by Darkimpulse, 425 days agoo.k. guys, i have the initial quest almost complete just short a few primordial saronite, and the acidci blood of rotface and festergut.
the following tactics are from the tankspot guide to shadowmourne. anyone fancy giving me a hand? there is one drawback apart from the first quest, every quest is 25 man unless blizz have made changes recently
Shadowmourne, Quest Line and Mechanics
Because the Shadowmourne quests require you to alter raid strategies a bit in order to be completed, this guide will be discussing what needs to be done in order to complete those quests. Eventually I am hoping to be able to post videos displaying exactly what needs to be done in addition to the written guide. As more and more people do these quests there will be many different methods developed to complete them, and I will do my best to describe a few different options that you have when attempting each quest.
Most of this will be from a DPS warrior perspective, but I will do my best to make note of tricks other classes can do as well.
I will not be talking about making shadows edge, and instead focusing on the quests after that. I will not be discussing boss strategies beyond specifically what needs to be done for each part of the quest and will assume that you know how the boss mechanics work.
Quest Line
A Feast of Souls
This requires you to get 1000 kills inside of ICC. This is the only part of the quest chain that can be completed on 10 man as well as 25 man
When ever you do something to an enemy it will place the debuff Shadow's Fate on the mob. Applying this debuff does not require you to damage the mob and can be applied with abilities like demo shout and chains of ice. The debuff has an infinite duration and does not go away if you unequip shadows edge. The debuff will persist through death but if you are dead when the mob is killed you will not receive credit for the soul. Please note that immunity abilities will clear the debuff, IE the BoP's on mobs during blood wing trash
Most of the mobs in the instance will grant you souls, some of the mobs that do NOT grant souls include:
•Nearly anything considered to be an "add", ex. Bone spikes on Marrowgar, Blood beasts on Saurfang, the zombies on precious, etc. (however, Deathwhisper mobs count, big oozes on Rotface count, everything on Dreamalker counts)
•Anything that doesn't give rep, doesn't grant souls (so you can't farm the endlessly spawning mobs at the start of the instance)
•Critters.
•Anything involved in the Gunship encounter.
If you plan on farming Marrowgar trash keep in mind that on 10 man you will get ~50 souls per full trash clear.
Note that it is possible for you to more or less "farm" Dreamwalker because everything grants you souls including the Rot worms. While learning this encounter on 25 man my guilds DK was averaging ~75 kills per attempt.
Depending on how much trash farming you do this quest can be done in as little as 2 weeks.
Unholy Infusion
This quest requires you to consume some of the ooze during the Putricide encounter. This means you get to be the person controlling the abomination. When you turn in to the abomination you will have a new ability called Shadow Infusion. This ability costs 100 energy, and is a 4 second cast, after that you have 6 minutes to kill putricide and you can not die in the process. Supposedly you are supposed to get a buff that displays the 6 minute timer, but when I did this part of the quest I did not see said buff.
What this means for your raid is that you are pretty much guaranteed to miss snaring one of the unstable experiments. Timing when to infuse shadows edge is the most critical part of this quest. Because you know you will not be able to snare the next experiment you want to make sure that it will be a volatile ooze that won't be snared because they are far less likely to wipe your raid than the gas clouds. You also want to make sure that you aren't infusing the weapon too early. When I did this quest I did the infusion when the boss was around 48%. Because it's a 4 second cast you will not be able to consume ooze for those four seconds, so make sure that you are not going to fall behind on ooze by infusing your axe.
Completion on Heroic:
A while ago there was a bug where the quest simply wouldn't complete if you did it on heroic, though as far as I am aware it was fixed, there really isn't a major change from the strategy when doing it on heroic, just make sure you are setting up when you are going to do the cast properly. execution is more critical but it can be done fairly easily.
Blood Infusion
For this part of the quest you have to deal with some interesting mechanics for blood queen.
First you must subject your self to the debuff Blood Mirror, which is applied to the tanks. To do this, right at the start of the encounter, just run and stand on the tanks for a second and have your OT back up a bit, the moment you get the debuff, run away and have the OT move back on top of the MT. Once blood mirror clears you will get the debuff called Gushing Wound which causes you to take ~1500 damage every second, and reduces your damage by 10%.
