healers having trouble on Firemaw - Page 3

Tel · 11/24/06, 9:58 AM

Ignore, was being retarded.

Taipan · 11/24/06, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by kamii

Originally Posted by Taipan

When an OT has more than 5 debuffs at firemaw he's doing something wrong. You only need to be there once every 30 seconds when the Wing Buffet comes. We use 2 offtanks simultaneously by the way, so when one taunt gets resisted the MT doesn't eat the Wing Buffet.

Even though you reduce a lot of stress at the healingcamp by letting the OT's only get into LOS for WB-taunting, we will lose the failsafe option of a tankswitch when the MT goes down or eats unlucky/shitty taunted buffet(s). One little mistake would result in a certain wipe since half the raid (read: the whole raid) is too far above the 2 OT's threatwise.

LOS rotating debuffs after eating a wing buffet seems a bit more safe, even though it requires a bit more effort from the healers, amirite?

Hm, our MT only dies on Firemaw when he gets a Wing Buffet somehow and gets out of LOS from the MT healers. I don't see how OTs can keep up on the aggro list when they have relatively little rage to work with and are eating aggro-reducing Wing Buffets. But if you're experiencing this you might indeed not want offtanks only present at Wing Buffet time..

Prelate · 11/24/06, 11:15 AM

We do this regularly with one MT and one OT (Troll and Cow). Both with their backs to the gate and the OT stays in.

We run 14 healers like this.

4 on OT
2 on melee
Rest on MT

Melee healers hide behind the wall at the alch lab. Melee run to them for heals. Ranged DPS stay in the supp room and get shouted at if they die. Any bored MT/OT healer will toss regen/rejuve about for ranged DPS.

We regularly gank him with no deaths and we are only starting in AQ 40 .. /shrug.

Some tips.

1) PW:S on shadowflame warning.
2) FR totem and imp in MT/OT group.
3) GRFPP pots.
4) No CoR. This was mentioned before but can be crucial on this fight (our MT runs at about 7.5k unflasked so CoR spikes r bad mmk ?).
5) Never be afraid of overheal on this one.

mordus · 11/24/06, 11:30 AM

Since most people have coverred the healing and positioning points, I thought I would add something that the tank himself can do:

Get your MT to use Shield Block at the Shadow Flames. With all the FR gear on, they are likely to have less +defence. Preventing crushing/crit blows right after spike damage is always a good thing, especially with reduced defense levels.

Lomar · 11/24/06, 11:32 AM

Looks like most of us do this fight very similar.

We too will use 3-4 off-tank healers.

We'll sprinkle 1-2 on the Raid doing what we call "chaos" healing. They have a secondary job of filling in for an OT healer if one of them drops.

For Firemaw we use what we call A.B.C. for healers:

A - Always
B - Be
C - Casting

We usually setup 8 MT healers using a "buddy" system. Every healer is assigned a buddy.

Then the healers spam heal like mad. non-stop. When they get to 1/2 mana they hit a macro to whisper to their buddy. Then they go into mana regen mode while the other healer steps in and A.B.C.

At 20% health on Firemaw then all healers start casting on the MT.

We usually have 1 priest that heals the entire time and he's responsible for bubbles before a shadowflame.

The buddy system usually helps us support A.B.C. which is key on a lot of fights. Otherwise, some healers tend to get gun shy about casting heals because they're low on mana. Dead tank.

Early on we used the buddy system with A.B.C. for many of the BWL bosses so our mana pools could last the entire fight.

Nowadays our gear is such that it isn't an issue, but this setup was huge for us for many months.

♦ Oggie · 11/24/06, 11:48 AM

Well, pace all the good advice given above, 2 things that my guild does that I haven't seen mentioned and a commnet about the # of healers (and why that might be messing you up more than you think).

1) 2 shaman w/ rank 2 Chain Heal. Even if you can't normally downrank CH on this fight, just pick some melee and toss it at them fairly often, it really simplifies matters and your bounces are almost -never- wasted. With 3 piece TS, you would be stunned at how efficent CH becomes if every single point is a needed heal. In addition, the bounce range will hit OTs who need heals and the MT (god I love the new bounce range). This is more or less all you need for all melee healing.

2) We found that w/ 1 OT taunt was being resisted far, far too much, and with 2 they got nervous about ducking in/out due to FR. So we use 3 OTs, one always out of LoS as a replacement when called on vent that they need some time.

And a note about why 7 OT healers is wierd/bad. The honest truth is that throwing more healers at an issue is just as likely to cause -more- issues past a certain point- I first noticed on anub'rekan for my guild while setting up healing that the MT was getting a little lower than I'd like (though he had NEVER died), so I increased healing on him. He promptly died. I threw another healer at him next attempt, and he died -faster-.

