Hi, currently the group we have for curator encounter is this

1 mage
1 hunter
1 rogue
2 warriors
1 shaman
2 priest
1 feral druid
1 lock


Our healers are running out of mana near second evocation, do we not have enough healing? or should we drop a rogue for another ranged dps? We were thinking about dropping the rogue and adding a tree of life druid.

Two priests and a shaman healing full-time is plenty. Plus a potential innervate from the druid if he pops out of form for a moment. This is a DPS fight to a significant extent, and adding more healing is counterproductive. You need to be able to stay ahead of the adds. Just make sure the adds are getting quickly picked up and burned down because if they're drifting all the way back and shocking the hell out of your healers and ranged all the time, you're going to have major problems.

Definitely doable with that group composition, though, I wouldn't say it was ideal. I don't think adding another healer will help you much.

Make sure people are spread out, DPS are using DPS consumables, healers using mana pots etc. in case you need that extra bit of boost.

Also we found having our 2nd warrior in DPS gear worked better, in case you were having him try to tank them.

Yea we try to burn them down as fast as we can what happens is soon as the add spawns, he goes directly for the ranged dps or healers, which is our main problem probably i think thats why we burn a crap load of mana healing. Our second warrior claimed they were untauntable, so kinda at a wits end as to how to keep the sprites by the melee, they go directly for priest, shaman or our mage, lock.

They are untauntable. Remember, when he's vuln, that's your opportunity to really burn him. If you kill the adds quickly, then the fight is sustainable for a while. Don't think of it as DPSing the Curator and pausing to kill the adds. Think of it as DPSing the adds and pausing to hit the Curator a bit, and then really unloading once he has to recharge. That means the melee too. Don't try to "tank" them, but a DPS warrior just unloading on them when they spawn works just fine.

We did it with

2 warriors (1 prot, 1 fury)
1 mage
1 hunter
2 rogues
1 warlock
1 priest
1 paladin
1 druid

This was I guess technically our "B" karazhan squad, as we had few people in tier 3 if any. We were getting smushed on healing, I found myself getting crushed as healers ran out of mana by the 3rd evocation. We eventually alleviated the problem with flasks and greater arcane resist pots, but damn if this isn't a healing intensive fight.

That or my gear sucks, which is probably also part of the problem. I can't imagine I'm very easy to keep up.

If you have the dps burst to catch up with the adds after the evocation you could do what we do and just ignore that one add, leave it to nuke a healer/caster as it does very little damage by itself. We manage to get him to 25% after two squishy phases, then burn him down to nothing the next time he goes vun. Keeping the fight so short really helps with the mana issues.

We did it with:

2x Warrior
1x Druid
2x Paladin
1x Priest
1x Rogue
1x Warlock
2x Mage

With god knows what specs but the druid who was resto.

With such stacked healing we did him still in three rotations because the melee were on him at practically all times.

As long as your ranged dps can pop mana pots to kill adds in time and the healers can keep up he is quite easy. His enrage is a blessing!

And I repeat, healing in this fight is amazing with tree form / FoL / Prayer of mending and quite possibly chain healing.

Having either the 2nd warrior or the feral druid (Mangle + maul opener on them aparently sticks them) go and 'grab' the lighting balls each time they spawn and keeping them away from the majority of the raid makes things alot easier for your healers.

Having the lock always DoT the boss and generally have their DPS on him over the spawns (maybe a SB or Immo per) means most of the arcane blast attacks will go for them, meaning its easier to be prepared for only 1 person getting that nuke, instead of a random raid member always having to be atleast over 5k HP (our poor rogues spend most of fight on <20% HP)

Another tip would be if you have multiple rogues, have them alternate using AR on each evocation cycle, then next time while their AR is on cd they focus the blob while the other is on the boss etc.

Oh and if you're (as a healer) running out of mana by the 3rd Evo, then you either need to start using MP5 consumables (food, oils, potions), or get some more gear with it on..

We have a very similiar raid makeup, however 2 druids rather than 2 priests.

As Gurgthock has noted, adding more healing won't exactly change much. The problem im assuming you're having is the adds are living too long. Taking more DPS out, and adding healing will just further extend that problem. Killing the adds is the most important thing you can do. Sometimes your range will get hit by the adds, its not avoidable. But the quicker you kill them, the less healing you have to put out.

Keep in mind, Greater Arcane Protection Potions (dreamfoil/dreamdust) are pretty cheap to make, and would save the healers mana a good bit by having DPS chug them. Also, rogues can can cloak of shadow to resist an add every few spawns. Finally, make sure you save your bloodlust and fire elemental for the regeneration phase.

