Not necessarily.

The key with bigger heals is to be using them effectively… just because you CAN cast a GHeal that will crit for 30K doesn’t mean you should. The same goes for Flash Heal, Renew, COH, POM, Penance, etc.

Wait, what?

Overheal, at its core, isn’t going to wipe your raid, but if you aren’t overhealing it can be indicative that you are healing more effectively. Bigger isn’t always better!

Blizzard has introduced Strength of Wrynn (SoW) and Hellscream’s Warsong (HW). This mechanic is something moderately new. We haven’t seen much similar to this before: a scaling buff over time. What does this mean? Does it mean that when it gets increased that you are now 5% more awesome than you were the previous week? Maybe… but in reality, as healers, you need to figure out what this actually means for YOU.

DPS is different than healing. DPS getting a pure DPS buff from SoW and HW means they are peeling away the bosses health faster. For healing, this means your heals are hitting for more; but nothing else. SoW and HW does not increase your Haste, Crit, or Mana Regen. Do you even need these heals to be hitting for a larger amount? Ask yourself questions!

Take a look at your gems in your gear; I bet many of your are gemming for pure spellpower in your red sockets. I bet many of you are breaking socket bonuses for pure red gems. Stop. Think. Evaluate. Take a look at your logs. Do you need that extra spellpower from that Cardinal Ruby? Weigh in the 20% buff (keeping in mind its going up to 25% and then 30%). If you don’t need this added spellpower, you might have the ability to regem and increase your throughput via your other stats. Get your haste up higher! Increase your intellect if you are having mana issues! Improve stats that you think might be a little too low when under the ICC buff! (Remember Strength of Wrynn and Hellscream’s Warsong are ICC only buffs, so if your guild is running a lot of stuff outside of ICC you might be reducing your spellpower lower than you’d like).

Additionally, you might not want to wear your 4-piece T10 gear after weighing in the ICC buff. For holy, the added 10% to COH that your 4-piece provides, might be pure overheal and you can get more stats and more throughput by equipping offset items. I know I do this; I trade that 10% buff for better stats on offset gear when I am in my Holy Spec. When I play Holy I tend to run Haste heavy– I like being faster.

For Disc, this can be tricky, as your Shields are preventative… putting my “issues” with pure Bubble Spam aside… are you not proccing Rapture b/c your shields aren’t being eaten? (Remember Rapture isn’t just for you! Your other Raiders get benefit from it as well!) You could be able to increase your Haste for more Tank healing and DAs. Figure out where YOUR tipping point is- generally Disc is all about MOAR SP!!! But, with the increased buff you might have more flexibility to gear/gem. When are you giving up too much in your throughput stats for just more Spellpower? Are you going to be gaining more from more haste or are you overscaling on spellpower? A bit easier to determine if you are Holy; more difficult as Disc.

It is important to remember that shifting your focus from spellpower to throughput is up to you and is impacted greatly by your gear. If you are new to ICC and are in dungeon heroic gear and some 232 badge gear, perhaps spellpower will be the way to go for you. However, if you have the extra gems, badges, or if you are a Jewelcrafter and have extra Dragon’s Eyes laying around: I encourage you to test it out. Swap out some spellpower for more haste- kick it up a notch. See how it works for you. I know I have regemmed and have noticed an increase in my output – not from spellpower gains provided the ICC Buff, but from my thoughput gains via Haste.

The ICC Buff and You – Throughput vs. Spellpower is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Remember – Full HD Versions are available at YouTube.

Additionally, the Rawrcast podcast with Ava and myself is now available for download on iTunes and from the Rawrcast page directly. Give it a listen!

Woot! Congrats Dark Nemesis!
Derevka, Bane of the Fallen King

Heroic Lich King 10-Man Down! is a post from: Tales of a Priest

One very common misconception about Disc Priests and the Lich King encounter is that it is all about Bubble Spam– nothing more, and nothing less. If you have a Disc priest, Infest is irrelevant: just spam and /profit. This couldn’t be further from the truth – the key to this fight is an INTELLIGENT Disc Priest, not just some Bubble Monkey. There is a lot you need to keep track of during this fight all while protecting your raid from Infest: You need to be very aware of your ability and the detriment of “outgearing” Infest. (Yes, I said DETRIMENT).  On top of all the other stuff that is going on during this fight you need to remember that the LK Encounter is a 10 minute fight, can your mana pool stand up to 10 minutes of blanketing the raid with a 900 mana per cast Power Word: Shield?

To better understand all of this, first lets go over what Infest actually does…

Infest: Deals X to Y Shadow damage to all enemy players within 50000 yards. In addition, the targets will take increasing Shadow damage per second. This effect is removed when the target has more than 90% health.

Note that it will continue to do damage until you are at 90% HP. What PW: Shielding does is it eats the first hit of Infest and leaves people at (hopefully) greater than 90% HP. Lets take a look at each of the 4 versions of Infest.

Infest is Shadow Damage, so you will have a certain amount of resist from your Shadow Resist buff. (don’t forget to cast it!) The amount that is resisted each time (and by each player) is completely RNG. This and the “range” it hits for is the wild card and can be a bitch. Lets use a very simple example here to explain how using PW: Shield works on mitigating Infest.

Here are the basics of this example:

PW: Shield Value – 8,000
HP of the Player – 30,000
Infest Hits – 10,000
Shadow Damage Resisted – 500

Great! We resisted 500 damage of the Infest, and absorbed 8,000 damage from the shield resulting in 1500 net damage to the player, bringing them to 28,500 HP which is 95% HP. Since we landed at 95% HP we do not have to worry about Infest ticking on the player. Woohoo!

Now, lets kick it up a notch, and take a look at a Heroic 10 example.

