Demo Warlock on H Spine

[Aethilus]

So I raid in a pretty casual guild that officially raids 8 hours a week but we usually only do 6 at most and sometimes we only raid 1 day for about 3 hours a week. We're currently 6/8H and started H spine progression yesterday, I was under the impression that the demo warlock threshold was about 1m to 1.1m damage done per lift, but I'm only managing 800k to 900k. I have DTR, I use bottled wishes and will of unbinding for the fight since MWC can't possibly be up for every lift.

I'm wondering if I just heard the benchmark wrong or if I'm failing at doing my job properly, I'm not very many attempts in and I know that I've accidentally activated bottled wishes early as well, I do have to use one of my potential dpsing GCDs on curse of the elements because we don't have another source of that as well, though that should have very minimal impact.

Another question I have regarding the fight is do you use your doomguard to help on amalgamations or tendons? And if you use it on tendons, do you have any trouble with it causing unnecessary damage to bloods when the tendon isn't available causing extra unnecessary raid damage?

Edit:

I can't believe I hadn't neglected to do this for 1.5 hours after the thread had started, but I hadn't even posted our logs for the attempts. Here they are:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m3b8i0n3n79hhm3c/

[Shmeh]

/cancelaura parachute
/cleartarget
/tar boss2
/tar boss3
/stopmacro [@target,noexists]
/use 14
/cast
/cast

Hit the macro at the start of the fight, it clicks off parachute. You can hit it whenever you want and it won't do anything unless you have the parachute buff, or a tendon is up. When a tendon is active it targets it, uses bottled wishes, and uses whatever casts you put in at the end of your macro. If you're an engineer add a /use before the /casts to activate your engineer cd. The first 2 casts should be your damage cooldown, and the start of your rotation.

As an arcane mage, mine looks like this:

/cancelaura parachute
/cleartarget
/tar boss2
/tar boss3
/stopmacro [@target,noexists]
/use 14
/use mana gem
/cast arcane power
/cast arcane blast


You should be able to pull a little extra damage from this. At the very least, you won't pop your trinket early anymore.

[asharia]

Hit the macro at the start of the fight, it clicks off parachute. You can hit it whenever you want and it won't do anything unless you have the parachute buff, or a tendon is up. When a tendon is active it targets it, uses bottled wishes, and uses whatever casts you put in at the end of your macro. If you're an engineer add a /use before the /casts to activate your engineer cd. The first 2 casts should be your damage cooldown, and the start of your rotation.

As an arcane mage, mine looks like this:

/cancelaura parachute
/cleartarget
/tar boss2
/tar boss3
/stopmacro [@target,noexists]
/use 14
/use mana gem
/cast arcane power
/cast arcane blast


You should be able to pull a little extra damage from this. At the very least, you won't pop your trinket early anymore.

engie springs dont work with 'use' trinkets. and since bottled wishes should be up every lift, theres no point macroing springs in.

[Shmeh]

engie springs dont work with 'use' trinkets. and since bottled wishes should be up every lift, theres no point macroing springs in.

Ah, been a long time since I've been an engineer on anything. Thanks.

[gracfuldeath]

Another question I have regarding the fight is do you use your doomguard to help on amalgamations or tendons? And if you use it on tendons, do you have any trouble with it causing unnecessary damage to bloods when the tendon isn't available causing extra unnecessary raid damage?

Both amalg and tendon! And you use it twice first plate first lift, third plate too. You should pop it while burning the amalg with BoD on the amalg. Resummoning felguard during the cast and stuff, make sure to keep attacking the amalg for keeping WoU stacks up, then BoD/BoA on the tendon to put the doomguard back on it!

The doomguard won't attack the bloods. It won't attack anything that doesn't have a BoA or BoD on it. It's in the tooltip.

[Aethilus]

Ty for the help, looking still for someone who's finished the fight to provide me a benchmark to aim for and info on how the doomguard behaves on the fight, I already have a macro very similar to the one above which has worked fantastically.

---------- Post added 2012-04-25 at 05:34 PM ----------

Both amalg and tendon! And you use it twice first plate first lift, third plate too. You should pop it while burning the amalg with BoD on the amalg. Resummoning felguard during the cast and stuff, make sure to keep attacking the amalg for keeping WoU stacks up, then BoD/BoA on the tendon to put the doomguard back on it!

