Quick Facts

Screenshots

Videos

Comments

Comment by Iroared

This is apparently the boss for Spine of Deathwing encounter in Dragon Soul.
Loot for this encounter can be found in Greater Cache of the Aspects.

Here is the strategy for normal version (10 man):

This fight consists of three repeating phases. In each phase the goal is to remove an armor plate from Deathwing's back. Once three plates are successfully removed, you will see a short cutscene and get teleported to the Maelstrom.

Deathwing himself has only one ability - if all players are on the same side of the platform, Deathwing will perform a Barrel Roll in that direction, throwing off all players and Amalgamations not attached to its back.

Throughout the fight, you will encounter several types of adds.
When you start the encounter, you will be dropped onto a small platform with four Corruption. These chain cast Searing Plasma at random raid members, which needs to be healed through. Sometimes they will start channeling Fiery Grip, which stuns the target and inflicts large amounts of damage, and needs to be quickly interrupted by damaging or killing the corruption (around 100k damage is enough). When a Corruption is killed, a Hideous Amalgamation is spawned, which should be quickly picked up by a tank, and Corrupted Blood will start spawning from the hole left behind by the Corruption. Also, players that get close to the hole will be affected by Grasping Tendrils, which inflicts a small amount of damage and prevents them from being thrown off the back. If no Corruptions are left, a new one will spawn, so there's always at least one up.
When Corrupted Blood is killed, it deals some a little bit of damage to the raid and leaves behind an untargetable residue, which crawls back to the hole, and reconstitutes into a new Corrupted Blood. If Amalgamation is dragged over a residue, it will consume it, and gain a stack of Absorbed Blood, increasing its damage and attack speed. When Absorbed Blood reaches 9 stacks, it starts dealing intense damage to the raid, so the Amalgamation should be finished off quickly. When it dies with 9 stacks, it casts a Nuclear Blast, which pries off nearby armor plate and likely kills all players in range. After a plate is pried off, a Burning Tendons appears underneath it, casting Seal Armor Breach. If the cast is completed, the armor plate is re-sealed.
After the plate is successfully removed, the platform becomes larger and two more Corruptions appear. The whole process repeats, until three armor plates are removed.

The general strategy is to start off by killing all Corruptions except one or two, then stacking at one of them to throw off all Amalgamations. Kill the one more corruption and have the main tank pick up the Amalgamation. When blood comes out, main tank should taunt it and hold aggro on it, to make sure it dies near the Amalgamation. DPS should attack Amalgamation, until it gets to about 10% health. The remaining Corruption will spam Plasma, so you should assign a healer to spam heals on debuffed players. Every 5 plasma casts or so (can't figure out the exact number), it will grip someone, so you need a couple ranged DPS to quickly switch to it. You should avoid killing it for as long as possible, since it spawns more Amalgamations which the off-tank will need to pick up and drag away from the raid and the blood. Main tank should taunt blood away from the offtank, so his adds do not get stacks.
Once the main Amalgamation gets 9 stacks, it should be moved to the very front of the platform and quickly finished off. Everyone should move away from the nuclear blast, and get ready to burst the tendon. After the platform is successfully removed, repeat - kill all but one Corruption and do a barrel roll.
- It should be noted that the tendon has relatively tight dps requirements, depending on your set up. If a dps gets Fiery Gripped, it can easily mean not killing the tendon in time, so its suggested you assign a ranged dps to bring the last corruption to low health, and then finish it off as the Amalgamation is exploding.

Comment by ZelosRaine

This fight, like many add control fights, is very simple once your raid understands what their individual jobs are. The fight, on 10 man, is as follows but 25 man should differ little:

1 tank, 3 heals, 6 dps (balanced ranged and melee is nice)

The fight will start (and each subsequent phase will as well) with killing tentacles. Your raid will parachute in (everyone should hit esc ASAP). The raid leader, while he is drifting down, should mark a tentacle for everyone NOT to kill. Dps and tanks should quickly kill the other three (the other two on subsequent phases as only 3 will be up for each plate after the initial parachuting in). As soon as all but one tentacle is dead, the raid should stack NEXT to a predetermined burning puddle of blood, then, when Deathwing emotes his barrel roll, should immediately move into the puddle and use ONE raid cooldown (PW:B, Spirit Link, etc). This minimizes the damage from the puddle and helps healer mana (the fight can be very healing intensive). This will cause the three hideous amalgamation that spawn from the dead tentacles to fly off of Deathwing's back (the corrupted bloods cannot be knocked off and will respawn unless handled properly). This process will be performed a total of 3 times: once when landing on Deathwing's back and twice more, once after each of the three plates is destroyed (the third plate ends the encounter, hence no need to perform a barrel roll as you will be happily watching a cut scene).

Once you have only one tentacle left, have all dps kill it quickly. The tentacles can channel a stun on raiders which is especially dangerous if individuals are stuck in the fire when it happens. Assign one NON DOT CLASS ranged (hunter, shammy, spriest using mind spike, etc) to keep an eye on the tentacle (there will always be at least one up) in order to break the stun quickly. The stun breaks once 20% of the tentacles health has been done as damage. DO NOT KILL THE tentacle as it will spawn another amalgamation and likely wipe the raid. Also HEALERS SHOULD NOTE that the tentacles will put a healing debuff on randon raiders that absorbs a large amount of healing and does damage. Healers should focus on spam healing these people ASAP as it is a very dangerous debuff considering all the other spikey raid damage that can happen.

At this point, the tank should have the hideous amalgamation in the middle of Deathwing's back, immediately next to the armor plate to be destroyed. All dps should burn the amalgamation while the tank focuses on taunting bloods and cleaving them down. Once the amalgamation is sub 20-30%, dps can SINGLE TARGET the bloods. The bloods do an aoe when killed and, if too many are killed at once, can stack the debuff on the amalgamation far too quickly for your raid to react properly. The tank should be sure to move the amalgamation around a bit as it has to physically pass through the puddles of blood left by the dead corruption to gain the debuff. Once the debuff has reached 9 stacks, the amalgamation will begin doing VERY high raid wide damage. The raid needs to closely manage their dps going into this point. Ideally, the amalgamation will be sub 5% when the last stack is applied and the dps can kill it nearly instantly. However, it is better to take slightly more raid damage than risk not getting 9 stacks as killing the add without 9 stacks will mean a repetition of the entire process and a likely wipe (the number of bloods increases exponentially as the fight goes on, creating a soft enrage).

Once the amalgamation is killed with 9 stacks, everyone should run away from it immediately as it will, after a few seconds, blow up in a massive explosion which will instantly kill anyone near it. As soon as this happens, the only real dps check of the fight will occur. The add's explosion will cause the plate to, after a few moment, lift up and reveal a "burning tendon." All raiders (including tank and healers) should make a "/tar burning" macro and should use all dps possible to kill it. The tendon casts for 23 seconds but is unattackable for 5 of those seconds, leaving your raid with 17 seconds to kill it. If you fail to kill it, it means repeating the entire process again and will likely lead to a wipe.

Strategies for maximizing dps in this phase include the following. All dps should save all cooldowns for the tendon. EVERYONE SHOULD STACK ON THE TENDON when it appears (be careful NOT to stack in the pool of burning blood next to it). Everyone, including healers, should maximize dps on the tendon. Obviously, if people need heals, healers should heal. However, if no one is below 50%, healers should focus on doing any damage they reasonably can. Obviously, this means that the dps and tank should be doing outstanding dps during this phase as it is their only time to let loose. The strategy that worked for my raid group was: For the 1st tendon, use all dps cooldowns that had a cooldown of less than 5 minutes; for the 2nd tendon, use hero/lust and any one minute cooldowns; for the 3rd tendon, use any and everything we could (5min and ten minute cds). If a stun goes out during this phase, ignore it and continue dps. However, it is very important that any stuns BEFORE this phase be broken immediately as every bit of dps is needed.

Good luck!

Comment by Kathucka

Here are short instructions on how to defeat this encounter on LFR difficulty:

Mark and kill ONE Corruption (tentacle). It will spawn an Amalgamation. Tank the Amalgamation next to the armor plate closest to the head.

DPS the Amalgamation down to 20%.

Secondary tank, pick up bloods and move them to the Amalgamation. Kill them there. This increases the stacks on the Amalgamation.

When the Amalgamation reaches nine stacks, kill it and run away. This spawns a Tendon in front of you.

Blow all DPS cooldowns and nuke the Tendon.

Repeat the above two times, then watch Thrall PewPewLazor Deathwing, and collect your ilvl 390 loot.

The fight is extremely easy in LFR if you do this. Low DPS requirements. Very little healing. Very little tanking.

Comment by Espoire

As I posted over on the Burning Tendons page:

3006k HP on 10-man normal mode. Seal Armor Breach's cast is 23 seconds, however the tendons are non-targettable until 7 seconds thereafter, leaving 16 seconds to kill them. Thus, you need 28.52k DPS per raider, assuming a 0.5 second delay due to latency and targeting, 1/3/6 raid comp, and that the tank and all the healers add up to 0.8 damage dealers. This is slightly higher than Ultraxion, but has the advantage of being burst DPS required, and thus trinkets and cooldowns can and should be timed for this burn phase.

3006k HP on 10-man normal mode.
16 seconds to kill.
28.52k burst DPS per raider to kill in a single phase.
Save trinkets and cooldowns for this phase.

Comment by 609114

Currently is rather buggy for pets; pets will frequently fall through Deathwing whilst trying to attack the tendon.

Comment by Euphemia

Instructional video of a kill, including the Maybe he'll get dizzy achievement. This is on 10m normal.

Comment by tadelle

We are 3 man healing this fight. 2 man assigned for Searing Plasma. When 3 or more people have it , it's time to start using CDs. But not a hard encounter on normal difficulty.

Comment by 126504

Grasping tendrils seem to come and go willy nilly within the last few weeks. Has anyone else noticed having the debuff and the suddenly losing it and getting flung off his back?

Comment by JASP01

Can't help but notice he isn't classified as Dragonkin....

Comment by Kathucka

Although it doesn't look like it, this turns out to be primarily a healing fight on normal mode. Healers will have to blow cooldowns at certain points to keep everyone alive.

First, right when you roll, lots of people will have Searing Plasma, as there were just three or four Corruptions applying it. At the same time, everyone will be jumping into the holes, which means the whole raid will be taking damage. There will also be two or three Amalgamations up, so the tanks (or other raid members!) will be taking extra damage. Note that this happens right at the beginning of the fight, so watch out! Blow cooldowns before the roll so that you can clear all the Searing Plasma before the AoE damage starts.

Second, and obviously, when the Amalgamation gets nine stacks of Absorb Blood, heavy raid damage and even heavier tank damage go out. Look for raid-wide damage-reducers (aura mastery, bubbles, Divine Guardian, "Raid Wall", etc.), and hope your tank is blowing his cooldowns. Better yet, get the Amalgamation to very low health before stacking up the Absorb Blood, so you don't have to put up with it for long.

When someone gets Fiery Grip, they take heavy single-target damage. Watch out for the debuff and be ready to heal them hard, especially if it's a fellow healer or they have Plasma.

Also, for the whole fight, you have to keep Searing Plasma clear while not running out of mana. A single tentacle casting the 10-man normal version requires 25,000 HPS to keep clear, and it has to be clear when you hit the AoE damage parts of the fight.

