I still feel it's a bit early to theorycraft about Ulduar healing. At best you create hundreds of scenarios which at this point is pure speculation. Let's wait until parts of Ulduar are released on the PTR to get a glimpse of what lies ahead for us in terms of healing. Attempting to compare and contrast what we think the encounters will be, how T8 will be itemized as well as the T8 set bonuses, and which classes will excel or become laggards in the new content, at this point seems like throwing darts at an invisible wall. I feel my time is best spent now honing my skills as a priest in game by adapting and getting comfy with the CoH nerf, help my fellow healers polish their skills, as well as relook at my gemming/chanting/gear selection options in preparation for what Blizzard has called "a more challenging instance."
For example: Healing on Loetheb for maximum throughput/efficiency:
Pre 3.0.8: Spam CoH on melee/ranged groups to top them off. Very easy and efficient.
Post 3.0.8: Ensure all healing priests are in separate groups. Find out your cast time for PoH and precast it to land just as the Necrotic aura drops. Then hit a melee/ranged group with a CoH, and (most of the time) you should have a Surge of Light proc ready to hit the target with the lowest health immediately after the CoH cooldown. If you happen to proc Imp. Holy Concentration or even have Heroism/Bloodlust, you should have time to cast a Flash Heal if you don't get a SoL proc. This should be about the time the Necrotic Aura is reapplied.
I would like to say first off, these forums are fantastic, some of the points and discussions are throughly useful.
I'm a fairly new priest, having only rerolled from a mage in WoTLK. I've used these forums a lot, for researching specs, gear, and playstyles, and it's been a tremendous help. I had a question for the more experienced priests regarding the Malygos fight.
My guild downed Maly last week for the first time, it was my first encounter with malygos and I found it to be a tough but very satisfying encounter. What I'm wondering is, with the new CoH / Wild Growth changes for Priests and Druids respectively, how are Priests handling the vortex mechanic?
Previously, i would use prayer of mending, along with CoH and use any SoL procs i would receive. I have not been back since the new CoH change, and I'm just wondering how priests who have been back since have handled vortex?
I was thinking I would have to pay more attention prior to the vortex and throw up renew's to try and offset less healing during the actual vortex?
When I did Malygos on Wednesday, circle of healing (and wild growth) didn't work at all during the vortex. If you tried to cast it on anyone (including yourself) you'd get an invalid target error. So yeah, maybe precast some renews on the lower health characters as malygos is taking off, get a mending up, and then just keep renewing people, use any surge of light procs that your mending gets you, and do a circle of healing as soon as the vortex ends and you're falling. Then top people off with binding/flash/greater heals with coh on cooldown after you land (and prayer of healing if your whole group needs it).
For example: Healing on Loetheb for maximum throughput/efficiency:
Pre 3.0.8: Spam CoH on melee/ranged groups to top them off. Very easy and efficient.
Post 3.0.8: Ensure all healing priests are in separate groups. Find out your cast time for PoH and precast it to land just as the Necrotic aura drops. Then hit a melee/ranged group with a CoH, and (most of the time) you should have a Surge of Light proc ready to hit the target with the lowest health immediately after the CoH cooldown. If you happen to proc Imp. Holy Concentration or even have Heroism/Bloodlust, you should have time to cast a Flash Heal if you don't get a SoL proc. This should be about the time the Necrotic Aura is reapplied.
Actually timing a PoH perfectly followed by CoH was better than CoH spam Pre- 3.0.8 as well.
At best we can attempt, as a community, to figure out where we will be best suited for Ulduar and where we need to step aside and let the other healers shine in their best areas.
Pre 3.0.8: Spam CoH on melee/ranged groups to top them off. Very easy and efficient.
And also not optimal. This would work OK up until the five minute mark, that is, so long as Inevitable Doom was only hitting once every thirty seconds - though you still wouldn't be maximizing your effectiveness. After that you would still want to have been using Prayer of Healing, precast and timed to land just after the Aura expired. Followed by CoH spam.
