This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of theencounter with Madness of Deathwing in Dragon Soul. It is mostly targeted to tankswho desire to have a short but detailed overview of what is expected ofthem during that fight.

This guide applies to patch 4.3 of World of Warcraft.

The Madness of Deathwing encounter contains a large variety of adds,spells, and mechanics, but it is, ultimately, not difficult to understand orexecute. All three roles will, at certain times, have a lot ofpressure placed on them to perform well.

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

As a tank, you will find the greatest challenge of the encounter to besurvival, as there are several highly damaging mechanics that you will becoming your way.

1. Overview of the Fight↑top

The Madness of Deathwing encounter is a two phase fight.

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

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

1.1. Aspects and Their Buffs

             Throughout the fight, your raid will have assistance from the four dragonAspects. Each Aspect is flying over one of the four platforms, resulting inthe following naming conventions for the platforms in this guide:

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

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

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

The Aspects provide the following buffs and abilities:

• Ysera provides the raid with:
  • Ysera's Presence: 20% increased healing done;
  • Dream: an ability that Ysera grants to all raid members. Playersreceive an extra action button, with a 30 second cooldown. Using this abilitygrants the player 50% damage reduction for 5 seconds.
     
• Alexstrasza provides the raid with:
  • Alexstrasza's Presence: 20% increased maximum health;
  • Cauterize (Phase One): an ability that Alexstrasza uses todestroy all Blistering Tentacles (adds that spawn at certain times duringPhase One);
  • Cauterize (Phase Two): an ability that Alexstrasza uses tolower the damage done by Corrupted Blood (Deathwing's unique abilityduring Phase Two).
• Nozdormu provides the raid with:
  • Nozdormu's Presence: 20% increased haste;
  •               Time Zone: an ability that places a type of protective bubble on theplatform where the raid is currently fighting. This causes theElementium Bolt (a type of projectile NPC that flies towards the raid) tobe greatly slowed down, giving your raid more time to kill it. It also reducesthe attack speed of any enemies within the zone by 50%.
• Kalecgos provides the raid with:
  • Kalecgos' Presence: 20% increased damage dealt;
  • Spellweaver: causes all attacks to deal 23,000 Arcanedamage to all enemies within 6 yards of the main target (but not to the maintarget itself).

2. Phase One↑top

Phase One consists of clearing all 4 platforms of Deathwing's limbs. Youwill do this one platform at a time, and a platform is considered cleared whenthe respective Arm or Wing Tentacle has been killed. For each platform, youwill have to defeat a series of adds in a specific order. Fortunately, thisis the same for all 4 platforms (with a minor variation), so the strategyremains simple.

Your raid leader will almost certainly clear the platforms in the followingorder: Ysera > Nozdormu > Alexstrasza > Kalecgos or Ysera > Alexstrasza >Nozdormu > Kalecgos. As such, we will provide you with the strategy only forthis sequence.

2.1. First Platform

Here, you will have to perform the following tasks:

•          Pick up and tank the Mutated Corruption (a large tentacle). It spawnsroughly 10 seconds after your raid reaches the platform. This add will dealmassive damage with Impale, for which you will have touse defensive cooldowns. Impale also leaves behind a DoT that increases damagetaken by 100%, so a tank swap is required. Remember that you can make use ofYsera's Dream ability as an extra defensive cooldown.
•          When Deathwing casts Elementium Bolt, stand as far away as possiblefrom its impact location (it is marked by a golden void zone), and use adefensive cooldown (possibly an external one from a healer) to survive themassive damage that you will receive from this ability.
•          After the Mutated Corruption has been killed, you will have to pick up andtank 6 adds called Regenerative Bloods. They will be quickly killed byyour raid.

For the rest of the time, there is nothing for you to tank and you shouldsimply contribute with any DPS that you can on the Arm/Wing Tentacle.

2.2. Second Platform

By now, your raid will have lost the 20% increased healing from Ysera aswell as the Dream ability.

You should simply repeat the steps from the previous platform.

2.3. Third Platform

By now, your raid will have lost either Alexstrasza or Nozdormu's buffs.In case you have lost Alexstrasza's buffs, you will now have 20% less health,making it much more difficult to survive Impale andElementium Bolt, but there are no strategy changes whatsoever.

2.4. Fourth Platform

Your raid has now lost all but Kalecgos' buffs, meaning that this platformwill be the most difficult for your raid to clear. Your own survival as wellas the raid's survival will be put to the test, so you should not hesitateto use any cooldowns you have.

Otherwise, there is no strategy change.

3. Phase Two↑top

During Phase Two, you have a single task as a tank: pick up one of the twoElementium Terrors that spawn, and tank it inside Nozdormu's Time Zone until they are killed. These adds stack a very damaging debuffon their tanks.

In all likelihood, 2 or 3 waves of Elementium Terrors will have time tospawn before Deathwing dies.

If you are a Protection Paladin and you are your raid's only tank (in asingle tank strategy), you can use Divine Shield (followed by a quick/cancelaura Divine Shield) to get rid of any stacks of the Tetanus (10-man/25-man)debuff.

4. Tier 13 4-piece Tank Set Bonuses↑top

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

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

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

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

5. Heroic Mode↑top

The Heroic mode of Madness of Deathwing is a rather difficult andchallenging encounter, that will test your abilities as a tank. You will alsoneed to survive some rather extreme amounts of damage.

5.1. Differences from Normal Mode

All enemies have increased health, and most abilities do increased damage.The most important damage increases, that are relevant to you as a tank,are:

• Degenerative Bite (10-man/25-man) now deals 1,800 damage per second, per stack in10-man difficulty and 2,400 damage per second, per stack in 25-mandifficulty, up from 1,500 and 2,000 damage respectively.
• Impale (10-man/25-man) now deals 840,000 damage in 10-man difficultyand 1,200,000 damage in 25-man difficulty, up from 400,000 in bothdifficulties.
• Tetanus (10-man/25-man) now deals 72,000 damage on application and then another24,000 damage per second, per stack in 10-man difficulty and 96,000 damageon application and 36,000 damage per second, per stack in 25-man difficulty,up from 60,000/20,000 and 80,000/30,000 respectively.

In addition to these increases, two new mechanics exist:

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

5.2. Strategy

The fight will go on in much the same way as Normal mode, with only a fewdifferences.

5.2.1. Corrupting Parasite

The Corrupting Parasite cannot target you as a tank, so your only concernsregarding it are:

• be 10 yards away from the affected player before the debuff runs out;
• for the second Parasite of each platform, tank the Regenerative Bloodson top of it.

5.2.2. Impale

The Impale (10-man/25-man) ability now deals significantly moredamage than in Normal mode. On the first platform, you can use Dreamtogether with a minor cooldown in order to survive it, while on otherplatforms you will always require a major cooldown. Do not hesitate to askfor help from healers, in the form of a Power Word: Shield or anexternal cooldown like Guardian Spirit.

5.2.3. Phase Two: Elementium Terrors and Congealing Bloods

The new adds that spawn in Phase Two, the Congealing Bloods, are of noreal concern to you. Your DPS players will AoE these down. However, forefficiency purposes, you may be required to tank the Elementium Terrorsuntil the Bloods spawn and then move them on top of the Bloods, so thatyour raid can AoE them all together.

In any case, you should tank the Elementium Terrors inside the Time Zone until you have to move them onto the Bloods.