Madness of Deathwing Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included) (2024)

Table of Contents

• +1. General Information
  • 1.1. Health Pool
  • 1.2. Enrage Timer
  • 1.3. Raid Composition
• +2. Loot
  • 2.1. Mounts
  • 2.2. Weapons
• +3. Overview of the Fight
  • 3.1. Buffs Provided by the Aspects
    • 3.1.1. Thrall's Buff
    • 3.1.2. Ysera's Buff
    • 3.1.3. Alexstrasza's Buff
    • 3.1.4. Nozdormu's Buff
    • 3.1.5. Kalecgos' Buff
• +4. Phase One
  • 4.1. Enemies, Abilities and Their Interaction
    • 4.1.1. Deathwing
    • 4.1.2. Arm Tentacles and Wing Tentacles
    • 4.1.3. Regenerative Blood
    • 4.1.4. Mutated Corruption
  • 4.2. Strategy
    • 4.2.1. Platform Order
    • 4.2.2. Clearing a Platform
    • 4.2.3. Ysera's Platform
    • 4.2.4. Alexstrasza's Platform
    • 4.2.5. Nozdormu's Platform
    • 4.2.6. Kalecgos' Platform
• +5. Phase Two
  • 5.1. Abilities
  • 5.2. Strategy
    • 5.2.1. Single Tanking
• 6. When to Use Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp?
• 7. Tier 13 4-piece Tank Set Bonuses
• 8. Learning the Fight
• +9. Heroic Mode
  • 9.1. Differences from Normal Mode
    • 9.1.1. Increased Health and Damage
    • 9.1.2. New Mechanics
  • 9.2. Strategy
    • 9.2.1. Preliminary Clarifications
    • 9.2.2. Phase One: Corrupting Parasite
    • 9.2.3. Phase One: Impale
    • 9.2.4. Phase Two
• 10. Achievement: Chromatic Champion
• 11. Concluding Remarks

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of theencounter with Madness of Deathwing in Dragon Soul. It is targeted at anyonewho desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

The Madness of Deathwing is the 8th and final boss encounter of the DragonSoul raid. If successful, raids will, at long last, bring an end to Deathwing,the Destroyer.

The fight contains a large variety of adds, spells, and mechanics, but it is,ultimately, not difficult to understand or execute. Tanks, healers, and DPSplayers will, at certain times, have a lot of pressure placed on them toperform well.

The five Aspects aid your raid during this encounter, although, as thefight progresses, they become effectively disabled, making it increasinglydifficult for your raid. Though, they do come back to help you killDeathwing, at the very end.

We found the encounter to be extremely engaging, even if we would have likedto be given the chance of fighting Deathwing alone, without the help of the aspects.

The Madness of Deathwing encounter is a two phase fight.

During Phase One,you will have to defeat 4 of Deathwing's limbs (two wings and two arms).This part takes place on 4 different platforms, surrounded by water. Each ofDeathwing's limbs rests on one platform, and your raid will have to travelto every platform and kill all the limbs in order to make it to Phase Two.

During Phase Two, your raid will have to burn Deathwing's head, who will have crashednext to one of the platforms (where the entire phase is spent). At the sametime, your raid will have to regularly kill two types of adds. Deathwing'shealth will initially be at 20% and he will deal increasing raid damage as henears death.

Throughout the fight, your raid will have assistance from the four dragonAspects (though, Thrall also offers a minimal contribution). Each Aspect isflying over one of the four platforms, resulting in the following namingconventions for the platforms in this guide:

• Leftmost platform: Alexstrasza's Platform;
• Middle-left platform: Nozdormu's Platform;
• Midle-right platform: Ysera's Platform;
• Rightmost platform: Kalecgos' Platform.

Each of the Aspects offers the raid a specific buff (such as increasedhealth) and uses a specific ability.

• In Phase One, once an Aspect'splatform has been cleared of Deathwing's limb, that Aspect will cease toassist the raid and focus solely on attacking Deathwing. This means thatPhase One becomes increasingly difficultas you progress, and your raid will have to choose the order in which toclear the platform carefully.
• In Phase Two, the Aspects are once again fighting alongside your raidand they resume their assistance.

During Phase One, all the buffs, except for Thrall's, only last untilthe platform of the respective Aspect has been cleansed of Deathwing'slimb, at which time the Aspectwill begin assaulting Deathwing and will cease to aid your raid until PhaseTwo begins. Thrall's buff lasts for the entire duration of the encounter.

