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    Priest's guide to Dragon Soul Hardmodes

    Prelude
    As a short introduction, I am a healing priest in US top 5 guild. We are currently 6/8 HC, expecting a spine kill any day now . I made this guide for healing and dps priests who are just starting on or are in the middle of hard mode progression to give you an idea of what to expect on a fight by fight basis. Hope you enjoy! (Please note this is still a work in progress).

    As a disclaimer, all of my raid experience for this tier is in 25 man, and as such the majority of this advice is directed at 25 man raiders. If you have any questions pertaining to 10 man raiding, please feel free to ask.

    Morchok

    Healing Priests
    This is definately a disc favored fight, with a lot of burst aoe and predictable raid damage. Given the very short fight length, you'll want to make sure you drop most of your spirit and spec out of veiled shadows for this one, as the mana returns from rapture, shadowfiend, and hymn of hope will be enough to get you through the fight.

    The fight requires your raid to split into two evenly sized groups, each group containing 1 tank, 3 healers, and 8-9 dps. It is very vital that you ensure your raid leader organizes groups accordingly, so that prayer of healing always hits 5 people.
    During this fight your primary job will be to pre shield all the squishies before each stomp and crystal explosion. A poorly timed stomp + crystal combo has the potential to kill several people, so your main task is to ensure soakers always have absorbs rolling on them. After each stomp cycle between prayer of healing on the two groups to top them up and get divine aegis on them for the next stomp / crystal explode. Try not to waste time prayer of healing the 2-3 dps not in a group of 5, instead rely on bubbles and other aoe heals to keep them alive.

    Make sure to use hymn of hope when you are in range of all 6 healers. The ideal time to do this is during black blood of the earth, as there is no damage going out and it is very easy to get in range of the other half of your raid. I typically use my hymn during the second black blood phase.
    Should you find yourself needing more mana, try and sneak a pot in after the raid is topped, just make sure not to do it before a black blood phase.

    For reforgings on this fight I recommend a heavy haste / mastery build, with crit and spirit taking a back seat. This will allow you to have strong shields and quick prayers.
    Use a standard spec, just drop veiled shadows. For glyphs I run PWS, POH, and Penance (though barrier is viable)

    Shadow Priests
    Double dotting is pretty much out the window on this fight. The high movement requirements make it very difficult to keep dots rolling on two targets, and the added chance of being gimped by a double stomp doesn't help. Instead, try and focus on damage mitigation and good soaking. Your healers will love you if you throw a shield on yourself before each crystal / stomp. Make sure to refresh dots on your boss before you have to line of sight the black blood phase for optimal dps gains. Be sure to use dispersion often, as the dps check on this fight is very minimal. Remember with a passive 15% damage mitigation and self shields, you are one of the best classes for soaking the crystal. It never hurts to throw out a disperse followed by a quick /cancelaura macro on crystal explosions.

    The black blood phase is an ideal time to use mana hymn, as dpsing becomes slightly more awkward and your healers may be low on mana.

    Reforges / specs on this fight are standard.

    Warlord Zon'ozz

    Healing Priests
    Holy and disc are both viable for this fight. The strat your raid chooses to use plays a large part in deciding which spec you will play.

    The orbs in this fight can be handled in one of two ways. Your raid can split up and ranged and melee ping pong the orb back and forth or you have designated soakers who will take turns bouncing the orb into the rest of the raid, who will be stacked in melee ranged. Should you choose to use the latter of these strats, you will find disc an ideal soaker-healer, as shield and bursty single target heals help deal with soakers who get the debuff. Should you require more raid healing however, holy makes an excellent raid healer through sanctuary, circle, and prayer of healing.

    As phase one progresses, the boss will start doing more and more tank damage. After about the 6th or 7th bounce you'll want to be sure to pop a pain suppression / guardian spirit on your tank if he doesn't have major cooldowns available. Good communication is essential here, make sure your tank knows to ask for a cd when needed.

    During phase two your raid will split into two groups to handle the tentacles. Make sure you have designated clump spots for the raid, so that you may lay barrier / sanctuary appropriately. Phase 2 is all about good cooldown management and efficient tentacle dps. Make sure your melee don't run off alone and die to lack of heals.

    For holy I recommend a spirit heavy reforge, with a fair amount of haste and mastery.
    For disc, I recommend getting as much mastery as possible, to help with bouncer healing. Aim for about 2400 combat regen, then stack a fair amount of haste for phase 2.


