Heroic Spine -- blood control

[Aleysia]

Hi everyone. My guild's been working on 10H Spine for about ~2 weeks now, since just before the nerf, and we're running into a wall with handling bloods. In the many videos that we've watched, especially of post-nerf kills, the raid never seems to get overrun the way we do, as early as we do, and we've tried various ways of dealing with it to questionable levels of effectiveness.

I hope that some of you guys can give us some ideas, so here goes.

Tanks: Warrior/DK or Warrior/Paladin
DPS: Spriest, Mage, Mage, Warlock, Rogue, DK (if not tanking)
Healers: Pally, Druid, Shaman

Strategy:
Kill 4 corruptions - Roll #1
Kill amalgamation - DPS tendon #1a
Kill amalgamation - DPS tendon #1b
Kill all but 1 corruption - AOE and roll #2 at the same time with CDs
[At this point we have maybe 2-3 bloods and ~2 residue]
---------------
Kill amalgamation - DPS tendon #2a
Kill amalgamation - DPS tendon #2b
Kill all but 1 corruption - no AOE - roll #3 with CDs (can possibly do with just AM)
[At this point we have probably 15-20 bloods? seems too many to AOE even if they could all be soaked]
---------------
This is where we run into major issues:
- Before we get the 3rd plate to pop (#3a), our blood tank has to start kiting already. He doesn't think it's practical to kite for such an extended period of time, and he tends to get hit hard on turns once stuns are on DR. Thus...
- We've tried AOEing with 2 min CDs before tendon #2b above and soaking up as much as we can, but we still get overwhelmed later at almost the same point. Maybe we just need to be better at positioning residue, but we definitely don't manage to soak up everything.

I don't have good logs of us doing the above, since last night's raid was a 3-hour exercise in experimentation with various things. But generally speaking, how do you guys handle the bloods later on in the fight? Should there be more dps dotting/cleaving/single-targeting the bloods throughout? Better use of CDs so we can afford to AOE more?

I would greatly appreciate any advice from the community with regards to what we can do with our raid comp, but also any specifics regarding how and when YOU guys deal with bloods. Thanks!

[morphling8]

You can definitely aoe that many blood.

Our 3rd roll looks something like this. Kill corruption before plate comes up, dot the new one. Plate blows off, kill low corruption. While DPS works on the last one, we pick up all the residue on the ground with our two amalgs.

Then stack up in the middle, start aoe + raid cooldowns when third amalg is almost to the group. Typically we have a paladin raid wall, spirit link totem, priest bubble, and warrior shield wall (though the last one isn't really that necessary). After about 2 seconds of aoe, we move a bit closer so the roll actually counts down, finish off the blood and jump in.

After our kill last week we had 0 residue on the ground, 4-5 blood, nearly all of which spawned during the roll. We soaked around 20-25 I would guess.

After our 2nd roll we usually have about 1-2 blood left no residue.

Takes some practice, but the 3rd plate is really easy (post nerf) if you can pull it off.

[Cyberowl]

Your warrior should kite the adds since he has more mobility and a great dmg reduce without Blood Shield up.
Your DK (if not tanking) should taunt the blood towards the plate and kill them until there are 9+, otherwise you have to kill the adds at the plate while the tank is having his kiting. The most important thing (after tendon nerf lol) is to reduce the duration of the fight, so don't start collecting the blood all over deathwing's back.
Your shadow should kill the adds before the kiting starts (if you have no DK/Moonkin/Ret/Warrior) and swap to the big add after having 9+ killed. He can/should keep his dots on the big add if your dps is too low.
Safe your pots for the 3a big add (dunno the name in english >.> some like amalgination?), bc you shouldn't need it for tendon burn. Make sure all your DDs have a

/tar Amalgination (?)
/use 10 (for engineers)
/cast xyz spell
makro and a

/cleartarget
/tar Boss2
/tar Boss3
/stopmacro [target=target, noexists] ---> You can spam this macro before the tendon appears without using your trinket
/use VP trinket (dunno which slots)
/cast xyz spell
/petattack (if you have a pet)

to maximize DPS.

If you decide to bomb the bloods because the blood is still overwhelming you in the end do it asap and before a big add explotes so the burst dmg won't screw you. Use raid CDs if you have some left.
Try to make us of the Bloodlust for big add DPS. Trigger it after the add explotes, kill a corruption to have a big add and swap asap. Don't overnuke your corruption, it mustn't die before the tendon appears.

I've killed the boss in 25 man, so some things could be wrong, but some could also help you.

[Azshira]

We are doing practically the same as Morphling8 and works quite well for us. So I would recommend it.

[Aleysia]

Thanks guys.

I'll suggest to my guild to keep playing around with having a second AOE+roll and see if we can figure out how to pull it off.

