Making Maiden Submit

I was about to turn in, but I decided to check my email first (5th time today). I had an intriguing question directed at me that I could not resist answering.

Edit: Email partially edited for clarity and compactness.

Hey Matt

Guild went to Kara today, downed Attunmen (hurray – first all guild boss kill). Then we went on to the Maiden of Pwnsauce – though not really. Wiped 4 times. We had three healers. 2 hrs later came back to try, this time with 4 healers, one replacing the offtank. Wiped 3 times. I threw Adam Smith at the wall and almost broke my headset again, because I like to be constructive.

I know that you can’t tell what the problem is just by hearing that. The tank keeps dying. We have 4 healers – 3 of which are above 1000 healing, one that’s at a shameful 617 (I’m going to kick him next time I see him on his hunter :P). You’d figure with two pallies on tank,  druid on raid, me on dispell, we could do this no problem – but. the tank keeps dying.

The essentials of the maiden fight – Pally does blessing of sacrifice to heal through redemption. Everyone stands at beginning of steps. Someone dispells holy fire. Pew pew. Lootz. Move on.

I have no idea. I’m so frustrated. The only thing I can do on my end from what I see is attempt to dispell better – for some reason, there are a few people out of my range. I do gymnastics to no avail, in fact, get bitchslapped by Maiden’s consecrationishthing and have got to heal myself. People keep telling me that if i stand at the stairs, I should be just fine. But these… are lies… or I’m doing something wrong and I don’t know what.

First, I’d like to address something. Headset smashing is a common occurrence. I myself have broken three Plantronic’s Audio 90s and one Logitech PC Gaming Headset within the span of a year. Hell hath no fury like a gamer pissed. That’s why I dropped $90 on my Sennheiser PC Audio 160’s and I am loving them (The SK edition even). Knowing it’s price, I would not throw it against the wall.

Anyways, I digress. So here I have a reader who has some trouble dealing with the meddlesome Maiden of a woman. The main problem here is that the tank keeps dying. There are two probably causes: The tank can’t survive due to undergearedness or the healers are sitting around taking a smoke break. Either of those two are bad.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you’re utilizing a circular formation for the whole raid. Every ranged member (healer, caster, or hunter) should be in between each set of pillars. Your melee classes would be in the central platform in a triangular formation of some sort with some distance between each other.

Possible Solutions

When you engage Maiden, every ranged member should be collapsing to the first step. You need to be able to dispel the guy that’s directly opposite from you. I know this has nothing to do with keeping the tank alive, but bear with me for a moment. If you can hit the guy on the other side, then you’ll be able to reach everyone else around you. I like to bind my Dispel key to ‘e’.

I’m going to suggest a minor change in your setup in regards to your healing. Shift one of your Paladins from MT duty to raid duty. You, as the Priest, should be on the MT. Have that Paladin cleanse the raid when Holy Fire hits (it’s cheaper then your Dispel). You should not be close enough to Maiden to absorb her Consecrate damage. Your Raid should be close enough to Maiden so that everyone can dispel each other but far enough away that her Consecrate does not affect you. If your Paladin isn’t keeping up Blessing of Sacrifice, then somethings wrong. One Paladin should be able to keep up the tank during the Repentance period.  When Repentance hits, you’re just sitting there and counting down. It is all Paladin. Once you’re free, your tank might be fairly wounded. Shield him immediately, then toss a renew, and resume your healing duties. You didn’t specify which stage of the encounter that your MT is dying in, but it’s usually in the Repentance period. If you got another melee class, consider having Paladin 2 put a Blessing of Sacrifice on him to wake him up out of Repentance.

If there’s still problems, you’ll need to take it a step further and analyze the encounters further to discover what is causing the problem. There isn’t much of a gear check involved here but if your tank is undergeared, it is possible for him to get smashed quickly. I confess that it took my Karazhan Guild about 10 days to take her down.

With four healers, there should be no excuse for the tank to die at all. If you can, I highly recommend using WoW Web Stats to parse your Combat Log. If you’re unsure of how, Kirk’s got a great guide (I’m working on one to help supplement it). What you can do is use that tool to help analyze your encounters and find out exactly what is going wrong.

I hope that helps! Having problems healing a certain boss encounter? Feel free to drop me a line: matttz at gmail dot com.