Tanks and damage-dealers need to be aware that healers are burning up mana dealing with Searing Plasma, and do what they can to reduce incoming damage. This includes using personal cooldowns as appropriate, breaking the Grip quickly, and keeping all the adds on the tank or tanks.

Comment by Galindruhek

I would just like to point out for Warlocks who might be new to raids in general and this fight in particular...should the Raid Leader tell you to "Stop DPSing Corruption" s/he doesn't mean your dot Corruption...they mean the tentacles. Failure to follow through as they intended could result in your being called all kinds of names, accused of intentionally trying to wipe the raid, and of course being booted...things that are good to know...

Comment by DBlightJordail

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, it should be noted that the Hideous Amalgamations do not have a front or back, therefore they can parry in any direction. As a melee dps, staying out of things is more important than than your position on the mob itself.

Comment by Mazorlion

From my experience healing this fight (many wipes) on heroic, I have never yet seen Blood Corruption: Earth change into Blood Corruption: Death. We even started dispelling the Blood Corruption: Earth to move it to the tanks before anyone else and still I have never seen it mutate back into death. Has anyone else had this experience?

Comment by rilgania

Yet another 10m heroic guide... :)

This is a quick cover of how my raid did the first kill and thought to give a few inputs for those looking for advice. It is by no means supposed to be the "best" way to do it, it merely was the best solution for OUR raid!

Setup
- 2 Tanks (druid, paladin)
- 3 Healers (priest, shaman, druid)
- 5 DDs (hunter, mage, rogue, warlock, priest)

Fight breakdown
Pull -
kill 3 corruptions - 1st roll - kill last corruption, amalgamation - tendon 1a - kill corruption, amalgamation - tendon 1b -
kill 3 corruptions - 2nd roll - kill corrupion, amalgamation - tendon 2a - kill corruption, amalgamation - tendon 2b -
kill 3 corruptions - 3rd roll - kill corruption, amalgamation - tendon 3a - kill corruption, amalgamation - tendon 3b

Details
The fight mechanics are simple and straight-forward. The hard part is to not get overwhelmed by the blood adds and general incoming damage. They were tanked by the paladin and constantly nuked by the hunter. The healers can call for time-off when things got tight but this shouldn't happen too often. The whole raid should bomb them during the second roll, but not during the last. Instead, they are bombed after the roll, because the Amalgamations are likely fully soaked before the roll and deal a lot of damage. Towards the end of the fight, after Tendon 3a (during which the hunter keeps bombing the blood if possible), you'll get to a point where's too much blood. Proceed to kite them, using paladin and warlock stuns for every change of direction.
Raid cooldowns are used during rolls 2 and 3 and Amalgamation explosions, assign them beforehand. Ours were: SL totem + hymn during rolls, tranquility for the explosion. The non healer cooldowns were called by our main healer whenever necessary. Also assign someone to backup the dispeller when they are casting their cooldown.
The Almagamation is tanked near the plate and nuked fast. Mind to kill it right when Fiery Grip comes off cool down, else it would disrupt the Tendon phase. Be ready to call for a nuke stop if you're too fast. Just to mention the obvious, save DPS cooldowns for the tendon.

Enjoy! :)

Comment by 324060

This is freaking Hard in Heroic with amalgation's Degradation and the burning Tendon Huge Hp pool,and even with the Aspect Nerf,the Dps requierements are very high to kill a single tendon,and with 2 tendons per plate,you will find impossible to kill both(at least till MoP) in a single exposed phase and you will have to repeat the Amalgation strategy twice per plate,and missing even a single tendon only makes things even worst with Degradation debuff stacking,and its pretty much a wipe in that case.Not even a sigle Dps must die,since it will be impossible to keep up the fight.

Comment by Voidly

Highlights of Lore Behind Deathwing;

Deathwing the Destroyer, formerly known as Neltharion the Earth-Warder. Thousands years ago he was empowered with power of the earth by Titans. Later, he has been corrupted by the Old God.

The Old Gods:

The Old Gods are powerful dark creatures. They are imprisoned beneath to earth by Titans. There is THREE known Old Gods.

C'Thun, he can be found at Temple of Ahn'Qiraj as the Last Boss. He is Defeated.

Yogg-Saron, he can be found at Ulduar as the Last Boss. He is Defeated.

And the last one is N'Zoth. Who is the responsible for the corruption of Deathwing.
He sent his Faceless one's to aid Deathwing.

Warlord Zon'ozz

"Victory for Deathwing. For the glory of N'Zoth!"
"The will of N'Zoth corrupts you."
"Your skulls shall adorn N'Zoth's writhing throne."
"Your deaths shall sing of N'Zoth's unending glory."

Yor'sahj the Unsleeping

"Our numbers are endless, our power beyond reckoning! All who oppose the Destroyer will DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS!"
"You will drown in the blood of the Old Gods! ALL OF YOU!"
"All praise Deathwing, THE DESTROYER!"
"From its BLEAKEST DEPTHS, we RECLAIM this world!"

Haethen Kaul

"It is true that we serve Deathwing, but we also serve a higher power. Never forget that!"

Also, He is source of Emerald Nightmare, which is twisted Emerald Dream.

His current place is unknown.

First Defeat of the Deathwing:

After he driven mad, he turned aganist other aspects during the War of the Ancients. He also showed himself as Lord Daval Prestor at Second War. After a series of setbacks, he retreated to the elemental plane of Deepholm to recuperate. And many believed he is dead.

After, he returned and his wrath resulted in the Shattering, which reshaped the map of Azeroth.

Dragon Soul:

Dragon Soul is an artifact created before the War of the Ancients by Deathwing to use aganist the Burning Legion. Howewer Deathwing corrupted and he wished to use it to control the other Dragonflights, and make himself a god to be worshipped by the mortal races.

Later Malfurion Stormrage succeeded to steal Dragon Soul but he was captured by Queen Azshara's soldiers, led by his own brother, Illidan Stormrage. Dragon Soul wanted to use open a portal that allows Sargeras entry into Azeroth at Well of Eternity. But they failed and Burning Legion banished back, then Malfurion and the four remaining Aspects placed a spell on the Dragon Soul that would prevent Deathwing from ever using it again.

Also it caused his defeat. Thrall channeled Dragon Soul's Power (Empowered with power of the other aspects, (Again) ) to Deathwing Three times, finally he is destroyed.

Deathwing's Followers and Relatives:

- Twilight's Hammer (The cult worshipping and serving Old God's, led by Twilight Council) Twilight Council : Cho'gall , Twilight Lord Everun and High Priestess Azil. After Defeat of Twilight Council, Twilight's Hammer led by Twilight Father-Prophet (Archbishop Benedictus)

- Ragnaros and Fire Elementals.
- Al'Akir and Air Elementals.
- Neferset Tol'vir
- Few Earth Elementals (His power over the earth) (Morchok)
- Few Water Elementals
- Faceless One's (Forces of N'zoth)

- Lady Sinestra (Prime consort)
- Onyxia, Nefarian and Wrathion (children)

Main sources : Wowpedia and Wowwiki.

Note: I will add more later. Thanks for reading. Sorry for grammar and typing mistakes.

Comment by Wolvigar

As I've pointed out for Ultraxion and Warmaster, Unholy Death Knights can take advantage of having Anti-Magic Shell during this fight. The Hideous Amalgamation's Nuclear Blast can be absorbed with Anti-Magic Shell, and turned into a high amount of Runic Power.

Comment by Eillesthis

FYI if you've done any previous bosses on normal mode (for achievements), you can't do Spine of Deathwing (or Madness of Deathwing) on heroic this week.

Comment by Sentro

As this hasn't been mentioned until now: This encounter has a fifteen minute enrage timer. After these fifteen minutes Deathwing will roll over and kick everybody from his back. You can't avoid this and even standing in the remains of the tentacles won't prevent you from this fate.

Found this out the hard way in the raidfinder...

Comment by Qoko

Want to see some confirmation or rejection of this detail on Spine heroic. Last I noted, it seems that Hideous Amalgamations actually Absorbed Blood way more than the 9 residues required for the Superheated Nucleus. A major tactic used on heroic to subdue the enormous increase of Bloods is by cleaning them as you roll, yet this invokes much more overall. If the above is true you can use the first two plates up simply clear all Bloods as you progress to the Tendon, making the third much easier. It shouldn't take the tank too long to pick up all residues though, due to the nucleus blowing your face off, but if they're at least partly placed alright, this ought to ease up a bit. So, anyone else noticed this as well?

Comment by catadon22

idk why people were always trolling this raid. I've played since vanilla beta and I've seen EVERY raid, EVERY difficulty. this is easily one of the most interesting raids ever. i mean, seriously... YOU ARE RIDING ON DEATHWING'S BACK!

Comment by wheelie294

"Inanimate Object" Boss.
Seems legit.

Comment by 975108

As of 5.3 all bosses in Dragon Soul drop regular gold (Approx 20-25 gold per person) and, it appears 1 legendary token in both 10 and 25, unless we got really unlucky, as we only got 1 drop off the first 4 in 25m, so we changed to 10 and killed the rest on 10.

Comment by Lordplatypus

DEATHWING! WHERE DA HELL IS MA PONY? YA DONT HAVE IT? I'LL RIDE YOUR SISSY ASS INSTEAD

Comment by bombblowup

i will work for death wing rrrrrroooooaaaaarrrrr you are dead(joke)

Comment by yorel0950

With thunderous step and hold of earth;
An aspect ruled over the land of your birth.
Under the world, the whispers had come;
Plaguing his mild till he had succumb.

Corrupted by the blackened god,
He was hated by his kin.
They trapped him in his domain, so broad,
So he lied dormant within.

He came with fury of fire and hate
To destroy his kin in a way so great.
Heroes came to destroy all he was worth,
So had fallen the lord of the earth.

Comment by Kiingy

It is possible to solo this boss post crunch on a 90.

During the fight he will continuously roll even if you stand in the middle, the only way I've found to avoid this is by running back and forth between the two sides, the message will pop up saying he's about to roll X, run to the other side and the timer will reset.

As for the rest of the fight it's pretty easy if you have any kind of self healing, the biggest issue is the Searing Plasma, keep that off and you'll likely not have any issues.

Hunter Solo Tips:
As a Hunter with barely any kind of self-healing it was a little tricky.
First up spec into Beastmastery and find a spirit beast for Spirit Mend.
Then take from the level 45 talents.
Also take from the level 15 talents and combine it with and keep your back turned to one of the plates and use disengage on cooldown.

After the second plate is off, you have to be quick with the third as it wont take long to get overrun by the bloods.

Good luck.

Comment by stym

6.0.2 Rogue and Warlock Solo Guide + General Tips

Since older raids deal less damage and you deal more damage to them as of 6.0.2, Spine is very accessible to Rogues right now. The difficulty lies in the Roll mechanics though, so it's not a walk in the park. I soloed it with my ilvl 569 rogue on patch day and it took me about a dozen tries to execute a working strategy. Since I'm kind of a klutz, you can probably do better. I also soloed it with my ilvl 574 destruction warlock with an amended strategy.

