Concerning 4H with 2 healers:

Option 1: use 2 people at the back who actually can self-heal. A DK and shadow priest / affliction warlock are ideal for this. Just leave them there until Thane is dead, then send a healer to back them up.

Option 2: don't put a healer on the Rivendare tank, and have him burn all his cooldowns while you kill Thane. Should live ok provided he has gear, and goes in with a PW:S+PoM.

Option 3: put a healer on each side, and have the one on Thane/Rivendare side run back and forth, get ridiculous stacks, live through it (barely), then swap with the back healer to allow stacks to not kill him.

Option 4: don't heal the Thane tank + meteor people, and just burn.

Option 5: dps + healer at the back (aff lock works well), single healer at the front using one of the previous options.

In all options, you should be putting a maximum of 2 people at the back, and 1 person on Rivendare. The 6 remaining people (who don't include the healer) should be burning Thane down. Even with minimal gear, you can kill him before the 5th mark, and it simplifies things dramatically to have one of the Horsemen dead.

I did 2 man heal 4H once, we burned down Thane while I walked back and forth using Prayer of Mending and Renew. I had to use PW: Shield on myself to handle the debuffs and Pain Suppression when I realized it would go bad next time. Then I ran away before I died and that was enough to get them both down.

Someone in this thread mentioned the thought of glyphing Holy Nova (40% more healing for -40% damage) to attempt to mitigate the upcoming COH cooldown. This obviously can't compensate for COH's ability to heal a group from a distance, however it is far more powerful than most people realize.

I'm a multibox PVE player and I have to eat a lot of damage that others can avoid. Holy nova has been a spell I've just absolutely abused. Of course, this statement is fairly anecdotal, but since I don't have COH anymore I can't do a good comparison right now. In any case, it's still spammable and heals for 3000-4000 depending on your spell power. Actually it seems to really benefit a lot from spell power! I would love to personally or have someone else run some tests on holy nova to see just how it compares in HPM to other spells or to COH.

As an added bonus there's no threat. You can spam this spell to heal your group members up as adds spawn and not get initial aggro. I don't know yet how this can help in raids, but it's tremendous in many heroics, like Skadi in UP or pretty much all of Azjol-Nerub.

For anyone who desires some deeper discipline specs with decent AOE healing, this is absolutely viable, though you're really gimping yourself to consider not speccing deep enough in holy to get the bonuses to greater heal. My priests use the points in discipline to further buff their int, stam and spirit.

(Glyphed) Holy Nova is a great spell when you can get it to work. The short range and party restriction means that you'll very rarely get it to work in anything larger than a 5-man.

This is true, however it will still be the only spammable AOE healing in the game after the patch, so it's worth keeping in mind. I sure as heck will be using it as a huge crutch given my (self-imposed) limitations.

Wow, lots of ideas, thanks.

Without answering to all options separately, what has helped me most was the insight that a combination of the "zerg Thane" method might just work in combination with having the tanks burn cooldowns early - even at our gear level (let's not forget player capability - not all "my" dpsers are capable of providing the dps they should).

Many of the alternatives center around zerging Thane. Our affliction warlocks so far are not able to survive for long in the back. Their self-healing is significant but not nearly sufficient, it just buys them time. I'm still not convinced we can actually zerg Thane, but I will run a test to see if we can achieve the 1 minute peak dps to kill him in time.

Maybe the following will work for us:

1. Put one healer and the weakest DPSer (synergy factored in) in the back.

2. PW:S and PoM both tanks during pull. Let the front healer heal the Thane group up after initial damage, let the Thane tank blow all cooldowns from then on, run over to the Rivendare tank, top him up, PW:S, PoM him, then run back and stay with the Thane group which has gone all-out from the start. As soon as the PW:S is absorbed, Rivendare tank starts blowing all cooldowns including trinkets.

3. Since we won't be able to zerg Rivendare as well due to all cooldowns blown, front and back healer will need to switch once after the Thane is down, I think.

