 9-stack amalg and every roll - and as has been stated, SLT with SWG up is easily the best for rolls. Make sure your raid is waiting until the last possible second to actually get the tendrils debuff and hopping out the moment the amalg flies off so they aren't taking an unnecessary ~80k damage every roll. You're going to want your STRONGEST healing cooldown on the second 9-stack amalg of the third plate. Probably tranq, treeform and hymn from a spriest if you have one.


edit: also, get an addon for tracking watershield if you dont have one, cuz it'll get removed like 20 times over the course of the fight

[Jinto]

Go watch the Blood Legion video. Anyone who is familiar with dispels but don't know that "trick" would think that they had amazing RNG with respect to the debuffs. That is until you figured out what they did.

[Kestaa]

What we usually did was delay the first roll to make absolutely sure that amalgamations hit something before getting thyrown off to get all of the debuffs, but later on you should roll as soon as possible. I wouldn't advise to take care of the debuffs before the roll - that just delays the roll, which will make additional bloods spawn.

I'm sorry I'm a bit confused on your wording. So as a group you all always delay the first and second roll in order to get the 3(maybe 4?) Blood Corruptions out on people then stack immediately? Subsequently on the third roll you do not wait to have the blood corruptions come out (dont wait for the alamgs to melee people) and roll right away due to the high amount of corrupted bloods out. Is that what you meant?

Also do you have a good suggestion on keeping track of the Blood of Neltharion buff? I use grid so I think I can configure it to where it has the icon + timer, (does Neltharion even stay for the entire duration of the fight? Or does it have a limited time, unfortunately it doesn't dictate in the dungeon journal.) I just haven't been able to test it out extensively so far.

Ty for all your time and help fellas.

[Kestaa]

Honestly, my experience as the third healer has varied quite a bit from what other people seem to be implying. As a resto shaman you will be woefully ineffective for the first two plates. Everyone will be full health because no damage is going out, and two healers can keep the tank(s) topped off AND keep the plasma debuffs down to 2 without really losing any mana. The only times I had to heal at all during the first two plates were rolling/right after rolling to stabilize debuffs, 9 stack amalgs (which happens all at once, hopefully with the amalg at no more than ~400k hp), and when someone got gripped WITH plasma.

For our first set of attempts I decided to go Crit > mastery since I knew that we weren't going to get to the third plate right away. It seemed to me just like you said, everyone being at full health with out too much healing to be done until the amalgamation is about to explode. What is you alls opinion on I as a Restoration Shaman dispelling over a Restoration Druid? Especially on roll phases where debuffs are out as well as intense healing. Or should I try to avoid dispelling Blood Corruption : Death when we are rolling? I know blindlad commented on doing attempts with 2/2 in cleansing waters (which id like to try eventually) but is the heal effected by mastery? Is there really THAT much cleansing in the fight where people are low / have the debuff (assuming it counts toward healing Searing Plasma) to warrant it? Cleansing waters seemed pretty nice for fights like Warlord Zonozz / Hagara for progression but I found it lackluster after a few kills under our belt. I haven't found a good 10m video yet from a healers pov that I can compare some of these questions to, although a 25m video from a R shaman pov wouldn't be too different to look at I suppose.

One other thing I'd like to ask is how a few of you all went about killing the corrupted bloods. Last night our raid leader (not a healer q.q) wanted the tank to pick up 9 and once they were collected aoe them down until dead. This seemed to work out OK but the healers wouldn't have a chance to get the Searing Plasma healed off 1 or two players and with the alamg explosion right after it just seems a bit risky. Is that generally the best way to do it and us healers just need to pick it up? or is there a 'better' way out there?

Sorry for so many questions but I'm usually the one that does a majority of research on the fights for our group, better to know before hand and prevent hundreds of wipe >.< Once again, ty much for your time!

[karrad]

I wrote this up to help prepare our other resto shaman to step in for me to get her achievement, but figured it might help some others as well.

Heroic Spine 10man

Overall this is a very underwhelming fight post-nerf, and i suspect going from experiencing it in 25man first also compounds this feeling. That being said it still takes coordination, and foresight on our part.

Gearing and reforging - in 10man the Searing plasma absorbs 280k down from 420k, and go out one at a time. There is very little raid damage for the first 2 plates, and crit will give you much better returns in regards to throughput vs mastery due to debuff targets being 90%+ for a majority of the time. Crit also has very similar throughput value to haste, but has the added benefit of giving us extra mana (i saw ~170k mana gained from resurgence on our 10man kill).