Your advice on healing post-3.0.8 is also bad. You suggest Prayer of Healing followed by Circle of Healing and hoping for a SoL proc (chance is only going to be 50-60%, max) for a third cast. Better is to do PoH, then the timed cast (Flash Heal), then Circle of Healing. You lose the chance at a free cast, but mana is irrelevant in this fight(*), and this way you can guarantee a space between first and last cast of 1.5 seconds (theoretical) or 2 seconds (figuring in latency and human sloppiness).
If you do it your way, then whenever you don't get a SoL proc you end up very likely hosed in trying to cast another spell - you can try to squeeze in Flash Heal, but you'll be trying to get one GCD plus a 1.5-second cast inside of three seconds, so you need haste for it to even be possible, and your timing on the Prayer of Healing has to be within a small fraction of a second of perfect even then.
Further, you talk about proccing Improved Holy Concentration to speed up your Flash Heal. Except none of the spells we just cast can proc it. So no, remove that from consideration.
(*) - unless you cast additional spells between healing periods, e.g. HoTs that will tick once during the three-second healing window, or dps to help out on the damage.
Pre 3.0.8: Spam CoH on melee/ranged groups to top them off. Very easy and efficient.
And also not optimal. This would work OK up until the five minute mark, that is, so long as Inevitable Doom was only hitting once every thirty seconds - though you still wouldn't be maximizing your effectiveness. After that you would still want to have been using Prayer of Healing, precast and timed to land just after the Aura expired. Followed by CoH spam.
Your advice on healing post-3.0.8 is also bad. You suggest Prayer of Healing followed by Circle of Healing and hoping for a SoL proc (chance is only going to be 50-60%, max) for a third cast. Better is to do PoH, then the timed cast (Flash Heal), then Circle of Healing. You lose the chance at a free cast, but mana is irrelevant in this fight(*), and this way you can guarantee a space between first and last cast of 1.5 seconds (theoretical) or 2 seconds (figuring in latency and human sloppiness).
If you do it your way, then whenever you don't get a SoL proc you end up very likely hosed in trying to cast another spell - you can try to squeeze in Flash Heal, but you'll be trying to get one GCD plus a 1.5-second cast inside of three seconds, so you need haste for it to even be possible, and your timing on the Prayer of Healing has to be within a small fraction of a second of perfect even then.
Further, you talk about proccing Improved Holy Concentration to speed up your Flash Heal. Except none of the spells we just cast can proc it. So no, remove that from consideration.
(*) - unless you cast additional spells between healing periods, e.g. HoTs that will tick once during the three-second healing window, or dps to help out on the damage.
First, does Loetheb take longer than 5 minutes for a group whose DPS has Fungal Creep the majority of the time? CoH spamming was more effective simply because it is a smart heal--it's gonna heal the targets that need it. PoH has relative effectiveness and should really only be used if the fight was going too long (which I really can't imagine unless you're doing one of the achievements).
Saying my advice is "bad" is an extremely poor choice of words. If it's not the most effective/efficient in your estimation, say that. Regardless, here's the breakdown. CoH should most definitely be cast after PoH, First, it maximizes the amount of healing done as it hits the targets that *need* healed within the aoe. If you wait to cast it, other healers may or may not pick your targets to heal while you are casting your Flash. Secondly, assuming perfect timing, you have 3 second window to heal. To me, I'd most certainly get the CoH while I could because of any unforseen lag or latency (esp. in Lagramas after this patch) that could happen in those 3 seconds that could prevent me from getting a CoH off before the Necrotic Aura was reapplied. Leaves too much to chance, even though theoretically it's it's easily possible. These are the reasons why CoH is more efficient to cast after the PoH lands.
I'm not one of those healers who stands there and waits 20 seconds to heal with a full/near full mana bar. If you are that's fine, but I have no problem getting Holy Cons. to proc while dpsing between heals.
You also bring up a good point I forgot to make. I do cast a renew on the MT, prior to precasting the PoH. It's probably ineffective because usually a shaman will bounce a CH off of the MT or the pally has a HL precast on the MT which will probably top him off, but just in case something unexpected happens, that renew will be ticking.
