heal

Circle of Healing Redux

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As you may or may not have heard, Blizzard is revisiting the idea of bringing in the CoH cooldown. I’m not sure where to start on this or how to begin.

Something that I feel has been overlooked is that there seems to be a feeling that raid instances right now at 70 (post nerf) are representative of what raid instances are like at level 80. A lot of players, right now, are a little overgeared for the content that they’re doing (again, due to the nerf).

Path of least resistance (or effort)

I was first exposed to this idea in my first year of psychology. The general premise here is that people, animals, or even machines will choose the path of least resistance or effort in order to get to their goal. Applying this to healing, we’ll see one person taking a shot for 2000 damage for whatever reason. I myself have been known to tap CoH once or twice to bring that one person’s health back up. Is that a loss of mana efficiency? You bet it is. But efficiency goes out the door if your mana regeneration is able to offset the mana loss within seconds.

Could I have used a Flash Heal? Yeah but it takes casting time.
How about a Renew? Yeah but it takes about 15 seconds for the full duration to kick in
Circle of Healing heals that minor damage extremely quickly and leaves me open for spell options without causing me to wait for the spell to go off or eat a channel or something.

This is partly the case because of current nerfed raid content and the way our spells work. It’s a smart heal, it’s the fastest heal, and it’s brain dead easy. I’m sure we can all agree on that.

With the complete gear reset at 80, I strongly doubt we’re going to be able to get away with non-stop CoH casting. I know I couldn’t. I was extremely limited with my mana regen and my overall mana pool. I confess I did start with PvP gear and I encountered some difficulty then. Yet, after daily Naxx and OS runs on 10s and 25s, I amassed a decent collection of PvE healing gear. I still found it difficult and strenuous. As this was largely a pickup group, maybe I was overcompensating in some areas.

The benefit of Circle of Healing is that it can heal a lot of players really fast.
The cost of Circle of Healing should be the fact that it taxes your mana pool.

I’m not quite sure if that’s possible. I can see why they want to include the 6s cooldown because there are a staggering number of players using it (at 70 and at 80 when I played). Maybe if they included a scaling cost with the spell it would be acceptable. The ability to heal a lot of raid damage really fast is an excellent tool to have. But it should come with a severe price or penalty. I don’t think time, a wonderful resource that it is, should be the case. Perhaps base cost + a percentage of healing done in that one cast? I don’t know. I’m not a game developer.

Regardless of what they do, Priests will easily remain the most diverse class. I’ll continue to play mine well into Wrath. Even if they do bring in the CoH cooldown, we still have Holy Nova and Prayer of Healing. Zusterke, on Plusheal, started some preliminary work on Holy Nova and it’s effectiveness.

By adding the glyph of holy nova, the spell has become quite a powerful healing spell. It is able to output more healing than circle of healing, up to a point where it rivals prayer of healing. The recent mana cost reduction boosted this spell even further where it has become a mana efficient spell, in comparison to the priest’s other AoE spells.

He might shoot me if he feels it’s a little outdated. But not much has changed yet so I think he’s definitely in the ballpark (or ice rink).

Plusheal has more great discussion about this.

Matt Beats Game, Epic G String Drops

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Er, did I say G String? I meant bow string.

thor

Here’s a few choices screenshots leading up to and including the kill.

WoWScrnShot_110208_205921

At this point, we’re down to 3 healers. Cheever just ate a real big Armageddon. Stupyd just died (Angel wings on the right). Luwin and Sthirteen are still alive. Both of whom are severely taxed and drained.

Thankfully, Lang (our MT) is still in good shape. Our Ret Paladin is still alive. We have enough momentum from our remaining players to carry over and finish him off. We started him today at 3:30 PM PST. We spent all night on him. It stretched on until around 8:50 PM. It was to be our last attempt regardless of what would happen. It always seems that on milestone bosses, it boils down to the last attempt.

I wonder why that is. I guess it’s desperation kicking in.

WoWScrnShot_110208_205926Here we are just a bare millisecond after we tip him over. The game registers the kill, my UI says he is still alive with 0.3k health remaining. The achievement system just kicks in.

I really want to take the rest of the week off. I doubt I’ll get that chance. My Guild leader was absent today. I entered the raid instance as raid leader. Clearly that must’ve affected the loot table.

Recount shows the DPS of the current fight. I didn’t set it to show overall. Caim was on orb duty as was Rackham. Big props to the two of them for handling the the Shields so well. Benchwarmer tank Hassai stepped in today and did a phenomenal job on acquiring and holding the Sinister Reflections.

