Yet Another H Spine thread

[Ysosrslawl]

Hello everyone!

Like many guilds we too need some assistance finding the root of our issue on this boss. We have been doing many of the things suggested and I have come to the conclusion that it may just be a DPS issue. Hopefully those of you will better skill at reading WOL can confirm my thoughts.

Here is our raid make up.

Tanks: Prot warrior Blood Tanking (This is me), Blood DK Amalg Tanking
Healers: Holy Pally, Resto Druid, Holy Priest (Primary Dispeller)
DPS: SV Hunter, S Priest, Demo Warlock, Arcane Mage x 2

**NOTE** This week we have a friendly pug stepping in for our S Priest who is on Vacation, but they have 8/8H on multiple characters and had been showing up our DPS most of the night.

Cool Down assignments:
Tranq on First Roll
AM on first 9 stacks
Rallying Cry/ Raid Wall on 2nd 9 Stacks (if needed)
Tranq on next roll
Hymn ??? (not quite sure if we should assign that to another roll or use it for 9 stack explosions, last week we used it for explosions)
Vamp Blood is suppose to be popped on each roll

Fiery Grip
We have been assigning our Arcane mage (usually top DPS and better burst) with our other mage on as backup. We kill the Amalg then switch to the low health Corruption and kill it before the tendon pops.

On the tendons we are mostly under 50% is not under 40% for the first pop, for the 2nd pop we are almost always under 50% (very few times less than 55%).

What my main concerns are
-Is the Warlock's DPS really what is holding us back?
-Are there any changes in assignments for CDs or whatever that we could change?
-Should we have one DPS AOE down bloods with 3rd plate (as i have read) to cut down on the need to kite?
-Is popping Tranq right as we stack a better idea than popping it around 1 sec on the countdown from DBM? What about the 2nd roll should we pop Hymn with Tranq and Vamp?

WOL here:
/guilds/149734/

(add that to the end of the WOL URL and thats how you can find us I'm not allowed to post links yet)

[Hakto]

@30% just have hunter kill bloods, just dont kill them during explosion or rolls.

low health Corruption and kill it before the tendon pops.

why? it means you get a new corruption which grips during tendon phase - such a waste of dps, leave it low and have the tank and perhaps 1 dps kill it as it is about to cast grip.

[Stasis007]

Warlocks aren't great for the Tendon burst, but if you're getting the Tendons dead in 2 lifts then it doesn't really matter. Demo is the best burst spec though. Judging by the WoL, everyone's under performing on the Tendon. You'd expect the Mages and Spriest to do 2M+ on each Tendon, and the Hunters not far behind.

Are you AOEing the Bloods before each roll? If not, try that. Use healing cool-downs on the AOE.

The only DPS that matters is the Tendon burn and the Amalgamation. Aim to kill the Amalg in ~2 minutes.

On the tendons we are mostly under 50% is not under 40% for the first pop, for the 2nd pop we are almost always under 50% (very few times less than 55%).

I don't quote understand what you're saying here, but you are attacking the same Tendon on the 2nd lift, yeah? So, sub-50% 1st lift and kill it on the 2nd?

[Deleted]

We've been 1-lifting previously but did our first 6-lift run yesterday and all we had to do was to use flasks and timewarp on two separate Hideous Amalgamations. I can see you used one timewarp to nuke the burning tendons, but only for one fight. What are you using your flasks and timewarp on? We use timewarp to quickly burn down last Amalgamation on the second plate. Then we use flasks on the Amalgamation before the first lift on the 3rd plate. For the last Amalgamation we let our hunters kill off bloods since they probably won't have time to go back to their holes and respawn before we've killed the Burning Tendons.

Also, we have our two tanks deal with any grips coming during a Burning Tendons burst. If the Corruption has low enough health, the tanks can kill it just before the Burning Tendons pops and start nuking the new Amalgamation to save time. The whole fight is really about saving precious seconds everywhere.

Your WOL link: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/y...ses&boss=53879

[Celentes]

Check up on recount after the first tendon lift how much damage to the tendon your dps are doing.
Spriest should be doing anywhere between 900k and 1.5m
Arcane mages should be above 1m
SV Hunter 800k and more.

It's not some crazy numbers, it's pretty medium of what the class is supposed to do.
Warlocks are silly like this, I've seen reports of 1.5m damage, but haven't ever seen anywhere above 600k per lift myself, even from good ones.
Warlock didn't hold us back even before the nerfs, so a warlock alone should not be an issue.

If you have some aoe stuns (say, hpala), keep stunning kited bloods on the third plate. You don't really want to aoe down bloods unless your healers are feeling fine with healing the raid at that point.
You pop tranq on rolls as soon as the damage comes from the charged up amalgamations. Normally you want to have tank staying outside and only dragging them through residues when the countdown is already going, to reduce the amount of raid damage there (may not be necessary to overcomplicate the fight if your healers are feeling fine).
I pop hymn of hope on the first roll and divine hymn on the second roll as shadow (don't have much to do there anyway).

Stupid questions:
Is spriest going mastery there? Or using shadowburst rotation at all?
Valor trinkets?

[Ysosrslawl]

I don't quote understand what you're saying here, but you are attacking the same Tendon on the 2nd lift, yeah? So, sub-50% 1st lift and kill it on the 2nd?

Let me reword this since I didnt make much sense.

With the FIRST TENDON burn we are usually around 40% or less (20% if we pop Time warp) and then on the next round we finish it off. For the SECOND TENDON we are just under 50% HP if not more and then sometimes we barely miss killing it on the 2nd lift by about 1%.
^That is what i meant to say, caps for emphasis.