    Shadow Priests
    Say goodbye to the days of crystal soaking and hello to orb soaking. Thats right, blizzard made another fight for us to spend 10% as a useless, cloud looking thing. Bleh.

    Anyway, as much as I hate to say it, shadow priests are the second best soakers on this fight, right after fire mages and ahead of rogues. Should your group choose to run a single-soaker strat, you'll want to pick up glyph of dispersion.

    The fight will start off with the boss facing towards the raid to bait an orb spawn. After the boss spawns the orb, the tank will turn him around and the bouncing will proceed. Shadowpriests are best used to soak the first 1-2 bounces, as we lack a powerful movement cooldown like blink and sprint.

    The best way to time your dispersion is to stand in the path of the orb, throw a shield on yourself (unless your healer is a disc priest), pop dispersion and run face first into the orb. This will prevent annoying blips in the orbs explosion timings and insta gibs due to lack of dispersion. After you soak, you are free to run back into the main raid group until you come back to phase one again, as you won't be asked to soak again in that phase. Be sure to clear out of the way when its time to bring the orb into the boss!

    During phase two, you will want to focus on keep dots rolling on the boss (this fight has a tough enrage check), then focus your dps on the claw. Once this is dead, you can pan out and multidot the rest of the tentacles. Make sure to watch your health during this phase, and be prepared to heal yourself if you run too far away.

    Standard reforging on this fight, pick up glyph of dispersion over SWD if you are soaking.

    Yor'sahj

    Healing Priests
    One of the more interesting healing fights in this encounter, Yor'sahj stresses control and proper execution on the part of all your heals. It is very important that you are well coordinated and have healing assignments for purple phase worked out ahead of time.

    This fight is viable for both disc and holy, but I tend towards disc on this fight because bubble is a far more useful cooldown than divine hymn, which is useless during purple phase.

    We typically 5 heal this fight, though 6 healing is viable after the health nerf. Either way, you'll want to make sure each healer is assigned a group or two, and that you do not touch anything outside your group unless asked (during purple phase). Should you be assigned to tank heals, you will want to use large heals like greater heal and power word shield. Remember that the debuff explodes at 5, so you can only put 4 heals into your tank / group per round. Watch the debuff timer closely however, as it will reset at one point and everyones stacks will fall to 0. Make sure to top your tank / group up if they are below 4 stacks before this happens.

    Purple phase may seem overwhelming at first, but it quickly becomes quite managable. The trick is to remain calm and keep using large heals. Do not give in to temptation and attempt to assist another healer without asking, as it often leads to accidental explosions that will wipe the raid. Focus on your group / tank and do the best you can to keep them up.
    Remember that prayer of mending does not generate stacks, so take advantage of this. If you are on a tank, make sure to be watching their stacks of void bolt and the time left on the debuff. The last tick goes out at 3 seconds left on the debuff, and the tank will not need any more heals after that last tick. If your tank is at 4 stacks and you think they will die, call for a lay on hands or a guardian spirit. Unless the raid is topped, avoid popping the tank. A tank death is managable with rezzes, but causing an explosion will probably wipe you.

    To handle mana void, make sure to pop shadowfiend / hymn of hope after it is done draining your mana. Your raid should get the void low, but don't kill it until the next void spawns. When it does, kill the low void and get the new void down to 10%. Keep repeating this through the fight.

    You can get away with dumping all your spirit in this fight and living off of mana leeched from the casters. You'll find haste to be fairly useless compared to mastery and crit, which make each individual heal more valuable. For disc I recommend a good balance of mastery and crit for tank healing, which holy should go for straight mastery. Keep your usual specs here, make sure to get 2/2 veiled shadows.
    Glyph of lightwell is invaluable for holy priests.

    Shadow Priests
    Make sure to always have shadowfiend / archangel up for the blue phases, so that you don't lose too much time dpsing. If these are down, a well timed shadow word death should get you the mana you need to keep going. If this doesn't cut it, pop a hymn to help out the rest of your healers / casters. Aside from blue phase, this fight is fairly straightforward. Keep dots rolling on the boss when you go to kill the oozes, and make sure you aoe down the adds in black phase.

    Spec and reforgings are all standard here.


    Hagara


    Healing Priests
    I would definately recommend holy for this fight, if for nothing else than body and soul. During the Ice phase, we have a shaman handle the dispels while I speed-bubble anyone who gets the debuff. The debuff people can then quickly move to the outside to drop their ice patch without hampering the rest of the raid. Holy will also have divine hymn up for all the storm phases, which is very useful.

