Holy is flat out better for Twins, but Discipline is fine. Just setup the groups to abuse Holy Nova and you're good to go. We've done the fight with 3 discipline priests before.

We're currently working on ToGC10 with two groups and have reached Anub (the groups change from week to week so not all of us have seen everything yet). Last week was my first viewing of Faction Champions, which proved to be quick, painful and unpleasant. We tried various methods, from heavy CC to straight nuking, but our best attempt ended with only one of them dying. We faired significantly worse than they did (First night, second night).

I raided as discipline on both nights we worked on this. The first night - with successful Beasts and Jaraxxus kills - I was with a holy paladin, on the second night I was with a holy priest and a resto druid. I've gone over our logs but much as I try, I'm struggling to fully understand what the main issue was. The incoming damage to the raid felt very rapid and uncontrolled. On the second night it felt like healing was a bigger issue, on the first I think we should have been better with CC, but I could be off the mark here.

We were up against the resto druid, resto shaman, shadow priest, warrior, ret paladin and warlock. My main feeling on the fight was that it should not have felt like the uphill struggle it did.

There's nothing particularly special about healing for Faction Champions. If healing is particularly difficult, it's either;

a) You're not dispelling enough (both offensive and defensive)
b) Your CC isn't working
c) Your DPS is too slow

If you can get through Beasts and Jarraxus, chances are good that healing isn't the problem for FC.

We normally burn down the two melee first while our tanks keep the healers busy (or our warlock if we get the resto druid). We generally pop fears and CC on the second melee while the first dies, but otherwise don't worry too much about CC. Once the melee are down, the fight is over.

Don't shield the lowest life player. He should be catching a chain heal. Shield the people that are 75% and up so that you fully utilise the Shield Glyph and don't waste PoM. If the low health player is in danger of death then you can use Flash Heal. Only if there's a risk of imminent death should you cast a shield, for the reason you mentioned.

As others have mentioned, dispels are extremely helpful in this fight. Some tips for a disc priest on FC:

* Shield up a couple of people before the pull and make sure ProM is out there.
* When you engage throw out 3-5 Mass Dispels. It's basically a couple GCDs for you and you'll wipe out a lot of their buffs and clear off the initial set of DoTs they put up.
* Pain Suppression early. Burst damage is huge in this encounter. If you see the warrior whirlwind with a group around him, PS someone to ease the healing load.
* When you see the shaman cast Heroism toss out another 2-3 Mass Dispels. You want to get Heroism off of them ASAP.
* Keep your eye out for Divine Shield and Hand of Protection. Toss out a Mass Dispel when you see them.
* In between shields/PoM/Penance toss dispels on your focus target. You want to keep HoTs off of him.
* Defensive dispels are really important. A single Dispel Magic on VT will save you from doing 17,500 healing over its duration.
* Did I mention Mass Dispel? Press that hotkey a lot.

Some general suggestions. Always make sure Mortal Strike (or something similar) is up on your focus target. On the parse I looked at MS uptime was 70% so you're pretty good there. Make good use of CC. We usually we have one tank interrupting and generally distracting their second healer while we burn the first. We also always have someone distracting their big DPS (espcially the warrior).

Good luck!

Hello, everyone!

I have been using your forums for a really long time now, i have seen many of your questions and the solution to most of them. Some did help me, and some gave me new ideas. And it has come the time when i am who makes a question.

I play my holy priest as "spirit priest"; i am allways trying to look for gear with huge amounts of spirit and haste, apart of the intellect and SP. I use Sparkling Majesic Zicorn (20spirit) and Quick King's Amber (20 haste) mostly. My idea is dont socket for intellect at all cost, and keep stacking as much spirit and haste as i can.

So here comes my question, wich will probably be usefull for more raid healer priests aswell i guess.

Dates: The World of Warcraft Armory

Haste....... 824
Spirit........1343
Intellect....1231
MP5......In (430)out (824)

I am wondering... how could it work if i switch my hate sockets for intellect gems? so those 50 haste points would become 50 inellect points. Acording to the rule where 3Int > 1mp5 & 1Int > 15 mana pool points, i would gain a not despreciable amount of mp5, and i consider the mana regeneration the prio for absolutly all healers, where ever it comes from.

So here comes the dilemma, shall i sacrifice some of my haste for more mp5 wich will come from crits (as it's intellect) and some extra mana pool? or shall i stack with te max haste possible and keep spirit gems?

I personally like the idea of stacking haste and spirit, the gear should give you the SP and itellect enough (as raid healer), then your play style will make the diference. I dont really have any kind of "oom" issue, i perfetly know how to use my mp5 cd's to make them usefull for the raid and for myself, but as i hope to get more gear with more sockets, i'll need to be sure about my plans.

I would like to know your opinion and sorry for the armory link, there are some new items wich may not be 100% fixed.

I am posting it here as I consider it important when it comes to talk about the raid healing aspect for TotGC.

Yes, I think you would like to have a larger mana pool in TotGC 25, and less haste. However, with a large amount of regen, you should have no problems with mana in TotGC 25. My suggestion would be to not change gems until you run it and see what problems you encounter.