First, does Loetheb take longer than 5 minutes for a group whose DPS has Fungal Creep the majority of the time? CoH spamming was more effective simply because it is a smart heal--it's gonna heal the targets that need it. PoH has relative effectiveness and should really only be used if the fight was going too long (which I really can't imagine unless you're doing one of the achievements).
It's taken my group over seven minutes multiple times. In any case, we were talking about maximizing healing on this fight; pointing out that it's easy to heal when your dps is good is in fact beside the point. On that basis I could recommend all sorts of bogus strategies that could work.
Anyway, you seem to have missed the point: by doing it this way you got to cast Prayer of Healing *plus just as many CoH as you could have cast anyway*, so no, CoH spamming was not more effective - it was something that was done in addition.
Your second point I suppose rescues your advice for a limited situation - yes, if I have godawful lag spikes that result in random latency changes of plus or minus 500ms, then I also will take the safe route and cast CoH immediately after PoH. This isn't the normal state of affairs, however. Somehow you didn't mention this in your original post.
As for my Flash Heal getting sniped/poached by another healer, there are two cases: either
- everyone is getting healed sufficiently, in which case I really don't care, or
- we are past the five minute mark and people are starting to take a lot of damage, in which case I am much less likely to suffer healing collision, both because everyone needs healing at every 3-second window and because the amount that needs to be healed is large enough that two heals on one person may have full effect.
As for choice of words: I think your advice is bad. I expanded on why. I'm not sure why you think the choice of words is poor when it does, in fact, express my opinion very accurately.
Finally, you still seem confused about how Improved Holy Concentration works. Three spells can proc it: Flash Heal, Binding Heal, or Greater Heal. So when you say you have 'no problem getting Holy Cons. to proc while dpsing' I tend to further discount the idea that you have actually given much thought to this situation. If you do normally down Loatheb inside of five minutes, that's not surprising; but in that case you shouldn't present your 'good enough' healing strategy and claim that it provides 'maximum throughput/efficiency'.
Saying my advice is "bad" is an extremely poor choice of words. If it's not the most effective/efficient in your estimation, say that. Regardless, here's the breakdown. CoH should most definitely be cast after PoH, First, it maximizes the amount of healing done as it hits the targets that *need* healed within the aoe. If you wait to cast it, other healers may or may not pick your targets to heal while you are casting your Flash. Secondly, assuming perfect timing, you have 3 second window to heal. To me, I'd most certainly get the CoH while I could because of any unforseen lag or latency (esp. in Lagramas after this patch) that could happen in those 3 seconds that could prevent me from getting a CoH off before the Necrotic Aura was reapplied. Leaves too much to chance, even though theoretically it's it's easily possible. These are the reasons why CoH is more efficient to cast after the PoH lands.
Well, maybe your advice is "good" if you give advice to people who suck at the game. Seems like you have some issues too.
Best way of healing on Loatheb before 3.08: PoH + 2 CoH
Best way of healing on Loatheb after 3.08: PoH+CoH+ .... nerfed
I concur with what the others were saying, we were routinely priming prayer of healing (usually 2 of us priests in the raid) on loatheb followed by 2, maybe 3, CoH. Now it's just 1 CoH and a flash on the lowest.
What I also found to be useful, is to precast a prayer of mending around the 5 second mark, and with luck you can get it to go off twice during the 3 seconds.
I'll be interested to see what the fight will be like next week, since I respecced disc this week (was holy the first night of naxx where we downed loatheb) - assuming the prayer crits, at least half my group gets a pretty decent shield. Combined with the ProM trick from above, the only thing I'm missing from the arsenal is CoH to grab another 6 people, however I could probably get a flash heal off on one person who is low,likely critting and giving them a shield as well. The bonus here being I also have fairly strong shields I can fling around during the 17 seconds to negate some damage (it would be even nicer if they remove the cooldown on PWS )
Just putting it out there, post patch I found that I can do some really good healing if I put renews on people while the aura is up, having 3-5 renews on people with low health so that it will tick when the aura goes down (Renew Glyph helps), then doing the Standard timed PoH, and I switched after the PoH to either Flash Heal or CoH, more often than not fairly randomly. It wasnt the most perfect way of healing, but my effective heals topped the charts, not that the charts terribly matter. I think the main thing Im mentioning is that without the CoH spam the renews ticking add in a nice bit of extra healing.
