Be that as it may, I would *still* strongly advise going with 3 healers, especially considering the HP nerfs he received. If P1 seems difficult to heal, P2 will be a nightmare.

2 healing phase 2 seems easier to me than 2 healing phase 1 to be honest after the most recent nerf. Admittedly I haven't been to 10man hardmode since the nerf, but I have been to the 25 version and well, damage in phase 2 was really manageable so I think it's possible to 2 heal phase 2 on 10man hardmode now. Maybe you want to burn heroism/bloodlust for it, but I think it's possible.
Phase 1 on the other hand is really annoying. Napalm + plasma still hurt a lot and if you get a little bet unlucky and you just happen to have to move out of the fire either one of your players will die or your tank, even if he used a cooldown if you only use 2 healers here.

If you want to be on the safe side just use 3 healers. The enrage timer really shouldn't be a problem on 10man and it makes the whole fight a lot smoother and allows you even some room for errors.

We did it with two healers the other night, was also the first time we ever tried it. Granted we overgear the encounter and had a priest + druid + retridin, but still the healing seemed extremely manageable. Considering that we were absolutely horrid at controlling the fires and spreading out, I dare say you don't even need that specific combo to do it.

When you run with two healers you should have the DPS to bring him down before the third plasma blast. That means that the tank can blow all of his cooldowns on the first, and the healers can use theirs on the second. Job done. Phase 2 really is harder to heal than phase 1 though, so you should really try to get through phase 1 without blowing Bubble/sacrifice.

Given the current information about 3.2, what are the best professions for dps casters (shadow priest) and healers (holy/disc)? I'm concerned mainly with flexibility, and am interested in the tradeoffs between the various options.

For shadow, tailoring remains first by a reasonable margin, with second place being a crap-shoot between Enchanting, Enscription, Leatherworking, Jewelcrafting, or Blacksmithing. The nerfs to prismatic JC-only epic gems means JC loses a lot of its lustre, as the primary reason for going JC was the ability to gain up to 3 socket bonuses while still putting red gems in blue or yellow sockets.

For healing, tailoring is (at least, imo) the best profession as it provides a tremendous chunk of regen in a slot where you would otherwise be unable to gain it. If you are primarily interested in throughput (consistent, non-proc), Enchanting, Leatherworking, Enscription, Jewelcrafting, and Blacksmithing all offer essentially the same spellpower gains. JC has the advantage that it does allow for +27 intellect or +27 haste gems in yellow sockets, which helps tweak your stat levels in a way nothing else does.

Conclusion: for healing, the best two professions remain Tailoring and JC. For dps, Tailoring remains supreme, and the second profession is up for discussion.

I'm a bit confused about trinket choice )
currently i have [Soul of the Dead], [Majestic Dragon Figurine] and [The Egg of Mortal Essence].
what is the right choice for U-10/25 with my crappy gear

For what it's worth, Alchemy can be added to this list: on the PTR, Flask of the Frost Wyrm is granting 47 extra spellpower through Mixology. For someone interested primarily in stacking spellpower, this compares competitively with other professions, e.g. the 46 from Enchanting; and the secondary benefit of double-duration flasks, while not relevant to stat optimisation, is a nice bonus when all else is equal.

Trinket question similar to a couple posts up..

I've always run [Soul of the Dead] and [Je'Tze's Bell] together. Last night [Spark of Hope] finally dropped and I'm unsure which to drop for it? All three are essentially regen trinkets but I'm not sure what would be the best stat trade-off.

Armory

While SotD and Spark of Hope could be labeled as "Regen Trinkets", Je'Tze's offers far less mp5 [around 25-31 mp5, by my quick napkin math - possibly a third of the other two], and I'd rather consider it as "Combined".

Thus, for fights where I'd be regen starved, I would choose going with Soul of the Dead/Spark of hope. Otherwise, I'd switch Jet'Ze's, probably in Soul of the Dead's spot [since you already seem to have a fair amount of crit].

A few questions, first about Shadow, then about Holy.

Shadow:
It seems no one includes SW: D in their rotation. Is there a reason for this? Is it the health hit, or does it simply not up your DPS enough?

When you cast SW: P, does it lock in the current Buffs/Debuffs on the target and yourself, or does each tick calculate damage independently? If it locks in, then when your Mind Flay refreshes SW:P, does it recalculate, or maintain the original casted values?

Finally, I know the basic priority of Shadow spells, but I don't know how the rotation begins. I've been told various conflicting things, and tested out different stuff, but never solidified anything. One person told me to Mind Flay to hit 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving before anything else. Another said lead with Vamp Touch/Mind Blast, then DoT and rotate as normal. Any help would be great

Holy:
I hope armory links are allowed? My current spec is as follows: Holy

I dropped Desperate Prayer because I never found myself using it, and recently picked up Serendipity and Holy Reach. My question is about Blessed Resilience and Test of Faith. Right now I'm rocking Improved and Empowered Renew, but it seems that Blessed Resilience might provide more overall healing than Imp Renew. As for Test of Faith, it originally seemed like a crutch, but I think in a lot of fights it could really help those CoH/PoHs after big raid damage. Thoughts?


Thanks for your help!

