Locks on Spine Progression

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Locks on Spine Progression

Postby booesq on Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:01 am

BL locks- our guild has been wiping on H Spine for about 3 weeks now. We are fortunate enough to have a shammy that could go ele for totemic wrath should I decide to go aff. Problematically, I am not sure how to really make aff viable here.

I have heard that Shina used aff on progression. My understanding was that she soulburned corruption onto bloods to insure eradication was up for tendons. I imagine she was soul swapping off the amalg as well. I had a couple questions, however.

1. Given the dearth of bloods up for the first plate, what do you do to maximize dps? Are you just potting and dropping dg right away?
2. Are you bothering to tab UA onto the bloods and shadowflaming them on cooldown, or are you solely focusing on burning the amalg?
3. I imagine after some pulls, particularly after any first burns powered by lust, you spend a ton of time in drain soul range. Are you bothering to get up full shadow embrace stacks immediately, or just doing the usual haunt on cd number so you can max out time using ds?


Thanks for the help on the staff, btw. It has been a great help. Particularly thanking you, Nodzz. Were it not for you on that last rag pull, I was concerned Rigg might have had a seizure.
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Re: Locks on Spine Progression

Postby kruciel on Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:01 pm

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Re: Locks on Spine Progression

Postby booesq on Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:43 pm

Yeah, I know. Believe me, I know. Their options are extremely limited, or else I'd be there already.
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Re: Locks on Spine Progression

Postby Shinafae on Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:03 am

Hi ~

Let me try to answer each of your points :

(1) Yes, I was Affliction on progression. We had an Elemental shaman, and Affliction permitted 100 % CoE uptime and a faster applictation of Shadow and Flame (spell critical strike debuff) than is possible with Destruction or Demonology. Additionally, Affliction's strong execute allowed me to coordinate potion + cooldowns to actually do a respectable amount of damage to the tendon on any second-pop where it seemed that damage would be tight. Raid DPS over 22 seconds is highly RNG-dependent and having this level of control was useful.

(2) I absolutely did not Soulburn : SoC anything. You cannot risk accidentally killing a blood too early/late/in a bad spot, and more importantly it is difficult to ensure that the Corruption (stun-rape tentacle) will not be caught in the SoC blast radius sometimes. An unwanted DoT on a Corruption is the last thing you need. I do Soul Swap off the Amalg, or a blood if the Amalg is too low to safely dot. If there are extra Amalgs up I will try to put a fresh Corruption on each shortly before the tendon becomes vulnerable in order to maximise Nightfall/Eradication procs.

(3) Your DPS, as in the number on WoL, doesn't matter one bit on Spine. The fight is about control, not mindless metre padding, and what matters is the damage you apply to certain targets at certain times. In our raid, I do not participate in breaking stuns as warlock nukes are terrible for this purpose and my contribution is not needed. I prepot for this fight like any other. I spend most of my time multidotting amalgs on the first plate as we pre-cleave a second for a quick second pop. I almost never touch bloods outside of an occasional Shadowflame if more pressure on them is needed, or, rarely, as a Soul Swap node/means of keeping WoU stacks pre-plate pop. At one point on progression, I used Doomguard with a potion and other cooldowns about 2 seconds before the tendon became targetable in order to maximise tendon DPS. This is an inefficient use for him (he's only going to manage 50-100k damage to tendon) but worthwhile if your guild must absolutely min-max every last bit of DPS. Eventually, we used a raid comp more favourable to burst and my Doomguard was not needed for tendon damage, so I instead dropped him during Amalg burn phases.

(4) I'm focusing on Amalgs. I will Shadowflame bloods when damage to them is needed only. Our positioning is such that doing so is not a DPS-loss-from-movement - if you do not have a similar setup, I recommend staying off bloods entirely if your raid can spare it.

(5) If you are starting the second pop with the tendon so low that you do not have time to cast Soul Swap > SB > Haunt > SB before execute range, you are probably getting it to mid-low thirties on the first pop. If you can accomplish this on any one pop and still have trouble two-popping other tendons, consider examining how your raid is using its pots/DPS cooldowns. You are frontloading too much damage. Either way, I prefer to get up full SE stacks unless the tendon is literally at 25 percent when the plate pops... in which case it probably does not matter what I do, anyhow.

I hope I have adequately responded to your questions. Being a warlock on this fight in particular is frustrating, but it is possible to do respectable damage with perfect optimisation. Congrats on your staff and best of luck on progression.
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