Heroic Spine 10-man Help

[Deleted]

We've been on this fight for a few weeks now, and we seem to be having some problems.

Logs from the latest night: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/4...ses&boss=53879 (2 healers were alts due to easter)

Our setup is the following (the usual setup):

Healers: Disc Priest, Holy Paladin, Resto Druid
Tanks: Feral Druid, Blood DK
DPS: SV Hunter, Shadow Priest, Arcane Mage, Balance Druid (will likely be a Sublety rogue from the next tries), Retribution Paladin

Healing wise, we usually have me (disc priest) at overall raid healing (Aegis is win) + dispelling, paladin on debuff clearing and resto druid on tank healing + chipping in with rejuv on debuffed people.

Tank wise we have the feral druid on bloods and the DK on the amalgamation.

We kill 3 corruptions in the beginning, roll as soon as we have 2-3 debuffs going. We combine all rolls with some cooldown, as well as all explosions with tank 4sets and healing cds. We try to only kill the blood we need but here's what happens: around the 2nd plate bloods start to go all over the place. Especially healers are heavily attacked, but also the occasional dps. We usually have the feral druid (blood tank) up by the plate with all healers and ranged dps, but still, aggro is all over the place. We've had attempts where we get to the 3rd plate, but at that point the tank dies before he can even start kiting. The last roll before the 3rd plate is very heavy on healing as well, and we're more or less oom at that point (if we even survive that roll).

Any tips would be appreciated. Our tank specifically would like to have any tanking pointers, especially regarding tanking composition and how best to handle keeping aggro on the bloods.

Thank you in advance.

[Skez]

You shouldn't be overrun with bloods until the 3rd plate is about to open the last time. What we did was after the 2nd plate goes down, we kill off all corruptions and living bloods then let the new Hideous Amalgamations pick up the blood on the ground and roll IMMEDIATELY after with full defensive cooldowns. This way you will get rid of most of the active bloods.

If you don't do this the blood will just crawl back into the holes and become new bloods. They never disappear unless you let a Hideous Amalgamation suck them up and then roll them off.

You will still get overrun by bloods but not until the 3ds plate is about to open the last time, like I said.
Your blood tank will also need to kite them good at this point.
Good luck!

[Deleted]

Your main problem is most likely coming from the Amalgamation DPS, the faster they go down, the less bloods you will get. From the looks of the log, the DPS is pretty poor even on the best of tries. Aggro shouldn't be an issue at all, since all of the raid should be stacked on top of the blood tank and he can easily taunt them and build aggro instantly from AoE abilities.

Are you killing any bloods before you roll and soaking them with the Amalgamations that will fly off? That can help significantly reduce the amount of bloods you have up, especially if your raid DPS isn't the best.

[Deleted]

I would discourage the 'kill all the bloods before a roll strategy'. Rather, have one person (in this case your SV Hunter) on constant AoE duty. This means the blood tank should never reach that unmanagable number of bloods until late on plate 3. You can always clear bloods by running amalgamations over them before each roll, but if you stack all of them ontop of eachother youre most likely going to get to 9 stacks (which isnt fun at all) while rolling. With constant AoE throughout the fight you can streamline the bloods, which means alot less damage. Also - if you tank the bloods in the middle it still takes them 2+ minutes before they actually reach the holes and come back.

So, my suggestion here would be to have the Hunter AoE constantly while the DK tank finishes bloods off 2 or 3 by 3 etc.
The rate at which damage will be incoming will make the fight alot easier. What I mean with this is that instead of having 10+ bloods blowing up within a few seconds of eachother you have 1-2 every few seconds. If you're losing people due to the blood explosions then you need to heal better. If DPS and Healers are taking blood aggro, you need to tell the feral tank to learn how to play.

Oh yea, other than changing tanks (I dont know how your tendon dps is so I dont know if you need the feral to go cat) -- ie DK on bloods and feral on amalgamation -- the only other things to note is: do you make sure to put 2 stacks of the Earth debuff on both tanks asap?


edit: ignore my previous edit, I misread wol

[Rätti]

Don't try to kill as few bloods as possible. Always try to have as many down as possible when you're exploding an amalgamation because it can in fact absorb a lot more than the 9 bloods it needs. This makes the fight easier closer to the end. I've written a pretty detailed guide for blood tanking which includes how you could deal with your situation, it's in my blog which you can find in my signature . Hopefully it might help.

