Sorry, but seeing another Loatheb thread when the survival thread is on page 2 and 4 pages long doesn't strike me as necessary.

I also don't see how disconnects would at all effect a static rotation any more than a reactive rotation. Taking Falk's example, what if it's Healer 2 that DC's That puts a delay of ~10 seconds during burst damage where no one can heal? What if it's Healer 3 that is DCing before his first heal, it will take until Healer 4 for people to react to the damage.

However, looking at the my damage logs done by Loatheb ... it's rather irrelivant. He really doesn't hit very hard, when looking at a tank with 14000 health. It's just somewhat intimidating when you're using a standard 8k hp tank for practice runs, you start looking at his ability to burst for 6k (doom and 2hits) and it's a bit intimidating until you realize just how much HP the tank is going to have on a real attempt.

Erm, you serious? A guy in my guild wrote that as his first pet project with mods :D

Im off to tell him, he'll be SO happy :)

(Its what most of our guys use too, although we use bigwigs to set a general rotation)

In a static rotation, there is no such thing as people "reacting" to the damage. It's the very definition of the static system, where your healers are casting at predefinite moments (60s/X healers = every Y sec). For every disconnect, you have a gap where it is possible for your MT to die. My combat log states he hits every 1.5s on average. So it's very feasible for him to get 4-5 hits, as well as a Doom in that 10s interval. If he wasn't at full health to begin with, or perhaps the MT is not extremely well geared (very plausible for guilds that are just learning him), it's perfectly possible to have your MT die. I'll always trust my healers to think and judge for themselves rather than put blind faith in a static system incapable of change.

The exact same thing happens with reactive healing due to the debuff, unless you have an extra 3 healers (very unreasonable and unnecessary) having 1 person DC is going to create problems. In fact, reactive healing has the potential to create a greater than 10 second gap in the healing, while a static rotation has a max of 10 seconds.

Either way you run healing, you'll always have at least 1 healer sitting out of the rotation to cover problems like chains of hits + doom or DCs.

Ermm, no. With reactive healing, the moment I see the guy before me has disconnected (or that simply the tank's health has dipped dangerously low, because of the guy lagging or whatever reason), I simply step up and cast my heal. It's more flexible and easier to adjust in case of the unexpected happening - and the whole healing queue adjusts after me, not being tied into a rigid casting system.+

edit: the reason why this is possible is found is Shalas's excellent post below.

With reactive healing you usually have multiple people with the debuff off at a time. If someone disconnects or dies, you just skip them, and cast a heal when they would have. I generally end up casting a heal about once every 70 seconds with 13 healers alive/online. Less overhealing reduces the number of heals that need to be cast.

I would like to point out that I was the one who made this point on our guild forums when we first discussed "lucky" and "unlucky" strings of hits or misses. :P

Aside from that though, the setup doesn't need to be terribly complicated. We use the Snagaloatheb mod (it's on curse-gaming.com) and it's pretty much idiot proof, as far as healing mods go. With it even a monkey could see when it's his turn to heal, and heal. If your tank get a lucky string of misses, it only screws up the rotation if one minute later your tank gets an unlucky string of hits, and such a string would be bad (possibly tank-killing) even if you didn't have that lucky string of misses. In other words, when it comes to MT healing, what happens in the past does little to affect how you heal in the future. Heal when you need to heal, don't heal arbitrarily just to stay "in order" in a silly attempt to hardwire each heal to a specific time.

EDIT: I posted the discussion we had about this on our forums below, for reference. (note: Gator is our MT.)

Summary: Set a healing order (ideally one that spreads out the AF/Inspiration procs, as well as the 8/8 Trans procs), and don't have each heal linked to a specific time. Heal when you need to heal.

And you can't do this with fixed healing because ... If I have 12 healers in rotation and 1 healer off, and all 12 healers are at 20+% overhealing ... I drop a person from rotation, it's not that big a deal.

Ohh god my eyes, 2 posts with the words Loatheb in the title!! Don't like it, don't look at it...




Regarding strategies, next we see Loatheb I'll try both static fixed interval rotations. If it doesn't click after like 5 pulls or show any improvement we'll probably try to fine tune our reactive setup. Again thank you everyone for the valuable responses.

@Boevis: Why are you getting so worked up? :/ You brought up a point something regarding reactive healing which I felt I needed to correct slightly. As a strategy, it works; just as static healing does. You don't NEED to prove that static healing works... I don't dispute that. It works like a charm for you and that's all well good and fine.

I just wanted to clarify that one misconception regarding a possible alternative and equally viable strategy which may very well do the job for Apparition's guild.

In any case, good luck on Loatheb... many things have changed in both healing and DPS for 2.0, so maybe our experiences learning the fight up to the first kill won't be exactly the same, but there you have it- two different and seemingly antagonistic strategies that have worked for numerous guilds.