Now you need to become a vampyr and start biting people.
In order to bite enough people you need to be the person bitten by blood queen, OR the first person to be bitten by who ever blood queen bit. This is because you need to bite 3 other people during the fight and if you are not one of the first 2 vampyrs you will not have enough time to do 3 bites.
Every time you bite someone you will gain another stack of the above debuff, meaning you will take ~3k dps and do 20% less damage after your first bite (2 stacks). After your second bite (3 stacks) you will take ~4.5k dps and do 30% less damage. After your third bite you successfully "quench" shadow's edge's thirst and gain the buff Thirst Quenched. The buff lasts 6 minutes but because the bosses hard enrage is shorter than that it deosn't really matter.
Again, if you die during the encounter you can not complete the quest.
Warriors:
Shield wall when you are running in to take blood mirror.
Paladins:
Do NOT bubble your self on this fight. Doing so will clear your gushing wounds debuff and make it impossible for you to get enough stacks.
Death Knights:
Do NOT use AMS when you are trying to get hit by blood mirror, as it makes you immune to getting the debuff.
Completion on Heroic:
as long as your guilds DPS is good enough, there really aren't any issues or tricks for completing this part on heroic
Frost Infusion
This infusion requires you to get hit by 4 Frost Breath's during the Sindragosa encounter. Each frost breath does ~45k damage over 4 seconds and puts a debuff on you that reduces your movement speed by 15%, and your attack speed by 50% for 90 seconds, this debuff stacks and is not dispellable. hand of freedom will negate the slowed run speed for its duration but it will not remove the debuff.
The frequency of the breath appears to be about every 20 seconds.
Every time you are hit by a frost breath you will gain a stack of Frost Infusion. When you are hit with your fourth breath the stack will drop and you will gain the buff Frost-Imbued Blade, at which point you have 6 minutes to kill the boss.
Because it is possible to get hit by your four breaths relatively quickly and the fight is decently long it's a good idea to wait to start eating frost breaths until the boss is semi low, but keep in mind you do not want to be eating frost bolts in p3. I suggest starting to eat breaths after she lands the second time (right after the second air phase)
Since you will be slowed this means that you may not be able to get out of the explosion she does and that means you will be taking even more damage that could potentially one shot you. Depending on when you decide to start eating breaths, you may only have to deal with one explosion. Save at least one personal and/or healer cooldown for the explosion to help insure that you do not die.
Wearing frost resist and/or tanking gear is a very good idea, with frost resist being prefered.
The breathe does pure frost damage, and can be fully resisted. Resists and misses count towards your four breaths.
Warriors:
Make a macro to intervene either a mage, or more preferably a warlock. have that warlock place their demonic portal in a place where not only can they safely port away from sindragosa before the explosion, but also so that you can intervene them right after they port, allowing you to avoid the explosion. If using a mage, simply intervene them after they blink away from the boss.
If you are having a hard time staying alive I suggest making a fury spec with titans grip, and last stand, this will give you enough cooldowns so that you can survive two abilities on your own, (shield wall 1st ability,then LS the next one, use external CD's after that)
something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LmZGxM0E0u0eRV0AoVcd0x
Death Knights:
AMS does not mess with breaths counting or not, so use it when ever possible.
Paladins:
This is speculation but I have a feeling that if you bubble, frost breaths will not count, and doing so might also clear your debuffs. I will try and get comfirmation on this ASAP.
As per usual if you die during the encounter you will not be able to complete the quest (unless your death occurs early on and you get battle rez'ed. If you die you will need to eat another four breaths).
Completion on Heroic:
It's definitely possible to this part of the chain on heroic sindragosa (my guild did it the other week with the 20% buff but I have read about guilds that did it with the 10% buff). the biggest factor is your gear set up. frost resist is even more important and it is definitely advisable to have all of your other pieces of gear be tanking gear for max HP. If you can snag your self the resist trinket from normal it will make things exponentially easier for you and your healers.