EDIT: As to above, I tried the prayer of mending as well, but found it too unreliable. If it bounced while the aura was up, no healing was done. This depended on the damage happening while the aura was down, which is fairly more regular as the fight goes on, but at the beginning its just depending on luck more than anything. Not a bad strategy, especially considering the mana cost of PoM, but it was too unreliable for me.
The bonus here being I also have fairly strong shields I can fling around during the 17 seconds to negate some damage
It turns out not to matter how strong your shields are, unless you're shielding the main tank. Neither the Inevitable Doom damage nor the small ticks of Deathbloom can be absorbed by Power Word:Shield. Only the final tick of Deathbloom (1500 damage), which will only hit a player once during the duration of a shield, can be absorbed. That said, if you have the mana to spare (and as Disc you probably do...), even that 1500 makes it worth casting the spell.
Your advice on healing post-3.0.8 is also bad. You suggest Prayer of Healing followed by Circle of Healing and hoping for a SoL proc (chance is only going to be 50-60%, max) for a third cast. Better is to do PoH, then the timed cast (Flash Heal), then Circle of Healing. You lose the chance at a free cast, but mana is irrelevant in this fight(*), and this way you can guarantee a space between first and last cast of 1.5 seconds (theoretical) or 2 seconds (figuring in latency and human sloppiness).
It's my experience that the only person who could possibly be taking more damage than you could handle with PoH + CoH is the tank, who you can shield at any time. Then again, I've also never had a group that lasted more than a few seconds into his soft enrage.
(*) - unless you cast additional spells between healing periods, e.g. HoTs that will tick once during the three-second healing window, or dps to help out on the damage.
I don't know about you, but 15 of every 20 seconds against Loatheb, I'm doing DPS. (A whole 950 DPS on Loatheb last night in Naxx10, and about the same for Noth. Our warrior MT went to get a snack halfway through Loatheb and still did more damage than me. Maybe I should start wearing hit gear for that fight?)
WWS from 10 man Naxx 2-healer (my toon is Endee) Wow Web Stats
So this week, for a bit more of a challenge we attempted to 2 heal 10 man Naxx for the first time. In my infinite arrogance, I thought I could pull in any heal-specced toon and be able to brute force the heals necessary to win. We ended up recruiting a respecced enhance shaman and had no issues pre-Sapphiron.
2 man healing the Sapphiron and KT fights seemed in a different league than the rest of the instance(to be honest, i'd be surprised if I couldn't solo heal most of Nacc with the exception of Construct Wing, and the last two bosses in Military Wing)
If anyone else has parses from a 2-man healing Sapphiron and KT, I'd love to see them to pick up on some of the mistakes I made during our wipes. I think I could have done it if I'd grouped with one of our main healers(the off-healer let me die to frost tomb on KT! That bastard!) We ended up bringing in an alt to bring down Sapp, but after the two wipes on KT, our main tank bounced >.<
Lessons learned-
1: Never waste a PoM on the MT on Sapphiron
2: Drop a lightwell close to yourself to lessen the need for Binding heal
3: Don't tell an enhance shaman to MT heal >.<
In our 10 man melee heavy group, i ended up topping at about 4k HPS on Sapp and I know that had I not made a few mistakes I could have probably hit 5k w/o too much trouble.
KT was a little bit more of a challenge. Having a melee heavy group and a resto shammy with the reaction speed of a grandmother posed unique challenges >.<
As my guild is starting to wake back up from early Wrath slumber, I'm trying to get 10man Sarth w/ drakes going, and I was looking for some input. This probably goes beyond the scope of this thread, but especially with the huge pair of handcuffs I recieved for raid healing, I'm trying to decide if I should even put myself in this group for the first couple kills.