I had 3125 spirit in adition to HoU which brought it to 4005, and reforged the rest to crit dumping haste as my first choice if possible. Below are my stats completely unbuffed for the encounter. Mana was still a issue on plate3.



Trinkets i chose were bottled wishes and HoU.

General strategy-
Riptide- on cooldown prettymuch. I cast it on the searing plasmas as they come out, and tanks if there are none. If both tanks have it and there are no marks i will wait for a new mark to appear usually. I also use this to make sure my HoU stacks do not drop when i am using TC.

Healing rain- I use this on the rolls and amalgamations exploding. I also use it often enough to keep up the hp buff. If there are not 3 debuffs out i chose not to keep it down as it is a complete waste at that point, and your time could be spent single targeting debuffs or using TC.

Healing wave- spam the shit out of this on debuffs in between riptides for the first 2 plates. If all 3 healers spam their hots and use their cheap efficient heals we can keep up with debuffs just fine.

GHW/HS- tanks during amalgs exploding/vell kiting adds on plate3. Also used if a debuff needs to come off immediately for either grips, or if they're low going into an amalg phase (back to back searing plasma sucks)

CH- use it on rolls and amalgs its pretty useless otherwise on 10man.

TC- You want to utilize TC so that you are entering plate3 with 80%+ mana. The trick is to do it in a manner that will not put more stress on the other healers who do not have the same option as we do. I tend to LB in between riptides, on tendons if there are not any people super low with the debuff. Basically i just use it to supplement my normal regen. You do not want to OOM yourself and have to regen it all back up, moderate consistent healing will ensure success for the first 2 plates from a healing standpoint. Plate 3 you need to use TC VERY sparingly. IF you rely on it too much it will put too much strain on the rest of the healers and you will most likely fail.

Cooldowns.

SLT- we use our SLT on the rolls in conjunction with Tranq (2ndary cooldowns will varry with different comps). With the way SLT deals damage and then heals to redistribute health it clears debuffs pretty quickly, and tranq is a backup just to ensure clean trasitions. The timing also lines up so you can get a 2nd SLT on the 3rd plate as well.

Plate1-roll
Plate2-roll
Plate3-roll+2nd amalg

SWG/Bottled wishes- I use SWG exactly the same as SLT, but i use bottled wishes a bit differently.

Plate1
Roll-SWG+Bottle
Amalg1-Bottle (if its up depends on how fast the amalg dies)
Amalg2-nothing

Plate2
Roll-SWG+Bottle
Amalg1-Bottle (if its up depends on how fast the amalg dies)
Amalg2-nothing

Plate3
Roll-SWG+Bottle
Amalg1-nothing
Amalg2-SWG+Bottle

MTT - I tried to save it for amalgs or rolls to better utilize our 2pc, but i found it worked out better overall if i just used it as soon as people could benefit from the mana, and then on every cooldown after that.


Misc
Try to set up your boss mods so that the healing requirement left on searing plasma is easily visible while monitoring your raid frames.



Make sure to have a poweraura or some way to easily track HST as bloods like to kill it a lot on plate3

During plate transitions there will often be a ton of debuffs up at once, but do not scramble to get them all cleared. Power through one if someone is gripped with low life, but other than that just wait for the roll to clear them all with SLT.

*more to come as it comes to mind*

Karrad- Resto Shaman
<Static> Executus

[Kestaa]

Trinkets i chose were bottled wishes and HoU.

I am assuming you chose bottled wishes for the on use spell power(obv). I know you were 25m when you were attempting to first down this (pre nerf) however, did you fiddle around with just regen trinkets first and realize that you didn't really need all of the spirit? Or was it more because you reforged for crit that you wanted the extra spell power since you didn't have as much mastery (mostly for plate 3 id imagine)?

What was your third healer in 10m if you don't mind me asking? You refer to tranq so I know its Rshaman Rdruid ___ .
One more thing, did you use just the standard DBM Searing Plasma info box or were you able to find a better option?

Make sure to have a poweraura or some way to easily track HST as bloods like to kill it a lot on plate3

I noticed amalgs would go and melee my totems when they are coming to the group and we are stacking for rolls. Awesome, awesome suggestion.

On a side note its kind of funny you're from <Static>. When my guild was 25m Lexabell was my healing partner and then transferred to <Static> of Executus when we downsized to 10m. Amazing player. ^.^

Thank you so much for your time and willingness to post your guide

[Redtusk]

Blindlad stated the stat prios etc. above, so I'll skip that part.