It's a psychological thing, I think. If you know you're one of 2-3 healers on a tank, and you have to sustain for an extended period, you end up beliving 'someone else will take care of it' or 'I can help out elswhere quickly'. Even worse, you might think that it's okay to use a quick inefficent heal, causing overheal in the other healers ane encouraging -them- to use quick heals because there's so much backup. It's counter-intuitive, but I've found it very true. I'd even bet your OT healers are popping out to heal the MT a hair.

Also, having 2-3 shaman CHing/helping on melee means melee can stay in that much longer -and- the OTs have backup healers ready to swing into action (because really, firemaw doesn't spike often).

Hey, on the plus side at least your ranged sound like they're okay with not getting heals!

u418936 · 11/24/06, 12:11 PM

Originally Posted by mordus

Since most people have coverred the healing and positioning points, I thought I would add something that the tank himself can do:

Get your MT to use Shield Block at the Shadow Flames. With all the FR gear on, they are likely to have less +defence. Preventing crushing/crit blows right after spike damage is always a good thing, especially with reduced defense levels.

Yeah. This is key. You know that you'll take a big spike when the shadowflame comes--even if your priest has timed his PWS perfectly. Instead of spamming shield block, as you probably do on most bosses, save your shield block for just after the shadowflame. It sucks when you get shadowflamed and thrashed.

Fiola · 11/24/06, 1:15 PM

Originally Posted by Taipan

I don't see how OTs can keep up on the aggro list when they have relatively little rage to work with and are eating aggro-reducing Wing Buffets. But if you're experiencing this you might indeed not want offtanks only present at Wing Buffet time..

Depends on the strat, I think. Our guild had trouble with Firemaw until we used a single OT strat - OT builds threat with MT, MT eats knockbacks and taunts it back from the OT.

OT seems to generate enough threat to keep ahead of DPS, since he gets rage (I think) from the DoT, and has uninterrupted facetime with Firemaw. (He also isn't supposed to eat any knockbacks - MT gets those. OT is a threat level "savepoint")

It worked better than using OT's to taunt wing buffets, because that often lead to LoS/timing issues (Taunt resist! - Next OT - Oops too late). Tanks also don't have to move much for this strat, which *greatly* reduces the healer LoS problem. Only problems nowadays come from snoozing healers. (>_>)

Melissande · 11/24/06, 2:51 PM

By the way, your main tank reallly needs 315 FR
Not 300
315, really.

Basically check that tanks have their Ony Cloak, DPS has enoughFR. MT healers should be with0 to 30 FR, depending ont the number of T1/T2 pieces they have. Anthing above is a waste (however OT healers can take advantage of FR)

Antoher tip : have one single priest on MT shield duty. He'll be on duty of putting shield on the MT right after or befor SF hits. He willl also have to find creative insults for any moron that shields the tank : the time shield is more usefull is when shadoflamme happens, anything else is a uselless 15 s debuff. So 1 shielder only

Have someone vocally anounce the number of debuff if it goes about 10-12. At this time al healers must be paying full attention and derank a little less

Sin · 11/24/06, 3:45 PM

I always hated using the perma sealed door strat. It requires your healers to be in a totally different room with huge los issues with smaller tanks and moving around. In this pic, yellow being your mt, red your offtank, and the two larger circles of the same color being each respective group of healers, and green your dps. This allows your dps to hop in and out of buffets quickly, which raises dps. The offtank can pop in and taunt firemaw before the buffet, and then duck back out with the dps. Should the mt take a buffet, theres a small niche in the doorway that keeps him from flying around, just like corner tanking him.

Ghostz · 11/24/06, 3:59 PM

Originally Posted by Fiola

Originally Posted by Taipan

I don't see how OTs can keep up on the aggro list when they have relatively little rage to work with and are eating aggro-reducing Wing Buffets. But if you're experiencing this you might indeed not want offtanks only present at Wing Buffet time..

Depends on the strat, I think. Our guild had trouble with Firemaw until we used a single OT strat - OT builds threat with MT, MT eats knockbacks and taunts it back from the OT.

OT seems to generate enough threat to keep ahead of DPS, since he gets rage (I think) from the DoT, and has uninterrupted facetime with Firemaw. (He also isn't supposed to eat any knockbacks - MT gets those. OT is a threat level "savepoint")

It worked better than using OT's to taunt wing buffets, because that often lead to LoS/timing issues (Taunt resist! - Next OT - Oops too late). Tanks also don't have to move much for this strat, which *greatly* reduces the healer LoS problem. Only problems nowadays come from snoozing healers. (>_>)

Thats a cool idea, never thought of doing it like that. I wonder if this is how Blizzard initially intended it to work?

