We have been trying to figure out the healing on Prince Malchezzar for some time, but we have such trouble with our mana running out just after phase 2, wich of course is not so great :p

Last night we had a healing raidsetup with 3 priests, we tried the "old fashioned" one priest spamheal, spam fade until he get to roughly 20-25% mana, then we switch for next priest.
This way we will have one priest on constantly regen.

This however didnt work that well, and neither have our previous healing tactics.

Is the sollution to have at least one shaman with manatide, and one shadowpriest for manaregen?

Curious about how the rest of you manage to bring him down.

Thanks alot for any answers.

Edit: Changed title of thread

I'm confused about your 'spam fade' tactic.

I don't find this a particularly mana intensive fight. Are your healers using appropriate consumables? Do you have mana tide + a shadow priest in the healer group?

This is problem one. Additional information on why this is a terrible idea can be found elsewhere on these boards, but to summarize, Fade doesn't work how you think it works, and you're burning both mana and global cooldowns unnecessarily.

Problem two is that your healing force ought to be more diverse if you don't want to run into brick walls like what you're experiencing. Having a Paladin who can spam Flash of Light infinitely plus give you Blessing of Wisdom, or a Shaman with Mana Tide and Mana Spring, or a Shadow Priest, or a Druid with an Innervate and big HoT's will all alleviate a lot of your healing stress. Three Holy / Disc Priests is probably the most horrid healing team I can possibly fathom for anything other than Moroes.

Problem three is that healing rotations of that nature shouldn't be necessary on Malchezzar. Phase 1 and Phase 3 are both pretty trivial tank damage because he dual wields for only moderate damage (and by default misses 19% more often than regular bosses). You should be full mana at the end of Phase 1, or near it. On Phase 2 having two healers spam (possibly downranked) heals for the ~90 seconds it takes to burn him down -- plus a third casting and stopping a large heal in case of a large crush on the tank -- should be adequate to survive.

Other people have commented on the "spam fade" thing, but honestly, it's worth mentioning again that this aspect of your Priests' technique should be re-examined post-haste.

I'm really not trying to be mean here, but it sounds like your healing strategy might be out of date by about two years. It makes sense that you're having trouble is at the first fight in the TBC raid game with very threatening spike damage.

I'm not going to regurgitate the whole thing--maybe someone could direct you to a good reference thread for raid healing strategy and setup (I can't think of a good one offhand).

While this topic isn't actually tittled "How to cope with manaproblems on Prince Malchezzar", I'll just treat it as such and hope I'm not being all too specific.

As Theras said, diversity of healers is the key to removing all manaproblems from the raid.
Comparing Priest/Priest/Priest layout with Paladin/Shaman/Druid/(Shadowpriest, DPS) is like comparing night and day. We're talking about around 90 passive MP5 to healers before taking in account Manatide (does wonders when dropped somewhere in the intensive perioid of P2/3) and the oh-so-powerfull Vampiric Touch. You even have an Innervate here for your Shadowpriest if needed, which in turn practicly innervates everyone else, due to how SP's work at the moment.

Not just repeating what's been said, I'll try and help by explaining my little trick to it:
Back when dressed in blue gear I swapped on Divine Illumination (50% cost reduction for 15secs) at start of Phase 2, and then just spammed with Holy Light until OOM. A single paladin spamming high rank HL is almost enough to negate all the damage on tank alone, and with some one other healer topping on at bursty moments, there's practicly no threat of tank-death while mana lasts.
As mana runs out (A minute or so perhaps, close to or at P3 start), I'd drop down an Improved LoH on the tank, topping him up and granting him that yummy 30% extra armour for the remaining fight. A super mana potion and mana tide later, I'm back to ~2/3 mana and ready to move to healing the less suprising damage in P3.

So in short:
-Don't use only one healer class, their strengths don't stack. Use different classes as they excel in different sort of healing, and complete eachother.
-Do save cooldowns for P2, as that requires most intense manaburning, and you'll want to get back up for P3 afterwards.

We were on him yesterday, and... I don't know, but his p2 burst damage seemed lower, to what I remembered over a month ago - I was usually almost oom on p2 end, yesterday we all (me, priest, shaman - no s.priest, no wisdom) had 60-70% mana on end of p2, with tank nowhere near death at any point. (his gear didn't change that much in meantime, he was unflasked, no warlock, no kings, 15k hp with shout).
on other hand, I don't remember his axes getting huge crushes on me before. (something like 2.9k crush, 300 hit, 290 hit, 1100 crush on caster - seemed strange, esp. damage range).

