25% Nerf: Madness what-to-know?

[Latwyy]

I guess I'm not gonna be original by saying: take 3 healers, ditch one of the bears for a damage dealer and have your hunter soak the impales.
I'm a hunter and we've been doing this tactic from the very beginning (killed madness after 5% nerf). I believe it's the easiest tactic to learn, since you have plenty of dmg while still being able to take the impales. For past few months I've been doing this fight in Marksmanship spec (less dps, but twice as many cooldowns for soaking). Tonight I started the fight in Surv by accident and surprisingly, it went down easier than last week. Here's a short overview of what I'd personally recommend (we have 1 bear tank, 3 healers and 6 dps)

Have your hunter soak 1st impale on 1st and 2nd platform (soaking is trivial, assuming your hunter can communicate on vent/ts: just have everyone else, including the tank go out of melee range 4 seconds before the impale. Hunter pops deterrence once he's alone with the corruption; he gets the impale, runs away from the mob while tank and melee run back in; feighn death when impale is at 1 second; done)

The only tricky part as Surv is the 3rd platform. I don't know anything about bear tanks, but our bear always wants me to soak both impales on 3rd platform, so I soak the 1st one standard way, but don't have deterrence for the 2nd one, so healers need to heal me like crazy, while I tank the corruption for a few seconds. They say it's not hard tho, just need to be ready for that.

On last platform hunter soaks the 1st impale, then the bear takes the 2nd one, which comes around at the same time as the bolt (after all the nerfs, the bolt doesn't really hurt). Then the damage dealers might want to pop some personal cooldowns to kill the corruption before the parasite appears.

One thing that's also possible with this setup, after all the nerfs is ignoring the second set of small tentacles on 2 last platforms. We just dps the big tentacle, without switching to single target dps the small ones and our healers can easily manage it. That way, we reach P2 with over 4 minutes on berserk timer. I think you'd find it very useful when learning that phase, since you don't have to worry about running out of time.
We simply dps the head down to around 17%, then kill 3 tentacles, then nuke down 2 terrors quickly, without keeping them alive for the bloods. Back to head, bloods spawn at 15% (just have your rogues slow them asap and you'll be fine). Now you have enough time to dps to 12%, wait for another set of adds and as soon as terrors are down, pop bloodlust, kill one set of bloods, then head, more bloods, then finish him off

I hope what I wrote made sense (sorry if it's messy, I'm not really sober atm). We used this tactic tonight while boosting a rogue with very crappy gear (did less than 50% of our average dps) and still got the kill on our 1st attempt. This fight has been a pain in the ass the 1st time we attempted it and we spent a lot of time on it, trying out several tactics. I strongly believe that if your bear and hunter can cooperate properly, this will be the easiest tactic to learn and execute, since 3 healers and 6 proper damage dealers really make things much easier to control. All you have to do is have your hunter learn how to soak

[snookiee]

First night: 10% 2nd attempt, downed it on 5th attempt.

Easy fight was easy, thanks for the tips guys!

[Zephur]

As the MS ret / OS prot paladin in that group, I was very happy to get both Gurthalak and Souldrinker without anyone rolling against me.

Thanks for the advice everyone. We ended up having the second tank go bearcat, but he tended to get targeted by parasite, which was annoying. Our dps is very capable though, so we could probably have kept him in a straight up tank spec. We skipped the second set of blistering tentacles on the 4th platform, since we have plenty of DR cooldowns available.

P2 is pretty easy, if hectic. Our hunter was on the ball with frost trap, and I think only one blood made it back to DW in all three spawns.

[Eon Drache]

We've always 1 tanked this fight. And now we 1 tank 2 heal it. And 1 shot it.

Instead of a 2nd tank, have your dps use their Cooldowns to negate the damage. Such as Hand of Protection on a caster. You can control the impale target by making it so only 1 person is in melee range when its about to be cast. After they get selected as the target, Hand of Protection them. Or Cauterize, or Deterrence, anything like that. After, your tank moves back in before the next melee swing and you'll be fine.

[Deja Thoris]

We've always 1 tanked this fight. And now we 1 tank 2 heal it. And 1 shot it.

Instead of a 2nd tank, have your dps use their Cooldowns to negate the damage. Such as Hand of Protection on a caster. You can control the impale target by making it so only 1 person is in melee range when its about to be cast. After they get selected as the target, Hand of Protection them. Or Cauterize, or Deterrence, anything like that. After, your tank moves back in before the next melee swing and you'll be fine.

HoP and cauterise dont work on impales in heroic, in fact no cheat death abilities work.

[Dandello19]

We've always 1 tanked this fight. And now we 1 tank 2 heal it. And 1 shot it.

Instead of a 2nd tank, have your dps use their Cooldowns to negate the damage. Such as Hand of Protection on a caster. You can control the impale target by making it so only 1 person is in melee range when its about to be cast. After they get selected as the target, Hand of Protection them. Or Cauterize, or Deterrence, anything like that. After, your tank moves back in before the next melee swing and you'll be fine.

Its laughable how you boast that you one shot the boss now, and don't understand how the mechanics work. You are either flat out lying and haven't killed it, or you pew pew, and get carried by people that understand the fight. GG.

[darkminaz]

DPS STOP AT 10% !
that was one of the biggest changes after 15% nerf that we had to find out.
tentacles + boss dmg + blubs at the same time is a pain in the ass.

exept from that it's pretty mutch same thing that bevore.
dot all the shit on the platform, go out of group with parasite, dot some more shit, be realy sad that your dps is struck at 70k since all adds die if you look at them realy evil ^^

[Mormolyce]

-post nerf, should we be lusting on first platform then on the head? Assuming at 25% the 4th platform burn is doable with dps cooldowns (is this true?)

You'll have to test this for yourself but for us this fight no longer lasts long enough for 2 lusts, in fact we have to stop DPS on several platforms. Save it for the head if you can.

-we killed spine after about 15 attempts on a (for the most part) flawless pull. I see both sides of the argument of which fight is harder at this level of nerfs, spine or madness, any insight of your own?

Spine is a hundred times harder than Madness, you will likely get 8/8 very quickly now you're through Spine. Madness is very similar to normal and the changes are easy to adapt to - set up a position for the parasite and get used to it, make sure you have AOE slows ready for the adds on the last phase (Frost DKs are immense here but you should be fine, maybe have one or both Rogues go Assassination if you're having trouble). Be sitting on them before they even spawn, there's visuals on the ground, they move super fast so if you aren't quick they'll get through. Other than that it's the same as normal.

[splinternz]

lmao at the OP getting infracted for off-topic. too good. I also lol'd at Ispamx's avatar and post. good combo

inb4 off-topic warning

on-topic: What the guy said above is essentially true. Don't sweat over Madness lol.

warn me now br0

[SirReal]

First night: 10% 2nd attempt, downed it on 5th attempt.

Easy fight was easy, thanks for the tips guys!

25% nerfs make easy things easier....grats