Spine 10HC Post-Nerf What to Know?

[snookiee]

So my guild will be pulling heroic spine for the first time tonight, and I have a few questions that revolve around the nerfs mostly.

1) First and foremost, since all the guides we're looking at talk about the DPS challenge but have been written pre-nerf, what is it actually like with the 20% debuff in place? We're running 3 heals 2 tanks 5 dps.
1a) Mostly what I'm asking about is regarding the tiniest damage increases that guilds were using before the nerfs, such as mele needing to reforge off all expertise and rogues using wound/wound, ect?
2) Would it be possible to, for the third platform, use lust+pots and get it down in 1 lift with 5 dps? I'm guessing no, but assuming that would simplify things alot if so.
3) Any tips/strats that your guilds developed after spending a few nights pulling this boss that really helped you progress?

Our team is roughly:

Tanks:
bear
paladin

Heals:
shaman
disc priest
pally

DPS:
legendary arcane mage
surv hunter
legendary sub rogue
(either legendary rogue or DK)
Balance druid

Not looking for "hurr durr post nerf it just dies" or calling it a joke because your team has it on farm and is fully geared, ect.

Thanks for the help!

[Frylol]

We use a similiar set up. Instead of lusting/pots last plate we 1 lift on the first making the fight and bloods and complete joke. Just make sure your healers stack up tight. Your shaman and Disc priest can also help Dps the first tendon.

[snookiee]

We use a similiar set up. Instead of lusting/pots last plate we 1 lift on the first making the fight and bloods and complete joke. Just make sure your healers stack up tight. Your shaman and Disc priest can also help Dps the first tendon.

So with our ~6/8H gear and dps comp we can 1 lift the first plate? It sounds like you guys have it on farm so probably are quite geared, just checking.

[Choptimus]

Yes you can 1lift it as long as your DPS aren't shit. 10man 1lifting is a joke with 20%.

[Deleted]

Yes you can 1lift it as long as your DPS aren't shit. 10man 1lifting is a joke with 20%.

With all CDs this might be the case for 1st plate, we get it to 35-40 without lust or pots, and we have an affliction warlock in our setup.

[Frylol]

We started raiding in march and have only killed the fight twice so your group probably has better gear overall actually. Yes extremely doable.

[snookiee]

Any insight regarding whether or not our dps should be reforging off their expertise/doing all the little things or if our damage (should be) enough?

[ergonomic]

Make sure your DPS uses the valor on-use trinkets and macros them with /tar boss2 and whatever other cooldown.

My experience is 25man, but here are the factors that I noticed made the largest difference for my guild:

• Corruption grips. need to be broken ASAP. DBM has a timer for them so your ranged should be pre-casting spells for when the grip goes out. Also try to time lifts so that you kill off a corruption (or at least break a grip) right as the plate lifts to ensure your DPS have the maximum window to kill the tendons. There is a window of a couple seconds between the Amalg exploding and the tendon lifting, which is the ideal time for the grip to go out and to break. Too soon, and a melee might die from explosion. Too late, and you get a grip late into the tendon exposure, reducing DPS uptime.
• Ensure the Amalgamation is low before soaking the 9 bloods. Excess pulses from the superheated Amalgamation will REALLY stress your healers out. In fact, you might even want to consider having your disc priest run Holy for this fight as HoTs are amazing for clearing the debuff.
• Healers stack on Blood tank Healer aggro becomes an issue late in the fight. Stacking on an AoE'ing tank will make sure they don't get demolished (but obviously make sure they run away from blast).

EDIT: Honestly, tendon DPS isn't as huge as factor as it was before. I wouldn't reforge; if your DPS on tendons is too low, it's more likely it's a case of errors in grip timing or slow targetting (again, use a /boss2 macro) than gear. Do use the valor on-use trinket though.

[Frylol]

Reforge wise i know that our disc priest completely reforges to crit for that fight. As for special reforging for dps i'd just suggest reforging to whatever is strongest for each spec. Crit for sub, haste for mage, boomkin etc. Roll on first plate is important so your druid can get DPS on the tendon. Just have everyone stack and have your pally drop a consecrate down and holy wrath for slimes etc. Priest and shaman should be helping as well and it should die with everyone popping 5 min cds, lust and pots. We tried the normal 2-2-2 strat for a week and switched to the 1-2-2 and got a kill the next night. Hope that helps.

[Tenzai]

Any insight regarding whether or not our dps should be reforging off their expertise/doing all the little things or if our damage (should be) enough?

This shouldn't be needed at all, but its hard to say without seeing what kind of dps they pull normally. I really don't see the need to do that kind of thing anymore though.

