WotLK Healing Discussion v3.2: Ulduar and Coliseum - Page 33

Vlydia · 11/04/09, 3:08 AM

Healing through the vortex in the door strategy is quite easy. With aura mastery, divine sac, and a divine hymn plus normal aoe heal spam we never lose a single person.

odyz · 11/04/09, 10:34 AM

Originally Posted by rooj

This fight is doable if only a few people are forced to take the off-color vortex instead of having nearly the entire raid soak it. We have done it where all the dps switch if needed on vortex.

We tried the door strat last night having only two spriests and two mages as soakers and we one shotted the boss. Before we were having issues with dps being able to bring down the white shield but we didn't even need heroism this way. Shields died must faster with having half as many soakers as with the "normal" strat.

The healing was not an issue at all, no one ever changed colors. People popped survival cooldowns on alt color vortex and it was easy to heal through, the spriests could hymn instead of dispersion if needed and if they could run the risk of getting hit during the channel. The ranged soaker dps was only when they got empowered and that was just icing on the cake.

We had 1 holy priest, 2 druids, 1-2 resto shammies and 1 paly if I remember correctly.

• constantius · 11/04/09, 2:34 PM

Our current strat involves 4 soakers, each with 415+ SR, and camps like normal. It doesn't quite cheese the encounter the way the door-clump strat does, and dps isn't quite as strong as in that strat, but it also doesn't require anything all that special for vortexes.

While I know some guilds pull this off using "the whole raid soaks" or "soakers without resist", we've had tremendous success (read: less deaths, 1-shot the boss repeatability) with using good classes in SR. Good classes are feral druids and shadow priests, with a third choice mages. Ferals are obscenely good at soaking balls: they can wear tank gear + SR (high HP), they have cooldowns (Barkskin, Feral-Last-Stand), and they innately move quickly. They also have passive reduction to AoE effects that means they take a minuscule amount of damage per ball soaked.

Seraphone · 11/04/09, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by Senres

My guild is working on 10m Heroic Anub. We can generally get to phase 3 but it's pretty messy. It's not uncommon to lose someone during a burrow phase. We usually just wipe it when that happens. The real problem seems to be phase 3. We invariably either lose one of the tanks and wipe very quickly or lose a dps and wipe when the second set of adds come.

We've tried a couple different healing setups: Holy Paladin + Holy Priest, Holy Paladin + Resto Shaman, Resto Shaman + Holy Priest, and Holy Paladin + Resto Shaman + Shadow Priest (only healing during phase 3). We were closest to getting Anub down when we had 3 healers for phase 3 but the second set of adds came and wiped us. Anub had 120k health left on one such attempt.

Generally we have the Paladin or Shaman drop large heals on the tanks to keep them up while I try to keep the raid up with PoM, CoH, and Renew. I often use Flash or Binding Heal on PC targets to try to keep them up.

I feel like we need to 2-heal phase 3 to beat the soft enrage when the second set of adds pop, but we don't seem to be doing a great job of keeping everybody alive in phase 3 without a 3rd healer, even just an offspec healer. Perhaps I should try going Discipline for this fight. Shields would be great for protecting PC targets. I do love having Body and Soul for the kiting phase, though. It might not be necessary but I believe it helped us get to phase 3 a couple of times when someone was poorly positioned.

Thoughts or suggestions are appreciated. I'm sorry to say I don't have a log to show.. I forgot to log last night's attempts.

Our strategy so far has been to run with two healers which has either been a Holy Paladin + Resto Druid or Holy Paladin + Holy Priest. This means we're only having one ground phase and with bloodlust after 30% we can get him down very quickly.

From a healing perspective I got renews rolling and pom out just before we hit 30% and then pop inner focus -> divine hymn once he begins leaching. After that cast pom and coh when they're off cd and flash penetrating cold victims with SoL procs, I was casting Prayer of Healing to fill in the spaces usually with one or two serendipity stacks. Last week was our first run through though and with 45 tries left I didn't want to leave anything to chance by seeing if renews were more effective at keeping the raid alive whilst on lowest possible health (or the possiblity of downranking), because we simply didn't need to run the risk with the dps we brought. With that in mind definitely don't treat that strategy as any kind of gospel, just simply stating what worked for us.

Here is the log for you.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

CaseyTheRetard · 11/04/09, 4:29 PM

Originally Posted by Seraphone

From a healing perspective I got renews rolling and pom out just before we hit 30% and then pop inner focus -> divine hymn once he begins leaching. After that cast pom and coh when they're off cd and flash penetrating cold victims with SoL procs, I was casting Prayer of Healing to fill in the spaces usually with one or two serendipity stacks. Last week was our first run through though and with 45 tries left I didn't want to leave anything to chance by seeing if renews were more effective at keeping the raid alive whilst on lowest possible health (or the possiblity of downranking), because we simply didn't need to run the risk with the dps we brought. With that in mind definitely don't treat that strategy as any kind of gospel, just simply stating what worked for us.