We’d gotten to the point where we would bring Kil’Jaeden down consistently to phase 5.
Then down to below 20%.
Then down below 10%.
Then below 5%.

Until we finally punted him back him back into the ground where he belonged.

WoWScrnShot_110208_210337

Burning Crusade complete. 02/11/08.

By the way, if you notice, you’ll see that we only have one mage. We could definitely use another one heading into Wrath. 

Sadly, the realm forum thread I created has already been trolled. Why do people hate me so much? 🙁

A Note about Mother Shahraz Post 3.0

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A comment from Xserisi has been brought to my attention. I figured it would benefit many players if they knew about it as well so I decided to turn it into a blog post.

Last night we saw BT, we stopped before Mother Shiraz, seeing we ran out of time and were unsure about our health if we would go in with with low or nill shadow resist gear. (anyone tried after patch?)

Yes. I can say with certainty that you don’t need to have full Shadow Resist gear on for Mother Shahraz. Prayer of Shadow Protection or Shadow Aura from the Paladins should be enough to get you through it. DPS has to be high. You don’t want to take more than 3 or 4 teleports. She should be able to go down relatively fast.

Keep in mind, everyone has to commit. If you go full Shadow Resist, make sure every one does so. If you want to go for the blitz method, then keep your raiding gear on. Soak tanks are still important. Your healers have to stand on their head (hockey expression for goalies making unbelievable saves).

As my ancestor Napoleonicus once said:

There ain’t a problem in the world that can’t be solved by copious amounts of DPS.

Healing Naxxramas – Instructor Razuvious (10 man)

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razuvious

Instructor Razuvious is the first boss of the Military Quarter (Death Knight Wing). He’s a rather unique fight in that your tanks don’t actually tank him themselves. Tanks have to hold threat indirectly.

The gimmick

razuvious-orb The first thing you have to understand is that Razuvious hits really hard. He hits harder than normal. He hits so hard he can remold the face of your bear tank and dent plate in others. He has 2 Understudy’s with him. There are 2 orbs on either side. The goal here is for your tanks to activate the orb thus granting control of the Understudy’s to you. Your players have to use their abilities to tank him. They have to taunt off each other and activate their abilities accordingly.

Who should MC? The groups I ran with had both main and off tanks on the orbs. For Guilds going in for the first time, I don’t advise this. I’d suggest having a tank and a random DPS use the orbs. The reason being is that if a mob breaks early and the orb controller can’t get the Understudy back, your tank can blow a taunt and temporarily hold aggro until the orb controller can get it back.

Above: Picture of an orb controller.
Below: Orb controller in action.

razuvious-orb2

Abilities

  • Random throw: Applies DoT damage to players. Need a healer to get them back up. Similar to the Zul’Jin phase 1 mechanic in Zul’Aman.

Releasing control allows the Understudys to gain all of their health back (this may have been changed with recent beta builds). Ranged and healers will want to stand at maximum range. When your orb players lose control, the Understudy will immediately run towards players who have MC’d them. Tank Raz as far away as possible to buy time for your orb players to pick it up again.

If you look at the header image at the beginning, note that room is circular in shape. Tank Raz at the very top part as much as you can.

Understudy’s CAN be healed. But please don’t rely on it too much. I suggest placing 1 healer on the raid, 2 on the Understudys (1 each).

understudy-ability

The Understudy has 3 abilities:

  • 4: Damaging melee attack (I think)
  • 5: Taunt
  • 6: Bone Barrier which reduces magical and physical damage taken by 75% for 20 seconds. You definitely want to use this.
  • 1: Auto-attack

 

Vocabulary

Communication is extremely important. When I took down Raz, I’ve heard successful tanks use the following:

  • “Taunt ready!” (When their taunt cooldown is up)
  • “Taunt now!” (When the tank is about to lose control and needs the other tank to take over)
  • “Debuff is off!” (There’s an Orb debuff that prevents them from using any orb for about 60 seconds)
  • “Losing him in 5!” (Provides a 5 second warning that the MC spell is about to fall off and that the other tank should pick him up while the original tank is going to lose control of an Understudy and has to use an Orb again)

Note: I’m going to re-emphasize this again. Healers can NOT sustain Understudy’s on their own for extended periods of time. Don’t try to tank it with just 1 Understudy the whole way. Tank switching and Orb releasing is imperative. The job for healers in this fight is to help extend Understudy’s for as long as possible.

1 healer on the raid to cover up the DoT damage that’s applied and the other 2 on the Understudy’s should be more than enough. This is a DPS fight more than anything else.

