We used to bitch and moan at healers for healing melee dps but now I believe most people have realised dismissing your fortitude buff makes taking a hateful strike almost impossible anyway so spamming chain heal on your assigned tank is great. However I still get the best hps results from LHW… probably from it’s ridiculously fast cast speed.

In many situations like this there’s probably a right and wrong answer but i just don’t think it’s the case here… Patch is just too damn easy.

standing=/=dipping in it and they don’t have to do it that often as often as you think. they are on the opposite side of the boss as the tanks and hardly receive any healing. i’d also be interested in seeing omen on this fight for your “flex” tank.

anyhow, i’m done arguing. you do what works for you and we’ll do what works for us.

apokteino-aerie peak-uprising

You’ll also note I stated our lowest DPSer, since you obviously replace your worst for something like this, not your average. our average DPSer is around the 5k mark. Our worst is absolutely down at 3500.

Also, do you not know what the Slime does? it reduces ALL stats, including strength/agility (meaning AP and crit) by 50%, which over the course of the fight is a substantial DPS loss if they’re constantly dipping thanks to Paladins with Glyphed Holy Light (which they should have) and Shamans with Ancestral Awakening (which they should have), and DK’s with Blood Aura (which, if specced Blood, they should probably have), and Paladins Divine Storming…

There’s a LOT of incidental healing being tossed around in a typical raid these days, and there’s just no good reason to take extra risks in hopes of avoiding it.

on a more practical note though: why would you have 3 tanks in Naxx anyhow (i am talking about heroic)? no bosses require more than 2 tanks and the trash is a joke. i guess we could have a dps warrior or dk throw on tank gear but then he’d probably have agro issues since he would be specced to reduce agro, not generate it. i guess we do patchwork the way we do b/c of convenience too.

Chain Heal works great for this fight. I usually combine 2-piece tier 6 and 4-piece tier 7 and just spam Chain Heal. It doesn’t take any skill but it produces a lot of healing. Be warned though, if your dps is lacking, you could end up running out of mana doing this.

With the aggro level mattering more than health level, we do not have any of our dps stepping into the ooze, as its debuff isn’t very nice.

We use the three tank method, as we have some new healers and have found that there was more time for “error” or slow response time. It also allows the three tanks to be the highest on aggro, which ensures that no melee will be taking hateful strikes. That way, we keep all of our dps alive to continue dpsing, and they do not have to worry about threat, nor does our third OT have to worrry about his threat as much and trying to avoid taking a hateful strike, this way he has healers too.

I tell all the heals to max their HPS. So Shammy’s include CH to bounce and priests PoM. No DPS is taking hits, so they bounce among the tanks. p1 and D1 heal MT1. d2 and Pally 1 heal OT1. And S1 and P2 heal OT3. In this way, no tanks health ever drops, and our more geared/experienced healers can help the others with extra HoTs and PoM bounces without anyone dying, or even any smart heals hitting the melee.

I like this method, it has gotten us the closest to the patch achievement. =)

Figure that your second tank would replace the weakest DPSer in your raid. Using my own raids numbers (Record Patch kill of 2:20, Quick Werk weekly fwiw), that would be a DPSer doing around 3500 DPS. Now, we run with, on average, 6-8 melee. Slime dipping is anywhere from a 1-200DPS loss, to as much as a 7-800 DPS loss (for Combat Rogues that lose huge amounts of Prey on the Weak uptime) – keep in mind the DPS loss is that the Slime Debuff ‘hangs’ for a second after leaving the slime, as well as the time off target to ‘dip’

So, given those numbers (we run w/ 1 combat rogue), you’re looking at a minimum dps loss of 1300 dps by having melee ‘dip.’

Now, a Tank on Patchwerk puts out ~ 1800 DPS, and, going back to my raid, brings the additional benefit of letting me find a slot in my raid for a Feral Druid – which, by bringing Mangle, is a rather large increase in raid DPS – certainly breaking even with a 2 tank strat, and in some cases exceeding it, with extra safety to boot!

the only thing i would state differently is that the hateful strikes don’t “generate” that much agro. it is possible for a dps to pass either off tank if the he isn’t paying attention or just flat out sucks (or if the dps isn’t paying attention). if this happens and a melee happens to have higher hp than the other off-tank, he will get one shot. this shouldn’t happen though; if it does find real tanks.

however, my guild does the fight with just 1 off tank (my guild is big into maximizing dps). that means there is always going to be a dps who runs the risk of taking a hateful strike should he have higher hp than the MT. because of this we tank patchwork so that our dps can be right at the edge of the slime and still melee the boss. if they end up getting healed (by our ret pally storm or w/e) they drop back into the slime. our pally uses SoM to keep his health down and also has salv if he needs it. b/c of this set-up we have 0 raid heals (which is why i questioned chain-healing in this fight- with 1 OT it is a bad idea).

you might think that with this setup we have melee die all the time. we did have a few die during the first couple weeks but since our healers and dps adjusted to the fight we haven’t had any problems. we’ll have 2 pallys and then usually a shammy or priest on the off tank. sometimes even a fourth healer will help (the MT dmg is a joke). the off-tank is always getting heals and even when he does take a 25k hateful he’s still above the melee’s health (not to mention he gets healed instantly).

if you run with 2 tanks and they don’t suck, though, having melee at full health isn’t a problem. chain-heal away.