Raid Strategy

Plan Your Raid with RaidComp!

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raidcomp

MMO Champion’s released a great new tool for Guild and Raid Leaders alike! It’s called RaidComp!

The basic premise of the tool is that it allows your leaders to plan raids and optimize them by literally dragging and dropping different class specs. The right side of the screen shows buffs and debuff abilities that the spec can bring.

With buffs now being applied raid wide, it would be time consuming to manually figure out what spec your players were and what abilities they had on your own. Using RaidComp, you don’t have to do that anymore.

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Right: Here you can it showing the debuffs that the raid composition I picked will be able to apply. Below the debuffs, you can see the total count of the number of tanks (based on talents), healers, Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, Mana Batteries (Replenishment), as well as Heroisms.

There are certain classes and specs that will overlap with each other. You’ll notice that Spell Damage Taken debuff is in yellow. I have a Warlock in there with Curse of Elements which increases the Spell Damage taken. There is a talent that increases the potency of Curse of Elements to 13% (Spell damage taken increase).

Alternatively, if I didn’t want the Warlock to pick up that spec or if they didn’t want to get the talents for whatever reason, I can mouse over that and it will show me the other classes and spells that can do the same thing I want. You can see what it looks like below.

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Below: And just for fun, here’s a test raid that I threw together just for kicks to ensure that I could get every possible buff and debuff so you can see what it looks like. It offers full support for a 40 man raid. Not only that, you can even export builds as links and share them with other players.

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A great big thanks to the tech monkeys at MMO-Champion for coming up with this nifty script!

Healing Naxxramas – Grobbulus (10 man)

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grob-1

Welcome to Grobbulus! You’’ll run into him right after Patchwerk in the Abomination wing. Once the room’s been cleared out, get ready to grab Grobby!

Abilities

He puts a disease on players at random called Mutating Injection. It’s very important that it does not get dispelled! There’s a boss in Blood Furnace (the big floating Eye) that drops poison clouds all around the room. This boss also drops poison clouds. If the disease on you gets dispelled or if it wears off, then you drop a poison cloud.

Slime Spray is another ability of his which hits for a decent sized amount. Any players who are affected will spawn slimes. DPS needs to kill slimes when they spawn!

  • Poison Cloud: Deals a moderate amount of damage

So how do you handle it?

grob-path

The Process

Tell your tank to pull Grobby in a clockwise direction. Don’t move him too fast. You don’t want to rush him around because it takes time for poison clouds to wear off.

Your DPS and healers will be standing in the middle and shooting outwards. Melee players will be standing behind Grobby as he is being tanked. Don’t forget to kill Slimes as they spawn!

If you get hit with a Mutating Injection, run and stay behind Grobbulus until it wears off. The main idea here is to keep the poison clouds on the exterior of the room thereby leaving the middle area relatively clean. Once diseased players are in a safe position, then all you need to do is Cleanse or Dispel them. The debuff will wear off and a poison cloud will expand where they were standing. Make sure they run back after the debuff wears off.

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Healing

I suggest using a 2 healer on tank, 1 on raid setup. Grobbulus does not hit really hard and the damage should be manageable. The concern here is the amount of players absorbing AoE damage from Poison clouds. As long as they are alert and aware of where they are relative to the clouds, they should have no major issues.

Other Notes

Grobbulus’ abilities are Nature based. Consider using Aspect of the Wild or other Nature Resistance abilities (Totems?). I do not know how effective using the resist is but it could help the raid stay alive longer than normal and buy more time. I haven’t had a chance to test Nature Resist. But it isn’t a necessity.

Healing Naxxramas – Grand Widow Faerlina (10 man)

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Faerlina is the second boss you’ll run into within the Arachnid quarter (Spider wing). She is flanked by 4 mobs. Do not kill them all at once. They need to be tanked in the side or just let loose running around.

Abilities

Faerlina will go into a Frenzy after every minute has elapsed from the last dispel (or a minute after the fight begins). She will hit the tank extremely hard and he will not be able to survive for more than a few seconds. The only way to dispel Frenzy is to bring one of her mobs on top of her and kill it. Only then can the effect be dispelled.

