Spine Burst Rotations

[Sadinar]

Our group has just started heroic spine, and our goal is to get the first tendon down in 1 burst phase(with lust/pots). We aren't having too much trouble getting it down in 2 phases, usually 1 good burn phase right now gets us to 25-30% and we're all looking to improve to see if lust+pot can push us to 1 lift on the first tendon. My armory is in my sig, and I'm running masterfrost.

To that end, I'm posting here to try and figure out the optimal ability usage for that. I'm not too worried about dps on other tendons, as I said, we can comfortably get it in 2 lifts, I'm trying to maximize it for one lift. With that, I'm thinking I should reforge some out of haste(perhaps down to ~1500 haste) but my question is what my ability usage should be. Right now I'm popping my cooldowns(valor trinket/pof/etc) right as the tendon lifts. I'm going into the burn with high RP and full runes, however, given that I have lust and am willing to pop ERW under lust, should I be obliterating at all? Should I just HBx4, blood tap, HB till out of death+frost runes, then ERW? Should I be using obliterate at all? What about Frost Strike vs HB? I'm not sure what I should be prioritizing here.

Also, if I'm not obliterating, should I bother with outbreak? Thats a GCD for plague strike which I don't think is worth it over those 18s, is it? Should I be popping my cooldowns 1s before the tendon pops so I don't waste a gcd on ghoul? That in turn means I lose 1s of PoF/Blood Fury but get an extra attack in(and thats assuming optimal, I'm likely to pop it a second too early and waste even more of the cd).

[Shiveron]

Lusting first plate during progression is not very smart. Once you see 3rd plate you'll know why. As for burst spam HB and frost strike pretty much. Start FS'ing at runic cap and then alternate back and forth between howling and frost. It's only up for 18 seconds so blow everything you can. You should definitely be saving your CD's for the tendon and i'd macro rotting skull to outbreak and open on the tendon with it. It's 1 gcd in the 18 seconds it'll help more than hurt. Blow ERW on first tendon, it will be back by the 3rd. Also, do NOT use that bone-link fetish unless you want to single handedly wipe your raid on the 3rd plate. You should be using eye of unmaking with rotting skull.

[Vereesa]

Just a general tip: regardless of whether you play Masterfrost or Hastefrost, you should never open with 4 Howling Blasts; you need to get your runes on CD as quickly as possible and that's best achieved by Obliterating.

More on topic: If (which is most likely the case since you're Bloodlusted) you can comfortably not run out of Runes whilst Obliterating and Frost Striking (as opposed to the more Howling Blast-centric rotation) the Tendons, then that's what you should be doing for maximum burst.

Also, remember to pop your ghoul a bit before the Amalgamation's Nuclear Blast goes off (try to have an FC proc up) rather than during the burn. That's because it isn't worth the GCD during the burn, and even then it takes a while to actually start whacking the Tendon.

[Deleted]

Why would you use Howling Blast? Unless you have 2400+ mastery and the Firelands mastery trinket up, Obliterate is better by far. Basically ignore Rime procs, spam Obliterate as much as possible while maintaining resources. Yes, you should even Obliterate beyond 130rp if needed, just as long as you can Frost Strike the runes back up. This is a very wasteful rotation but since you only need to do it for 18s, it isn't a problem. Obliterate does the most damage per gcd, and you only have 18 gcds. As many as physically possible of those gcds should be Obliterate, the rest Frost Strike, nothing else. It's the highest dps rotation.
10stack str trinket -> PoF+Trinket -> Ghoul -> Outbreak -> Obliterate. Try to Frost Strike instantly after Obliterate when possible, to ensure a higher KM proc rate on Obliterate.
One more thing you can do is reforge completely out of Expertise since the tendons cannot dodge/parry at all.
There's no reason not to lust on first tendon since it will be ready again on the third. Also helps healers with plasma which is key.

[Vereesa]

10stack str trinket -> PoF+Trinket -> Ghoul -> Outbreak -> Obliterate.

Using a GCD for Raise Dead during the burn is wasteful, because you lose precious Obliterates/Frost Strikes in addition to the fact that the ghoul will only get about 13 seconds of uptime. What you should do is make sure your Ghoul is out (and ready to attack) when the plate lifts. That way you don't need to waste a GCD for it, and it'll get far better uptime.

Why would you use Howling Blast? Unless you have 2400+ mastery and the Firelands mastery trinket up, Obliterate is better by far.