[Deleted]

Don't try to kill as few bloods as possible. Always try to have as many down as possible when you're exploding an amalgamation because it can in fact absorb a lot more than the 9 bloods it needs.

I didn't read your guide to be honest, but based on my own experience of amalgamation tanking and stacking the buffs on it, I say that this statement is false. You cannot absorb more than 9 residues with a single amalgamation.

[Deleted]

I didn't read your guide to be honest, but based on my own experience of amalgamation tanking and stacking the buffs on it, I say that this statement is false. You cannot absorb more than 9 residues with a single amalgamation.

Yes, you can. We do it all the time. The Bloods fire pools on the ground must be very close together though for it to work (I mean practically on top of each other). We clear out a shit load of the Bloods before the Amalgamation needs to mop them up, Druid tank kites him through a mass of Blood pools, he takes the 9 stacks and a shit load more blood, it's just that 9 stacks is the maximum the Amalgamation can have. If there is any gap between the pools though, you are right, it won't take more than 9 Bloods but if there is a constant line of pools, it'll soak the lot until there is a break in that line.
Judging by the fact so many use this to make the fight bit easier, and the length of time it's been able to be done, it's obviously an intended way to go about things.

[exd]

try to make it 3 healer's and best healers for 10 man is -- Resto Shaman for Mana tide and spirit totem + Disc Priest can help the kiting tank on ph3 last nuke ... Holy Paladin can stun all time the adds ~

2 healer's you cannot make it only if u have the PRO's Heals

[Rätti]

Yeah, you can absorb more as long as it picks them up at the same time as the last stack. Usually getting rid of like 20ish bloods at the same time closer to the end.

[Deleted]

We position our Amalg tank up by the plate and a little to the right, our ranged group up by the plate and a little to the left and our blood tank below both groups intercepting any bloods that come towards plate. All 3 groups are quite close, within ~10 yards of each other and we don't do any kiting. We AoE all bloods before rolling the boss, after they're AoEed the tanks absorb their residues and then we roll. Another thing worth noting is that we finish off the Corruption that does the grips right before exposing a tendon - this lowers tendon DPS a little but that's fine after the nerfs. Make sure to have a raid CD up for when each Amalg get to 9 (tank 4pc perhaps) and multiple CDs up for when you roll.

It goes something like this:

1) Amalg gets to 9 stacks and starts blowing up, use a tank 4pc. Ranged DPS finish off the corruption right before Tendon is exposed.

2) Tendon is exposed and DPS kill it while the tank picks up the newly spawned Amalg. You lose some tank DPS on Tendon while he does this but its ok

3) Repeat steps 1 and 2 in order to finish off that Tendon

4) Tendon dies and plate goes off. Healers and blood tank gather in the center of the room while DPS kill 2 corruptions. You now have 3 Amalgs and a lot of bloods.

5) Amalg tank keeps his 3 Amalgs off to the side while DPS AoE all bloods down. Use Spirit Link Totem and PW:B here to clear the plasma debuffs.

6) Bloods are dead, tanks gather as many residues as they can on those 3 Amalgs and we roll. Use Tranquility here.

If each of those 3 Amalgs absorbs an average of, lets say, 7 residues before we roll that's 21 residues which won't respawn back into bloods. We do this on the 2nd and 3rd rolls so we essentially eliminate quite a large number of bloods from the fight. That way we just tank all bloods in P3 and never get overwhelmed. Like mentioned earlier we're all very closely grouped so even if the blood tank misses a blood its likely to go to a DPS due to stray cleaves so healers don't draw aggro much.

I would discourage the 'kill all the bloods before a roll strategy'. Rather, have one person (in this case your SV Hunter) on constant AoE duty. This means the blood tank should never reach that unmanagable number of bloods until late on plate 3. You can always clear bloods by running amalgamations over them before each roll, but if you stack all of them ontop of eachother youre most likely going to get to 9 stacks (which isnt fun at all) while rolling. With constant AoE throughout the fight you can streamline the bloods, which means alot less damage. Also - if you tank the bloods in the middle it still takes them 2+ minutes before they actually reach the holes and come back.

So, my suggestion here would be to have the Hunter AoE constantly while the DK tank finishes bloods off 2 or 3 by 3 etc.
The rate at which damage will be incoming will make the fight alot easier. What I mean with this is that instead of having 10+ bloods blowing up within a few seconds of eachother you have 1-2 every few seconds. If you're losing people due to the blood explosions then you need to heal better. If DPS and Healers are taking blood aggro, you need to tell the feral tank to learn how to play.

