My guild just had our first few attempts on Thorim-10 last night, and I had a question regarding managing the aggro from the arena adds. I went holy for the fight since we had no resto druid for the arena, and honestly found the healing to be fairly easy. We split up 6 arena/4 gauntlet and had DK tank in the arena, with everyone grouped up around the central circle.
I didn't find whirlwinds or the hammer to be much of a problem, as CoH, PoM and renews handled all the damage easily as long as our melee was paying attention. What I was having trouble with was a tendency for the mobs who just jumped down to always aggro on me. It happened so frequently that I often found myself with my fade still on cooldown. I even tried intentionally avoiding renews so no ticks would give me aggro and refrained from healing until I was sure the tank had the adds, but sometimes they'd still come for me. On our last attempt, I didn't even cast a heal but every single spawned add came, hit me at once and insta-gibbed me.
Is there anything I can really do about this to avoid getting that initial aggro, or is it solely on the tank's shoulders to make sure he's picking up adds faster? I'm trying to stay in the center of the circle so as not to risk a proximity pull, though sometimes I do need to reposition to stay away from a whirlwind.
From what 10-man has taught me, Mimiron is more of an out-last fight. With that being said, I was considering taking 8 healers.
We did a couple of attempts on him last night for the first time. We consistantly got to phase 2 without any deaths, but there seemed to be so much dmg and not enough heals (we ran with 6 healers).
Healing set up I'm looking at bringing: 3 resto druids (2 if you guys say that 8 would be overkill), 1 resto sham, 2 holy priests, and 2 holy pallys.
Is the best way to assign heals, to assign quarters of the room for ranged in p2 and p4?
In p3, did you have three groups? Tank group 1, tank group 2, and then a third group with the ranged on the head? Or did you clump in one big corner?
In p4, did healers have to heal the tank if he got red-rocketed, or is there an easy way to have your tank see the red circle while tanking that monstrous thing?
I find that on Thorim aggro is an issue for everyone in the arena. As a shadow priest I also had to fade constantly but I don't think it's anything you can remedy by positioning. If you see mobs dropping down in your area, it is very likely they will aggro on the closest thing so the best thing you can do is try to run for your tank so he can pick them up.
Healing set up I'm looking at bringing: 3 resto druids (2 if you guys say that 8 would be overkill), 1 resto sham, 2 holy priests, and 2 holy pallys.
Is the best way to assign heals, to assign quarters of the room for ranged in p2 and p4?
In p3, did you have three groups? Tank group 1, tank group 2, and then a third group with the ranged on the head? Or did you clump in one big corner?
In p4, did healers have to heal the tank if he got red-rocketed, or is there an easy way to have your tank see the red circle while tanking that monstrous thing?
Thank you for the help ^_^!
1) In Phase 2, you really want to be spread in a line. Whether that means using the inner circle (just beyond where bombs land) for the entire ranged part of the raid, or the middle circle, it doesn't really matter. Spread your AoE healers out, make sure no healer is standing next to another healer (so no more than 1 healer gets Rapid Bursted at the same time), and spam your nuts off. Bloodlust can be used in this phase if you're really struggling.
2) In Phase 3, you can just clump. There's not much reason to spread, honestly. Keep your Aerial Command Unit tank just to one side, and your melee and tank can spin out slightly to deal with stuff. If your hunters are kiting Assault Bots, then assign a priest to each one to keep them dispelled and shielded.
3) If your tank eats a rocket, he's dead. It's 2 million damage. If your tank can't avoid rockets, replace your tank. Alternatively, use Baby Spice (from the cooking daily) on the bottom segment of Mimiron, and the ground will be more visible.
Originally Posted by Aeshun
I find that on Thorim aggro is an issue for everyone in the arena. As a shadow priest I also had to fade constantly but I don't think it's anything you can remedy by positioning. If you see mobs dropping down in your area, it is very likely they will aggro on the closest thing so the best thing you can do is try to run for your tank so he can pick them up.
