Northerner

I was kinda wondering about this a bit myself lately. CH seems to be almost tailored for this fight in a lot of ways and have team Shaman all spam an appropriate rank would prehaps not be a totally idiotic idea at all. AF would simply be up all the time, the healing efficiency is really pretty good as long as 2+ people are injured and the healing should spread to where you want it most. As long as you were timing your casts and targetting appropriately, from a theorycrafting standpoint I like the concept. Of course even trying this would make for some pretty strange problems for the other healers in terms of adjusting but still it might be worth incorporating. I just love Chain Heal for AE situations lately and the 3/4 targets soaking damage just seem to be sweetly set up for it. Besides, you know your shaman look pimp in three pieces of ten storms.

 

Bubba

It's funny you've switched to a single healer on OT3 over time. After our first kill (where we had 2 healers on OT3), we tried switching to a single healer on him and an extra healer on OT2 (ie 5/5/1/4). Since from our attempts we'd always see tanks die as a result of healers on *other* tanks not being fast enough, mathmatically it made sense that OT3 could easily get away with only ever having a single healer.

The interesting thing was that in reality, it just never worked. The healers on OT1/2 were never fast enough, so just as OT3 was creeping back up to full health with his healer working overtime, he'd get smacked in the face. Our healers repeatedly asked to go back to the old approach of 5/4/2/4, and even though as Mosh put it, they were arguing that 2+2=5, sure enough we downed him even faster than the previous kill.

While we can all see why a single healer on OT3 should work, any ideas as to why, in practice it doesnt? My thinking was that the avoidance of OT3, being more frequently in the HS chain, overall buys your healers more time across the board. That said, it works for you guys, so maybe our healers are just weird.

 

Dots

We go with 5/5/2/4 or 5/4/2/4 depending on numbers. I see OT3 only as a backup tank. On a long streak of hits with very few dodge/parry/miss in between, your backup might be needed again sooner than it takes 1 healer to get him on a good HP level. We have also had a good number of druids for PW and this is a good job for them with their slow&big heals.

 

arc

We've always run with 4 healers on the MT and it works perfectly for us. 1 pally on fast heals, 1 pally on slow heals, 1 druid keeping up some HoTs when he can and HTing, and an inspiration priest with 8/8 trans doing midrank GHeals. Even when I was sporting 4 DN 4 Wrath the 4 healer setup always worked.

Hmm, now that I think about it we may only be able to get away with 4 MT healers since we have 2 TFs.

Anyway, we struggled with Patch until we started stacking the OT1 healers more heavily. I think our first kill we had 18 healers and did a 4 MT, 8 OT1, 5 OT2, 1 OT3 setup. When we run with 16ish healers we'll do 4 MT, 7 OT1, 4 OT2, 1 OT3. Works like a charm.

The 3rd OT really just functions as padding. We've actually had him die -really- early on as people are just starting to find their rhythm and go on to have a clean kill.


One thing I forgot to mention is that we always have our pallies, when they're really low on mana, use Imp LoH on OT1, OT2 and the MT (in that order) to smooth out the ending as people are running OOM.

A few other nuances.. HoTs are going to be much more effective on MT and (less so) OT1 than OT2/OT3. For that reason druids and 8/8 trans priests tend to end up on MT and OT1 more than OT2. We always use a non-inspiration, non-8/8 priest to heal OT3. Inspiration priests are split up. We don't waste an inspiration priest on OT3 heals.

 

dojke

If you have one priest in 8/8 trans, then I'm pointing out that putting him on OT1 is not the efficient way to do it. The nature of OT healing means that the renew will never actually do anything substantive. The idea behind OT healing is that the tank must be healed to full within 3 seconds (or sooner if you use less tanks). As renew ticks only every 3 seconds (and resets the timer when you land the gh), it rarely ticks with the OT being hurt.

If you put the 8/8 on the MT, then it actually has the opportunity to do something, since patchwerk's melee is smaller steady hits.

