Spellweave abuse on Heroic Madness is just for meter padding/killing groups quickly?

[Leblue]

My GM and myself have been going back and forth on keeping bloods up while dpsing the tentacle with him saying its worth it to do so because "our dps is no longer 50-55k but now its 65-71k". I remain fairly convinced that this is mostly from the spellweave padding itself by the fact that only one of those 20k ticks from the spellweave is actually hitting the claw while all the others are just hitting the other bloods which in turn actually lowers the effective damage we're taking down claws/tentacles if we're purposely keeping them up just to multidot and what not.

I'm of the belief that its more effective to aoe the adds down on top of a parasite or the corruption (if its still up) and get rid of them as quickly as possible unless you're trying to post high dps meters for WoL. I'm not entirely sure how I'd go about doing the math to prove without a doubt its better to use the spellweave to clear out the bloods/corrupting parasite as quickly as possible and then focus dps on the claw/wing tentacle.

Is anyone able to help me with this matter? Thanks.

[Promethieus]

Leaving one blood up after the parasite for melee to cleave off the arm is okay as long as it's not straining the healers because of the DoT that the blood puts up on whoever it's meleeing, and as long as it dies before the next platform. How I see it: dps is irrelevant, it's where you put your damage. If he's doing low damage on the mutated corruption or the corrupting parasite then he's probably just doing it to pad to make himself look better. Not sure if that makes sense.

[Dracodraco]

Spellweave cleave is the best DPS possible for the Madness encounter, but the more bloods kept up, the harder it gets. During progress, my guild was (25 man, obviously, 10 man did not need to cleave to beat the enrages) keeping 3 bloods up.
Consider this - each spellweave tick hits for about 22K to all surrounding targets, including the arm. Now, if you have, say, a class with a 15 second dot, that throws a dot on a single blood, that's 22K every time that dot ticks to the corruption.
A boomkin in BIS hits for about 8.5K and crits for the double with a sunfire - the most powerful version of their dot. Which means that casting any dot on the blood, is going to provide more DPS than putting the actual DoT on the thing you're actually trying to damage itself.
Imagine a DK - they can spread all their diseases with a single global cooldown, and they last for half a minute - on 3 blood targets, that's 22K dps gained for a Dk, by spending one global every 30 seconds. Or ~7.3K for just a single blood.

It also means that any kind of cleave will become worth it for singletarget dps - take a hunter, for example, on 3 targets + the one you're trying to DPS - 22k+22k+22k, + 16K average from multishot, for a total of 82K damage for 40 focus, vs an average of 34K damage for 22 focus by dumping with arcane shot - essentially, Multishot becomes stronger for singletarget damage @ 3 bloods than Arcane shot does. Hunters are known for not having any real cleave viability, outside of Survival due to ISS (and even then you need 3 targets).
Any class that has a DoT that is either easily kept up (EG, 1 global cooldown every 15 seconds), or passive cleave (like a rogue with blade flurry, or a frost DK with howling blast) will gain a huge amount of DPS from spellweave-cleaving.
Assuming, of course, that your tanks can position the blood(s) correct, that is <.<.

So sorry man - can't help you, as your GM is right and you're wrong in this matter.

[Kakera]

Keeping one add alive to stack dots for spellweave procs will bring about the most effective dps gain. You could probably get away with multiple but it's hardly needed.

[Dracodraco]

Keeping one add alive to stack dots for spellweave procs will bring about the most effective dps gain. You could probably get away with multiple but it's hardly needed.

The more adds the better. It's not needed, but the DPS will only become stronger, every add alive means another 7.3K dps DoT on the target, and as said, many classes can begin dumping with their cleave for insane gains DPS-wise.

[Leblue]

I'm fine with me being wrong, I'm just attempting to see if there's anyway we can maximize our dps since its fairly weak. We can do a one lift tendon on spine but we have issues with dps on madness when it comes to the last platform especially. We have four minutes on the enrage timer when we get there and I'm just trying to see if its more effective to have our raid kill off the bloods and focus on that claw. The previous evening (we kept wiping due to derp so we didn't kill it this week yet, should get it tomorrow since we were able to last week) our dps would shoot up for the platforms but a lot of it seemed superficial and not really actually dealing effective damage to the tendon where it could've been focused on the tendon vice multi dotting.