The added DPS from the back might just do it for us, and the tanks cooldowns in combination with the front healer helping out once and early might just make it possible to put one healer in the back.

Will report - if this works, it's a lot easier to execute than my method used last time which was really a coordination PITA.

I personally like this option best I'm always healing in the back and I found Binding Heal to be the best option here.
Never had a problem with this encounter this way. I tanked with hunter, mage and warlock until now.

Lightwell should indeed work wonders here - what a pain to completely miss that!

As for DPS, yes, the "if" is the issue. To give you a ballpark figure, in our first id we managed to kill patchwerk but with just 7s left. Now we're down to a bit less than 5 minutes - that is if we do have heroism. That said, from roughly calculating the effect of cooldows to burst dps, I think my people can down Thane before the fifth mark even without heroism if I trade a healer to the back.

I think you'd better off having 1 healer and 1 caster in the back and the other healer front heal. Use the other dps from the back to speed things up in the front.

The best solution I often found for 2 man healing 4 horsemen was the one we used for our first kill on him. We only had two healers and we found that one healer in the back healing the warlock/boomkin and another healing the tanks in the front worked. Both would get 2 or 3 stacks of each and would call for a healer switch, with the back healer running to the front first to keep constant consistent heals on the front. It worked for us several times, and going for the achievement its the only way I can figure to do it without putting classes of keeping themselves alive the entire time in the back.

We are going for Sarth+3.25 this evening. I will probably be assigned to the Sarth tank. Normally I am Holy, but I have been debating switching to disc for the event. Do you think it will be better as disc? If so, how much, and how would you approach the fight?

If you are doing Sarth+3.25 for the first time, and are healing the Sarth tank, provided you're paired with a good paladin, Disc can be very good. There's a lot of movement, and having PoM and PW:S both available to mitigate damage as you move (+Grace to help out) is actually quite good.

Sadly, most of the learning for the MT/MT healing on Sarth+3.25 lies on the MT. If he can't remove one of the debuffs by playing silly buggers with the Twilight Torment debuff, it's going to be nasty on you guys. I highly suggest getting something like Grim Reaper for these attempts. Knowing exactly how your tank died, every time, helps you fix your game quickly.

Essentially, you can expect medium breaths / damage for most of the fight. After Shadron lands and his first acolyte spawns, it starts to get hairy (~ 28k breaths). After Vesperon lands and *his* acolyte spawns, it gets nuts (~58k breaths unmitigated). It's at that point that you start popping cooldowns. You, your paladin friend, and your MT need to coordinate those cooldowns and use them in sequence.

Get Quartz or a similar addon and setup a Focus Castbar. Focus Sarth. You *need* to know when he's casting breath so you can either queue a heal, quickly top up the tank, or pop a cooldown (Pain Suppression, mostly).

Good luck!

i saw some talk of this in the beginning of the thread but little since then so i wanted to bring it back up.

our current strategy is that we have a paladin / holy priest healing.
- holy paladin on Sarth tank with beacon on adds tank
- priest on drakes tank tossing heals on the add tank whenever possible
- ele shaman / boomkin to help out on the raid healing end

once we have the first 2 drakes down and nearly all the adds we have a fury warrior tank the disciple with the boomkin / ele shaman healing. at this point the fight is normally trivial from a healing perspective.

once the 3rd drake enters the fight theres normally a 15-30 second window where the drake tank has 2 drakes on him. at this point i find myself tossing a GS up just to be safe.

just curious as to how others handle this fight at least from a healing perspective.

Just to add some more information for you from my experiences MT healing Sarth+3 as Disc.

I tend to always keep my PW:S and Penance on CD but found the reverse to be true for some parts of the fight. You have to be ready to shield your MT before a breath when the Shadron acolyte is up and then I save Penance to top them back up right after given the large healing in a short time span. Mitigating ~7 000 damage on each bad Flame Breath is a very nice buffer.