Thrall's buff is the least noticeable one: he grants your raid Carrying Winds for the entire duration of the fight. This allows you tomove back and forth between two adjacent platforms. To do so, simply run orjump off your current platform in the direction you wish to go. Additionally,following each jump, you will gain a 60% movement speed increase for 10seconds (this buff stacks twice).

This buff does not play any evident role in the fight, and it simply allowsyou to move around freely between platforms.

Ysera's Presence is a passive buff that increases all healing done by20%.

Dream is an ability that Ysera grants to all raid members. Playersreceive an extra action button, with a 30 second cooldown. Using this abilitygrants the player 50% damage reduction for 5 seconds.

This ability can be keybound from the Key Bindings Menu (it is calledExtraActionButton1 and it is located in the Action Bar Functions section). Thebutton may may not display properly (or at all) if you are using any actionbar add-ons, although this does not affect the aforementioned key-binding'sefficiency. Alternatively, you can use the following macro:

• /click ExtraActionButton1

Clicking this macro (which, of course, can be keybound), has the sameeffect as clicking the Dream button.

Alexstrasza's Presence is a passive buff that increases maximum healthby 20%.

Alexstrasza's ability varies from Phase One to Phase Two:

• Cauterize (Phase One) destroys all Blistering Tentacles(adds that spawn at certain times during Phase One);
• Cauterize (Phase Two) lowers the damage done by Corrupted Blood (Deathwing's unique ability during Phase Two).

Nozdormu's Presence is a passive buff that increases your haste by20%.

Nozdormu's active ability is Time Zone, which places a type ofprotective bubble on the platform where the raid is currently fighting. Thiscauses the Elementium Bolt (a type of projectile NPC that flies towardsthe raid) to be greatly slowed down, giving your raid more time to kill it. Italso reduces the attack speed of any enemies within the zone by 50%.

Kalecgos' Presence is a passive buff that increases damage dealt by20%.

Additionally, Kalecgos imbues your raid with Spellweaver, whichcauses all attacks to deal 23,000 amount of Arcane damage to enemies within 6yards.

Phase One is started by talking to Thrall, located on Ysera's platform.

On each of the 4 platforms, your raid must perform the same set of tasksto destroy Deathwing's limb. Depending on the platform, the Deathwing's limbis either an Arm Tentacle or a Wing Tentacle. Out of the 4 limbs,2 are Arm Tentacles (Nozdormu's Platform and Ysera's Platform)and 2 are Wing Tentacles (Alexstrasza's Platform and Kalecgos' Platform).The only differences between these two types of adds are their nameand their visual appearance. Other than that, they cast the same abilitiesand have the same amount of health.

The strategy remains very similar from one platform to the other, just thatthe mechanics of the fight will be increasingly harder to deal with, as youprogressively lose the buffs granted by the dragon Aspects (when you kill thelimb on their platform, they go fight Deathwing himself and stop buffing theraid).

During this phase, you will have to defeat several types of adds, in aspecific order and fashion, so that you can eventually destroy all ofDeathwing's limbs. Below, we will list every add you encounterduring Phase One, all of their abilities and the way in which theyinteract.

Deathwing does not exist, during Phase One, as an attackable NPC.He does however use a few abilities and your raid will need to destroyhis limbs, either an Arm Tentacle or a Wing Tentacle, dependingon the platform.

• Assault Aspects is an ability that Deathwing casts on the dragonAspect on whose platform the most raid members are located. This abilitysimply determines on which platform the adds will spawn (the one where mostof your raid is located) and is a means of allowing you to choose the orderin which to tackle the platforms.
• Elementium Bolt is a projectile that Deathwing fires at theplatform where your raid is currently located, 45 seconds after hehas finished casting Assault Aspects. Upon reaching the platform, the ElementiumBolt will deal massive Fire damage to the entire raid with Elementium Blast. This initial hit deals less damage the farther awayplayers are from the impact zone. 5.2 seconds after landing, ElementiumBlast will tick again, for yet another massive Fire damage hit. This NPCcannot be tanked, and it does not melee. It has a small healthpool and your DPS players can and should try to kill it before it lands.
• Cataclysm is an ability that Deathwing begins casting 2 minutes afterhe has chosen an Aspect to assault. It has a 60 second cast time, at the endof which you will wipe (it deals 1.5M damage). The only way to stop thiscast is to kill the Arm Tentacle or the Wing Tentacle present onthe platform where you are fighting.

