The Reality of Healing Heroics and Tips for Holy Priests

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
- Newt Gingrich

I’ve scheduled a tentative 10 man Naxx on Saturday. We’re projected to have around 8 players that are capable of reaching that level by then. After that, I’ll have no choice but to pug the other 2 slots.

Since I’ve hit 80, I’ve started working my way through a few heroics to try and get some badges.

Let me tell you, it is not easy.

It has been such a long time since I had to work this hard to heal. I have to drink after every pull. Every cooldown needs to be noticed and taken into account. Every spell cast needs to be carefully thought out. I’m sitting at ~470 mana regeneration with a few quest and instance blues. The rest are filled out with T6. There are times when you have no choice between letting a player die to prevent an overall wipe. It’s absolutely tough.

Over the past few days, I had the opportunity to heal Halls of Lightning and the Occulus (on Heroic since they were the dailies). There’s a few things to remember:

• We don’t outgear the instance: It’s a fresh start for everyone. The playing field has been leveled. I’ve resorted to using consumables to help finish off my old stock of TBC food. This goes the same for tanks.
• We’re going in blind: We don’t know the instance. I don’t like going into a fight without knowing what I’m up against. I keep WoWhead open and WoWWiki to understand what abilities bosses uses and develop a counter for it. Two things to watch for is debuffs and any special animations on the ground or spells that the bosses use. Watch for the in game boss cues. It’s a hard lesson to learn every time.

One thing that most Priests (or all healers) will find when healing any sort of high end instance is that they’re running out of mana. Don’t forget that it takes more Spirit now then it did back at 70 to reach the same level of mana regen. The amount of Spirit required to reach ~1000 mana regen is much higher then it was at 70.

Here’s a few tricks to help out:

• Hymn of Hope: It’s an 8 second channel spell and you’re going to be hard pressed to find time to use it. Observe the boss and find a pattern. See if he has a long cooldown for an ability. Put a shield on the tank, a Renew, and a Prayer of Mending. Top up the rest of the party as best as you can. Hit your Hymn and pray to the highest deity you know that you can maximize the use out of it. You can break it early. I set my personal limit to around 50%. If the tank reaches 50%, I’ll break my Hymn and start healing.
• Shadowfiend: Since it’s a 5 minute cooldown, this is the first trick in the book I’ll use. In the event we wipe, I should have it up for the next attempt.
• Runic Mana Potion: I’ll typically blow a potion in conjunction with Hymn of Hope after it’s cast. I don’t try to save it. I try to be liberal with their use.
• Guardian Spirit: Don’t think of it as a healing bonus spell or a way to prevent the person from dying. Think of it as an instant 50% health return. Gauge how much damage the tank takes roughly per hit. If they take 5000 damage blows and your tank is at around 7500, slap the GS up there and stop healing. Watch as the tank’s health rockets back up to 50% while you spend precious seconds just regenerating mana.
• Pain Suppression: A lot of beginner Priests like to use Pain Suppression when their tank is really low on health. I don’t advise this since they run the risk of tanks dying. I drop Pain Suppression when tanks have near full health. I can stand there and mana regen knowing that my tank is taking reduced damage buying me more time to get more mana.

I’ve spent an average of nearly 3 hours per heroic dungeon. I’m way in over my element. But hey, that’s how Matticus rolls! I’ve always been a front line player!

Still looking for Mages, Warlocks, Hunters, Shadow Priests, Shamans and other healers! If you know of any that want to progress, tell them to drop me a line!

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“Matt, heal me! Why are you running?”

Oh, it just brings tears to my eyes when I anticipate hearing those phrases again. To level with me is a most unique experience. You can ask Wyn that. You can ask any of my friends that. You see, I have this knack for simply attracting mobs. Whether I move or whether I don’t, I am a virtual magnet for them. I’ll try to slip between 2 mobs breathing a sigh of relief when I’m almost through only to find to my surprise that I end up getting both of them.