I've been going back and forth on 2 or 3 healers, but right now am thinking of trying to go with one priest (myself as holy), a holy paladin, and a resto shaman. I'm looking at likely tanks of a feral druid and a prot paladin, and probably caster dps with possibly a dk to cover adds.
I'd been thinking of having the holy paladin put their beacon on the druid tank and then cover the paladin who I am anticipating will cover adds. Then either myself or the resto shaman would be on the druid tank full-time, along with earth shield, and the other healer primarily on the raid.
Any thoughts/suggestions on how I could improve this?
DK MT, DK on whelps, lava spawns, Warrior on Drakes
SPriest, Enh Shaman, Ele Shaman, Warrior, Hunter dpsing
HPriest, HPal healing
Hardly an optimal setup. We practically 9-manned it as our Hunter died in one of the early portals. I wouldn't recommend practicing this fight without two Shamans as waiting for Bloodlust is pretty awful for attempts/hr.
We started on this achievement and it took about 8 hours of tries across three days. None of us really researched the fight, so we just started from scratch. It took us about 4 hours of tries to get us down to a 1-portal rotation on the second drake, and our Paladin didn't have Divine Protector for the six hours T_T. It took us only three tries once we worked out a healing switch after the second drake was down where I (as Holy Priest) pulled off the Unholy DK MT and switched to OT while the Holy Paladin went to heal the MT and the DK adds rounder upper with beacon. I would throw my shields, renew, and the occasional ProM to the MT if it was necessary if I couldn't get an effective bounce off the DK and Warrior OTs.
I honestly couldn't handle the increased damage from the melee swings combined with the random elements to the fight like getting a me getting a circle combined with big melee hit + breath + tailside lava inc, etc... The Paladin pretty much laughed at it even though he's in some (relatively) mediocre gear. We don't have a Druid with good gear, so your experience may be different. I've also only recently returned to the game after a year hiatus, so I'm both rusty and generally less interested in the game than I formerly was, so I'm quite far down the road of "washed up."
I tried Disc early on in this fight, but the healing seemed clunky and awkward. I don't have a full Disc set, so that's part of it, but it just felt weird and mediocre. When I read that thread about how all the developers said they were fine with a Disc Priest healing a MT over a Paladin, I shrugged a little. I'm obviously unfamiliar with the spec, but it just seemed subpar. A 10 second Weakened Soul would be a huge boon to the spec if they ever changed it.
If anyone else has parses from a 2-man healing Sapphiron and KT, I'd love to see them to pick up on some of the mistakes I made during our wipes.
Well... as you already kind of hinted at, the *other* guy needs to be able to handle his half of the load. I notice that on your two-healer attempt the split was 60% for you, 30% for the other healer and the rest the usual miscellaneous. Clone yourself and you're set.
I haven't gone through the log line by line, but a few minor observations:
- If you are serious about two-healing the Sapphiron fight with this group and this gear level, get the Glyph for Circle of Healing, and shift some points from Serendipity and IHC into Mental Agility. You can look at my spec (which I chose specifically for Sapphiron and just sort of stuck with after) as an example of what I'm talking about.
- Binding Heal is efficient... but it's still not as efficient as Circle of Healing, especially glyphed. You would stretch your mana further by using CoH more and Binding Heal less. Prayer of Healing may be a better choice as well,but you seem to use this mostly as a way of getting the most out of Inner Focus.
- You should use Divine Hymn somewhere in the fight. Cast it right as everyone hides behind an iceblock and you can get 20-30K healing from it.
- It can be a pretty long fight (7+ minutes) when you first start doing it. Because of this, you should use your first Shadowfiend early (so that you will be able to use a second one at the six minute mark), and also keep an eye on things like Inner Focus, which you should be able to use more than once.
