You have to use tank rotations. On 25-man, we run 6 tanks when we're doing that achievement; you can get away with 3 on 10-man. You have to rotate tanks on the cats (because of the Rip), and on 25-man, we use the 6th tank as a backup for when a tank inevitably dies to Pounce+Fear+Rip.

Crazy Cat Lady is also zergable in 10-mans if you have access to heroism/bloodlust and some Ulduar-25 gear. We had our DK tank the two sentries from start to finish, using fear-wards or tank cooldowns for each fear (I think we only had 2, maybe 3 fears). We also ignored the Feral Defender.

We did have stupid amounts of passive healing that reset (VE, iLotP, healing stream totem, and JoL) so myself as discipline spec and a resto druid could devote most of our time to healing the DK.

We've done crazy cat lady several times on 10man just because it's faster to zerg the boss down. We had a warrior tank the boss and both cats, and just burned her hard with a 3 healer (restoshm, disc priest, restodru) 6 dps setup.

The biggest risks are when fears hit, so I usually fear ward myself and time a mass dispel for one of them, pain suppression another, and wotf the next while the tank uses cooldowns. We don't really have a set cooldown rotation, but I run that cycle on my own to smooth things out. We do have quite a bit of 25man gear and the group is some of our top raiders, but we've done it 3-4 times that way now and we 1-shot it two times if I remember correctly.

Edit: I just checked worldoflogs, and our most recent kill with the achievement, we did with 2 resto shamans and 1 disc priest. Our prior kills on it were with the previously mentioned setup. Our most recent parse is here: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

What we did on 10 man, was have a warrior tank on the boss and a DK tank tank the adds.
The DK tank had Vigilance from the warrior, when the stacks got to 6-8ish we would BoP the DK and the cats would attack the warrior for a short period (can shield wall during that phase if you like, don't think we bothered).
The bop as you can imagine, cleared the dots on the DK.

I think my guild was lacking dps last night in our Vezax hard 10 man. We were doing fine for mana when the animus spawned, but our dps had only managed to bring the general down to about 50%. What should he be at when the add spawns with a 10 man guild that only has a few 25 man items?

He should be at 5%. You should be moderately stacking the raid for your first kill (1 tank, preferably a DK, 3 healers, including a paladin and probably a rDruid), with lots of good casters who scale really well with the buffs. Sit your hunters, and bring only 1 interrupt if you can find someone you trust.

Unless your crashes were absolutely horrible, you should have to *stop* dps to avoid killing him before the 8th Saronite Vapor spawn. Then switch to the Animus, wait 5 seconds for threat, hit Bloodlust, and win.

That's true. Basically, assume your healers aren't super geared (although smart enough to use very high intellect items wherever possible), and assume no shenanigans with DIs, Soulstones, or Crash-based-Brez to get them back up with mana. In that case, you can get through the Animus only to discover that your healers are all basically flat OOM.

In a case like that, the lower you have the General, the better, especially because he *will* heal slightly (or a lot, if you're bad at MotF) during the Animus phase.

As a check, see how much healing he actually takes in a given Phase 1. If any MotF ticks more than twice on the ranged group, the person with Mark failed badly. You *have* to get out of the raid asap. Half of it is to reduce healing on the boss, and half of it is to reduce raid damage, because no-one has mana to actually heal that damage.

Also as an aside: you don't need to get Shadowdodger to execute a clean kill, but it should be "close". If people are eating crashes left, right, and center, you're not going to make it through the Animus.

For 10 man, we did well using a 2 tank / 3 healer set up but we did it slightly different.

We found that if you have the OT tanking 1 add and have the MT tank 1 add + Auriaya, the rip stacks will drop in 10 man. The defender can still cause havoc if not controlled, but on the whole this was a pretty easy way to manage the problem.

A couple more tips if you're finding the general has too much health coming out of the animus phase:

• Look at your parses and make sure you aren't getting too many Mark of the Faceless ticks (2 can be avoided, 3+ is bad) off 1 debuff.
• Consider having a disc priest shield all your ranged while standing in shadow crash; absorbed MotF damage doesn't heal vezax. This is sustainable in both 10 and 25man, provided you're smart about when you cast it. If a MotF was just cast and has already moved away, don't refresh the PW:S's right away - wait about 10 seconds. Don't refresh PW:S until it expires or is consumed (don't just go off weakened soul), and obviously don't cast ANYTHING outside of shadow crashes. Keeping a shadow crash mana cost POM on one of the ranged will also efficiently bounce and heal on MotF damage.
• Keep a healing debuff on vezax, even during the animus. A hunter using focus aimed shot or a rogue focus shivving the general with both mobs stacked on top of eachother works well for the animus phase.
• Aspect of the pack's daze effect does not trigger from MotF or the animus aura. Look into using it if you have a hunter - it makes moving out for MotF quickly so much easier, and your raid will instantly become pro shadow crash dodgers. You may want to turn it off briefly while the tank positions the animus when it spawns.
• Make sure your ranged dps aren't running too far when dodging shadow crash. You only need to be about 25 yards away. Some people like to run until the crash hits the ground, and it's lost dps time.