Sometimes I’ll panic and run if I think the situation’s a lost cause. Usually I’ll stay and fight. Until I realize I’m fresh out of gas (and mana). As a frequent multi tasker, sometimes my attention won’t be focused on the mob or the task at hand. I usually need a “gentle” reminder of this from time to time.

Aurik and Sephrenia want to issue a gentle reminder to tanks and DPSers that if you’re going to level with them, they understand and know that you will need heals. Because if you don’t get heals, you die. And if you die, they die. Ergo, it is in their best interest to heal you.

But if you’re rolling with me, remind me that you’re pulling so I can switch back into the game and watch you. Great raid healer. Not the best grinding healer.

While I don’t like hearing the phrase heal me in raids, I’ll frequently issue the instructions for extra heals on a player if the situation calls for it (damage debuff, impending big hit, healing reduction debuff).

Circle of Healing Redux

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.

Priest CoH Cooldown Returns?

Matticus has no comment at this time. But, I felt that the readers should be aware of this thread. It was tried before in the summer but they removed the cooldown. They’re thinking about bringing it back again (note the dates).

We’ve tried to keep up with all of the several threads that spawned as a result of my last comments. People have made some really good points.
Based on feedback from this forum, elsewhere and our own brainstorming, what we are thinking about right now is something like a 6 sec cooldown for Circle of Healing and Wild Growth.

We’re less concerned about Chain Heal, in part because it’s not instant, prevents movement, falls off with multiple targets, and is the spell that shamans are supposed to be hitting, while priests and druids have many other spells.

At 6 seconds, you would still want to use CoH/WG in the right situations (though hopefully not *every* time they are up), but you’d also want to use other spells during the cooldown. To be fair, a lot of priests and druids are asking to push other buttons.

This sounds like a potentially scary change because it has a lot of ramifications — one of the reasons we are mentioning it so early is to get feedback. We don’t want Resto shammies to push other healers out of raids. We would change some of the encounters knowing that CoH spam was no longer possible.

And

Yeah, we did. We thought it would feel like a big nerf and changed our minds. But seeing the state of healing at 80 makes us think it might be the right call again. When AE healing is so prominent, it also makes specs without great AE heals (Holy paladins and Disc priests) feel useless.

Assume that we would lower Wild Growth by the same proportion as Circle of Healing. The exact numbers aren’t as important to this discussion as the concept that you can’t hit the button whenever you want.

Reactions?

Will You Be Dual Spec-tacular?

Less than two weeks out from the Wrath of the Lich King release, I find that one of the upcoming changes I am most excited about will hit not with the expansion itself, but with an upcoming content patch. At some future point, many of us–particularly hybrid classes–will have the flexibility we’ve always dreamed of. The promise is that each character will be able to maintain two stored specs and switch between them easily. You won’t be switching during combat (imagine the exploits) but in a complicated dungeon, for one fight you could be the healer, and the very next you could be the tank or even (gasp!) dps.

There is every chance that this change will revolutionize gameplay, particularly for healers. Most of us would jump at the chance to heal for a 25-person raid and then tear through our daily quests as a long-feathered, wide-hipped, booty-shaking, snuffle-hooting Owlbeast. I know I would. However, I’m even more interested in the long-term effects of dual spec capability on the raid environment.

Of course, even with Matticus’ fascinating insights into raiding Naxx on the Beta, we still don’t have quite enough information to make fully-fledged (get it, a feather joke) healing strategies. However, that doesn’t mean that my evil little tree-brain isn’t working. As the healing lead for my guild, the following is my diabolical plan to take the fullest possible advantage of dual specs.

1. All healers will maintain a raid-viable dps spec and a raid-viable healing spec.
2. All healers will take appropriate dps gear at the off-spec dkp price and appropriate healing gear at the on-spec price.
3. All healers will practice both play styles in a raid environment.

