We tackled Madness of Deathwing on heroic mode this week, and after waltzing through the first three platforms right after killing heroic Spine, may have gotten a little over confident. However, the news of the nerf increasing from 25% to 30% next week spurred us on for a kill. Thanks again to Praka (playing Thoqqua) and Orfantal for filling in at the last minute. It was fun to watch the Moonkin turn into a Bear in subsequent screenshots (and even into a kitty and contract a parasite).
Heroic Madness of Deathwing requires some exacting cooldown usage, including external cooldowns for the tanks. For impales on a Warrior tank, I used Shield Wall, alternating with either Pain Suppression from Kal or a Last Stand / Enraged Regeneration combination and Hand of Sacrifice from Noondez. For Orfantal, he used Barkskin, alternating with Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regeneration and a Safeguarded Intervene from me (what a joy to have a reason to take those talents).
For parasite placement, we were humming along putting the parasite in the yellow Nozdormu dome, and burning it down with ranged only, followed by burning it down in amongst the AoE into the bloods. I can only resist Whipshamazin for so long, so on the last couple of attempts we moved to the strategy for the final platform, placing the first parasite very close to the corruption. It certainly didn’t make a difference for the first platform, but I’m told we gained 5 seconds overall, so I’ve got to be happy with that. The downside of placing the parasite outside the dome is that it blows up twice as quickly, the upside is that it’s a much easier for all DPS (and tank not tanking) to switch, burn it down and have spellweave hit the corruption that is up. Even at 25% the overall enrage timer is pretty well tuned with getting through each platform, so every second counts.
While the first three, and with a little practise, all the platforms are relatively straightforward, there is still a lot that can go wrong. It is one of those heroic fights where a couple of basic mistakes can eat through the one battle res and wipe the raid. It is also one of those fights that takes a long, long time to get to the part you haven’t practised, and that can wear on the focus of the raid as well.
Like a lot of groups, we had a significant amount of trouble with the bloods in the last phase. We tried keeping Terrors up to make the most of spellweave and efficiency with AoE, but it just resulted in some very dead tanks. Usually saying very dead would be a little redundant, but in this case it bears repeating. Very. Dead. Tanks.
We had various methods of slows with a mage, shamans, frost DK and warlock in the group. To shore things up, I toodled back to Stormwind and mangled my spec some more for Piercing Howl. Getting those those first couple of shouts up on consecutive GCDs as the bloods spawned made sure that the little bastards didn’t get too far before getting hit with everything else.
Our final strategy for the last phase was to DPS Deathwing’s head down to 3% above the next blood spawning mark, kill the fragments, kill the terrors (inside the yellow dome, focussing one at a time) and then load up the head again. So full of dots, we’d tick past the next mark and zerg the bloods. As long as he doesn’t heal up past that 5% increment, you can repeat it for the next increment. One of our worst attempts (aside from getting all the way through to the last phase) Deathwing was healed up past 25% as we would spawn wave after wave and his health awkwardly bounced over and under each 5% increment.
After killing the bloods at the 10% increment, it’s a zerg to 5% to kill more bloods while ignoring the fragments, and having the tanks just pick up the terrors. At this point depending on RNG, you may have some deaths due to unfortunate shrapnel placement.
It was exhillarating to get the kill on our “ultra-last” pull of the night, and a big grats to Whipshamazin who picked up our first [Life-Binder’s Handmaiden]!
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