Note that the strategy outlined below will work with most DPS classes. Just substitute your favorite nukes for the spells mentioned below. It's better to have an instant AOE type attack for the residue gathering phase, and some kind of damage mitigation for the Amalgamation kiting phase. Self heals are very helpful (duh.)

So far I've only tried 10-man normal mode.

Talent choices:

Rogue: The only relevant talents I used are Leeching Poison and Shuriken Toss. You don't want to choose anything else on those tiers. Since you deal massively more damage to level 85~88 creatures, Leeching poison will heal you for a ton of health each time it is applied. Shuriken Toss is extraordinarily helpful on this encounter.
Warlock: I used Grimoire of Sacrifice because I did not want to have to manage a pet. I sacrificed a voidwalker for the shield. I also used Soul Leech for the shield generated by Incinerate and Chaos Bolt, which is very good given that the shield is proportional to damage dealt and you deal increased damage (there is a cap of 15% of your max health though)

Initial notes:
You are never ever in the center of the spine. You are always slightly to to the left or slightly to the right and you will ALWAYS trigger a roll wherever you are standing. Deathwing waits a few seconds (I think 5) before starting a roll sequence, and that cooldown will reset only if he actually rolls. If you triggered a right roll sequence and move to the left before 5 or 6 seconds, you will immediately reset the roll timer and trigger a left roll sequence. This means that unless you are secured by a dead Corruption thanks to Grasping Tendrils, you will have to constantly move back and forth between both sides to avoid getting thrown off.
The Corruptions will not stun the main aggro target. That's you.

Strategy:

1- initial phase
Start by killing 3 Corruption with your shuriken toss for your rogue, or Incinerate with your warlock, then stand on a dead corruption to anchor yourself to the Grasping Tendrils. tank and kill the Hideous Amalgamations. If you are too slow killing them Deathwing will eject the remaining ones anyway.

2- Gathering Residues

Rogue: Two strategies:
a- Standing on a dead corruption and waiting for Corrupted Blood to spawn. Try to shuriken toss them when they are in the center of the spine if possible, that will make the next steps easier. If a corrupted blood spawns under you, run to the other side and anchor yourself to another dead Corruption and shuriken toss the incoming blood. The reason for that is that if you kill the blood on top of the dead corruption, it will respawn immediately (see Residue.) Repeat that sequence until you have 9 blood residues close to the middle of the spine. Advantage: you don't have to move much. Drawback: it's hard to stack the residues in the center and you have to cross the spine if a blood spawns under you, making sure DW is not in the middle of a roll sequence.

b- Place yourself in the center of the spine and start running around in a small circle to continually reset the roll sequence. Fan of Knives the incoming bloods (obviously not available to you in combat spec) until you have 9+ residues in the center of the spine. Advantage: the residues will be nicely stacked . Drawback: not sure. Maybe YOU'll get dizzy.
I have not implemented this strategy yet but I'll try next week. I am mentioning it because this is basically what i do with my Warlock.

Warlock: Place yourself in the center of the spine and start running around in a small circle to continually reset the roll sequence. Drop a Rain of Fire in the center of the spine and refresh it every 8 seconds. the incoming bloods will die within a couple ticks and stack nicely in the center. Continue until you have 9+ residues in the center of the spine.

3- Dealing with the Amalgamation and Tendon

Shuriken toss/Conflagrate the last standing corruption and start kiting the incoming Hideous Amalgamation on the residues. Don't forget to constantly move back and forth between the left side and the right side of the spine. When the Amalgamation is up to 9 stacks and gets superheated, kite it to the armor plate and kill it. You WILL have to also move back and forth during the kill, always hugging the armor plate. A little bit of a pain with a rogue. A warlock can toss one chaos bolt at it and be done with it.

When the amalgamation is dead, go hug a dead corruption that is close to the armor plate. Wait patiently until the amalgamation explodes and Shuriken Toss/Incinerate the Burning Tendon. (a macro that does /tar Burning Tendon /cast Shuriken Toss/incinerate is handy there.)
This is also your opportunity to use self heals ( or anything at your disposal. A rogue will have to tank and melee a hideous amalgamation to leech life from it)

After the plate flies away, kill all standing corruptions and start over.

Additional Considerations:

your Shuriken Toss does not trigger poisons. This means the only healing you get is by doing melee attacks on targets that will not get one-shot. That means amalgamations only. Hitting an amalgamation 2 or 3 times will heal you fully.
You should not have too many health issues while killing bloods, but if you do, kill the last standing corruption and rush to melee the new amalgamation to death. Don't let it reach residues. If you are a warlock, you can use Ember Tap to heal yourself.

It can be a little tricky when you are kiting the amalgamation, especially if the residues are spread all across the board. Your health may dip a little low at that time.
If that happens and you are feeling up to it, kill the last corruption and kill the new amalgamation but don't let it compete for residues with the one you are kiting, which can be tricky considering you are constantly moving back and forth on the spine to avoid ejection. A 5-point recuperate, health potion and avoidance (evasion, combat readiness, Sacrificial Pact/ Shadow Bulwark) can go a long way.

Madness of Deathwing is a complete joke after that.
Good luck on your Blazing Drake/Life-Binder's Handmaiden!

Comment by Benvyme

Just solod 25N Spine of Deathwing as a 573 SV hunter. (This was done post-squish, 6.0.2.) Took a few tries, but once I got the strategy down, it wasn't that hard. Mistakes can be costly and very annoying, though.

For this fight, I wanted as much healing as I could get, so I specced into , , , and Glyph of Misdirection.

My strategy:
I started the fight, and as I was floating down, I started killing all 4 Corruption's. After the Hideous Amalgamation's spawned, I Misdirected them to my pet (I kept my pet on passive, so he would follow me around) and ran onto one of the empty Corruption spots. Then I let Deathwing roll, and the Hideous Amalgamation's would fall off. Then I ran back to the middle of the spine, and moved slightly left or right whenever Deathwing was about to roll to level him out. As I kept Deathwing leveled out, I would use Disengage to heal myself while I waited for the Corrupted Blood's to spawn. When they did spawn, I kited them until they got to the middle of the spine, then I would quickly kill them (they died in ~1 Arcane Shot). Rinse and repeat this until you have killed 9 Corrupted Blood's, then kill the remaining Corruption and drag the Hideous Amalgamation that spawns over the Corrupted Blood's residue. Then MD the Hideous Amalgamation to my pet, and burn him down (make sure he has 9 stacks). When he starts casting Nuclear Blast, I Dettered to mitigate the extra damage. After the armor plate gets pried open, quickly burn the Burning Tendons to release the plate.

Repeat this 3 times and enjoy your loot. Remember to keep Disengaging to heal yourself and you should be fine.

You should expect to wipe a few times until you can get the strategy down. But don't give up and you will succeed!

~*Thanks to stym for the rogue guide that helped me figure this out.*~

Edit: Had it as 25H instead of 25N, my bad!

Comment by Ecwfrk

Soloed in 6.0.2 (25m Normal) with a 555 Ret Pally.

First, for those unfamiliar with the fight (like I was), 2 tips.
1. When you kill a tentacle it leaves a hole. If you stand in one of those holes, you'll get a "debuff" which sticks you to DW's back so you won't be flung off when he rolls.
2. The plates you need to knock off are towards Deathwing's head, not his tail. Hopefully I save someone else the embarrassment I felt when I figured out that's what I was doing wrong. :)
3. I had to take off my legendary cloak. The ginsu action caused me to kill things I didn't want dead yet, so it was just less hassle to do it without it.

The strat I found that worked easiest for me was:
First, I killed 3 of the 4 corruptions at the start of the fight. I then just stood around in one of the holes and let DW roll around while I kept my HP topped off and waited for Corrupted Bloods to spawn and stack on me.
Once I had enough bloods around me that they were starting to do more than tickle, I waited for DW to level out, moved the bloods to the spine and killed them before going back into my hole to wait for more bloods. Once I had more than 9 pools laying around, I then killed the remaining corruption to spawn an amalgamation, did a little DPS to get him a shot or two from death, ran him over the puddles until he went Nuclear, killed him then the tendon, then I got back in a hole and repeated the process.

The only slightly dangerous part, besides forgetting to side dance and getting thrown off, is when the Amalgamation gets up to 9 stacks as the damage he does isn't insignificant, especially on 25m.

Comment by mimee21

Hunter BM 6.0.10 man normal.

Health was absolutely never an issue so don't worry about disengaging or whatever or health pots. just no... you don't need any of that. Spirit bond was more than enough.

Easy as cake with a hunter, legendary cloak off as you don't want it killing everything, had pet on passive as I didn't want him to screw things up and having a pet out gives me 2% health every 2 seconds with "spirit bond" tier 3 talent so have your pet out. Kill all tentacles BUT one and stand on a hole where the tentacle used to be so you can roll everything over. You will just have one tentacle out at all times so you can kill it when you have enough puddles and the tentacle doesn't stun you anymore if you are alone, run left and right to avoid the roll as you gather bloods, they will follow you.. when you have 10 or 12 or whatever to make it safe, go to the plate and AoE them all.. Then kill the tentacle and have the Hideous Amalgamation follow you run towards the side opposite from where he spawns and have him run over the bloods, he will Nuclear Blast right there. Kill the tendon... After that rinse - repeat. Kill all tendons but ONE again so you can kill it after you have enough bloods, bloods spawn a lot faster so after the 2nd plate it is a matter of a minute or two before its all over.

Good luck oh... Deathwing himself is a joke so no worries after you get spine down.

Comment by 168650

Just solo'd this as a frost mage at ilvl 554, post 6.0.2 with stat squish in full effect.

It took me 14 attempts, from never having done the encounter, to completing it. The trick, to me, is to finish it before you become overwhelmed by the number of blood adds up, and that the amalgamations do not start casting nuclear until they are low on HP, below 20k it seemed. To beat this I had to have a specific strategy, because I lacked any significant heals, although I had spec'd into Cold Snap for the long CD heal. I tried several methods to beat this:

Letting all the bloods pile up on me before killing the tentacle and nearly killing the amalgamation, killing the bloods all at once and then lowering the HP of the amalgamation as I ran for a grip
Killing the bloods one at a time near or on the center of the spine, and keeping count up, then killing the tentacle, and then the amalgamation to about 100k, then letting it stack the bloods before pushing it to go nuclear.
The strategy that worked: Killing the bloods three groups of 3 on the center of the spine, leaving the last group of 3 up when I killed the tentacle. Then I dps'd the amalgamation to about 100-130k, kited the amalg over the dead bloods, then immediately used blizzard on it and the bloods right next to the plates to get it to 9 stacks, then chipping the rest of the amalg's HP until it started its cast. This strat's main purposes were:To keep my ice barrier from burning out as frequently as would happen when keeping all 9 bloods alive, thus minimizing HP loss and the necessity to use my long CD Cold Snap.
To keep the dead bloods fairly close together and where I needed them to be for easier kiting/killing of the amalg.
To minimize the damage I took from fully buffed amalgamations, reducing my need to keep Cold Snap on cooldown, and leaving me with more HP to deal with the future waves of bloods, which become very hectic to deal with.

