Spriest on Madness Kill

[Twattle]

Hey all!

Just hit 85 on my spriest and I have been following Kilee's guide pretty close. One fight that I'm having trouble with is the madness fight. I read alot of shadow priests generally dot up all four targets with dots, but the one thing I'm unsure of is, while dotting up 4 targets at once, am I supposed to still mindblasting on cooldown? And as for refreshing SW:P, should I be refreshing it on each target by using MF? or because there are so many targets, just hitting SW:P to refresh. Thanks again!

[Dorfie]

4 Targets?

[Twattle]

If your on the central platforms, you have a leg to the left and right of you, plus the platform your on, and the corruption.

[Veyne]

I, too, am confused about what you mean by "four targets." I'm having trouble thinking of any part of the fight which has four. At most, there's usually either three targets, or a whole lot of them. But I'll try my best to help.

During the first phase, your priority is Elementium Bolt> Mutated Corruption > Arm/Wing Claw. The Arm and Wing Claws are the big ones grabbing hold of each of the four platforms. The Mutated Corruptions are the glowing tentacles that pop up from behind the platforms. The Elementium Bolts are the big chunks of Rock Deathwing shoots at you and goes boom when they land. For any platform where Nozdormu's still alive, your group should never have trouble killing the Elementium Bolt before they land. If your DPS is slow, it may be beneficial to roll dots on Elementium Bolts, but usually, Mind Spike/Mind Blast chains are about all you can mamage before your group destroys the bolts.

So really, during phase one, you generally only have two targets to worry about. Here's my advice for phase one.
Make a macro to set your current target as your focus, and either macro or keybind a button to target your focus. When the encounter starts, and each time you go to a new platform, immediately set the Arm/Wing Claw of that platform to your focus, and start rolling your dots. Whenever the Mutated Corruptions pop, immediately switch targets and roll a new set of dots on the new target. Whenever All of your DoTs have plenty of time left on their durations and Mind Blast has a bit of time before it's off cooldown, thus, all you're doing is Mind Flaying, hit your target focus button and refresh Vampiric Touch when necessary and try to refresh Shadow Word: Pain with Mind Flay.

ALWAYS KEEP DEVOURING PLAGUE ON YOUR HIGHEST PRIORITY TARGET, meaning, it should be on the Corruption at this point.

At this point, it's just about juggling Shadow Word: Pain with Mind Flay and Refreshing Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague as necessary. Always try your hardest to cast Mind Blast whenever it's off cooldown and, again, on your HIGHEST PRIORITY target. Mind Blast is still your strongest spell after DoTs, unless below 25% boss health, in which Shadow Word: Death pulls ahead. But you also want to hit Mind Blast on cooldown to keep Empowered Shadow up. Multi Dotting isn't nearly as good as it can be without Empowered Shadow.

When the Mutated Corruptions are down, make sure to put Devouring Plague back up on the claw and do your single target rotation as you normally would. When Deathwing casts Hemorrhage, target whichever tank will be picking up all the adds and Mind Sear. Try to time a Mind Blast before so so that you have your Empowered Shadows buff. When the adds are down, kill the Claw as normal.

On the fourth platform, when Deathwing conjures Blistering Tentacles, you'll be Mind Spiking and Mind Blasting. Try to hit tab twice when they first spawn so that you get plenty of time on the second nearest target, as much of your DPS will likely be hitting the first tab target (nearest).

During the second phase, keep Deathwing's face as your focus target, and keep your DoTs rolling on him. When all the miniature tentacles spawn, if they're clustered fairly close together, target a central tank or melee DPS and Mind Sear. It wouldn't hurt to toss out a few Shadow Word: Pains. When the two big adds pop up, Keep your DoTs rolling on both, with Devouring Plague on the kill target. Still, keep dots on Deathwing's big, ugly face. And always Mind Blast on Cooldown unless you're doing MASS AoE, then only Mind Blast to refresh the Empowered Shadow buff.

Do this, and you should be rocking the charts.

