Best classes for heroic spine

[jman101]

My guild just started progressing on heroic spine and we are just slightly short on tendon damage (1-2% short during each expose). We currently run with:

- Sub rogue
- Ele shammy
- Arms warrior
- Arcane mage
- Shadow priest

and we have access to

- 2nd arcane mage
- Hunter
- Ret pally
- Frost dk

Would bringing the hunter be viable as a source for the 8% spell damage debuff and would it make a large difference if the warrior went fury over arms?

[Deleted]

I would bench the ele shamy for another arcane mage and force the arms warrior to go fury (yes you can do good damage as arms, you cant come close to fury tho, or atleast i couldnt once i went arms again)

Our comp during progression was:
sub rogue
arcane mage x2
spriest
demo lock (our buff bitch lol)

Our kill was arcane, hunter, spriest, demo and sub rogue tho

Another route would be to make those players push out more dps, min maxing a bit more, dunno if you already do, but all our dps had special spine reforges

[Sildor]

The best classes for it are sub rogues and arcane mages. Ret paladins, warriors, and SPs are not bad for it. Try to have a setup where you also get all the important buffs.

[Fuqup]

Do you have access to any logs? Sub rogues, arcane mages, and shadow priests (w/ 4pc) are excellent for this fight, so I'm surprised you're coming up short. How does your guild handle grips during lifts? Do you wait for a grip before a lift, or kill the existing corruption before the burn phase? Assuming it isn't an individual DPS issue, what tank classes do you use? I highly recommend ferals if you have access to one, because they can go cat and do respectable burst up until the last 1 or 2 lifts when they're forced to tank some of the bloods. Ours tanks in agi gear and does ~700k per lift. (our logs)

There is an excellent guide on the rogue forums to playing sub on spine here, though at this point with the nerfs you can probably afford to cut some corners. Other subforums probably have tendon guides as well.

edit: I found your logs (not creepy) and your dps could probably be better but it isn't terrible. You need tanks to DPS as much as possible though. With high stacks of vengeance, a tank can probably pull ~500k which is not negligible. Also, make your DPS buy their valor trinkets. They are better than any other trinket on this fight for providing burst.

[jman101]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Here's the wipe logs from out attempts last week: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/8...pes&boss=53879
We can make it to 2nd and a couple of times to 3rd plate but we have to use hero/pots on the tendons before that just to get there. It's seems like the dps is inconsistent too often and I don't think it should be an issue of having to rely on people getting enough crits on the tendon to get it down.

Everyone is reforging/specing specifically for tendom damage, and we all have our 'on use' trinkets so I don't think there's too much to be gained there.

Handling grips during tendon isn't really an issue since we have the timing down now to where we can have healers kill the corruption while dps are on the tendon.

[Deleted]

Thought I'd just add that our setup was:
Arc mage
Sub Rogue
Boomkin
Demo Lock
Spriest

[Deleted]

First of all you get a hold of your shadowpriest and ask him if he isnt interested in killing this boss.

Then you direct him to countless threads on any major wow site regarding shadowpriest + Spine HC and then you'll get enough dps to kill the burning tendons just by doing that and have him work his butt off on Under City Dummies, using the macros he is being told to use from all those sites.
Then you divide out the loot.

On Big adds he should do Mindflay spamm, only doing VT, DP when he is 100%! sure he'll have his shadowfiend back up for the next Burning tendon burn phase.
He shouldnt help on Fiery Grib if he dont think he'll have his Shadowfiend up for the next TB burn. (normally between burns where you've rolling DW he can help abit)
Then you have him make a target macro for Burning tendon so he gets 100% uptime.
Then as soon as he gets Burning tendon targeted pop his all in one macro with Valor trinket - Wings - Engi glove enchant if he has that - Berserker whatever anything and his Shadowfiend.
Rotation - 1 3xorbed MB - MS until next 3xorbed MB, MS til next 3x orbed MB he may run out of time if he messes up, so it might be a un orbed MB, fill with SW when it his sub 25% Rinse and repeat.
Pending his gear he should be able to do anywhere between 1.1 mill - 1.7mill + job done. If I saw correctly he averged 600k on some tires and used VT and other kinds of fail spells on burning tendons..
If he cant handle it, replace him with an alt ret, they'll do the job blindfolded.

[Fuqup]

Tendon damage will always be a little inconsistent due to RNG over the short time period of tendon exposure, but it's clear you're having some DPS issues too. I looked at some pulls where you didn't kill the 1st tendon and on the 2nd lift you have some DPS only doing 500k damage for a full 20 sec burn. Your tank also needs to do more DPS, like I see your prot warrior usually just cleaves it a little and your prot pally doesn't seem to be doing any damage at all (if he's the guy picking up the newly spawned amalg, he can still do a little DPS beforehand).