Right at the start, I did nothing, until I knew a roll was coming. Then I would kill 3 of the tentacles, get into a grip, and let the roll push the amalgs out, less damage incoming, less mobs in general, less worry for me. I found that, between the strategies of constantly moving back and forth over the spine and staying in one spot for the turns, with only 3 bloods up, it was immensely easier to just keep moving back and forth.

The bloods themselves I would kill as close as I could to the plate, and when ready to build stacks, I would kite the amalg along the side of the plate, from one side of the spine to the other. When I killed the tentacles, I would keep the amalg 5 yards or so from the plates, to make sure I didn't get any unintentional stacks. As the encounter moves on, you get more and more bloods showing up, and not only can you, but you need to stack them near the plates, and kill them as soon as you get 3 or more. Once you've killed two packs, and have a third set of three or nearly so, kill a tentacle and dps the amalg to ~115k, enough for 2-3 non-crits to set it off into nuclear, then aoe and drop it to low HP.

If, for some reason I found myself overwhelmed by bloods, I would take them to the oppose side of the encounter from the next plate, and aoe them there. I found it gave me enough time to get the next set of adds in line and get the amalgamation stacks going, and be well into the next plate phase before the pools respawned as blood adds.

Once I got the strategy cemented, I just had to remember to keep moving across the spine, keep the bloods near the plate on the center of the spine when I killed them. The last plate was very hectic, bloods were spawning almost constantly, and my ice barrier was battered, with me being at 30-40% health and cold snap on CD. I had to pop mirror images to let myself escape from the amalgamation and set it off from a grip point. From there I just let it blow up, and killed the last tendon, popping my CDs just to be sure I killed it fast enough to beat the bloods killing me at that point.

Comment by KingStannis

I just soloed spine on 10 HC as a warrior, prot spec, with 551 ilvl. I was wearing a Juggernaut trinket (LFR version), though you may be able to make it without it (the leech from it did 33% of the healing during the encounter)
The only talent that really matters is the tier 2 one;
I chose Impending Victory (though enraged regen might be more useful; if you take enraged regen, use the victory rush glyph and it should be even easier)
I took stormbolt so I could keep attacking the tendril even when doing the "dance" to avoid the roll; shockwave or dragon roar are prob useful too near the end of the fight, when you have dozens of adds spawning (Thunderclap was enough though, and they don't deal too much damage)

The mecanic of the fight is the same as normal version; the only thing you have to keep your eyes on is a debuff called Blood Corruption: Death , which is given to you by the amalgamation.

Basically, all I did was keep Shield barrier up most of the time and Shield Wall whenever Blood Corruption: Death was about to expire. Last Stand is useless here, since I think Blood corruption deals damage depending on your health at the moment of the detonation (not sure about that)
I used my victory rush whenever it was up, and tried not to make an amalgamation appear unless I was at ~70-80% health with Shield wall up (killing the tendril will give you a free victory rush, allowing you to go full health)
All in all, it's not a hard fight at all once you understand the mecanic; I even failed with one nuclear blast and still made it.

Good luck!
(and sorry for the bad english)

Comment by stym

Destruction Warlock Heroic Mode Solo Guide

This is the strategy for 10-man Heroic Mode.

Talent choices:

I used Grimoire of Sacrifice and sacrificed an imp for Singe Magic, and that is mandatory.
The rest of the talents is not very consequential. You will have some health issues on this fight so I'd recommend picking talents that will either shield or heal you.
I picked Soul Leech, Mortal Coil and Dark Pact. I ended up not needing to use mortal coil or sacrificial pact.

Glyph choices:

I went fully defensive, with , and

Initial notes:
As mentioned in other strategies below, you will ALWAYS trigger a roll wherever you are standing. This means that unless you are secured by a dead Corruption thanks to Grasping Tendrils, you will have to constantly move back and forth between both sides to avoid getting thrown off.
The Corruptions will not stun you.

Strategy:

1- initial phase
Start by killing 3 Corruptions with Incinerate , then stand on a dead corruption to anchor yourself to the Grasping Tendrils. tank the incoming Hideous Amalgamations but do not kill them! Degradation will stack for every amalgamation you kill. Those thrown off by Deathwing do not count, so just wait for Deathwing to complete a roll sequence.
A couple seconds after you engage an amalgamation, it will infect you with Blood Corruption: Death. Dispel it immediately with Singe Magic. It will automatically transform into Blood Corruption: Earth, which will buff you with damage reduction after 15 seconds.
This is the most crucial part of this fight. EVERY time you engage a new amalgamation or a new pack thereof, they will cast blood corruption. Use any means necessary to track the debuff and be quick dispelling it. I used TellMeWhen to track the debuff.

Normally an amalgamation will only cast it once on you, but if you spend too much time killing or kiting it, it will recast it after maybe 25 seconds. Since the cooldown of Singe Magic is 15 seconds, you're covered.

2- Gathering Residues

a few seconds after the amalgamations learn to fly, place yourself in the center of the spine and start running around in a small circle to continually reset the roll sequence. Drop a Rain of Fire in the center of the spine and refresh it every 8 seconds. the incoming bloods will die within a few ticks and stack nicely in the center. Continue until you have 9+ residues in the center of the spine. Alternatively you can incinerate them to benefit from the shield effect of Soul Leech. Note that they will start crawling towards a dead corruption and as a result will be a little spread out when you're done.

3- Dealing with the Amalgamation and Tendon

Conflagrate the last standing corruption and throw a Chaos Bolt at the incoming Hideous Amalgamation to tenderize it a bit. Ideally you want it down to 20% life before you kite it so you can shadowburn it fast when it is time to kill it. Start kiting it on the residues. Don't forget to constantly move back and forth between the left side and the right side of the spine and DON'T FORGET TO DISPEL YOURSELF. I died a ridiculous number of times because I was not focused on my debuffs. When the Amalgamation is up to 9 stacks and gets superheated, kite it to the armor plate and kill it. You WILL have to also move back and forth during the kill, always hugging the armor plate.

When the amalgamation is dead, go hug a dead corruption that is close to the armor plate. Wait patiently until the amalgamation explodes and Incinerate the Burning Tendon. This is also your opportunity to use self heals ( or anything else at your disposal).

After the plate flies away, kill all standing corruptions and start over.

Additional Considerations:

Did I mention you need to dispel yourself? Dispel yourself.

heroic Madness of Deathwing is laughably easy compared to this,
Good luck on your Blazing Drake/Life-Binder's Handmaiden!

Comment by kliebst

I tried soloing this raid on heroic the other night on my 572 BM hunter. It was a walk in the park until I got to heroic Spine of Deathwing. After a few attempts where I died pretty quickly I looked through the logs to try and figure out what was going on. I was dying to Blood of Deathwing. This ability will one shot you (about 100k overkill). This ability is caused by not dispelling the magic ability Blood Corruption: Death. Unfortunately as a hunter I have no way of dispelling this. This means that classes that can't dispel magic effects on themselves cannot solo heroic Spine of Deathwing at this time.

Comment by Solsku

Just soloed this with a protection warrior (567). Took around 5 tries to get right. Had to rely on Shield Wall + Last Stand -combo to survive Blood Corruption, and had legendary cloak to back me up.

Never again :<

Comment by Stimmie

Deathwing's ability Blood of Deathwing (which made it quite hard to solo this fight) had been fixed in patch 6.0.3:

Dragon Soul
Spine of Deathwing: Blood of Deathwing should no longer deal an excessive amount of damage.

Everyone can continue mount farming again! :D

Comment by Schadenfreude

Blood Corruption Death isn't an insta-kill anymore but it will do about 30k damage, which is a pretty big chunk of health if you don't have a reliable heal. You don't need a dispel but it helps. As a destro lock, I took searing flames (huge increase to ember tap healing) and grimoire of sacrifice to dispel myself. You also want to download the Cata DBM timers to be reminded about roll; it's easier now that it's 10 seconds but you still want to keep on top of it especially if you get dazed.

The amalgamations still do a decent amount of damage while having somewhat low health, so start the fight by killing 2-3 tentacles and then rolling deathwing to get rid of the amalgs that spawn. Let the bloods build up and do the roll dance while you're waiting. Once there are lots of puddles, kill another tentacle and damage the amalg slowly while moving it over the blood puddles and continuing to roll dance. You'll have to deal with the damage from its melee attack and blood corruption death, but if you can dispel it it's a savings on damage. Kill it quickly since it is very powerful at 9 stacks, and then hit the burning tendon. From here it gets easier since more bloods are spawning, just stay ahead of the roll, the debuff, and the incoming melee damage and you'll be done spine in no time.

To update, this fight is pretty lols at 100-- there is a bit of incoming damage but I mostly forget about the debuff and just concentrate on roll.

Comment by Briandris

Well they fixed one issue holding us back from soloing this but the CONSTANT rolling is annoying still. It's hard to run the Amalgamation over the bloods and live as a hunter while doing the roll dance. He still hits pretty hard at 7+ stacks.

What finally worked for me was killing 3 tentacles when I landed on his back. Then I kept my pet out but on passive so spirit bond would heal me. I stood in the grasping tentacles and just let him roll, roll, roll while killing bloods as they spawned in a pile on the center of his back. Spirit Bond easily kept me healed while standing in the grasping tentacle. Once I had 9 dead bloods pooled in the middle I killed the tentacle causing the Amalgamation to spawn. I stayed in the grasping tentacle until the Amalgamation was about 50% (not hard at all). Then I dragged him to the middle to stack the blood pools on him and up to the front when he had 9 stacks. The constant rolling forcing me to strafe and such to stop it happening made the Amalgamation miss pools sometimes so it will take a second to get him his 9 stacks. Bring him to the front and kill him, kill the Burning Tentacle to break the plate then get back into a Grasping Tentacle. Repeat until he's dead.

Comment by jcarneiro

Soloed 10man Heroic as a 555 legen-cloaked Enhancement Shaman, but not without following some mechanics and preparation. Talents and cloak didn't really matter, tho Nature's Guardian saved me sometimes.

What REALLY matters are your glyph choices. I've found to be extremely useful, giving an incredible income in healing if you simply apply and renew the debuff on EVERY enemy in your way. Other glyphs consisted of for emergencies and which increases survival a bit, but could be traded for something else.

Preps done, the encounter strategy is quite the default for soloing, which consists in leaving only 2 Corruptions alive and then spin to get rid of the Amalgamations. Then, while killing the Corrupted Bloods in the middle, avoiding spin, and healing yourself to get rid of Searing Plasma, you gotta wait for Blood Corruption: Death to wear off (for caution), heal up, and only then kill the third Corruption. Then, kite the Amalgamation that spawns through the bubbles while healing yourself, preparing for when the debuff takes your health and dancing between left and right on Deathwing's back, only then to kill said Amalgamation (with 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood) near the armor, explode said armor (avoid explosion), release hell on Burning Tendon, and then proceding to the next lane where the process is essentially similar. Rinse and repeat.

Quite complicated, I know, but after a few tries you should get it. The key is understanding the mechanics, being 100% aware of what's going on 100% of the time, and opting for the cautious man's steps.

Good luck on your farming!

Comment by leowow

Super annoying fight to solo. He is still rolling right and left and you are at the middle!. Dont know why Blizz doesnt fix this boss.

Comment by lesteraz

As a Guardian/Feral Druid you can easily solo this fight by simply strafing from side to side, close to the elemental plates. A good tip is to think about doing the strafing, and talking to yourself about strafing to not forget it.