Personally, I think a better gem expenditure would be to replace that haste with spell power, as your spell power looks a bit low for someone geared in mostly iLvl 245 pieces.

Resto Druids, both the amount you bring and (I guess in your case) their healing ability, definitely set the tone, if you will, for Twin Valks.25 Heroic. Without them it can be pretty exciting for a Holy Priest, but with two or more it can be quite the snoozefest. We have used the door strategy as well; our setup is to keep one healer dedicated to the Hunters or other orb catchers, use one Holy Paladin on tank heals, and the rest, typically 3-4 healers, on the raid. Nothing too explicit about it, as Nidaba said; there is a lot of cross healing.

Sans Resto Druid (or with a terribad one), I would definitely recommend just bringing another Holy Priest or Resto Shaman if you have them to sub in. Having three or so CoH used on cooldown along with Chain Heals and rolling renews should keep people alive. Range isn't an issue with the door strat so abuse Holy Nova too like others suggested.

Haha, I wouldn't say the dps can be too slow, as long as the healer's mana supports it and you're not losing players. Please note, I'm not bragging about this kill, nor is it indicative of our standard kills of Faction Champions Heroic. But for some entertainment, 15 min. : World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis.

As for your "zerg melee strat," I personally find the melee to be the least worrying of any of the mobs in the encounter. Sure, the melee can be deadly, but if you raid with hunters, just keep traps down and run away from them... I've spent a lot of time arguing with many different raid leaders to the effect that the melee should in fact be the last priority in the kill order. I would recommend nuking a healer or a ranged dps first followed by whichever of the two wasn't nuked. For ranged dps priority, the hunter and the mage are definitely the most deadly. As for healer priority, the druid is easily cced by rotating banishes and fear and any hots he gets off are easily dispelled. The paladin can be solo interrupted, therefore, I recommend always choosing the priest or shaman healer if they are present. Personally, I think dropping the shaman first is the most effective, mainly because players in raid aren't always vigilant about keeping tremor and grounding totems dead and this can cause problems early in the fight.

The whole reasoning behind this is that the melee are just as deadly as the hunter and mage. However, the mage and hunter can easily combo someone from range and they will definitely die without pain suppressions or bops, or class-specific cooldowns. Preventing the chance of this happening is difficult, because it is impossible to keep the mobs cced 100% of the time (dispells, tremor totems, the mob's pvp trinkets). However, the melee should never be able to combo players in the way that the ranged can, because you simply slow them and kite them. If you have an enemy rogue, assign a rogue or a dk to controlling him. When he shadowsteps, deathgrip him back or have a rogue that blinds/stuns/etc. If you have an enemy warrior, assign a dk to deathgrip him out of the raid when he charges. If you have an enemy dk, make sure that chains of ice is dispelled quickly from players that he death grips. Apart from this, all the raid needs to do is simply stay a bit spread and run away from any melee that are near. A disc's PW:S and a Holy Shock should be more than enough to cover the damage any raid member can take from melee alone with this tactic. Note: have priests watch if the melee get freedom and quickly dispel it. Once, you have one or two healers down and both the hunter and the mage down (if present), then I would have the raid take down rogue, enhancement shaman, or ret paladin (if present).

The reset of the enemy ranged dps seem insignificant in their actual threat to the raid. Their job more seems to be to create chaos with cc's and dots and dispels. They can easily be left to this as long as you throw the odd cc their way and dispel better than they do!

The melee train can be problematic - if you get rogue/war/DK/hunter (yes, hunter is ranged) that combo can run around one-shotting folks easily. However, the melee train can also be handled well - and should be. DK on rogue works well, and having that person calling out the rogue's target is extremely helpful. Once people learn that if they hear their name called out they need to stop whatever they're doing and GTFO, the fight gets easier.

The shaman healer should probably be the first to go - the healing stream totem gets ridiculous - I don't remember what it ticks for, but it's nuts. The druid can be taken care of between banish/fear. The paladin is easily interruptible (use like a war tank)

I do, however, advocate for a melee dying, right after the shaman healer. (If there is one.) My preferred kill order would (in 25) would be 1 healer, then 1-2 melee, and if you reach that point with the raid alive, you win.

Since this is the Priest forum, priests need to be on-the-ball with Mass Dispels. Your primary concern is the paladin Hand of Freedom/Hand of Protection (either or) and the obvious Heroism/Bloodlust. An AOE fear from the opposing priest that's countered with a MD would be good as well. In general, I wouldn't worry about the silence from the Warlock DoT. We have our paladin tank just running around dispelling folks

Maybe I have just been very lucky but I've never been hit by the backlash effect on Unstable Afflication. I typically heal faction champs as a Disc Priest and spam Mass Dispel a lot. Given my experience I assumed that Mass Dispel is "smart." The same way it targets Divine Shield and Ice Block before other buffs it seems to ignore Unstable Affliction.

But like I said, maybe I've just been lucky. I'll have to run a few tests to see if that's the case.

Edit: The Not So Evil below explains what's probably happening. We also have a Paladin who spends a good portion of his time helping to cleanse the raid.