There's about 5 threads on both here and R&D that explains why this line of thinking is wrong. Druid tanks are absolutely inferior.

I use flash heal, I think it was rank 5. Efficiency means nothing if the tank dies. Consumables goes a long way.

 

• Playered

Is it worth using 2 OTs and resulting with a tailored group with < Pala - Devotion, Priest - Full T1 PoH for Insp, Warlock - Imp, 2 OT's> as im... concerned about us being able to keep inspiration on all 3 OTs.. which would be bad :)

 

◊ Praetorian

Well, we had a couple of kills in a row where we had three dedicated OT3 with 4/4/3 healing, and we'd lose one of the tanks at like 70% and then go from 70% until a kill with a 6/5/0 split. The healers said afterwards that it felt more stable, so, I figured, why not base the strategy around that?

It also helps if your OT3 is well-geared -- if your OT3 has a bunch of dreadnaught and such, then odds are much better that if you get unlucky and he eats a second HS before he's been topped off, he'll survive it.

 

Cordelia

For the tank situation, we really have no other option than the fully decked out Druid tank taking HSs. We have 3 "well-geared" tanks so far, on of them is the druid. Besides those 3 tanks, theres a few Prot warriors in a little bit of Wrath. Overall, those tanks in small amounts of tier 2 wouldn't compare. That's what I'm saying. I know Warrior > Druid. But in -our- case that's not true due to the lack of warrior gear. So its either Druid with 75% mitigation and 11000 health or Warrior in a bit of Wrath with like 7000 health.

I'm not the only Priest in 8/8. I was the only priest on that tank in 8/8. One of the MT priests has it and one on the other OT has it. But our purpose in using the Greater Heal is not to keep the dot up. It's to use a heal that has good enough hps and isn't very costly.

I like the idea of splitting up inspiration priests accordingly. We've got all but 2 priests with 3/3 Inpiration and it'd be helpful to be keeping that up especially on OT1, the warrior. Thanks for the advice.

 

issei

we just got our first kill on 4th or 5th pull using 5/6/5 for MT/OT1/OT2. not sure what our priests were smoking, but i know there was variance between gheal2 and heal2/4. they started running out of mana around the 6% mark, 7:01 time for a kill, but they also all had flasks of distilled wisdom.

 

FunBall

You don't need to guess. Take a little bit of time, and you can figure out a heal that you can cast on an OT and make it through the fight. 2,000 is a good rule of thumb for a Druid or Priest that is mostly tier two, and has at least 50% BWL/AQ/Naxx gear in the other slots. Undergeared healers aren't going to be able to maintain heals for 2k for the whole fight, and heavily geared healers will eventually approach the ability to use heals for 3k.

There's no point leaving mana on the table, and there is no point spamming a big heal you can't maintain only to have your tanks die consitently 4 minutes into the fight.

1. Calculate your total mana pool for this fight. This is basically the addition of your raid buffed mana pool, consumable pots during the fight, and your total regenerated mana (you should only use casting regeneration for calculations, to stay on the safe side). The Healpoints mod can help calculate a lot of this.

A Major Mana pot restores 1800 mana on average, and a Dark Rune restores 1200 mana on average. You can use 3 in a given Patchwerk fight.

For your regenerated mana, don't forget to add items such as Mageblood and Nightfin soup, or buffs such as Mana Spring or Blessing of Wisdom.

For example, my raid buffed mana pool is 8209. I don't use Dark Runes, usually, but I plan on drinking 3 mana pots during the fight for 5400 additional mana. I'll use mageblood, mana oil, and nightfin. Combined with raid buffs and gear, I'm at 220 mana/5 casting regen, which is 18480 mana I will regen over the course of the fight.

So if I burn all these consumables, my mana pool is 32089. (I don't usually calculate in innervate, although this can also simply be added in as well.)

