Note: That’s actually Lodur’s kill screenshot. How he heals with raid frames that small, I have no idea =).
Conquest is officially 2/13 in the hard mode 25 progression. It was nice getting the kill and getting the monkey off our backs. It had been weeks since our last progression kill and this was much needed.
Why Magmaw?
We had been struggling for a long time on heroic Chimaeron and it was felt that a change of pace was needed. Knowing it was nerfed, we detoured straight to him instead. I think it took us about ~20 wipes.
Setting up
The first 14 attempts of the night saw us using 7 healers and 4 tanks (1 Frost DK kiting). On the kill, we ended up with 7 healers and 5 tanks (2 Frost DKs kiting).
Healers
2 x Resto Shaman
1 x Resto Druid
1 x Holy Paladin
1 x Disc Priest (Shields)
1 x Disc Priest (Atonement)
1 x Holy Priest
Every DPS player and healer stands on the star and DPS’s from close quarters. The two tanks on Magmaw positioned themselves on the shield depicted above. Our resident Holy Paladin and Resto Druid were assigned to both of them. The triangle, diamond and square marks served a purpose.
We had a group of players who would stand on the outside in order to draw fire from pillars and Nef’s fireballs. We had a Frost Deathknight pick up the parasites but I was having trouble keeping him alive towards the end. This was offset with a second Frost Deathknight who assisted on picking up additional parasites (and split the parasite damage accordingly).
Bro tip: Place all of your outside players together in a group to maximize group healing. In our case, both of the Frost Deathknights, myself and two Hunters were placed in that group. Prayer of Healing combined with Chain Heals and other spells were enough to keep us alive through the pillars.
Tank healing
You will want to use two dedicated players. One healer by themselves may not be enough (at least, when learning). If you’re tank healing, you can’t even deviate for a moment because that tank will die. It’s going to take everything you have to keep them alive. Configure your raid frames to show debuffs like Mangle. If necessary, get your tanks to call the switches so you can keep pace with them.
Assign another healer to cover the tank grabbing the Constructs. They can switch between the tank and the raid if they choose.
Raid healing
Raid damage is going to continue slamming the players (the outside group especially). I wasn’t able to keep them and the kiters alive myself. You’re going to want to use 2-3 healers at least. It’s to counteract the damage from Magma Spit and Lava Spew. Be fast with any Ignitions. It’s up to the players to move, but if you’re standing at the right spot, it shouldn’t take more then a few steps to get clear.
Head phase
When Magmaw eats the spike, this is the time to regenerate and use mana cooldowns. With 3 Priests, we used our Hymn of Hopes separately. Our Resto Shamans used their Mana Tide totems earlier on. Telluric Currents for Resto Shamans helps immensely from what I understand.
Additionally, you may want to consider having 1 Atonement Priest. Smite during the head phase to heal up any residual damage from the transition.
Concentration Potions are awesome here.
Parasite kiting
For the kiting healer on the outside, I suggest using a Holy Priest. My main job was to heal our Frost DKs as they were weaving figure eights around the room. Body and Soul was enough to give them a little burst of speed if they needed it. The benefit of a Priest is that if the DKs get trapped with incoming parasites or encroaching fires, Life Grip gave them a way out. If the kiters were in no danger, I’d default to throwing Renews on the group while running around fire dodging.
This job sucked for me. I had to hog Innervates and use the expensive spells. There were times when I had to swing through in front of the marked positions to get in range of Druids. With the amount of cooldowns we had and the DPS, we were able to afford to do that. The faster a fight goes, the higher the HPS since you’ll have more mana.
Hunters: Don’t use Ice Traps. Outside group may not be able to see Pillars or Nef’s Blazing Infernos
Final phase (sub-30% health)
Spread out immediately (Try 6 – 8 yards). This is the most stressful part of the encounter.
Your healing lead is going to want to take a broader look at the health of the raid. Use Tranquility and Divine Hymn accordingly. Don’t forget about DPS Druids or Priests.
The DKs and I drop back further away to allow room for players. Shadowflame Barrages are going to hurt. You may wish to take a moment before the encounter to manually position your healers to maximize the area.
Continue to keep 2 tank healers for Magmaw, 1-2 on the Construct tank and the rest on the raid. Construct tank healing is going to be sketchy. Your raid leader might have to call a DPS burn on a Construct if there’s too many up when you transition. It’s going to be nearly impossible to keep a tank alive with 3 Constructs up. It’s doable if they have 2 Constructs. Watch their tank cooldowns and when theirs wear off, use yours. That should buy you about 30-50 seconds if healers have their single target cooldowns free.
Good luck!
The next question is heroic Maloriakk or heroic Atramedes next.
Also, Conquest healing corps is looking for another Holy Paladin, Boomkin/Resto Druid, Shaman (all specs) and Priest (all specs are welcome). DPS classes are also encouraged to apply.
Grats on the kill! We did the same last week (killed H Magmaw post nerf before finishing off H Mal, which we were struggling with).