The doomguard won't attack the bloods. It won't attack anything that doesn't have a BoA or BoD on it. It's in the tooltip.

I just got myself in combat with 3 targets via fel flame and then summoned doomguard, it handily killed all 3 targets even though they didn't have BoD or BoA. I know I can keep one of them on the amalg and prevent that, but there are windows of time where there is no amalgamation or tendon active.

Second question, is it really worth using one of the dps GCDs on a BoA for tendon? It seemed to me like I was losing damage when I tried to get one up, I've been doing CoE, immolate, corruption, then standard dps rotation.

[gracfuldeath]

Ty for the help, looking still for someone who's finished the fight to provide me a benchmark to aim for and info on how the doomguard behaves on the fight, I already have a macro very similar to the one above which has worked fantastically.

---------- Post added 2012-04-25 at 05:34 PM ----------



I just got myself in combat with 3 targets via fel flame and then summoned doomguard, it handily killed all 3 targets even though they didn't have BoD or BoA. I know I can keep one of them on the amalg and prevent that, but there are windows of time where there is no amalgamation or tendon active.

Second question, is it really worth using one of the dps GCDs on a BoA for tendon? It seemed to me like I was losing damage when I tried to get one up, I've been doing CoE, immolate, corruption, then standard dps rotation.

Well, I have finished the fight... Yes you can get up to 1mil or so if the stars aline with MC procs, or you can be bleh with no procs and do more like 800k. Or be even worse and not even have meta. It really all comes down to luck once you've gotten rid of all the silly mistakes to be made. Luck on MC procs for better tendon damage, and luck on ID procs to even have meta up for second lifts. This is the first week since the first kill that I've been able to get 5/6 metas per lift, and I accidentally popped it at the very start.

As for the doomguard. I have too seen it attack non BoA/BoD targets. But I moreso see it not attack non BoA/BoD targets. It is SUPPOSED to only attack BoA/BoD targets, and the majority of the time I've seen it follow the tooltip.

Yes and no. BoD for the first lift is a must, you get one tick out of it, and your felhunter get's an extra dot to chomp on, and for the first and third plate, your doomguard will for sure attack it which makes it required to put it up if you pop the doomguard. As for the second lift, currently having a convo with someone else on those specifics, but several extra experienced locks say that you still put up a bane, but use BoA instead since hopefully you did enough dmg the first lift to not have a full 15s or more on the second lift. It also gives the felhunter more umph in it's shadow bite.

---------- Post added 2012-04-25 at 11:50 PM ----------

And even if the doomguard attacks some bloods. It is fine. One blood dying is not going to kill the raid. AoEing bloods at the wrong time will kill the raid, and the doomguard does not AoE.

---------- Post added 2012-04-25 at 11:52 PM ----------

And as for maximizing your tendon dps in general, a macro that includes a /castsequence is pretty much the way to go. Spamming that minimizes the error of being late, hitting the wrong key and having to cancel the cast, or doing things not in the order your plan on doing. Imo, if you're not using a castsequence macro at all, you're hurting yourself to some degree.

[Rustjive]

Ty for the help, looking still for someone who's finished the fight to provide me a benchmark to aim for and info on how the doomguard behaves on the fight, I already have a macro very similar to the one above which has worked fantastically.

---------- Post added 2012-04-25 at 05:34 PM ----------



I just got myself in combat with 3 targets via fel flame and then summoned doomguard, it handily killed all 3 targets even though they didn't have BoD or BoA. I know I can keep one of them on the amalg and prevent that, but there are windows of time where there is no amalgamation or tendon active.

Second question, is it really worth using one of the dps GCDs on a BoA for tendon? It seemed to me like I was losing damage when I tried to get one up, I've been doing CoE, immolate, corruption, then standard dps rotation.

I pop DG 1st and 5th lifts. I don't recall him ever getting a bolt off before BoD gets on the tendon (which was applied after Incinerate and Immolate). Post lift the Amalgamation is usually up for us, and he doesn't get a bolt off before I Bane the Amalgamation either.