2. Figure out the biggest heal you can cast at least 65 times and no more than 90 times. The average well geared OT will get hit 60-70 times by Hateful Strike. In that time you'll get some overheals, so you want to figure out what the biggest heal you can get away with casting a minimum of 65 times. If you pick a rank that you can cast more than 90 times, you'll be leaving mana on the table. It is much better off for the raid if you bump up at least one rank on the OT and add a little healing.

In step 1 you calculated your total mana pool for the fight. Now check the mana cost of your heals, specifically GH ranks 1-3 and Healing Touch ranks 6-8 for starters. Don't forget to account for talents, items, set bonuses, etc. that will discount the mana cost of each cast.

I use a resto spec'd Druid, and with my gear, I can cast a rank 7 HT 92 times, rank 8 HT 75 times, and a rank 9 HT 62 times. Following the rules I picked, I'm going to choose a rank 8. While rank 7 might hit for 2k, why wouldn't I throw a bigger heal if I can? At the same time, I could choose a rank 9 and probably get away with it, but I might also sometimes get the tank killed.

3. Calculate what the heal will hit for on average. Healpoints will also calculate this for you. You should be using amplify magic on the tanks, so don't forget to add 150 (225 for improved amplify magic), and any other bonuses from consumables and other buffs.


Done - You really don't need to calculate this for everyone in your raid. You should take a look at one of the better geared and one of the less geared healers of each class and simply develop a range for your guild. You can also use this to match certain healers to certain tasks.

Once you have this range, you can start watching healers and see how well they use their mana. If they tend to run out early, you'll be able to tell if it is because they weren't stopping heals (overhealing), or perhaps they weren't using consumables, or that they were using the incorrect rank of heal.

 

Cmpnd

We tried the whole spam MT1 strategy with a few healers on MT2 just in case and it didn't work well for us. We normally have 4 Paladins on our raids so we put them all on the MT, and they can keep him up fine.

So assuming we have 15 healers, we use:

4 on MT
4 on OT1
4 on OT2
3 on OT3

If we have 14, then just subtract one on OT2.

As far as gear goes, we have 6 active Priests in the guild, all of which have 7/8 or 8/8 Trans as well as 3/3 Inspiration. Personally, I only use 3/8 Trans and random epics to get 1138 +heal before SG, and use a Rank 2 GHeal that heals for about 2500-2600 for 386 mana. With the setup we use now, I really don't use too many consumables (last kill I used 2 combat potions and an oil).

 

Melthar

Whilst I wouldn't want a druid as OT1.. They make the perfect OT3 (or OT2 if going a 2 tank strategy)

*All of the HS's have to pass through the avoidance of OT1 and OT2 before they get to OT3. The druid may have lower avoidance, but will be benefitting from OT1/2 avoidance.

*OT3 will generally have less healers, so less likely to have inspiration up constantly. (especially as alliance) Inspiration is one of the big things that gives warriors the advantage here.

*From a consumable standpoint, you would not need to be chaining stoneshields on OT3, and possibly avoiding a flask on the druid as well to make sure they stay on lower max HP than the warriors.

*A minor point.. but it's substantially easier for a feral to keep up Faerie fire, than relying on your healing druids to stop healing and switch targets long enough to do so.


Keep warriors in as your first two OTs, and throw the druid in no.3 They're just there to cover for when OT1 and OT2 are low anyway.

 

• Playered

Druid: 3000HPS
75% DR // 29900 *0.25 = 7475
Warrior: 3200HPS
70% DR // 29900 *0.3 *0.9 = 8073

Assuming you use a spam healing strat... where technically you dont care about dodge or parry if your healers can sustain it long enough, is it not more beneficial to use a druid by this logic?

 

Shik

This makes no sense to me at all. I'm assuming a flawed understanding of the fight mechanics on your part. OT3 is going to get hit if he has the highest current HP of the targets primed for HS. It doesn't start at OT1 each time and move down the order, it just hits him because he has more HP than OT1 and OT2 in that instant, since they had probably eaten the preceding 2 hateful strikes and are still in the process of being healed to full.