PW: Shield Value – 8,000
HP of the Player – 30,000
Infest Hits – 13,000
Shadow Damage Resisted – 1,000

Taking all these mitigations and resists we have the net damage resulting in 4,000 putting the player at 26,000 HP or 87%. Uh oh! Infest ticks! This player will need fast heals to get them back up over 90% pretty quickly or the Infest DOT will kill them in a matter of seconds.

Of course these examples assume a rather low Sheild Amount- for purposes of illustration. My Shields, with 15% buff, and when I have my 4pc equipped, absorb around 12k. Which, as you can see isn’t enough to handle Heroic 25 Infest by itself, you have the Shadow Resist in there as well.  (typically somewhere around 1.1-3.8k)The additional shadow resist  is VERY important, and (as you can see) is a bit of a wild card. You can see resists from 0 to 3,000. Not only do you have the resists being variable, you also have your spellpower being variable. (ICC Ring Procs, Trinket stacks, Cloak Enchant Procs, forgetting to buff Inner Fire, etc.). Of course the total HP of the target also plays a factor since Lower HP targets are more likely to fall <90% than higher HP targets.

Here are some examples of the RNG aspect of Sheilding with resists and SP Variances.

The Lich King Infest Derevka 1848 (A: 12235, R: 3821)
The Lich King Infest Derevka 3531 (A: 11856, R: 1895)

Raidwide buffs such as Totem of Wrath and Demonic Pact also cause variances in your shield amounts (we could even try to include DA procs from the PW:S Glyph), and when you are trying to mitigate a Heroic 25 Infest for upwards of 19,800 damage: every. bit. helps. The issue with Demo Pact is that you don’t get the buff until it procs, and the first Infest you should be preemptively shielding your raid during Fordring’s RP diatribe. (I start shielding my groups at about 15 seconds until combat). That means, I don’t have the spellpower that Demo Pact provides… which means, the first Infest can get messy. If you are struggling with the first Infest due to variable Spellpower, do what I have been doing pre-pull pop a Wild Magic potion for the 200 SP bonus and spam your assigned groups for Infest shields.

So depending on your gear, raidwide spellpower, and resists you should be able to mitigate most (if not all Infest damage).

Outgearing Infest
With 4-piece and the impending 20% buff (25% and 30%) eventually PW: Shield will outpace Infest, including SP and resist variables. You may already be encountering this on your current attempts on Normal 25, 10, and Heroic 10. At first glance you might say “Great! I don’t have to worry about Infest ticks since everyone will be able to stay at 100%! People will take no damage from infest at all! WOOHOO!!”

BZZZ WRONG!!!!

This is one of the situations where bigger isn’t always better. Let me say this explicitly: You do not want to have your shields be bigger than the Infest damage. Two things happen as a result of ‘outgearing’ the Infest damage.

1. You don’t get mana back from Rapture if your whole shield isn’t eaten by Infest. PW: Shield isn’t a cheap spell, and when you are casting it on 10-15 people each rotation of Infest, you’ll burn through mana pretty quickly if you aren’t getting your Rapture procs back. (Further the ICD of Rapture triggers upon full absorption, and if you can get 10-15 shields eaten all at the same time, you get 10-15 procs at once… which means you’re getting a LOT of mana back).

2. “A more powerful spell already exists”. I hate seeing those red words across my screen – even if your residual shield is only for 100, you will not be able to reapply a new shield if your SP is lower. This can happen from a Ring Proc on an earlier shield, Lightweave proc, etc… This prevents you from reapplying a shield and protecting that target from the next Infest.

Granted, you could make your whole raid use a /cancelaura macro for PW:S and leech Innervates, but that seems to be a waste.

You want your whole shield eaten by the inital blast from Infest. This also means you might have to downrank your shields… On Heroic LK10 I downrank to Rank 12 to allow for full absorption with my SP/Gear. With the increased ICC buff coming shortly, more and more people will have to downrank soon, otherwise they could bleed out of mana from lack of Rapture restores, or they could run into the overwriting a more powerful spell issue.  What rank works for you will vary based on your gear (if you have 4pc) and your spellpower and raid make up… trial and error FTW. Customize your PW: Shield to the Mode/Size of the encounter you are doing, your raid will thank you for it. You want your shield to just cover infest, be completely used up, and remove the RNG aspect. Ideally you want everyone to land at 95-99% HP, so your Glyph of PW:S brings them back to 100% the next go around.

Working Rapture
Rapture is your savior on this fight. Putting out that many Shields can be very mana intensive if you aren’t watching your Rapture cooldown. (I track mine using ForteXorcist). You want your Rapture returns to be from your mass bubbling on Infest, NOT from anything else. This means you need to be careful about when you shield a tank or a player who is taking damage. Rapture can only restore mana to you every 12 seconds. So if you need to shield one of the tanks, do so during that 12 second ICD (and be sure the shield will be eaten during those 12 seconds). You don’t want to lose sync of your Infest Rapture mana restore. Also, be wary of shielding high aggro melee players. I’ve found that our Ret Pally and Whirlwinding Arms Warrior tend to pick up aggro on the Ghouls and can take substantial damage, so I try to shield these players at the last moment before Infest. (and often time’s follow it up with a POM to heal up any Infest damage that PW:S didn’t absorb)

Communication
For our Heroic LK25 progress we use 2 Disc priests on the raid: Ava and myself. We are on opposite sides of the circle, and are moving quite regularly due to Shadow Traps. We also split the raid in two. (I take 2 groups, Ava takes 2 groups and we both cover the 5th). Protip: be sure your Grid Shows not only Weakened Soul, but also other Priests PW:S. We also communicate on a Vent Bind to each other if one of our ‘assigned’ players is out of range. Given the amount of movement required in Phase 1 of Heroic LK25, we often need to cover each other regularly. You need to work as a team, and communicating is pivotal.

