I was very “lucky” to run into Deathwing the other day, but boy was he in a bad mood.

“I’m sick and tired of all the nerd rage happening on my back during LFR,” he complained. “Everyday it’s the same. Stop DPS. Stop DPS. Kick him. Kick her. Kick me. It’s all I hear. I wouldn’t mind so much if it meant that I was winning all these encounters but even the crappest group gets there eventually and in the meantime I have to put up with all that shit. I want people to learn to do this properly & quickly. I’ve got better things to do than have 25 people trampling all over my back yelling words at each other that my mother (god rest her soul) banned me from using.”

I could see he was upset and if there’s anything I’ve learnt in my time in Azeroth you do not want to upset Deathwing when you’re on your own with him (we were both fishing on Azuremyst Isle as it happens. Interesting fact – he wears the weather-beaten hat when he fishes. Screenshot to follow.) Anyway in the hope that he would spare my life I offered to use this blog as a way to promote his own strategy for completing Spine of Deathwing in LFR quickly and easily. He seemed quite taken with the idea – even used his lovely fire breath to warm my feet as a little treat for me.

This is what he said:-

1. Right the raid (is that what you guys call yourselves?) are meant to be removing my armored plates. Not polishing them. Not tickling them. Removing them. Get it. They need to be removed because with them I am pretty invincible (without them I’m just pretty).

2. The first thing you will see upon landing on my back are four wavy tendrils – I call them Adam, Joe, Duncan & Kenny but you call them Corruptions (it’s all a question of perspective I guess).

3. When one of my tendril friends is killed (you bastards you killed Kenny) it will bring forth a Hideous Amalgamation (again not my name for these dear friends of mind – I call the first one Paul, the second John, the third…you know where I’m going with this and yes I’m a huge fan – all the Black Dragonflight are).

4.Corrupted Blood will also appear from the hole where the original tendril (Kenny – it’s always Kenny) was. Now by corrupted all it really means is that – if it were ever to be tested – you’d find a bit of alcohol in it. Not too much. I’m not over the limit. I can still drive .. I mean fly …officer. But there’ll be a bit of gin in it. Nothing wrong with a bit of gin my old mother used to say. She swore by it to send me to sleep. Apparently I was a troublesome whelp. These days I usually need a nice gin & tonic to wind down of an evening. It’s the pressure see. But I do not have a problem. No sireee.

5. Where should you be standing you ask? Umm on the ground leaving me well alone. Ha ha. I jest, I jest. You should probably be somewhere in the middle of my back. If you jump up and down a bit it feels like a shiatsu massage – FACT.

6. Now in LFR (see how I know your lingo – that comes from hours of enduring these bloody things) – you only need to kill one Corruption. This is where it usually goes wrong. Certain people do not know this and start killing them all. And why wouldn’t they? In most fights if it’s red it’s dead. Yes? But this leads to mayhem. However, instead of telling these people what they are doing wrong certain other players just yell abuse- things like Noob, idiot and that awful …tard word that I – the most evil thing in the whole wide world – cannot bring myself to say. But all they really need to say is, “Don’t kill corruptions, kill the corrupted (i.e. gin-soaked) blood.” Not hard but seemingly too hard for some of the people crawling all over my back (ugh it makes me shudder just thinking about the calibre of people I have up there – I deserve better – I really do).

7. Anyway let’s suppose only one Corruption has been killed & let’s suppose there is just one Hideous Amalgamation (would be Paul- he’s always first out – likes the limelight that one). Well the tank should then move Paul up near my head (we normally have a good chat at this point so I prefer him nearer my ears ..I do have ears & by the end of the encounter they are usually bleeding after all the crap I have to listen to in LFR but there you go). The tank should focus on Paul while the DPS kill the corrupted bloods.

8. When a corrupted blood dies a small fire will appear in its place (don’t ask me why – gin is flammable?). The tank should move Paul over it to stack “Absorb Blood” (let us be frank here – the game developers were on something when they designed this – none of it makes biological sense to me & it’s my bloody body).

9.Once Paul gains 9 stacks he should be killed (awww no more silly love songs).

10. Once Paul is killed he will cause a nuclear blast – be prepared to run from it. It should lift up one of my armor plates exposing one of my tendons. You may be tempted to pause a moment here to ooh and aah at how strong my tendon looks (I am buff – make no mistake about it). But you really need to move quickly & start blasting away. Don’t worry – I don’t really feel it. I’m usually sending suggestive texts to Alexstrasza at this point.

11. Once my tendon is destroyed my armor plate falls off & you can start it all over again (three times in total). Fun eh.

12. Once completed celebrate for a few seconds but then know I’m gonna get you in the next encounter, oh yes, I will have my revenge. Once I finish texting of course.

And that was it from Deathwing. Pretty self-explanatory I thought. Feel free to copy & paste this into Raid chat when you’re next in LFR – I’m sure it will help a great deal…. At the very least it will lead to a resurgence of interest in the Beatles and that is never a bad thing.