We set up the healing assignment similar to you. Group 5 had myself (Disc Priest), Frost DK, and our 3 hunters. You’re right, the job is tough. A couple questions/comments:
1) Why were your DKs taking so much damage from parasites? Did the parasites end up infecting the kiters? I think that might be avoidable damage. Regardless – all the people outside take a ton of damage anyway. I have not see any official note on this, but it felt like the Magma Spit favored people at range. I think Magmaw fires 4 or 5 per barrage, and I’d swear at least 2-3 would hit my group each time. Did you have that experience as well?
2) I know you’re a holy specialist, but you may want to consider disc next time. Your point about B&S is well taken, but I found that being able to maintain shields on the entire group helped mitigate a lot of the Magma Spit/Lava Spew damage. Pain Suppression was also a big help. Those two skills took a lot of the RNG out of Group 5 deaths.
3) Something else you didn’t mention, but applies to both specs: Binding Heal. I used it a TON on that fight, almost as much as I do healing Nef. I found Binding Heal, PW:S, and Penance far more effective than PoH for that assignment. Of course, Holy’s PoH is more effective, but I’d think there was still a significant amount of overhealing.
Anyway – nice post, and grats again!
Oh, and thank O for the retweet 😉
1) Looking at damage taken, it was mostly due to a combination of Lava Spew and Magma Spit. Parasitic Infections represented maybe 20% of the overall damage. Sounds like its mathematically possible to ignore all of it but realistically, I do expect some of them to close and get an occasional swing in. And yes, I suspect he might favor the outside players a little more (or grant it more “weight”).
2) I will try Discipline next time. Remember our group composition already consisted of 3 Priests (2 of which were Discipline). With 2 Disc Priests, I was reasonably sure the outside group was going to receive shields anyway. I opted for the Holy flexibility instead. Having both a Barrier and a Pain Suppression are great outs to have.
3) You’re right, I forgot to mention Binding Heal. Actually, if you look at my logs (Top of the post has a link), you’ll find that I used that the most on our Death Knights.
Interesting – you actually made better use of Binding Heal than I did, awesome.
I expected your log to show more PoH, but your style (appears to be Serenity Chakra + Renew/Binding Heal) is probably the better way to go, given how inconsistent Magma Spit damage can be.
For reference, here is the log from our kill:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/2299xy09v27se8ey/sum/healingDone/?s=11719&e=12180
Ovy: Yeah, was moving around a ton. It wasn’t often that I’d stay in range of the star group. And it wasn’t as economical to prayer of healing the outer group as often. What I ended up doing when the entire 4th group was hit with a Spit or something:
Spell 1: Binding Heal target A
Spell 2: Flash Heal target B
Spell 3: Prayer of Healing
This helped build up the Serendipity stack.
Yeah, that’s the way to play it. Looks like you used serendipity stacked GHeal just as much as PoH – which seems warranted based on my experience.
I don’t miss all that much about Holy, but count B&S and Serendipity among the two things I do.
You should have just put everyone in melee range and only left a healer/kiter out. Probably the easiest heroic mode now.
As far as I know you need 3 people at range to guarantee no Pillar of Flame on the melee? Confirm/Deny?
Ovy: You’re probably right on that. I thought the minimum was 4, but I’ve seen cases where we’ve lost a player and our raid was able to pull through.
Still, I’d feel safer with 4-5 on the outside at least in the event I do lose someone.
Congrats on the kill!
We (apparently unconventionally) run all our priests holy for Magmaw hc. We started attempts just after 4.0.6 when the world was a buzz with shield spam – so naturally we gave it a go. In the end though it was more stable with all 3 priests holy and the druids having their innervates for themselves.
Our kill itself was pre-patch, so barrier didn’t really have a use. I think if we were to be aiming for a first kill post-patch we’d likely run a disc priest for that spell alone now that there is a sizeable huddle of folks. As it is though, we still just all go holy and have a lovely chakra party 😉
Here’s the first kill log if you are curious! http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-tgvqe31gh5glrxlz/sum/healingDone/?s=12312&e=12852
I should add here the the Tol Barad resistance trinket (Mirror of Broken Images) is absolutely fantastic for this fight, and several other hard mode fights.
Wouldn’t be caught without it <3
As far as the Chimaeron/Atra question, it really just depends on what your raid is the best at as to where you’ll see the most success. Chimaeron is all about judicious planning and use of tank/external cooldowns to get them through the feuds (lay on hands/ GS;AD to get through the first hit, big CD through the double). Beyond that, you’ve gotta tune the dps stop/start to be at the beginning of a feud so that you can lust, have the healers top everyone off, and have dps push him over to P2 before more than like 1 slime goes out. Atramedes is literally just the normal fight, but like 1.5x as fast on the rings, adds that have to get trained down, and more raid damage from searing flames. Have your dps make a /tar obnox macro to make the adds easier, and be sure to use raid cooldowns for the searing flames (1 tick hurts, two ticks will probably be someone dead after the modulation). The cooldowns on raid wall and aura mastery line up such that you can use them on EVERY searing flame. Anyways, grats on magmaw, good luck on the rest.