My guild is currently working on BWL, and after getting to Broodlord fairly quickly, we've hit somewhat of a brick wall. We only started MC 3 weeks(6 week old server) ago, so our tanks gear isn't that great. This is my first time playing a healer in raiding, so I have some questions regarding Broodlord.

Basically, our problem is that on even our best attempts, he simply 1-rounds our tanks in a way that seems unhealable. Our 2 MTs are each sitting at 7.5-8k hp for the fight, with 12-14 healers.

The suppression rooms have led to similar problems with mages, especially since almost all of our mages sit at around 2.2k hp unbuffed, and don't have dreadmist or other high stamina gear for AOE situations.

The obvious solution is to gear up more, which comes with time, but I'm wondering if there's any tricks to the broodlord fight that can allow a healer to prevent the 1-roundings that keep happening to us.

Use more than 2MTs, all fighting for aggro as hard as they can. Will reduce the amount of damage each one takes. Keep all of them topped off.

We generally use 4ish MTs on BL, and we don't have any trouble with healing. Also, with 4MTs on the fight, if one tank DOES die, it's not an immediate wipe the next time the other tank takes a knock-away.

Also, Broodlord is one of those fights you have to finish quickly and painlessly, despite the aggro concerns. Some guilds have rogues wear FR gear to resist the Blast Wave. I'd suggest against that, and either eat the blast wave, or avoid it entirely by going out of LOS for it. Because of that, MP/5 gear and regen gear probably shouldn't be a huge concern. +Healing gear to get the tanks back up to topped off quickly would probably work a bit better.

Sorry, I should've been more clear there. We have 5 tanks fighting for aggro, but other than our 2 best geared, they sit at around 5.5-6.2k hp for the fight, so they get 1-rounded easily.

EDIT: The 1-roundings I'm talking about go something like this too: MS, Blastwave, Crushing/Crit in quick succession. Even trying to get a shield up immediately afterwords doesn't seem to help much in those situations. Do you have your tanks wear a certain amount of for that, or just straight up stam/AC/defense for the MS/normal melee?

No FR.

Keep your ranged dps and healers well away from the blastwave. All tanks fighting as hard as they can for aggro. Assign a shaman to each warrior (I'm going to assume you're horde here) to keep the tank topped off. What you'll probably find is that the blastwave is getting them a tad too low, then he switches and they're dead.
There's not really much of a trick to this fight except brute forcing and making sure your healers are up to standard. You can use a few consumeables such as stoneshield potions and flask of the titans to get that first kill. Definately PW:S on MS.

One macro you can use (and I don't reccomend everyone does) is
/assist Broodlord
/cast Flash Heal(Rank 7)

Are you fully buffed? Like he said, stoneshield and flasks are good. Also good are superior defence and mongoose are kinda nice as well. Any dodge/armor will make them last longer.

If I were to redo MC and BWL I probably would have brought thousands of Stoneshields along the way for learning attempts.

We usually have 4-5 warriors doing their best to build up aggro the whole time. Each of them has one designated priest. This priest's job is basically to keep the tank topped off and throwing him shields after mortal strike. The rest of the healers just focus on healing whoever has aggro.

If your warriors are still somewhat underequipped for the fight then flasks will help out a lot. Grind a few flasks of the titans and make your tanks use them at the end of the suppression rooms, just before you pull Broodlord. Since the flasks last two hours they should also last you through your first few Firemaw tries, invaluable if your tanks are rather slow grasping the meaning of LOS. :P

This encounter gave me ulcers for weeks as a healer, and the clear beforehand is especially depressing.

Assign a priest and pally per warrior, priest keeps renew up and shields after maybe a blastwave if it looks like he could pick up aggro soon. Paladin hits flash of light to get his hp back up asap, warriors try and spam shield block. Demo shout/tclap are wonderful too. Other than that there's not much more to be said unfortunately.

Only other thing I would perhaps reccomend is amp magic on the tanks if you're having troubles healing through the ms. Really you just need to be alert and make sure every tank is max hp at all times, and that people use short heals when possible.

Assigning healers was a big help on most difficult to heal situations for my group. While you may have 14 healers, if they're each trying to watch 40 healthbars, their reaction times will probably be too slow to prevent 2-rounding. Limit their responsibilities so they can concentrate and react swiftly.

This macro will switch your healing target when Broodlord switches, and might help your healer reaction time.

/script if UnitIsUnit("target", "targettargettarget") == nil then TargetUnit("targettargettarget"); SpellStopCasting(); CastSpellByName("Flash Heal") end

With the suppression room, i think we had a warlock tank for the AOE, that would probably be easier to heal than mages. The mages must have started a few seconds after he began AOE, or were using lower rank aoe, to have him hold aggro.

The 1 priest/pally per warrior tactic worked pretty well for us tonight, and Broodlord died(not cleanly, last warrior died at 2% and it was a messy end).

Thanks to everyone who offered advice here.

At your gear level, i dont think MS->Blastwave deaths are easily avoidable, they will probably happen at least twice a fight. sounds like you are using the right consumables to do it tho.

Grats on killing him tho, it'll obviously get clearer every weak as your tank average HP grows.

Save PW:S for after MS, as the damage absorption ignores the healing debuff. You don't want Weakened Soul running when he pops MS on your already undergeared tanks.

All the info in here is great. To sum it up, and add some things, I've found 3 tanks works the best. Take your three best geared, and salv/TA all the others. If they're doing their jobs, aggro shouldn't be a problem, and you won't have your other tanks getting one shot. All 3 fight as hard as they can, the entire fight. Designate 3ish healers just for offtanks, that is, to keep anyone not currently tanking topped off. One priest shields, and only on ms. Greater stoneshield potions are your friends, use them liberally while you learn. Until your tanks get some wrath, you'll probably want to keep rolling with flasks. Armor/HP>all.

We were in a similar situation as you recently, Broodlord on our third or fourth week and everything mentioned here is already what I would mention. The only thing that I would add is to pick your highest +healing priest (should be pretty clearcut who at that gear point) and assign them as Renew and PW:S on top of assigning healers per tank. Keeps more mana onto the other healers not getting overrided and lets one person focus on shielding MS which is probably the most important thing at that point with low stam and def warriors.

Healers on offtanks just downrank heals to keep them topped up the whole fight, a tank at 80% will possibly be one shotted based on the numbers you gave, so simply top up with a mana efficient low rank heal continuously after blastwaves.

Whilst a lesser problem now with mage threat reduction talents, if you use a minmal number of tanks then you're going to hit the aggro cap much, much sooner than if you were using 5 tanks.