Edit:
Whoa, really? I remember seeing the mod somewhere on EJ a long time before we reached Loatheb and snagged it in advance just because I like to be thorough. It really saved us a -lot- of headache, as LV was too bulky for some people (me especially :( ) to use in fights like Loath./Thadd. I'm pretty sure a ton of guilds who lurk EJ forums would have had exposure to the mod as well.

This is probably one of those things like Patchwerk OT healing setups, or Twin Emps tanking setups, where there are multiple ways to do it but one is clearly better. I honestly don't see how a fixed interval healing rotation could possibly work better than a reactive heal-when-you-need-it rotation, for the reasons I mentioned above.

If you have multiple healers disconnecting frequently enough on a 5 minute fight that you need to cater your strategy to it, I suggest they get better ISP's.

Static system is easier, less prone to error, and allows the healers to focus more on dps(just as hard for an undergeared raid as keeping the mt up) and surviving.

Wait to heal systems also make surviving more difficult for healers. What happens if the tank goes on a parry streak when it's time to bandage? I've seen our MT take negligible damage for 15+ seconds, that's too long to wait to bandage yourself.

And besides, there's a reason you have 1 (or more if you have lots of healers) person sitting out of the rotation. If someone disconnects he can cover for them.

10 seconds is very much a worst case scenario anyhow. I know of very few raids who bring only 13 healers to naxx. If you need to sit out that many healers just to have the dps to kill him, I would recommend world buffs, more mats, more gear, or learning how to dps, instead of implementing unnecessarily complicated healing strategies to make up for the fact that you're short healing.

Most of the time you'll probably have closer to 14 healers in rotation with 1 or 2 sitting out. Which means, even if one or both of your out of rotation healers are on timer, your tank will go at most about 8 seconds between heals. There's a reason your MT specs prot for last stand, has a lifegiving gem, and a healthstone.

Since putting this strat in place we've never had trouble keeping the MT up unless multiple people make stupid mistakes, which is a wipe with any healing strategy. We've had disconnects, premature healer deaths, etc. Unless your tank is seriously undergeared or you're lowballing on the mats, keeping the MT alive is really not that challenging.

I'm not trying to say a wait to heal strategy sucks or doesn't work. Both strategies are viable. I'm merely defending the static strategy. I've not once in 12 weeks of killing this guy thought 'Gee if we'd been using a wait to heal strategy that wouldn't have been a wipe!'. It just doesn't happen. Unless your healers are connecting to the internet using string and paper cups, the static strat is solid, reliable, and foolproof.

Sometimes, connections aren't a matter of choice. Oceanic guilds raid with an average ping above 350-400ish, and that's with the best ISP's. I'm sure many Australians have choice stories to tell of multiple ISPs and their international links, but here in Sunny Malaysia, I can assure you the situation is... well... see for yourself - my beautiful green-glowing hands taking an eternity to conjure what is supposedly an 'instant' spell

http://files.filefront.com/Immortal_.../fileinfo.html
http://files.filefront.com/Immortal_.../fileinfo.html
*

When you ask a group of 13 odd people with similar connections (admittedly I skew the connection 'shittiness rating' curve on the high side) all you can do is hope for the best. At those latencies, the zaniest client-side twitches can push you over the edge of the client and server saying 'screw this out-of-sync bullshit' and waving good-bye to each other. I think we've had an average of 1-2 people disconnecting any given week on Loatheb, and at least 3 on Thaddius throughout the course of the fight. And they're never all the same people. We've just learnt to adapt strategies that are robust enough to account for a reasonable number of disconnects.

Sorry for the slight derail, but I suppose your raid's connectivity may be a factor in what kind of healing setup you want to use. Bad connections are mostly a matter of choice... but only in certain parts of the world.

*note-Was recorded, I think, a day right after the Swiftmend patch. Don't laugh at my noobgears.^_____^

Step 1: Everyone downloads Natur's EnemyCastbar

Step 2: Healers use this macro
/tar Roch
/cast Healing Touch XI
/ra .countsec 3 Aliria next!
/w Aliria your next!

Roch is our MT and Aliria is the next healer on the list. We use a reactive healing strat so my macro makes a castbar that the next person can watch. This has greatly reduced overhealing for my guild and at any given time, we have 3 healers not on cooldown. Hope this helps :)

I would like to point out that if you haven't started raiding again by the time we reach Sapphiron, Xix will call your boss and have you fired. ;-)

---------

And yes, this is a lot like the Loatheb consumable order discussion. We a bunch of people saying, "look, this way is strictly superior," and a bunch of other people saying, "it doesn't matter because we can succeed by doing it this other way." The whole point of this discussion is to try to inform people who are actually contemplating both options (and for whom it might make a difference between success and failure) which one is better.