World of Warcraft®

So my raid group has been working on HM spine for 4 weeks now, and we can get to third plate but just get overwhelmed. Here is our roster and how the fight normally goes for us:

Raid Comp: Prot Warrior (amalgs), Prot Pally (bloods), Holy Pally, 2 Holy Priests, Boomkin, Hunter, Warlock (legendary staff), 2 arcane mages.

1) Fight Begins: Tanks go to one side and raid to the other, power down corruption, and both tanks receive 2 stacks of the buff. Stack up, roll.

2) Plate 1: We use hero on the first tendon phase and manage to dps it down to ~ 23%. On the the 2nd go we don't use any cooldowns so that we can ensure they are all up for plate 2.

3) Transition. The blood tank pulls bloods over near the whole and kills them with the aid of 1 dps, while everyone else nukes down the corruptions. Amalg tank grabs the amalgs and we all roll deathwing (amalgs pick up the bloods on their way over to us).

4) Plate 2: Same as plate one, except we use cooldowns and potions to get it down. Bloods are becoming a bit of a problem here, but not TOO bad.

5) Transition. Same as the last transition but there are a TON of bloods up. We soak up ~15 bloods and roll him.

6) Plate 3: Our pally who is dealing with bloods, consecrates over the healers, stuns the bloods and runs to the back kiting. A priest lifegrips him to the front when the bloods reach him while the amalg is nuked down. We use cooldowns on the first tendon phase of this plate. ( this is where we're dieing as the blood tank eventually get's overwhelmed, or the healing is too much - should we be killing any bloods here? is that just unneeded damage?) Hero will be up to finish off the plate at the very end should we make it that far.

- Should we be killing bloods in third phase? The amount of damage aoeing them down does is nuts.
- Any tips on getting the corruptions down faster on transition to avoid additional heal debuffs?
- Is there a way to get rid of more bloods?

If you are getting overwhelmed with bloods on the last plate you are either doing a bad job of mopping up the bloods or you are just taking way too long.

If your tanks have the 40% less damage taken buff (they shouldl by then) there should be no need to kite until you are past 11 minutes into the fight.

You will have to obviously kill some bloods on the 3rd plate but if your healers can't cope with random aoe of bloods just have someone single target enough, have your amalg tank pick up bloods as well to help out just make sure people don't randomly cleave and kill debuffed people.

Wow Sabod, my man, you're good at this game...

1. The only time you should EVER hero on the first plate is to kill it in one lift. Its a complete and utter waste otherwise. Regular DPS cds should be MORE than enough to get the first 2 plates down in 2 lifts (Protip: If your tanks aren't helping they're bad, not that this is even needed anymore)

2. Tell your tanks to sweep better. At 30%, its better to oversweep than undersweep, if the amal gets 9 stacks just have your boomkin tranq on top of your normal roll cds

3. Don't wait for the second grip to drag the amal anymore, if someone gets a grip during the tendon just have the hunter break it. With 2 arcane mages tendon damage should be a complete joke. The time spent waiting for the second grip is time you could be shaving off the fight.

4. Roll as quickly as possible. Nobody except healers and the sweeping tank(And even this is dependent on where the bloods are relative to the corruption being killed) is exempt from killing the corruptions, the back one first, and then the one you're using to roll

5. Hero when you drag the amal for the second lift of the 3rd plate to help the healers

6. Your paladin might not be as overwhelmed on bloods if they stopped gemming parry and hit and used any gems they don't need to hit 102.4 on stamina, as this would give them a very noticeable health jump to work with.

7. Chain CDs when bloods get high, The valor trinket has a dodge on use, don't forget that

8. Yes, some bloods dying on the 3rd plate helps control them, the roll cds will be back up during the 3rd plate, use them to catch up on debuffs so you can kill bloods. Honestly the damage isn't that bad unless literally 10+ die at the exact same time.

The thing that stood out to me (as I used to try that method) was that you're applying the buffs before rolling. That is not good. You're probably losing 15-20 seconds by doing that, and the fight is all about getting it over with before becoming overwhelmed. Kill the corruptions, wait just a few seconds (so the debuff can be applied) and then roll. If you do it well enough and smoothly enough, you could have 3 debuffs running while rolling. Then you can have everyone group on the right side, tanks on the left (or however you do it) and bounce it there. Mind you, the debuffs should be bounced while rolling, simply because you have to do it anyway to get it to change. But making that switch should save you a nice chunk of time.

For plate 1, if you're going to use Heroism, then you should be blowing every cooldown as well (pots DPS cooldowns). And both tanks and healers should be helping to dps. Since damage is so light and there's relatively few bloods, not much damage is being taken and this is the best time to get everyone involved. Do that and you should be able to down the plate in 1 lift. And using Hero on the 1st plate ensures that everyone's personal dps cooldowns will be available. It's probably the best time to use it. Because if you can get 1 plate off in 1 lift, you've just cut down the whole fight by a minute, which means even less bloods at the end.

Otherwise it's just a matter of making sure things are done as quickly as possible. Are folks standing around before rolling or are they immediately moving to the roll location even if the corruption isn't dead yet (and dpsing it on the way)? That can add a few seconds to the time. Are folks DPSing the amalg as quickly as possible? Are folks gripped too long? Are grips happening at bad times (i.e. exposed tendon). That sort of thing.

I wouldn't bother killing any more bloods than is needed to get to 9 stacks on the 3rd plate. Since every time a blood dies the raid takes physical AoE damage, killing huge numbers of bloods on the 3rd plate is just begging for a wipe. That's why kiting is so useful. Of course, if you can get a plate down in 1 lift and shave away seconds from other parts, then you probably don't even need to kite as the bloods won't be near as many.

We don't bother trying to game the debuff/buff. Any time you waste thinking about it is more time bloods have to spawn. We tried AE'ing bloods and mopping them all but it put too much stress on the healers and I'm not sure how effective it was in the long run. It was much better just to immediately roll after killing the 2 corruptions on a transition and just pick up whatever residues were available. We still had several bloods up after each roll and probably a few random residues that got missed. Doing it this way cut the time down dramatically however and that seemed to be more effective.

Hero on the first tendon is a bad idea by a small amount. You won't have it up by the end of the fight to get a second one off unless you are taking way too long. If hero had a cooldown that was 60 or maybe even 30 seconds faster you could get 2 off. As for the bloods on the third plate you don't need to kill more than the amount needed to stack the amalg but I would disagree that stopping at exactly 9 is a good idea. I've seen too many situations where you get to 9 and people scream about not dps'ing the bloods, then one of them makes it to a hole while the amalg tank is trying to stack. Having one or two extra isn't going to significantly increase the amount of damage taken and gives a bit of a buffer.

Biggest thing we had issues with (and in my 25m run even with a kill we still haven't gotten sorted) is managing the grip timers. In 10m we have range dps and the amalg tank burning down the corruption during the nuclear explosion to avoid having a grip during the tendon. This can cause some issues with the amalg tank not being able to dps the tendon much but at least on 10m it seems to insure that nobody gets gripped during the tendon.