Arm Tentacles and Wing Tentacles are the limbs of Deathwing (theylook like tentacles) thatyou need to destroy during Phase One. These adds do not melee andcannot be tanked. In order to clear a platform, your raid will have to killthe limb attached to the platform.

Deathwing's limbs have a high amount of health, and your raid will have todeal with different kinds of adds before the limbs can be finished off.

Arm Tentacles and Wing Tentacles do the following:

• At 70 and 40% health, they spawn several Blistering Tentacles.These adds are immune to AoE damage, and they deal increasing raid damage, bystacking Blistering Heat on raid members.
  • If Alexstrasza's platform is still active, then her Cauterize (Phase One) ability will quickly kill all of the BlisteringTentacles.
  • Otherwise, your raid will have to single-target them down.
• 90 seconds after engaging a Tentacle, it will begin to hemorrhage. This willspawn 6 Regenerative Blood adds.
• For the entire duration of their existence, the tentacles will deal asmall amount of damage to the raid, every 2 seconds ( Burning Blood). Thisdamage is greater the lower the tentacle's health is.

6 Regenerative Bloods are spawned by Arm Tentacles andWing Tentacles 90 seconds after they have been engaged. These small adds have normalaggro tables and have fairly weak melee attacks.

Their attacks stack Degenerative Bite on the tank. This eventuallyoverwhelms the healers.

Regenerative Bloods have an energy bar with a maximum capacity of 100,which starts empty and fills at a rate of 10 energy per second. Each time thebar reaches 100 energy, the respective Blood will be healed to full health(50% health in LFR difficulty).

These adds are easy to AoE as long as Kalecgos is up (thanks to thedamage-splashing ability, Spellweaver, that he imbues raid memberswith).

Mutated Corruption is a tentacle add that spawns 10 seconds afterDeathwing assaults an aspect (when the raid has just started the fightor switched to a new platform). It has two abilities:

• Impale is a massively damaging attack that theMutated Corruption performs on the main tank. It deals an immense amount ofPhsyical damage (260,000 in LFR and 400,000 in 10 and 25-man difficulty), forwhich the tank will have to use defensive cooldowns. Additionally, tanks canmake use of Ysera's Dream to survive this attack, while she isstill active.
• Crush is a very damaging AoE attack that theMutated Corruption uses regularly. It will target a random raid member, anddamage everyone in a line between the Corruption and the target for a highamount of Physical damage (65,000 in LFR and 100,000 in 10 and 25-mandifficulty).

The strategy for Phase One consists in clearing each of the 4 platforms.A platform is cleared when the respective Arm Tentacle orWing Tentacle (Deathwing's limb) is killed. Inorder to do this, the raid must perform a series of tasks. Fortunately, thesetasks are identical between all 4 platforms, so the fight is not verydifficult to understand.

The first thing that your raid must decide on is the order in which toclear the platforms. This will determine the order in which you will lose thebuffs from the Aspects, and which of the buffs you will get to keep untilthe final platform.

While it is possible to successfully complete the phase by clearing theplatforms in any order, we will only detail the order that we recommend asbeing optimal:

1. Ysera's Platform;
2. Alexstrasza's Platform.
3. Nozdormu's Platform;
4. Kalecgos' Platform.

Before starting the encounter, you should position your entire raid onYsera's platform (where you land after parachuting down from Deathwing'sback), and speak with Thrall to pull the boss.

The first thing you will notice, when clearing a platform, is themassive Arm Tentacle or Wing Tentacle right infront of you. Your DPS players should immediately begin attacking it, andyou should try to do as much damage as possible to it before theMutated Corruption appears. Then the raid encounter will followthese steps:

