Spine of Deathwing

[Mystryka]

http://www.learntoraid.com/2011/11/28/spine-of-deathwing-video-strategy-guide-25-normal/

[Stevonivich]

Spine of Deathwing is the 7th boss of the Dragonsoul and is a one phase fight. He has one main ability which is Barrel Roll. Remaining abilities are add spawns.

• Barrel Roll will be triggered if the majority of your group are standing on one side. It's a real group killer if you're not focused enough to see where your're going and all of the sudden a barrel roll is triggered and because of that you wipe. Make sure you stand in the middle of his spine unless other directions have been given.

One of the first things you will notice when you land on Deathwing is several tentacles. When one of these are killed, an add called Hideous Amalgamation will spawn, and you require these to blow off Deathwings armor.

• The Tenctacles will occasionly grip and stun a random target, and it can be interrupted by doing enough damage on the tentacle. The tentacles will also place a healing debuff on a random target, absorbing 200,000 healing. The healing debuff and the stun does not exist in LFR difficulty.

When tentacles have been killed and a Hideous Amalgamation have spawned, Corrupted Blood will shortly spawn after. These Corrupted Bloods have to be killed near an Hideous Amalgamation (upon death, they'll leave blood on Deathwings spine, and you can drag the Hideous Amalgamation over it instead), and the Amalgamation will receive a buff which stacks to 9. Once enough bloods have been killed near the Amalgamation and it reaches 9 stacks, the Hideous Amalgamation will start to cast a Nuclear Blast which is meant to blow off a piece of Deathwings armor - Nuclear Blast also deals AoE damage. Make sure the Amalgamation is near Deathwings armor when this happens, and quickly run out of range before he finishes his cast. Now when the Amalgamation have exploded, a add called Burning Tendons will spawn under Deathwings armor and you need to kill it quickly, and a piece of his armor will come off. This needs to be done three times in order to defeat the spine of Deathwing. If you fail with dpsing the add, you simply have to get another Amalgamation and get another Nuclear Blast, and then continue to DPS the add again, its HP does not reset - just make sure you position the new Amalgamation at the same side where the previous one exploded. Sides matter, so if you explode one Amalgamation on the left side but fail to DPS the Burning Tendon add down, and then explode a add to the right, then a new add will spawn with full health and you won't be able to continue on the low health add. Corrupted Blood spawns out of the holes on Deathwings back, which is where the tentacles are in, and the holes will be visible once a tentacle have been killed. The more tentacles you kill, the more holes will there be, and Corrupted Blood will spawn faster because of that.

Use a raid cooldown when the Amalgamation is casting his Nuclear Blast, the damage tends to get abit rough at that point and it's better to play it safe by using an Aura Mastery, Barrier, Tranquility, or even a Spirit Link. From that point forward, it's just a rinse and repeat fight.

Tips & Tricks:

• Using Spirit Link Totem to remove healing debuffs works quite nicely, especially when stacked for a Barrel Roll.

• To help the most with healing kill the corrupted bloods in a group away from the amalgamation until it was low (under 15%) and you have 8-9 puddles ready. Bloods don't hit hard, so you can just have a dps "tank" them and stack the puddles together. When ready, have your tank run the amalgamation through the puddles to stack up the debuff, then run to the explosion spot. Doing this keeps the tank damage laughable until the amalgamation was almost dead, letting the healers focus elsewhere.

• The tendon seems to be a dps check. There's no healing at this time so you may want healers to chip in DPSing this thing.

• After first plate is up, just aoe down all existing bloods to lesson the mayhem.

• Use your own cooldowns on the first Burning Tendon, Heroism/Time Warp/Bloodlust on the second, and then your personal cooldowns on the third one again.

• Rolling seems very sensitive on 10m. Make sure everyone is in center OF the center plates to avoid weird rolls.

Videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jntn6SuuUEc