If you want the Bane to tick (on a full lift) it must be cast before your 4th spell. On the 2nd lift of every tendon it might never get a chance to tick. Agony isn't worth it (or is barely worth it because of Shadow Bite, I'm not sure).

I did 4.575 million in our kill the other night to Tendons, dying with a few seconds to spare on the last lift. I may have lost a few seconds earlier in the fight on tendons due to a grip/rez, but that number is pretty close to my average. I ran BW/LFR WoU, but I could've done a lot more tendon wise running MWC and BW (and playing better). My guild doesn't need me to CoE. I just chose to do more Amalgamation damage (9.18m in this case). My numbers are for 25 man. I don't know how they compare to 10m numbers. My gear is fairly terrible though (double counting Heroic Lightning Rod puts my ilvl at 398.5), and I'm Destro forged.

[Aethilus]

I pop DG 1st and 5th lifts. I don't recall him ever getting a bolt off before BoD gets on the tendon (which was applied after Incinerate and Immolate). Post lift the Amalgamation is usually up for us, and he doesn't get a bolt off before I Bane the Amalgamation either.

If you want the Bane to tick (on a full lift) it must be cast before your 4th spell. On the 2nd lift of every tendon it might never get a chance to tick. Agony isn't worth it (or is barely worth it because of Shadow Bite, I'm not sure).

I did 4.575 million in our kill the other night to Tendons, dying with a few seconds to spare on the last lift. I may have lost a few seconds earlier in the fight on tendons due to a grip/rez, but that number is pretty close to my average. I ran BW/LFR WoU, but I could've done a lot more tendon wise running MWC and BW (and playing better). My guild doesn't need me to CoE. I just chose to do more Amalgamation damage (9.18m in this case). My numbers are for 25 man. I don't know how they compare to 10m numbers. My gear is fairly terrible though (double counting Heroic Lightning Rod puts my ilvl at 398.5), and I'm Destro forged.

Again to you and the others in thread thanks for the help. I only have 399 gear in the set I use for H spine, 397 in other fights when I'm using MWC. Like I said we've only done about 3-4 hours total of 'progression' on spine and much of that was not attempts but rather just discussing strategies.

Our best attempt the raid died during the 4th lift with the 2nd plate about to die, I know the 3rd plate is again exponentially harder than the 2nd, just as the 2nd was much harder than the first, but we'll have our first full night of progression tomorrow and hopefully make some progress into that or even kill it. On a side note, we do raid 10man.

Another question I have is whether or not it is possible with just 5 dps to the third tendon in a single lift assuming bloodlust and potions are used for that lift. So far we've been practicing trying to kill the first tendon in that manner, and we get it to about 25% without potions, I don't think 5 potions would make that much difference though, plus naturally there is much higher potential dps by everyone during that lift than during the 5th.

Edit:

I can't believe I haven't done this yet, but its unfair for me to ask for advice without giving more information in the form of our logs. I'm actually way worse off than it indicates according to this, but then the only place I can see to analyze damage done to tendons specifically says it doesn't include pet damage, so I don't know.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m3b8i0n3n79hhm3c/

[lockattack]

So I raid in a pretty casual guild that officially raids 8 hours a week but we usually only do 6 at most and sometimes we only raid 1 day for about 3 hours a week. We're currently 6/8H and started H spine progression yesterday, I was under the impression that the demo warlock threshold was about 1m to 1.1m damage done per lift, but I'm only managing 800k to 900k. I have DTR, I use bottled wishes and will of unbinding for the fight since MWC can't possibly be up for every lift.

I'm wondering if I just heard the benchmark wrong or if I'm failing at doing my job properly, I'm not very many attempts in and I know that I've accidentally activated bottled wishes early as well, I do have to use one of my potential dpsing GCDs on curse of the elements because we don't have another source of that as well, though that should have very minimal impact.

Another question I have regarding the fight is do you use your doomguard to help on amalgamations or tendons? And if you use it on tendons, do you have any trouble with it causing unnecessary damage to bloods when the tendon isn't available causing extra unnecessary raid damage?