I gotta disagree with that. I heal this fight and while having a few bloods die here and there from the tank's own AoE as well as any stray cleaves I really don't like having a dedicated AoEer for it. I find it much easier to heal the fight if they are all AoEed at the same time before a roll. This does several things:

- It allows for more Amalg DPS since you're not wasting time AoEing all phase long.
- It confines all of the damage to one short period which lets you abuse cooldowns, if you spread it out CDs aren't as effective
- It allows more residues to be absorbed and therefore permeability removed from the fight. Any bloods your hunter kills will eventually make their way to respawning, however if you kill them all at once and immediately after absorb their residues then roll the Amalgs you're permanently removing those bloods.

[Repse]

If you are seeing a lot of tank deaths, you probably aren't using the Blood of Neltharion buff correctly. It is not mentioned in many videos, but you can actually guide the buff onto your tanks at the beginning of the fight before you roll the first time by putting all the raid on one side of the spine and the two tanks on the other, and just keep dispelling the Blood Corruption: Earth till you get two stacks on your blood kiter. The debuff jumps left and right on each dispel. After the roll, when the next Amalg spawns, we just move the whole raid off to one side and have the tank who only got one stack the first go around go to the other. Having a 40% damage reduction on the tanks is vital. After tanks both have two stacks, I try to get them on healers and squishies if convenient.

Make sure your holy paladin has Holy Wrath glyphed, as the stun is huge for assisting your kiter. What our kiter(also a feral druid) does is run all the adds to the back of the spine, and charges the amalg to quickly get to the front. When the slimes catch up to him towards the front, I(holy pally) Holy Wrath to stun them all so he can run through them to the back of the spine, swiping for aggro as he goes without taking any damage. Holy wrath should be up for every single time they move to the front. It took a little while to get the rhythm for this, but now that we got it, the blood kiter takes literally no damage. On the first two plates, just stack the raid on the tank with the bloods to make picking them up easy. Best of luck.

[Deleted]

Kill bloods constantly, if you have enough dps cleave them down doing tendon burn aswell, many classes can still do respectable single target dps while aoe'ing, utilize that if possible. Before you roll assign one person+tank to kill bloods (watch healthbars!), have rest kill corruptions (we actually kill all the corruptions to get enough amals to soak as much blood as possible). Pop big cooldowns, stop hitting the bloods, go into pit, have tank who has agro on amals run over the dead bloods and roll 2-3 seconds later before you get blasted to much by the high stack amals. If you're going oom you're overhealing to much and should look into ways of healing less to decrease overhealing and reduce inefficient spell usage. After the 5th amal dies there should be no need to kill bloods, and you should focus all your attention on getting the 6th amal down to reduce the time your kiter has to stay alive.

As for keeping agro as a tank just tell your dps/healers to stand so close to the tank that they within the tank aoe ability range. This is especially important as you progress on the 3rd plate as the bloods spawn faster than the tanks can pick them up.

[Deleted]

Yes, you can. We do it all the time. The Bloods fire pools on the ground must be very close together though for it to work (I mean practically on top of each other).

This is exactly what I do from day one, especially on the 2nd armor 2nd lift, when we kill a lot more bloods than it's necessary. I pick up all the stray residuals first, getting like 3-5 stacks, and then kite amalgamation into the pile of the residues near the armor, where we tank the bloods. Every single time a good bunch of residues remains on the floor near armor, and those I have to clear later during the transition roll.
So, does anyone have an actual proof that amalgamation can absorb 10+ residues? Clear video for example.. Without it, I'm sorry, but not gonna believe you.

[Rätti]

This is exactly what I do from day one, especially on the 2nd armor 2nd lift, when we kill a lot more bloods than it's necessary. I pick up all the stray residuals first, getting like 3-5 stacks, and then kite amalgamation into the pile of the residues near the armor, where we tank the bloods. Every single time a good bunch of residues remains on the floor near armor, and those I have to clear later during the transition roll.
So, does anyone have an actual proof that amalgamation can absorb 10+ residues? Clear video for example.. Without it, I'm sorry, but not gonna believe you.

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Our altraids kill, 7:55 onwards. Look around where the barrier is down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJECEW1_8fo 7:40 onwards, Silent's first 10man HC Spine kill.