Why is this plan such a winner? Read on to find out how the dual spec system will save your raid–and the world!–from much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

1. I can adjust the number of healers for each fight.

Based on what I’ve read on Matticus and elsewhere, it seems that Wrath of the Lich King raid encounters require, on the whole, less healers than Black Temple or Sunwell. My guild–and probably many others–recruited its healing corps with the latter two instances in mind. At the moment, we have at least 12 healers who raid on a semi-regular basis. Our healer retention has been excellent, and many of these players have switched part or full-time to alts for raiding in order to keep their spots. However, even with this partial solution, we sometimes have 10 great healers sign up to raid. My solution for Wrath? I’m not about to force people to respec dps or to reroll warlocks and enhancement shammies. Instead, we’ll share the dps and healing roles, and everyone will get to play what they want at least some of the time. In addition, I don’t fully trust the developers not to put in some fights that require 5 healers and others that require 8 in the same instance. With dual specs in place, it will just be too tempting.

2. My healers will become better players.

Yes, this belongs to the category of what I like to refer to as “L2P Raiding Solutions.” It’s going to be hard to switch from doing what Ghostcrawler referred to as “playing the UI, not the game,” to actually targeting a boss or, even more incredibly, assisting off a designated player. I look forward to this process. I need to go through the learning as much or more than anybody. An expansion, as I see it, is a great opportunity to get better at the game, and I know there’s going to be a learning curve. By, let’s say, next February, I want to be that player that people trust to do whichever task, dps or healing, is most necessary. Those players already exist, but I’ve had too much tunnel-vision to be one myself.

3. No one will feel stuck.

Sometimes all of us need a little change, a little breath of fresh air. I think that dual specs are going to help ward off healer burnout, and to demonstrate that, I’m going to resort to a very mundane metaphor. Let’s compare two real life humans–Level 30 Scholars, let’s say, and for the sake of argument, we’ll call them Sydera and Briolante. Now, Syd owns about 10 pairs of shoes she can wear to work, and she never wears the same pair twice in a row. Brio wears the same pair of admittedly very nice dress shoes every day. At the end of six months, whose footwear is in better shape? Variety is the spice of many things, my friends. If I know that I can cast gigantic Starfires on one of the bosses on a given evening, all the while hooting to myself in owlish glee, I’m likely to heal for the rest of them with good grace. Many healers feel victimized and put upon–our job is rather stressful, and blame sticks to us like cat hair on cashmere. What a nice relief it will be to sometimes focus on the boss instead of the little boxes on my Grid!

Dual Specs are Wonderful! But Why Do We Have Them?

I’d like to spend a few moments speculating about the underlying reasoning behind the dual spec change. It goes against many of the trends laid in place during Classic WoW and BC. First, WoW has always made players pay for flexibility. As we all know, the Vanilla WoW design for hybrids could be summed up by the hackneyed refrain “jack of all trades and master of none.” Moreover, gold costs for respecs–used more by hybrids than other classes–used to climb to obscene levels in Classic.

In BC, the fate of hybrids improved somewhat. Aside from a few broken specs (notably Moonkin and Retribution Paladin), hybrids became raid viable, but also just as limited to one role as any “pure” class. Respecs were of course possible, and in BC they top out at 50 gold, which still cannot be considered a reasonable price for mid-raid respecs.

Maybe it’s my own selfish featherbrain, but I think that the changes we’re seeing to how respeccing works–which is basically the removal of the penalty for changing your mind–have a lot to do with the perceived fun of playing hybrids–bringing us closer to the jack of all trades model again. I think this change might even have more to do with healers than other classes. We know that, my own freakishly healer-heavy guild aside, healers are often in short supply. For Wrath, Ghostcrawler has laid out the possibility that raid healing might be overhauled entirely, just as was done with tanking. The idea, in general terms, is to make raiding “more fun.”

