Spine of Deathwing Encounter Guide: Strategy, Abilities, Loot

• Do not apply DoTs to the Corruptions, as you want to keep them alive as long as possible and only break the Fiery Grip.
• Ranged DPS should always be watching the Fiery Grip timer and instantly change targets when the channel begins.
• Do not kill the Corrupted Blood via AoE or the raid will take a huge burst of damage.

• Rotate raid-wide defensive cooldowns while the raid is afflicted by Grasping Tendrils, and when Hideous Amalgamations gain Superheated Nucleus.
• Assign one healer to be in charge of dispelling only.
• Use large, single-target heals on players debuffed by Searing Plasma.

• Keep the Hideous Amalgamation away from the Blood Pools until it is low health, and there are at least 9 Blood Pools to be absorbed.
• Make sure you always trigger Nuclear Blast on the same side of Deathwings armor.
• Coordinate AoE stuns as needed to help facilitate the tank in kiting the Corrupted Bloods.

• Roll — Deathwing will periodically attempt to Roll towards whichever of his sides he feels the most raid members on.
  • Grasping Tendrils
• Corruption
  • Searing Plasma
  • Fiery Grip
• Corrupted Blood
  • Residue
  • Burst
• Hideous Amalgamation
  • Absorbed Blood
  • Superheated Nucleus
• Nuclear Blast
• Exposed Armor Plate
  • Burning Tendons
    • Seal Armor Breach

While Spine of Deathwing is not the final boss of Dragon Soul, nor is it the final encounter with Deathwing himself, it is nonetheless the most difficult encounter found in the raid. Strap in and prepare for an extremely challenging battle as you make an all-out assault upon Deathwings armor itself. The goal of this encounter is to remove three plates of armor off of Deathwings back, exposing his weak-spot.

The encounter can be started at any time by speaking with Sky Captain Swayze; doing so will enter your raid into the fight, where you will parachute down on top of Deathwings back. Have the raid make a macro to cancel the parachute, /cancelaura Parachute, to quickly fall down to Deathwings back and start the fight a few seconds earlier. The first add to be encountered are the 4 Corruption adds found on Deathwings back; there will always be at least 1 Corruption alive, as soon as the last one living dies out a new one will spawn. Corruptions regularly use Searing Plasma on a random target, absorbing a large amount of heals while the player is afflicted and deals damage-over-time; heals must be assigned to quickly heal these targets to remove the debuff and allow the player to receive healing again.

Corruptions will also use Fiery Grip, channeling a 30 seconds stun into multiple enemies and dealing 90,000 Fire damage every 3 seconds. To break the channeled stun and free your fellow raiders, you will need to deal 16% of the Corruptions health in damage to it, which will interrupt its channel. When doing this, you want to deal as close to 16% of the mobs health in damage as possible to keep the same Corruption alive as long as possible. Each time a Corruption dies a Hideous Amalgamation will spawn; we will go over the Hideous Amalgamations abilities in full detail later in this guide, for now just know you only need one Hideous Amalgamation alive at a time.

The first thing you need to do is clear out the 4 starting Corruptions. Have your DoT DPS spread their damage out, while the rest of your raid focuses Skull down first. Once Skull is low, Ranged DPS should swap off to Triangle with the goal of killing it around the same time that Cross dies. Melee DPS will finish off Skull before moving to Cross, which is the stacking point for the raid once Skull, Cross, and Triangle are all dead. Tanks will need to be ready to pick up the Hideous Amalgamations that spawn each time a Corruption dies.

With Skull, Cross, and Triangle all dead there will be 3 Hideous Amalgamation alive on the tanks, and one more Corruption that should be somewhat low health. As mentioned earlier, we only need one Hideous Amalgamation alive, yet now we have three; luckily Deathwings giant body can be used against him to trick him into aiding us.

Seeing as we are fighting on Deathwings exposed back, he is able to feel raid members moving around on his body. The raid must be mindful of this at all times, as Deathwing will attempt to perform a Roll maneuver whenever he feels too many players on one side of his back at once, attempting to fling the raid off of his back and to their deaths down below. To avoid falling to your deaths, your raid will need to stack together on one of the exposed holes on Deathwings back, where the Corruptions spawn from. Standing on these exposed areas will "tether" players to Deathwings back via Grasping Tendrils, which deal minor damage-over-time while also slowing down the movement speed of the afflicted players. Players must make sure they make it to the exposed area before the roll as you must have the Grasping Tendrils debuff before the roll is initiated or you will still fall off. Most notable about the Roll that Deathwing performs is that the Hideous Amalgamation adds can not gain the Grasping Tendrils buff, meaning when a Roll is performed all Hideous Amalgamations will by flung off of Deathwings back.