Mobs spawn more to the south side of the room than the north (right as you come in = south). We put everyone in the north, and we all try to stay within 10' of the Death and Decay for our sole DK tank in the arena. If you get aggro, you step forward into the D&D and wait for someone to pull it off you. If it's a big mob, pray.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
...
If you get aggro, you step forward into the D&D and wait for someone to pull it off you. If it's a big mob, pray.
We usually have a Holy Paladin put up RF and stand (relatively) near the tank. It makes the praying portion a little easier as a pally can usually take a hit and you know who is likely to be taking hits when things go pear shaped. You will still have to use fade, but it is overall less scary.
In p4, did healers have to heal the tank if he got red-rocketed, or is there an easy way to have your tank see the red circle while tanking that monstrous thing?
If you turn off projected textures for mimiron, you wont see the death and decay, but youll be able to see the rocket.
Using baby spice actually makes it harder for the tank to run around him when he's doing his spinning up thing, because he'll try to follow. And your melee will hate you too :P
In p4, did healers have to heal the tank if he got red-rocketed, or is there an easy way to have your tank see the red circle while tanking that monstrous thing?
Regarding the red rockets: tanking isn't easy in P4. Give your tank the time to learn that, even if that means you have to go through perfect phases 1-3 several times.
It's not only the rockets that are hard for the tank to see, a similar problem is reacting properly to spinning up. From the tank's POV, it's far harder to see the direction than in P2. Worse, the Leviathan body will follow the tank (including turning while spinning up), so the tank needs to move carefully.
Originally Posted by Pewsey
Many of our snakes are 3m+ in size. They'll just take the lawnmower off you and beat the shit out of you with it to make you tender, then bite you and eat you.
We are going to be trying Freya on hard mode 10 this week, I believe, with all the guardians up. Our holy priest is normally very good with the raid healing, though I am considering asking her to go disc because of the mitigation it offers that is pretty much free from Ground Tremor, since PW:S is instant-cast.
I'm feeling slightly unsure, though, just due to all of the aoe damage that goes on during the fight. We'll also have a resto druid rolling hots and a holy pally in the raid as well. What do you guys run in your Freya hard mode on 10?
(And on a side note; do you run 2 healers or 3 for Assembly of Iron? We're going to definitely try to get that Algalon encounter unlocked in the near future.)
We've attempted it once in 10-man with three healers and two tanks, managed to get him down to 50% before he self-healed and it all went to pot. I think I'm going to suggest having only two healers, perhaps have our second tank be DPS spec in tanking gear (death knight), and not to kill that second guy until there's a rune for us to Heroism in.
We are going to be trying Freya on hard mode 10 this week, I believe, with all the guardians up. Our holy priest is normally very good with the raid healing, though I am considering asking her to go disc because of the mitigation it offers that is pretty much free from Ground Tremor, since PW:S is instant-cast.
I can definitely see the benefits of a disc priest on that fight but if your priest prefers to stay holy there is no point in forcing him to spec disc, it's not a big deal really. While the damage might seem scary at first, once you get a bit of practice and learn to properly manage each add wave you'll see alot of the damage is avoidable and the fight is very controllable. For the record, we used 2 healers on our kill and it went very smoothly. Log if you are interested.
As for Steelbreaker last, it is easily doable with 2 healers. It really doesn't even feel like a hardmode on 10man
I find that on Thorim aggro is an issue for everyone in the arena. As a shadow priest I also had to fade constantly but I don't think it's anything you can remedy by positioning. If you see mobs dropping down in your area, it is very likely they will aggro on the closest thing so the best thing you can do is try to run for your tank so he can pick them up.
In my experience the adds will ignore aggro and run underneath the stage. Once they get there, they aggro on whoever is closest and then behave as normal. I stand on the inner circle as far from thorim as possible and have never had aggro issues.