This is not a pure mindless bubble fight, you could try to just spam your Shield button and try to play the hero that way, but but you might as well stick Billie Baddie with his 1337 Gear Score in your raid slot and hope to win. Lich King is a great encounter (even though I’m tired of hearing the RP speech at the end/begining) and more and more guilds are getting the opportunity to go toe to toe with him. I hope these pointers provide some good insight to how Infest works, and more importantly gives the Disco Priests out there some insight they might have overlooked in some of their earlier attempts.

Lich King Shielding & Infest – More Than Just Bubble Spam is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Ooooh I, I love the nightlife…I got to boogie……On the disco ’round, oh yea. Oh, I love the night life….I got to boogie on the disco ’round, oh yea…

What? Disco is dead? Shit, I guess I didn’t get the memo. Thank god, because Disco music sucks.

But I’ll tell you what DOESN’T suck! Healing the Lich King fight as a discipline priest. If for some reason you still run with a group of window lickers that still don’t understand the benefits and abilities of a discipline priest, this fight alone should change their mind.

First of all, congratulations are in order: You made it to the Lich King. Now you have to kill him. He DOES have the purples, after all. When we did this, there werent many strats available, which is usually the case, so we usually adopt our own. How we do things may or may not work for you, depending on raid compesition, but the principles, and how to handle them from a healing perspective, remain.

Alrighty. PHASE ONE: FIGHT!!!!

(I’m also warning you now. I have NO CLUE how to use Photoshop,& I suck at MS Paint. Next time I’m just doing this in CAD.)

Our MT (the triangle) stands at the bottom of the stairs, tanking the LK, with all DPS focused on him. Our OT (The Star) stands to the right and tanks the Horrors. Melee stay clustered by the LK, with all Range and healers is a second group in the the position shown with a happy face. This allows for Range/healers & melee to DPS the LK while having a quick route to the Horror to have Necrotic Plague (NP) dispelled. Remember to move ASAP to this OT position, as it starts dealing a shit ton of damage. The cleansed NP will jump to the OT (cleanse it from the OT when the original target runs back) or Horrors. The LK will also be summoning Ghouls, which the MT should pick up. Don’t worry about them – AOE damage will take care of them too.

Here’s a Power Aura’s Code for the Necrotic Plague:

Necrotic Plauge on You – FUCKING RUN!! wrote:

Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu4; g:nu0.31372549019608; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterfaceIconsAbility_Creature_Disease_02; size:nu0.81999999284744; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.77254901960784; y:nu72; x:nu-14; customname:st; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu2; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu34; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; owntex:bofalse; isResting:nu0; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; anim2:nu0; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; spec2:botrue; InactiveDueToState:bofalse; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu10; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu18; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:botrue; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:stNecrotic; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:bofalse; stance:nu10; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:botrue; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu1; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu2; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1

Phase One Positions

So what does a Disc priest do here? You make dealing with the Infest simple stupid, that’s what you do. Infest is a raid wide damage debuff that will appear in intervals throughout this fight (DXE/DBM/BW, ect should all have timers showing you when the next cast could occur). Notice how Infest works: The damage per tick continues to get larger and larger until the target is healed past 90% of their health….or dies. But if your target has a disc applied PW:S on them – *POOF* completely negated. The infest is absorbed the second it lands, and there’s nothing to heal (There’s also a strat in Heroic mode to click off Fort/Mark etc buffs, “healing” you past that level, but it’s not worth talking about for a normal mode kill).

If you’ve seen this fight a few times, you’ll know infest comes fairly soon after the fight starts. You should be running some raid warning mod(s) that have Timers & countdowns; After the dialogue starts, wait to about ten seconds before the actual fight starts- start spamming the raid with shields. Your gear should reflect this shield spamming role, making sure your PW:S GCD is at the 1 sec mark via haste, and have a higher amount of intellect for the constant spam.Watch your timers, spot heal, Rinse & Repeat. For our set up, we use two disc priests – one for tank healing & one for raid healing. As the tank healer, I focus on keeping the tanks healed, and shielded, as well as their respective group, leaving the other 4 groups for the raid disc. The tank healer can easily switch to raid spamming if the bubble spammer dies. You can choose to have 2 disc on the raid, but make sure you split your targets so you arn’t tripping over each others shields & Weakened Soul debuffs (sheilds & WS should be visable on your raid frames). It’s probably worth mentioning that Death Knights AMS works on this as well.

Also, make sure your raid frames are showing the amount of absorption left on your PW:S. With the increasing ICC buff, your shields may be able to absorb more than one infest (gear depending as well). Seeing this will allow you to skip some targets with sufficient shielding, saving time & mana.

PHASE TWO: MULTI KILL!!!!!

At 70% phase 2 starts. The LK runs to the center, so move to & spread out at the position shown. The Shield Spamming can be draining on your mana, so this transition can be a good time to coordinate your Hymn of Hope with your other priests (this may not be needed at this point, with the ICC buff and most have considerable upgrades at this point- your mileage may very). Have a Ranged dps or two on the Spheres, have the tanks pick up Raging Spirits and the rest of the DPS take care of them. There is no defile in this phase, so spot heal as needed. This is a short phase, only lasting 60 seconds. At the end of that 60 seconds, run to the center of the platform as he begins to cast Quake, keeping away from any remaining spheres as the DPS finishes them off.

Note that it’s extremely fun to yell “GET THE SPHERES!” in your best Sean Connery voice.

Phase Two Positions

PHASE THREE: ULTRA KILL!!!!!!!!!!

Again, we might do things a tad different here. Infest will begin to cast again this phase, as well as Soul Reaper on the Tanks. Soul Reaper ROCKS the tanks, which will be swapping the LK, This is another benefit of the other Disc Priest on the tank by being able to mitigate a large portion of damage.