What is more fun, in the developers’ minds? Based on the druid class changes for 3.0, I can take a guess. Despite what some healers find entertaining, Blizzard doesn’t want us to be tied too closely to timers or set-in-stone rotations. Pre-3.0, I used to cast something–usually an instant, and many times Lifebloom–every time the GCD was up. This means that I can spare about half an eyeball for the raid environment, and I haven’t even seen many raid bosses. I spend too much time looking at Grid with one eye and the ground–for nasty AoE effects–with the other. To a certain extent, this is necessary for proper focus–I’m not sure that Briolante spends much time gazing longingly on, say, Archimonde’s face either, even though he’s up there tanking. Here’s a quote: “Demon crotches get old after a while.” The developers want play to be variable, engaging, movement heavy, and reactive rather than proactive. As a druid healer at the moment, I feel that I’m supposed to entirely change my playstyle, and old habits–like maintaining Lifebloom rotations–die hard.

At least dual specs are actually fun! Many times, the developers seem to design away from fun by putting arbitrary limitations on things–the recently removed movement speed reduction for trees comes to mind, as does the prohibition on flying in Northrend until level 77. It is my hope that, whatever they do to healing, the dual spec possibility keeps me from entirely losing my mind, or, should I say, my feathers.

Healing Naxxramas – Instructor Razuvious (10 man)

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

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.

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).

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

• Accursed Bow of the Elite
• Girdle of Lenience: Belt for Resto Druids
• Iron Rings of Endurance: Bracers for Resto Shamans
• Mantle of the Extensive Mind: Possible Priest Shoulders (lacks Spirit)
• Plated Gloves of Relief: Holy Paladin Gloves
• Rapid Attack Gloves
• Scepter of Murmuring Spirits: Potential Druid or Priest healer Off-hand (lacks Spirit)
• Waistguard of the Tutor

More guides to healing Naxx can be found here.

Healing Naxxramas – Anub’Rekhan

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.

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.

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.

Phase 2

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

Run along the outer edge of the room in a circular fashion (Refer to the image header at the top). 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.

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.

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.

Loot

• Agonal Sash: For Priests
• Band of Neglected Pleas: Any Healer (Shamans/Paladins should get first dibs)
• Boots of Persistence: Resto Shaman Nikes
• Collar of Dissolution
• Deflection Band
• Knife of Incision
• Ravaging Sabatons
• Splint-Bound Leggings: Resto Druids

Order of Operations: Surge of Light, Clearcasting, Improved Holy Concentration

A question was posed this morning on the two articles I wrote on Spiritual Guidance this morning. A number of talents have been modified for Priests in the Holy tree.

If Surge of Light, Clearcasting, and Improved Holy Concentration proc, will Flash Heal eat all 3?

(Not the exact question, but the exact question was much longer which sort of leads to the same direction)

A quick examination of the talents:

• Surge of Light
• Holy Concentration
• Improved Holy Concentration

Here’s an action shot of my buffs. You’d think activating all 3 (well 2) would be rare. It actually occurs more often than you’d think. So here’s the million dollar question:

What happens?

In all of my experience at beta healing, I noticed that Surge of Light gets checked first. If you cast a Flash Heal, it eats Surge of Light. Clearcasting and the 2 charges of Improved Holy Concentration remain active. The next direct heal you cast (Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal) will trigger the Clearcasting and 1 Improved Holy Concentration charge. This will result in you having only 1 Imp Holy Conc charge remaining. The next direct heal you cast will consume this.

What if we open up with a non Flash Heal spell?

Dropping Greater Heal first will activate Clearcasting and 1 Improved Holy Concentration charge. Surge of Light will still be available. Casting Greater Heal again will eat the Improved Holy Conc charge left. Lastly, Flash Heal will then trigger Surge of Light.

So to summarize, if you have Surge of Light on you and you cast Flash Heal, it will always be free and non-crit.