Gear used: Full 536 Feral PvP gear.

Main abilities used here are Thrash and Frenzied Regeneration.

The Main gimmick about this fight is Deathwing's Roll, which is a spell he starts casting when there are more players on one side of him. (His spine is considered the middle, and standing there does not prevent him from Rolling.) If you would fail to strafe from side to side, he will Roll and throw you off his back, killing you and instantly wiping you leaving your corpse on The Skyfire.

Start fight by dropping down, killing every corruption, and the four Hideous Amalgamation after that. This allows you to have one Hideous Amalgamation, meaning all Corrupted Blood will go onto that one.
Corrupted Blood comes from the Corruption "holes", and spawns periodicly throughout the fight.
As you do not control the spawns of the Corrupted Blood, and they go to you, you basicly don't have to do more than Thrash when there are corrupted Blood around you. Make sure you don't spam Thrash as this will kill the Hideous Amalgamation.

When a Corrupted Blood dies, it will leave a small graphical little bubble on the back of Deathwing, pulling the Hideous Amalgamation over to that, will make the mob absorb that Corrupted Blood and it will gain a stack of Absorbed Blood. You will need to get nine Absorbed Blood stacks on a single Hideous Amalgamation, as it will start Superheated Nucleus, which in order will start Nuclear Blast on death. Make sure to pull the Hideous Amalgamation close to the Armor Plate before killing it which is where you already should be at.

When Nuclear Blast hits one of Deathwing's Elemental Plates, it will go away for a couple of seconds allowing you to hit his Burning Tendons. Here is a good place to just spam damaging abilities and mainly Thrash. I had to do every Tendon twice in order to kill it.

You need to kill three tendons before the next Cutscene appears, which will trigger you to the Maelstrom. A chest will be your greeting right next to Thrall.

Welcome to the Madness of Deathwing. A complete joke, compared to this fight.

Comment by roguescion

Soloed Heroic 10 today with Frost DK. The key, besides the normal mode mechanics of running around the whole time, is managing Blood Corruption: Death. Popping AMS right as the debuff is about to expire manages the damage to something more reasonable. However, be prepared to still be using Death Strike on every Corrupted Blood to heal yourself back up. Hard, but not impossible.

Comment by shaitan22305

After you get the mechanics down I found this really easy to solo as a 561 WW monk due in large part to the decent self heals and mobility. The toughest part of this fight is the deathwing roll and being able to survive some heavy hits. If you solo this, Deathwing will be barrel rolling like a mad man because you are supposed to balance your raid party on the right and left side of his back which is impossible to do on your own. Once he feels more people on one side of his back, after a 3-4 second delay, he rolls and if you are not in one of the tentacle holes you die.

You want to start out by destroying 3-4 of the original tentacles, there will always be one that re-spawns so you should only have one up at any given time. Once you are down to one tentacle up ignore it and get into a hole. After destroying a tentacle a few things will happen, a humanoid elemental called Hideous Amalgamation will spawn and start smacking you for each tentacle destroyed and the holes that the tentacles were in will be open and spawn these fiery spiky slime things called Corrupted Blood. Here is what i recommend after destroying the first set of tentacle immediately run into one of the open holes, this will keep you on deathwing's back even when you rolls, and start spamming this will keep you alive while the Amalgamations smack you. You can completely ignore them initially cause as soon as deathwing rolls for the first time they fly off his back. Now what you have to do is stay in that hole, top off your health when needed with surging mist and collect the Corrupted Bloods that spawn without killing them. They DO NOT get flung off deathwing's back during a roll. You want to get to 9 Bloods for what you need to do with them next but I always mess up the next part so sometimes I just wait around for 7ish cause I get impatient. Once you get the 7-9 Bloods you need to wait for just after a deathwing roll, otherwise your timing might be off and you'll get flung off during a roll, and then run to the one tentacle still up and destroy it. If you recall doing this spawns an Amalgamation which is what you need next. The gang of Bloods (see what I did there) that you have collected will need to be killed which leaves behind a fiery puddle for a bit. Without killing the Amalgamation you must run him through the blood puddles. Doing so give him a buff that stacks up to 9 times, maybe more idk you just need 9. The buff makes him hit harder and gives him some more beef I think so this is where you may need to pop some heals and Touch of Karma to stay alive. Keep in mind if deathwing rolls during this the Amalgamation will fly off and you'll have to start over by gather Corrupted Bloods again. To prevent deathwing from rolling you must run across his spine from side to side ever few seconds. Going from one side to the other will stop a roll before it happens and prepare him to roll the other way. This is where the monks mobility and rolls come in handy to quickly get to his other side. It will give you a warning in game when he is preparing to roll (maybe you need DBM for that? I think it might tell you regardless). Once you see that warning you have a few second before it says "deathwing rolls". If it says that and you are not in a tentacle hole you will die. So you have your Amalgamation chasing you as you run back and forth from left to right over death wings spine trying to get 9 stacks of the Corrupted Bloods dead body puddles. Once you get the 9th stack kill the Amalgamation right in front of the armor plating sticking up on his back (it's the one towards his head with a little point in the middle). If it's not close enough to the plate when it dies and detonates (goes nuclear) then you'll have to redo everything from the beginning. The Amalgamation will only detonate if it has the 9 stacks. If you succeed then the plate will start to come off and reveal a fiery ball tendon that you can target for a short duration. You must destroy this tendon to detach the armor plating on deathwing's back completely. If you don't do it fast enough the plate will reseal and you'll have to start over. Once the plate is off there will be two more tentacle holes and you'll have to repeat the above steps two more times to remove a total of three armored plates from deathwing's back. Once you remove the third the encounter ends and you'll feel a sense of achievement after dying 10ish times trying to figure the fight out.

Tips for WW monks.
If you play a monk like me you use your rolls and flying serpent kick to get around faster. I would remove flying serpent kick from your button mappings during this fight if you feel like you'll unconsciously press it like me cause what killed me the most was serpent kicking too far and flying off of his back. Rolling is so so useful in getting from one side of his back to the other quickly to prevent a deathwing roll. Surging Mist was my self heal of choice and made the overall encounter incredibly easy to stay alive for. When you are kiting the Amalgamation is when you have to be careful of your health the most because when he gets those stack he starts taking out big chunks of your health. Touch of Karma and Chi Wave helped keep me alive through this. Finally don't get discouraged if you die a lot the first time because it is a tough fight to solo with all the mechanics :D

Comment by Rasztra

A guide to solo Spine of Deathwing (including the achievement Maybe He'll Get Dizzy) can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ybrlf-hSY4

Comment by Zoronden

If you are having issues completing this fight, I made a simple and short guide to completing it solo at level 100.

Simple WoW Guide - Spine of Deathwing Solo lvl 100
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FxMLEENpg8

Comment by hiramloram

Ilvl 645 destro warlock. On 10H there's still enough damage going out to kill if one isn't careful.

On 10N, stand in the fire gripped by a tendril, swamped by adds, it doesn't matter. Just execute the mechanics properly and that's it.

Voidlord didn't take any noticeable damage on normal or heroic.

On 10H, used Glyph of Eternal Resolve, did a lot more moving around to avoid damage, used the Voidlord to handle the bloods a lot more, popped Dark Regeneration once or twice. That was plenty, and multiple different combinations of heals/CDs/talents/glyphs would work. Managing the amalgamation to pick up the debuff, position, go nuclear and blow off plates was a bit more involved as a consequence.

Not a big deal at all, but 10H required some attention. On 10N one can afk.

Comment by stym

Not significantly harder to solo in 25H compared to 10H as an ilvl 665 Destruction Warlock (655 Weapon and Trinkets)/

The strategy is essentially the same as the ones described below in other posts. I sacrificed an imp to dispel the blood debuff that hits you whenever an amalgamation comes in melee range (not a huge deal if you don't have self dispels, it will hit you for about 30k)
I used most of my burning ember for talented ember tap and I did use a healthstone at some point.

So basically, kill 3 corruptions, eject the incoming amalgamations, start stacking blood residues in the center of the spine, running back and forth to reset the roll sequence/
When you have 9 residues near the center, kill the last corruption, kite the amalgamation on the residues and kill it near the plate, then position yourself on a dead corruption and kill the tendon.
Be careful, the burning tendon does have a lot of health, so don't be shy about using your offensive CD's during that phase.
When the plate flies away, kill two corruptions (leave one alive), rinse and repeat.

Comment by Kyrunn

Worst encounter ever. There has to be a way to skip this boss

Comment by Xilu82

Killed it tonight and all it dropped was 1 Essence of Destruction... What the hell?

Comment by rodmaan

anyone else having problems starting the spine of deathwing encounter? If I click on "start the encounter" nothing happens.

As I finished the fight before and spoke with the npc I just got ported away and died.

Comment by kharth

Still not dropping loot on heroic. GM said was "bad luck". Maybe they can just up Morchok's belt drop rate I need for xmog idc about spine

Comment by Benvyme

My new strategy to solo this fight is pretty easy and has worked for me so far on my level 100 hunter, shadow priest, and feral druid. So far I've done it on 10H, 25N, and 25H.

Start the fight, and immediately kill all 4 Corruptions. Then run to either side and stand in one of the holes (preferably the one closer to the plate of armor) where the tentacle was. Then you just wait for the 9 Corrupted Bloods to spawn and just let them hit you while all 9 spawn. At level 100 they barely tickle, and my hunter's spirit bond, my shadow priest's shields, and feral druid's rejuv was able to easily keep me up. When I have 9 Corrupted Blood on me, I run to the center of the spine near the plate of armor and kill them all there. Then I run back to my hole as I kill the tentacle. When the Hideous Amalgamation spawns I run him over the puddles and when he reaches 9 stacks I quickly kill him while running from side to side every few seconds so Deathwing doesn't roll. I then kill the exposed Burning Tendons to remove the first plate of armor. Repeat 2 more times to complete the fight and you're done.

Comment by whyzzim

Quite easy to solo:

Kill all Corruption(tentacles) except one. Each Corruption spawns a Hideous Amalgamation when killed. If you are soloing Fiery Grip won't be cast.
Stand in the pit of tentacle so you'll have Grasping Tendrils, which makes you safe from Deathwing's roll, but Deathwing's roll will kill Hideous Amalgamations, so you don't need to kill those by yourself.
Wait until 9 Corrupted Blood(oozes) spawn, aoe them, and kill the remaining Corruption.
Pull Hideous Amalgamation over the corpse of oozes. You'll need to move left and right in this step and the next step to keep Deathwing from rolling.
When the Amalgamation has 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood, pull it to the front end and kill it. The Blast will damage deathwing's armor. Kill the Burning Tendons that spawns so the armor falls off.

Repeat those steps for 3 times and you're done.

