So. We raided Friday and Saturday as usual. Sorak was missing Saturday so we took Squishi. Friday we got our five bosses down, bang-bang-bang. We actually had two wipes on Beth which was a little embarrassing at this point but hey. And she dropped my gloves so yay. Just need my head. Took 5 attempts on Alysrazor and our kill ended up being considerably faster than our previous kill – Slice got her while she was in the air the third time. Yay! Our hard work on that boss really paid off. We’re still using a three heal strategy and our dps have stepped up to make that work.
We even went to BH Friday night, killed Occu’thar, and still got done a little early.
Saturday was time to work on Staghelm. And work, and work…. we’re definitely getting there, but we aren’t having the easy time some groups seem to have. I wonder if it’s because I’m a healer that I see this fight as really hard? I’m calling the cooldowns and trying to remember what we still have available to use, and it’s hard. By the end of the night, we were taking 8 stacks of Flame Scythe and 7 cat jumps every time, and I’m thinking we should try increasing that to 9/8. We can blow heroism off the top and just burn it down. Our best attempt was 11% so we’re not that far off. I think we’ve more or less got the Burning Seeds part, but the Mushroom things are still killing us. Part of the problem is I’m not seeing the debuff show up and so not getting targets hotted up fast enough.
It just feels like our heals are a bit weak right now. Our numbers look good, and Kerick and I have awesome synergy, but I don’t feel like we’re using our third healer right. Usually we have a disc priest. She’s awesome and a personal friend, but I feel like I don’t understand how best to tell her to work with us. I know what Kerick’s job is going to be, on a fight. I know my job – usually, “heal all the things”. But how to best work with the disc priest? Do I stick her on the off tank with a side of raid healing, or straight raid heals?
We’re also questioning whether Divine Aegis is doing enough on Flamescythes or whether she needs to do more. All I know is I’ve read “COH moar”, but she’s doing that. So I just don’t know.
Kerick and I can two heal some fights in Firelands, and more as we get them on farm (We’ve done Shannox and Ryo, and I’m willing to try Alys again sometime. A little more gear and I might even try Beth). But we can’t two heal Staghelm, and I think what’s holding the raid back right now is communication on my end. I have taken the job of heal lead and I need to be serious about it, and that means improving my awareness of the fight, my ability to call and analyze things, and not sacrifice my effectiveness, either.
Just a note: Disc priests don’t have CoH, it’s a holy spell. If your priest is casting CoH, he/she is playing Holy. I find that this fight is better as Disc as it gives an extra raid cooldown.
My raid group normally does 12 for the first Scorpion phase and 7 stacks for everything afterwards. I find the most effective way to heal the fight for me is:
1) Before the fight, cast alternating PoHs until Divine Aegis stacks up to the max and then quickly eat a bit of mage food to regen mana before the pool. The first Flame Scythe is completely negated. It’s not really needed but it’s fun and lets everyone twiddle their thumbs waiting for the next one.
2) Heroism used as a raid cooldown to help healing so probably on Flame Scythe 4/5.
3) Power Infusion when Heroism is about to fall off.
3) Power Word: Barrier on a later Flame Scythe as it can soak two Scythes.
The most sustainable healing rotation is to PoH on groups alternately while only shielding to keep Rapture on cooldown (so shield someone once every 12s roughly). Cast Prayer of Mending and watch it bounce with every Flame Scythe.
For Searing Seeds, I make sure I can see the debuff timer on my raid frames and shield people as they run out with 5s left so they don’t come back in too low and get killed by a Flame Scythe. In between shields, I cast Prayer of Healing.
Power Infusion should be up for every Scorpion phase and should be used on a later stack when it gets harder to heal.
In terms of mana regen:
1) On the 1st cat phase: shadowfiend + hymn immediately after the first leap so it won’t be interrupted.
2) On 2nd cat phase: Potion of Concentration after the first leap.
Hope this helps!
I must be thinking of POH instead. Thanks for the tips! She’s definitely disc, we call for PW:B all the time.
Those look like some great, really specific tips. I will pass them along. 12 scythes, huh? Hmm…. if we used PWB first time instead of saving it for second stack….
Noting the logs as well, maximizing Rapture procs is important as well to keep mana up, not sure if she is using a rapture addon to help keep track, I got one recenlty and it helps out immensely.
12 interesting, i know in SR we were pushing nine, using barrier and Aura mastery only.
But what Kiriel said are all great tips. Its what I do as well lol.
I was going to say pretty much exactly what Kiriel said about Disc priest healing. Power Word: Barrier is absolutely amazing for soaking two (or possibly even three) flamescythes late in the scorpion phase when they are being cast in quick sequence. Disc can also put out a large amount of raid healing with PoH + PoM during scorpion. Everyone is stacked nicely there which really helps.
Oh wow, you’re all (in comments as well) pushing a lot of stacks in every phase.
I don’t know why, but in both guilds I play in we only do a lot of stacks on the first scorpion phase (blowing many raid cooldowns), 5 every kitty phase and then one guild does 4 every subsequent scorpion phase (the one with the least cooldowns available) and the other does 5. We can’t heal through more than that it seems. Don’t know if it’s due to bad healer setup or what, but we would wipe if we pushed as many stacks as you are.
I bow my head to you, cause I really couldn’t heal through that 🙂
We do 12, 6, 8, 6, 7, kill. Blow cooldowns to stretch out the first phase as long as possible – the extra 8% damage every time he shifts really adds up.
I actually do this fight as holy due to the power of the floor heal. We have resto druid, priest and paladin for the fight. The raw healing provided by holy for our group beats the PW:B and the bubbles, so thats how we got our kill.
We agree the use of CDs ahead of the time and so nobody has to call them out, the responsible person calls out it was called, it makes the strain evenly spread accross healers.
We do 10 – 7 – 6 – 5 – 5 -3 – kill. 3 is, if i did not misjudge, the mushroom part, as find its best to keep it as short as possible.
Good luck 🙂