Priest Healing Discussion: Cataclysm - Page 16

Hamsda · 01/13/12, 4:50 AM

Thank you for the input, Oestrus. Those were my thoughts too.
But after trying Spine HM for the first time yesterday, I'm not sure with the maw anymore because most of the fight is just healing 1 or 2 targets besides the tank... will need to take a look in some of our logs^^

Regarding Zon'ozz we do it this way:
Start of the black phase all group up under the big tentacle with zon'ozz coming there when he finishs casting. For the initial damage we pop 1 or 2 cds (Tranq, Hymn, PW:B, AM, DG, RC, SLT depending on the setup of course). DPS focus flails asap, 1 cleaving melee stays on big tentacle + zon'ozz. 1 Range kills the eye in the north, 1 melee the one behind the claw and a team of 2 ranged kill the other 3 one after another.
As disc I try to keep the people outside of the aoe heal range (healing rain, hr etc.) alive with shields and penance/pom, only assisting the other 2 healers on the 5 or 6 people who really stay close to the big tentacle. This doesn't result in the best WoL ranks but it keeps people alive :P
Bounces are 7-7-5-3, killing everything for the first 3 black phases and only killing flails in the last and just burning him with lust. The cooldowns used in the first phase also come back up on the 4th this way, so we have 2 cds for the group everytime.

Sokaris84 · 01/13/12, 7:51 PM

We do 7-7-7-3, with a paladin, druid, disc priest set up. Black phase cooldowns are as follows.

1. Tranq (resto) + PW:B
2. Tranq (boomkin) + Raid Wall
3. Tranq (resto) + Aura Mastery
4. Hymn + PW:B

On the 4th, we ignore all tentacles and burn the boss. I'm smashing out attonement heals only after my hymn finishes.

Ulfar · 02/10/12, 6:43 AM

Since my guild started 10man Spine HM progress yesterday I would like to discuss this encounter a little bit. My healing partners were a holy paladin and a restoration shaman (somewhat underequipped). My thoughts on spec/gear setups:

Discipline: Rapture uptime is a huge problem, especially in the first part of the fight.

Disc + mastery or balanced: too many wasted absorbs.
Disc + haste: viable but our paladin outheals me easily.

Holy: Loosing Power Barrier is painful but Heavenly Voice helps getting rid of debuffs.

Holy + mastery: GH as main filler is ok but our paladin still outheals me.
Holy + balanced: Renew spam as filler is great and I could win the hps battle.
Holy + crit: Will try this on sunday, looks promising.

I will aim for the 6th Renew tick on Seal of the Seven Signs procs and ~4k spirit infight. I would greatly appreciate input from people who downed that boss on heroic difficulty.

PS: Recount seems to take absorbed healing into account, skada does not (please correct me if I am wrong).

Szeretlek · 02/10/12, 3:22 PM

Discipline: Rapture uptime is a huge problem, especially in the first part of the fight.

Ask your tank to sit down and take some critical hits. Works perfectly. Im serious.

Disc + haste: viable but our paladin outheals me easily.

I may post some logs, but they all on Russian. Hpal get insane amount non-overhealing hps through healing debuffs with beacon. Thats fine.
As disc you should spam Smite first 2 plates. (7min of fight) and at last plate (last 4 min of fights) you should start real heal. When you do a barrel roll you pop-up AA, PI, Bers, Jaws preshield everyone (priority to ppl with debuff) and spam PoH under the effect of SLT. When mob get 9th stack you rotate Barrier, MA, Shield wall etc. To burst tendon write macro:
/cleartarget
/target boss2
/stopmacro [noexists]
/cast berserk
/cast Shadow Word: Pain
and spam it like there is no tomorrow.
Give Sfiend at 1st, 4th (with manahymn) and last plate get-up.
Dps tendon with penance, hfire, smite.
You should do 700-900k damage each plate.
Shield ppl that grabbed by tentacle and have debuff on them. Shield saves ppl at this fight rly.

With that strat I rank 7th place at WoL today.

P.S. And forget about going holy, because Disc saves ppl better and help with tendon much better.
P.P.S. And you should reforge to haste at all fights btw.

