More Heroic Magmaw Solo Adds
I was interested in trying to break my previous record for Heroic Magmaw 10 man. To do this I planned for a couple things. First, I specced specifically to rank on the fight. Secondly, my raid helped to increase my damage.
Ok, as far as my spec goes I originally used the Piercing Howl spec. I was pretty much using this for most fights, due to it’s strengths in AoE and single target threat as well as survivability. However, since I wanted to up my rank I switched to a completely AoE threat/damage focused spec, and only had to sacrifice a small amount of survivability. This spec took Deep Wounds for the damage increase, but I wanted to keep the small survivability bonus from Blood Craze. With Deep Wounds, you can only take 2/3 Blood Craze though so that’s why I say you only sacrifice a little bit. The 1 point in Gag Order was to lower the cool down on Heroic Throw, to help when picking up new Bone Constructs. I could have put the point in Impeding Victory or one in Incite. It really doesn’t matter a whole lot in my opinion.
My raid also altered a bit to help me. By our raid I mean our Mage. He went Arcane so I had a 3% damage increase. Maybe one kill when we have a Hunter for 5% Crit I’ll get our Mage to go Arcane again for the 3% damage, give me Focus Magic and have our Warlock give me Dark Intent. In all seriousness though, I doubt that will happen. A Warrior can dream though, a Warrior can dream…
Doing that I could probably push World 1st, but for now I’m World 2nd for any class/spec with a large lead on all other Protection Warriors. I’m content with that. Here’s a pic.
A few things I noticed in terms of self healing. I think I forgot to glyph Victory Rush on the prior kills (oops) because my average heal from Victory Rush was about 47.9k today where as it was about 25k in previous kills. So, that makes a big difference and definitely more than made up for the 1 less point in Blood Craze (which only did 46k less healing, 30% less than it alone did on my kill before this one).
Face Pull Like a Champ 
Hello. First, thanks for sharing all the information, and congratulations for you blog. What I would like to ask you, it’s possible for you to post a video to show how do you kite and kill the adds on Heroic Magmaw? Thanks!
Hey Gooliver,
At this time I would take too much of a performance hit trying to record while raiding. My Nefarian add video was only doable because of the short duration and limited number of spells/actions/etc I need to perform during Phase 3 of that encounter.
On Magmaw there’s simply too much going on and recording would lag me to a point where my performance would jeopardize the raid. I expect to have more disposable income this summer and upgrading my computer to better record encounters is one of the things I’m looking into (but that would probably be for Firelands and beyond).
I know guild mates have recorded Magmaw before, but due to bad camera angles/really distracting UIs I was not visible. I will talk to them about perhaps getting a video that shows me better.
Cheers.
Gool, I will try to get a third party perspective of it next time I’m in on that fight. We recently added a new holy paladin to the rotation and I tend to sit for him given that I don’t need loot.
Would that be useful for you?
Great, thanks a lot. What would help us a lot would be a video that shows where the melee/ranged stack, and how the off tank handle the parasites/pillars.
Hey Aulaugus
First of all let me thank you for a great blog, I really hope you gonna keep it up for a long time. It’s real fun to get a new perspective on things and especially from another warrior tank. Regarding the add tanking on Magmaw I got a few questions. Currently I am trying your tactic out but I get flamed by the healers cause of the amount of damage I am taking when there are a lot of those parasites up. Would you say that is avoidable in any way or do I and my healers simply have to co-ordinate a CD rotation for when it gets extra nasty?
Once again for an awesome blog and I really hope to hear more from you in the future 😀
Hey Calazzar,
Sorry for not replying earlier. I just started a new job this week and it’s been hectic. Thank you for enjoying my blog first off. As far as continuing it, the plan is to keep it running as long as I am playing WoW (which should be a while).
The damage you take will mostly be unavoidable, but you can do a few things to limit your damage taken. First off is timing your Shield Block well. Try to use it as often as possible with the 6 second magical damage reduction going out over Lava Spews. Secondly, don’t be afraid to use Shield Wall if you’re getting into a nasty situation (say DPS is a bit behind and you have 2 Bone Constructs).
This also assumes that you aren’t doing anything to cause yourself extra damage, such as turning your back to the adds (no avoidance/block) or standing in the fire. If you are though, try to not do those things! 🙂
A final thing is that moving the group of parasites near the head during head phases and allowing DPS to cleave them away will reduce your damage a bunch. This results in the number of parasites being reset each rotation, thus increasing your control over the encounter and lessening your overall damage taken.
Of course, as I’ve said before, this method of solo tanking all the adds is quite damage intensive on the tanks and will require a little more output from your healers.