[snookiee]

• Ensure the Amalgamation is low before soaking the 9 bloods. Excess pulses from the superheated Amalgamation will REALLY stress your healers out. In fact, you might even want to consider having your disc priest run Holy for this fight as HoTs are amazing for clearing the debuff.
• Healers stack on Blood tank Healer aggro becomes an issue late in the fight. Stacking on an AoE'ing tank will make sure they don't get demolished (but obviously make sure they run away from blast).

When should healing cds be used? I can see them being best for rolling and amalg pulses, but i don't know, given cds, whether we should save them on the first plate, ect so we have them later?

[Deleted]

1: It's 20% and then another 15% on spine tendons aswell. It's by no means "hard" anymore, as long as people target it and u don't have grips mid burn you should make it np.
1a: I wouldn't bother respeccing till you know wether or not you need the extra dmg, most of the dmg you do is done on the amal, and you still need expertise and stuff on that.
2: Maybe, but makes plans to keep going, since you in all likelyhood will get another amal.
3: PoP cooldowns on rolls, blow amals up when they are low to reduce amount of pulses. Either kill the corruption before burn part or kill amal right after a grip. Blow lust when the 5th amal is about to blow up, to help healers with healing as you probably won't have many cooldowns left if you used them on that all important roll on 3rd plate. Also on 3rd plate make sure everyone is standing near tank to prevent bloods from killing randomly. And assign one person to kill the blood while everyone else focuses the amal. We use a dk, but i've seen others use hunters aswell.

[Raxxed]

Hi op!
We do this with a variety of setups, mainly depending on who actually logs on XD

It's always:
Warrior Tank(me)
Pally Tank
Resto Shaman
Disc priest
Resto druid
Arcane Mage
Shadow priest

And the rest just depends on who logs on.
We go 2-2-2 (Not lusting on the first plate, obviously).
Our first kill was with 10% nerf and we 4shot it, it's a REALLY simple fight if your healers are exceptional competent and your dps know how to burst when needed.

We Pull, killing 3 corruptions and getting one down to ~20%
We wait for TWO bloods to spawn, DO NOT KILL THEM, then we roll top right
Our dpriest spams mass dispell until the debuffs turn from death to earth (this is essential as its nearly impossible to single target dispell 3 debuffs at once)
We use most raid cooldowns on every roll. We use SLT/Barrier/Raidwall/Cry/Shieldwall 4pc (Obviously the first one is pretty lolmode, but we do it anyway. It removes all the stacks we have).
After we have rolled I tank the two bloods (now 3) to my spot - which is just off to the centre of his spine(left) and pally tank tanks the amalg on the right.
Our arcane mage is the essential breaker of the grips, he precasts AB when the grips about to go off, usually resulting in 0 ticks of the grip.
If the mage is gripped, we have someone else break it(usually a hunter if we have one).
Everyone stacks in so i can tclap on cd and pick up any loose bloods (really not necessary until the last plate) as with vigi on the pallytank i just taunt the bloods as soon as they spawn.
Dps burn down the amalg, stop at 5% and leave it there until the second grip. Just before the second grip, our pallytank kites the amalg over the pile of bloods, picking up 9 stacks. Just before he pulls he calls dps to nuke it, the dps burn down the amalg whilst hes taken over the bloods. If executed properly the amalg should immediately start casting nuclear blast and you will only get 1 pulse of the nucleus.
The first tendon we use cooldowns (no pots)
after the first tendon goes back under (around 30% for us) we kill the corruption and just do the phase again, no need for a wall of text.
After the first plate flies off, this is where execution is tested.
I take all the bloods to the back right corruption (new one that spawned) and tank them there whilst dps kills the corruptions. There will be 3 corruptions alive. We kill the one that was alive during the plate (the one from the first phase) then the one on back left, THEN the one on back right. As soon as the back right corruption dies, we call for massive aoe, everyone (bar the pally tank) runs to the safe position ready to roll and pops the massive list of raid cds. AS SOON as we call for massive AOE, the pallytank whom is picking up the amalgs will be runing over his amalgs, picking up the pile blood and caused the amalgs to pulsate (This is why we use so many cds on rolls). We roll (duh) and watch the amalgs fly away with the blood that we will never see again.
The rest of the fight is a rinse and repeat.
We use potions on second plate
We use lust on the third plate.
It's essential to get 2 stacks on your blood tank, means they can stand there in phase3 tanking it to the face rather than kiting.
I've probably missed something, but i'm sure I've covered most of the fight.

Good luck!