    During hagara's normal phase, the main thing to focus on is proper soaking of the ice shards (the damage increases over time so be sure to step out when you are low) and good tank heals. When ice tombs come out, your raid should have a designated area for all the targeted people to move to. Make sure you do not let these tombs LOS you from your tank. If for some reason the tombed people need a heal, remember that both prayer of healing and divine hymn can reach them (remember not to trying to target them with prayer of healing, target another group member).

    If your tank is not a warrior, they might need help escaping the focused assaults quickly. Life grip is the perfect tool for this. Have the boss targeted or focused so that you can see their cast bar. Stand a decent distance away from your tank, and when focused assualt pops out immediately life grip the tank away. (Please make sure to let your tank know about this before hand . )

    The ice phase, as I said before, will revolve around you speed bubbling anyone with the debuff so that they may get the the outer edge in a timely manner. If someone starts to fall behind, you may turn around and life grip them, but this may lead to confusion and ultimately a death. If for some reason you think you absolutely will be hit by the ice wall, guardian spirit yourself and run through it.

    The lightning phase is fairly straightforward. Your ranged should be clumped in the center dodging the pillars. Be sure to lay down sanctuary and use your standard aoe heals to top people up. Be sure the melee get enough heals on the outer edge, but don't go too far out that you chain lightning the raid. This is the perfect phase for divine hymn, just make sure you wait until after a pillar spawns to prevent having to move.

    The reforgings for this fight are a standard spirit > haste to 12.5 > mastery reforging. This is one of the less healing intensive fights in the tier, so you should find you have very little throughput / mana issues here.

    Spec is standard but make sure to pick up body and soul

    Shadow Priests
    A pretty dull fight to be a dps I'm afraid. There's not too much here I can tell you, but I'll try anyway.

    Be sure to track the phase transitions, as you don't want to pop any cooldowns like shadowfiend / archangel before them. It's also a waste of time to refresh dots right before an ice / lightning phase, as the boss becomes immune to damage.

    Make sure to cycle through stances for the ice phase. Ditch inner focus and throw on inner will for the extra 14% movespeed (6% extra movespeed if you have run speed on your boots, which you should) but be sure to pop inner focus again before the end of the phase!

    The lightning phase is rather boring, so this is a great time for hybrids to off heal. You can pop divine hymn / hymn of hope, or just hop out of shadow form and start prayer of healing the raid. Believe me, if all the hybrids heal it makes a large difference.

    At the end of every ice / lightning phase the boss becomes stunned and takes extra damage for 5 seconds. This is a great time to pop cooldowns (lust will usually be used on one of these occasions).
    If you have 4 piece t13, consider popping archangel and shadowfiend and going into a mind spike / mind blast rotation on the boss during this time. The burst damage is quite something to behold.

    Standard reforging / spec here. Make sure to have 2/3 in inner sanctum.


    Ultraxion


    Healing Priests
    For this fight you will most likely have to be disc. While holy pulls at least 30% more output, the disc barrier is vital for the last minute.
    The majority of this fight for healers basically boils down to the last two minutes. We run four healers for this, and no longer have issues with the enrage, but most guilds doing this for the first time will run 5 heals.

    If you do choose to 5 heal this fight, you will be DPSing whenever possible. To accommodate this, we set up a system where we had two healers cover 90% of the healing for the first four minutes. For us these healers were a holy pally and a resto druid, the rest of us optimized our specs for dps (atonement, lightning bolt for rshams, etc...). The only times you will heal during the first four minutes is when your two primary healers go to pick up red, when any healer needs to pot, and right before each hour (make sure soakers are topped).

    After the second to last hour comes out, you will want all healers to be healing. Blow mana hymn after the hour after blue comes out (unless you are the designated healer for blue, in which case do it earlier). Make sure to use shadowfiend early on so that you can use it right before the fight turns to crap at the 5 minute mark.

    To figure out which healers are best for which buffs, keep this in mind.

    Holy pallys are overpowered as hell for this fight. If you have two holy pallies you will definitely want both of them to have blue buff (Holy Radiance spam OP). After holy pallies, priests are probably the second best target for blue, as we can put out a lot of healing with 1 second, 0 overheal prayer spamming, but rdruids and rshams can put out similar healing.