Stay mobile and keep moving. Watch out for Rain of Fire.

faer-2

So there’s a two stage encounter. The first stage is a simple tank and spank while keeping the mobs away from her. They are absolutely needed in order to remove frenzy. If you kill one by accident, then the time you have to kill her goes down. You can DPS them but don’t over do it. I suggest using mild AoE to bring them down to approximately 20% or single targeting them.

In this case, notice how we established icons on all of the different mobs. We did it so we could coordinate the kill order (“Triangle first, move square out, ease off of X”).

Healing

One healer on the main tank, one healer on the raid, the last one floats. The moment she goes into a frenzy, drop everything you’re doing and get on the MT right away. Priests, use mitigation spells as quick as you can. Actually, I’d advise your tank to use one of his panic buttons (trinket, talent, skill, whatever) right away until they get the hang of this fight.

After that, repeat what you just did. Wait until she frenzies, drag a mob over, kill it. Rinse, repeat.

However, you are on the clock. Once the last mob dies and she enrages there is no way for you to dispel it. When I did it, she went down between number 3 and number 4.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Heroic Naxxramas

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naxx-kel

Last night, I had the pleasure of working with some of the most skilled players in beta and we were able to clear out Heroic Naxxramas (otherwise known as 25 man Naxx). Let me tell you about my initial impressions, what I love, and what I hate.

I love…

the fact that the number of tanks needed for Naxx don’t seem to have changed. Our main tank was a Warrior. No fusses about class here. The reason he was the MT was because he was the most geared (he ran Naxx, Obsidian Sanctum, etc. every day). Prot Paladin was the second tank for any massive AoE related pulls. Feral Druid was third although he would switch up with the Prot Pally depending on what the job was. Didn’t have the pleasure of working with a Death Knight. I’m happy to say that I had no problems healing any of them on the various bosses or mobs. Druid tank had the most with 34k while the Paladin and Warrior clocked in at about ~31k. I made sure to address this first, due to a question I got from Twitter:

@honorshammer Are you seeing much disparity in healing tanks of various classes?

Hope the above question helps! Love your blog by the way ;).

I hate…

my mana regen. I took a look at one of the other Resto Druids and he was sporting a jaw dropping 1500 mana regen while not casting. In my PvP gear plus other assorted PvE epic items, I hit around 600+.

I love…

how Priests will be virtual requirements for Heroic Naxx. You can get away without having other classes at all, but you need Priests for 2 of the encounters because we have to Mind Control certain mobs in order to successfully do them.

I hate…

Sapphiron. He’s the 2nd to last boss in Naxx and he’s going to be a huge headache.

I love…

how the bosses drop between 4 – 6 pieces of loot (some of them are tier bosses).

I hate…

how people complain about not getting the loot they want because its freakin’ beta and you don’t get to keep it anyway!

I love…

that while most players were still wearing blue PvP gear to raid, we were still able to 1 shot almost every boss in the instance. We didn’t over gear it. All of us were on par with or were what could be considered slightly undergeared. This proves to me that if you have a large number of skilled players going in, you won’t have a lot of difficulty. There are a few exceptions:

Instructor Raz: 2 shot
4 Horsemen : 4 shot
Sapphiron: 5 Shot
Kel’Thuzad: 1 shot

I hate

the fact that it took us a little over 7 hours to clear. But there are a few important factors to keep in mind:

  1. Pickup raid
  2. Boss explanations are complicated
  3. Some people had to leave and we had to pull in replacements

If it’s a Guild run, I can see the time knocked down to about 6 hours or maybe even 5. Obviously if you over gear the place, then I wouldn’t be surprised to see it drop down to even 4 and a half. But suffice it to say, I suspect most guilds will take at least 2 days to clear the instance and learn it.

I love

Death Knights. Look at this screenshot below:

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The top 5 players are all Death Knights. Number 6 is a Rogue. The numbers ARE slightly inflated since Thaddius has a little mechanic about him that increases DPS. Here’s a slightly better representation:

naxx-dps1 naxx-dps2

DPS order by class on Noth:

  1. Death Knight
  2. Hunter
  3. Death Knight
  4. Death Knight
  5. Ret Paladin
  6. Ret Paladin
  7. Mage
  8. Death Knight
  9. Death Knight
  10. Rogue
  11. Boomkin
  12. Feral Druid
  13. Boomkin
  14. Mage

Your mileage may vary. We only had 1 Rogue and 1 Warlock. Our raid was stacked with an abundance of Death Knights as you can see above and all of them made up the top 10.