While you may have killed the boss, I think it's a credit to the performance of your DPS. Divine Hymn, PoM, and PoH are pretty much the worst possible things you could cast in P3: you want to heal lots of people a little bit, not few people a lot. Next time, be sure that paladin is judging Light, roll Renews on him and yourself, and flash the PC victims.

Seraphone · 11/04/09, 6:51 PM

Originally Posted by CaseyTheRetard

While you may have killed the boss, I think it's a credit to the performance of your DPS. Divine Hymn, PoM, and PoH are pretty much the worst possible things you could cast in P3: you want to heal lots of people a little bit, not few people a lot. Next time, be sure that paladin is judging Light, roll Renews on him and yourself, and flash the PC victims.

This really isn't neccessary in 10 man assuming you have DPS geared/skilled for the encounter. It's better to ensure everyone lives (which casting larger heals will do) than it is to keep everyone on as low health as possible in order for minimum healing from leeching swarm, any decent DPS (especially if you're running with six and have bloodlust up) will far out damage any healing Anub will do. Of course you aren't aiming to keep everyone on full health but there's simply no need to cut it that close.

I haven't done the 25 man encounter but from videos it seems that it is much more important to keep everyone on their minimum health without dying than is needed on the 10 man fight.

Especially as this is the guys first run through I'd say playing it safe is the best bet.

Tainter · 11/05/09, 10:22 AM

If your dps are up for the job then you can have one burrow phase and three healers. The important thing in P3 is to keep the tanks (with focus on MT) topped as much as possible. A Paladin with Beacon does wonders here and without a Paladin healing we have yet to kill the boss. I usually go Disc for this fight because all the damage is so predictable. It allows me to buffer the tanks for the Pala to fill up, shield people when they're low during leach swarn, instead of healing them and occasionally it saves a silly dps from dying to Impale if they're a bit too slow. For the third healer spot we normally have a druid because hots are great at keeping people low during P3.

In P1 and 2 the druid and I tend to dps, because Mana isn't an issue and damage is fairly light. PoM and Shield cover the debuffs and one good Pala can keep up both tanks fairly easily from what I've seen.

lemonparty · 11/06/09, 4:11 PM

Originally Posted by Seraphone

This really isn't neccessary in 10 man assuming you have DPS geared/skilled for the encounter. It's better to ensure everyone lives (which casting larger heals will do) than it is to keep everyone on as low health as possible in order for minimum healing from leeching swarm, any decent DPS (especially if you're running with six and have bloodlust up) will far out damage any healing Anub will do. Of course you aren't aiming to keep everyone on full health but there's simply no need to cut it that close.

I haven't done the 25 man encounter but from videos it seems that it is much more important to keep everyone on their minimum health without dying than is needed on the 10 man fight.

Especially as this is the guys first run through I'd say playing it safe is the best bet.

This is just plain bad advice. Just because a sloppy healing strategy works for you doesn't mean it's a good strategy to recommend to others.

Our very first time killing Anub 10 I was healing the raid and the Paladin I was with panicked and started spamming FoL on the raid. The phase took longer and it was unnecessarily stressful. The faster you heal the faster people drop.. which, if you're spamming heals, means this becomes a vicious cycle.

When I finally got him to understand how the phase is supposed to be healed, he laid off and just stayed on the tanks. It has been so easy since then.

Phase 3 healing is very simple. Keep the tanks topped off and be quick to throw heals out to PC targets. Divine Hymn, as someone stated above, is the worst spell for a priest to use in P3. If someone dips low because of a lingering scarab debuff you have SoL and PW:S.

Our 10m Insanity run was a Disc priest healing the MT and me (Holy priest) on the OT & raid - far from the ideal healing setup. We didn't have JoL or VE. We had LotP and HS totem and the non-PC'd raid didn't need any healing beyond the passive healing received from LotP and HS (but I did have renews on myself and the Disc priest). This fight can be completed without incident if you heal the phase correctly.

Starfire · 11/06/09, 5:25 PM

Low Rank CoH is pretty wonderful too, especially since it will smart-target the people most in need.

On this topic, Rank 1 Smite is pretty cool for Faction Champions. It has the fastest cast time of any spell and does not require targetting (which wanding does, how annoying). Useful for killing totems.

Gnizz · 11/06/09, 10:54 PM

Actually, healing the raid for a lot more than necesarry isn't the safe bet, it's dangerous. A simultaneous Penetrating Cold and huge Leeching Swarm tick caused by "overhealing" can kill a player very quickly.