[ergonomic]

When should healing cds be used? I can see them being best for rolling and amalg pulses, but i don't know, given cds, whether we should save them on the first plate, ect so we have them later?

You can rotate through your cooldowns with 3 healers. I recommend SLT on rolls since that's when the most debuffs are out and it helps clear those. It should be up for all rolls. AM should be usable for almost every Amalg pulse, since ideally you want to be popping a tendon ~once per 2 minutes to maximize valor trink usage. If you're getting only 1-2 pulses from Amalgs, use Barrier on rolls as well; otherwise stack it with AM on the pulses when you can.

Edit: Also remember that you should also have 4pc tank bonus up for Amalg pulses since that's when they hit the tank the hardest anyway.

[Paulosio]

My guild normally takes the amalg down to about 5% and then we take it over the bloods when there is about 4 seconds left till grip is cast. After a couple of secs the amalg has 9 stacks and all our dps nukes it down except 1-2 we have left to break the grip. This guarantees you don't get issues of players getting gripped during a tendon lift.

I play survival hunter on the fight and it's a good class to have on the tendons along with 1 other player. I fire an explosive shot at the corruption like .5 secs before the grip.... that means even if i get gripped my explosive shot will help free me along with the 1 other dps on it. I also do a couple of misdirected multishots on the bloodsbefore the 5th and 6th tendon exposure to help stop any healers getting aggro.

[Ryme]

Tendon is a near non-issue at this point, don't worry about gearing/reforging around it, it's just not worth it any more. Your biggest issue will come from blood management, specifically tank deaths on the third plate. Get your pally to glyph holy wrath and practise kitting.

Aside from that, just pop CDs on the rolls and break the grips as fast as you can, you'll get a kill quickly if you can function well as a group.

[snookiee]

Alright, first night of attempts report:
We got to the 3rd plate a couple times, but died pretty quickly. Our problem is what I expect most groups encounter, the bloods. During the second plate the number is already getting really out of hand. I may be mistaken, but aren't our options to stack up with raid CDs and kill them or to roll once or twice on every plate?

Our arcane Mage had computer trouble tonight so we brought in our other rogue, who wasnt ready for it so was combat the whole night(not his fault, he was prepped to run in the alt raid this week so hadn't bothered putting a sub spec together). Our best 1 lift attempt, with people not using targeting macros and still somewhat uncomfortable with the burn phase, was 16%. I feel that swapping the rogue for the legendary Mage (or just having him play sub) can make the difference. Just to be clear, can someone please explain the definite advantages to 1-lifting the first plate?

Thanks again, I'll probably post in this threat before raid tomorrow to answer whatever questions we come up with in our analysis.

Edit: a quickie, is heroic cunning very good or very dangerous for this fight? Our balance druid has that and the 403 int trinket, which should he swap for a valor trinket?

[Frylol]

Definite advantage is you can afk through the last plate, less slimes throughout the fight, the fight goes faster making mana regen a non issue. Tanks dont have to kite slimes anymore etc. Also cunning should be swapped for VP trinket.

[Mayna]

We 1-lift this with:

UH DK, Arcane Mage, Sub Rogue, Surv Hunter, Demo Lock

We have the same tanks you do and a Disc/Shaman DPSing on the tendon as well. Neither our rogue or mage has legendaries. We didn't start raiding until the beginning of March so surely your gear is better than ours and with 20% we easily 1-lift the plate. All of our DPS uses VP trinkets and pots w/ Bloodlust. You should be able to do it incredibly easily with your setup as it is superior to ours + legendaries.

I suggest you log to make sure everyone has a macro setup and is using their cooldowns correctly because there is no reason you shouldn't be absolutely destroying the tendon.

We wiped for 2 weeks on this fight, we switched to 1-lifting and downed it within 5 attempts. I highly suggest it.

As for your boomkin, switch cunning for VP.

[Deleted]

We killed Spine for the first time last week, so our gear is probably similar to yours.

We also got to 30ish on the first tendon, we tried one lifting using hero etc and we always ended up in the 5% region, so in the end we decided it wasnt really worth the trouble. We felt the game was more about control than anything else and just kept it at downing it in 2 goes.

The tendon dps was actually the least of our problems. The biggest problem we encountered (bar the enormous amount of slimes) was not killing the Corruption when releasing grips, with the health% nerf, and blood tank (pally) having trouble picking up adds from healers on plate 3 while kiting. Also killing too much slimes hurt us a lot.

It really feels like it was a fight that slowly but surely clicks together. You just need to get some tries in.
It's totally unlike Blackhorn, that's just pure randomness galore, where you have either a massive wipe or a flawless fight when you do exactly the same.