Last night we had a boomkin, shadow priest, two rogues, and a fire mage and were having dps issues on the last platform and the corruptions (not the parasite) so I'm trying to buy time wherever.

[DesireKT]

I'm fine with me being wrong, I'm just attempting to see if there's anyway we can maximize our dps since its fairly weak. We can do a one lift tendon on spine but we have issues with dps on madness when it comes to the last platform especially. We have four minutes on the enrage timer when we get there and I'm just trying to see if its more effective to have our raid kill off the bloods and focus on that claw. The previous evening (we kept wiping due to derp so we didn't kill it this week yet, should get it tomorrow since we were able to last week) our dps would shoot up for the platforms but a lot of it seemed superficial and not really actually dealing effective damage to the tendon where it could've been focused on the tendon vice multi dotting.

Last night we had a boomkin, shadow priest, two rogues, and a fire mage and were having dps issues on the last platform and the corruptions (not the parasite) so I'm trying to buy time wherever.

Hero on the last platform to kill the bolt/corruption with a little remaining on the claw/wing thing... If you are doing that then people just aren't pulling their own weight it shouldn't be an issue at this point, unless everyone is in LFR gear and even then I'm pretty sure it's possible with the current debuff. Maybe you should get more attention to the Corruption say everyone can apply their dots to the bloods once and then focus down the Corruption. I just don't see how it's possible to kill a Tendon in one burn and not the last platform. (You could also force warlocks to save Doomguards for the last platform - ie first and fourth instead of first third and head.)

Our strat for the first few kills was to cleave until the Parasite spawned then aoe them on the Parasite if 1-2 were left alive they just hung with the tanks and generally died to warrior/rogue cleave during Cataclysm.

[Deleted]

Are you ignoring claw aoe, and parasite on the first platform ?
Usually buys you 30-60 seconds overall on the encounter

[Leblue]

First and second platform we place the parasite away and ignore it entirely. The first parasite is just dropped away from the group, the second is dropped up closer to the claw. For the third and fourth platform we've been putting the first one next to the corruption for spellweave cleave, and the second by the claw. What do you mean by ignoring claw aoe?

We're having about 3/4(if our hunter is in the group instead of the second rogue) on the blue platform to start to get some damage on the blue platform. Once the corruption pops we pop bloodlust and go on. We don't pop lust again until the final platform when we're pushing from 9% to kill (current strat). Its how we got our first kill, albeit we killed him right as he enraged. Now we're sitting at dps issues again and I'm trying to figure out where we can buy more time ~_~.

[Seriss]

We're having about 3/4(if our hunter is in the group instead of the second rogue) on the blue platform to start to get some damage on the blue platform. Once the corruption pops we pop bloodlust and go on. We don't pop lust again until the final platform when we're pushing from 9% to kill (current strat). Its how we got our first kill, albeit we killed him right as he enraged. Now we're sitting at dps issues again and I'm trying to figure out where we can buy more time ~_~.

Lust/Hero is better used on the fourth platform. For one thing, it doesn't seem to buy you any time at all to pop it right at the start, and it isn't really necessary on the final platform. The fourth platform is where it gets hairy.

I've seen heroic Madness kills with fewer dps than you say you have without spellweave abuse, so personal dps doesn't seem to be the problem.

You say you can do a one-lift on Spine... that means your dps know how to burst. Are people not focusing things down at Madness properly? How many healers and tanks are you bringing? 1 tank, 2 healers is enough and has been a viable strategy for a long time.

[Mudkiper]

Now, if you have, say, a class with a 15 second dot, that throws a dot on a single blood, that's 22K every time that dot ticks to the corruption.

Isn't spellweave only 35% proc chance

As far as boomkins go there really isn't much in it, if you ignore the bloods and just single target you do pretty much the same damage to the boss, dotting the bloods will get you a small damage increase if you do it right and have good rng but nothing amazing.

[Deleted]

Bad wording on my part.
Do you keep nuking claw on first platform and not stopping to avoid aoe ?