• After 10 seconds, a Mutated Corruption will appear.
  • The tanks should position themselves towards the back of the platform andthey should be ready to taunt the Mutated Corruption as soon as it spawns.When this happens, all DPS players should switch to it and burn it down.
  • Tanks and healers will have to pay special attention to the Impale cast and make sure that the tank is protectedagainst this. This can be done in one of several ways (or a combination ofthem):
    • Tanks can use damage reducing defensive cooldowns.
    • Healers can use damage reducing cooldowns on the tanks, or Guardian Spirit.
  • In case the tank does not have any way of surviving another Impale, theoff-tank should taunt and use one of their own cooldowns.
• At a certain point, while DPS-ing the Mutated Corruption, Deathwing willlaunch an Elementium Bolt towards the platform.
  • The exact location whenthe Elementium Bolt will land is marked by a golden swirling void zone.Everyone should move away from the impact spot, as the damage that the Boltdoes, when landing, is greater to players closer to it.
  • Prepare for the massive damage to the raid that the Bolt dealswhen it lands (through Elementium Blast). Defensive cooldowns such as Power Word: Barrier and Devotion Aura are useful here.Anti-Magic Zone is also an extremely useful cooldown that can be used forevery single Elementium Bolt.
  • The Elementium Bolt must be destroyed as soon as possible. Theidea is to kill it between the moment when it lands and the moment when Elementium Blast ticks again, 5.2 seconds after landing.
• After the Bolt is dead, players should return to the Mutated Corruptionand finish it off, then switch back to the Arm Tentacle.
• After 90 seconds, the Arm Tentacle will spawn 6Regenerative Bloods.Your raid should simplyAoE these adds down (while tanking them close to the Arm Tentacle).
• It is likely that before the Arm Tentacle or Wing Tentacle dies,Deathwing will have started casting Cataclysm, but there should be ampletime to finish off the Tentacle.
  • Note that when Deathwing is casting Cataclysm, the Tentacle takes 100%increased damage, as the Aspect on whose platform you are standing beginsto attack it.

On Ysera's Platform, you can make use of the following:

• To deal with Impale, tanks canmake use of Ysera's Dream ability (50% damage reduction).
• DPS players can kill the Elementium Bolt before it lands,thanks to Nozdormu's Time Zone.
• Keep the Regenerative Bloods within Nozdormu's Time Zone,as this will slow down their attacks.

With Ysera dead, your raid will have to cope with the loss of 20%increased healing and Dream, although this does not affectthe strategy of the encounter at all.

The loss of Alexstrasza's buff will mean that your raid has lost the 20%health increase. Additionally, your raid will now have to manually kill theBlistering Tentacles each time they spawn. As these adds are immune toAoE, you will have to use single target attacks against them.

It is very important that all the Blistering Tentacles are killed in atimely fashion (before the next set spawns), thus allowing for the debuff thatthey apply to wear off.

Equally importantly, your raid should make sure not to bring theTentacle to 70% (or close to it) until after the Mutated Corruption andthe Elementium Bolt have been dealt with. Otherwise, you risk havingBlistering Tentacles spawn at the same time as another raid-damaging abilityis going on, most likely causing a wipe.

Other than this, nothing else changes, although healers will have to payspecial attention to tanks (for Impale), as the tanks'health will be considerably lower.

This platform will be the most difficult one by far. The loss of Nozdormu's buffs means that the Elementium Bolt will hit the platform much sooner (totallyunslowed) and will likely have time to pulse once or twice after it haslanded, dealing absolutely massive damage to the raid. Healers must be on topof their game here, and a mix of defensive cooldowns should be used.

Additionally, with the absence of the Time Zone, theRegenerative Blood adds will deal more damage to the tank.

Finally, both DPS players and healers will have lower output here, dueto the loss of the 20% haste buff granted by Nozdormu.

Phase Two is a rather simple burn phase. Once all the 4 platforms arecleared, Deathwing will slump forward and his head will land, helpless, onYsera's platform. The phase starts with Deathwing at 20% of his health, andends when he has been killed by your raid.

During this phase, Deathwing does not perform melee attacks and only has asingle ability: Corrupted Blood.This ability deals fire damage every 2 seconds to the entire raid. When Deathwing'shealth reaches 15%, 10%, and 5%, the damage dealt by Corrupted Blood increases.

Throughout the phase, Deathwing will spawn two types of adds: Elementium Fragmentsand Elementium Terrors:

• Elementium Fragments are spawned every 90 seconds, 3 at a time in 10-man difficultyand 8 at a time in 25-man and LFR difficulties. These small tentacles cannot be tankedand have very little health. They cast Shrapnel, which deals a high amount ofphysical damage to random raid members.
• Elementium Terrors are spawned every 90 seconds, 2 at a time.These big adds must be tanked and inflict a stacking debuff on the tank: Tetanus.

The first wave of Elementium Fragments comes 10 seconds into Phase Two,while the first wave of Elementium Terrors comes 40 seconds into Phase Two.