My gear is good, better or close to all the other priests who I raid with. I have discussed my rotation with others and they seem to agree that it is good. In the WWS report that I linked below it shows me using PoH more than I normally do, but due to the encounters last night I felt it was best.
During this raid I was assigned to raid heals. The other holy priest was assigned to heal the tanks.
It hasn't seemed to matter whether I am on tanks or raid heals... i seem to just be healing way less then others all the time.
I'm pretty frustrated and that's why I'm asking you guys. I'm hoping someone maybe able to tell something from looking at the WWS report that I linked. I'm ready to chalk it up as fail heals due to a crappy computer and a bad connection, but I really hope that something I am doing sticks out to someone as really stupid that definitely needs changed.
Any input that you may have would be deeply appreciated.
Read the beginning of the Healing Compendium 3.1 thread. Constantius' advice on how to heal the raid will help you - a lot. There a are also issues regarding your talent build for your raid healing role - again, see compendium. For further analysis, look at what your other holy priest Talienna does - that looks much better. It's all in there, don't look at the amount so much, look at what she does and how often.
Some specific issues in your WWS:
Auriaya
- Use PoM whenever available. Your PoM quota of 8% is pretty low.
- You do not use enough group heals.
As a comparison, my breakdown (2-healing 10-man) looks like this:
- PoH: 35%
- FH: 19%
- PoM: 13%
- CoH: 11%
- Renew: 9%
- The remainder is GH, Divine Hymn, Binding Heal.
It should be pretty similar in 25-man, perhaps a bit more CoH and a lot less Renew, also less GH.
Hodir
Similar issues. I won't list my breakdown for Hodir, as I suppose you can utilize CoH there far better than in 10-man (range issues).
Basically, you underutilize PoM, and you do not cast PoH enough (by far!). Make sure you find a good balance of mixing FH and PoH, so you have a good number of hasted PoHs available. It's very often worth it to throw one or two FHs to targets low on health, then cast a hasted PoH.
Originally Posted by Pewsey
Many of our snakes are 3m+ in size. They'll just take the lawnmower off you and beat the shit out of you with it to make you tender, then bite you and eat you.
Any input that you may have would be deeply appreciated.
Try and be aware of the group's composition and their placement when throwing a PoH. If five people in the same group are in a line, 15 yards apart and you target a person on the end, you won't hit as many people as if you target someone in the middle. In hodir there is a crazy amount of movement going on, so it is likely that people will be all over the place and hard to hit with PoH, so you have to try and be aware. The best target is a melee party, because they are likely more clumped than the other parties. If you position yourself in the middle of the room and your party needs a heal, you might get better coverage if you target yourself.
Also, it looks like you cast divine hymn just once on Hodir attempt. This is such an awesome spell, especially during frozen blows. I coordinate with other priests and stagger then on different frozen blows. I like to wait until frozen blows hits, bubble myself, position myself between the melee and the ranged (if possible), wait until a couple frozen blows ticks have landed, then pop an inner focus hymn. It may be the most powerful weapon of any healer on this fight.
I never seem to have any problems using PoH at Hodir, perhaps I miss 1 out of the 5 in a group, but normally I can hit a whole group. Then again, I took Holy Reach.
But it is what Hegen said, your usage of PoH, CoH and Prom are very low compared to what I see me and other holy priests doing.
Here is a log from our Hodir kill, note that I didn't have SoL then, so my usage of Fheal is higher now that I have it back again.
But I found that even when you can't stack Serendipity it is a good thing to cast a non-hasted PoH during heavy aoe dmg, over trying to cast 3 Fheal and then a PoH again. Most of the time someone is very low by then or even dead.
Looking over your talent build and WWS reminds me of a chat I had with a new recruit a few weeks ago.
* you have 6 points and a glyph spent on renew yet you only casted it 20 times on the 15boss fights in the WWS
* you spent 13 points in gheal (5 of those are shared with fheal) but only casted it 9 times on the 15 boss fights
you might wanna rethink some of these points/glyph
* your usage of PoM is appaling on fights where there is constant low raid dmg and you know it will bounce fully (steelbreaker aura, frozen blows) and this is not only your problem but also the other priest (hecarte) is low on PoM usage on these events.
