Yes there are, mostly because of the Shadow Protection buff/aura.

In addition to that, some classes have talents to reduce the damage (Spell Warding, Shadowform, Survival Instincts, Soul Link, etc). You also need to mind that your PW:S Glyph ist able to crit and therefore procc Divine Aegis. You already mentioned Valanyr Proccs.

There are many different things that lead to inconsistent amounts of absorb, so there is no other solution than to play around with your spellpower (especially trinkets) and the ranks of PW:S. In an optimal case most of the shields break and no one has the infest debuff left on him/her.

I cleaned this up a bit for releasing from some data I was gathering for Infest.

Infest Shield Calculator

Enter your spell power, level, talents, and ICC buff, and it will display your absorb values for ranks 10-14. The last tab has some information about Infest on 25 Heroic. I believe all of the information listed is accurate, but feel free to PM me with any corrections.

The new version has Focused Power and Twin Disciplines as additive multipliers.

Pixlol,

The infest ticks for 17-19k unmitigated in 25 hm. I doubt you can absorb a non-resisted hit with a shield only. Getting maximum spellpower will help, but isn't enough by itself.

The main problem I see is your healing configuration. Idealy you will want two priests healer to cover the infest. At least one disc, and either another disc, or a holy priest who knows what to do. You might be able to do it with one priest only, if you're comfortable with the fight. Keep in mind that dealing with infest gets harder in valkyr phase.

Also, keep your shadowpriest ready to pop his DH when you call for it. Your palas should plan an aura mastery rotation, you probably can't rely on it for every infest, but it will help learn the fight. And anyone with a cooldown is supposed to use it if he/she sees an infest ticking on him/her for too long. Prioritize lower total hp targets with infest first (I like to display infest as a corner indicator on grid for this reason). A 40k hp warrior will not get the dot with -3.5k after infest, but a 30k hp mage will get it.

On a side note, is it me or you didn't use Prayer of Mending? It's incredibly efficient against infest. Try to use Binding Heal and Penance as well. You shouldn't be on the tanks at all, not even a shield, to keep your rapture off cd between infests. And if you start casting flash heal, you're loosing time that you could spend shielding against the next infest. That's the frustrating part...

Casting PW:S on tanks before ~15 seconds until infest is a perfectly valid way of getting a rapture proc and still resetting the rapture ICD in time for the next infest.

Pixlol,

As tasha said, you won't be absorbing every infest in its entirety without breaking, however you should only be left with a handful of still ticking infests each time.

Two things that may help you:

-Firstly taking a a druid when you are using a 5 healer strategy is imo still a no go on the 20% buff, they just dont have the burst aoe healing to deal with the infests that weren't negated by your shield, A Shaman and a Holy Priest seems to be working best for us at the moment.

-Secondly you should probably aim to get 20 people shielded for each infest, this is easily doable and should still leave you with a gcd to fire off a PoM before most infests hit. We stick our tanks and DK's in group one who won't be getting a shield, the DK's use AM wherever possible and CH and CoH tops them up to full almost instantly after the infest hits.

As tasha also said, definitely don't use your shield on the tanks, you don't even have enough time to get a shield on the rest of the raid. As for the start of the fight, 20 seconds before he engages is the perfect time to shield everyone but the LK tank, fire off a PoM and cast a PI on a lucky mage before the 1st infest hits.

Hope this helps, good luck with progression.

Hi Bobbeh,
I'm the bubble-spammer guy on LK, and I'm quite surprised by your statement.
Probably due to the lag (150ms approximately), even if I spam PW:S just before the end of each GCD (to diminish the lag effect between each PW:S), I don't manage to put 20 shields plus a PoM (and a PI if it's up) between each infest.
My average score is 18 PW:S + 1 PoM, so that's 3 GCD less than what you do easily.
Since I'm GCD-capped, I was wondering if you did something particular to be able to cast 3 more spell than me, or if I was doing something wrong (can I fail in spam ? O_o).
Do you have a log to show, please ?

Grouikette,

for me, the shortest time between 2 infests is enough to get 20 shields and nothing else, this is with 50ms and being GCD capped. Then when the interval is slightly longer theres enough for a PoM or more shields or whatever.

During phase 2 there's still the occasional interval where there's room for a PoM but with all the movement and such it becomes much tighter sometimes missing a few shields, but for the majority its possible to get 20 up each time.

We're still very much progressing through phase 2 so our logs are a bit messy at the moment but here's out best try from this evening World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I generally favour an extra shield over a PoM at the moment as our 2 infest healers are doing so well clearing it off.

My guild is currently working on HM LK and we seem to have hit a brick wall half way through phase 2. The discussion that has come up is how to most effectively handle infests. Our healing make up is as follows:

Paladin x2
Shaman
Druid
Priest x2

Sometimes we trade trade out 1 paladin for a shaman depending on who is there.

My question is whether the priests should run holy/disc or duo disc.

Another question I have is that currently we have the two priests and the druid on raid heals and the rest on tanks. Is the druid a bad choice? Should we have the druid on the tanks and shaman on the raid instead?

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Hey Kalandras,

If you decide to take 6 healers with you (one being a druid) your most optimal approach to infests is to leave it to the shaman and 2 priests, I can only really speak from my own perspective (and a bit from what I hear from other healing teams progressing on it) but the shaman/2 priest combo really is the most effective way of nullifying infests.

Its been said before but essentially your druid (compared to the other healers at least) is a dead weight during the 1st 2 phases. I would love to hear from someone who is progressing (or has killed it!) who uses a resto druid to good effect/how they set things up etc.