Some individual stuff from the 2nd lift of this pull:
- arcane mage popped his engi gloves, then his trinket. He should be doing trinket for the first 15 sec of the burn, then engi gloves for the remaining couple seconds. If he has it macroed into his cooldown button, have him unmacro it and keybind it separately, because there is no good way to macro gloves on this fight.
- spriest dmg was very low. maybe fiend wasn't up or something, which impacts burst dmg a ton for him. You have to expect that this will happen and should compensate by doing more damage on the first lift.
- ele shaman dps was low. I can see he didn't have elemental mastery up for that burn. the best way to get it off CD before a 2nd burn phase is to spam chain lightning a bit (make sure he doesn't cleave the corruption tentacles). this will also end up being necessary later on in the fight to kill bloods faster.
- tanks did like 100k combined damage during that 2nd burn. An extra 500k dmg from them over the course of 2 burns is the difference between a failed pop and a successful pop. Later in the fight you will not always have the luxury of tank DPS though so you will have to use potions and bloodlust to compensate.

Tank dps is definitely your biggest problem. Fix that and you should have a lot less trouble.

[lwalker8]

Yeah, shadow priest is the problem here. I usually do 1-1.2 million per 20 second burn. He needs to just put SW:P on the amalgamations and mind flay repeatedly until shadowfiend is back up.

[Fuqup]

I'm surprised more people are commenting on the spriest compared to the arcane mage. 500k for a 20 sec burn with heroism as an arcane mage who has arcane power + valor trinket is around half of what you should be doing. He must not be focusing the tendon or is mismanaging CDs because 500k is like 10 casts at most, and you should be running enough haste to have ~1sec 4stack ABs during hero. Remember, spriests cannot be expected to have fiend up for every burn on HM spine, especially if you're doing ~90 sec between lifts (which you should be doing to avoid being overrun by bloods on 3rd plate). You could probably get your fiend back if you did 100% mind flay spam, but this simply isn't doable for most guilds because amalg DPS is still important.

[zenga]

I would bench the ele shamy

And lose the spell power buff when they are short on dps? Ele shaman is actually one of the stronger specs for spine due to elemental mastery being up for every tendon, combined with the on use VP trinket.

@ OP

We progressed on this fight prior to all the nerfs. The first attempts on the tendon we felt like we were never going to make it, it seemed like impossible back then. We have a pretty active guild forum and basically every player (even the weaker specs) started to 'theorycraft', try burst sessions on the dummy, check back if certain older trinkets would be beneficial, change talent points around, make target macro's, see if a tank can use a dps trinket, etc. This process was one of the more fun progress experiences I had during entire cata, and eventually what seemed to be impossible (beating all tendon timers) was really doable for us prior to the nerfs (though we killed it with 5% buff).

My point being: with the 10% nerf and at this point in the patch, it's not so much about comp but all about the individual player his/her ability to research how she/he can bring the best burst for her/his spec. I'd rather go with the most intelligent players than with the best specs.

[Deleted]

Compared your log to my last kill and damn, you have some serious dps problems...

The longest try i checked was bit over 8 min, both mage and spriest only managed todo ~1 million more damage then our algamation tank, our healer did 450k more then your pala tank lol..

And depending on try, everyone except rogue has performance issues and needs to improve alot.
Have the whole raid read up on spine tactics, gearing/rotation for their class, for spine.
Then tell them to visit dummys with a stopwatch for a couple hours.

If you dont, im afraid you'll wipe until its 20-30% nerf :/

[stevenhawkin]

I feel that Rets are very good at Burning Tendon damage in our 25man. I pull 1.6mil off in that 23sec window of the first lift

[Mnevis]

I would bench the ele shamy for another arcane mage

The Arcane Mage they have isn't beating their Ele Shaman on Tendon damage (looking at overall for the night, and at their longest pull). The mage should should, and I'm not saying Ele's the best spec for tendon dps, but Elemental Mastery and the VP trinket up for each reveal means they should be able to do a million each time. I doubt they're looking to sit one of their Dragonwraths. Of course, you're missing the very important 8% spelldamage, which is kinda like sitting legendaries.

We get our 8% spelldamage bonus from a SV Hunter's Windserpent. He doesn't do the most to the Tendon, but it's not exactly mandatory to stack Arcane/Sub for this anymore. Can't speak to Fury v Arms, our Warrior tanks this one. Do get your SP to learn the Fiend/MB/MSpike rotation for tendons. That would probably be enough to make the difference.

Also, your tanks don't do much to the tendon, and your healers don't do anything at all. There's your 2%. Oh, I do see that you said your healers are finishing off the Corruption. This shouldn't be necessary (at least isn't in my group). We smack it a couple times while the Amalg is going nuclear, and our SP leaves dots on it. It dies without any help during the tendon dps phase (or during nuclear blast).

[Mudkiper]

Ret's are nearly as good as Arcane Mage / Sub Rogues if they do it properly.

[Deleted]

stick the FM on the shadow priest and he will have fiend up for each tendon

[Deleted]

@Mnevis, ye that was before i read logs and just went based on classes ;P
If you read my reply after that, you'll see i would prob bench everyone cept rogue :x

[nanessa]

I didnt really look at logs, but you are saying you are 1% off so I would bring lock ( demo would be best for the fight) not only he brings curse of elements , but also brings 5% spell crit, both of those buffs really can make a huge difference. Not sure who I would replace tho, thats up to you I guess, maybe shammy ( lock if demo would cover for sp buff) or warrior.

[Deleted]

what is ur mage doing at the bottom of tendon dmg? (should rape there)

and if you control ur dps on corruption ur amalg tank can do some more dps aswell on it.