For Kel'Thuzad, you lost two people to the Frost Blast early on. More practice reacting in time. I also don't know whether you had positioning problems on this fight, but you need to be somewhere in the middle of your spread formation so that everyone is close enough for you to heal them. Once everyone has practice healing Frost Blast in time this isn't so important (as long as everyone is in range of *some* healer), but early on it helps a lot if you have as much healer overlap as possible, so that if one healer fails to catch it in time there's still a chance the other one will.
I notice you didn't use any instants. If everyone is topped off, Circle of Healing (even one) will save a Frost Blast victim. Power Word:Shield is also effective.
That might be a good spec for Sapphiron, but that is pretty much it. :-( You really want HC/IHC and serendipity at all times. Raid healing is pretty much flashing and CoH, plus Holy priests are often assigned to tank duty, making those two very good talents. So, sure, 2 man healing might warrant that spec, but in reality, you probably don't want to heal all of the raids like that.
If everyone is topped off, Circle of Healing (even one) will save a Frost Blast victim. Power Word:Shield is also effective.
Be careful using CoH to top off multiple melee Frost Blasts. Every time I have tried with a single CoH in 3.0.8, I lost most of the melee group, including an add tank. It should work mathematically, but it's really easy to have bad luck with it.
PoM is also pretty useful, though the victim will only get one hit. It's a least frontloaded.
WWS from 10 man Naxx 2-healer (my toon is Endee) Wow Web Stats
So this week, for a bit more of a challenge we attempted to 2 heal 10 man Naxx for the first time. In my infinite arrogance, I thought I could pull in any heal-specced toon and be able to brute force the heals necessary to win. We ended up recruiting a respecced enhance shaman and had no issues pre-Sapphiron.
2 man healing the Sapphiron and KT fights seemed in a different league than the rest of the instance(to be honest, i'd be surprised if I couldn't solo heal most of Nacc with the exception of Construct Wing, and the last two bosses in Military Wing)
If anyone else has parses from a 2-man healing Sapphiron and KT, I'd love to see them to pick up on some of the mistakes I made during our wipes. I think I could have done it if I'd grouped with one of our main healers(the off-healer let me die to frost tomb on KT! That bastard!) We ended up bringing in an alt to bring down Sapp, but after the two wipes on KT, our main tank bounced >.<
Lessons learned-
1: Never waste a PoM on the MT on Sapphiron
2: Drop a lightwell close to yourself to lessen the need for Binding heal
3: Don't tell an enhance shaman to MT heal >.<
In our 10 man melee heavy group, i ended up topping at about 4k HPS on Sapp and I know that had I not made a few mistakes I could have probably hit 5k w/o too much trouble.
KT was a little bit more of a challenge. Having a melee heavy group and a resto shammy with the reaction speed of a grandmother posed unique challenges >.<
I solo healed 10-man Naxx yesterday. I can try getting you a WWS of it. Sapphiron is easy to single heal, you have a few fights where it's hard to solo heal:
1. Thaddius P1 (actually it might work to put a lightwell on the other side and have selfhealing DKs tanking)
2. Gothik LoS to the other side.
3. 4HM I needed some small help from the elemental shaman, but I actually think it's doable to completely solo heal this too.
Glyph of PoH helped a ton, max haste is also very very useful. I'm at 700+ haste and it really makes a difference... closing in on 800 haste fully elixired and so on.
This was the most fun I've had in a very long time. I recommend everyone trying it out if you have the gear for it. Noth didn't go up to the balcony, Heigan wouldn't have started dancing if we had heroism up for him... it was a breeze.
Be careful using CoH to top off multiple melee Frost Blasts. Every time I have tried with a single CoH in 3.0.8, I lost most of the melee group, including an add tank. It should work mathematically, but it's really easy to have bad luck with it.
Two problems. One, if you have more than 5 melee (plus the tank, who is in range of your CoH and will probably take one of the charges), you'll only save the ones you hit, and it's not always easy to tell which ones you hit and which ones you missed. Two, and possibly more pernicious, Kel'Thuzad has a nasty habit of casting the mass Frostbolt immediately after Frost Blast ends. So your problem isn't just healing people for 4%, it's healing them for 4% immediately plus 8k shortly thereafter.