Furthermore, Howling Blast will realistically never (in Dragon Soul anyway) outdamage Obliterate on a per-GCD basis with current mastery levels.

[Deleted]

Prior to tendon popping, make sure you dont use runes on killing the amalgamation, you must have all your runes off cd by the time it explodes.

Also when you run from the nuclear blast, melee a blood to keep up your EoE at 10 stacks.

1 second before the tendon pops up,

Trinket + PoF + Ghoul

#showtooltip Pillar of Frost
/use 13
/cast Pillar of Frost
/cast raise dead

Tendon Pops

OB > OB > BT > OB > ERW > OB > OB > OB > FS > FS > FS > OB > OB

For tendons where you dont have ERW you must be slightly cautious and actually use your rime procs so you dont end up rune starved.

[Sadinar]

Lusting first plate during progression is not very smart. Once you see 3rd plate you'll know why. As for burst spam HB and frost strike pretty much. Start FS'ing at runic cap and then alternate back and forth between howling and frost. It's only up for 18 seconds so blow everything you can. You should definitely be saving your CD's for the tendon and i'd macro rotting skull to outbreak and open on the tendon with it. It's 1 gcd in the 18 seconds it'll help more than hurt. Blow ERW on first tendon, it will be back by the 3rd. Also, do NOT use that bone-link fetish unless you want to single handedly wipe your raid on the 3rd plate. You should be using eye of unmaking with rotting skull.

We have actually seen the third plate; our problem is being overrun with bloods during the 3rd plate. Lust during the 3rd plate would do nothing for the DPS unless it can push it to a 1 lift, which seems more plausible to occur on the first tendon lift(as healers/tanks can DPS can do DPS on the first tendon as nothing is going on). Without healer/tank DPS(which is a good million damage on its own) I don't think we'll get it in one lift. So we've decided to try and push a 1 lift tendon on the first plate, which shaves over a minute off of our time to get to the 3rd plate which should lower our blood spawns. But since we're easily pushing over 50% of the tendon per lift, I don't see how lust is useful during that phase unless its essential for healers to keep up, in which case if lust on the first tendon would push it to 1 lift, the healers lives will be much easier with less bloods.

As for BLF, thats just me not logging out in the proper gear. We did madness normal after our attempts so I switched back to BLF, I have the valor trinket and would be using that for spine.

Why would you use Howling Blast? Unless you have 2400+ mastery and the Firelands mastery trinket up, Obliterate is better by far. Basically ignore Rime procs, spam Obliterate as much as possible while maintaining resources. Yes, you should even Obliterate beyond 130rp if needed, just as long as you can Frost Strike the runes back up. This is a very wasteful rotation but since you only need to do it for 18s, it isn't a problem. Obliterate does the most damage per gcd, and you only have 18 gcds. As many as physically possible of those gcds should be Obliterate, the rest Frost Strike, nothing else. It's the highest dps rotation.
10stack str trinket -> PoF+Trinket -> Ghoul -> Outbreak -> Obliterate. Try to Frost Strike instantly after Obliterate when possible, to ensure a higher KM proc rate on Obliterate.
One more thing you can do is reforge completely out of Expertise since the tendons cannot dodge/parry at all.
There's no reason not to lust on first tendon since it will be ready again on the third. Also helps healers with plasma which is key.

This is exactly what I was hoping for, thank you. It seems I've been misinformed, I was prioritizing HB over Obl during the tendon, I suppose because in a normal masterfrost rotation you only Obl when UH runes are up, so I figured HB was a better use of GCD. It makes sense when you say it, I just never thought of that way. As for the ghoul, should I be PoF/Blood Furying before I summon it, or just summon it early without those just to save the GCD? I suppose I could pop my golemblood up to 7 seconds prior to the burn and summon the ghoul with that. What commands would I want in my macro to immediately get my pet to start attacking? I usually attack corruptions/bloods lying around before the first tendon(obviously not during later tendons) to get my RP up before hand/keep EoU stacks up. I dont want to risk the pet sitting and attacking a corruption for 4s before switching to the tendon.

What level of mastery does it take, however, for FS to be a better use of a GCD than Obliterate? If my 4pc procs, for example, should I prioritize FS over OB?

[Deleted]

reforge all haste / crit to mastery and use the OB > FS > HB rotation and you will pull 1m+ per uplift without potion or bloodlust.