Things to remember

Watch your freakin’ buffs! Have your sound effects on! You should be able to recognize the distinctive chime of Clearcasting! When you hear it, dart your eyes to your buff bar and see what happens. Use up the effect that has the least amount of buff time remaining. In the shot above, since I have only 4 seconds to use Surge of Light and 10 seconds on Clearcasting, I have 3 seconds to make a decision to cast a free Flash Heal or I lose out on my freebie.

Don’t forget that Surge of Light also activates on Smite. So if you don’t have any present targets to heal at all, target the boss and slam your Smite key. It’s free!

On the other hand, if you have less time remaining on Clearcasting as opposed to Surge of Light, cast a non Flash Heal. You probably want to use Greater Heal at this point first since the Flash will be instant.

What about Inner Focus?

I’ve noticed Inner Focus and Clearcasting be consumed at the same time after one Greater Heal.

Surge of Light also gets eaten if Inner Focus is activated. Check out the shot on the right. I was able to proc just a Surge of Light. Casting Flash Heal knocks off both Surge and Inner Focus respectively. Even though there’s a slightly increased chance to crit, I highly doubt it can due to the restrictions imposed by Surge.

Sigh. Isn’t that just we need? More things to watch for. More complications. More conditions. More ifs, ands, or buts. Gone are the days where I could mindlessly spam stuff while watching games on TV.

However, I’ve adapted. It will take some time for you to do the same (even the most veteran of Priests). I promise to do what I can to ease the transition from old school healing to that of the new hotness. 

Observations taken from beta. Could change at any time. Disclaimers own you.

Healing Naxxramas – Four Horsemen (10 man)

Here it is. Welcome to the most potentially complicated 10 man boss ever. By popular request (from Jove!), I’ve nailed down the process of how to handle the Four Horsemen on Normal Naxx mode. I’ve seen a few questions asked by a people asking me if I’ve ever done this fight before. I did do it on 25 but I didn’t feel qualified to address this on 10s. I’m not going to write about a fight until I get to experience it myself first hand (and that will continue to always be the case with boss fights).

The Four Horsemen have had a reputation for being the most difficult encounter before Burning Crusade hit due to the level of timing and coordination that it required from players. The Wrath variants, while a little easier, will still require some semblance of coherent teamwork.

The Abilities

The Knights have their own individual debuffing marks which gradually increase the amount of damage that tanks and other players around them take:

• Mark of Rivendare
• Mark of Zeliek
• Mark of Korth’azz
• Mark of Blaumeux

Note the fact that it is a stacking debuff which increases the amount of damage you take. The first debuff is applied after 20 seconds and then every 12 seconds after that. It has a max range of approximately 65+ yards and is applied one everyone within the vicinity. You cannot use any abilities to make the Mark fall off (Divine Shield, Ice Block, etc).

Every Horseman must have a player nearby that can get the Mark. If there is no player within 65 yards of the Horsemen, the raid will take massive damage and subsequently wipe.

Each Knight has it’s own unique spell:

• Baron Rivendare: Unholy Shadow
• Thane Korth’azz: Meteor
• Sir Zeliek: Holy Wrath
• Lady Blaumeux: Void Zone

Placement

Four Horsemen is unlike most encounters you’ll see in the game as the bosses are on preset scripts that take them to specific locations. Sir Zeliek will always go to the back right of the room, for example. When setting up, send your Caster/Healer pairing to the back end along the left and right walls respectively.

Note: I really recommend using a healer class and a class that has the ability to heal itself (Balance Druid or Elemental Shaman), but I stress that the fight can be done without either of the two. The healer in the back has to compensate by being really on the ball with their regeneration and healing if such a player is unavailable.

Left: Matticus sneaking up the right wing. Those Knights won’t know what hit them!"

To activate the event, all you need to do is walk up to them and shoot them before they automatically race off to their locations.

Lady Blaumeux and Sir Zeliek do not move from their positions at all for the duration of the encounter and remain stationary. Korth’azz and Baron Rivendare are tauntable and movable.