Comment by Kulisek

Pull the boss, kill 3 tentacles, move into a hole and afk till you have 9 bloods. Ignore the fact boss is rolling, ignore bloods (if you are a rogue, feel free to kill some of them to get CP so you can heal yourself).
After you have 9 bloods, wait after deathwing rolls, move to the middle, and remember to keep moving left/right so you don't get rolled. Kill tentacle, get back to the middle, kill all bloods on one spot, move big guy on those patches, let him eat 9 debuffs, keep moving left/right so you don't get rolled, kill tendon. I hope I haven't forget to write this: be sure to keep moving left/right so you don't get rolled. Really. It's the only thing you can screw your try on.
kill back tentacle, kill one of new tentacle, move to it's spot and go to the step 1

Comment by eric0707

How to Spine of DeathWing solo LV 100 -> https://youtu.be/NNJUjFQjwZY

Comment by Mydge

Due to an unexpected turn of events (my party died), I found a nifty way to solo this without worrying about grasping tendrils (after one respawned right on the roll and had me killed).

Setup:

Feral Kitty with Moonfire (690).
Turn on 'v' bars to keep track.

Tactic:

Moonfire the tendrils when you spawn (instakill).
Go to the armour casing and run back and forth along it.
Deathwing will talk about rolling like it's 1999 and he is Fred Durst.
Mark an Amalgamation with a Skull.
Swipe/Thrash to kill Bloods.
Continue to Moonfire any tendrils that appear.
Once your Skull has 9 stacks, kill him.
Target the Burning Tendon and use a combo to kill it (as you continue to run).

Rinse and repeat.

Comment by bleuwolfe

the best part of this fight is the corpse run back- there are always other people running back too :D
Guess I'm not the only one who can't dance

Comment by Maurvyn

This fight is horribly bugged. Trying to duo and the roll killed us regardless of having the tentacle buff. Both of us with the buff and it killed us three times. I just hope Blizz will eventually fix these old raids to allow us to solo them.

Comment by Dangerkitty

If there are 2 of you trying to do the Spine, then have each person stand on each side. It keeps him from rolling and then all you have to worry about is dowing the bloods to blow off the back armor.

Comment by Vjnzen

For fellow Soloing Masters - here a video I made for a friend of mine. Seeing how many people still have trouble with this encounter I decided to upload a short Video with some Commentary! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxbe1sTskJI

~~Seems like this fight is currently bugged. I will make my video available again when(/if) they fix the issue.~~

The Strategy in the Video seems to work now again just fine. Good luck out there. :)

Comment by Avataru

I've tried every solo technique on this page and done nothing but shell out GPs to repair my death damaged gear. A ilvl 687 BM Hunter cannot solo this... Seems a bit bugged to me.

Comment by ganny

I was doing this until the wee hours of the morning, then I had to call it because I was going to the movies in about 10 hours and I wanted to get some sleep.

Anyway, I am able to get one plate off before eventually being one-shotted by some BS.

I was greatly amused when, upon one death, I got the Stood in the Fire achievement. I honestly didn't know it was possible to get the achievement post Dragon Soul release (I had barely managed to get it while Deathwing was flying around Azeroth).

After some research, I had learned that you can still get this achievement during this raid fight.

Comment by Maurvyn

This is SOOO @#$%ing bugged. Roll was knocking us off even with the tentacle buff. The bloods would die to 1 health and then instantly heal. Endlessly. Amalgamations were dying to nothing. It was a god-damned ^&*!ing joke. After three tries we just bailed. Not worth the repair bill.

Comment by Rybin

This is probably the worst encounter in the entire game.

Comment by killicious

I used to solo this all the time. iLvl 700 hunter. Piece of cake. Now, is it the latest patch? 7.0.3.
The bloods are too many and they kill me before I can finish the encounter.
Has blizz made this more difficult intentionally or what's going on?

Comment by gpxsis

This fight is not only annoying but also bugged as hell

Comment by gpxsis

Trust me, I know how to appreciate a good challenge, but this is nothing but bull^&*!.
The one who designed this fight deserves to be fired.

Comment by lapdragon

I just did this fight (solo) as of 7.0.3 and while it did take a bit of practice to understand the mechanics, I followed Kulisek's stragegy and had no trouble at all.

1) Kill 3 tentacles
2) AFK in one of the tentacles holes (and make sure you have the tendrils buff) until you have at least 9 bloods on you - make sure to turn off your autoattack so you don't slowly kill bloods and not realize it.
3) Once you have enough bloods, kill the 4th tentacle and start running back and forth across his back to keep resetting the Roll countdown, the bloods will follow you and the Amalgamation will eventually come to you. Aoe to kill all the bloods, and run the amalgamation across them a few times, once he gets to 9, murder him as quickly as you can and KEEP RUNNING BACK AND FORTH, else the Amalgamation will get blown off before it can explode.
4) Kill the tendon holding the next back plate on, and then restart again at step 1.

Once you get the process down, it's actually really easy - I did it on a bearmode druid in 700 Invasion gear with no problem. You can even do the "Maybe he'll get dizzy" achievement at the same time - just start in a left-side tentacle hole, wait for the roll, then go to a right tentacle hole, wait for the roll, left again, and then right again and you're done dancing, just finish the encounter and you're golden.

Comment by HeKol

On an average of 10 runs Spine of Deathwing 25HC rewards 164 gold, 75 silver and 57 copper after vendoring dropped gear.

Comment by Komamura

This is the stupidest encounter ever. Just saying.

Comment by Hoplowe

Easiest way to solo, assuming you're at 110:

Start running in a circle and don't stop for the entirety of the encounter. You have a one-to-two second chance to react to the notification about rolling - it doesn't sound like a long time but you'll be able to do it.
Kill three of the four Corruptions tentacles - if you screw up the circle, you can leap into one of their gaps to hang on. Try to avoid rolling him though, since it wipes all your progress with the next steps.
Corrupted Bloods will spawn - kill them. Use spells/attacks that only damage a single target and do not spread to nearby mobs. Also, make sure you do not AoE.
Hideous Amalgamations will also spawn - do not kill them. Instead run them back and forth over the corpses of the Bloods, until they've gained nine stacks of their buff. This is displayed with a huge counter on the mob name.
When any Amalgamation reaches nine stacks, go to the plate. Kill the stacked Amalgamation next to the plate, which will cast a short spell that will open the plate.
Kill the revealed Burning Tendril, and repeat the process. You'll need to do this three times to end the encounter.

This whole encounter looks very confusing, but that's only because of all the flashy effects running around and the large volume of mobs you'll end up running around with. Make sure you can tab through mobs, because it's way harder to target the things you want to kill manually; I usually set mine to the ` key. Stay focused on what you need to do and you'll be fine. It might take a few runs to get the circle method down, but once you do this encounter is over fairly quickly and painlessly.

Comment by guardianphoenix

I just soloed this on my Fury Warrior.

I read a few of the walk throughs, but most of what I saw was for older patches. So here is what I did:

1. When you parachute in kill the two tentacles nearest the armor you want to blow up (the ones towards his head not his tail).
2. This will spawn the adds that need to get to 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood, then you kill them next to the armor plate. Do not kill these guys until they have 9 stacks. Single target the bloods down and run these guys over where they did.
3. To avoid Deathwing rolling you and the adds off of his back move back and forth. If you stay on one side for longer than about 5 seconds he will roll, through off and you die.
4. Once the armor plate starts to fall off quickly DPS the tendril, tendon, or whatever it is holding the armor on him. It took me like to hits to do this.
5. Move onto the next area killing the front two tentacles and repeating these steps until you win.

Once I figured this out it was super simple compared to what I had been trying (killing all tentacles and having a ton of the adds trying to gain stacks of absorbed blood).

Comment by ZombieEris

Level 105 sub rogue. 10 man normal.
(Going for the fangs and xmogs will update later when i do higher difficulties.)
Just strafed back and forth near the plate(his head) and killed the bloods until the amalgamations got is 9 needed. Killed it for it to explode. Killed the tendril, rinse repeat three times and gg.
Died twice until i got the strafing down.

(edited for how many times i died.)

Comment by Hawkeye5723

Has become harder since 7.2

Previously you had a 10 second notice prior to the role (& getting thrown off), since patch 7.2 that is now only 5 seconds.

Not a big issue, but one worth noting.

Comment by Ryawy

During the early stages when you are slowly waiting for bloods to spawn, you don't have to dance back and forth the whole time. Standing on the spot where the tendril comes out gives you a little root that sticks you to Deathwing's back so you don't fall off when he rolls. The amalgamations fall off when he rolls, the bloods do not. Stick yourself and let them spawn for a while. It is safe to move off of the spot as soon as Deathwing gives the next roll warning.

Comment by sajaki

I soloed this on my lvl 110 prot warrior.

Drop the parachute, and kill 3 Corruption tentacles. Each Corruption kill spawns 1 Hideous Amalgamation elemental when killed and a stream of Corrupted Blood oozes.

Stand next to the pit of the killed tentacle so you'll have Fiery Grip buff, hooks you to Deathwing back when he starts rolling and collect 9 Corrupted Blood on you.

Leave the pit and start strafing left-right on the front spine, aoe the bloods, then kill the last remaining Corruption (use a throw) so the last Hideous Amalgamation spawns. and kite the Hideous Amalgamation over it over the bloods so it soaks 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood.

After its on 9 kill the Amalgamation it will go Superheated Nucleus and explode with Nuclear Blast. Make sure you're hooked to the closest pit otherwise you'll be blown off and killed.

the Nuclear blast will pry off armor plate. then a Burning Tendons appears underneath it, casting Seal Armor Breach. kill the Tendons (otherwise the plate reseals).

So you've got 6 pits. Repeat as before.

The Corrupted Blood will be coming quicker so you don't need to kill off all Corruption. fish until 9 oozes are on you and then kill a Corruption and repeat.

Repeat once more until 3 plates are removed.

profit.

Comment by selkie47

So you thought it was awful before? Well, seems like blizz in their infinite wisdom decided to up the difficulty. You CANNOT for any moment stop strafing back and forth. The roll timer has been reduced and it feels like the moment you reset it, it has already started again- giving you barely a few seconds to get to the other side.

Do NOT stop strafing.
Do NOT aoe.
Run back and forth by the plate single-target killing bloods till the amalgram starts to blow up.
CONTINUE to run back and forth.
Kill the tendon.
BE PATIENT before going to the next "area", this is where I fell off (think I am up to five or six deaths)

What was not fun in the past is not an absolute chore. GL

Comment by Meanie

I am a feral druid and the Amalgamations kept dying on me after the patch 7.3. Finally after a few tries I understood what was causing it: If you have added a point in Torment of the Weak at the Netherlight Crucible on one of your artifact relics, you will kill the Amalgamations simply by hitting the Corrupted bloods. To solve this simply unequip your legendary weapon.

Comment by Malachi68

I've just tried this nine times in a row, using all of the tips and advice written on this page but nothing seems to help (I'm a lvl 110 Demonology Warlock ilvl 920). I've switched out the artifact for a level 100 heirloom weapon and dismissed all pets. No imps or hounds active.

When a Hideous Amalgamation comes over to me (I'm being held on with a Grasping Tendril), it sticks around for about 3 - 4 seconds before getting knocked off Deathwing - flying off to their death. They still have 100% health when they go flying off. They never amass any Corrupted Blood. This continues ad infinitum until I get bored and kill myself.

I soloed this a few years ago with a feral druid without any particular difficulty. I'm wondering if this is a new bug? Any help/insights?