Edit:

I can't believe I hadn't neglected to do this for 1.5 hours after the thread had started, but I hadn't even posted our logs for the attempts

im pretty sure with hero and pot and dg, i do about 1.2-1.6 million. could be wrong, but other lifts im well below that, esp since meta isnt ready for every lift... what i started to do is spread out your pot, dg, and meta so you have a cd for each lift.

other than that man, dont sweat it. its not our fault that locks are so bad at this fight

also, its very hard to get the first one in 1 lift. we got it to 1% last night, we all have 405 item levels - so there is no point in using everyone's cds on it, cuz you need some of those cds for the 2nd and 3rd tendon


DG on tendon... personally i dont aoe the bloods at all. we havent had a problem killing it. also make sure you are killing the corrupted tent right as the nuclear explosion hits

[gakpad]

I just got my legendary this Tuesday, so I imagine they'll be higher, but right now I'm doing around 2-2.2 mil per tendon. Make sure you're popping meta + immolation aura before the tendon is targettable for the extra GCD. Everything else I do has pretty much been covered. Locks are in no way bad at heroic spine for tendon damage >_>

[Jellospally]

Yea, as Gak said. My alt warlock who is 404 Ilevel does 1.3-1.5mil first pop and around 1mil on 2nd pop since tendon dies.

Don't glyph Meta on this fight it is a waste.

Unless you groups dps is really high meta will always be up for the tendon and just do everything else everyone said above.

[Rustjive]

I just got my legendary this Tuesday, so I imagine they'll be higher, but right now I'm doing around 2-2.2 mil per tendon. Make sure you're popping meta + immolation aura before the tendon is targettable for the extra GCD. Everything else I do has pretty much been covered. Locks are in no way bad at heroic spine for tendon damage >_>

While Locks might not be bad for Tendon damage, they're purely a one or the other type class - pick either Tendons or Amalgamation. It's not just because Demo as a spec relies on Meta - pulling 2+ EVERY tendon (and not just on the 1st lift, 1st tendon) requires you to run 2x burst trinkets, unlike other classes which can get by with just one. It's even worse post-nerfs because 6 Metas is far from guaranteed - most locks will only see it up for 4-5 on the average attempt. I don't think I recall a single 15% log where a Lock pulled 6.5 million+ on Tendons, in 10 or 25.

[Sangmourne]

Is Demo the best overall spec to play for raiding in this current Expansion?

[Rustjive]

Edit:

I can't believe I haven't done this yet, but its unfair for me to ask for advice without giving more information in the form of our logs. I'm actually way worse off than it indicates according to this, but then the only place I can see to analyze damage done to tendons specifically says it doesn't include pet damage, so I don't know.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m3b8i0n3n79hhm3c/

To see tendon damage with pets, use the analyze tab. Here it is for the last pull of your night:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...497&target=141

Is Demo the best overall spec to play for raiding in this current Expansion?

There is no fight where Demo is a liability. It is the weakest spec in some fights (Blackhorn, Madness). It is the strongest in some others, by a lot (Yor'sahj), or a little (Ultraxion). Because Demo is almost mandatory for H Spine, most locks will play Demo at some point this tier. You might say that it is the best spec if you had to do all fights with it.

[Yax]

I usually do about 1.1-1.3M on the first lift.

This is how I do it: (taken from my warlock guide at: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ter-Guides-4-3)

6.7 Spine of Deathwing

There is only one spec choice here in my opinion: Demonology. The others just won't do enough damage to the Burning Tendons to be viable.

Start with your Felhunter on this fight, as you won't be popping Demon Soul near the start.

I will go over two things here, breaking Fiery Grip, and burning the Burning Tendons.

First of all, make sure you are watching your timer for Fiery Grip. Pre-cast so that the stun gets broken quicker. Be careful how much damage you do, as you will probably have 2 grips per lift, and you don't want the corruption to die until after the lift. One trick to do here is to put Bane of Doom on the Corruption when there is about 15 seconds left until the grip, so that you get a nice big tick just as it grips. This won't be enough to break it, but it helps. Also, take into account the travel time of your spells. Say if you cast before the grip, the grip might stun someone while your spell is still in the air. This means that even if you're the one who gets stunned you can still do some damage to it.