People don't SW:D because of the opportunity cost of making a mistake in your casting vs. the very marginal DPS increase it could theoretically provide. Most players now save SW:D for an instant when on the move or if there is a gap in your casting that is less than the duration of a 2 tick mindflay cast, because a 1 tick mindflay is generally a poor cast both in damage per second and damage per mana, and will incur a full 1.5 GCD whereas SW:D will incur a GCD based on your current haste. Unless you have large damage buffs (recently I've been killing myself on Hodir like a moron thanks to the crit buff) the self damage portion of SW:D is pretty much completely inconsequential, especially since a spriest with VE up probably requires the least raid healing of any class in the game.

For SW:P, your current crit percentage (based on all buffs on you and debuffs on the mob) is only calculated at cast time, and not refreshed by mind flay. Percentage based damage buffs on you (like shadow weaving, spark splashes on Malygos, positive/negative charge on Thaddius) are only counted at the time of casting and not refreshed by mind flay. Percentage based debuffs on the mob (curse of elements, singe on Hodir) work as soon as they're applied so you don't have to worry about them. Spellpower is the only thing that is always updated automatically by mind flay.

This has two main effects. First, if you get a major crit or flat damage buff during a fight, you can recast SW:P and "roll" that damage/crit bonus for the rest of the fight if you don't let it fall off, and that you should make sure all major crit debuffs (scorch, totem of wrath) are up before casting SW:P. Second, you should NOT recast SW:P when you gain spell power bonuses from things like trinkets.

As for the "opener", I'll let other people argue about that, but the main thing is to make sure you have 5 weaving before casting SW:P. Two ticks of VT or whatever is probably not going to win or lose a fight for you.

Someone else can comment on the holy stuff.

Test of faith is a no brainer for Ulduar, especially if you work on hard modes (where you might also go back to Desperate Prayer). As for Blessed Resilience, there is no common consensus - read up on the very lengthy discussion in the Holy Theorycrafting thread regarding 3/3 BR vs. 3/5 EH.

Hi - I recently switched from a Holy healing spec (14/57/0) to Disc (57/14/0). I used to have PW:S/weakened soul and PoM stack show on my grid frames to help aid spell choice, but now with Disc I realise I've got a lot more things to keep an eye on like Grace and Divine Aegis.

Any tips on how to setup grid frames for a Disc priest? Dispels probably take priority over anything, but Shield/Weakened, PoM, Grace and Aegis could all be present at the same time.

I use the corners for things like this (Lower Right, Upper Right, etc)

You don't really need to see DA or Grace, honestly. I have PWS showing in Center Icon, Weakened Soul in the bottom right, Renew in top left, PoM in top right, and Earth Shield in bottom left (mostly for keeping an eye on "my" tank for the occasional times I have a rSham assigned to just ES the tank, and otherwise raid heal).

I have seen a number of posts about there being a bug with Mind Flay and also posts on Mind Flay Clipping when VT, DP, or MB are available to cast.

My question is: How long should Mind Flay be channeled for to make it worthwhile?


If MB is going to be ready to cast in 1 second is a MF the best option?



Thank you

I solved this issue with GridSideIndicators - Addons - Curse

For simply Spirit- and Int-based OOFSR (out of five-second rule, or "when not casting") regen, that IS what shows up on your character sheet. There is, however, other regen to be considered. In a raid, you'll have at least one member with "Replenishment", which currently (before 3.2) restores 0.25% of your mana per second, so that should be considered when counting your mana regen, but that will not show up on your character sheet. More mana means more mana regen with Replenishment.

As far as the second part of your question, there is a talent in the Holy tree, Spirit of Redemption, that increases your total Spirit, and then a talent in the Discipline tree (which all healers need to have), Meditation, that allows half of your OOFSR to be WHILE casting, and this also shows up on your character sheet when you mouseover your mana regen.

If you are full Discipline, or a hybrid spec, there is also a talent in the Disc tree, Mental Strength, that increases max Intellect by 15%.

Hope this helps.

Hey there my guild is working our way through 10uld hardmodes and so far we've 2healed everything without much trouble HPriest/RDruid. We're getting ready to start work on vezax and I plan to swap over to disc, so I had a couple questions. First off, I was wondering if I should try to cut some points out of the disc tree in order to reach Improved Healing; and secondly I was wondering what class we should try to bring for a third healer. Also for this lockout we have either a warrior or pally tank; although this isnt ideal which would be a better choice for us to start work on this with?

If you armory me my second spec is currently my Vezax spec. It is worthwhile to go down to Improved Healing in my opinion, every bit of extra mana helps.

It should be rather easy to 2-heal this fight with a disc priest and a resto druid. That said, a good resto druid can do an incredible amount of healing in this fight. When I did 10man hardmode last week I tried it as a holy spec since I wanted to give it a try. Well, never again as holy. It was really bad and I was oom way too quick, but our resto druid managed to keep the raid alive and we got him down.

For anyone curious: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

What you want for Vezax hardmode is every single bit of mana you can get in my opinion. Don't bother taking some tiny +heal talents, damage is really predictable anyway. Also give it a try with only 2 healers instead of taking 3.

Regarding tanks I guess it's not that big difference. Just use your better geared one and make sure that the pala keeps JoL up.

It's actually a huge difference between a DK -> Feral, and then again a huge difference from Feral -> Warrior. It's not even worth trying Vezax with a prot paladin: they don't get enough mana back to be able to put out the threat necessary to stay ahead of casters in Crash.

Remember: a DK tank (Blood) can do hundreds of thousands of points of effective healing on their own. That's healing you don't have to do, which saves mana. On top of that, they have equivalent avoidance to a feral druid and better cooldowns to pop on every Surge.