U10: Heartbreaker

XT-002 Deconstructor

Heartbreaker

This is how my guild managed this achievement without a Bloodlust/no shaman. Note: this is a ten-man strategy guide, though the layout can certainly be used with a heroic-size raid.

Our Makeup:

• Prot Pally
• Arms Warrior
• Feral Druid
• Blood DK dps
• Ret Pally
• Survival Hunter
• Destro Warlock
• Fire Mage
• Holy Priest
• Resto Druid

Positioning:


Rough outline of group positioning: tank at the base of the stairs, melee at the boss' back, ranged dps clustered farther behind, with healers shuffling themselves in between to stay in range of those running into the bomb zones.

In our normal kills, we liked tanking him at the top of the stairs towards the portal into the antechamber, as it made a longer path for the adds to be killed before they would reach the raid/boss. The downside to this strat is the LoS to healers around the stairs and the columns at the base of the stairs' railings--something we adapted to in time.

For the Heartbreaker Hardmode, killing XT-002's heart will stop the junk-pile adds from being spawned, which means that tanking him at the bottom of the stairs is preferable to reduce any chance of LoS issues. This is important, because in place of having the adds spawn, breaking XT-002's heart will result in several new "fun" abilities being used against the raid!

• Light bombs will now spawn a Life Spark, which must be avoided as it damages all players around it. These must be killed by 1-2 of your ranged dps (we assigned the hunter and warlock to these).
• Gravity Bombs will now spawn a Void Zone like those seen in the early trash of Drak'Tharon Keep (dark black holes on the ground.) They last for 3 minutes, so these just need to be avoided.
• XT-002's own damage is increased by 40%, and guess what: he's gonna be throwing tantrums with it!

Killing the Heart:
This should be done the first time the heart is dropped at 75% health, which is about 30-45 seconds into the fight. Waiting until the 2nd or 3rd drop (at 50% and 25% health respectively) to kill the heart may force you up against the enrage timer, so if you miss it on the 75% drop, just wipe and reset. If you have the dps to kill the heart without a bloodlust, though, you shouldn't have any problems with the enrage timer, and it would probably be okay to try again at the 50% mark!

DPS should go all-out, pop all cooldowns, to get this thing killed. As long as healers have topped everyone off/thrown enough HoTs to top everyone off, they should assist in DPS, too. If your raid is strong enough, you CAN kill the heart without having a bloodlust!

Resto Druids: I popped a faerie fire on the heart as soon as it dropped to increase the raid's dps against it. Doing so cut that GCD out of the feral druid's own rotation, allowing him to power through without having to cast Faerie Fire himself! If you have revitalize, keep a rejuv ticking on any kitties, rogues, and DKs (maybe warriors too, if they look low on rage) to assist with power regen. They will need all that they can to provide the dps needed for this achievement!

Add Cleanup:
Adds are ignored while the heart is dpsed down. Once the heart is destroyed, XT-002 resets to full health, so him picking up the repair bots is not an issue: let him suck them up while your raid takes care of the boombots and pummelers. We were lucky and didn't have a pummeler spawn on our actual kill, but when one did on prior attempts, the MT would pick it up and tank it as dps killed it. Once all of the adds are cleared, you can settle into the long-haul of killing the boss.


Light/Gravity Bombs:
These will still be cast, and as mentioned earlier, they now have additional abilities after they wear off of the afflicted player. It is important for your raid to stay clustered around the middle of the room, leaving the sides clear for those players with bombs on them (designated Bomb Zones in the diagram).

You can specify that gravity-bombed raiders go to one side and light-bombed to another, but we found it easiest to just let them go to whichever side was closest at the time. This split the number of void zones fairly evenly, keeping them from piling up on one side to make a giant shadowy mine field, and also prevented any confusion when one person got both bombs applied to them consecutively! For 25-man, I recommend being more strict about which side each bomb type will go, since there are more people getting bombed.

1 or 2 ranged dps (for 10-man) should be assigned to killing the life sparks that spawn after light bomb explodes off of a player. Those afflicted with the light bomb must run away from the life sparks quickly, just as those afflicted with the gravity bomb must quickly evacuate from the void zone.

In both bomb cases, players must be especially aware to remain within range of one or both healers. If the tank gets a bomb on them, melee should clear away from them and wait it out.

• Note: if your dps has trouble getting the life sparks down quickly, Beruthiel of Falling Leaves and Wings suggests having one of your more durable melee (feral druid, DK, etc) taunt/grip the life sparks to pull them away from the raid, to keep them from causing additional damage to the raid as a whole.
  

Tantrums:
These are the hardest part of the Heartbreaker hardmode, as they did lots of damage in the non-hardmode and now do 40% more. He will tantrum roughly once per minute. All players should pop whatever shields/damage reductions/absorptions that they can to help mitigate the damage done by the tantrum; multiple AoE healers will be useful for this, and dps classes who can heal should assist as necessary, particularly if someone is currently afflicted by a bomb while the tantrum is going off.

Druids: Barkskin should be up every time he tantrums. Use it! Resto Druids: Save your cooldowns for tantrums. Conserve Nature's Swiftness for a true emergency, and make sure your hots don't drop off of the MT. Mana should not be a problem at all in this fight since it will be relatively short, but do keep an eye on your mana levels if they get low. Make sure you innervate ahead of a tantrum if it's needed, so that you don't waste a GCD on an innervate that could've gone to a heal. Use your Wild Growth wisely so that it will splash on as many people as you can!

~~Rinse-repeat through this damage while the remaining dps not assigned to sparks whittle down the boss, and you will have yourself a deconstructed Deconstructor, complete with a broken heart!~~