Comment by Chilcoot

What worked for my 110 BM Hunter:

Throughout the fight, CONSTANTLY straddle Deathwing's spine, never spending more than 2 seconds on one side or the other.
Kill one of the tentacle-like Corruption. That'll release both one Hideous Amalgamation and a slow stream of Corrupted Blood.
While stradling the center of the spine nearest Deathwing's head, kill each Corrupted Blood and have your Hideous Amalgamation walk over the spot tht it died. That will add a number to a counter for the Hideous Amalgamation.
Repeat the above until the counter reaches 8. When the next Corrupted Blood arrives, kill it as close to the center of the spine nearest Deathwing's head as possible. Then lead the Hideous Amalgamation to that spot to turn its counter to 9.
At 9, the Hideous Amalgamation is ready to cast its Nuclear Blast. Kill the Hideous Amalgamation so it dies as close to the center of the spine nearest Deathwing's head as possible.
After the Nuclear Blast, a plate on Deathwing's back will blow off, exposing two tendons. Destroy those tendons.
Repeat steps 2-6 two more times, and Deathwing dies.

Hope this helps, if only me.

Comment by KingLich1

wasn't that hard for me as a prot warrior, just kept 1 corruption tendril alive, killed all the bloods at same spot, at 9 bloods on the ground killed last tendril, amalgam came and ate the 9 bloods and boom, all you got to do is run left and right, constantly, if you forgot to do it just run to the flaming pit scar, it'll keep you from rolling, blood globes don't fall off as well, so you'll have another try. It took me 1 try to get the idea, pets might slow you down if you have any so dismiss them aswell.

Comment by Yogilaw

Biggest pile of &*!@ing dog $%^& of an encounter ever come across.

Comment by paullaverick

No doubt this has been said, but if you constantly go from left to right to left he will never through you off. It was easy been a warlock, I could dot up the blood things, so other classes it will work different. Watch your AOE, so you don't kill the main guys to early. At least if you keep moving, you don't fly off! Now to repair... Gonna be costly! But hopefully next time, 1st time!

Comment by dillybar

Solo - Hunters (120)

Dismiss your pet, you don't need it anyway. If you keep it out, it can and usually will kill an Amalgamation at an untimely point.

Kill one corruption tentacle. This will spawn an Amalgamation. Do NOT target it, just kite it around.

You MUST move left to right, this fight could also be called "How To Get Insanely Dizzy", I just run in circles around over the top of the spine.

Use your tab key to target the corrupted bloods, then just use cobra shot to kill the blood. You can NOT target Amalgamation, they die in one hit.

Drag the Amalgamation over the top of the pool of corrupted blood (corpse).

Repeat till the Amalgamation has 9 total blood pools collected (watch the count on the Amalgamation's focus)

At 9 pools collected, bring Amalgamation to the front of the spine, keep him right against the front, DPS him down, then he explodes.

That explosion separates Deathwing's armor, target the tendon, dps it down.

Kill the next corruption tentacle, and follow the same instructions, you have to do this 3 total times.

Once you dps down the third tendon, the fight is over.

Everyone in our house hates this fight, because of the DBM warnings when you are running back and forth on the spine haha.

Comment by urfurf

Soloing this (in 2019!) can be a bit tricky - if you haven't done this before, you might actually die a few times before getting it right.

The key thing to understand here is that the Roll boss ability timer resets when you move from one side to the other. Usually you don't want him to Roll, because even if you're secured, the Amalgamations will fly off, and you need one alive to scoop up the 9 stacks of Corrupted Blood corpses. No problem - just keep moving from one side to the other to prevent him from rolling. The amount of seconds until next Roll will go back to full when you do that. This can get a little hectic, and you will probably use movement abilities, so watch out for running over the edge by accident, the edge is closer than it seems.

When you have 9 stacks on an Amalgamation, move it up against the armor plate (the side of the area towards Deathwing's head), kill the Amalgamation, it explodes, nuke the exposed fleshy bit. Repeat a couple of times. Not really that hard, you just have to remember to watch out for the roll timer while doing all this.

Comment by Wolfenstein3000

Solo as 120 Lok in 423 gear. Lok tip: use the imp because while you are standing in the dead tentacle pool for the hook, you can send the imp to kill other tentacles. Sometimes tentacles spawn out of cast range so you can use the imp instead of worrying about running over there with all the rolls.

Tonight (500 game days played) I finally solo'd it. I watched some videos here and it took 3 goes but then I was able to find the rhythm of the shuffle L-R-L-R. It is quite easy if you have DBM.

DBM text will come up on screen - or maybe it is just the game without DBM - "Deathwing feels players on his left, he is about to roll left" Now this does not matter when you are standing in a dead tentacle hole because you cannot get thrown off but if you are kiting the corrupted blood things or the elemental is up, you have to shuffle left, right etc.

If you are strafing left and you see the text "about to roll left" immediately strafe right until you see the text "about to roll right" - you will need to do this maybe 15 times before the add goes nuclear.

I found it very difficult to target the tendon with about 12 adds on me so used AOE spells on them.

After the third back plate comes off and he 'dies' the next encounter was surprising. You are on three islands. It is ok to just run and jump to another island when you need to kill stuff there, you get a leap/fly buff so no need to be terrified like I was that I would plunge into the raging ocean and die.

Good luck, there is certainly very interesting loot to farm here. Now on my weekly chores :)

Comment by Zhamant

Super easy to solo nowadays, just keep moving from left to right. Simple video how to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYKFywfCtsk

Comment by Mookosh

I highly recommend unequipping your Heart of Azeroth for this fight. It will prevent Essences and Azerite traits from randomly proccing and killing tentacles/amalgams when you don't want them to die.

Comment by archdruidbook

This fight wouldn't be that bad, if it weren't for my azerite powers automatically proccing and killing the adds I'm supposed to NOT kill.

Comment by George14

If you have trouble with Spine of Deathwing, when you start the fight, kill 3 of the 4 Corruptions, then stay in one of them to prevent Deathwing throwing you off, wait for the Amalgamations to be thrown off and wait for many Corrupted Bloods to gather, then when you have enough (9 to bring an Amalgamation to full charge) kill the Bloods, kill a Corruption and bring the Amalgamation to 9 charges, blow up a plate, kill the Burning Tendon and repeat.

Comment by Ceraina

Solo Spine of Deathwing

I'm giving a TLDR version, but I highly recommend the (very) long version. It's all the things I learned the hard way, along with detailed notes of how and why you're doing each step. Had I known this before I started my grind for the drake (which is still ongoing), I would have spared myself a lot of frustration, agony, and repair bills for the many deaths I took flying off DW's back. It took reading a bunch of other people's posts to find all of this information. I'm trying to compile it into a single post, cause, while nothing will make this fight easy to solo, hopefully this will save you the time of finding each little nugget of info upon flying off DW's back, to try to figure out why you died.

The TLDR version:
1. Land
2. Kill 3 of the tentacles you see, leaving one alive. Stand where one of the tentacles was. Leaving one alive is critical.
3. Wait for 9 corrupted bloods to spawn. This will be a lesson in patience.
4. Gather 9 bloods together and kill.
5. Wait till after a roll finishes, then start the Deathwing Dance (see below for details). You must move from one side to the other about every 8 seconds. DBM is strongly recommended for this.
6. While keep up the DW dance every 8 seconds, kill the last tentacle.
7. Keep dancing while you lead the amalgamation moving along with you. He's soaking up the residue left from the deaths of the 9 bloods. He has a ticker next to his name that is 0 when it spawns. Once he has absorbed 9 residues, the ticker will be at 9.
8. Bring the amalgamation as close to DW's spine as possible (nearest his head). DPS the amalgamation to 1 health. Wait for the amalgamation to go nuclear. Keep dancing.
9. Once DW's burning tendon is exposed, kill it. Spine section pops off. Still dancing thru this.
10. Repeat steps 2-9.
11. Repeat steps 2-9 again.
12. Autoparachute off DW's back and grab your loot.

Detailed version with critical info if you're not very familiar with this fight.

Upon landing after the cinematic, you'll see four tentacles.

Kill all but one tentacle and then stand in the empty spot where one was before you killed it. I recommend leaving one of the tentacles nearest DW's spine (facing his head) alive, but that's not necessary. It's just efficient.

I emphasize that you must leave one tentacle alive. If you kill them all, they will respawn, but if you leave one alive, the rest stay dormant. It is especially likely they will respawn in the hold where you're standing, right about the time you see DBM say, "Deathwing rolls <direction>). In such a situation (and I encountered this a LOT), you will not have time to kill the new tentacle before you're floating away from Deathwing's spine. And after a split second, cool moment of floating, instant death.

Immediately after a tentacle's death, a hideous amalgamation will spawn. So you will see three of those, along with a Corrupted Blood or two. You can ignore all of them for the moment. Your first priority is to get in the spot where a tentacle was.

Reason: There is a debuff, grasping tendrils, from the spot where the tentacle was that will keep you rooted in place, even during DW rolls. Once you see that debuff, you you are good for the next part.

So you're secure on DW's back, and you aren't going to float away and die. Now back to the mobs. Ignore the three hideous amalgamations that spawned with the first three tentacle deaths. The first time DW rolls, they will all float away and die. It is a beautiful sight to see.

So now you're gonna stand around for while. As long as you've followed the above, you can take an afk and grab a beer, let the dog out, or whatever you want. You are just sitting in that root spot waiting for 9 corrupted bloods to spawn. They will slowly trickle out of the three empty tentacle spots. It's usually a couple minutes for the first spine section. And all the while, DW is rolling around, treating you like a flea on his back, while you act like a tick. There's even blood involved. Lots of them.

Why 9 bloods? Each corrupted blood will leave a "residue" on dying. Each time a hideous amalgamation crosses that residue, he absorbs it and the counter next to his nameplate will tick up one. He starts at 0 and needs to get to 9. You do not need to have the corrupted bloods alive for the amalgamation to absorb the residue. It's usually easier to kill the bloods before killing the last tentacle. My recommendation is to gather all the bloods in a single spot as close to the center of DW's spine (nearest his head) and use your best AOE to kill them all at once. But if you move out of the rooted spot, know you've got about 8 seconds to start the Deathwing Dance.4

Now that you've got 9 residues as close to DW's spine as you can get 'em, you should step out of the spot you're standing in. Now you're gonna do the Deathwing Dance, and ensure that DW doesn't roll again for the current spine session. I'm gonna pause here for an explanation, cause this is the second piece of soloing that killed me (a lot).

As you've probably seen in the part of the fight where you're waiting for 9 bloods, DW rolls - a LOT. If you have DBM (and I highly recommend it), you have seen a lot of "Deathwing rolls <right/left>" depending on which side you decided to root your ass in. And every time he rolled, anything not nailed down flew off. Remember that beautiful sight to see the amalgamations flying away with the first roll? It's a sight for tears now, if you don't manage the Deathwing Dance, even if you've managed to root yourself before the roll. Cause you need that amalgamation that spawned with the last tentacle dying.

So the Deathwing Dance is you moving from left to right, right to left, before DW rolls. Once you see the DBM warning that Deathwing is about to roll, you have approximately 9 seconds before he actually rolls. So you know that ole Waltz thing, "Dance, two, three, four?" Well I do that with a "five, six, seven, eight" in my head while I keep my eye on the amalgamation. On eight, I move to DW's other side. You will almost immediately get the DBM warning that he's gonna roll again. Just sing your countdown. No need to run around like a headless chicken every 2-3 seconds like I've seen in some videos.