Theres 3 options for your priests:
-Disc/Holy - the disc aims to shield 20 people for each infest and does nothing else while the shaman and holy priest clear off any that remain.
-Disc/Disc - same again only the second disc has a slightly harder job clearing off the remaining infests. The benefit from this tactic however is that when your primary shielder gets picked up in phase 2 you have your second disc to finish off the shields before the next infest hits.
-Disc/Disc - this time both priests shield half of the raid each for every infest, after it hits both priests have a brief period where they can clear off any remaining before they have to begin reapplying shields.

I honestly can't tell you which one of these works best (or if there are other variations) but the 1st has served us well so far, most of our wipes are caused by defiles or important people getting carried over the edge.

As far as your druid goes, stick it on the tanks supporting the paladins, however it'll be hugely useful on the raid during the transitions and in the frostmourne room.

As I said we're still making progression through phase 2 as well so my opinions are only based on what I've seen so far, hope it helps either way.

There's a 4th option, use a 21/41 (+9) Disc/Holy Priest. It gives you the benefit of Soul Warding and Circle of Healing; however this priest won't have Rapture, so mass-shielding the raid will not be sustainable. (You also lose Guardian Spirit and Pain Suppression/Power Infusion).

Also, every holy priest should be able to cover at least 6 people through Infest with no problem. Prayer of Mending should guarantee 1 person and a Prayer of Healing on melee should cover 5. The shield difference is surprisingly small, because the holy priest has more spellpower and couple of talents to help make-up for Borrowed Time.

Bobbeh,

Currently the druid is only with the run because we are working with what we got. I told to healers that I can generally only handle about 18 Give or take some With PW:S, but usually i get blamed for anyone dying to infest. Our second priest gets back this week so him + his valynar should make a huge difference in our healing group + the 25% buff I believe hits this week as well. While on the topic you mention going Disc / Disc which Is what we were going to try however it seems like having one Disc and one Holy would work the best with him instantly topping off the melee with Prayer of Healing and then CoH immediately following. I haven't been able to see if this work but was curious if that's a valid strategy. Also, we had a Paladin emo rage this week and was curious if it was highly possible to have a restoration shaman healing the MT with a Holy Paladin beacon on the MT while healing the OT.

Thanks again for all the information its helping when we get time to get pulls in.

PS: Also regarding 10 man we are doing Holy paladin / Disc but it seems to get rather rough with raid heals During the transitions any advice?

Bobbeh,

On the subject of the shaman and druid assignment, keep in mind that you pretty much want 100% inspiration on tanks in this fight, since Soul Reaper gibs are still very dangerous and sadly neither the druid nor the paladin healers can't do provide this buff. The disc priest will be shielding raid and almost never the tanks, and the holy will also be busy with infest with it comes, leaving your tank sometimes without the -10% physical dmg buff.

With the tactic we use (Shaman/Holy) the 2 infest healers are essentially just tank healing anyway until the brief period where they need to clear infests meaning inspiration will more than likely be up all the time.

As for Soul Reaper our second tank just range taunts it so when done right it'll never result in a death.

My ICC 10 group is stuck on the Lich king. I've found that keeping PW:S up on the inside phase where the valkarie are carrying off the people helps a lot to keep the other heals on the tank (2 druids). I'm the lowest geared person in the group, aside from the PvP bracer that was better than my lower level one, do I need to regem? Re-enchant? Anything like that? Any suggestions other than to put up PW:S in that phase and keep prayer of mending on the tanks on every CD? Should we grab another Disc priest to help with the infest? Any suggestions would be awesome. Thanks.

Disc/Disc isn't really an effective combo, for 25HM at least.
What we basically did, was designate 3 groups for myself (disc), a melee group for the Holy Priest (and left overs for the sham's CH bounce). Doesn't put out the max number of possible shields, but its a little more reliable (especially when 1 of those healers is picked up). I shield my 15, get a PoM out on one of the common targets to not remove infest (mages/locks/paladin's seem to take slightly more damage, possibly through a lack of % spell based damage reductions in talents), when done with those, I'll get a few renew's going (depending on time).
Those 15 players are mostly my responsibility, so when infest rolls out, those are my priorities to remove infest debuff (rather than restarting shielding immediately, with 2 people still having infest).
We typically use a Sham bouncing CH's through the MT (picking up the other melee in G1 for infest, along with CoH after the PoH cast for Holy Priest), keeping up 10% reduction. The priest version of this is much more difficult to manipulate on a single target (Target MT w/ 6 people at lower % Hp around him = those 6 get healed and not tank, doesn't 'have' to hit the primary target).
As for the rough damage at transition, the P1 transition is fairly low impact (as the platform is still there), and no one should be taking Winter ticks. But the second transition, everyone in the raid takes at least 1, plus your dealing with P+S. About the only thing you can do, is either have the raid fully shielded already (can be tricky, but if there's an infest right before transition, there needs to be a raid CD call). Also, having designated sides to run out at helps to (2 ranged run out about 10-15yds from the LK MT with a healer, few others and other healer on other side, spread far enough to maintain range, but avoid 10person cone).
If damage during the transition (melee heavy groups), only way I've seen thats really effective, its to just have melee watch out, split them to 2 groups, if they get a 4 stack (self monitored), each group takes 2-3 steps further apart (out of dps range), for 1 P+S pulse, which will reset the stacks on at least most of them.

Holy with Body and Soul is very effective for Heroic Halion. If you have a Disc Priest, ask them to restrain themselves from rampant bubbling in the 1st phase to leave your raiders clear for a free sprint when they get consumption/combustion. It's also very mobile in the twilight realm. You are able to put out a lot of healing with your instants and keep Guardian Spirit for dangerous moments on your tank or to save people that get RNG'd with debuffs or cutter.

I used the 18/53/0 spec I'm wearing for the longevity with instants, and even got some good healing with Lightwell when I remembered to use it.

Halion 10 Heroic