If you are having healing problems, you may want to consider a Hateful Bolt soaker full time on the Curator. The 5k Arcane Bolt is not random, rather it hits the 2nd highest aggro target. We used a feral druid (me) wearing Arcane Resist gear dpsing the Curator full-time, and I took every Bolt.

Our composition was:
Prot Warrior
Feral Druid

Resto Druid
Holy Priest
Elemental Shaman

Hemo Rogue
Mutilate Rogue
Combat Fist Rogue
Frost Mage
Hunter

Putting a dps class on the Curator full time may impact your overall dps, but we had no problems, and used no major consumables, only basic food buffs and maybe some minor pots here and there. I was wearing sitting at 125 buffed Arcane resist, and every resist piece was green AH gear; I plan to bring some higher quality crafted stuff next reset. In this gear I lost approx 300 AP and 4% crit I think, but I still did very well on overall damage meters. The Curator does NOT have a -90% shield anymore, I think its that he takes normal damage during phase 1, and like 250% during a weaken. I believe we killed him after 3 weakens.

Our healing assignments were:
Shaman chain-healing the rogues/dps
Priest healing the Arcane Soaker and MT
Druid healing MT only.

This worked very well for us and we got our kill in very few attempts, without ever having to reclear the trash. We were worried about the enrage and I was expecting a huhu-style mess, but our healers said they hardly noticed.

While I don't really know what I will be working with next Curator kill, our strat does not work with more than 2 melee DPS. We keep melee DPS on the Curator all the time. With a tank and 2 DPSers on him, you can work him down to maybe 20% before the first weaken. Also, one of them will be your Hateful bolt sponge. The adds do garbage single target damage, but every person in chain range increases their DPS. We range down the adds exclusively. This means we need high ranged DPS. This means no one has to move the entire fight. One advantage is I've seen that paladins have better chain casting healing lasting power than shaman. Thus, we use 2 and one priest - small paly heals cover add damage nicely. By the end of the second weaken, he was basically ready to enrage. As our gear/dps improves, this will be easier to do with less consumables. We flasked 3 mages for kill 1, less if any for kill 2, and hopefully won't have to continue it.

What works pretty good for us is having a paladin healing the MT exclusively, while 2 priests will cover the heals from the damage that the adds do, as well as one set up to counter the arcane bolts.

Prayer of mending works great here, they jump so quick, and you are pretty much guaranteed to get all 5 hops. On top of that, renews on the people killing the adds works great too and is efficient.

Also, unless I missed it, nobody had mentioned saving your shadowfiend for a recharge phase. You're pretty much going to get a full bar of mana from your fiend if it's used during a recharge phase. Between shadowfiend, a mana pot or two, and an innervate if needed, your priests should not have too much of an issue with mana.

What we do is form a semicircle with the curator as part of the circle. Then I will grab aggro on the adds (100% doable with your offtank) drag the add to the middle of the circle and DPS it down. We only use me plus one additional melee on the add so only 2 people are total getting hit by that arcing lightning.

Here's a picture demonstrating the formation.

dampen magic trivializes this fight btw.

Even without it its very easy if your offtank is competent. A warrior in full dps gear in defensive can easily get and hold aggro away from the raid with one sunder and a shield slam/ms/bt. On last add before vuln drag him to the boss and cleave/blade flurry/ww.

A pro tip for your priests on the curator; tell them to use their shadow fiends during a weakened stage (evocation). It's practically a free innervate, this should help their mana out a bit.

edit: looks like someone beat me to it =p

Thx alot fellas, tweaked a few things and 1 shotted him thx for everyones help and input much appriciated.

Has anyone beaten shade of aran with only 1 lock? We tried for a while tonite with 1 lock and came pretty close, almost as if u need 2 locks to even have a chance at the end with his random timing for flame wreath when 4 elementals are out.

A group in our guild running Kara beat Aran without any locks.

Beaten him with 0 locks so locks aren't necessary. Have a fear rotation and keep in mind they are elementals so pallys can fear. Also, druid can keep "one" banished via cycloning a different one every 5 seconds or so. Also have a warrior generate aggro on a couple so they go back to him and stay off healers.

Did they kill the water elementals? I know they are only up for 90 seconds but seems pretty rough having 4 up with no warlock CC.

We didn't kill any of them and yeah it was a little rough took like 4 or 5 attempts to get it down.

The elementals can be stunned and cycloned, as well. Banish/Fear are the best solutions, but not the only ones.