What I do is to instantly place Mana Tide and SWG just as we land on the Spine. That way no CDs go to waste and you can use them later on.
This is the spec I'm using, i found it to do a tremendous difference in comparison to a non-tc spec: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary

As Blindlad also menchioned, save your SLT (if possible) for the rolling phases. It just completely gets rid of the Searing Plasma debuff and that is a huge help on plate 2 and 3 especially.

You should always look for an oppertunity to squeeze in a LB where you can, I run with the same setup as you do, and the druid and paladin both seem to be pretty much full on mana all the time (Mana tide, thank you very much).

For regen I use HoU and DMC:T, make sure you keep your HoU stacks up, cause on Spine, you can feel every single point of spirit.

Killed it with this setup tonight.

[karrad]

I am assuming you chose bottled wishes for the on use spell power(obv). I know you were 25m when you were attempting to first down this (pre nerf) however, did you fiddle around with just regen trinkets first and realize that you didn't really need all of the spirit? Or was it more because you reforged for crit that you wanted the extra spell power since you didn't have as much mastery (mostly for plate 3 id imagine)?

What was your third healer in 10m if you don't mind me asking? You refer to tranq so I know its Rshaman Rdruid ___ .
One more thing, did you use just the standard DBM Searing Plasma info box or were you able to find a better option?

I went with the bottle due to how the raid damage (and high risk of losing someone) comes in predictable patterns that line up very nicely with our normal
cooldowns as well as with the bottle. The bottle is actually a very amazing trinket for any fight with predictable high damage moments, especially if you can line it up with 4pc or even better 4pc+berserking. For spine its either bottled wishes or a 2nd regen trinket +HoU. WWH has a high likelyhood of hitting people who do not need it and/or do not have the debuff, and SotSS is useless for prettymuch any fight other than ultraxion (re-equip it at the start to force the icd back so it has a proc at ~ the 4:45-4:50 mark, and even then i think the bottle is better)

I think i had 4100 spirit on our first kill, and even then mana was very tight at the end of plate3, and i went into plate 3 at nearly 100% with MTT coming up. Crit ended up getting me ~170k from resurgence with ~80/90k from TC. I still feel very strongly that decent consistant healing for the first 2 plates is btter than relying on constant TC, and there is really very little time at all on plate 3 to stop healing for any reason. We did not have a warrior tank for kiting in p3 so we had our prot pally kite them with his stun+ our ret pallie's stun which caused him to take a bit more damage than if we had a optimal tank.

Our 3rd healer was a Disc priest, and yes i used the standard dbm for searing as i had not been able to find a better replacement.

I noticed amalgs would go and melee my totems when they are coming to the group and we are stacking for rolls. Awesome, awesome suggestion.

On a side note its kind of funny you're from <Static>. When my guild was 25m Lexabell was my healing partner and then transferred to <Static> of Executus when we downsized to 10m. Amazing player. ^.^

Thank you so much for your time and willingness to post your guide

Lex always kept me on my toes.

If you're kiting you will tend to have more strays running to healers/totems, just make a Power aura that tracks HST+MTT together and displays something obnoxious if neither are present from your own totems. and you're welcome.

[Gray_Matter]

I went with the bottle due to how the raid damage (and high risk of losing someone) comes in predictable patterns that line up very nicely with our normal
cooldowns as well as with the bottle.

Is foul gift any good for spine HC (http://www.wowhead.com/item=72898)? It has about a 40% up time. The only difference is that you can't control when it procs. Not that I will be healing any time there in the future. I thought I would ask for other people who maybe have it.

[Seriss]

Foul Gift is an awesome trinket that I like very much... but I'm not going to use it for Spine because I prefer wearing regen trinkets there, at least while still progressing on it.

[karrad]

If i wanted a trinket like foul gift for heroic spine i would go with the Necromantic Focus with a FI spec. Foul gift is a decent trinket, but for a fight with periods of heavy damage followed by periods of low damage the chance of wasted procs, or procs not happening when they're needed becomes very high, and the usefulness of the trinket becomes less.

[Gray_Matter]

If i wanted a trinket like foul gift for heroic spine i would go with the Necromantic Focus with a FI spec. Foul gift is a decent trinket, but for a fight with periods of heavy damage followed by periods of low damage the chance of wasted procs, or procs not happening when they're needed becomes very high, and the usefulness of the trinket becomes less.

Ok, thanks.