To recap where we are in the fight: Skull, Cross, and Triangle are dead. The raid has stacked on Triangles' "exposed area" and baited a Roll to fling the 3 Hideous Amalgamations off of Deathwings back. The 4th Corruption from the start of the fight is now dead (after the Roll) and there is a new Corruption alive (can spawn in any of the exposed areas), as well as a new Hideous Amalgamation.

Now the raid will need to start dealing with the third and final add of this fight, Corrupted Bloods. Early on into this fight, these adds will slowly start to spawn from the nearby exposed areas on Deathwings back, and will begin to spawn more frequently the longer that the fight lasts. These Corrupted Bloods must be picked up by a tank and killed on at a time, as each add will use Burst upon death, dealing moderate damage to the entire raid. Whenever a Corrupted Blood dies, it will create a "Blood Pool" on the ground; this Blood Pool does nothing but slowly move to the nearest exposed area, reforming again into a new Corrupted Blood upon reaching one. To entirely remove Blood Pools from the fight, you must drag a Hideous Amalgamation on top of them; this will cause the Hideous Amalgamation to absorb the Blood Pool, gaining a stack of Absorbed Blood in the process.

Deathwings plated armor is being held in place by Burning Tendons, an attackable enemy that when killed, will cause a chunk of Deathwings armor to fly off of his body. In order to expose the vulnerable Burning Tendons however, the raid will need to cause a Hideous Amalgamation to become Superheated Nucleus before killing it. Killing a Hideous Amalgamation while it has Superheated Nucleus will cause it to cast Nuclear Blast upon death, an explosion powerful enough to lift Deathwings armor off of his body temporarily and expose a Burning Tendons. The raid will need to damage the same Burning Tendons tendon down twice per armor plate to cause the plate to be removed.

Get the Hideous Amalgamation low, but do not kill it, stopping ideally around 10% health; this will allow us to quickly kill it later on, greatly reducing our tank and raids damage taken. Your Ranged DPS will need to frequently attack the Corruption to break the Fiery Grip channel; remember that you only need to do 16% of the Corruptions health after it has started channeling Fiery Grip in order to stop the cast. Do not use damage-over-time debuffs on the Corruption here as you want them to live as long as possible; try to deal as little damage over 16% as possible. Your second tank will be grabbing all of the Corrupted Bloods that spawn and tank them near, but not on top of, the Hideous Amalgamation that the other tank is tanking. Single target the Corrupted Bloods down with the goal of building up 9 Blood Pools on the ground.

Whenever a Hideous Amalgamation walks over a Blood Pool, it will gain a stack of Absorbed Blood (up to 9 stacks total), and remove that Blood Pool. Each stack of Absorbed Blood grants the Hideous Amalgamation 20% attack speed and 10% damage dealt, and upon reaching 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood, the Hideous Amalgamation will gain the Superheated Nucleus buff. The increased attack speed, all damage dealt, and the powerful AoE from Superheated Nucleus make it a bad idea to absorb the Blood Pools before getting the Hideous Amalgamation low health. Tank it out of range of the Blood Pools until there are at least 9 on the ground, clumped near each other.

Once there at least 9 Blood Pools, simply drag it over the pools until the Hideous Amalgamation has 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood and gains the Superheated Nucleus buff. Quickly drag it to one of the sides of Deathwings armor plates and kill it, causing it to start casting Nuclear Blast. When the cast completes, any nearby players will die, and Deathwings plate armor will temporarily expose the Burning Tendons underneath. You will need to do this process of "feeding" 9 Blood Pools to a Hideous Amalgamation twice per Burning Tendons as they have very high health and you only get a few seconds to damage them.

Deathwings plated armor is being held in place by Burning Tendons, an attackable enemy that when killed, will cause a chunk of Deathwings armor to fly off of his body. In order to expose the vulnerable Burning Tendons however, the raid will need to cause a Hideous Amalgamation to gain Superheated Nucleus before killing it. Killing a Hideous Amalgamation while it has Superheated Nucleus will cause it to cast Nuclear Blast upon death, an explosion powerful enough to lift Deathwings armor off of his body temporarily and expose a Burning Tendons. The raid will need to damage the same Burning Tendons tendon down twice per armor plate to cause the plate to be removed.

When exposed, the Burning Tendons will begin to cast Seal Armor Breach, attempting to pull the armor plate back down and covering itself back up. All DPS should save their cooldowns for attacking the Burning Tendons to ensure you are able to deal at least 50% of its health each time it is exposed. Be sure that you trigger the Nuclear Blast on the same side of the armor plate each time, as there is a different add on the left and right sides of the plates with separate health pools. You only need to kill one of the Burning Tendons per plate, so choose a side that you will always bring the Nuclear Blast to.

