Spine of Deathwing Heroic - Maximizing Tendon DPS

[Derishi]

Hey Warlock Forums!

My guild is currently working on Spine of Deathwing Heroic (10 Man) and naturally Tendon DPS is an issue. With each tendon having 12.7 Million Health as well as looking to burn each tendon within 2 burn phases (6.35 Million), my napkin math is putting it at around 63.5k DPS from 5 DPSers over 20 seconds in order to kill each tendon in time. Of course, this will be lower with the addition of tank and healer damage, but the fact remains that it is an extremely high DPS requirement.

So, the question to those warlocks currently working on the fight or anyone with some good ideas in general, what would you think the best way to handle them would be? From what I've seen through the current logs on WoL, Warlocks definitely fall behind in the burst department against other classes, with the only semi-competitive spec being Demonology.

Personally, I've tried Affliction and Demonology (sorta) for this fight so far. For Affliction, I'm currently soul swapping full DoTs (Corr/UA/BoD) and haunting, then spamming SB, refreshing Haunt once (only get time to do once) and not refreshing any DoTs as they won't last long enough. Doing this can usually net me close to anywhere from 450k to 600k per burn. My demonology numbers aren't that much better, really hoping to get some good tips for that here as it really seems the way to go for this fight.

[Paarthurnax]

Basically from what i have read:

Use two good DS trinkets (WoU + CoC), spec Incinerate Demo and hope the rng gods love you and you get the proper impending doom procs so you can meta like 2 sec before the tendon pops. That's the best we can hope for i think.

[Beyz]

Okay we really only started on this fight thursday, and were only there for like 1 hour, so I'm not going to have a final answer for this one. But seeing as my damage one the first burnphase was 1.2 mil without pet damage added, I'm pretty sure that I'm doing it right for the most part

Basically you wanna run challice + CoC (not that CoC is particulary good for the actual tendon, mostly that it does up to 25% of your damage for the entire fight) and make sure that every tendon phase is delayed to 2 minutes so that challice is ready.

Also having a couple of persons in your raid who's ICD stacking (mostly ICD reliant burners) won't be half bad either. Just make sure to have something to track your ICDs and time left for next Burning Tendon so that you can do optimized damage on the oozes etc for the rest of the time.

I'm conspiring in a little in using H-IotCM given that the default line up is very close to challice line up so if you just throttle your dps for the last 15 sec before Burning Tendon it's going to line up nicely. It'll remove a bunchload of your ooze damage however, so it really depends on whether or not your raid comp can handle the rest of it just fine.

[Palmz]

For shits and giggles when I do see Spine I want to try Affliction out because we have a boomkin and ele shaman.

Try using (if you have them) WoU and Bottled Wishes for trinkets.

While the Amalgamation is casting Nuclear Blast drain life to try and get a Nightfall proc so you can use it first thing when the tendon comes up.

My order will be..
Cast Demon Soul (to save as much time as I can for the next Tendon) Still gives me time to refresh a new UA under Demon Soul.
Cast my Nightfall proced Shadowbolt (if proced)
Use my 4piece but not cast Soulfire just yet
Receive PI from our disc priest
Use Bottled Wishes
Use Soul Swap with UA,Corrup and BoD.
Haunt
Shadowflame
Use my instant Soulfire
Shadowbolt
Drain soul at 25%.

I'll also be bringing my felhunter back before he blows a Shadowbite. So around 1-2% on the amalgamation to make sure he'll use it the second he gets on the tendon.


I have yet to test it and idk if any other locks have but an upside to Affliction is the Amalgamation dps will be much better compared to Demo and a better chance on the Corruptions.

And if you want, Drain Life will help healers with Searing Plasma debuff.

I have yet to test this is in normal or heroic but with LFR ive managed to pull 4 million on the tendon.

[Beyz]

I'll have you know that affli is in no way viable for a 20 sec gap if you wanna maximize burst DPS.

But really, just work out the math for yourself. Just add following to the top of simcraft, configure the actionlist to the optimized and voila.

max_time=20.0
vary_combat_length=0.0

Just by using the default uncofigured sim you can tell that demo is far ahead of affli. BiS affli does 48k in this gap while demo does 70k dps.

[Deleted]

Where is destruction in all of this, approx?

[Beyz]

Again, this is an entirely unconfigured output, but by default settings it does 57k in a 20 sec timegap.

[Deleted]

We'll, at least it gives us an inkling of what to expect. Thanks a lot!