Malchezaar allows for pretty diverse healing setups imho. We oneshotted him this week after killing him last week for the first time, this time with a much lower level of consumables as well as very bad infernal spawns (we had to move a full round from our original tank position on the right side of the balcony). In the first week we had a holy priest, a resto shaman (whoose gear wasn't really up to date) and a resto druid. This time our shaman went elementary since we added a paladin to our setup. This was absolutely sufficient to keep me up even though I had to move a lot (though our healers were pretty dry at the end). I was using stoneshields from P2 on though, I feel they are worth the money since they reduce the spikes possible from the prince which helps the healers a lot.

Edit @ psk: I guess its just luck. The damage the prince does, varies a great deal, depending on often he is able to crush the tank after eating the shield block charges. Yesterday was much more relaxed than the week before where I died once because I got hit for 16k within 2 seconds while my healers were on the move.

Fade reduces threat by 1500, which would not really do anything to shift your position on threat. Also, his debuff is RANDOM, so it doesn't matter where you are on the threat list. Finally, his Shadow Nova has a range of 30 yards, so if you have your healers stand 31+ yards away, they wont have to move if they get the debuff.

So, basically there is absolutely no point in using fade.

Quite apart from healer composition if your healers are truly running oom, are they wasting mana healing people getting hit by the aoe knockback? If so have a quiet word with your melee dps and tell them to ALWAYS run out. the loss of dps is minimal compared to the loss of mana from healing all those melee missing 3000hp.

Enfeeble is thread based? I thought, except for the maintank, anyone is a valid target for Enfeeble and the roll is done random, not based on thread.
Secondly, it shouldn't affect any healer when he is enfeebled. The range of shadow nova is something around 30 yards, so it's pretty easy to outrange.
Or are you tanking him at the Entrance, Raid positioned in the tunnel? If this is the case, you can use Line of Sight to evade his Shadownova if you are not able to outrange it (which should work as well, though). The door serves as an block here: You can heal the tank all the time, but you don't need to move - just like in BWL, at Firemaw.

I cannot really comment on those Damage changes, but it sounds like those "Onyxia deep breaths more" type of things. Sometimes you are just (un-)lucky.
Actually, we had troubles yesterday to keep our tank alive during phase 2, which didn't happen since our first kill.

I was hit by Shadownova when mindflaying, which means the range is above 26 yards. So the right number should be 30.

I'd been under the impression that the fade deaggro was a temporary buff, did that change at some point?

Well, then fade obviously is of no use in that fight, at least not for that.
And we didnt heal any other raidmember exept the tank, the rest are left on their own, with bandages, hs and pots.

What I'd suggest is going to a more varied healing assignment way of tackling the encounter (in addition to the many things pointed out by others). On Prince, if you have 3 healers, there's really no reason to have people take time bandaging when you could instead heal them.

How we do it is generally have one healer on MT for Phase 1, one on raid, and the third playing support to both for helping during spike damage on MT, covering peoples' screw-ups (getting shadow nova-ed into an infernal, for example, and being slow to get out of it). Then, during Phase 2 that support healer swaps to helping the dedicated MT healer for the duration of the phase. This support healer will always have mana to spare, as their work-load in Phase 1 is minimal. Phase 3, the support healer goes back to helping both the dedicated MT healer and the dedicated raid healer.

During moves we generally go with the mentality of MT-first, no matter the cost (we're a bit sloppy on moves).

For reference, our setup has (generally) been; Holy Paladin, Restoration Shaman, Restoration Druid (or, prior to his re-spec, balance/resto), sometimes swapping a Holy Priest in for the Druid. We swap assignments around often enough to ensure everyone has done it all (though we rarely have the tree-Druid MT healing, excepting HoTs).

And unless our DPS have their idiot moments (far too common..), most won't need healing until Phase 3 anyways (especially if ranged).

Doing it with two healers is.. a different story (yay for disconnects!) entirely, but doable if everyone is on the ball the entire fight and you get decent infernals.

Shadow Reach adds 20% to a 20 yard range spell, making it 24 yards. You get hit within a yard of MF range, so it's 25 yard range. I often use MF to act as a guide for people on where the range is.

Edit: Oh as to threat, afaik the only threat component of the enfeeble is the top threat person not getting enfeebled to avoid the MT being 1 shot.

