Squeezing out that extra bit of dps on H Madness 10

[continuousbeing]

Hi all

For the last three nights or so we've been moving through H madness, and I would say we've pretty well got it down at this point. However, we have wiped to enrage pretty much every time we make it to the last platform (he closest of these wipes was, I believe, at 1.3% hp. ), which means we need to be looking for ways to squeeze out some extra dps. This is both over the course of the fight, and specifically on the little congealing blood bastards in phase 2.

As of right now we are running blood dk, hpal/druid/sham, fire mage/sub rogue/arms warrior/destro lock/frost dk/ele sham. We're already going to have out healers, especially our shaman, pump out as much damage as possible during cataclysm, have our pally consecrating/holy wrathing the bloods. But any other advice would be very welcome, as this is starting to frustrate us greatly.

We are also potentially going to be swapping to warrior tank, and have the blood dk sit our for either another rogue or a shadow priest, or possibly a ret pally. All are available. One of the big benefits of dropping the dk for the warrior seems to be that we dont have to wait during cataclysm to make sure his cds come back up for that first impale. But then we lose AMS and dropping tetanus stacks, so I don't know.

We have decided to send our warlock over to blue to start with, and to bring him down a little bit, and then bane him. Aiming for around 85% or so when that last corruption comes up. Not sure if the aoe will be a little much though.

thanks folks

[Bombs]

I'm not sure what you mean by last platform exactly. Does it mean the last platform BEFORE phase 2 starts or, phase 2?

In any case, you have a couple of options here:

1). 1 Tank + Shadow Priest for 2nd impale. Plus Shadow Priests are overall the highest DPS on that fight.

2). Send 2 DPS over to blue and have them bring it to 91% or so before they come back to the green platform.

For phase 2, save Lust/Hero/Timewarp for this phase. Basically...

a) DPS DW down to 17% and everyone stop DPS, let dots tick.
b) Adds will come out, kill adds. Terrors will come out, kill Terrors. Dream only if you have Shrapnel or are tanking.
c) DPS DW down, watch for adds. One person call out where they are about to spawn (ie left, right, behind).
d) This is when everyone's slowing abilities need to be used. Plus EVERYONE needs to dps the bloods. Make an effort to slow them all down at the same time so that they stay clumped up as much as possible.

e) DPS DW down to 12%, watch for adds. Repeat rest of c).
f) Repeat d).
g) Once all adds die, Lust/Hero/Timewarp and burn DW.
h) Another set of bloods come out at 5%, repeat c) and d).
i) Healers chain cooldowns/dream, burn like hell.

profit.

[Priestion]

Something that might help is your rogue respeccing. Subtlety is really weak for Madness because you can't shadow step the tentacles and it has really weak aoe.

[Deleted]

Another thing you can do is, on the last platform, ignore the second set of blistering. It takes as long to kill them and turn back on the arm tentacle as it takes to just burn through their aoe damage. This will be quite a few essential seconds.

We use BL on the 4th platform, to get the corruption down asap, so depeding on your single target dps you might or might not need to do this, try and gauge this to see if you can make it without BL so you can use it in P2 when you burn from 10% to 0 (while only killing bloods).

Edit: what is your warrior doing? trying to gauge your single target dps on the corruption, why is he so low? He did pretty much 1/3 of the rogue's damage, and warriors are extremely powerful atm.

[Deleted]

Yeah, your warrior definately needs to read up on how he should manage his CD's and stuff. On your 14:58 min try he only used Deadly Calm and Recklessness once. That's kinda weak.

Also your resto druid should use shrooms > hurricane afaik . Just minor tips, I hope you kill it before further nerfs.

[Deleted]

Your warrior and DK should improve their damage output greatly. I have only played a warr on Cata so I will focus on him. His dps is way too low for the fight, and if you wiped at 1.3%, only if 1 of these 2 guys deal an extra 10k dps as the rest of the team, DW will be down with no problem. Have your warrior reforge to full mastery as spellweave is king on this fight. He also has some bad enchanting going on (bracers/chest), he could fix it. However, I don't think that these minor changes will do any huge difference judging from his overall reforging/enchanting and especially his spec (he doesn't stance dance?, booming voice over incite?). Personally, I don't think he's hc raid material. Either have him run by some warrior forums / elitistjerks etc, or just replace his spot immediately (which might not be an option if he's a friend). The DK should be able to deal that extra 10k dps as well. Have your rogue respec to combat/ass, as it is better for this fight (no shadowstep).

The easiest way to fix the dps, would be to replace these 2, and have some of the dps w8ing to try. Their damage could be better.

[Deleted]

Leave a couple of bloods alive and spellweave cleave off them?