[Worshaka]

You need to be careful Multi-dotting away in this encounter. We have worked out it's far easier to 2 heal this encounter with a single tank giving us 7 DPS. The only way 2 healers will not get overwhelmed is if you don't allow a leg to go below 90% before the corruption and elementium bolt are dealt with. If you do let the leg go below 90% the raid starts taking AoE damage on top of the corruption and elementium bolt damage, not to mention that AoE damage is up for a larger proportion of time. While the AoE damage is not enough to kill anyone, it's enough to send the healers OOM over the length of the encounter.

As such we DPS a leg to 95% then focus 100% on the corruption, then the elementium bolt then back to the leg. Doing it this way means we only get 1 impale (hence don't require a 2nd tank) and we can have the corruption dead before the elementium bolt appears. This has made the encounter infinitely easier.

That means no multi-dotting for me, so while I do less DPS, the encounter is much easier to complete... I'm sure that won't stop some people going with the higher DPS however.

[Dorfie]

You need to be careful Multi-dotting away in this encounter. We have worked out it's far easier to 2 heal this encounter with a single tank giving us 7 DPS. The only way 2 healers will not get overwhelmed is if you don't allow a leg to go below 90% before the corruption and elementium bolt are dealt with. If you do let the leg go below 90% the raid starts taking AoE damage on top of the corruption and elementium bolt damage, not to mention that AoE damage is up for a larger proportion of time. While the AoE damage is not enough to kill anyone, it's enough to send the healers OOM over the length of the encounter.

As such we DPS a leg to 95% then focus 100% on the corruption, then the elementium bolt then back to the leg. Doing it this way means we only get 1 impale (hence don't require a 2nd tank) and we can have the corruption dead before the elementium bolt appears. This has made the encounter infinitely easier.

That means no multi-dotting for me, so while I do less DPS, the encounter is much easier to complete... I'm sure that won't stop some people going with the higher DPS however.

We've never done that. The damage the leg puts out above 80% is barely noticeable. We usually get our leg to around 80% before the corruption even comes out and it's never been a problem.

This is from a healing perspective as well.

[Deleted]

He means that he should jump to the two platforms on each side of him and DoT those things up and the two targets on his platform.

[Ineras]

I just multi-dot the Arm/Wing Tentacle and the Mutated Corruption. Personally, running around keeping 4 targets multi-dotted seems like it may not be a good idea because the Mutated Corruption's Crush ability.

[Veyne]

You lose a lot of DPS time if you're doing crazy time like hopping between all four of the platforms. DPS time that you'll make up by Mind Flaying and Mind Blasting on the platform you're on.

As others have said, you may want to be careful DPSing the Arm/Wing Tentacles at first. The way our guild does it is we only let people hit the tentacles to get stacking buffs and other things ready to pull maximum DPS on the Mutated Corruptions, however, letting our DoTs tick away after that isn't going to pump out enough damage to bring the Arm Tentacles down below the danger point. We have two Shadow Priests in our typical 10 man raiding group, and both of us keep our DoTs rolling on the Arm/Wing Tentacles while DPSing the Mutated Corruptions.

[Deleted]

I don't understand the reasons why anyone would run around multi doting each platform for one the damage done for each platform would be negligible where as the time spent per platform for the rest of the group would increase which would require more healing and more dps from those players to survive.

Essentially you are padding your own dps numbers if in fact your numbers are higher then normal while also making the fight harder for your raid group, when your group can 9 man the fight then you can run around trying to get no1 on WoL.


Ah wait I found this vid showing what I think he is talking about
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2od2V...MM-TN3F2l4IDWB


In this case if you are not actually jumping to other platforms and simply mind flaying to keep pain up on the other arm while also assisting the main platform then I guess it would make sense and would be worth while.

[stickyjam]

just the 2 targets to roll dots on, MS>MB on bolt. win win.

focus arm, face the tentacle, win win.

[Deleted]

If your raid starts either of middle platforms, you can dot your platform and another middle one + tentacle while standing in one spot. So dots in 3 target for some time.