Dragon Soul Tactics: Fall of Deathwing

by Tachyon on Sun. 20. November 2011, 11:45

Filed under: cataclysm, guide, strategy, deathwing, dragon soul, raiding

Welcome to the 2nd part of the Dragon Soul raid tactics. If you've missed the first part (Siege of Wyrmrest Temple), you might want to read that first for tactics on Morchock, Warlord Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj the Unsleeping and Hagara the Stormbinder.


Ultraxion
http://www.wowpedia.org/Ultraxion

This fight is a tank-and-spank fight, where especially healers and tanks have to deal with the increasing damage done by this boss. The buffs granted by the dragon aspects (crystals, only one can be active on each player) grants the healers more healing power.
Tanks gain a buff from Thrall, reducing defensive cooldowns by 50% and increasing the duration of defensive abilities by 100%.
The dragon aspects will summon crystals behind the raid in regular intervals. Those are meant to be used by the healers, every healer can have one (and only one) buff for the entire duration of the fight.

• Red crystal (Alexstrazsa): increases healing done by 100%
• Green crystal (Ysera): causes all healing done to be duplicated and distributed evenly amongst the raid
• Blue crystal (Kalecgos): reduces mana cost by 75%, and haste by 100%.

Healers should organize before the fight which crystals each healing class takes, and in which order they want to get buffed.

The fight takes place on two realms: normal and twilight. Players get a bar with a spell button for Heroic Will in the lower center of the screen, which will allow to escape them from the twilight realm for 5sec, butrenders them unable to do anything until they're back in the twilight realm. Some addons may cause problems by obscuring the bar with the special button, so better make a macro for that:
/click ExtraActionButton1
All players gain a Timeloop buff by Nozdormu, which prevents death once (instead of dying, you'll lose the buff and your health is filled up).

• Boss explodes if he's not killed within 6 minutes, so it's also a DPS race (also because his damage increases steadily during the fight)
• Hour of Twilight: tanks stay in twilight realm and use defensive cooldowns to survive this, all other players escape to the normal realm.
• Fading Light: Ultraxion applies this debuff to 1(10)/ 3(25) players. You need to leave the twilight realm using Heroic Will ~2 seconds before the buff expires, otherwise the explosion will kill you.

Warmaster Blackhorn
http://www.wowpedia.org/Warmaster_Blackhorn

Also known as: Lootship. The fight starts with waves of two meele attackers and drakes, which need to be killed, before in phase 2 Blackhorn and his drake Goriona enter the fight.

• Kill adds (Sappers need to die quickly), casters focus on the drakes
• Twilight Onslaught: large swirly patches on ship the ship, this is where Goronia's next attack hits. Enough players need to stand in them to soak up the damage (otherwise the damage hits the ship, and if you lose the ship you're dead).
• Phase 2: Kill Blackhorn and Goriona (drake, will eventually fly away), casters and healers need to stand at least 10y away because of disrupting roar
• Twilight Flames: Goriona casts purple (non-swirly) void zones on the deck of the ship, don't stand in them as they deal massive damage

Spine of Deathwing
http://www.wowpedia.org/Spine_of_Deathwing

After defeating Blackhorn and talking to the NPC on the Lootship, you get ported to the back of Deathwing, where the fight immediately begins.
Be warned: this fight can get quite chaotic, make sure everyone on the raids knows exactly what to do.

• Kill one of the four Corruption Tentacles. Each killed tentacle leaves an open wound on Deathwing, from which adds (large Hideous Amalgamations and small Corrupted Bloods) will spawn.
• Killing Corrupted Bloods near an Amalgamation give it an Absorbed Blood buff. Bring the Amalgamation low, but don't kill it before it has 9 stacks of absorbed blood. Once the Amalgamation has 9 stacks, it will do heavy AoE damage, so meele should step aside and let the ranged classes kill it.
• The Amalgamation will cast Nuclear Blast upon its death, which pries open an elementium plate and exposes a Burning Tendron within. Nuke and kill it quickly before it finishes casting Seal Armor Breach. Once it is dead, another armor plate is removed, exposing two additional Corruption Tentacles.
• Kill the next Corruption to spawn another Amalgamation, and proceed as with the first one.
• The fight is won after 3 Burning Tendrons are killed.

Note: Barrel Roll isn't needed in normal mode, but I suppose it plays a role in hard mode. Barrel Roll can be used to get rid of the adds on Deathwing's back, but players have to get near a Grasping Tendril in order to not to fall of during the barrel roll.


Madness of Deathwing
http://www.wowpedia.org/Madness_of_Deathwing



The final fight against Deathwing takes place at the Maelstrom. There are four platforms around it where players can stand, and each platform is supported by one of the dragon aspects. The platforms are, from left to right:

• RED (Alexstrazsa, presence: +20% health)
• YELLOW (Nozdormu, presence: +20% haste)
• GREEN (Ysera, presence: +20% healing done)
• BLUE (Kalecgos, presence: +20% damage done)

The platform order can be freely chosen (once you've 'done' a platform, you lose the effect from the dragon aspect there).
The recommended platform order is Green->Yellow->Red->Blue. This lets you profit from the +20% dmg buff the longest, and you only have to deal with the Blistering Tentacles on the last platform.

On each platform:

• Attack tentacle
• Switch to Mutated Corruption as soon as it appears
• When Elementium Bolt is cast, target and kill it quickly. Step away from its impact location, as damage you take is lower the further away you stand. Use the 'Dream' ability before it impacts (until you've done Ysera's platform). A '/target Elementium Bolt' macro is recommended.
• Kill small adds (Blistering Tentacles, Regenerative Bloods)
• When the Mutated Corruption is slain, switch back to the tentacle and kill it (if you don't kill it fast enough, Deathwing's Cataclysm spell will wipe your raid)
• After killing the tentacle, proceed to the next platform

Each platform gets a litte harder, as you lose the support of a dragon aspect once you've done his or her platform. The Elementium Bolt is really fast after you've done Nozdormu's platform, so be careful to step outside its impact location immediately when it's cast. After Alexstrszas' platform, you've got to kill the Blistering Tentacles by yourself (this has top priority, failing to kill them fast enough is a common wipe cause), and depending on your setup you might want to use bloodlust/heroism/timewarp here. The Blistering Tentacles spawn when the platform tentacle is at 75%/50%/25% health. On the PTR it seemed like the Blistering Tentacles are immune to AoE damage, so you might want to focus kill them.

After the 4 platforms, go back to the first (where you started), and attack Deathwing. Adds will also spawn also in this phase, kill the first add waves but remember to focus on killing Deathwing quickly (tanking and ignoring the last waves), this phase is a pure DPS race.

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