• constantius · 11/06/09, 11:06 PM

That's a flawed line of reasoning, because a PC tick and *any* Leeching Swarm tick can kill a player quickly, especially if you have them low. Leeching Swarm does a percentage of your life. If you are at 6k health, and you take a Leeching + PC, you will die. If you are at 2k health, and the same, you will die. Provided you heal or shield for the amount of the PC damage incoming, the Leeching tick (whether large or small) will not kill the person.

Gnizz · 11/06/09, 11:17 PM

Point taken.
Seems as if I didn't think this one through.

Lambi · 11/07/09, 11:06 AM

What you need to account for though is lag. Always try to shoot an extra heal through than what is necessary. We've had several people dying from PC tick going off first, and then the leeching swarm tick being calculated wrong and ticking for a much higher value than it should, resulting in somebody dying.

Senres · 11/08/09, 3:01 AM

Originally Posted by Gofa

If the problem for your raid is the second wave of adds, just kill the first wave. There is no soft enrage in phase 3 and it's easier to just keep killing the adds and kill him slowly in my opinion. The best thing you can do is bring a holy paladin as a second healer, he will take care of the tanks on his own. Make sure he saves mana so that he can go with almost 100% mana into phase 3, he will need it.

We were able to take him down tonight. We gave him 10 or so attempts on Wednesday and couldn't get it but we one-shot him tonight. We killed the first set of adds after entering phase three which helped a lot. We also had our resto shaman go elemental and brought a holy paladin instead. The other thing, and this was more of a personal change, is that I managed not to panic at seeing everybody's health drop. Instead I managed to calmly use PoM and CoH to heal leeching swarm and flash heal PC targets to keep them up.

Thanks for all of the advice.

• constantius · 11/08/09, 9:38 PM

Originally Posted by Senres

... we also had our resto shaman go elemental and brought a holy paladin instead ...

Basically, this will always make it easier. You could have changed nothing but this, and probably beaten it. Beacon is extremely broken for Anub.10H.

Starfire · 11/08/09, 10:38 PM

Originally Posted by constantius

Basically, this will always make it easier. You could have changed nothing but this, and probably beaten it. Beacon is extremely broken for Anub.10H.

Wouldn't you say Beacon is pretty broken for most 10 mans in general?

Personally though, I think unless you're using a well-geared shield-tank for the adds, you NEED either a Holy Paladin for Anub or three-healers.

I am not saying other combinations aren't possible, but if you're serious about Insanity I wouldn't do it with less than a Holy Paladin or three-healers if you do not have a well-geared Warrior/Paladin for adds. But once you do have a well-geared shield-tank for the adds, it opens up other possibilities. (Like this week we were able to keep up our shield-tank with nothing but HoTs for the most part).

siegfried · 11/08/09, 11:02 PM

Definately not true with "shield tank or paladin." We have completed Anub10 hardmode with 2 healers (Holy Priest and Druid) and 2 DK tanks. It is not an issue at all.

edit: *and I think we got it like 2nd week 10m HM came out.*

Lambi · 11/09/09, 5:45 AM

Originally Posted by siegfried

Definately not true with "shield tank or paladin." We have completed Anub10 hardmode with 2 healers (Holy Priest and Druid) and 2 DK tanks. It is not an issue at all.

edit: *and I think we got it like 2nd week 10m HM came out.*

There's a very big difference between completing and making a setup that for sure will get insanity though...

I can for sure say that you can complete togc10 with any 2 healers coupled with any 2 tanks. But a wipe is alot more likely to happen.

Tainter · 11/09/09, 5:50 AM

For a best shot at Insanity I'd definitely go with Holy Pala (Beacon) + Priest (Versatility) + 3rd healer (Safety). We've had good experience with Druids as third, but a Shaman or 2nd Priest is probably fine too. Paladin tanks also make dealing with the add spells much easier. Mind you, it can be done with any tank, but requires more coordination. The off-tanks really need very little healing before P3 from what I've seen.

Tygerlily · 11/09/09, 9:28 PM

We've done 10man Anub with a Holy priest (myself) and a Resto druid every single week. (1x Mad skill, 3x Insanity). I focus the tanks (FH, Renew, Hasted GHs, not a single aoe heal, Binding heal when I have PC). The Resto druid takes care of PC targets (PC > PC > Tank > Tank > PC > PC). We save all of our cooldowns and pop them one after another.

The benefit of having 2 healers is that you can easily get it to phase 3 in one kite phase. Plus, we haven't had Heroism yet, so it's much easier for us.

Edit: We also let the last set of adds burrow.