I solo healed 10-man Naxx yesterday. I can try getting you a WWS of it. Sapphiron is easy to single heal, you have a few fights where it's hard to solo heal:
1. Thaddius P1 (actually it might work to put a lightwell on the other side and have selfhealing DKs tanking)
2. Gothik LoS to the other side.
3. 4HM I needed some small help from the elemental shaman, but I actually think it's doable to completely solo heal this too.
Glyph of PoH helped a ton, max haste is also very very useful. I'm at 700+ haste and it really makes a difference... closing in on 800 haste fully elixired and so on.
This was the most fun I've had in a very long time. I recommend everyone trying it out if you have the gear for it. Noth didn't go up to the balcony, Heigan wouldn't have started dancing if we had heroism up for him... it was a breeze.
Concerning Thaddius, what do you mean with "it might work"? I assume the elemental shaman you mention later was healing, too. The thing is, if you want to run naxx-10 with one healer you probably want to run with just one tank, too. And doing it with just one tank and e.g. a DK in dps gear as second tank works ok on all bosses. Except for tanking Stalagg when he gains "Power Surge" (Power Surge - Spell - World of Warcraft). When Stalagg gains "Power Surge" while your DK is on his side it gets ugly. At least that was my experience.
So if you run with two tanks and go all out dps in P1 and have the tanks blow cooldowns etc. if might work. But i don't think you can pull that of with a plate dps as second tank. On the other hand, i would be happy to be proven wrong.
Last edited by Hungtar : 01/26/09 at 8:17 AM.
Reason: cleaanup
Two problems. One, if you have more than 5 melee (plus the tank, who is in range of your CoH and will probably take one of the charges), you'll only save the ones you hit, and it's not always easy to tell which ones you hit and which ones you missed. Two, and possibly more pernicious, Kel'Thuzad has a nasty habit of casting the mass Frostbolt immediately after Frost Blast ends. So your problem isn't just healing people for 4%, it's healing them for 4% immediately plus 8k shortly thereafter.
In addition to this; it's 4% of their maximum health - so one CoH would only save them if they were topped or close to topped off. If you get a frost blast right after an aoe bolt, people may not be topped off yet - and specifically for the tank, if the melee chain it to him (though he should always be first priority on getting topped up, and usually whoever is healing him will already have heals being cast).
Definitely notice a change since the CoH nerf on that fight. Our raid usually has way too many melee (last raid we had about 9) and whereas before we were able to do it with everyone in, and myself and the other priest being able to save them all with 2-3 CoH, we can't rely on that and we've resorted to leaving melee out until the adds come out, and then sending them in (at which point, as long as they don't chain the tank, we should be fine even if one or two of them die).
Since speccing to discipline it's been considerably easier for me to save someone; a shield is usually enough, and I can penance and then flash heal another. Combined with other healers we haven't really lost anyone unless melee chains it too much - but I still wish Kel was a bit more lenient on melee - until we can get more ranged I think we're still going to have this problem with too many melee.
I'm glad to see I am not the only one who thinks that raid healing as a Holy priest now is clunky and feels odd. Since Naxx doesn't really have a lot of AoE damage (apart from perhaps Kel'Thuzad's frost blasts as we tend to run melee heavy) you don't really feel it there, while Sartharion with drakes up and Malygos P2 have become a bit of a pain to heal for me.
I have considered whether stacking haste is a way to get more efficient with "filling", which seems to be basically flash heal spam. Or maybe getting a crit set for tank healing in order to keep Inspiration up? Both seem a bit contrived, and I am struggling to find something that feels useful and efficient.
My guild is working on perfecting our execution of Sarth2D and will start on Sarth3D once our 2D take downs are smoother. I'm worried about being put on raid healing there though, as I felt unfomfortable already with raid healing the two drake scenario after the patch.
If you've done this pre and post patch, are the changes affecting your healing style? Are you filling a different role to before? Did you have to rethink your gear/gem choices?
I even tried out Lightwell as a solution to stabilise raid healing, but it's hard to spot in a fight where you have so many AoE effects and adds around, plus due to raid movement, it's too often far away from where people are standing.