Strategy

This strategy used makes sense if you remember the fact that each Knight has their own debuff that they apply. Each tank is required to pay strong attention to their debuffs.

Raid DPS starts out at the front of the room working on Korth’azz and Baron Rivendare. The raid will be positioned on the front left side of the entrance engaging Korth’azz first to eliminate the Meteor effect as quick as possible.

Caster tanks

Once the Knights are in place, they’ll start locking onto the players that are closest to them. Zeliek does have his own chain damage type spell (Holy Wrath) and that’s why the Zeliek tank is going to be alone for the first half of the encounter.

The magic number of debuffs before you move? 3 maximum.

Once you get 3, signal the other tank on Lady Blaumeux. Remember, the debuffs have ranges. The only way to shake them is to outrun the original Knight.

Example

I was tanking Zeliek and I had a boomkin as a partner on Blaumeux. When we got to 2 debuffs, we’d slowly cheat towards the middle. Once we hit 3, we made a mad dash to the other side and star tanking each others original mob. As I ran by, I loaded up my boomkin partner with Renews, a Prayer of Mending, and a Shield. Similarly, he’d hit me with a full stack of Lifeblooms.

Center: Me and my Boomkin homeboy tag teaming. Note the Shadow Bolt from the left and the Holy Wrath from the right about to nail the two of us. He’s running right towards my original Knight and I’m running left towards his Knight. Void zone on the bottom left.

Don’t worry extensively about the damage being done. The Holy bolts hit me (clothie Priest) for about 2500.

Be aware that Lady Blaumeux does put out void zones. She targets the player when she does so. Keep your eye on the ground and when you see the black hole, side step it. Try to be tactical and strategic about your placement. Don’t place them in the path between Blaumeux and Zeliek. (Pictures at the bottom)

Melee tanks

Set up 1 healer on the front right and the front left. Those healers will be assigned to the tanks that are immediately close to them.

Got the raid set up on the left? Good. They need to stay within 8 yards of Korth’azz to distribute the meteor equally. Here’s the tricky part of the encounter which is based mainly on observation and inquiry.

Tanks will still switch after 3ish or so debuffs, but there is a trick. The two tanks for Rivendare and Korth’azz have to run towards each other and meet in the middle. Then they taunt off each other, and turn around and run in the direction they were originally coming from. The raid group and the supporting cast will need to stay in their locations.

Example

That last part may not have been clear, so let me try again.

Ubertank the Death Knight tank is on Korth’azz left. PseudoPally the Paladin tank is on Rivendare on the right. The third mark’s about to hit, so they run towards each other.

At this point, they’re within melee range of each other and will soon begin to acquire debuffs from both Knights.

PseudoPally tanks Korth’azz, turns around, and drags him back to the bottom right. UberTank, the smart Death Knight that he is, realizes that PseudoPally’s taunt affects more than 1 mob at a time and waits for PseudoPally’s taunt to go off before using his own taunt to peel Rivendare off and back to the left.

The two Knights have now switched locations allowing time for the original debuffs of the raid to wear off.

Both Knights should die within seconds of each other as the DPS will be split amongst them fairly equally.

Korth’azz and Rivendare down

At this point, the initial Knights are dead. The entire raid will then move up and start working on Zeliek and Blaumeux. The same tank switching principle applies. All healers will collapse back to the original spawn platform where the Horsemen stood. If any player that isn’t a tank picks up too much of one debuff, have them turn around and run back towards the south side of the central platform. At that distance, the Mark should easily slip off and allow them to resume.

Get the raid to focus on Blaumeux first before the Void Zones become a pain. You don’t want to deal with Ziliek’s proximity chain Holy spell just yet anyway.

After 3 Marks, PseudoPally and Ubertank will have to switch and continue to do so. Just mind the Void Zones! Keep that up, and the boss will go down.