The raid should group up off center (towards the center of the platform) of where the tanks will be positioning the Lich King (Shown as the pretty heart). The Val’kyrs will approach from the shortest distance, so by positioning off center you will give yourself the largest amount of room to DPS them down. They will grab someone in the raid & make their way towards the edge of the platform.IF you don’t kill them before that, they drop their target off the side, and there is no way to rez them. They’re fairly slow, and you can’t snare them, but they can be slowed or stunned.

Phase Three Val'kyr Positions

Now that’s only part of this phase. While this is going on, the Lich King also casts Defile – Big, Black Puddles of Bad you don’t want to be in. I can’t stress this enough: DON’T FUCKING STAND IN IT. You need to be watching your timers for when this is coming. When it’s coming, you need to spread out – FAST – as you have a mere two second cast time. After those two seconds, the Defile will drop where ever you are. It also will grow in proportion to the amount of people touching the drop area…if you’re not spread out, and it touches more than one person it can become too large to avoid. Three or more people usually results in this growing too fast to get out of, wiping the raid. Defile pools last about 30 seconds.

To handle this, we spread out in a fan direction towards the stair & portal sides of the room. Now, sometimes, the RNG gods will fart in your general direction, and defile and Val’kyrs will almost be on top of each other. WATCH YOUR TIMERS. Be prepared to run & spread out as soon as the Val’kyrs grab a target, or vice versa.

A disc priest has another advantage here in dealing with defile, as your shields can absorb the first tick or so of it, keeping it from spreading on the slowpokes.

Phase 3 Defile Positions

PHASE FOUR: YOU’RE ON FIRE!!!!!!!!!!

This is another transition phase, occurring at 40%. It’s basically a repeat of Phase 2, so move back to the edge of the platform.  Raging Spirits seem to be a bit faster to spawn here, so make sure the tanks are prepared for that.

PHASE FIVE: FINISH HIM!!!!!!!

Move back in as he begins to cast quake. This phase is similar to phase Three, having Infest & Soul Reaper, but also adds Vile Spirits (there’s no more defile, however). Ranged dps has about 15 seconds after the first one appears to blast the crap out of them – after that, they make a bee line for you and explode. Make sure you are spread out when they charge so multiple people do not get hit by the AoE explosion. Seed of Corruption, grounding totems, Howling blast etc all work great here. Disc priests again offer a great buffer against this explosion for any stranglers that didn’t get burned down in time.

The Lich King will also cast Harvest Soul (Luckily he can’t cast this on someone targeted by Vile spirits anymore…that was usually a wipe). The person being harvested will be lifted up into the air, being strangled. HEAL THE HOLY HELL OUT OF THEM. Do not let them die. They will take a crap ton of damage, and if they die, the total amount of Harvest Soul Damage is transferred to the tank all at once. His ass will hurt for a week after that.

If the Harvest Soul target makes it thru the 6 seconds of pain, they are transferred in Frostmourne’s room. Inside, you will see Terenas Menethil fighting against The Spirit Warden. I found out the hard way, as a healer, you HEAL Menethil to full (yes, smiting the Spirit Warden doesn’t work too well). Make sure you dispell the Soul Rip (If you’re a druid, bash it if you can’t heal thru it). Again, DO NOT Let Menethil die, or the LK will enrage. This continues on until he’s at 10%…..

PHASE SIX: BOOM!! HEADSHOT!!!

He’s had enough of playing with you. He kills you all, and begins to turn you into mindless Scourge. It’s GAME OVER, MAN. GAME OVER!

Or is it?

(Pro Tip: Don’t release.We found that out the hard way too.)

So That’s how we did it. It may or may not work for you, but hopefully it demonstrates the concepts & process well enough that you can adapt to something that WILL work for you. The hardest part of this fight is being aware, & being able to react. You master that, you’ll be collecting some new weapons in no time.

We usually don’t write fight specific guides, and tend to focus solely on the healing. This is one of those rare exceptions where we felt the fight needed explanation in order to assess what you will being healing through. If anything is unclear or you have any questions, feel free to comment, or hit me up on AIM or email/Gchat.

GOOD LUCK!

How to Disco with the Lich King is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Enter the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter. Blizzard finally implemented a fight where you have to ‘heal a boss to death’… erm life? Healers rejoice!! Finally a fight where we can flex our epeens, show off our HPS numbers, and have the proverbial pissing contest with all the other healers.

*screeching breaks*

Sorry priests! You simply don’t have the throughput that is needed to pump out the HPS to that of a Shaman, Druid or a Paladin. Our single target heals, even if we spent the talent points to maximize, do not hit hard or fast enough to outdo these 3 classes. As I stated during RaidWarning’s Power Word: Fail, I think a lot of priest healers are having a hard time with this encounter soley based upon their egos. We finally get a fight that is all about big heals… and priests, because of our throughput design, simply can’t shine when it comes to big numbers on this fight.

This brings up a very difficult conversation and I’ve seen a number of threads about this on the WOW Forums over at PlusHeal and comments on other blogs. Who do you send into your portals? Generally speaking you want to send in your highest HPS classes and get them as many stacks of the buff as possible. Priests tend not to be the high single target HPS class… our highest HPS spells are our multi target spells. (Binding Heal, Prayer of Healing, COH). That is where Holy Shines. And with Discipline, it’s all about damage mitigation from Divine Aegis and PW: Shield, not pure HPS.