When it’s over

We’re not done yet. We still have 2 of these MC’d mobs up. Have one of your tanks release control and have the other Understudy taunt that. Use the mob to tank the other mob. As soon as you DPS that one down, have your free tank (Main or off tank) taunt the remaining one. DPS that down and you’re home free.

Loot

More guides to healing Naxx can be found here.

Healing Naxxramas – Anub’Rekhan

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anub-header

Anub’Rekhan is the first boss of the Arachnid Quarter (Spider Wing). Most guilds entering Naxxramas for the first time will wish to go and try their luck against him initially as he’s the easiest boss to get to. He’s a really big Spider boss with a few tricks up his sleeve.

Anub is a two phase, repeating encounter.

Phase 1

Anub does a knock back. Your MT is going to want to position him against the far back wall with the boss facing the right (Look at my diagram).

Every so often he’s going to use an ability called Impale. It’s a straight line damage spell which knocks players in the air if they get hit by it. In other words, anyone in the path of an Impale will get thrown in the air.

WoWScrnShot_091308_102037 He likes to spawn a mob during this phase. Have your off tank keep an eye for one. When you kill it, it’s going to spawn these mini-mobs called Corpse Scarabs. Have any AoE DPS lock them in place and burn them down before they get on the tanks and healers.

WoWScrnShot_091308_102157 So for instance, the red arrow signifies an example Impale targeting a blue raid member. I, being the idiot Dwarf I am, is standing just ahead of him. I’m close enough that I would get struck by Impale as well. 

Impale’s target the player. They’re inevitable and players will get hit by them. But we want to minimize it by having them spread out in a staggered line facing Anub. Impale will hit for about 4400 on Cloth.

Really important: See the green slime? Don’t stand in those. Or run into there. Don’t come in contact with it. Trust me.

Example: Stop’s Warlock is right behind me. Anub targets him and lights up an Impale. The two of us go flying in the air. I pop a CoH in the air to help boost our health a little and Levitate down. Stop just… lands really hard and continues DPSing.

anub-phase1

Phase 2

In this phase, your tank has to do one really important thing:

run-forrest

Run along the outer edge of the room in a circular fashion (Refer to the image header at the top). By outer edge, I mean run in the green slime pit but not in the actual slime. You can still run on the outer rim without getting in contact with it. Anub slows down a lot. In addition, he’s going to use an ability called Locust Swarm. At this point, all casters and healers should fall back to the middle of the room. Locust Swarm will silence players and hurt a lot. It’s a 30 yard radius stretching out from Anub’Rekhan that’s in constant effect (like an aura almost) In this phase.

WoWScrnShot_091308_091910

Similar to the first phase, he also summons a mob. Make sure your OT jumps on it.

Make sure your tank does not run it into the raid. It’s absolutely imperative that they run along the outside. When you run to the other side of the room, Locust Swarm should expire and he’ll return to phase 1 mode.

The green arrows signify the path your tank should take. Note how the scattered raid has collapsed to the center. The second time you enter phase 2, go ahead and take the reverse path back up.

anub-phase2

Pro tip: Are your tanks out of shape? Their armour really heavy? Having a hard time running away from the boss? If you have a Hunter, have them activate Aspect of the Pack temporarily. Death Knights should switch to Unholy Aura for increased run speed. If you have a Warrior as a tank, feel free to have a player jump across the river of goo and have your Warrior intercept into them.

Just take care you don’t run too fast that Anub starts cutting across the raid.

Healing

Anub hits fairly hard. I’m going to suggest a 2 healer on MT with 1 healer on the raid and OT. Note that the raid doesn’t take a lot of damage throughout the encounter as long as they spread themselves out to avoid and mitigate Impale damage. Once the impale hits, your 3rd healer should drop a few AoE spells or whatever to get them back up (I’m not telling you what spells to use. You’re in Naxx now).

Like I said earlier in Phase 2, collapse to the middle. Try to load up the tanks with as much HoTs and mitigation spells or abilities as possible. If you need to sneak out and hit your tank with an emergency heal, do it even if it means risking a Locust Swarm. You should be able to max range the tank without getting affected by it. Another method is to run slightly ahead of the tank so that you still remain out of range of Locust Swarm.

Example: Assuming I’m a Discipline Priest, I would park myself on the side and heal the MT. Anna, on her Resto Shaman, would be tasked to healing the raid. Jess’s Resto Druid would be unloading HoTs on the MT as wel as any melee players that are up front.

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Edit: Clarified tank path during phase 2.