* on a fight like Hodir you don't need serendipity stacked if you use the moonlights
Other then that your RL can do some smart grouping so your PoH will hit its maximum targets. I put all the melee/tanks in two groups knowing they will usualy all be stacked around the boss, Mages/Locks/Spriests on fights like Hodir will be flocking together near cosy fires or if you split the DPS up into groups/quadrants you can put them in the same party
I'm most of the times disc spec but holy on fights with much raid dmg like tantrum pre-nerf and hodir and then I use this spec for maximum raidhealing.
My guild is doing decently in our 25mans and like most guilds (I imagine atleast) we've gotten to mim25 and need a couple more attempts to push through. My question here is that I like to play around with different specs (it may be that I'm just bored) and I wanted to bounce some ideas of people who have done the 25man hard modes.
I'm running a 28/43 spec for most fights (except for mim where i've restricted myself to a cookie cutter 14/57 just because we're learning the fight and GS is beneficial for dps that likes to stand in rockets :/) and have a couple of questions:
-PoM, renew and CoH being my primary heals (I'm going to play around with nova this week since I think its an undervalued heal), i'm usually the one who's heal lands first and tides the person over before a larger heal tops the toon off. However my 2k+1 tick of renew ends up making that casted heal over heal for 4k-ish. Thus are my heals mostly for show/meters while making others overheal?
-Because this spec severely lacks throughput when we do hard modes will PoM+CoH+renew+nova be enough or will I not be able to tide over the incoming dmg?
-am I gibbing myself with this spec? The reason I'm asking is that for nearly all encounters I top meters so its hard to figure out if I'm doing things right or wrong. However I've also seen people mentioning here that healing meters aren't like DPS meters and I might have priorities mixed up (my warrior used to be my main so there it was just about big numbers and being #1)
WMO (last weeks 25man with the 28/43 spec though without the serendipity)
my priest
I am reading the above posts about doing Steelbreaker hard mode with 2 healers and am puzzled because we are working on normal mode Council in 10 man and we are having trouble without 3 healers.
This is the WWS of our first kill where we had 2 Resto druids and myself (Disc Priest). We were doing the other night again so my gear shows I was using Foresight and Energy Syphon (instead of Egg) since it's such a long fight for us. He was enraged when he died on our first kill (we lost 2 dps to overload).
How we did the fight is tank 1 gets Steelbreaker and myself and 1 druid healed him and the dps towards the entrance of the room. The other tank (warrior) tanks the other two in the back of the room with a druid healer to himself. I am responsible for fusion punch dispel as well as keeping the MT up. I tried also to spam shields and PoM on the group but being our first kill I was probably a bit more stuck on the tank. I made sure I had a shield on the SB tank at all times and penance ready after Fusion Punch. However I can't really see how I could manage to keep all the dps up as well as the tank. We tried Council again with 2 geared healers (both disc priests) and an undergeared Paladin healer and it was bad, we replaced the undergeared Pally with a better one and it was much smoother, but still my mana was a bit taxed just tossing shields and keeping the SB tank up. I was keeping PoM on the tank, but now I am wondering if I needed to be putting it on dps (like Saph).
Is it a gear issue that is making 3 healers necessary? We are a mix of 10 man with some 25 man gear here and there. We may need to work on the other bosses a bit instead of banging away on Council.
First of all, that pally tank needs to be responsible for dispelling himself. You have to heal. There is no reason for the Paladin to rush building threat as he will have more than enough time to do that, also Steelbreaker heals up between adds going down. I'd suggest putting both druids on the tank with full hots, while leaving the raid for you. Prayer of Mending on yourself every cooldown, Power Infusion on yourself + spam PW:S on entire raid on cooldown, use Inner Focus -> Divine Hymn, try to get in a Hymn of Hope when its Steelbreaker's turn. Flash Heal raid otherwise. Druids should help occationally with a wild growth on raid, but focus on Steelbreaker Tank.