That being said, Priest’s have a very important job on this fight: keeping the raid alive while the other healers are inside the portals getting buffed and when they are healing Valithria. If you only have one priest, you likely will want them as Holy so they can provide a Glyphed Guardian Spirit buff on Dreamwalker every 60 seconds. If you have more than one, having your Discipline healing the tanks and tossing out PW:S on the DPS will often really be handy for abilities. (ie. Lay Waste)

Here is the make-up my guild uses for our 10 and 25 man Heroic Valithria Kills:
Heroic ICC10: We typically run 2 or 3 healers for Heroic 10, so we have our Boomkin swap to Alt-Spec Resto and go into the portals with our Holy Pally. I stay in Holy spec and heal outside.
Heroic ICC25: We run 8 healers total: 6 going in, putting a Holy and Disc Priest outside.
(While this is out make up for Heroic, the same logic applies to Normal mode)

By no means am I saying that a priest cannot go into the portals, that certainly isn’t the case. Hell, on my 10 man’s first Heroic kill… I was going in. The key, when you are going into portals, is to be coordinated. Get your first cloud, reset your buffs (ideally with someone else), then group up quickly and fly around getting your stacks. (Remember to pop the last cloud moments before you get sent back out of the dream world). It is more important to have coordination in the dream world, than anything else. So that means, if you have a Druid who can’t keep their stacks up and a Holy Priest who can… you likely will net better having the priest be buffed, and the Druid to heal outside.

Your DPS needs to be very clear in understanding that they need to do all they can to avoid extraneous damage, as the healers need to be putting full attention on healing the Dragon. Healers that are outside of the portals, can assist healing the dragon as they can– however should conserve their mana for healing the damage that is going on outside. (As holy, I typically will burn Surge of Light procs and the occasional Renew on Valithria)

We typically save Heroism for the portal that ends around the 5 minute mark. Be sure to time your Guardian Spirit cooldown to sync with the portal ending at that time. We’ve found that our DPS begin to get overwhelmed at the 6 minute mark, so the Heroism not only helps the healers dump big amounts of heals, it also provides the DPS a chance to catch up on adds.

The key to this fight is to remember that it is not a DPS race, if you are lasting over 6 minutes and she isn’t healed to 100% you likely can cut back on DPS and add more healing to the fight. Your first few portal rotations will take some learning, and figuring out the best way to “pop” the clouds certainly can be difficult. (I SWEAR I fly straight through them, and they don’t pop!!) Stick to it, and your raid will get it. And priests, remember— its not about meters, its about working with your raid and getting the job done. Besides, who else brings Guardian Spirit?

Priests and Valithria Dreamwalker is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Dark Nemesis - Fall of the Lich King

Avalonna will be working on a strat write up in the next few posts, so stay tuned for that.

Arthas was so gracious enough to drop the Royal Scepter of Terenas II, (it doesnt have MP5 anymore it replaced the MP5 with 63 haste) I had to pick it up. Om nom nom!!!

Remember to sign up and send in your questions for Power Word: Fail over at Raid Warning!

Lich King Defeated! Bring on Hard Modes! is a post from: Tales of a Priest

The Plagueworks is the next wing in Icecrown Citadel. It is not too dissimilar from a lot of Naxxramas: complete with Abominations, Slimes, Decimate, and bosses that yell at us if we kill their pets!

After killing Saurfang, you have your first idiot check of Icecrown: Frogger! While, this version of Frogger is a bit easier than previous versions, it doesn’t stop people from dying from it. (Pro Tip: when you phase into the Plagueworks wing, stop holding down your run key and wait for the zone to render– you can thank me later.)

After Frogger, we are faced with some pretty epic feeling trash. You have exploding mobs, Scientists that turn raid members into a Flubber, Geists, Precious, and Stinky (Festergut and Rotface’s pet dogs). The damage this trash can put out should not be underestimated, and the healers in your raid should be ready.

Precious and Stinky are pretty much minibosses, so I’ll go over them briefly. Be sure to pull them separately, and when you do pull one of them, try to drag them down the stairs a bit to be certain you don’t wind up with both of them at once.

Precious can apply a Mortal Wound debuff to the tank that can stack up to 100% healing debuff, so to mitigate that, simply have your tanks taunt back and forth every 2 stacks. Additionally she can cast Decimate, so raid healers shoudl be ready to top off your raids. Finally, she can summon waves of zombies that should simply be AOE’d down before their physical damage debuff gets too out of hand.

Stinky is a marginally more difficult than Precious, since she does a constant AOE Nature damage to the raid, which means raid healing after a Decimate will need to be quick. Stinky does not have a Mortal Wound, and does not summon adds.

Wow… trash that you can’t just faceroll/AOE through? Unheard of! It’s a step up from the TOC trash, right?

Festergut, was the first boss we faced last Tuesday. While his mechanics are not too difficult – adding in the server lag made it quite rough. On 25 man, the DPS requirement is fairly high. Ava and my guild (even with the lag) downed him with over 35 seconds to spare. (Go Dark Nemesis!)  However, I’d imagine many 25 man guilds will struggle with this. 10 man seems to be a bit more forgiving with the DPS requirement, as Blizzard expects that most 10 man make ups probably will not be min/maxing raid buffs.

Rotface, while mechanically similar to Grobbulus, has some really interesting mechanics. In my opinion, this fight is rather fun. The key simply is controlling the slimes and being sure your raid doesn’t take unnecessary damage. Coordination and communication regarding Mutated Infection and Unstable Ooze Explosion is critical to being sure you have this fight down pat. Perhaps the most important part of this fight is controlling the Small Oozes that spawn from Mutated Infection — remember the Small Oozes cannot be taunted, so be sure to not return to the raid group until the Ooze has been eaten!

