We usually give priests as many mark icons as they need. Between pig, turtle, sheep and detect magic it's pretty easy for mages to mark their own targets even without raid icons.

This technique is what really cleaned up the live side for us.

Have mages frost novaing the deathknights before their graphic has loaded in and you'll minimize the charges. Similarly priests can usually get their targets before the graphic is loaded in using V targetting.

Have a warrior standing >8 yards from the DK spawn, everyone else farther away than the warrior, and if the shackle is slow/resisted, the DK will charge that warrior pretty much like clockwork.

We'll run with two warriors. One to tank Deathknights that aren't being shackled. One to tank riders, and soak deathknight charges from the ones that are being shackled. (Or tank one in the early waves where we kill both.)



With trainees, we just have our warlocks fear/DoT them, and generally have a hunter help out if we're low on locks. We start sheeping about halfway through and just hold the sheeps throughout the fight for the most part. If a mage or priest dies once Gothik is down, we have a spare warrior that's able to pick up whatever is loose. We also tend to stick a druid on the live side as well (6-7 priests and a druid for live side healing) so loose trainees gravitate towards him rather than the priests. He'll be in hybrid gear so if he ends up with a handful of trainees glued to him he can help out with tanking in a pinch and whine on Vent til someone kills them.

We allocate our raid icons to priests as well. While mages probably can get more use out of them (wandering sheep, no 'G' targetting), priests tend to be far less proficient with targetting unfriendly mobs, and if you're throwing out the occasional smite or SW:P you're going to screw up your G targetting.