[morabund]

We use DK/War tank. Our DPS is surv hunter, spriest, frost dk, and 2 rogues. Pre nerf we were getting to the 3rd plate and shortly after our warrior tank had to start kiting. Post nerf we easily got the kill and our warrior never had to move. We allow our frost dk and our surv hunter to constantly AoE as long as it doesnt severely hinder their single target DPS. We posison so that our frost dk can howling blast through the amalg and hit the bloods. Our hunter will serpent spread every now and again. This keeps the number of bloods under control without killing them all at once and causing huge damage to the raid. Also what seemed to make it really smooth is using the bloodlust to kill the last amalg, since the 20% nerf to tendon hp you dont need it for them anymore.

[Gertrude]

On 25's at least, using a priest with a lifegrip thingy at the right time can be a saviour (and we use only one as otherwise it gets mental with cds).
Getting this "pull" right can really make the difference between an unhealable dead tank and an alive tank.

Coupled with the raids ability to passively nuke down as many bloods as you can manage safely whilst still dpsing the priorities.

[Barael]

We also learned that kiting isn't really necessary until the very, very end which helped us a lot at getting the kill (lot less stray bloods on healers etc). And by that I mean something like until 10-15 seconds before the 2nd lift of third plate and our blood tank wasn't particularly geared either (we actually benched our paladin and told our dps warr to start tanking because of the superior kiting potential, but turned out it wasn't really even necessary). Also, Army of the Dead is actually awesome for that phase when you're just trying to keep things together to reach the last lift.

Also I might add that you should aim at mopping up all the blood on 2nd plate roll (except the couple bloods that just spawned) and at least 20 residues on 3rd plate roll. If you don't hit those marks, you should probably work on that part of the fight because you're just making the end part too hard otherwise.

[Cailyena]

You need to AoE at roll #3 - Use ALL your CDs. You seem to have access to: AM, SLT, DG(or Warrior RaidWall) and Rallying Cry. Your Druid can pre-blanket Rejuv and then Tranq. I as a Holy Paladin pop both Wings and DF and just spam HR on the raid that is grouped up.

We also thought it wouldn´t be possible at first, but aslong as you time your CDs right. Also make your DPSers watch the Raid Frames while they AoE and stop as soon as someone drops below 20%.


EDIT:
Here is a revised better version of the macro earlier in the thread:

/stopmacro [@boss2, noexists]
/target boss2
/cast [exists, harm] <ability goes here>

Rogue example:

/stopmacro [@boss2, noexists]
/target boss2
/cast [exists, harm, stance:1/3] Premeditation
/cast [exists, harm, stance:1/3] Ambush
/cast [exists, harm, nostance] Backstab

[Aleysia]

Thanks guys! I guess I'm getting the picture that we just have to work on pulling off the AOE+roll lol. We've seen several videos where they don't do this (post-nerf) so we were trying to find a way around it since damage is so heavy, but it sounds like we're just doing it wrong.

[Oatz]

Eh, we didn't soak all of them during transitions and we never had to kite ever. Just stick the blood tank at the plate and stack healers on top of him. He should be healable, especially as a warrior (we had a bear blood tank).

[madmessias]

Paladin+warrior can do pretty sick aoe together, and you also have other cleaves (Mainly the DK), mainthing is just to have the tank do good dps, keeping up Inquisition etc, then you shouldn't get overwhelmed.

[Revoked]

Pretty much what evryone else is saying, you can aoe that many bloods. In our kill we actually force pushed the whole fight ignoring any type of clean up. After each plate died we immediately killed the lowest corruption and then rolled, even on the last roll.

We have our blood tank (warrior) tank the bloods at the plate, with all the healers and ranged ontop of him. I(bear) put my back to the bloods and tank the amal at that point, spamming swipe/thrash to help kill the adds (watch you dont pull a bunch of aggro, bloods hitting you in the back is recommended)

Right before the last liftoff I call saying im about to stack and the raid and blood tank move out of the way, the warrior only kites from here to finish.

[Espada]

Just have been a week on it, but we were trying to do it by killing all the corruptions in the second lift, and cleaning almost all the bloods. Even with all the raid CDs is a pretty risky movement (it can be done, and watching videos didn't seem that impossible). We finally let it go, and have been doing trys with killing just one corruption and then controlling a bit the bloods via passive aoe+tank damage, as to not get overwhelmed to soon on the third plate. Anyhow, it seems like a tank with the 40% reduction buff can handle a lot of bloods, os it is an easier way to do it... Our problem as I saw it was that we did the whole 3 corruptions + bloods aoe + roll too slowly, and we had a lot of damage from searings, charged amalgamations and hole grip. If the operation is not worth it, we will keep working with the 1 corruption+roll option.