Congratulations! You just killed what was once considered the toughest boss in Naxx!

Healing

For Priest tanks, I suggest keeping a Renew on yourself to help lessen the blow. When you reach around 60%, drop a Greater Heal. If you’re healing the other tank near you, don’t forget to use Binding Heal and maintain Renews on the two of you.

When you’re on the just the two Caster Knights, work out a rotation with the healers. Try not to eat the Marks. Sometimes you have to because of LoS issues or because you just have to.

Action shots

Above left: Even at this distance, I can still hold aggro against this boss. Note the positions of the Void Zones. As I’m tanking, I try to position as many of them together in a cluster as much as possible.

Above right: Me trying to shake off the two Marks on me. I’m at the back of the platform not healing and the other 2 healers are aware of this. We’re each taking turns switching on and off.

Above left: A Starfire about to kill Void Zone queen here.

Above right: The results of our labor. A 2H sword. Where’s my freakin’ caster loot?

Did I forget anything? Please post a comment! Questions? Post those too! I’ll do my best to get to them! Otherwise, feel free to check out my healing guide for the Naxxramas bosses.

Healing Naxxramas – Thaddius (10 man)

Thaddius is the idiot check boss of Naxx. There might be others (wait ‘til I get to Heigan), but I do think this one really separates those that can and those that can’t. You’ll find out why momentarily (but keep the first boss of Heroic Mechanar at the back of your mind).

Engage

When you enter the room, you have to engage two mini bosses before you can engage Thaddius. Fuegen and Stalagg need to go down together within seconds of the other dying. Unlike the original Naxx, you don’t have to stack melee players on one side and range on the other. The raid needs to be split fairly equally with 5 on one side and 5 on the other. It’s going to be hard to do with 5 total DPS (assuming 2 tanks and 3 healers) so I recommend pairing your top 2 DPS players together and the bottom 3 DPS players together. If necessary, adjust on the fly and rotate a DPS from one side to the other to help play catch up.

The two tanks (literally) will fly back and forth and switch between Fuegen and Stalagg respectively. I think when the Tesla Coil portion of the fight activates, the tank switches. Healers have to be aware of which tank is presently on the side that they are on. I suggest using a range finder of some sort. Aggro shouldn’t be a problem. One healer on both sides should be enough (although you’ll have an extra one, so use your discretion there). AoE healing will be the order of the day. Try to ensure everyone is near full as much as possible.

Once you kill the 2 constructs, here’s the challenging part. You have to run and actually jump from the ledge onto the platform below! If you decide to fall off, then you’ll miss the platform entirely and hit the sludge water below (just turn around and head towards the entrance as there is a ramp that will allow you to try again).

Now you’re onto Thaddius himself.

He uses an ability called Polarity Shift.

• Polarity Shift: Places either a Negative Charge or Positive Charge to all nearby enemy targets. Players near other players with the same Charge type increases each their damage dealt. Players near other players with the opposite Charge type deal damage to nearby raid members.

And that right there is the gimmick for the fight. I like to designate left side as positive and right side for negative. You don’t have to stray too far out. Melee players with opposite charges can remain 180° from each other and still stay within striking range of the boss.

Your raid leader should be extremely vocal:

“Polarity shift soon!”

“Polarity shift, MOVE MOVE MOVE!”

Some players fail at checking their debuffs and can potentially wipe the raid. As the raid leader, I strongly recommend that you hold their hand through this as it is not worth the frustration.

Healing

Healing is a walkover on this boss. AoE heals and single target heals on the tank should the order of the day. Your AoE healers will be able to cover both groups no matter which side they are on. Keep a single target healer on the tank at all costs. He does like to randomly fry players with lightning. It’s nothing a healer can’t handle, however.

One last thing

DO NOT LOOT YOUR ITEMS AFTER THE BOSS DIES! Wait for your charges to wear off before doing so or else you’ll be in for a very nasty (and shocking) surprise.

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