When a Burning Tendons is killed, the armor plate it is attached to will detach from Deathwing, expanding the combat area and adding 2 additional "exposed areas" for players to deal with. These exposed areas will have a Corruption add spawned on them, in addition to the previous one you had before. From here on out the fight essentially repeats itself for the next 2 armor plates: damage the Hideous Amalgamation until around 10%, interrupt Fiery Grip by dealing 16% of Corruptions health, heal targets debuffed by Searing Plasma to remove the debuff, single target the Corrupted Blood as needed for Blood Pools, drag the Hideous Amalgamation over 9 Blood Pools and trigger the Nuclear Blast to expose the next Burning Tendons.

Remember that Corrupted Blood spawn from the Exposed Areas, meaning as you remove plates more and more Corrupted Bloods will spawn in, in addition to spawning in more rapidly the longer the encounter lasts.

As mentioned earlier, the second and third plates play out the same as the first. The only difference in the fight at this point is that you now have 8 Exposed Areas, all spawning Corrupted Blood. By now there will be so many Corrupted Bloods alive, and more constantly spawning in, that your tank will need to kite them around. Use AoE stuns as frequently as possible on the Corrupted Blood, in addition to helping your tank create distance with spells such as Leap of Faith. Have a DPS player taunt one of the low health Corrupted Bloods over if you need more Blood Pools; you may also choose to have a third tank for this, a Feral DPS swapping to Bear Form is a great choice here.

Use major DPS cooldowns such as Bloodlust when exposing the Burning Tendons for the first time on the 3rd plate, aiming to use half of the Bloodlust to burn the Burning Tendons, and the other half to damage the next Hideous Amalgamation. Once the third Burning Tendons has died, the last armor plate will be removed and the encounter will instantly end.

On heroic difficulty, the raid will be debuffed by a stack of Degradation whenever a Hideous Amalgamation dies, reducing maximum health by 5% per stack. A stack is not gained when a Hideous Amalgamation is thrown off of Deathwings back due to a Roll. Healers will also need to deal with Blood Corruption: Death, a debuff that bounces to a random target when dispelled; after 15 seconds the Blood Corruption: Death will detonate, wiping the raid. When dispelled, Blood Corruption: Death has a chance to change into Blood Corruption: Earth, which grants the target -20% damage taken per stack, up to 2 stacks total. Have 1 healer assigned to managing the dispels of this debuff; They should spam their dispel quickly until they can get a Blood Corruption: Earth change, ideally on the tanks. As your tanks will be debuffed by multiple stacks of Degradation, getting this 40% damage reduction on them is crucial for surviving this fight. Do your best to get Blood Corruption: Earth on the tanks, but remember that each dispel brings a chance for the Blood Corruption: Earth to transform back into a Blood Corruption: Death, which will wipe the raid if allowed to expire. The healer in charge of dispels will need to make a judgment call depending on the remaining timer on Blood Corruption: Earth if they can risk trying to get the buff on the tanks.

4.

Spine of Deathwing Loot

Normal Heroic

Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.

4.1.

Normal Difficulty Loot

Item
Gloves of Liquid Smoke
Molten Blood Footpads
Belt of Shattered Elementium
Backbreaker Spaulders
Gauntlets of the Golden Thorn
Eye of Unmaking
Heart of Unliving
Resolve of Undying
Will of Unbinding
Wrath of Unchaining

Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.

4.2.

Heroic Difficulty Loot

Item
Gloves of Liquid Smoke
Molten Blood Footpads
Belt of Shattered Elementium
Backbreaker Spaulders
Gauntlets of the Golden Thorn
Eye of Unmaking
Heart of Unliving
Resolve of Undying
Will of Unbinding
Wrath of Unchaining

Achievement	Description
Fall of Deathwing	Defeat the encounters leading up to the Fall of Deathwing in the Dragon Soul raid.
Dragon Soul Guild Run	Defeat the bosses in Dragon Soul while in a guild group.
Heroic: Spine of Deathwing	Emerge victorious from the Spine of Deathwing in Dragon Soul on Heroic Difficulty.
Maybe He'll Get Dizzy...	Defeat the Spine of Deathwing encounter on Normal or Heroic Difficulty after tricking Deathwing into performing the following roll sequence: Left, Right, Left, Right.

Spine of Deathwing is just one of the eight encounters present in the Dragon Soul raid of Cataclysm. If you would like to learn more about the others, please see our other pages for the raid below.