This is what we did as well. Tremor totem of course is huge but fear ward (cast before the pull and again during) helps quite a bit as it will prevent your cast from being interrupted. The biggest problem we were having was either of the tanks (pally / DK) being gibbed on the pull - we hadnt used CDs at the beginning before but we may in the future to help with the initial dmg burst on the tanks.

Anyone have any tips on Mimiron hard mode (10m)? I know it was nerfed yesterday but we have problems keeping melee up if napalmed in P1. Is this typically a two or three heal hard mode fight?

You'll want to bring 3 healers for stability. One person heals Napalm, and 2 cover the tank; when Plasma Blast isn't going off, the 2nd tank healer helps on raid.

If more than 2 people get Napalm at a time, you're in trouble; it happens on 25-man, but it shouldn't happen on 10. Just have your melee try to spin as they run out for Shock Blast so they don't end up on top of each other.

We ran 8 healers for early learning, then dropped to 7 to get into P4, and finally went 6 for the kill. After the second kill, we went back up to 7 in order to drag our holy paladin through the fight. After the nerf, we used a random composition of "whoever was online" and 1-shot it. Basically, since you're learning it now, I suggest bringing a balanced group of 7 healers, and just practicing until you can transition to P4 with 3:30-4:00 left on the enrage timer. You'll use the time.

As far as fires, here's the general rule(s) of thumb for when to control fire:

P1: only semi-control fire until the Suppression goes out. After it does, absolutely 100% control every fire that spawns, and keep them tight and do NOT run vertical lines from the middle to the wall.You have to be able to rotate around the room. If you're really pro, you can take a fire and turn it into 3 blobs in a triangle shape for all of its tail (just run it over itself).

Here's a video of a clean transition. I don't quite manage to get the fire to clump in 3 spots, but it comes close enough: playing-with-fire.mp4 Download File

P2: You can't control fire. Basically, just try to rotate CW or CCW from a spawn so it chases you in long strings that are parallel to the walls. You never want to take a fire from close to Mimiron back to the wall, again. This phase you mostly ignore the fire except to make sure you don't stand in it. Frost Bombs help keep the room clear.

P3: As soon as P2 ends, the entire raid needs to clump up near the biggest concentration of fire in the room (hopefully just one zone of it, since a Frost Bomb will have recently gone off). Spawn any new fires near that, and stay tight. Then the ONLY people who leave the clump are the Fire Bot killers (i.e. hunters), and the head tank + his healers. Keep rotating in a consistent direction (we call which way we're going on vent as we transition), and keep the head tank well ahead of the raid for at least 30 seconds, preferably until the first Magnetic Core.

As P3 ends, leave the Fire Bots up for a few seconds, let them clear out some fires for you, and kill them just before Mimiron goes active again (their frontal AoE will kill squishy people).

P4: Stay in the middle as long as you can, as as soon as the first Frost Bomb goes off, head into that area with Mimiron, all melee, and all ranged. Stay reasonably close in a big circle, but spread out around him so you don't share Hand Pulse. When the next bomb goes off, same thing: run to that area. Keep repeating this until he dies, or you hit Enrage.

Hi - I have raided Ulduar so far with a 14/57/0 Holy spec. Up until yesterday we had everything up to and including Auriaya pretty much 'on farm' and are learning the keepers now.

Our normal healing setup is:
1 resto druid
1 resto shaman
3 holy priests
1 <random healer>
On the more healing intensive fights we would add a 7th healer (whatever was available)

We've always had problems keeping tanks alive (XT tries tank always died, Iron Council had problems with tank dying, Kologarn lost lots of time due to tanks dying). We have some pretty well geared / skilled tanks in all 4 classes (DK, Warr, Feral, Pala)

Yesterday, for Hodir tries, I thought I would try Disc (57/14/0). Given that this was our first night on 25-man attempts, we didn't lose the tank once (apart from the time when he equipped the wrong trinket and wasn't capped).

I'm convinced my spec made a difference, and I'm also convinced it will help prevent tank deaths on the other fights listed above, but I want to prove it. Any tips on how I can read WWS to assess Disc healing contribution to a raid? Would using World of Logs be a better option for me?

Renewed Hope alone is a good enough reason to bring a Disc Priest. (-3% damage taken entire raid.) Also the ability for a Disc Priests shields to make a difference on a person with low HP is worth noting.

Should I expect to see a (near) 100% uptime on Renewed Hope?

What about Grace and Divine Aegis? What kind of uptimes should I be looking for on these. I'm guessing that, if mana allows, its acceptable to overheal massively with FH or Penance just to proc a Divine Aegis? Same with Grace? Overheal is OK if a) it keeps 3 stack up and b) mana is OK?

re: shields yes - I noticed that on Hodir. Many a time I would skip round the raid, shielding low HP targets and relying on the other 2 holy priests and the resto shaman to heal them up with CoH and Chain Heal.

Renewed Hope lasts 20 seconds after you cast a PWS. If you are not casting a PWS every 20 seconds you should reconsider going back to Holy. Uptime (when you need it) = 100%. (I have however not retested lately to see if it still stacks with Sanctuary, as it did before.)