[Deleted]

have one Person with Slow (Warrior Piercing Howl / Rogue Slow with Crippling Glyph) or whatever and go slow the 5% adds and nuke Deathwing you can even ignore them if your DPS doesnt suck.

[Deleted]

Something that might help is your rogue respeccing. Subtlety is really weak for Madness because you can't shadow step the tentacles and it has really weak aoe.

I can't say a whole lot because we are in roughly the same boat, but I can tell you that Priestion is right. I honestly see no reason to bring a Subtlety Rogue to this fight. Combat can cleave at certain points which is great, and Assassination straight up does the most damage both single target and AoE. Subtlety brings nothing to the table besides for a shorter cooldown on Vanish if you are using him to soak Impales. And without doing any math I'm pretty sure an Assassination Rogue specced into the Vanish cooldown reduction will still outperform a Subtlety Rogue by quite a bit.

[Deleted]

have one Person with Slow (Warrior Piercing Howl / Rogue Slow with Crippling Glyph) or whatever and go slow the 5% adds and nuke Deathwing you can even ignore them if your DPS doesnt suck.

This!

If you pop major cooldowns + heroism at <10% when the adds die you can simply pop dream at 5% and have everyone nuke the boss if you can keep the 5% adds slowed.

[LET JIMMY RAID]

The fight's long enough to lust twice, if you aren't already. We lust on the first platform about 10-15 seconds before cataclysm, and our second lust comes just after the 10% bloods.

[continuousbeing]

Thanks for the input! Yes, we had our rogue sub because of the lowered vanish cd, but I'm going to get him to go back to combat and just go into the sub tree for it. Will probably have our warrior tank this on Monday so we don't have to wait for tank cd's to come back up during cataclysm on red/yellow. Seems like we can save an extra 20-30 seconds right there. I am a little worried that losing his bladestorm though will give us trouble with the bloods, as he did the single most amount of damage to them by almost a million. I'm hoping a rogue re-spec and having a shadow priest would help alleviate this issue.

Also, a follow up. I have been looking at a lot of other parses, and the amount of spellweave damage people get is simply insane. On the order of double or more what our highest people are getting. What is the deal here? Just leaving up a blood the entire time next to the arm/wing? Or is there some other little thing we've been missing?

[Hartlin]

Lots of advice here is great, especially the "how to manage P2" part; that's identical to how we do it.

As someone said, lust on the pull and then at 7% or so.

Have your mage go Arcane if you need the extra DPS. There's your kill right there, assuming he can play Arcane reasonably well.

[Rätti]

We 2 healed it, and seeing how you have a resto shaman & a hpala just like we do, it should be no problem.

[Deleted]

Also, a follow up. I have been looking at a lot of other parses, and the amount of spellweave damage people get is simply insane. On the order of double or more what our highest people are getting. What is the deal here? Just leaving up a blood the entire time next to the arm/wing? Or is there some other little thing we've been missing?

Yea some people simply pad it for meters, some leave a few alive, some always tank bloods on parasites, some put parasites on corruptions on all platforms. With a dk tank he can AMS off the stacks so you can just leave them up till big ones at like 20% or something anyway.

[Deleted]

only your shaman is doing proper dps, rest are on lower side with exception of warrior and frost dk who are rly low, change your war for any ranged, it should be better
also i dont get how youre struggling with dps on platforms if u have 1 impale only and u didnt say but i assume ure focusing on terrors when they spawn from where a lot of time loss might come
kinda lazy to search details in the log, if i get bored, will add/edit something

[Brakthir]

Your warrior and dk are god awful.

[Deleted]

checked a bit more
only your first try is proper on all the others bloods healed deathwing
as i see from spellweave dmg on that try only 2 tentacles were close to each other on that try and it mightve take long for you to kill them with such dps resulting in delaying 15% and 5% switches
tho you should mostly work on killing and slowing those bloods on time i guess

[Whoopsa]

As of right now we are running blood dk, hpal/druid/sham, fire mage/sub rogue/arms warrior/destro lock/frost dk/ele sham

Wat? Affliction > Destro, and Assasination >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Sub for this fight. The Warlock spec isn't all that important, but the Rogue will give you 70% slow on bloods, as well as instant application of 8% spell damage taken, while the 'lock can only put it on one target at a time, costing a GCD to do so. On top of that, Assa just does a lot more DPS than Sub. The only fight in the entire xpack where Sub was viable was Spine, and that's because of the tendon timing with Shadow Dance.

Also, you shouldn't have to be waiting for your DK's cooldowns. They can solo tank it without waiting, just make sure you're utilizing your Hand of Sacrifice.

[continuousbeing]

Thanks once again for the helpful input! Hopefully we will get this down on our next raid night.

One follow up question for Mione: Is using army on the third corruption viable simply because army is taunting it away, thus taking the impale?