The strategy for Phase Two is quite simple. Your raid should begin thephase by burning Deathwing. Because the damage that he deals to the raidincreases progressively when he reaches 15%, 10% and 5% health, your raidshould stop DPS before the 10% threshold, finish off any adds and then proceedto burning Deathwing.

Healers will have to deal with the increasing raid damage fromCorrupted Blood. Especially after Deathwing reaches 10% health, healingwill become extremely difficult and any available cooldowns should be used.

The adds spawned during this phase should be dealt with as follows:

• Elementium Terrors should simplybe picked up (each by one of the tanks) and DPSed down before the stacking Tetanus kills the tanks. It is ideal to tank these in the Time Zone provided by Nozdormu.
• Elementium Fragments are the most deadly aspect of the phase. Theymust be killed with utmost urgency. They will target random players with their Shrapnel ability. Targeted players will notice a debuff that theyreceive. When this debuff expires, they will receive a massive amount ofdamage. Players should use the Dream ability just as the debuff isabout to wear off.

Essentially, the DPS priority in this phase is:

1. Elementium Fragments;
2. Elementium Terrors;
3. Deathwing.

Once the second set of Elementium Terrors have been killed, Deathwing shouldhave around 11% health and your raid should execute an all-out DPS burn onhim, ignoring the next set of Elementium Fragments.

It is possible to use a single tank for the entire duration of theencounter. In Phase Two, if this tank is a Paladin, they can use Divine Shield (followed by a quick /cancelaura Divine Shield, possibly ina macro) to get rid of the stacks of Tetanus.

There are two important parts of the fight where using Bloodlust, Heroism, or Time Warp will greatly help.

You can use Bloodlust, Heroism, or Time Warp during Phase One, to help yourraid clear the 4th platform, either to help you kill the Mutated Corruptionfaster or to help you finish the Arm or Wing Tentacle before Deathwing finishescasting Cataclysm.

You can use Bloodlust, Heroism, or Time Warp during Phase Two, whenDeathwing's health reaches 10%, to shorten the period during which yourraid will take increased damage. In this case, you can also use Bloodlust,Heroism, or Time Warp right at the start, as there will be enough time forthe 10-minute debuff to drop.

Tanks can use their 4-Part tier 13 set bonuses (all of which offer eitherdamage reduction or increased health to the raid) at certain key points, inorder to help the healers deal with the high amounts of raid damage.Specifically, these bonuses are of use:

• When an Elementium Bolt is landing (i.e., after Nozdormu's buffsare gone);
• When Blistering Tentacles are active (especially after Alexstrasza's buffsare gone);
• During Phase Two, after Deathwing is below 10% health.

Keep in mind that these cooldowns can only be used at the expense of thetank's own major defensive cooldown (as they are, in fact, one and the same),and as such they may not always be available.

Furthermore, it is ideal that these cooldowns be worked into a cooldownrotation by the raid leader, and not just used freely.

Despite the many enemies and abilities that this encounter presents, youshould not be alarmed. The fight is easy to learn and quite easy toexecute as well.

The best way to practice Phase One (the only difficult part of theencounter) is to simply try to perfect your play on the very first platform.Once all raid members are familiar with their duties, repeating the processon the other platforms, even with the loss of buffs, will prove a much easiertask than it may appear.

The Heroic mode of Madness of Deathwing is an extremely challenging anddifficult encounter. However, if you have come this far (especially pastSpine of Deathwing), then you will succeed with enough patience andperseverance.

While the structure of the fight is very similar to what you are used tofrom normal mode, there are quite a few changes in Heroic. They can be bestcategorised like this:

• increased health and damage;
• new mechanics.

All the enemies in the encounter have their health increased, compared toNormal mode. Moreover, a large number of abilities deal increased damage. Themost problematic of these increases is the damage increase of Impale. The exact changes are:

• Elementium Blast now deals 468,000 damage on impact and another468,000 damage every 5.2 seconds, up from 390,000 damage (both on impact andafterwards) in Normal mode.
• Degenerative Bite now deals 1,800 damage per second, per stack in10-man difficulty and 2,400 damage per second, per stack in 25-mandifficulty, up from 1,500 and 2,000 damage respectively.
• Blistering Heat now deals 3,750 damage every 2 seconds, up from2,500 in Normal mode.
• Crush now deals 130,000 damage, up from100,000 damage in Normal mode.
• Impale now deals 840,000 damage in 10-man difficultyand 1,200,000 damage in 25-man difficulty, up from 400,000 in bothdifficulties.
• Shrapnel now deals 400,000 damage, up from 200,000 damage inNormal mode.
• Tetanus now deals 72,000 damage on application and then another24,000 damage per second, per stack in 10-man difficulty and 96,000 damageon application and 36,000 damage per second, per stack in 25-man difficulty,up from 60,000/20,000 and 80,000/30,000 respectively.