StormyParis · 11/10/09, 1:52 AM

Regarding the Twins fight. We haven't reached them in Heroic mode yet, but in Normal mode I find it is the one fight where I easily out-heal my val'anyr-equipped fellow druid. We're both on orbs-busting duty. I macro Circle and PoM to automatically target my tank, so that I don't have to bother with aiming those two spells, which it is critical to spam on CD. The rest of the time I'll probably Renew or SoL myself (I get hit by the wrong orbs quite a bit) and the tank, and the occasional raid member.

Regarding Anub 10HM, we also have a very hard time downing him without a Holy Paladin, especially if Heroism is missing: the tanks and the cursed players require too much healing, I get overwhelmed. I think PoM is a strong spell for P3 though: since it auto-target the lowest-HP player, it always heals the right person. I find the CD is too long though.

Loqua · 11/10/09, 6:14 PM

So, due to some rather unfortunate circumstances, my guild just lost our only resto druid. What advice would you give me to try and equalize the damage on heroic 25 valks since we lost our hotbot?

Kashir · 11/10/09, 7:40 PM

Originally Posted by Loqua

So, due to some rather unfortunate circumstances, my guild just lost our only resto druid. What advice would you give me to try and equalize the damage on heroic 25 valks since we lost our hotbot?

Resto Shaman or Holy Priests will both output roughly equivalent HPS on Twin Valks for blanket raid healing (both will be generally about 10-20% below a Resto Druid).

Rotation might vary slightly, but I hit 10.5k HPS on our first kill by sticking pretty strictly to;

CoH . PoM. R. R. R. CoH. R. R. R. R.

You could try to make use of Holy Nova, but I found it wasn't worth it. HN is potentially much higher HPS than Renew, but it also resulted in far higher overhealing; there's too many smart-heals flying around that you can't control.

PoH is too clunky and will result in massive overhealing and mana drain. Don't even try to use it (except for Vortex!).

I needed an Innervate to keep up that rotation for the full fight (first time since Sapphiron, I think!).

Edit: This will also vary a little depending on your strategy, but if possible make sure your Holy Pallies are getting the full benefit from the HL glyph. That's a lot of free healing.

Loqua · 11/10/09, 11:11 PM

Originally Posted by Kashir

Resto Shaman or Holy Priests will both output roughly equivalent HPS on Twin Valks for blanket raid healing (both will be generally about 10-20% below a Resto Druid).

Rotation might vary slightly, but I hit 10.5k HPS on our first kill by sticking pretty strictly to;

CoH . PoM. R. R. R. CoH. R. R. R. R.

You could try to make use of Holy Nova, but I found it wasn't worth it. HN is potentially much higher HPS than Renew, but it also resulted in far higher overhealing; there's too many smart-heals flying around that you can't control.

PoH is too clunky and will result in massive overhealing and mana drain. Don't even try to use it (except for Vortex!).

I needed an Innervate to keep up that rotation for the full fight (first time since Sapphiron, I think!).

Edit: This will also vary a little depending on your strategy, but if possible make sure your Holy Pallies are getting the full benefit from the HL glyph. That's a lot of free healing.

I'm not sure I made that clear enough. I know how to heal the fight. I've done it a couple times now. My problem has nothing to do with how to put out hps, I have no problems doing that.

The difference is that before we had a resto druid rolling hots on everyone which evened out the incoming raid damage.

What I was more interested in is this: would it be better for me to switch to disc for raid shields to try and even out damage or to go full renew build.

Edit: My Current heal team for heroic 25 is usually 3 holy pallies, one resto sham, and three priests. I'm the only one of us priests who even knows how to play disc.

StormyParis · 11/11/09, 12:07 AM

I Don't think Disc will cut it without a druid to heal people back up. In the end, shields are nice, but on a very mobile fight, Disc **ONLY** has shields, and overall throughput is not as good as Holy.

I'm mainly Disc, but Twins is the fight where I always switch to Holy. That fight is a showcase for Circle and PoM. Plus Shield interferes with PoM: you'll shield the lowest-life player, PoM will go there too and sit idly until your Shield is eaten up... Holy fully uses PoM charges each CD, Disc's Shields actually spoil up to 3 PoM charges.

I did indeed go for a full "instant heals" spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

even going as far as taking Lightwell and trying to motivate my DPSers to use it: clicking Lightwell does not even consume a GCD, so if you put it right beside the boss, some will actually click it. You could probably use 2, one for distance and one for contact DPS.

You've got 5 points left, that can go either to regen talents (Mental Agility in Disc or Holy Concentration in Holy), or some throughput (Empowered Healing in Holy for those SoL Flashes, but they'll be few)

Glyph of Circle of Healing is a no-brainer. Glyph of Renew depends, maybe a slower, longer heal will work better in your case. Glyph of Lightwell would be good if you teammates actually use the well. Maybe your special circumstances can be used as an argument to push them a bit. Glyph of Guardian Spirit also makes sense.