[Dracodraco]

Isn't spellweave only 35% proc chance

As far as boomkins go there really isn't much in it, if you ignore the bloods and just single target you do pretty much the same damage to the boss, dotting the bloods will get you a small damage increase if you do it right and have good rng but nothing amazing.

it always procs on multishot when I fire it off atleast, but there seems to be a small ICD on the proc Mud :s. My first multi shot will make spellweave tick, but my ISS/serpent sting ticks won't untill a second or so has passed. After that, all the serpent stings triggers it again. If you're dotting them up with both IS and moonfire, it might be that there's more than a 1 second ICD on the procs, so the second dot you throw on are effectively doing nothing? Can't really say if there is a 35% chance or not, as I don't dot them up as a hunter, I just know it always procs of my explosive trap ticks/multi shots.

Regardless, with two rogues (blade flurry) and a mage (needs living bomb to be on 3 targets for a haste buff), keeping 2 bloods alive would deffo be worth it DPS-wise. Heck, even the priest just throwing SW:P on the bloods (2 GBC's every 18 seconds) would be worth it, as shadow orbs would spawn more frequently, giving more 3-stack mind blasts, right?

[Leblue]

I'm going to agree on you with that there's probably some sort of ICD because as a disc priest for this fight (atonement spec) I do holy nova every two seconds to try and proc some extra spellweave. If I hit it as it comes off the GCD then I get a spellweave everyother one.

We nuke the claw and ignore the parasite entirely first two platforms (I think that's the aoe you're refering to?). We don't start doing anything to the bloods until they're at the claw unless its the fourth platform because they then come up with the corruption still active.

Right now we're two tanking (Blood DK(GM) and Feral Druid) and we're three healing (Disc priest (myself), Resto Druid, and Holy Pally). I've tried to convince my gm of 1 tank two heals or at least 1 tank 3 healers (we've got at least a rogue and a shadow priest each week) to increase our raidwide dps because I feel when he compares our raidwide to that of other groups, he's not entirely taking into the fact that a lot of people 1 tank 2 heal. My hunter (which I use for the first 6 bosses) is also the most geared toon (aside from the two legendary rogues) and consistently performs best but we can't bring to bear on madness or spine due to what our gm wants for spine and madness. Our bear tank also has a boomkin off spec that isn't half bad as well.

[Mammoon]

Last night we had a boomkin, shadow priest, two rogues, and a fire mage and were having dps issues on the last platform and the corruptions (not the parasite) so I'm trying to buy time wherever.

Tried to read the rest of the thread, but this really, really stood out to me... I only counted 5 dps in that list......

So you are doing 10 man Heroic Madness with a 2 tank, 3 healer strategy at the 30% nerf? I am sure it is possible and some guilds still do it, but this cannot be the best (or even 2nd best) strategy for the encounter, especially with the 30% nerf. Please tell me I am wrong....

It is so incredibly easy to 1 tank, 2 heal this fight at this point... and if your healers are really, really awful, you can 1 tank 3 heal the fight.

Edit: and you have a Feral Off tank? Just make him go full cat dps and if you somehow are getting 2 impales then he can soak the second one with SI (bearcat ftw)... but you really shouldn't be getting a 2nd impale with the 30% nerf, even if your dps are in like full LFR gear... I would really, really recommend 1 tank, 2 healing this (I have 2 healed the fight on all 4 healing classes, it really isn't hard anymore).

[Leblue]

Our dps is a bit...special. The third healer (which was normally me) was a smite healing disc priest and my gm was convinced to do 2 tanks 3 healers because a nice solid chunk of our raid is special ed sometimes. We did end up killing it, our fire mage (which was doing badly) went on his disc priest and I went on my hunter and went BM so we still had lust. Ended up killing it on the second try after we had a screw up the first time round. We also subbed in a frost dk for one of the two rogues, who performed significantly better in all normal gear while the rogue we replaced was about 405 ilvl.

Frost DK ended up crushing the other dps and we killed the fight with about 45 seconds to spare on the enrage. As far as the bloods, we kept them up and somewhat ignored them (dk tank's diseases, bear's thrash, my explosive traps, frost dk's howling blast) and didn't aoe the crap out of them till cataclysm. Boss died again this week, all is well with the world.