UnholY_Prince · 02/11/12, 12:13 AM

As Szer said, Disc is much better than Holy on this fight. PW:S saves lives on people who have debuffs during big AoE or Rolls. PW:B > Hymn during the mass AoEing of Bloods. AA/A is a huge benefit on this fight, as there's plenty of downtime where you're better off helping on DPS, AA provides significant mana regen, and plenty of burst healing opportunities for the AA buff to shine. Most of all though, Disc mana regen is just so much better than Holy, and you'll need it on this fight.

Here's a link to our kill last night. If you look at my breakdowns, AA was almost a full Sfiend worth of mana for me over the course of the fight.

You can build up AA while helping DPS every Amalg, and have AA buff up for every Superheated Nucleus to help AoE heal. As well as on every Amalg before the big AoE comes. Having 15% extra healing on all the intensive parts of the fight is really useful.

Sfiend on every 1st pry, you should be able to get 3 in during the fight. Hymn of Hope somewhere early in P2 (after your 2nd Barrel Roll), and you'll have it up again in the last phase where you'll desperately need mana. Just throw Shield on your Blood tank for Rapture procs. If you're healing debuffs, make sure to try to throw a Penance on the target before Ghealing, for Grace stacks. Makes a pretty big difference.

Hamsda · 02/13/12, 5:28 AM

As Szeretlek and unholy_prince already explained I would also recommend disc in 10H Spine, simply because of PWS being the best heal in this fight. Healing in general for this fight seems though in the beginning but as your dps get better with their job, yours will get easier.
At the start of our progression I switched from PoH glyph to Penance glyph and tried to heal most of the searing plasmas with penance + gheal but that will still not yield as much healing as most other specs can bring, because grace won't be up fulltime even with glyph and our DA is mostly wasted.
After getting used to the fight dpsing most of it is actually the best thing you can do. Atonement, being the smart heal it is, will aid in searing plasma healing (since the other raidmembers should be nearly full due to things like healing rain during the dull parts of the fight) but also help you quickly pick up targets who took melee hits from bloods and assist in tank healing. Additionally you will contribute a noticeable amount of damage over the whole fight, which is not only important on tendons (which are pretty ridiculous since the nerf anyways) but also on amalgs.
Depending on your tactic holy DH may be even more useful than PWB but I tried holy a few times and in 10 man I think holy would struggle way to much with their mana regeneration. Smiting the whole time and getting rapture proccs off the tank or gripped raidmembers it is very easy to keep your mana at very high levels to spamheal the tank and the raid before and after the 5th lift.

I uploaded a video of my guilds firstkill from Disc PoV using a 1tank 3heal strategy pre nerf if you need additional pointers

Steddy · 03/01/12, 11:43 PM

Originally Posted by Hamsda

Atonement, being the smart heal it is, will aid in searing plasma healing

To clarify, do all smart heals automatically target searing plasma? I am a holy priest and I am wanting to know regarding coh and pom. I have noticed via logs that coh efficiency is very high for most people, but I couldn't verify this through personal testing.

UnholY_Prince · 03/03/12, 6:56 PM

Searing Plasma has a small DoT component (or damage on application, I forgot). Therefore someone with Seraring Plasma usually will sit around 90% or less for a while. Thus in early phases where damage is low, Atonement will smart heal to them as they're usually the lowest person that's not the tank.

Nanyana · 03/05/12, 5:58 AM

Originally Posted by Steddy

To clarify, do all smart heals automatically target searing plasma? I am a holy priest and I am wanting to know regarding coh and pom. I have noticed via logs that coh efficiency is very high for most people, but I couldn't verify this through personal testing.

I wouldn't advise keeping CoH on CD on Spine. It heals 5 (or 6) people which is highly ineffective on Spine if you ask me. I haven't done HC, so I can't comment on that. Spine normal is one of few the fights I stay in Serenity more then in Sanctuary. Being able to keep up renew on multiple targets while removing the debuff is a big plus. I only switch to sunctuary just before the AoE from the add come around and switch back to Serenity after we did a role.

nightlily · 03/06/12, 6:56 AM

I am wondering whether people find it more helpful to be disc or holy for 25H madness?