I love

the DPS averages. Again, scroll back up and look at the DPS on the side, not the damage done. You should be pushing over 2000 DPS when you enter Naxx. Of course, I might take that statement back later. Who knows? But I’m just going by what I’ve seen thus far.

I love

these crits:

heal-crits

Repeat after me: MASS OH PEE. That’s a Resto Shaman above me there and my own Prayer of Mending.

I hate

this whole loot homegenization thing but I understand it. I started a discussion on Plusheal about how to tell whether or not you should roll on certain cloth gear or to pass on them. Wyn will be exploring this topic at some point later on, as well. It feels weird for casters to roll on gear. But I accept it and I understand it will be better in the long run.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be doing detailed healing guides for the normal and heroic versions of Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum. You’ve seen a sample of them earlier when I published a few of the 10 man ones. They’re not designed to replace WoWWiki or Bosskillers guides. What they’re meant for is to provide you (the healer) with the knowledge that is relevant to you in order to keep your raid alive. I’m most likely going to miss out on a few abilities but I’ll be sure to nail all of the ones that are important including all major boss mechanics.

Yesterday night, I took a boat load of screenshots, recorded vent when the raid leader was delivering explanations, and I have a plethora of notes all across my desk with diagrams, and post-its scattered all over the place.

By all means, if you’d like to savor the learning experience yourself, go for it. I’ll be here if you need a quick pointer or two to help you out.

Which is what this blog is for.

Questions? Comments? What else would you like to see? Will the Canucks make the playoffs this season? Will Brady get usurped? Do you require more Vespene gas? Are you, in fact, a hollahback girl? Will I ever stop beating myself up over the 7 questions I know I for sure got wrong out of 50?

Big shout out to Totodile for having to put up with the various morons in the raid, as well as organizing and quarterbacking the whole show!

Healing Naxxramas – Patchwerk (10 man)

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patchwerk

Post is about the beta raid and is subject to change at any time. Changelog at the bottom.

Patchwerk is one tough Abomination. You won’t have to worry about raid damage. Your main focus is going to be on the main tank and the off tank. Do a quick check of everyone’s health totals. Make sure your MT and OT have the largest and 2nd largest health pools respectively.

Upon first pull, Patchwerk will latch on to the first person who gains threat on him and stay on him for the duration of the encounter. He does a Heroic Strike attack which will hit your OT for about ~7000 damage. Important: The OT is determined to be the player with the most health after the person with Aggro.

Therefore, if necessary, tell players to click off Power Word: Fortitude (like Death Knights).

There’s also a river of slime nearby. If you jump into it, you can knock off about 50% of your health instantly. Use at your own risk.

Patchwerk has a rough enrage timer of around 5 minutes. Have your tank blow Shield Wall around 15 – 20%. If you’re specced for Guardian Spirit, use it the moment Shield Wall expires.

Healing

Tough, tough, and really tough. You’ll be working your stopcasting here often. Holy Priest on the MT, Resto Shaman on the OT, Paladin with Beacon of Light on one tank and healing the other to cover the bases. Flash Heal for maintenance healing. When your tank drops to 60% or less, queue up a Greater Heal and keep your finger triggered on the stopcast button. If someone else catches him, hit it. If not, let it go.

I want to emphasize that the raid should not be taking much (if any) damage at all.

Bust out the Hymn of Hope early on while eyeing your group. Make sure all the mana users can get the most out of it. When you get low again, bust out the Shadowfiend. Your last line of defense is the Runic Mana Potion.

I did this fight with about 477 MP5 while not casting. I felt a lot of pressure towards the end. However, I did this with blue PvP gear. We should theoretically have an easier time with the various PvE gear we’ll get access to.

spirit-deathWhen you kill him…

See the green slimes above in the screenshot I posted? Those mobs aren’t targettable via mouse. However, if you get in close range of them, you will explode pretty horribly.

Don’t understand? Think of it as a mini-Frogger.

So when you do get him down, don’t forget to sidestep those oozes or else you’ll end up like Matticus with a faceplant on solid concrete.

Changelog

9/24/08 – Original post