I would also highly recommend your MT has Nightmare Seeds on hand and be ready to use them when you git the big breaths with the Shadron acolyte up as Sarth can sometimes do Flame Breath with as little as 7 seconds between each one, meaning you won't have a shield available. That extra 2 000 health can make the difference between a tank living and dying. Our CD rotation on the MT for the bad breaths is Shield Wall --> Pain Suppression --> Blessing of Sacrifice --> Guardian Spirit --> Last Stand ---> Nightmare Seed+Luck. Your mileage will vary with the above and be based on what you have in raid. We also don't use all of those each kill but are prepared to if needed.

Also, we've had flame breaths with up to ~45 seconds in between as well so be ready for some RNG but always be prepared for the worst.

Cheers and best of luck.

When I did a 2healer 4horsemen, we had one healer in back, with a dk, and myself as a coh priest to cover the front. I was primarily on the Rivendare tank while the dps burned the meteor down. By watching for a debuff to hit on one side, I was then able to run over just after and coh the meteor group and toss the resulting flash heal on that tank before running back. With attentiveness, a coh priest can cover the entire front solo.

4H 2Healers

A Disc Priest can also cover the front alone, provided Thane dies without switching. A PoH/Nova after Meteor (requires groups to be set up with dps in the Priest group) and a quick jog over to throw Shield, PoM and Renew (if damaged) onto the Rivendare tank. I accidentally managed to pick up both front row debuffs once, by healing the Rivendare tank at a bad moment. That's something to watch out for.

When Thane dies it becomes trivial. There's no need for the back healer to come the front either. I waited for 3 Rivendare marks, then the original Rivendare tank came down, full health, shield and PoM and everyone else went up. After mark cleared, all the dps and the Thane tank came back down and killed him. Basically the Rivendare tank does not require dedicated healing.

4h 2healers

I haven't seen this mentioned, but if you're healing in the back on 4h, put something on the horseman on your side before you start healing. I was healing an elemental shaman in this fight and was in range of shadowbolts, but Lady Blammo! decided that she would rather AoE the raid then hit me with spells, and we wiped in short order. A SW:P on the target fixed this the next time we went in, and she didn't act up on any subsequent raids that we've been to.

I can confirm this. Grabbing immediately the attention of the caster bosses when switching seems necessary, though guides state that range is sufficient. AoE nukes when switching stopped when I asked my back warlocks to put anything on the boss, even before taking a potion or a healthstone.

Hi guy,
Wanted your thoughts on an idea before I burn the time on it.
I keep thinking, maybe GC is right and all healers should be equal and that a healing priest brings utility to a raid (I don’t think this, but that’s the claim and maybe I am too focused on priests)

So, I was thinking about pulling together a break down of each healing class with their core healing spells assuming x level of gear (yep nothing new here), but then I was going to look at converting each classes buffs to ilevel points. So if you buff haste then convert the haste % to haste rating then ilvl points for example.

This would mean you end up with the class/spec, MT healing, AoE healing, Raid healing, HoT, etc and an ilevel buff value

- is there any value in this?
- for buffs like kings is it fair to assume 2 main stats count per class and what value would use (2.5k total before kings?)?
- would you say a 6 min fight is a good target?
- is there any way you would try and convert the healing and ilvl points to each other to get an over all rating by class?
- Is there value in also doing it at current stats * 1.5 for example to see how each class scales?

That’s the general idea, with the goal being a some what less personal view on what classes bring what, let me know if you think its worth it.

p.s. sorry if this it the wrong place to post it.

Is anyone else having issues casting Circle of Healing during the vortex phase on Malygos? I cannot cast it while in the air, but can cast it immediately as I start to fall to the ground. Our Druid reports that he's having the same issues with Wild Growth. It's not a range issue, either, as I can cast Prayer of Mending/Renew/etc on myself.

Yes. It's spouting "Invalid Target". I've been able to get it off by randomly targeting people and spamming it, but very infrequently.

What about bouncing it off yourself? You should certainly be able to center a "circle" of "healing" (if you will) on yourself, since you're always a valid target for your own heals (Penance the exception).

I'll probably be doing Malygos tomorrow, so I'll test it then. Should be fun with the new mechanics. =/