There are two mechanics that are entirely new in Heroic mode. We presentthem below.

• Corrupting Parasite is a rather complex mechanic that will occurtwice on every platform during Phase One, once at around the same time thatthe Mutated Corruption spawns and once again 60 seconds later.It begins with Corrupting Parasite, a 10-second debuff cast byDeathwing on a random raid member. This debuff deals increasing Shadowdamage, for a total of roughly 300,000 over the course of its duration. Whenthe debuff wears off, an NPC with the same name will spawn at the location ofthe afflicted raid member.
  • Corrupting Parasite is the enemy NPC that spawns when Corrupting Parasitewears off. The Corrupting Parasite has 3M health in 10-man difficulty and 9Min 25-man difficulty. It has no aggro table, it does not melee, it can bekilled, and Alexstrasza's Cauterize (Phase One) will damage itfor a small amount of its life. When it spawns, it deals 250,000 Fire damage to all raid memberswithin 10 yards of its location (excluding the raid member who was affectedby the debuff). After this, the Corrupting Parasite will begin channeling Unstable Corruption.
    • Unstable Corruption is a 10 second cast, at the end of which theCorrupting Parasite will deal 10% of its remaining health as damage to theentire raid. If the Parasite is inside the Time-Zone provided by Nozdormu, itscast time is increased by 50%. After casting Unstable Corruption, theCorrupting Parasite will despawn.
• Congealing Bloods are adds that spawn during Phase Two. They spawn whenDeathwing reaches 15%, 10%, and 5% health, but if Deathwing's health does notreach 15% within a minute of entering the phase, or 10% or 5% within a minuteof reaching 15% and 10% respectively, the bloods will spawn regardless ofhis health. Each spawn is comprised of 9 Congealing Bloods. They have950,000 health each in 10-man difficulty and 3.2M in 25-man difficulty.They perform no action other than slowly moving towards Deathwing. They haveno aggro table and they are killable. Deathwing regains 1% of his total healthevery time a Congealing Blood reaches him.

The strategy for the encounter remains unchanged for the most part. Inthis section, we will provide all the necessary information for obtaininga kill.

The same platform order that we recommend for Normal mode should still beused (Ysera > Alexstrasza > Nozdormu > Kalecgos).

While it is possible to use a 1-tank strategy (especially in 10-mandifficulty), it is not a requirement and, we feel, it is not the optimal wayto complete the encounter.

The healing requirements are quite intense, and as such 3 healers areneeded in 10-man difficulty and 6 or 7 are needed in 25-man difficulty.

The Corrupting Parasite is the only notable change in all of PhaseOne. The way to handle the Parasite is rather simple:

• The player who receives the debuff should move into the Time Zoneand should receive ample healing.
• Other raid members should make sure they are not within 10 yards of thisplayer.
• When the debuff wears off and the Parasite NPC spawns, it should bequickly killed.

The second Parasite of every platform will spawn around the same timeas the Regenerative Bloods. It is most efficient to move the Bloods ontop of the Parasite and AoE them there. If the Parasite is still alivewhen the Bloods are dead, it can be single targeted down.

Note that, especially in 10-man difficulty, you do not have to kill theParasite in order to be safe. You must only bring it low enough that 10% of itshealth will not be problematic. This means that you can have the Parasiteat around 30% health in 10-man difficulty and 10% health in 25-mandifficulty and still survive.

Finally, on the last platform (Kalecgos' platform), you should positionthe Corrupting Parasite near the Mutated Corruption, thus allowingmelee DPS to cleave both of them together. Doing this is not a problem, as youno longer have Nozdormu's Time Zone so you no longer have constraints regardingwhere to position the Parasite. Just make sure that no one is within 10 yardsof the Parasite's spawn location.

