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Shifting Perspectives: A feral guide to the Fall of Deathwing

Chase Hasbrouck
Updated ·7 min read

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin!

As the portal from the Eye of Eternity shimmered and closed behind me, I continued to curse loudly.

"Enough, OK? Enough! I've been slimed, tentacled, and now? Frozen solid. You dragons got your precious iris; send someone else to get the next Magic Battery or whatever else you decide you need!"

"Alaron," Tyrygosa began, "perhaps now's not the ..."

"No! Maybe I wasn't clear. I AM DONE WITH DRAGONS."

All conversation stilled, and heads turned in my direction ... which is how we heard it. Wingbeats. Lots of wingbeats. In the distance, an uncountable horde of twilight drakes came over the horizon, preceded by the largest and ugliest dragon I'd ever seen, and headed straight for the Temple. A soft groan rippled through the room as we prepared yet again for battle.

"You may be done with dragons," Tyragosa murmured, "but they do not appear to be done with you."

Last week, I covered the first four bosses in Dragon Soul, and this week, we'll finish things up. As before, I'll provide a quick capsule strategy for those attempting the fight in the Raid Finder, then describe the changes to the fight for normal and heroic modes.


Ultraxion

Raid Finder Pure tank and spank, though you'll be locked into using Mangle due to attacking from the front. Click the button every time he casts Hour of Twilight, and you're golden. Oh, and turn off any real-time logging addons (Recount, Skada and so on) for this fight; your frame rate will thank you.

Normal While it's not necessary for Raid Finder, you definitely want to replace your Glyph of Bloodletting with the Glyph of Mangle for this fight. (Just don't forget to switch back afterwards.) You may be called on by your guild to be an Hour of Twilight soaker; in that case, use both Survival Instincts and Barkskin together to survive. If you start the fight in Bear, you'll be able to get the Last Defender of Azeroth buff, which will let you soak every other Hour of Twilight.

Heroic This is just a massive DPS and healing check. Even if you're not specifically soaking, I'd still recommend getting the LDoA buff so you can keep your damage reduction abilities up as much as possible; it's cast about 10 seconds into the fight, so you can use a few bleeds, switch to Bear and grab it, then switch back. Try to hold off on using Heroic Will as long as possible; wait until there's 1 second left on the Hour of Twilight/Fading Light cast.

Warmaster Blackhorn

Raid Finder DPS the adds and run into the Twilight Onslaughts (purple void zones) when they appear, to help absorb the damage. When Blackhorn appears, DPS him, dodge to the side or straight through him if he turns your direction to cast Shockwave, and stay out of the purple flames.

Normal Same as Raid Finder, though you'll also have to kill Sappers that drop in. Use Feral Charge to slow them, then go Bear and Bash to give your raid time to kill them. (Stuns and slows work; roots do not.) You may have to soak Twilight Barrages; use Barkskin for this.

Heroic More tight DPS timers mean you'll have to work really hard to get DPS up, which means multiDoTing. This takes quite a bit of practice, but focus on not wasting CPs; get a Rip up (or extend it via Ferocious Bite if the target is below 60%) and switch to the other add. You'll have a lot more fire to dodge, and you'll have to help kill Goriona in phase 2.

Spine of Deathwing

Raid Finder Kill one, and only one, Corruption to spawn an Amalgamation. Lightly DPS the Amalgamation (save Berserk); don't kill it until it has nine stacks of Absorbed Blood, then run away. After the Blast, a piece of armor will pry up and a Burning Tendon will be revealed underneath. Use Berserk now and burn it ASAP. Rinse and repeat two more times.

Normal Things are mostly similar, but your DPS burn on the tendons will be more intense since you only have 20 seconds of burn time. DPS requirements prior to the tendon are pretty loose, so make sure in the Amalgamation's last seconds of life, you use Savage Roar to prevent having it drop during the burn. Feral Charge a blood to proc Ravage, then get in there ASAP. Berserk when you can, and definitely use a potion at least once. (Rip is somewhat marginal here; if there are 10 seconds or less left on the tendon, skip Rip and just drop a 5-CP bite.)

Heroic Can't help much here; just expect to be contributing a lot more DPS than normal during the non-tendon phases, and then you will absolutely have to shut down DPS for a short while so you can line up cooldown procs for the tendon phases. You'll want to equip trinkets with good on-use abilities, such as the Kiroptyric Sigil or this one from PvP. For 10-mans, bearcatting is amazingly helpful for raid composition purposes.

Madness of Deathwing

Raid Finder You'll be on a row of four islands. On each island, you'll have to start out by attacking a Arm/Wing Tentacle, then switching to a Mutated Corruption when it spawns. When the Elementium Bolt comes out, switch to it and kill it. (Ranged DPS usually handles this with no problems in Raid Finder, but it's good practice for regular.) Once the Corruption is dead, switch back to the tentacle. When Regenerative Bloods spawn, break off the tentacle and AoE them down. Repeat this four times. On the very last platform only (assuming you follow the 3 > 2 > 1 > 4 order that has become standard), you will have to switch off the tentacle twice to single-target Blistering Tentacles.

Once all four platforms are cleared, phase 2 begins. Two types of adds will spawn, Elementium Fragments and Terrors. Kill the first set of Fragments and Terrors, then focus-fire the body down, ignoring further spawns.

Normal There are no new abilities here that you haven't already seen before, but everything hits much harder. Unfortunately, you can't Feral Charge back and forth between the Mutated Corruption and the Arm/Wing tentacle, but you can Feral Charge the Elementium Bolt; you'll definitely want to to help burst it down, though make sure you use Barkskin to cut down on the incoming damage. Berserk timing is tough to gauge, but you should be able to use it for each Mutated Corruption and have it back up for phase 2, when it's really needed.

Phase 2 works similarly as well. Look to find a group of 3+ fragments you can use Swipe on, then kill a terror, repeat. Unless your raid's DPS is very high, you will likely need to kill two sets of adds before the final push (which should start around 11%). Save Survival Instincts for when Deathwing hits 5% health.

Heroic If you're working on this, then you should be writing this column, not me.

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Looking for the latest and greatest in feral cat druid guides? Shifting Perspectives has the answers! Check out our cat 101 for Cataclysm. Also don't miss gearing your cat for Firelands raiding, addons for cat druids and raiding strats for feral cats, as well as our feral cat Firelands boss strats.