I like to blow Lay on Hands at the start of Phase 2, then pop a potion + Talasite Owl + Divine Illumination. Helps minimise burst on the tank, and doesn't leave me too far in the hole mana-wise. Not sure if I'd get better returns on just spamming HL with the mana I blew on LoH, but I feel keeping the burst potential of Malch to a minimum is important.

Does it matter who has the debuff? Pretend it's controllable (which, the consensus is, it's not) - anyone dying on the fight practically assures you that you'll lack the DPS to not run OOM, so whether you lose a healer or a rogue, you're done either way. So does it matter who has enfeeble? Don't put more moving parts into a strategy then necessary, unless you're training people for a future encounter.

Fade - 330 mana you're saving every 30 seconds there. I think our first kill was 9 minutes, so that's practically a full mana bar you're saving.

We don't have a heal rotation for PM as far as I know, and I think the closest thing to pre-expansion "fat epics" for regen was that we had a druid and a priest who clung a little feveredly to their 20mp5 3pc t2 set bonuses.

As said in other places, diversified healing helps, if for nothing else then the variety of buffs to go around (you can't have 3 PW:Fs, but you can have MOTW, PW:F, and BoW). More than that, you should expect to be practically OOM around the entrance to p3 (and, if it's taking too long, you may want to consider that perhaps you lack the DPS - attack the mana problem on both sides). The most dangerous part of p3 is exactly the transition from p2, after five seconds or so we consider the fight over. We've actually wiped once or twice due to people getting too complacent with how easy it is. :P

Our healing setup is quite similar. Our resto druid is responsible for the group in P1 and P3 (especially those hurt by the flying axes), he will switch on me during P2 though since the prince can burst pretty bad, if he has a good day. If you move, tell your tank to keep LS and shield wall ready, it might save the day.

Although far from ideal, I can't imagine three priests not being viable for this fight. Just downrank to GHeal(1) and cancel whenever needed, and be prepared to step up healing a notch when Sunder is stacked. I've sometimes done this fight with four healers which, while not ideal, certainly works and relieves the healers somewhat I suppose, lessening the chance for the tank to suddenly drop low in exchange for prolonging the the phase's duration. We've never had the luxury of a Shadow Priest or Innervate, but a Druid tanked our first kills which arguably could have helped depending on if the spike damage is what's killing you. I'd emphasize that Shadow Nova should never be a concern, as Priests should maintain max range at all times unless running in for a quick dispel of the SWP (which ticks for 1500).

Some (potential) suggestions:

- I'm not sure if this makes a difference, but I Shadow Prot everyone just in case.

- Ask the Warlock to use Imp. Curse of Weakness if Imp. Demo is not available.

- Use cooldowns like the Mana Fiend early if you expect the fight to last longer than six minutes.

- Check the healing meters after wipes to determine who is or who isn't pulling their weight and to what extent; if one healer is dominating the charts phase one but running out of mana, tell him to relax somewhat and let the other healers share some of the weight.

I'm giving you an infraction for a horrible thread/thread-title, but since there have been constructive posts made, this can stick around for now.

This is one of the situations where overhealing matters. Use SW Stats or equivalent on your attempts, and at the end of each attempt, see what the healing breakdown was, and what the overheal % was. I bet some people are just spamming their mana dry and accomplishing little in the process. Also make sure people are using a mana pot proactively, probably midway through phase 1, to keep mana high and so that the timer refreshes later in the fight.

All our healers take it easy (usually resto druid, resto shaman and holy/disc priest) in P1 and they all go into P2 with 95%+ mana. We've had a shadow priest once, which was needless to say, awesome in terms of extra mana. Anyway, use all cooldowns during P2 and assign one person to heal the axes/raid in P3. We have always used our priest for this because the tank is taking pretty consistant damage, but the axes, especially with amplify damage, can really hurt undergeared clothies, and our priest can get out the best burst healing.

Obviously tank gear matters alot aswell, the lower his migitation/avoidance, the more the healers have to heal.

As for your idea of Enfeeble/Shadow Nova, not only is Enfeeble random, it doesnt matter whatsoever if healers get it. Infact, I MUCH rather have a healer get it then a melee DPS in this fight. Healers (and ranged DPS) have perfect overview in this fight, so they should never be hit by a single tick of hellfire nor Shadow Nova. That's also a way to reduce healing needed, calling out infernals quickly enough so really nobody get gets hit by hellfire.