Impale deals a massive amount of damage in Heroicmode, namely 840,000 Physical damage in 10-man difficulty and 1,200,000 Physicaldamage in 25-man difficulty. As you can tell from these numbers, it will bequite difficult for your tanks to survive the damage. You will have to ensurethat the tank is using a major cooldown for every one of the Impales (and thatthe off-tank taunts off so that a tank never takes an Impale while alreadyhaving the debuff from a previous Impale). For the first platform, your tankscan simply use Dream together with a minor cooldown. Tanks should alsonot hesitate to ask for external cooldowns from healers.

It is important to note that invulnerabilities and abilities that allowplayers to bypass dying (such as Ardent Defender or Guardian Spirit)will not work against Impale. The ability must be survived by simply reducingthe damage taken.

One way that works well is by having a Shadow Priest using Dispersion.To engineer this, you should have the Shadow Priest be the closest player tothe Mutated Corruption right before it is about to cast Impale, and having thetank move out of range of the Corruption. This will cause it to cast Impale onthe nearest target, the Shadow Priest.

During Phase Two, the only notable difference is the spawning ofCongealing Bloods at 15%, 10% and 5% of Deathwing's health. These addswill have to be AoE'd down before they reach the boss. This is not difficultas their health is rather low and they move slowly. They will always spawn atthe back of the platform (the exact place varies) and their spawning locationis indicated by a ground effect for about 2 seconds before they becometargetable.

A useful way to maximise DPS during this phase is not to DPS theElementium Terrors right away, and instead wait until the CongealingBloods have spawned and then AoE all of the adds together. Doing so will giveyou more DPS time on Deathwing and will allow you to make use of Spellweaver on the Elementium Terrors. They will most likely still bealive after the Congealing Bloods die (their health is much higher) so theywill require single-targeting.

You can have your tanks simply tank the Elementium Terrors normally (in the Time Zone) until it is time to kill them, or have one tank take both andthen have the other tank taunt off them in order to have the stacks of Tetanus drop off.

When Deathwing is about to reach 5%, you should stop DPSing any Terrors thatmay spawn, and simply burn down Deathwing. The raid damage will be high, aswill the tank damage, so you should use all cooldowns.

The Chromatic Champion achievement is part of the Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider meta-achievement. The achievement is verystraightforward; it requires you to defeat the Madness of Deathwing encounterafter having started the fight on each of the 4 platforms. Naturally, thismeans that the achievement will have to be completed over the course of 4separate kills, so it will take at least 4 weeks.

Below, we will give you the recommended platform orders for each of the 4starting platforms:

• Ysera > Alexstrasza > Nozdormu > Kalecgos;
• Alexstrasza > Ysera > Nozdormu > Kalecgos;
• Nozdormu > Ysera > Alexstrasza > Kalecgos;
• Kalecgos > Ysera > Nozdormu > Alexstrasza.

The first three orders should not pose any problems to your raid, with thepossible exception of starting with Nozdormu, which will put a rather highstrain of your healers due to the damage from Elementium Bolt.

The most problematic order will be the final one. The more gear you have,the easier this will be, so we advise you to leave it for last, as by thenyour raid will have obtained much more gear from Tier 13.

In this order, your raid will have to kill the Regenerative Bloods bysingle-targeting them down on all platforms except for the very first one, dueto the loss of Kalecgos' AoE buff. For this purpose, we recommend that all DPSplayers in your raid always target the same Regenerative Blood as a designatedplayer. The easiest way to do this is by use of a /assist Player macro (wherePlayer is replaced by the player's name).

Using this macro will change your target to the target of the respectiveplayer. You should keybind this macro to a convenient button and use iteach time the Blood you are targeting is about to die.

This concludes the encounter guide for the Madness of Deathwing. The fightpresents many interesting challenges for raiders, not so much from theenemy abilities, but more from the synergy and combination of the buffsgranted by the Aspects. We feel that this makes the encounter feel quiteunique, and the extra power that the Aspects grant you truly makes you feellike you are part of something greater.

While we would have wished to be able to fight Deathwing head on, we findthis to be a fitting ending to The Destroyer.

If you've followed us this far, then you have, most likely, completed everythingthat Tier 13 and Cataclysm had to offer in terms of raiding. We hope thatyou have found our guides useful and enjoyable, and that you will continue tofollow us into the new expansion!

As always, we would be pleased to read any feedback that you have (typos,suggestions, praise, etc.) by e-mail or in a comment below.