Professor Putricide has got to be one of the funniest bosses that Blizz has come out with. There is a clear and obvious association with Professor Farnsworth. Due to the horrific server lag, my guild decided to wait until later tonight (Sunday) to not risk any of our 10 attempts on him. Instead of burning through those, we decided to have our 10 man groups learn him. Both Ava’s 10 man and my 10 man downed him with 6 and 5 attempts remaining. We’ll be putting up strategies on how we handled Professor and the other 2 bosses in the coming week. Putricide is clearly the biggest challenge we’ve seen yet in ICC! Strong DPS is required, strong tank and raid healing is needed, and intelligent tank kiting is critical as well. It is certainly a perfect storm!

The Plagueworks wing is definitely challenging and I expect a good deal of guilds will struggle with these bosses and their “checks”. What does sadden me is that many guilds are screaming for nerfs already. The wing hasn’t been open for a week yet… why are people giving up so quickly? Keep at it, learn the mechanics, tweak your strategies, continue to get upgrades as you reach the Plaugeworks… you’ll down them.

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Icecrown Citadel: The Plagueworks Impressions is a post from: Tales of a Priest

In Naxxramas and Ulduar we had Slot Specific Tokens. For example, Gauntlets of the Lost Conqueror would yield Tier Gloves for Pally/Priest/Lock. Then came Trial of the Crusader, where we had a whole new system: Universal Tier Tokens – Trophy of the Crusade.(Almost reminiscent of original Naxx40′s system) With TOC, you didn’t NEED a Trophy to get your Tier gear. You could buy an an iLvl 232 Tier item for a given amount of badges, you could turn in badges and a Trophy of the Crusade for iLvl 245, or alternatively you could turn in a “Grand Regalia” token.

As you upgraded your Tier 9 gear from 232 to 245 to 258, the badges you used were somewhat ‘lost’ on the way — you didn’t need the prior version to upgrade; you could go straight to T9 iLvl 258. However, TOC’s system could wreak havoc on DKP Economies with Universal Tokens often favoring certain classes that had minimal gear competition on non Tier items. (Plate Spellpower gear, for one example)

Now, enter Icecrown and its Tier 10 system. To get a Tier item you first must purchase the base item with Emblems of Frost. This gives you the iLvl 251 version of the item. Then, you upgrade that item by turning the item in along with Grouped Token (Pally/Priest/Lock) to upgrade to the iLvl 264, and again to iLvl 277.

This system impacts many aspects of the game: it requires you to first purchase the iLvl 251 version (thus burning Emblems of Frost) and slowly work your way up. In TOC I skipped iLvl 232 and started at 245 since my guild did well in TOGC 25 and 10; Trophies became available quickly. People spent their first cache of Badges on non-Tier items, picking up Rings and Trinkets. In Icecrown, I think you’ll see people waiting to get Cloaks and Trinkets (unless they are in desperate need for that upgrade), and holding out for T10 shoulders first. (60 Emblems of Frost).

Of course, this new upgrading system plays an interesting role on the DKP economics of the Token drops. In your first few weeks, you’ll probably see Token drops going fairly cheap since people will only be able to upgrade once they have amassed enough Emblems first, then you’ll see the prices go back up as more and more raiders have enough Emblems to purchase and upgrade. The demand for the upgrade (people with the ability to upgrade since they already have their 251 item) increases; but the supply stays fairly static. (Only Saurfang drops them— that is until the next wing opens)

As I mentioned earlier, initially I didn’t like this new Tier System– but now, I think that it’s quite brilliant. It balances Casual Players and Hardcore Raiders well. One of the biggest complaints casuals voiced was that they had very little access to Tier gear. Casual players didn’t get to walk around and utilize the Set Bonuses that Tier Gear offered. To respond to that problem, Blizzard enabled Tier items to be attained solely with badges with the launch of TOC. While only the hardcore raiders were able to attain the highest iLvl version of these Tier Sets, they didn’t provide any visual distinction – there was no immediate visual recognition that their higher iLvl item was more difficult to attain. As catty as that may seem, many Hardcores struggled without that distinction. With T10, each increasing iLvl has the same look, but a different color scheme. For example, the Priest Crimson Acolyte set starts Green, then upgrades to Purple, and finally upgrades and caps at White. This methodology not only does this help distinguish raiders who get access to the ‘upgraded’ versions, but also allows the less hardcore players access to T10 and the set bonuses provided.

I really look forward to seeing this new system in action. Granted, I still don’t like the popped collar priests have to wear. Stay tuned! Maybe you’ll see Ava and I cameo on an episode of the Jersey Shore on MTV! What do you think about the new Tier System? Annoyed by the badge requirements? Like the fact that you get ‘use’ out of your old gear to upgrade?

The New T10 System- More Than Popped Collars is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Trash -
Rep Grind for Ashen Verdict Rings! Joking aside, the trash in here is actually kind of tricky. Be aware that the Giant Skeleton mobs have a AOE interrupt, there is a non-interruptable cast bar so you can see it coming – but also note that when they start casting this spell, it looks like they are casting a lightning spell. Keep an eye out!The Nerubian mobs in Deathwhiper’s room have a life leech not unlike what General Vezax has in Ulduar. Spread out, and if you get the debuff… please move.

Lord Marrowgar –
I am guessing that this fight will be substantially more difficult on heroic, as the normal version is very straight forward. Four things you need to be aware of as a healer.

• Bone Spike Graveyard- 1 target on 10 man, 3 on 25. Bone Spike will target players randomly and damage them over time. These players will continue to take damage until the bone spike is DPS’d and destroyed. Be sure to either have your Grid notify you of these targets or be aware of raid warnings. Players that are spiked cannot spellcast. So if your 10 man runs 2 healers, and one is targeted, be ready to heal them. Holy Priests – POM can be very handy for speed if you don’t have a Surge of Light queued. Disc – PW:Sheild.
• Coldflame – People should see these coming, they move pretty slowly – but as healers sometimes it is our job to “heal through stupid”. Sigh.
• Bonestorm- Run away! On normal the damage to the slow movers isn’t overly difficult to heal through, but I’m sure we can bet that on Heroic it won’t be. For those that remember Leotheras, this ability is very reminiscent. If you see a good deal of people get hit: launch a POM at them and let the bouncing magic do its work!
• Saberlash - Provided your tanks are in position, this should be split and managed pretty effectively.