[Beyz]

Just updating with some demostuff

1. Moonwell Challice gives a 9k DPS increase over using WoU-HC
2. The default rotation is actually pulling ahead of most configurations I've tried by now
3. Scale factors goes like this:

              Int     SP      Hit     Crit    Haste   Mastery
Scale Factors 6.2725  4.7687  7.7069  3.0571  6.8815  5.4879
Normalized    1.0000  0.7603  1.2287  0.4874  1.0971  0.8749

Remember that these numbers are generated for BiS setup and that yours may vary by quite a huge margin.

4. If you ICD stack and wait 2 min for each Burning Tendon H-IotCM will also be a 4k DPS increase with a 76% uptime. This trinket puts mastery higher than haste once again.
5. Popping a doomguard is only about 1-2k dps increase depending on the situation.

[Logbc]

CoC is a TERRIBLE idea on this fight. Uncontrollable add damage near the end of that that fight can very easily contribute to wiping a raid.

[Gohzerlock]

Just updating with some demostuff

1. Moonwell Challice gives a 9k DPS increase over using WoU-HC
2. The default rotation is actually pulling ahead of most configurations I've tried by now
3. Scale factors goes like this:

              Int     SP      Hit     Crit    Haste   Mastery
Scale Factors 6.2725  4.7687  7.7069  3.0571  6.8815  5.4879
Normalized    1.0000  0.7603  1.2287  0.4874  1.0971  0.8749

Remember that these numbers are generated for BiS setup and that yours may vary by quite a huge margin.

4. If you ICD stack and wait 2 min for each Burning Tendon H-IotCM will also be a 4k DPS increase with a 76% uptime. This trinket puts mastery higher than haste once again.
5. Popping a doomguard is only about 1-2k dps increase depending on the situation.

Thanks good tips

[Vanel]

For my guild... in 25 man, we only had 1 Warlock and that was for CoE for all corruptions and he was Demo, but he was also the lowest DPS on the tendon which is the main part of the fight. And yes on use trinkets are the best for this fight.

Oh and Dots are terrible for this fight.

[Samania]

For my guild... in 25 man, we only had 1 Warlock and that was for CoE for all corruptions and he was Demo, but he was also the lowest DPS on the tendon which is the main part of the fight. And yes on use trinkets are the best for this fight.

Oh and Dots are terrible for this fight.

For the DoTs thing, that isn't always true. Yes, they're horrible on the corruptions, and if the person isn't careful with them on the Amalgamations, it can be awful. But if you make sure all DoTs are off before 20% on the Amalgamation, and don't use them on the Corruptions at all, they can be really great on the Burning Tendons and for multi-dotting the Bloods. DoTs can be really great on this fight, but only if they're used correctly.

But yeah, I agree about the on-use trinkets thing.


And my guild hasn't started this on heroic yet, but I'm assuming how each our 4 locks is doing on the tendons won't change purely because it's heroic. Currently, it goes our Aff lock (with legendary, also one of the highest on it), me (destro, no legendary), Demo lock (no legendary, and we're doing basically even, it switches each time we do it), and then the other aff lock (no legendary, and I'm not sure exactly where she falls as she hasn't raided in a couple of weeks, so we've passed her in gear)

[Vanel]

For the DoTs thing, that isn't always true. Yes, they're horrible on the corruptions, and if the person isn't careful with them on the Amalgamations, it can be awful. But if you make sure all DoTs are off before 20% on the Amalgamation, and don't use them on the Corruptions at all, they can be really great on the Burning Tendons and for multi-dotting the Bloods. DoTs can be really great on this fight, but only if they're used correctly.

But yeah, I agree about the on-use trinkets thing.


And my guild hasn't started this on heroic yet, but I'm assuming how each our 4 locks is doing on the tendons won't change purely because it's heroic. Currently, it goes our Aff lock (with legendary, also one of the highest on it), me (destro, no legendary), Demo lock (no legendary, and we're doing basically even, it switches each time we do it), and then the other aff lock (no legendary, and I'm not sure exactly where she falls as she hasn't raided in a couple of weeks, so we've passed her in gear)

The only reason I say dots are terrible is because you don't want to kill too many bloods on Heroic, or too fast either. Also DoT's don't continue ticking on the tendon when it is not attackable which sucks.

[Viceversa]

.

Warlock (demo) guide to tendon damage:

Step 1: Unglyph meta glyph for corruption glyph and spec incin spec. Use moonwell chalice

Step 2: Make sure you always have a felguard out before the tendon comes up, all tendons.