The way I have done it so far, is to leave the Pally Tank alone with Steelbreaker tank, entire fight. PW: Shield every time I can and toss in a Flash Heal whenever I can (usually when he does Fusion Punch). Otherwise I heal Runeshaper tank. Prayer of Mending keeps myself + Casters up, Judgement of Light can most of the time keep melee up. Whenever Power Infusion is up, PI myself, shield entire raid, top everyone off, and then take a minor break (Pain Supp on Steelbreaker tank, Hymn of Hope).
But if you are getting far enough to have him on enrage, you probably have trouble with DPS (Unless DPS are actually going dead from lack of healing).
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My guild is doing decently in our 25mans and like most guilds (I imagine atleast) we've gotten to mim25 and need a couple more attempts to push through. My question here is that I like to play around with different specs (it may be that I'm just bored) and I wanted to bounce some ideas of people who have done the 25man hard modes.
I'm running a 28/43 spec for most fights (except for mim where i've restricted myself to a cookie cutter 14/57 just because we're learning the fight and GS is beneficial for dps that likes to stand in rockets :/) and have a couple of questions:
-PoM, renew and CoH being my primary heals (I'm going to play around with nova this week since I think its an undervalued heal), i'm usually the one who's heal lands first and tides the person over before a larger heal tops the toon off. However my 2k+1 tick of renew ends up making that casted heal over heal for 4k-ish. Thus are my heals mostly for show/meters while making others overheal?
-Because this spec severely lacks throughput when we do hard modes will PoM+CoH+renew+nova be enough or will I not be able to tide over the incoming dmg?
-am I gibbing myself with this spec? The reason I'm asking is that for nearly all encounters I top meters so its hard to figure out if I'm doing things right or wrong. However I've also seen people mentioning here that healing meters aren't like DPS meters and I might have priorities mixed up (my warrior used to be my main so there it was just about big numbers and being #1)
WMO (last weeks 25man with the 28/43 spec though without the serendipity)
my priest
Thanks
For Mimiron (especially p2), I wouldn't dream of not having Divine Providence 5/5. For what reason are you feeling the need to go down that far into disc? Mana issues?
I wouldn't use Nova for Mimiron (or any other fight in Ulduar). It's hps is not worth the mana and it only heals your party, not the raid.
For hardmodes, spec 5/5 Divine Providence if you're a raid healer, simple as that. Having GS on certain encounters (hardmode IC, Thorim, for example) is almost necessary to prevent tank death.
Honestly, if you're a raid healer, you don't have that many talents benefiting your ability to heal the raid. PoH is a fantastic tool for raid healing, yet you don't have 2/2 Healing Prayers (btw very good), or 5/5 Divine Providence (this also reduces CD of PoM, added healing to all your raid healing spells). Your spec right now doesn't look like it favors much of any type of healing job. For hardmodes, you're going to have to change your spec if you want the raid to live on fights like IC where you have to squeeze every bit of healing out of your healers in order to win.
Also your glyphs are a little boggling to me. Why glyph Holy Nova/Renew when you could have Flash/PoH/GS (all which will benefit your raid healing more)? Holy Nova is really a terrible healing tool (unless you're standing on top of your party the entire raid, which I should hope you're not). Glyph of Renew is good, but not really worth the slot when you can get much better options with PoH, FH, or GS.
This is the build that I typically run for raid healing in Ulduar, and it hasn't failed me yet. Some priests take Desperate Prayer, also.
Holy Nova is actually amazing for Mimiron if you set the raid up to use it. It's more HpS than PoH on burst (since you get 3 hits in the same time as a PoH due to channel time). It's effectively CoH off cooldown for a 5-man party (when glyph'd), and is worth using, especially on Mimiron hard-mode.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
05/22/09, 10:32 AM