    You'll want red to go to whoever is covering healing for the first four minutes of the fight. For us this was a holy pally (who later picked up blue) and a resto druid. If you choose not to bring a druid, two holy pallies will do a great job with red. Shamans and priests are the best dps'ers for this fight, so you don't want them to get red unless there are no viable alternatives.

    Green goes to whoever doesn't have red and won't be getting blue. It's the worst of the buffs, and is abysmal for priests (doesn't scale with our mastery) but blue is far and away superior on holy pallies.

    Make sure you have a good cooldown rotation set up going into phase 2. I usually use my bubble after the first aoe pulse after the last hour (at around the 5:35 mark). Divine hymn can be used on a judgement call, but remember to try and save your cool downs til after the 5:30 mark, as you have about a 6 second window to get everyone topped before the final hour of twilight.

    Because I was dpsing for the majority of this fight, I found I was able to keep my mana up through rapture alone. This means you can drop a lot of spirit, and reforge based on what buff you get. If you get blue, focus on mastery / crit, as you'll have 1 second prayers without much external haste. If you have green, mastery is pretty much crap. Focus on haste, choose crit over mastery if you have to.

    As far as spec goes, be sure to pick up atonement and evangelism. You'll want glyph divine accuracy and glyph of smite. Glyph of barrier is a must have, as is prayer of healing.

    Shadow Priests

    Ultraxion is the baleroc of this tier. Aside from hitting your button when bad stuff comes up, you pretty much get to stand still and deeps for the entire fight. Make sure to have a good fading light tracker, and have your Extra Action Button keybound. Use heroic will when the timer for fading light reaches 1 second (make sure to do it early if you have lag / aren't comfortable with leaving it that late, cutting it close isn't worth it if it gets you killed). You will probably be in the rotation for hour of twilight soaking, so be sure to stay in the twilight realm and disperse when it is your turn. You will not need glyph of dispersion for this fight.

    Standard spec / reforgings here.

    Warmaster Blackhorn

    Healing Priests
    This is a very odd fight to heal, and one that is, for the most part, rather unenjoyable. I've never really liked this style of unpredictable burst damage on small amounts of targets, as it puts you in a rather awkward spot. Disc is the preferred spec here, as you'll need a lot of absorb type stuff in phase 2. In addition, pain suppression and bubble are ridiculously amazing in phase 2. Holy really has no place in this fight.

    You'll find that the first phase of this fight involves what's called post-burst bubbling, a style which is rather count intuitive. Basically, the nature of this fight makes it very hard to predict who will be taking damage at any given point, and as such prebubbling is kind've hard to do. The damage breakdown for this phase is twilight barrages, blade rushes, twilight onslaughts, and tank damage (with a small but not negligible amount of deckfire damage thrown into the midst). With the exception of onslaughts and tank damage, most of the damage just hits random people at random times throughout the fight, and you'll see a lot of people get gibbed during progression by solo soaks, soaks followed by blade rushes, double blade rushes, soaks before an onslaught, soaks following an onslaught, soaks following another soak, and solo soaks.

    Did I mention solo soaks? Twilight barrage is basically blizzards way of forcing your entire raid to play the trust fall game. Throughout the night you will hear "Why didn't you soak that with me?" or "There were four other people around me, I assumed one of them would step in" or something else of that nature.

    Anyway, the point of that long rant is to basically illustrate the many ways in which your individual raid members will be taking damage during this phase. With pre bubbling out the window, the best way to keep people alive is through post burst bubbles. While this concept is inefficient and will reflect poorly on meters (hello 9k hps for all of phase 1 =[ ) you will find you save far more lives than your 20k hps resto druid. The reasoning behind this is that the overall healing requirements for phase 1 are not high, and could probably be covered by four healers. However, the nature of the damage forces healers to be rather inefficient in our healing. To solve this, we had our disc priests take on the burden of inefficiency by spamming flash heal on anyone who takes damage and bubbling anyone in danger of dying.

    Should you make it out of this hellish phase, you will find phase 2 to be somewhat of a relief. Though the damage spikes up considera[ubly and tank deaths are guaranteed to happen in every attempt, the damage at least follows a pattern, which appeals to my insanity. Phase two is really about two things, keeping tanks alive and dodging shockwaves. Disc priests are definately the most valuable healer for phase two, as it is essentially your responsibility to keep squishies alive through some of the final disrupting roars (classes with no mitigation will die to a 90% vengeance roar almost every time). I find the best way to do this is to POH each group 1-2 times before the roar comes out, to ensure they all have at least some kind've absorb on them. While it may seem like the raid damage is very high, try to remember that there is always a 30 second lull for you to top the raid up, and that a tank death is far more likely to wipe the raid than anything else. For this reason, all your healers should be on primary tank heals, and only pallies / disc priests should do any raid healing (Divine Aegis + Illuminated Healing saves lives). Be sure to barrier one of the last two or three roars, as these hit the hardest and will kill people if theres not some type of cooldown out. It helps if you place it on the melee in a spot where the tank can use it, as the roar can gib tanks just as easily as it can the rest of your raid.

