Ancestral Healing and Inspiration don't stack. The single target healer on alliance side likely has inspiration being used by priests. Add in devotion aura and imp LOH and the warrior is pretty much guaranteed to be mitigation capped.

My guild is having some patchwerk issues at the moment, we have up to thaddius down (loatheb/gothik/4hm left) but CANNOT seem to kill patchwerk consistantly. Every week we're whiping countless times on him using a 5(MT)/4/4/4 strat with an additional priest doing PoH spam on OT1 and 2 (yes i know we're very very healer heavy, dps can keep up and kill him before enrage still tho). the topping up of tanks just seems to fall apart around the 70% mark, EVERY single time. does anyone have some suggestions as to how we can improve this? Or is it simply a case of me having a sit down chat with our healers and making sure they arent fcking it up?

This week we've actually got to the point where we said 'sod it, this isnt happening' and gone and spent time learning loatheb and doing c'thun (leaving abom uncleared unless we get it tonight). Im in dire need of ANY tips anyone can give me.

Note: All of our healers are using heals for around 2k, do you thnk we would benefit from having some do small heals and some bigger heals (obviously using highest sustainable rank)

@Tel:

We do a combination of fast and slow heals and it works very well for us.

Honestly I think your healing strategy is a bit off though. If all 3 tanks get hit more than just a couple times in a row those 4 healers won't be able to get any of the tanks topped off, probably unless they're just spot on, flawless. If you stack extra healers on one or two of those tanks it's more likely he'll get healed to full in the necessary time. Gives more time for slower healers on the other OTs. Also this way your best geared tank is getting the most Hateful Strikes. Means more mitigation, even if it's only a few percent better.

Try putting your worst geared tank as OT3 and having your healers more heavy on OT1 and OT2. 5/5/2, 6/4/2 or even something like 6/5/1 would probably serve you better.

Also I hope this goes without saying, but just in case.. you're using Flasks, and chugging Stoneshield Potions every time they're up on all the tanks, right?

Most people go into the Patchwerk fight assuming that you need to keep 3 Hateful strike tanks alive so they put relatively equivalent healing on all 3 tanks which is the absolute worst thing you can do.

This is how the math works on Patchwerk .

Patchwerk always hits the highest hp tank on the list so assume that 1 = highest hp tank, 2 = 2nd highest etc.

A typical round works like this:

Tank 1: (1st, 4th)
Tank 2: (2nd, 5th)
Tank 3: (3rd, 6th)

The risk of death for each tank occurs on the 2nd hit, so the amount of time you have to heal each tank is dependent on how long you have between hits. If you healed tanks equivalently, it would hit the tanks in the above order.

Since it always hits the highest hp tank, anytime the first tank is healed up before the other 2 tanks, it allows that tank to skip the rotation. Every additional hit the first tank takes, every other tank gets hit one round later and thus, becomes much easier to heal.

Let's say you throw some overhealing on the first tank, and he gets hit 4 times per rotation, it would like this instead:

Tank 1: (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th)
Tank 2: (5th, 11th)
Tank 3: (6th, 12th)

With equivalent healing, the 2nd and third tank get hit every third time they are in the rotation whereas if you overhealed the first tank instead, they would get hit every 6th hit in the rotation which means you double the amount of time you have to heal them before they die.

All you have to do is count the amount of healing the 1st tank's healers can do, and you know how many times you skip the rotation due to overhealing.

It typically takes 5 healers on the 1st tank to be able to relatively consistently skip the rotation 1 additional time so your tanks can live. If you went around to most guilds that consistently kill Patchwerk, I'd bet 99% of them have at the very minimum, 5 healers on the first tank. Anything less then that and you likely aren't able to kill Patchwerk consistently.

So, the foundation to kill Patchwerk is a minimum of 5 healers on tank 1. After that, it depends on how many additional healers you want to put on the 1st tank, and how many you want to take off the 2nd and 3rd.

Each additional healer on tank 1 increases the amount of time you have to heal tanks 2 and 3 before they die which is how you can reduce the amount of healers on them to practically nothing (1 healer each) if you truly wanted to.

If you only use 5 healers on the first tank, then you are giving your healers the bare minimum amount of time to heal up the other tanks before they die so if your healers are late, it could result in a wipe.

If you stack the healing on the first tank too high, like 10 / 1 / 2 then it takes multiple heals (longer time) to get tanks 2 and 3 back to full before they can get hit again so if for some reason the 10 healers mess up and heal at the same time resulting in a lot of overhealing in one round but not delaying the rotation, it could also result in a wipe.

The mathematically best way to kill Patchwerk is to put the bare minimum number of healers on tanks 2 and 3 so that they can be healed to full in one round, say 3 healers each, put the minimum amount you can get away with on the main tank, probably 4 healers, then the rest on tank 1.

