I'm pretty sure the ads on Black Stalker are completely random. We've killed it with having like three waves of ads spawning nearly right off the bat, making it a furious race to kill it. We've also killed it with zero adds spawning. I think there's a patch note for 2.1 referring to making the spawns more predictable.

With my paladin alt newly 70 and finishing getting rep for heroic keys, I was hoping someone could help out a little on the healing perspective.

Which heroics would you say are impossible to solo heal with a paladin? (assume no shadow priest to take care of group heals) The two that immediately come to mind are slave pens (last boss) and arcatraz (the meteor trash mobs). Has any paladin successfully done those solo healing? Some instances would be much harder with certain group compositions (steamvaults first boss with no warlock), but I'd like to think not impossible. Just trying to figure out if there's a line between challenging but possible, and the futile.

While I cannot speak to Arcatraz, my usual group is fairly static with a paladin healer who has solo-healed through all of Slave Pens numerous times. She does tend to use at least one mana potion and will typically be close to out of mana by the time we have killed the last boss, but yes, it's doable.

I have successfully solo healed slave pens with no melee,bite buff+hunter aura for 180 nr, Arcatraz as mentioned many times is pretty much impossible more due to the chance of a double mind flay then anything else. The one time I tried to solo heal Steamvaults 1st boss we wiped 6-7 times before swapping a player for a guild priest, but someone said to me they just get a hunter to kite both adds to the entrance.

I run heroic Slave Pens on a daily basis with my tanking druid, and our group composition is the following:

-Druid Tank (myself)
-Paladin Healer
-Hunter for DPS/CC (Improved Traps and 2/5 Beast Lord bonus, very reliable)
-Feral Druid DPS/OT (depending on our 5th)
-Shadow Priest or anyone else that is available.


If we have the Shadow Priest as our 5th, the paladin never runs out of mana, period. And it also allows me to do some things you wouldnt really advise anyone to (double tank defenders, triple tank bogstroks...etc) and the last boss is really easy.

If we don't have the Shadow Priest, then the Feral Druid will help me by OTing defenders, bogstroks, and other things that are uncc'd (we run CClight, with basically just the hunter trap), but the last boss goes just as smoothly. The poison bolts itself do not do enough damage to kill anyone before the boss is dead anyways, and as long as I taunt the boss off during his 'vomits', nobody else really takes a lot of damage. While the hunter aspect is useful for this last boss, many times we just forget to have it up, and go without it.

DPS note: Quagmirran is dead right after his second 'vomit', I assume if we were light on DPS than it wouldnt be feasible for the paladin healer to keep it up, but I've never seen him go below 50% (without the shadow priest).

Honestly don't worry about Quagmirran, he is not hard to solo heal as a paladin. Instead, worry more about the second boss, because if anyone else other than the tank (still possible on current live, will be fixed next patch) gets 'Grievous Wound', then it will get tricky, but shouldn't be too hard, as this boss in question doesn't hit hard.

To wrap it up, honestly, don't underestimate yourself in what you can or can't do, I've done over half of the heroics with a paladin solo healing, and I'm yet to see a situation where we had to call it quits because of him -- we've had to quit due to lack of crowd-control, but never over his healing.

Even after a dozen or so Underbog Heroic runs, I've yet to be able to determine exactly what causes adds to spawn on the Black Stalker fight. Sometimes, we'll engage Black Stalker and sit there twiddling our thumbs for 30 or 40 seconds before even a single add pops. Another time they'll start spawning almost immediately (within 10ish seconds). I have no idea what the cause is, but anecdotal evidence leads to some random element.

In any case, in my experience it's best to have two strategies ready, and elect one person in the group to call out which tactic to use mid-fight. Assume that you'll ignore adds and DPS him down, and start the fight like that's the plan. Blow through all your big cooldowns quickly, because that will take a good chunk off Stalker's HP regardless of when adds spawn.

Then, once the adds pop, depending on the Stalker's current HP, the elected group member should announce whether to continue the DPS tactic (if it looks like you can make it in time), or to switch and kill adds.

As mentioned, Warriors should use spell reflect and taunt, but chances are if your Warrior is the tank, he won't be able to move much for fear of chaining chain lightning to another nearby member.

Also, I seem to recall Int. Shout working on the adds in this fight, but don't quote me as I'm not 100% certain.

Lastly, remember that pulling Stalker just beyond the lip of the cave where you entered his room (the wall directly on your left as you enter) will reset him and drop everyone out of combat. One thing that will help a lot in the initial DPS and engage is to have your tank pull the Stalker by himself to that edge of the wall and get beat on a little bit to build up rage, then reset after 10 seconds or so. Repeat as necessary until your tank is full or near-full rage, then call the rest of the group to come into the room for the proper engage and battle. This goes a long way to getting initial agro on the tank, landing those extra sunders/mauls, etc.