Lady Deathwhisper-
AKA Shade of Akama 2.0: You’ll be healing 2-3 tanks (depending on your strategy and gear) taking the waves of adds that come from the different entryways (reminder: Priority to the Empowered adds). Again a fairly straightforward fight: Survive the waves, while DPS burns her mana shield – once the shield is down, take her out. Again, a few points:

• Death and Decay – Don’t stand in the green shit! Healers be ready for slow or “let me finish this cast” players.
• Dispels!! -  There are lots of debuffs that go out on this fight, some from friendly players when they are Mind Controled.
• Dominate Mind – Be ready to flee from an MC’d Rogue, but also be ready to use any CC available to you.
• Shadowbolt – Her shadowbolt hits pretty hard, so be quick to top of the raid as it can hit for a substantial amount.
• The adds have fairly substantial raid damage. Having that chain, followed by Death & Decay can be fatal. Holy Priests – this is where Burst Healing offsets Burst Damage nicely. Be ready for Serendipitous POH’s followed by a COH snap.
• Tanks and Threat in Phase 2 – Once the mana shield goes down, she starts to stack debuffs on the tank. Tanks will need to take turns tanking her so healers should be aware of the debuff stacks and when the next tank will surpass cumulative threat. Oh, and to make it even more interesting: she’s taunt immune.(edit: confirmed on normal mode she CAN be taunted – heroic: TBD) This reminds me of Bloodboil’s threat mechanic. If you struggle with this, bring 3 tanks – having all 3 build threat, but only 1 getting the debuff.

Gunship Battle -
So far my favorite fight in Icecrown: hands down. Step one- don’t do what some of our raiders did: forget to equip your Jetpack shirt.

• Assign at least 2 healers to go with the Tank/DPS to the other ship, at least one should be a raid healer, and the other should be on the tank. If the tanks are close enough to eachother from one ship to the other, Beacon will reach.
• Healers on your Faction’s ship have a fairly straightforward encounter. Heal the tank(s), and raid heal while you burn the waves of adds down. There also is a ‘situational awareness’ check on your ship to not get hit by the missles that the other ship is launching at you. Answer: Don’t stand in the glaringly obvious missle strike zones.
• Healers on the Opposing Factions ship need to be aware of the number of stacks that the Captain has. As time goes by the Captain will gain a stacking buff, Battle Fury. Once this gets too high, healers will struggle to keep the tank alive. DPS will take out the mages. My guild uses the stacks and the timing of the death of the mages to jump back to our airship while the buff resets. Once the buff resets, head back over, rinse and repeat. As the stack gets higher and higher, cooldowns like GS and PS should be used proactively to prevent the tank from falling from the damage from Saurfang/Muradin and Axe-Throwers.
• Healers who happen to find themselves with the ability to multitask, can also use their jetpacks to ‘crash’ on top of the mobs. This will apply a movement and attack speed debuff for a short duration. The duration increases with how far/high you’ve rocketpacked.

Deathbringer Saurfang –
From a lore perspective, this is an interesting fight. However, if you have the coordination to complete the Gunship encounter, Saurfang shouldn’t pose too much of a hurdle for your raid.

The key to this raid is to control Saurfang’s abilities from either empowering himself or healing himself. As he deals more damage, he buffs himself and gets stronger. Saurfang also summons Blood Beasts throughout the fight. Provided your DPS can shift focus and take them out fast enough, they shouldn’t be much of a concern.

• Spread Out – Prior to the pull/talking with the NPC to start the encounter, you should have your raid in defined locations and use DBM or DXE range monitors to spread out more than 12 yards from your closest neighbor. Failing to do so will chain Blood Nova, which can be devastating if it is chained to a Boiling Blood target.
• Boiling Blood – This is a debuff that is applied to random targets in your raid that places a fairly strong physical damage dot on the target. Disc’s either not on the tank or Tank Discs with a spare GCD should shield these targets, and holies should baby sit these players so they don’t go down too fast – particularly clothies with minimal physical damage reduction.
• Increasing Damage – A Tank Healer’s job gets more and more difficult as the fight goes on due to Blood Link and Blood Power. Think of it as an enrage of sorts.
• Rune of Blood – Tanks will need to taunt (quickly) off of each other once this debuff is applied to them. It is applied to the tank with aggro. Healers should be ready to quickly switch targets to the new tank. Depending on how well geared your tanks are, towards the end of a fight slow healer reaction/switching time could prove devastating. (I expect the Heroic version of this to be very unforgiving)
• Mark of the Fallen Champion – This is applied every time Saurfang’s energy reaches 100. This debuff stays on the target for the remainder of the encounter causing notable physical damage to them each time Saurfang hits a target. If you die, he heals 5%. If you take too long to kill him, you could see 2, 3, even 4 people with this debuff – coupled with Blood Power, you have another “enrage” like mechanic. Healers should be prepared to heal these other targets as needed. Perhaps even assigning people to the first, second, or third target as needed. (Pallies with Becon are very effective at mitigating this effect) If you are struggling, you may want to consider letting him heal the 5% and let that one person die… that is assuming you can DPS through that 5% heal without losing more players.

Overall this fight requires good positioning, timely taunts, and strong dps.

Bring on the next wing!