If you had 17 healers it would look like this,

Main Tank - 4 Healers
1st Tank - 7 Healers (constantly healing)
2nd Tank - 3 Healers (Healing when tank gets hit)
3rd Tank - 3 Healers (Healing when tank gets hit)

Any additional healing would all go on the first tank. The bare minimum to kill the mob would be 15 healers, which is what a typical raid force should have anyway and any additional healing would exponentially make the mob easier. You can adjust it slightly for whatever your guild has available. Obviously tons of different combinations work as long as you keep the bare minimum 5 healers on the 1st tank. I'm just saying that mathematically you have the most room for error with the above combination (ie - it's the easiest).

Omg. Thank you so much

That makes more sense now. I've had people telling me 'we need to go through the full rotation everytime or we dont have enough time to top the tanks up' and as i dont play a healer at all (except if i ninja someones alt for Alt MC) its very difficult for me to judge whether or not they're talking rubbish.

I'll go beat the healer officers with a stick (and your maths) now :) Thanks again for the help.
One point tho, when you say constantly healing, do you mean constantly casting? Or constantly cast/cancel/cast/cancel until heal is needed? I was of the opinion that with some using smaller heals and stacking healers on the OT1 they would simply be chaincasting, or am i way off?

Sorry if these are really stupid questions, but this forum is pretty much the only place im guarenteed of getting solid info to start my learning process about healing which i need if im going to take our guild from 'middle of the road' to 'near the top'.

like i said my knowledge of horde specific abilities isnt that great:( I assumed they stacked. thanks for clearing that up.

Having actually read all 4 pages, this an incorrect assumption. Many guilds sucessfully use a 4/4/4/3 (15 healers) setup, and its sucess is consistant because of consistant, and simple heal timing. It's not that difficult to, for instance, begin your heal immediately after the previous OT took a HS because you know that yours will be targeted for a HS in 1.2 seconds, if your OT parries, you have plenty of time to cancel and recast. Or, like my guild, begin your cast immediately after our OT takes a HS, knowing that he won't take another for 3.6 seconds.

By stacking healers on 1 Tank, you require healers to have staggered healing and rely on their ability to cancel/start at exact times or risk wiping due to OOM from overhealing. With 7 healers in order for the tank to take 4 HS per rotation you require the healers to heal 9k every 1.2 seconds on that specific tank for 4.8 seconds. I always picture some sort of called out healing rotation "Group 1 Cast now!, now Group 2, now Group 3!" being yelled over vent, otherwise you'd end up with OT 1 taking a HS then being healed for 20k, taking the next HS and not seeing another heal for 2.5 seconds while OT 2 dies because he only had 2 healers.

PS. Majk, your avatar makes myself and Keydar (the artist of that comic) happy.

You're wrong on so many counts I really don't know where to start.

First off, by stacking healers you don't need to cancel any healing so that's a false assumption on your part. As soon as the tank gets healed up, he immediately takes the next hateful and gets hit so unless all of the healers are healing at the exact same time, it doesn't matter when they heal, just that they are constantly healing. All the 2nd and 3rd healers have to do is cast a heal when their tank gets hit. They never have to cancel a heal, and it's not exactly hard or complicated to do.

Secondly, you don't need to take 4 hateful strikes in a row, you only need to take 4 hateful strikes between the hits of the 2nd and 3rd tank (From the 2nd tank getting hit to when the same tank gets hit again). It's just easier to show how the math works by putting all 4 hits in a row rather then staggering it every other hit. I don't know why you would think those healers would stop healing after the 2nd and 3rd tank get hit. Do you need to take 4 hateful strikes to beat the encounter? Obviously not, but you need to delay the rotation a minimum amount so that your healers have enough time to heal and the more people healing that tank, the more likely that will happen.

Your OOM comment is also quite funny because mathematically, you take LESS damage by overhealing the 1st offtank. Obviously, Patchwerk is always hitting a tank and that never stops. Guess what happens when a greater percentage of his hits occur on your best equipped tank?

Have guilds beaten the encounter using 4 healers? Yeah they have, but that doesn't mean it's a smart way to do it and the majority of guilds that use 4 healers likely won't be able to beat it consistently like that. You'll be running it until you get a run where there was a dodge / miss / parry in almost every round to compensate for the lower amount of time you have to heal the tanks.

Thats exactly what is happening to us using 5/4/4/4. We're gonna try 4/7/3/3 (maybe 5/7/3/3) and i'll get back to you and let you know how it went.

That strip which I cut that out from was amazing:) Keep up the good work!