So yeah, the Deathwing Dance is just moving from side to side about every 8 seconds. That's all. Easiest dance you'll learn today.

Remember the amalgamation? It's the only way DW's spine is going to open up. And it takes more than the time between rolls for this to happen. The good news? If you miss and roll, as long as you're in a tentacle section that hasn't respawned, you will stay on for the roll. And once the roll is over, look around, kill a tentacle, and wait for another amalgamation to spawn. The better news, that DW Dance moving around is good, cause it helps the amalgamation absorb residue faster, as long as you're dancing through the residue with the amalgamation.

So the amalgamation ticker is at 9? Now what? Kill the MF, while still doing the DW dance. Here's where any instant casts you have available should be used. At Shadowlands level, it shouldn't take much to bring him to 1 health.

He doesn't die right way. Instead, he gets pissy with you and decides he's gonna go nuclear. For real.

You want to make sure he nukes as close to DW spine as you can. This is where having the living tentacle from earlier and the blood residue be nearest the spine is efficient. If he nukes too far from the spine, you get to rinse and repeat. If he is close enough, a piece of DW's spine breaks off, revealing a burning tendon. DPS that tendon (easy to do now). Once it's dead, two more tentacles show up, and you're going to repeat this process to blow off section two of the spine. And, as if you haven't already had enough fun with the first two, you get one final tendon section on which to repeat exactly what you did the first two times.

It won't take as long for the bloods on rounds 2 and 3 - because each time, you have two additional new tentacle spots from which the bloods spawn.

Once you've successfully disabled his spine, you're gonna parachute off his back, thinking he's dead. *Spoiler alert* - He's not. Yet. But you do get a second chance at him, along with a pair of cool mounts.

Happy hunting. And dancing.

Comment by MamaBear

I hate this fight so, so much. Wayyy too easy for the Amalgation things to die before getting full charge for Nuclear Blast. OR they just fall off when the dragon rolls. Just need to do this ONE more time for the Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider Achievement. Ugh

Comment by Plufproop

Just tried to two-man this and it's hopeless.

We couldn't get up to nine stacks on the amalgamation, or if we did, didn't see it happen. There is no obvious way to see how many stacks there are.

I came here to read about how to do this and it really is completely ridiculous.

This is so badly designed it belongs in the Shadowlands. TERRIBLE quest. 0/10.

Comment by LadySky89

As of today, 25th August 2022, this fight seems to be bugged (it was the previous week as well).

When you kill the Hideous Amalgamation on 9 stacks and they cast "Nuclear Blast", as close to the shell as they can be, the game returns you the message

" was not close enough to pry up the plate!"

...and the shell doesn't open.

Unfortunately this prevents ending the encounter, and so getting to the final fight (which drops the mount).

Comment by Eshan

I am a MM hunter with over 120 kills on Spine on my hunter and around 60 more on my Alts, but since the latest patch, I have had severe issues with this battle.
Previously in 2 years of doing this solo I had only 11 wipes on H 25 man, now in just 24 hours I am up to 24!
This is due to 2 problems, first the Hideous Amalgamations are dying for no reason or shot being fired at them and secondly Deathwing is now rolling randomly without any warning via DBM, so you could be leading an Amalgamation over the bloods and suddenly you are flying off the back of Deathwing's spine causing yet another wipe!
I am only doing DS as I still don't have Experiment 12-B or the Blazing Drake to complete my collection of mounts from this instance (it took 76 kills for the Handmaiden mount to drop BTW).
Hopefully Blizzard will take note of this bug that I have submitted and fix the issues fairly soon.
-Edit- 23/12
It appears that Blizz have seen the error of their ways and fixed this battle back to the way it was pre-DF as I have done it solo on 3 of my toons & also gotten the Reins of the Blazing Drake to boot after kill # 126 on my hunter !
Now all I need is Experiment 12-B and I never have to enter this instance again. Well here goes attempt #150 for that drop lol.

Comment by Dreadalous

Still bugged as of today. I have done this solo tonnes of times over the years without a problem but now going near (not even attacking) an amalgamation or walking over a blob pool randomly sends me flying off. I never stay longer than 5 seconds on each side and this happened easily after 2 seconds. Maybe there will be a patch tomorrow but I doubt it will be to fix THIS lol.

It seems every patch there is SOME problem that affects old content. The only reason I can fathom is they updated the DS dragon aspect NPCS to the current Dragonflight ones even though they are not even in the Spine of Deathwing fight.
Either that or some UI problem. New UI has been causing a LOT of problems in-game even without addons.

Comment by erro3

Completed Spine today on my level 50 rogue. I had wiped a couple times at the start and came here looking for mechanics because it had been so long since I ran Dragon Soul. The latest comments made me think maybe it was bugged, but I was able to complete the encounter. Whatever the previous bug was is apparently fixed.

I stood in a tendril spot the majority of the time to make sure to have the grasping tendril debuff for rolls. Switching sides did not matter, as long as I had the debuff I was not thrown off. I always made sure to be standing in the spot closest to the plate wall. Keep 1 tentacle up in easy kill range for your class. Wait for a bunch of bloods to spawn. AFTER a roll, I would move slightly out of the tendril spot, by the plate wall, and aoe down the bloods, then move back inside the tendril spot. When I knew I had 9+ bloods dead, I would wait until after the NEXT roll, and then immediately kill the tentacle. Once the Amalgamation comes over and absorbs the blood, kill it by the wall. This must be done before Deathwing rolls or you will lose your Amalgamation. Kill the plate tendril to pop the plate off. Then rinse and repeat, always hanging out close to the next plate wall. The encounter just takes some time and patience to complete.

Comment by Blunderbus

Blizzard, please let us skip this encounter. Signed, mount collectors everywhere.

Comment by anneonymie

Update 10.1.0 - sajaki's method is the perfect way to do this right now, and Ceraina's comment gives really good justification so you know what to do if things don't go exactly as planned.

Also if you are attempting Maybe He'll Get Dizzy..., for Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider, I've tested it a couple different ways and it only succeeds if the Left➡Right➡Left➡Right roll sequence occurs before killing the boss with no off-sequence rolls in-between (e.g. L➡L or R➡R). You can do as many iterations of the sequence as you want, at any time in the fight, but if you break the sequence prior to killing the boss, it will fail and you'll need to restart the roll sequence prior to destroying that last plate. So I recommend doing it closer to the end of the fight so you don't have to worry about roll sequence alongside everything else!

View in 3D Links

Deathwing <The Destroyer>

This NPC can be found in Dragon Soul (2).

Dragon SoulThe Siege of Wyrmrest TempleMorchokWarlord Zon'ozzYor'sahj the UnsleepingHagara the StormbinderFall of DeathwingUltraxionWarmaster BlackhornSpine of DeathwingMadness of Deathwing

Encounter Journal

Heroic		Mythic
Deadly		Important
Tank		DPS
Healer		Interruptible
Magic		Curse
Poison		Disease
Enrage

Roll – Throughout the encounter, Deathwing tries to throw players from his back when he senses that they are all standing on the same side of his spine. During a roll, Deathwing throws off all players and other creatures not attached to his back.

Elementium Reinforced Plates

The glancing strike from the Dragon Soul destroyed one of the large armor plates on Deathwing's back and loosened another three. Players must remove all of these plates to give Thrall a chance to get a clear shot.

Burning Tendons
Players expose Burning Tendons when they pry up one of Deathwing's armor plates. Destroying these fibrous strands is the key to removing an armor plate.
- Seal Armor Breach – After the players pry up an armor plate, the Burning Tendons rapidly pull the plate closed, protecting the tendons from further damage and preventing the plate from flying off.

Deathwing's Immune System

The creatures that comprise Deathwing's Immune System emerge from the holes left by torn off armor plates. Deathwing defends himself with increasing intensity as more plates are torn off.

Grasping Tendrils – These tendrils sprout from holes in Deathwing's back that aren't currently occupied by Corruption tentacles. The Tendrils grasp any player that wanders too close, reducing their movement speed by 35% and inflicting 5 Fire damage every 0.5 sec. until they move away. This effect prevents players from being thrown off Deathwing's back.
Corruption – These tentacles are dramatic physical manifestations of the Old God Corruption that runs rampant through Deathwing's body. They emerge first from the holes in his back left by armor plates, and they seal the wound completely, preventing any other creatures from emerging from it.
- Searing Plasma – The Corruption coats the victim in the searing blood of Deathwing. The thick blood absorbs up to 200 healing done to the target and causes the victim to cough up blood. The violent coughing periodically inflicts 7 Physical damage every 10 sec.
- Fiery Grip – The Corrupton grips victims with a whip-like cord of plasma, stunning them for up to 30 sec. and inflicting 53 Fire damage every 3 sec. The corruption must channel to maintain this effect, and players may break the channel by inflicting significant damage to the tentacle. This effect prevents players from being thrown off Deathwing's back.
Hideous Amalgamation – These unstable creatures are a patchwork of Elementium Armor fragments and pieces of the former Dragon's body held together by his molten blood.
- Absorb Blood – The Amalgamation absorbs nearby Corrupted Blood residue. The Amalgamation grows more unstable with each Residue absorbed, increasing its damage by 10% and attack speed by 20%. At 9 stacks it becomes superheated.
- Superheated Nucleus – The core of the Amalgamation becomes critically unstable, causing it to inflict 21 Fire damage to all enemies every 3 sec. If the players destroy the Amalgamation in this state, then it will trigger a Nuclear Blast.
- Nuclear Blast – The superheated nucleus of the Amalgamation triggers a massive explosion, inflicting 311 Fire damage to targets within 8 yds. This powerful blast pries up one of Deathwing's Elementium plates if it is within range.
- Degradation – Destroyed Amalgamations degrade the maximum health of all enemy targets by 5%. This effect occurs regardless of the state of the nucleus and stacks up to 15 times.
- Blood Corruption: Death – Deathwing's corruption courses through your veins. This corruption takes hold if it is not removed quickly, infecting the player with the Blood of Deathwing. When dispelled this effect jumps to a new target and can mutate into Blood Corruption: Earth.
  - Blood of Deathwing – The blood of Deathwing explodes violently from your veins, inflicting 140 Fire damage to you and several other players.
- Blood Corruption: Earth – A shadow of Neltharion courses through your veins. This corruption takes hold if it is not removed quickly, infecting the player with the Blood of Neltharion. When dispelled this effect jumps to a new target and can mutate into Blood Corruption: Death.
  - Blood of Neltharion – The barest hint of a shadow of the former Earth-Warder suffuses your blood. Damage taken from all sources is reduced by 20%. This effect can stack up to 2 times.
Corrupted Blood – These living globs of Deathwing's blood appear fragile, but leave behind an indestructible residue when killed.
- Burst – Corrupted Blood explodes when destroyed, inflicting 22 Physical damage to nearby enemies within 200 yards.
- Residue – Destroying a Corrupted Blood leaves behind an indestructible residue. It slowly creeps toward the nearest hole in Deathwing's Back where it reconstitutes into a new Corrupted Blood.

Deathwing <The Destroyer>

Encounter Journal

Related

Contribute