Hamsda · 03/12/12, 9:15 AM

Personally I've only killed 10H Madness so I'm not 100% certain but I hope I can help.
Generally speaking if taking the impales is not a problem (which I imagine is the case in 25 with all the external cooldowns the tanks can get), especially since you most likely will bring 2 tanks in 25, I can imagine holy being superior largely due to the fact that coh can pick up the lowest targets during heavy aoe better than poh can and because you can utilitze your divine hymn much better. With the 10 minute cooldown as disc and our cooldown mapping I'm forced to save it up until p5 (head phase) 10% or 5% whereas with holy I could probably use it at least 1 or 2 additional times.
The biggest advantages I see in being disc are tank cooldowns (including bigger pws) and being able to dps half of the fight to beat the enrage, but those concerns do not really matter in 25 I guess, since half a dd is not as much compared to over 15 dds in 25 than to 6 in 10 man

Elvissa · 03/12/12, 9:38 AM

Originally Posted by nightlily

I am wondering whether people find it more helpful to be disc or holy for 25H madness?

My guild started on this last night and I found Disc to be very useful. PS is excellent for when our tanks run out of Impale cooldowns plus there's PW:B for the Elementium Bolt on the 4th platform. With the current gear levels of our healers we're not finding 6 healing it remotely stressful and can afford the luxury of bringing a Disc priest purely for the extra utility. I've been using Atonement on the first 2 platforms as well to give us a bit of extra DPS.

Does anyone know if GS is a viable Impale cooldown on this fight if used in conjunction with one of the smaller damage reduction cooldowns?

Hamsda · 03/12/12, 10:43 AM

Originally Posted by Elvissa

Does anyone know if GS is a viable Impale cooldown on this fight if used in conjunction with one of the smaller damage reduction cooldowns?

What do you mean? GS will not help against impales because those just kill through death immunity effects. If you think about surviving the impale with small cds but getting killed afterwards by a melee hit and/or crush, GS surely will avoid that situation.

Vintoran · 03/12/12, 11:46 AM

Our other priest, who is usually holy, went disc for Madness25HM (in addition to myself), because the cooldowns are really usefull (had trouble with our prot warrior dying to Impale with Shield Wall + Hand of Sacrifice + absorbs).

I don't know how good your dps are, but even in our latest kill with the 10% nerf (14:11) I managed to get 2 DH off. One in the end of the 2nd platform (because it's very mana efficient, not because it's needed) and one at 10% in p2.

I also smite quite a bit on the platforms, usually the only thing else I do is parasite healing, PW:S on the tanks for Rapture (but mind the Impale timer), PoM and one PoH when a ranged group gets a Crush until the first wave of Blistering Tentacles. Then some PoH/PoM with still rapture still on cooldown until the Tentacles are dead and resume smiting until 40%, then heal again until the end. (With Cataclysm running one could argue that smiting would be beneficial as well, but in my opinion it's too much overheal because the Atonement heal is too big for a single person.)

In any way, my opinion is that at least one Disc priest is very usefull (25man, possibly 10man) because of the better PWS, more raid cooldowns and better suited tank cooldowns. Hamsda is overestimating the dps of disc priests a bit I think because even with my heavy smiting approach I do only around 11k dps, while dps do 60-110k dps. But that's still very usefull to beat the enrage timer.

Hamsda · 03/13/12, 5:45 AM

As I said, I can't speak for 25 man, but in 10 man a disc priest can make quite the difference. Here's the log from our firstkill:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Granted we take a slow approach in p5 because of cooldowns, I guess my damage helped us get the kill because we only had 18 seconds left. A few IDs later we had a bit of a wonky setup and I was on standby but had to come in because our dps wasn't enough and we barely killed it.

But as you said, disc cooldowns are supreme for this fight and if you need them in 25 go for it, in 10 I dare say that Disc is much stronger than holy for this fight, mostly because it requires something like 2 1/2 healers depending on the raids cooldowns with really dull phases and nearly overwhelming burns, which is really nice for AA/A disc