Second of all (and most importantly), burning the Burning Tendons. Warlocks are not the best class for this. In fact, they're pretty awful for it, but if you get the execution right you can still pull off about 1.2 or 1.3 million on each (first) lift.

There are two methods that I know of for maximising your damage on these, one involves Bottled Wishes, which is the one I will discuss, and the other involves Moonwell Chalice, which I will briefly discuss and mention why I don't use it.

Bottled Wishes is a trinket you can buy from the valor vendor for 1650 valor points. It has base haste and a spell power on use with a 1 minute 30 seconds cooldown. The length of this cooldown is the key to it's usefulness. It basically means that it will be available for every lift, which is what you want. Demon Soul, on the other hand, has a 2 minute cooldown, and will typically only be available for every other lift. Metamorphosis has a dynamic cooldown which has a chance to be reduced each time your filler spell lands. To ensure that you have this available for every lift, it is useful to reforge to a bit more haste than usual (I go for about 2300). You can also replace your Metamorphosis glyph with the Corruption glyph, as you won't need the extended duration of Metamorphosis (each tendon is available for roughly 18 seconds) and the instant cast Shadow Bolt procs will be a dps increase.

Now, there are several key things you can do before the tendon is exposed to maximise your damage:
1. As Amalgamation is about to die (before it starts casting Nuclear Blast), hard cast summon your Felguard.
2. As it is dying, use Drain Soul (if you need soul shards) or spam Fel Flame to keep your Will of Unbinding stacks up (if you are using this trinket)
3. Metamorphosis
4. Immolation Aura
5. Doomguard (if you use this on the 1st lift, you can use it again on the 3rd plate)

As soon as the tendon is exposed:
1. Pop a macro that will use Curse of the Elements (if you're the only one supplying the debuff), Soulburn, Demon Soul and Bottled Wishes
2. Bane of Doom (to get your Doomguard attacking straight away)
3. Felstorm as soon as your Felguard is in range
4. Follow your normal rotation, consuming your Soulburn buff to summon a Felhunter after the 6 seconds of Felstorm
5. If there isn't enough time to cast your filler spell before the plate closes, use Fel Flame

The macro that I use is this:

#showtooltip Soulburn
/cleartarget
/targetexact Burning Tendons
/cast [target=target, exists] curse of the elements
/cast [target=target, exists] soulburn
/use [target=target, exists] Bottled Wishes
/petattack

The wording of this means that I can button bash it while I'm waiting for the Burning Tendons to appear, and it will only use all my cooldowns when the target becomes available.

The second method of doing this is pretty much the same as the first except that you replace Bottled Wishes with Moonwell Chalice (make sure you use Moonwell Chalice before Metamorphosis, so that you actually get the buff). The downside to this however, is that this trinket is on a 2 minute cooldown, and the time between each lift is roughly 1 minute 45 seconds. However, there is a way that this can be worked around. Because Metamorphosis snapshots your mastery, if you use Moonwell Chalice about 15 seconds before you need to nuke, you will still get the entire buff for the entire nuke. This will also mean it should be off cooldown by the time you approach the second lift (you can also go further by using Moonwell Chalice 35ish seconds before the nuke (if you can time it right!), followed by Metamorphosis 18 seconds before the nuke. With a Metamorphosis lasting 36 seconds you will still have Metamorphosis for the entire nuke, and you knock 35ish seconds off your Moonwell Chalice cooldown). Furthermore, the time between the 2nd are 3rd lifts will be about 2 minutes due to having to roll him as well, so you can potentially have Moonwell Chalice available for every tendon.

The reason I don't do this is that it's awkward and when I did do it I didn't see much of a significant damage increase, and our guild wasn't struggling on doing enough damage on them. So, for quality of life, I went with Bottled Wishes.

(Note: a few guilds can now kill a tendon in 1 lift, meaning using Moonwell Chalice wouldn't be very awkward)

A further point I would like to say about this fight, is that your Dark Intent is actually best placed not on a Shadow Priest, as they nuke the tendon with Mind Spike and Mind Blast, and no DoTs at all. This means that neither of you will have any benefit from Dark Intent, and you should place it on a Boomkin, Ele Shaman or even a Survival Hunter (if you're desperate) instead.

PoV Demonology Warlock:





Hope it helps.