Jonno · 11/24/06, 6:04 PM

Originally Posted by Oggie

1) 2 shaman w/ rank 2 Chain Heal. Even if you can't normally downrank CH on this fight, just pick some melee and toss it at them fairly often, it really simplifies matters and your bounces are almost -never- wasted. With 3 piece TS, you would be stunned at how efficent CH becomes if every single point is a needed heal. In addition, the bounce range will hit OTs who need heals and the MT (god I love the new bounce range). This is more or less all you need for all melee healing.

I second this. This is a great fight for Chain Heal. We run with 3 OT healers hiding in the corner near the Alc lab (Priest + Druid + Shammy). As the priest and druid pretty easily keep our 2 OTs alive I'll often be Chaining into the melee and lead the effective healing by a long way on the fight.

If your OTs are smart about the debuff stack its a very simple fight and 2-3 healers is all you need on them. If they're still standing out there with double figure stacks on them they're just wasting your healers mana and asking to get fried.

To me this sounds like the core of your problems. OTs not "cooling off" enough -----> more healers needed but still unable to keep them alive -----> not enough healing on MT = FAIL.

DeeNogger · 11/24/06, 9:55 PM

good way that you can use to improve reflexes on healers: have your OT and MT turn on the SCT option to show the name of the healer that heals you (if they dont already). After a shadow flame have them call out the healer that landed a heal first. Starts a friendly competition of going for perfect timeing on shadow flames, which can only be a good thing. Also quite effective on nef.

Taikero · 11/25/06, 6:02 AM

PW: Shield is what took my old guild from wiping every time on Firemaw to immediate farm status.

Boevis · 11/25/06, 7:07 AM

Originally Posted by levk

You say your OTs are standing behind him - this is new for me; we always had 1 OT standing in the closed doorway opposite side of main tank. It seems to me every wingbuffet you OTs would get punted back and you'd have to run around to reposition him. If your OT has his back against the wall he won't get punted and Firemaw never moves. I had a good diagram for this fight but I can't find it anymore.
http://www.anikki.com/share/wow/bwl_firemaw.jpg

(posted on thottbot)

On the subject of your MT dying - some people push contingiencies for high debuff stacks like switching the tanks out, we never did that, it only complicates the fight for no real reason, better to just make sure you keep the MT you have alive and in case he does die, another warrior has to know where the tank spot is and how to position him. Eventually your MT gears up and won't be dying anymore. Even if you don't want to flask the MT, cheaper hp methods are always there, use them.

That's the general strat used by the top 4 horde guilds on my server, I can't say what alliance do.

The Method that worked the best between all of them is having 2 OT's in very high FR gear taunt right before a wing buffet (2 instead of 1 in case of resists) MT taunts back. MT, OT1, OT2, Warlock (imp), Shaman is the main group, other groups set up for FR on DPS groups and Raid Leader rotates Shaman through the healer groups for Mana Tide (Horde only of course) Each OT has 1 Druid, 1 Priest as healers, HoTs and a timed Shield/HT for the wing buffet keep them alive easilly. If OT debuffs get too high, they run out AFTER a buffet, one at a time (just in case). A couple healers heal the DPS. Every other healer is on ABC duty on the MT.

Only problems occur when MT gets unlucky and doesn't resist the debuffs (I've seen 35 stack before, we didn't have ours wearing 315 FR, whatever your first Tank on Vael wears should be enough for Firemaw) or too many taunts get resisted. DPS have to spend so much running in-out that even if the MT takes a buffet, he shouldn't risk losing aggro.

I've also seen 1 OT building threat with the MT and having the MT take buffets and taunt it off the OT. Not fond of this method, since any taunt resists effectively switch the OT and MT.

Whatever way you go with on this fight, it's essential that healers not just l2p but learn to work together healing someone. I always enjoyed studying healing meters for this fight, of the MT healers the ones with the most effective healing are likely the best at timing heals to bursts (good awareness of the fight mechanics). The ones with the least overhealing are the best at canceling (good reaction time). Both qualities are good for every healer to improve upon for later fights

Edit: Important thing about shields - assign 1 priest and only 1 priest to shield the MT before a Shadow Flame, same with the OT's (though we only had 1 priest per OT anyway). As odd as it sounds, we had a priest specced for shielding with the ZG priest neck (never had luck with trans/proph drops, so ZG set was his healing gear anyway) and it helped quite a bit, an extra 181 damage absorbed I think.