 

dojke

If your strat involved healing ot1 to full every 1.2 seonds, sure. But I'm not sure there's any strat that involves that. Personally I'd be very impressed if any guild uses this, due to both mana and latency concerns.

The reason (at least for us) that OT1 takes a majority of the HS (65 OT1 vs. 25 OT2 vs. 12 OT3) is not some incredibly fast healing, but the fact that all 3 tanks are avoiding more than half the HS's. It's extremely easy to heal OT1 if the Hs's come every 2.4-3.6 seconds, notsomuch if it's every 1.2.

Also our avg HS dmg on warriors is 6471, which puts our total mitigation (incl def stance) to be 74.57%. This is without imp loh becuase well, because we forgot to use it.

And yeah druid OT3 tank justification just doesn't make any sense at all. If you HAVE to use a druid then that's clearly the best spot (since he'll get hit the least there), but it's not like it's more optimal than a warrior in that slot or anything.

 

Tenkawa

Is there a way to do this fight then, with fewer healers? Our raid has an average of 11-12 healers. =S

 

krucifix85

By having 1 HS OT, there is also more than double the amount of healers on the one target, ensuring a very steady stream of heals. Overheal heavy yes, but that is of no concern if they can last the full 7 minutes.
Also, yes there are strats that invole only 1HS OT, <vodka> is one guild i know that use it, i know i've read of 2 others aswell.

Tenkawa

Very consumable heavy, and using the 3 OT system would be your best bet.
EDIT: having said that it's probably not possible?

http://ctprofiles.net/13134

 

dojke

Well we go in with 10 healers on OT1 and he's still only eating 66% of the HS's.

That's crazy impressive if you can keep all the Hs's on one tank. Could be gear related though, we have to downrank a LOT (yay for 6 of our 16 healers being apps).

 

niss

Sometimes I wish we were alliance so that we coudl do the 1 OT with 1 backup tank, but after a lot of testing it's not viable as horde. We usually do something like 8/2/2 with the rest on the MT. It works well for the most part.

 

Tenkawa

What makes 1 OT viable for alliance and not horde? Pally heal cast time?

 

niss

Devotion aura and LOH if you really want to get fancy.

 

Melthar

Correct.. But he'll only be trying to HS OT3 if the first two OTs aren't high enough in HP. If they're dodging/parrying enough to be healed up to full in time then OT3's avoidance means little.


Part of it is that the third OT will tend to have less healers on them, and hence be less likely to have inspiration up. (especially as alliance without ancestral fortitude) So the armor gap between a warrior and a druid for OT3 is likely to be larger than in an OT1/OT2 position (which leaves the warriors superior in those slots)

 

Hiba

We use 8 priests/shamans on OT1 healing, the armor bonus is up most of the time since all shamans have the talent. If we have extra druid to spare, we use the one with most +healing to cast nonstop the HT4 with -cast time idol from Viscidus on OT1 (so 8-9 healers OT1).

Lightwell object increased in size to make it easier to click.

 

arc

Ouch.. Maybe Brodda Thep or one of the other CQ guys that's active here will post on the subject; I know they run with pretty low healer numbers most of the time. It seems pretty unlikely to me that anyone would be killing him with that few healers as I just don't think you'd have the necessary throughput.

Do any of your guildies (especially low DPS ones like your extra warlocks, hunters, a fifth prot warrior, etc) have healer alts that you could run through MC, BWL and AQ to gear up a bit? Chances are if you've gotten this far with 12 healers you have a very good healer core, so a few extras that are a bit sub-par on gear shouldn't hold you back much. I'd aim for 15 or 16 total if you can pull it off.

 

majk

My understanding of Horde specific abilities etc is pretty limited but I always thought that (and no this isnt a Horde vs Alliance rant) Horde actually had the "advantage" on this one when it came to HS soaking. AH > Devotion aura (when its up ofcourse) and Grace of Air is just amazing for added avoidance.