The Splintered Throne
Compared to the infusion quests this one is quite simple, and only time consuming. It requires you to collect 50 Shadowfrost Shards these shards drop off bosses just like the fragments for val'nyr.
•Every normal mode boss has a 25-49% chance to drop a Shard.
•Every hard mode boss has a 50-99% chance to drop a Shard.
For normal modes this averages to a 37% drop rate amongst all 12 bosses.
1-0.37 = 0.63 (63% chance to NOT get a shard drop)
12*0.63 = 7.56 bosses will not drop a shard
12-7.56 = 4.44 shards average per clear assuming doing only normal modes
50/4.44 = 11.26 weeks of clearing the instance on normal mode.
For hard modes this averages to a 75% drop rate amongst all 12 bosses.
1-0.75 = 0.25 (25% chance to NOT get a shard drop)
12*0.25 = 3 bosses will not drop a shard
12-3 = 9 shards average per clear assuming doing only hard modes
50/9 = 5.55 weeks of clearing the instance on hard mode
Or if the entire universe aligns in a way that it spells out your full name and every boss drops a shard for you:
50/12=4.16 weeks minimum needed in order to complete
Most people will be somewhere in between 5-11 weeks because more than likely they will be able to do some hard modes.
Once you complete this quest, congratulations on your [Shadowmourne]!
Mechanics
Now that you have your fancy new axe it's time to understand how it works. I have been lead to believe that most of the mechanics discussed below are the same for all classes, though all of the testing was done with a warrior so it might in fact only work this way for warriors.
First things first, how exactly do soul fragments and chaos bane work in relation to each other?
Once you gain 10 soul fragments you "unleash" chaos bane, causing the damage proc and giving you the buff chaos bane for 10 seconds. While chaos bane is active you can not generate more soul fragments. When Chaos bane falls off you will begin generating soul fragments again. There is no actual ICD (internal cooldown) on generating soul fragments, so if you click off/ cancelaura the chaos bane buff you will be able to generate soul fragments immediately.
Would using a cancel aura macro be a DPS increase because of more damage procs?
It depends on the class. As far as I have been informed,it's a DPS increase for paladins, though for warriors and death knights it's a DPS loss to use a cancel aura macro. Regardless of whether you use one or not the DPS gain/loss is pretty minor and will only be about a ~40 DPS difference.
What can/cannot generate Soul fragments?
All forms of white damage (including offhand swings), pretty much any ability that would simulate a weapon swing, regardless of whether or not it does damage, and applying certain debuffs can generate soul fragments. For example: the act of applying rend, or sunder armor can proc fragments, and shattering throw can generate two fragments at the same time (one for the damage, one for applying the debuff). If an ability does not simulate a weapon swing (ex. demo shout/pummel) then chances are that it cannot generate soul fragments.
How fast can you generate soul fragments?
Because there is not ICD on soul fragments it is possible to generate 10 fragments in as little as 3 seconds in an AoE situation. HOWEVER Soul Fragment generation works on the PPM system with a very high rate of occurrence.
What does that mean?
It means that there is no strict % chance to generate a soul fragment from a hit. instead the game calculates when an ability will/will not generate a soul fragment based on a time scale so that on average, you see X number of procs over Y period of time. In the case of Shadowmourne fragments are gained so regularly that the ratio is expressed in Fragments per second.
Okay, but exactly how fast will you generate soul fragments on average?
Simply auto attacking you will generate ~0.5 fragments per second.
When DPSing a single target you will generate ~1.0 fragments per second
In AoE you will generate ~2.0 fragments per second.
Keep in mind that the above rates are limits on an infinite timescale. RNG will cause lots of fluctuations with fragment generation and that's ok. In general though the numbers will average out to be the above rates.
I hope this guide has been helpful for you and/or your guild mates. If you notice any errors/mistakes, or think there are easier ways of doing the quests, please let me know
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so anyone interested? drop an email to
Darkimpulse@hotmail.co.uk
Cheers
Darkimpulse
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