I can see you used one timewarp to nuke the burning tendons, but only for one fight. What are you using your flasks and timewarp on? We use timewarp to quickly burn down last Amalgamation on the second plate

Prior to tonight we had been trying to save Time warp for the 3rd plate since the first one was easy enough to get down in two lifts but we still didn't have enough to get it down in one lift when we tried with Time warp.

Stupid questions:
Is spriest going mastery there? Or using shadowburst rotation at all?
Valor trinkets?

I couldnt tell you about how our S Priest is built, I don't know enough about that class (yet)
I have been instructing everyone to buy and wear the VP trinkets for that fight to tie into their Burning Tendon Target/ CD pop macros.
^Something I will be checking on later today.


Additionally I'd like to mention, if you go look at the over all dmg done to tendons by our warlock you'll notice that they are doing roughly 1/2 the over all dmg the rest of the DPS are doing IF THAT. Which is why I have so much concern for it.

[Celentes]

I couldnt tell you about how our S Priest is built, I don't know enough about that class (yet)
I have been instructing everyone to buy and wear the VP trinkets for that fight to tie into their Burning Tendon Target/ CD pop macros.
^Something I will be checking on later today.

Additionally I'd like to mention, if you go look at the over all dmg done to tendons by our warlock you'll notice that they are doing roughly 1/2 the over all dmg the rest of the DPS are doing IF THAT. Which is why I have so much concern for it.

That's quite okay for a warlock, they're really having bad times there. But after all the nerfs, it shouldn't be much of a concern, as long as everyone else are doing fine, especially with double arcane and a shadowpriest.

[Ysosrslawl]

well as an update we did seem to do much better with tendon breaking, accept one slip up we broke it every single time on the 2nd burn. Only problem we kept running into was damage right after 2nd plate broke or random points after we broke first plate off and were on the 2nd.

We switched out the Warlock because she didnt care to even want to improve when we spoke last night and brought in a Frost DK.

/reports/h040tbh8wvfu0m2k/

(put that on the end of the WOL URL)

[Ysosrslawl]

As an update we still haven't killed Spine. We had our H Priest go Disc for a while and honestly it doesn't seem like it changed anything.

Our Damage is much better and rolls have been going ok, but we end up wiping because I die (Blood tank) or someone else dies during a 9 stack even with popping CD's.

/guilds/149734/ is how you can find our logs. I really am not sure whats wrong... :C

[Conora]

So looking only at your most recent logs it seems that dpswise the arcane mages are performing very poorly, one in particular was the lowest or 2nd lowest dmg done to tendons each attempt and overall a hunter was number 1 on tendon damage. Arcane mages should NEVER lose to a hunter. In very subpar gear arcane mages in my group pull 1.5 mil plus every single lift. Make sure they are not messing up and have all of their stacks before the tendon lifts and make sure they are using trinkets and presence of mind and arcane power properly. Also I am of the opinion that you should have your blood dk wear dps trinkets and maybe a little dps gear and dps tendons during lifts. If an amalg is up at that time the warrior can tank it and just be careful about not stepping in blood pools.
The last thing is if you are dying to the 9 stack blasts from amalgs try getting them lower before you get stacks. They should do the explosion pulse a maximum of 2 times before they are dead.

[asharia]

You really shouldnt be failing because of lack of dps on the tendons, at this point.

I killed it a long time ago on my warrior, but have recently been back in there on my hunter. We pretty much didnt bother lining up grips and lifts, or even killing the corruption. I was on grips as an MM hunter. If there was a grip during the lift, i just switched to it and back really fast.

I think your dps should take some time to figure out how to line up their CDs and rotations on the tendons better. Buy those trinkets if need be.

edit: didnt see the updates. One thing that i found worked was having everyone stop dps on the amalg at around 10%, and leave one person to work it down slowly. This person need to be SMART, and be aware of where the blood residues are, so they have a idea of how quickly it will get stacks. Ideally you want it <5% hp when it gets stacks. 1-2 aoe pulses is a success. Really helps if the amalg tank is vocal in calling out the hp and when he's getting stacks.

don't forget, if you're kiting up and down, any paladin can holy wrath stun the bloods when you come back through the raid. Leap away, shockwave stun when they catch up, get gripped back, holy wrath stun when they get to the group, charge a corruption in the back, shockwave again (maybe, i forget the timing), intervene back, etc etc

[Deleted]

edit: didnt see the updates. One thing that i found worked was having everyone stop dps on the amalg at around 10%, and leave one person to work it down slowly. This person need to be SMART, and be aware of where the blood residues are, so they have a idea of how quickly it will get stacks. Ideally you want it <5% hp when it gets stacks. 1-2 aoe pulses is a success. Really helps if the amalg tank is vocal in calling out the hp and when he's getting stacks.

This helps a lot indeed. We also just have 1-2 pulses (3 if things go sloppy a bit) and no need for any raid cooldown of some sort either, which means there's more room to pop them elsewhere and less damage outgoing, and only a very small chance of someone dieing.

[underdogba]

If you are having no problems meeting the burst dps for two lifts, then the next priority is dps'ing down the amalgams as fast as possible, because the longer you drag out the fight, the more unmanageable the bloods become. For a group with your makeup doing this right now, that is the single biggest issue with downing it.

Also past first plate, don't dps down blood unnecessarily, because killing them just geometrically increases their spawn rate as a function of the residues down. From here on out, all dps should be on the amalgam, unless you specifically need residues, but in all likelihood, until the final plate/lift, the bloods tank should have that down (by the end, the tank making 9 residues might actually be challenging b/c while kiting they don't have high uptime on them, and are getting affected heavily by the aoe cap). The only exception is killing them prior to a roll strictly for cleanup purposes.