Keep in mind that the adds in this fight do not require a 'tank' tank, in the traditional sense, since they are all elemental damage, and most likely no one in your group came with resist gear.

When I run Steam Vaults Heroic, I almost always have a single healing capable class, one tank, and three DPS, so we try to reduce the amount of crossover damage in the fight as much as possible.

Therefore, we position the healer and the tank at the entrance to her room, and the two weakest (in terms of HP pools/agro generation) DPS outside her room, down that slope 10-15 yards (next to the protruding rock), so they are out of LoS of her room for the most part.

Then we have the final DPS member initiate the pull by ranged agroing one of the adds. As soon as they agro, that player starts running back down the slope toward the other DPS and the three of them quickly DPS it down. Take advantage of your group makeup here (in your case, obviously the feral druid or the arms warrior would be the ideal 'OT', depending which is your actual tank).

Meanwhile, the moment the DPS member agroed the pull, the tank should charge in (via Charge or Druid equivalent) and immediately Demo Shout/Roar/TClap. Neither the second add nor Thespia herself will have agro on the DPS puller, beyond that initial point from the pull, so any action will get both of them onto the proper tank. Make sure the tank quickly smacks both of them with an agro move before the healer is forced to heal anyone, then have the tank keep Thespia and the second add as far back into the room as possible.

This forces the DPS to be far enough away during the first add kill that they won't be at risk for taking extra damage from the second add or from Thespia herself. The healer for the group is at the room entrance, in LoS and range of healing both the tank and the DPS. The healer should start out far to one side (the left or right) of the room entrance, in case a cloud lands on him/her, and forces them to move to the opposite side.

Once the first add is dead, the method for killing the second one varies depending on group makeup. If your group has a DPS member with the ability to taunt in some way (in your case, the Warrior or the Druid, obviously), have that person run back into the room and quickly taunt and throw a couple agro moves on the second add, while backpeddling out and down the slope again. Repeat the first steps, having DPS kill it off out of LoS and range of Thespia.

Once she's alone, it becomes pretty easy. The only real risk is standing in clouds too long or having your healer get cycloned at a bad time. However, if your group makeup allows it, have someone ready to backup heal. At this point in the fight, without a very strong healer/group, chances are your healer is low on mana anyway, so have someone help them out until Thespia is down if necessary. Also, take advantage of any abilities your group may have to increase HP pools or resistances (Commanding Shout, Blood Pact, NR Totem, NR Aura, etc.), as 90% of the deaths I see on this fight are due to a burst of damage before the healer/player can react.

Good luck!

Arcatraz is the only one I can think of, and it'd be for the end boss more than anything else.

Unconventional thinking (like the strategy outlined above for Thespia) and pots help a lot.

If you have some, get everyone to pop a GNPP before the Quag fight starts, make sure you keep Bite alive, bring a hunter/shaman for NR aura, and it shouldn't be any worse than solohealing Rokmar (which can get kinda hairy for a paladin at times too).

@Eylirria, we had our tank triple-tanking two defenders and one observer on the last slave pens I did ... wasn't pretty but we managed it.

edit: couple tips for the end of heroic SP (which I'm sure you know already)... when you let Bite out, have your tank stand where he would to pull that first bogstrok pack (basically right in the tunnel entrance), that way Bite doesn't get involved and stays alive. It's probably also a good idea to CC the soothsayer.

On Quag himself, the tank can taunt+reflect the acid geyser (or for the less-fortunate tank types just taunt it and take the damage) ... the trick to geyser is that it's a cone effect in the direction of his target, so if you're all standing in a clump all the ranged dps will take damage. Have whoever gets the acid geyser debuff move out of the group post-haste and you should be fine.

Arcatraz might be possible as paladin if you have a some random pet classes around. Voidwalker/succubus/hunterpet/water elemental And I think snake trap (not sure) can take charges of mindflay greatly reducing the chance you get double yourself. Greater shadow pots might help some aswell.

Any effects that removes stuns also work against Skyriss. Stuff like PvP trinket and blink work wonders.

The steamvault strats for the hydromancer seem rather complex...if you have enough control just make sure to stun/interrupt the bolt volleys and you should be fine. A warrior can focus on bashing/stunning one add while the other dps kills/interrupts the other. Guess if you have a druid or paladin it would be more difficult.

Touf - healing that fight is probably the hardest of any of the heroic fights (that I've done) from a healer alertness/movement test standpoint. Aside from the boss damage on the tank, you have the cyclones, lungbursts, potentially winded people in cyclones and the bolt volleys. That's a lot of factors to manage while dodging two cyclones and keeping everyone alive.

I'd *hate* to soloheal that as a druid or shaman though, no dispel would (literally) be killer.

Bring a .. oh wait.