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Healing Icecrown: Storming the Citadel is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Well, it is finally here! Icecrown – Tuesday we all marched towards that taunting little sonofa… *cough* The Lich King. (by the way, doesn’t the 3.3 Logo look like it says Fail of the Lich King to anyone else?).

I must admit I really was looking forward to 3.3 – for more than the fact that I have been really tired of TOC. But, 3.3 is not just all sunshine and smiles, it certainly has its flaws in my eyes. So I do want to take some time to discuss both the thumbs up and the thumbs down features.

Lag and Server Stability at Launch – This baffles me every patch. Back in Vanilla WOW, patch days were pretty smooth and had minimal issues. Ever since TBC, every single patch seems to be this cycle of ‘reboots’ and ‘Loading Character Screen’ – and the infamous boss: The Blue Bar. *shrug* status quo… but irritating none the less. Thumbs down.

Icecrown Graphics – Visually, the interior of Icecrown is very impressive. The designers clearly spent a good deal of time on the interior (albeit eerily similar to Black Temple). Thumbs up.

The Ashen Verdict – A new patch means new reputations! 3.3 is certainly no exception. Not only does the Ashen Verdict sell the new crafting patterns, but they also provide your choice of “Path” for a rather snazzy ring! Mirroring the same format that the rings from Mount Hyjal in TBC, these rings scale and improve as you move up the reputation ladder. Clearing 25 man and the first boss in 10 man grants you your friendly ring. (or visa versa). Some guilds, and players have gone even so far as rep grinding and resetting the instance (by dropping and reforming the raid) to gain higher rep sooner. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet – but the spellpower proc the rings offer at Revered is mighty tasty. (and another gem socket at Exalted!). Thumbs Up.

Tier 10 Gear – What?! You mean I won’t look exactly like a Warlock or a Mage anymore? Nice! While I understand the whole fact that Tier 9 was meant to look identical, so we all appeared the same as we charged like a Military Force into Icecrown – it doesn’t mean I liked it! — A cop out in my eyes — However, the new T10 gear is here! I can even get over the fact that the Priest T10 looks like we have a Popped Collar and perhaps we should be putting in too much hair gel and hanging out at the Jersey Shore with spray on tans. (/pump fists!) Thumbs Up.

Tier 10 Purchasing – At first I wasn’t a fan of how we had to purchase T10 gear, and slowly upgrade it. However, this may just be an ingenious solution to catering to the Casuals and the Hardcore players alike. One of the biggest complaints Casuals had was that they had very little access to Tier Gear. Then enter TOC and Badge Tier Gear: the Hardcores now had minimal visual distinction over the casuals. (QQ I know, but I’m of that group!!!). With this color scheme in T10 – casuals have access to Tier Gear and their bonuses, and Hardcores can walk around like a proud peacock in their color distinct T10. Not only does this help distinguish, raiders who get access to the ‘upgraded’ versions, don’t feel like they wasted Frost Emblems on the lower level version of T10, since it will be required to upgrade. Thumbs Up.

Forced Pacing – Blizzard has always rolled bosses out slowly. TOC was one every week, Ulduar was similar – just like Sunwell. But, when Hardcore raiders found out we had to wait nearly a month for a new boss: jaws dropped. My guild, Dark Nemesis, is a progression guild. We competitively kill – so forcing us to wait is a bit irritating. Blizzard promises the pace that they roll stuff out will increase after the first wave. With the holidays coming up, I kind of like the fact that I can miss a night of raiding to spend a night with family or friends this Holiday Season, and not feel like I am leaving 24 other raiders high and dry. Now… come January that might change. The verdict is still out on this one – if Blizz drags it out too long, I fear they will lose players more than they will keep people craving more. Neutral.

Normal Boss Difficulty – The bosses in Icecrown that are currently open don’t seem to be too difficult. For a point of reference, US-Bloodhoof has 2 guilds with Heroic: Tribute to Insanity in TOGC 25 my guild and one other. We cleared all available bosses in ICC25 all the first night it was opened, another 4 guilds who cleared through all four 25-man Icecrown bosses the second night they were available, and an additional 3 guilds cleared all new content before the weekend.

I understand, especially with Arthas, the desire to expose more players to content – but this seems to be a bit under-tuned. (feel free to call me an elitist raider that is just ranting – but it does seem a bit off). I am hoping the Heroic counterpart offers a bit more of a challenge. Looking at the Wowhead data-mined boss spells does seem like it will be a bit harder (particularly the damage output and DPS requirements), but how will that scale with gear upgrades from ICC25? I’m going to have to give this a Thumbs Down.

Looking For Group System – This seems to be a hot topic on the blogosphere. There are a number of posts out there exclusively on this topic, as well as Twitter discussions. This new LFG system is kinda great for healers and tanks – I enter the LFG toget my daily 2 Frost Emblems, and no more than 30 seconds later – BOOM group. Now, the wild card is the group make up. (I was in a group with 3 DKs and a Ret Pally – I’ll let you draw your own conclusions with that one…) Frankly, I like it. yes, its a PUG… but no one is asking you to PUG ICC25. Thumbs up.

The New 5 Mans – From a lore perspective these are fantastic. The attunement requirement to do the 2nd and 3rd is something a little new, but I do like it. The storyline about the Lich King is something that everyone should experience and understand. Difficulty is a bit more difficult than the existing Heroics, but the rewards are equally improved. Then, we can add in the Quel’dalar quest item and quest line… loreriffic! Big Thumbs Up!

Overall 3.3 has a few things I would have liked to have seen done differently, and a few things that I have some lingering concerns – but that is mainly because I am an end-game raider. Let’s hope the remainder of 3.3 lives up to the expectations.

Coming this Tuesday: Icecrown Healing Tips!

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Initial Icecrown and 3.3 Impressions is a post from: Tales of a Priest