The Number of Wipes It Takes

This is my particular brand of crazy — some may even call it a gift. The truth is, I can wipe many, many times without become too frustrated, at least before we score that first kill. (Wipes after that first kill…well no one’s patience can last that long.)

Since I am nearly done wiping in Cataclysm, here are my all time high scores, complete with recent pictures I’ve taken while wiping.

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Heroic Madness of Deathwing 10 Tanking Guide

In 10 man, Heroic Madness is more difficult than Heroic Spine, and will probably remain difficult even after successive nerfs. Don’t get fooled into thinking that you’ll be done with this tier after just one or two nights of wiping, because it will probably take many more. Heroic Madness is very stressful for healers, but pretty straightforward for tanks and dps.

As with most my guides, this is intended for tanks because that’s the role I filled. I hope there are helpful things for other roles, but I am not an expert in those roles. I expect you to know the basic mechanics of the fight before diving into this guide. There are many solutions to complex boss fights like these, and the way we did it is not the only right way.

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Heroic Spine of Deathwing 10 Tanking Guide

This is a difficult fight for tanks and healers, and an extremely boring fight for damage dealers. Each phase gets progressively more intense until you finally reach the chaotic finish. It’s widely believed to be the most difficult fight in Dragon Soul because it requires highly focused dps, a lot of blood control, and lucky strings of avoidance while kiting. After all the nerfs it has received, I’d rank the 10 man version far below Heroic Madness and Heroic Warmaster, but it is still a difficult fight.

As with most my guides, this is intended for tanks because that’s the role I filled. I hope there are helpful things for other roles, but I am not an expert in those roles. I expect you to know the basic mechanics of the fight before diving into this guide. There are many solutions to complex boss fights like these, and the way we did it is not the only right way.

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Heroic Hagara 10 Tanking Guide

As usual, this isn’t meant to be a complete guide. I assume you already know the basic mechanics of this fight and everything here is mostly geared toward tanks.

Changes Between Normal and Heroic

  • Everything hits harder.
  • Ice Lance increases frost damage taken by 25% per hit, instead of reducing attack speed.
  • Ice Wave moves faster and there is a new snare debuff that needs to be properly taken care of if you want to stay ahead of the wave.
  • There are 8 Crystal Conductors to overload in the lightning phase. You need 2 people between each conductor to overload them.
  • You need to avoid Storm Pillars during the lightning phase, which leave a runic circle on the ground before they erupt for a large amount of nature damage.

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Heroic Ultraxion 10 Tanking Guide

Or as my guild calls him, Ultra-Nixon (he even sounds like Nixon). This fight doesn’t change much from the Normal version, but the dps race is tighter and you have to rely on more people to soak Hour of Twilight. As usual, this isn’t meant to be a complete guide. I assume you already know the basic mechanics of this fight and everything here is mostly geared toward tanks.

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Heroic Yor’sahj 10 Tanking Guide

I’m not going to do a narrated video this time because my experience during this particular kill will be vastly different than your own. This fight is has so many avenues of variation that it’s difficult to cover all possibilities.

As usual, this isn’t meant to be a complete guide. I assume you already know the basic mechanics of this fight. Everything here is mostly geared toward tanks, though since this fight is primarily a test of healer skill, I will add what I know for other roles as well. I only have experience in the 10 man version of the encounter, so all advice in this article is catered to that raid size.

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Quick Things I Learned from Tanking 10 Man Dragon Soul

Dragon Soul. Perhaps a more fitting name would be “Raid of the 1.5 Tanks.” Nearly every fight has a place for you to go cat form, or for non-druid tanks to sit around and dance. If they don’t have that opportunity, then it’s just a 1 tank fight to begin with. I like to think that this instance was designed to give feral druids one last go at being that tank who dpses, because damn there are a lot of opportunities to do so.

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