My guild is working on perfecting our execution of Sarth2D and will start on Sarth3D once our 2D take downs are smoother. I'm worried about being put on raid healing there though, as I felt unfomfortable already with raid healing the two drake scenario after the patch.
If you've done this pre and post patch, are the changes affecting your healing style? Are you filling a different role to before? Did you have to rethink your gear/gem choices?
Well I definitely feel haste is the right way to go... but I'm totally the wrong person to ask, since I've always loved haste in every situation. I'd recommend you speccing discipline for that fight, put yourself on MT healing and help out with PoMs and shielding the OTs (shielding actually gives you a huge haste buff, so this is a great tool for reactive MT healing). Right now the only really viable way of doing that fight as holy is being put in the same group as DPS and PoH.
So if you run with two tanks and go all out dps in P1 and have the tanks blow cooldowns etc. if might work. But i don't think you can pull that of with a plate dps as second tank. On the other hand, i would be happy to be proven wrong.
The best offtanking spec is 23/48/0 (possibly move deathchill to lichborne but I like deathchill). It's 1-2% off the min/max frost dps spec and gets everything but the 5% in anticipation as a tank. If Stalagg/Feugen are the problem, stick the DK in tank gear (full t7.5 is ~70% avoidance in this spec) and have him burn a cooldown ever time he's on that side. He should easily be able to pull 3k dps (pre +- buff) with a weapon/sigil swap on Thaddius. It's not like you'll need the dps to beat the Thaddius enrage. Now this all assumes a certain gear level, but if you're doing crazy stuff like solo healing/tanking naxx, then gear expectations aren't unreasonable.
@Lambi:
I'm actually really curious how you pulled Thaddius and Gothik off. I would think a lightwell on Feugen's side would cover most of it with you on Stalagg sending the tank over with a pom, but I'd like to know how you actually did it.
I'm actually really curious how you pulled Thaddius and Gothik off. I would think a lightwell on Feugen's side would cover most of it with you on Stalagg sending the tank over with a pom, but I'd like to know how you actually did it.
Wouldn't that be vice versa? Feugen has the aura - or does Stalagg hit harder? There is the possibility he had an offspec heal the one side though.
I'd be interested as well - I was at the point in our 10m where I was pretty much able to solo heal most of it. Gothik would of course pose the largest issue, next in line being 4H. It was hectic enough with only 2 healers. But I think on those fights they could be negated by having an offspec healer. Kel'thuzad would be impossible unless you got really lucky, if you didn't have someone who could throw a quick heal on you if you got hit. And sapphiron wouldn't be too fun either, to be honest.
Something that came to mind in regards to Kel solo, even without an offspec healer, is if you managed to keep yourself topped up and with a PWS running at full (would still require luck for it not to be depleted by an aoe frostbolt) is that the shield would save you from death (especially as discipline) thus making the encounter, while difficult, still possible to solo.
Glyph of PoH helped a ton, max haste is also very very useful. I'm at 700+ haste and it really makes a difference... closing in on 800 haste fully elixired and so on.
Warning, slightly OT: I was thinking of current priest gear. In TBC post-Karazhan there were loads of gaps in peoples gear but in WotLK people have tonnes of crit, haste and spell power already. Where are they going to go gearwise for Ulduar and beyond? Are we going to end up with 40% crit and 30% haste? Or is the gear going to push spellpower and AP only, to keep haste and crit at reasonable levels? If so, what will that do with the scaling of spells when we gain lots of spell power.
This development (ie, being well rounded very early) is even more noticable for my warlock. I am hitcapped, have 25% crit and 10% haste already in addition to a good amount of spell power. In TBC destro was out of the question at the equivalent level due to not enough crit available.
Anyway, hope we don't get to see a lot of future 'healing gear' with loads of mp5 on it, just because they didn't want to give us too much of the other stats. I do feel there is a risk they gave us too much too fast initially and will have to hold back quite a bit in the future, making upgrades feel small.
01/23/09, 2:14 PM
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