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.

Continue reading “Heroic Spine of Deathwing 10 Tanking Guide”

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 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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A Sunnier Bear’s Survival Guide to 4.3

According to MMO-Champion, patch 4.3 is coming this Tuesday. We don’t have any major changes coming our way, but here’s what to look out for.

Changes to Bears

Bear Form now provides a Stamina bonus of 20%, up from 10%.

This is a change to help us remain competitive among block-capping Paladins and Warriors. This increases stamina’s value to bears, though it is still not more valuable than agility for damage mitigation. In most cases, you should still gem agility, though Shifting Demonseyes will be even more attractive for those blue slots.

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Bears: What Exactly Do We Gain or Lose in Mists of Pandaria?

Blizzard released the most up to date talent calculator last night. I plan on writing up a complete analysis later, but for now I wanted to list the spells and passive abilities that we lose or what will be changed. If I missed something, please let me know in the comments. It’s nearly 2am and I went over this pretty quickly.

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A Look at New Talents for Guardian Druids

I’m very excited about the new talent system. Not only will you be able to respec any time you want (as long as you’re out of combat), but most tiers actually do add an element of choice. I especially love the nature vibe emanating from most of these talents, which adds more potential flavor to bears. I believe they still need some polish, and likely many of these talents will change before Mists of Pandaria goes live, but let’s have a look at them before all of that happens.

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The Death of the Bearcat

Hybrid no more.

I’m going to assume everyone is caught up with all of the recent Blizzcon news. If not, read up on it at MMO-Champion.

The biggest event for us bear druids was the separation of the traditional feral spec. Melee dps druids will continue to be called “feral combat,” and tanking druids will become “guardian”. I will miss referring to myself as feral, but guardian has a nice ring to it.

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