    You may want to go a heavy spirit / mastery build on this fight if you aren't comfortable with the amount of mana burn you will have in phase 1. Spec here is standard, I run glyph of penance / pws / POH, but barrier can be subbed in for penance.

    Shadow Priests

    Ah finally a good multi-dotting fight. Did I say good? I meant awful. Prepare to be keeping track of 4 different sets of dots while dodging a flurry of blade rushes and twilight barrages.

    Spriests are pretty valuable on this fight, not only for their multi dotting capabilities, but also for their soaking abilities. You are much less likely to be killed by a solo soak, as you can always disperse at the last second. For this reason, be aggressive with your soaking. If people know that you always take every barrage, they tend to follow you in whenever they see your shadowy figure.

    Your number 1 priority in phase 1 is drake damage (and not dying). Feel free to keep dots rolling on dreadblades / slayers, but keep your single target burn on the drakes, as killing them in a timely manner is vital to reducing the amount of twilight barrages (which in turn reduces ship damage, deaths to solo soaking, and deck fire). Whenever the sapper comes down switch to it immediately and mind spike / mind blast it down. If you have downtime on the drakes and sapper, prioritize any dreadblade that might be up, as their cleaves make them more dangerous then the slayers.

    During phase two your priority is DPS on Goriona. She flies away at 20%, so stop refreshing your dots a little before then. Once goriona flies away, the fight becomes a lot simpler. Dodge shockwaves and keep good damage on the boss. Be sure to hawkeye your health, and throw a shield on yourself before a roar if you think it might kill you. Try and stand about 15 yards away from the boss, so you have less distance to run for the shockwaves but you can't be interrupted.

    If you don't already have a good nameplate addon and a good dot tracker, you'll want to make sure you have one for this fight. I recommend tidyplates and forte timers, but any other addons will suffice.

    Standard spec / reforgings here again.


    Spine of Deathwing

    Well I've put it off about a month now so here goes...


    Healing Priests
    As far as healing goes, this is a fight where priests thrive. While resto shamans have been in the spot light ever since kin took three to their first kill, holy priests have some of the best throughput on this fight, while disc can rival resto shamans in terms of utility.

    The best way to approach this fight from a healing standpoint depends heavily on your core. Holy and disc are both supremely good on this fight for vastly different reasons. I would almost never attempt this without a disc priest, as grips towards the end can easily gib someone missing 30% of their max health with the debuff. However, while power word shields are extremely clutch, disc is the worst healer in terms of output. Because of the nature of the healing absorbed debuff, disc priests suffer in terms of what we can do as a filler. As such, most disc priests are stuck with the task of dispelling, tank healing, and bubbling people caught in grips.

    Holy on the other hand is fantastic in terms of throughput. Divine Hymn is one of the strongest cooldowns on this fight (in the same league as frenzied regen and tranq, little bit behind spirit link). As a Holy priest, you will be doing a lot of renewing, as renew is able to tick to its full duration on the debuffed targets, making it incredibly efficient and high hps. During explosions you will be spamming prayer of healing, and then go back into a renew rotation, keeping sanctuary down, circle / prayer on cooldown.

    So, time to talk about the approach to this fight. Stepping back from just a priest view point for a second, the fight essentially has three phases that repeat themselves 3 times each.
    -> Roll
    -> Amal 1 explosion
    -> Amal 2 explosion

    Aside from these three times, the healing requirements are fairly low and people can only really be killed by grips (or blood aggro towards the end of the fight). So during this time, you want to keep efficient heals (renew, greater heal, heal, surge procs, lightwell, prayer / circle, sanctuary) on the debuffed people. During the explosions and rolls, you will be needing substantial cooldowns. This was our approach.