Divine Aegis is a result of you having a crit heal. So its uptime is based on how much damage whoever you heal receives and your chance to crit. Not really important, as most fights where there is a challenge there is enough raid damage to never have a wasted Divine Aegis.

Grace is stacked up fully after 1 Penance (unless you don't take 2/2, which some people prefer.) Grace is only improving your heals, not the entire raid. I've spammed Penance on cd on hard hitting bosses just to keep up extra DA and Inspiration. Happens I spam Flash too if I know I wont be challenged on mana.

Hey guys, first time posting.

Had our first night of attempts on 10 man Algalon tonight, I just had a few questions.

Comp is warrior/druid tanks, warlock, hunter, ele shaman, and rogue for dps, with two priests and a resto druid healing. We managed to get Algalon to around 56% percent at our peak attempts. Our main problem was simply the tanks kept dying. We started off with one priest as discipline and the other as holy, healing the tanks and raid respectively. About a half hour into attempts, I, being the holy priest, respecced to discipline to focus more on tanks. However, we still had major problems keeping the tank alive for the rest of attempts. I have the basic cookie cutter discipline talents, but I'm wondering if there are any talents worth taking just for Algalon that I'm completely overlooking.

Also, is having two disc priests worth losing the benefits of a holy? Guardian Spirit being the first thing that comes to mind, could be crucial for the Big Bang. I honestly could not tell if it was my being disc or our getting used to the fight that improved attempts after I respecced. It should also be known that I definitely have more experience as holy.

What healing comps have been used so far?

Our comps that have been successfully used are:
Paladin/DPriest/RSham
Paladin/HPriest/RSham
and
Paladin/DPriest/RDruid

You pretty much need a paladin for tank heals. Disc is a great *second* tank healer for this fight, but paladins bring the brute-force throughput you need to keep your tank(s) alive.

We've used:
Warrior/Druid
DK/Druid
DK/Warrior

as tank combos as well. The strongest is definitely DK/Druid, for what it's worth.

As an aside, Algalon is officially off-limits for discussion of "strategy". We've traditionally allowed things like this to slide in healing forums where it's focused specifically on JUST THE HEALING and not the strategy. So don't go any deeper than spec-as-a-priest for now; there still aren't very many kills. And 25-man is completely off limits.

Having healed Algalon 10 as both holy and discipline, I can say that Discipline is by far the superior spec for the fight. The incoming tank damage is so high and the raid damage so intermittent that holy doesn't have much room to shine. Everyone is going to be spending some time healing the tank, and using Renew and Surge of Light just isn't enough healing. You pretty much need 100% inspiration uptime on the tank as well, something Discipline does better than holy.

The other thing to note is that even as holy, you'll want talents which boost single target throughput: Empowered Healing, Divine Fury, and Improved Healing. Odds are high that you're missing some or all of these in your traditional raid spec. So if you have to respec for the fight anyway, you might as well pick discipline.

Thanks for the responses.

Constantius, I think we have the strat down pretty well, it's just a matter of the tanks dying, so I'm honestly just curious as to whether or not there are certain talent points I should rearrange. I realize that the Big Bang is physical damage, but his other abilities are magic. Is Spell Warding worth taking over Divine Fury as disc?

The reason we have two priests in the same run without a holy paladin is simply that we only have one holy paladin, and he's in a different run. Would double disc make up for the lack of holy paladin maybe? During attempts I was basically spamming the tank with flash heal and penance on CD, only prayer of healing after stars died, but the resto druid picked up any raid healing slack with ease. I know that the other priest was doing the same. Maybe it's just a matter of swapping one of the priests and finding a holy pally alt.

You basically want 2 "almost full time" healers on the MT anyway. The problem with double-Disc is that you share a Weakened Soul debuff. There's also no way a druid would be anywhere near as effective, since HoT ticks don't do enough when faced with LOL-FACE-SMASH dual-wield damage like Algalon.

If the priests used PWS on themselves for the 4-piece proc, and one of them kept Weakened Soul on the tank, it should work reasonably well.

You should both be spec'd 5/5 Spell Warding, for what it's worth; Divine Fury is almost never worth it as Disc. It's far better to just cast 2 FH than to try to use a GHeal.

For our first 10-man Algalon kill we used a Pala/DPriest/Druid setup, but as we've tried to switch the groups up a bit, last night we healed it with a Shaman/DPriest/Druid team. The shaman and I were on full time tank healing and while I've always used a standard FH-based 57/14 spec, I was worried that an LHW-spamming Shaman and an FH-spamming DPriest wouldn't have the HPS to keep up. I went for a GH-based 53/18 spec (dropping to 1/2 Grace and dropping Imp FH) which was successful. The combination of large heals and the huge DA shields really seemed to smooth out incoming damage.

I don't really like the spec for much else, since most bosses don't hit hard enough or fast enough to land 2.1s GH's with out major overheal, but if anyone is in a situation to do Algalon without a holy paladin, I think this setup is a viable strategy.