On a serious note, if you have a mage (and are all running KTM, and all trust KTM) what you can do is have everyone bar the mage in fear range, have the mage at <70% of your threat and dpsing from max range, and have the mage higher than everyone else for threat.

(When you get feared, aggro snaps to the mage, mage blinks away. As soon as you come out of fear, hit commanding shout or even bandage yourself, he'll snap right back to you.)

Makes things a little slower, but at least no-one should die.

edit for mathcraft: the 70% number I quoted above is actually 1/1.3, which works out to 76.9% ... essentially if you have some threat x, you want the mage to have some threat y where x > 1.3y (30% range aggro-pull modifier), so x/1.3 > y, (0.769)x > y.

Sorry for the thread rez, but I didn't feel that this merited its own, separate thread. A group of us decided to make an attempt at Shattered Halls, and some of it went ok and some of it was disastrous. The first hallway went ok, and Nethekruse went ok. The endurance run ran into problems, but mostly due to slips...once we got our stuff together, it went pretty good. So the big difficulties were the room just before Nethekruse and the hallway after the gauntlet (we called it at that point because it was getting late, so no further bosses after that). I'm not sure if it was because of our group setup, or just that we need more practice. Here's what the group was composed of:

Tankadin
Resto Shaman
Affliction Warlock
Fire Mage (me)
Rogue

It seems to me that it might have been a combination of both - we definitely need some practice running the instance. We had plenty of damage and cc, though. Unfortunately, I can't help the feeling that the weak link might be the tank. His defence is fine (too much, even), and he' pretty good at holding aggro, but 10k unbuffed HP is not enough, I think, to deal with the amount of mortal strikes and high damage being dealt by mobs. Any thoughts?

Judging from your paladin tanks armory page his armor, stamina and avoidance all look low to me.

Were you wiping because your shaman went OOM in the first 20 seconds of the pull or because adds were killing your DPS/healing? Answer that question and its easy to figure out what the problem was.

Actually, while I have not confirmed this, I think the adds spawn as a result of the debuff that he puts on someone. In regular mode, this debuff does damage to everyone around them, and can be dispelled. In heroic mode, it spawns adds when it hits a nearby player, and the only way to effectively counter it is to spread out.

I could be entirely off base, but so far spreading out seems to stop the adds from spawning. Unfortunately I have only run the instance several times on this theory, so it could have just been completely random as usual.

The answer is "a little from column A, a little from column B", which makes it even easier to answer. Thanks for the help in clarifying.

Since patch 2.1 I have had problems with Nethermancer Sepethrea. We used to kill her by kiting the elementals down the hallway. That does not seem to work. Any suggestions?

Pull and pray :P.

She leashes now, but her elementals do not. An easy adjustment is to have your puller go in, and have the rest of the party waiting on the glass. Puller runs toward the last room and the tank goes in and grabs her right before she reaches her boundary. The puller then has all day with the elementals to himself.

Just do it "properly", no tricks, stay aware and highly mobile to keep away from her elemental guards.

You can use FR aura/totems if you have a paladin or shaman to help mitigate their damage on the group.

Having run speed enchants help, but aren't needed, since they move slower than character's default run speed anyway. If your really struggling you might try FR gear / protection pots as well, but I've never needed too.

If you always used the long-pull trick, even in non-heroic, try going back and doing it normally (in her room) in non-heroic to get the hang of their movement patterns. It's how it's designed to be done.

You can still kite the adds down the hallway although I think they will fix this in 2.1.2. Anyway for now here is how to kite the adds:

All non kiters stand on the glass walkway just outside Nethermancer's room. The kiter pulls Nethermancer and runs back towards group. Once she comes into view group runs in an pulls her back into room while kiter runs off down the corridor. All 3 elementals should be stuck on on the kiter. I found when I did the kiting that I couldn't loot her so it might be an idea to let the kiter know when she is at ~30% so he can run back and get a hit on her before she dies.

Doing her without kiting which I think will be necessary in 2.1.2 (the elementals will switch targets) will be exceptionally difficult I think (completely out of whack with the rest of the instance difficulty at least). 3 elementals that move very close to normal speed and her dragon breathing and beating up clothies is not going to be fun at all. I honestly think this would be a fun fight if she couldn't wipe aggro or disorientate the tank but as it currently stands I hate it.

(looks like I was a bit slow posting)

Ive never really had a problem with the Sepethrea encounter on heroic. Although perhaps it is one encounter where a druid (of any build) with a good set of healing gear is invaluable. Im feral but whenever we do her, I slap on my healing gear (~1400) and just run around keeping people HOT'ed. Takes a *huge* load off the primary healer and makes the fight quite manageable the 'normal' way.

While a druid is probably ideal for this encounter, I think any hybrid switching to healing mode and supporting the primary healer should make the fight vastly easier.