Step 3: After the first tendon make sure you are incin / sb as much as possible to get your meta cd reset before the next tendon

Step 4: immolate / corruption as many targets while the amalg is blowing up maybe even some before it's dead. This way you get molten core and shadow trance procs for the tendon

Step 5: once the amalg finishes casting it's explosion pop moonwell and run next to where the tendon will be showing up then pop meta /demon soul before it shows up.

Step 6a (optional): cast incinerate to get 5% crit up for the raid. After the cast is successful and you don't see CoE up, cast that as well.

/tar boss2
/tar boss3
/cast Incinerate

Step 6b: while you are casting the incinerate have your pet use felstorm

Step 7abcdefg: Cast Soulburn / Immolate / Bane of Doom / Immolation Aura / Corruption / Shadow Flame / Hand of Gul'dan

Felstorm will have finished doing it's thing after this

Step 8: cast summon felhunter (wait .5second before telling it to attack so it's shadowbite scales after being summoned) then tell it to attack the tendon

Step 9: spam incin, use shadow trance procs, and use hand again.

Step 10: if the tendon has less than 1.5~1.7 seconds left spam fel flame

When the tendon goes away go back to step 2

.

[Samania]

The only reason I say dots are terrible is because you don't want to kill too many bloods on Heroic, or too fast either. Also DoT's don't continue ticking on the tendon when it is not attackable which sucks.

Yeah, true, didn't really think of that, but it still helps a lot for when they're up. I mean, just coming from someone that's destruction, not having Immolate up really messes up your dps lol

[rijn dael]

+1 demo for this fight

As to how-to-demo it - (updated)
I am undecided on pet swapping - pulled off right after perfect felstorm, you can achieve 2 bites and a full felstorm - which is huge - but it might not always work like that depending on pet glitchy runtime. Sticking with pure felguard for now.
I pop everything except felstorm during the 5sec explosion cast (they are all longer than 20sec available dps time) - demon leap as soon as it explodes, and pop felstorm as soon as I see my pet actually in range.
Ideally you would pop MWC 15sec before the explosion, so that you could use VP trinket in your other slot, but we kill amalgs in about 1m50s, so this never really works out for me.

[Deleted]

I had the same issue deciding spec, but affliction didn't seem that great in the end for 2 tendons. Demonology seems to be able to do sick burst on the one you can use Moonwell + Metamorph, and then you have 2 DG's aswell for Tendon 1 and 3.

A neat thing is you can spam incinerate, but you really have to do it with cutting dots on mobs, and you can reset your Metamorph for each Tendon. Warlock's aren't great on 2 tendon burst, its too short, i thought destruction would do good but its horrible aswell...

Felhunter vs. Felguard demo is also a thing, if you get some nice Molten Core procs and the haste + extra dmg from Felguard DS, you can do some really heavy damage. I didn't have the time to calculate the felbites vs the on demand burst on Spine itself. The issue is that your Felhunter will get a bite off without any proper dots up and felguard you decide the burst on. On the kill itself i used the Felguard, but it might actually not be the best.

[Beyz]

Okay just updating with some actual experience here. Insignia of the Corrupted Mind is very viable. Running it together with MWC and im doing like 1.3 mil on the tries that I'm executing correctly. Even had it at 1.5 mil damage during one burnphase. It requires some timing however so NTK ICD trackers is a must have.

Furthermore I noticed that having DI on a shadowpriest is utterly useless for both parts given that I never had stacks up and he didn't benefit from stacks without dots up obviously. Expecting to do 1.4mil+ for every try the next time.

Still working on the perfect executing of abilities but for now doing this has provided the most DPS:

- Pre-tendron -
MWC + Demon Soul: FG
Meta
Doomguard
Immolation Aura

- Tendron Spawns -
Curse of the Elements
Felstorm
Immolate
Bane of Doom
Corruption
Shadowflame
Soulburn: Felhunter
Hand of Guldan
Incinerate spam

And fyi, ICD stacking is priceless

[Palmz]

Why would you waste Immo aura like that? Its DPET is so high and only last 15 seconds.

You are the only class who is bringing the 5% spell crit debuff so i'd use SB/Incin first before you throw up your DoTs.

You can save BoD behind corrup and Immo, b/c youll only be getting 1 tick of BoD off in 18-19 seconds.

I'd much rather have out the Felguard. Its Demon Soul and the time it takes to waste to blow out a felhunter wouldn't be the best idea.

If you are stuck not getting to use Demon Soul id use the Felhunter.