We got our first kill last night. Started the evening at 5/5/5/2, and then adjusted to 4/5/5/3 because HS3 was the tank we most frequently lost. In hindsight, however, that was an incorrect decision. The difference between 2 and 3 healers will not save the tank if he takes 2 Strikes in quick succession, so the goal should be to prevent that possibility in the first place, with more healers on HS1 and HS2. Going back, I would run 4/6/6/1 or 4/6/5/1, depending on class distribution.

Our kill last night was a testament to this. We were running 4/5/5/3. About halfway in, HS3 went down. The healing essentially shifted to 4/7/6/0 at that point, and they lasted the entire duration of the fight without a DPS'er getting splattered.

This raises one issue, however. It seems to me that our healers, with a 4/6/6/1 setup and more practice, are going to keep HS1 and HS2 almost perfectly healed (they did it yesterday, and it was literally the first pull we'd seen that went longer than 4 minutes, so things will probably get better). Presumably, top healer teams almost never let one through to HS3. So do you have aggro issues between HS3 and the DPS? Even if you let him take one or two at the beginning, if he doesn't take one after that, the DPS will surpass him pretty quickly. Obviously, if the healers on HS1 and HS2 never let one slip by, it doesn't matter. But what about when the only time that backup is needed is 5 minutes into the fight? How do people who use a 2/1 main/backup strategy keep the third tank's aggro up?

your obviously not a gnome warrior either. RAWR!

ok sorry last derail I promise.

The Hateful Strike has nothing to do with agro. You need to be on the hate list to get onto the Hateful Strike list at the very beginning of the fight, but once you are on the list, agro doesn't matter.

We used a 5/5/3/3 strategy on our first kill. It was inconsistent and required way to many consumables. We now use a 4/5/5/2 strategy and it works a lot better. I'm considering trying out a 4/6/4/2 strat, though.

One of the wierd things about Patchwerk is if you're having trouble keeping OT2 or OT3 alive, the answer is not necessarily to put more healers on that OT. In many cases you're actually better off taking healers off of that tank and moving them to OT1. I think this aspect of the fight has caused some problems and confusion for a lot of guilds at first, including my own.

After whiping over 20 times on him the other night. We came back today with this new strat, took 18 healers (just to be safe, which was lucky as one dc'd about 1 minute in) and killed him 2nd go. Only reason we didnt kill him 1st go was because OT2 and 3 healers werent healing reactively, so those tanks both died from getting half topped up.

Thank you all for the help, seems that for us 5/7/3/3 > 5/5/4/4 by a considerable margin :)

I have to say that this declaration is false. I have seen instances when dps fury warriors could outaggro the 3rd HS tank, and as a result become a target for HS close to 2 minutes into a fight. Therefore, I would still say that aggro is still somewhat a concern.

Our guild has been working out various healing strats for the past 2-3 weeks. Today we thought were going to have a pretty good go at it, but for some damn reason we keep losing OT1. We were running with a 4/7/4/3 healing strat (MT/OT1/OT2/OT3). Aside from every other attempt where the MT would die, our primary concern is that even with 7 healers on OT1 we just could not keep OT1 alive for more than a minute into the fight.
I think our setup is sound, but what we're starting to wonder is if the *how* of our heals is what the problem is. We've been ranging from having priests chain cast flash heals on OT1 with shaman/druids doing slower heals, to just stacking priests on OT1 who did nothing but spammed low flash heal ranks. Every time the OT1 died regardless.

Try adapting your heals according to FunBalls explanation in this thread.
Worked well for us, killed after only 2 hours of trying.
Our setup was 5/5/4/2 (MT/OT1/OT2/OT3).
Our problem was that the MT was dieing to oftern. Didn't down him until we shifted our MT for the last try with another. I had to struggle hard to convince them that tanking Patchwerk with 3 Might is NOT a good idea. -.-

What bothers me is, every single one of these strategies laid out for healing requires an inbalanced raid in favor of healing. Are there any guilds out there who regularly kill him with less than or equal to 15 healers?



-Mela

16 healers isn't that inbalanced.

the only agro concern for this encounter is the switching of MTs, which can happen early on in the fight. A person eating an HS who wasnt meant to is doing so because his hp > then your 3 OTs, assuming ofcourse that they are all primed as HS targets. Isnt that the fundamental mechanic of Hateful Strike? We have melee doing 800+ dps and none of them are getting HSd unless healing is slow or the 3 OTs slack at avoidance.

There is a hp requirement for the hateful strike tanks in order to be eligible to be hit by a hateful strike. If the tanks are above the requirement, it will always hit a tank with a hateful strike. If, at the time of a hateful strike, all 3 tanks are below the hp requirement to be hit then Patchwerk can hateful strike off of the list if he wants to.

People just assume that if a DPS warrior or a rogue got hit with a hateful strike tank while all 3 tanks are alive it was because of agro which is a false assumption. It's because all of your tanks were low hitpoints.