    We had three feral druids (one tank, two cats), one prot warrior, one disc priest, one holy priest, two shamans, a resto druid, and a holy pally. We broke our cooldowns down like this

    Rolls: One spirit link, one frenzied, holy divine hymn, shield wall
    Amal 1: Disc bubble, tranq, frenzied
    Amal 2: Spirit link, am, frenzied

    Obviously your comp will vary, so this is how you need to set it up

    Rolls: The best cooldowns for rolls are raw healing ones. The rolls themselves don't much damage, so mitigation isn't that important. What is important is that you get a lot of debuffs up when you lift a plate (you'll have triple the amount of corruptions up momentarily, so you could get from 10-15 debuffs before the roll). So, you'll definately want a spirit link here. This part is certain. After that, frenzied regen, divine hymn, and tranqs are all great cooldowns to use. Divine Hymn is much stronger than tranq, so if you're running a holy priest have them hymn here (it outheals tranq and gives +10% healing taken). This is the most important place to have a frenzied regen, so if you only have 1-2 ferals, make them use one here.

    Amal explosions: Split up your mitigation cooldowns here. If you have more than one tranq type skill, frenzied regen, or spirit link, toss em in here. Then split up the bubbles, shield walls, AMs, and other mitigation cooldowns.

    OK, so now thats out the way, back to a priest standpoint.

    Disc Priests:
    As a disc priest, you will be on dispels, as you have the worst debuff healing of the healers. In addition, its your primary job to tank heal, as absorbs are actually useful here.
    As far as the dispels go, you want to try and bait the -20% damage taken buff onto tanks and healers (healers pull a lot of blood aggro so they take the second most damage after tanks). Dump a lot of globals into the dispels early on to try and force the buff onto all your tanks, then try and get it onto healers (don't worry about spending too many globals on this part if its just not happening). Make sure any cats in the raid have it, as they may have to go bear at some point in the fight.
    Your major job (the reason you are disc and not holy) is to shield people who get gripped, to buy the raid an extra second to break the grips. While they should always be broken before a second tick, sometimes the corruption will target three mages, or something else unpleasant happens. For this reason, it is vital that you track the debuff so you can quickly bubble someone as soon as grip goes out.
    During the amal explosions, start spamming prayer of healing. During the down times, just heal tanks / dispel and throw out penances / greater heals onto debuffed people or prayer a group with 4+ debuffs in it.

    Holy Priests:
    Holy priests are one of the most efficient healers you can have on this fight. During the down time, you want to be spamming renew on people with the healing debuff, and keeping sanctuary down. Keep prayer of mending out and circle of healing on cooldown (for the most part). Remember that lightwell is amazing on this fight (if used) so try to keep reminding people to click on it. If everyone with the debuff has renew, start using heal / greater heal / flash heal as a filler. If you have the debuff, pop desperate prayer and use binding heal as a filler.
    Divine hymn is one of the strongest cooldowns on this fight, so make sure to use it on each roll after the plate pops up (tons of debuffs out). I think I got off four divine hymns on the kill with 0.6% overheal. Its a majorrrrr cooldown.

    Both specs will want to bear a few things in mind about this fight. It is a very long fight, and one where there is always something to spend mana on. As such, spirit is very valuable here, especially for holy priests. I ran tier 12 2pc and had about 4k spirit because it allowed me to constantly be healing (never really had to stop to regain mana).
    You'll want to make sure you manage mana cooldowns well. Try and make your hymns as efficient as possible. I normally pop shadowfiend at 30 seconds in, pop hymn at about 2:30 in, then shadowfiend again at 4:30, then both hymn and shadowfiend at 8:30. Both myself and our other disc priest hymn at the same time to increase the total mana gained, and we make sure the rest of the healers know when we are going to do it so they can time mana cooldowns appropriately.

    Fade is amazing towards the latter part of the fight, so don't forget to glyph it and use it whenever you have blood aggro with the debuff.
    Try to always be doing something. Even if its just casting heal, never let a gcd go to waste. This is how you stay on top of debuffs and stay efficient.
    Tier 12 2pc is amazing, I had it return about 60k mana over the course of the fight.
    Holy priests should not be afraid to throw a bubble on someone if death is imminent and you don't think your disc priest will be able to do it (such as shielding someone while the disc priest is gripped).
    As far as spec goes, make sure to pick up reduced cooldown on shadowfiend.

    Shadow Priests

    Well, if you don't have tier 13 four piece, you'll most likely be on the bench for this. You'll want to drop all your haste for this fight, as haste scales poorly with mind blast / mind spike. If you have tier 13 4 pc, go for a full mastery reforge with crit taking a backseat. If you don't have tier 13 4 pc, you really don't have much of a choice but you might as well go for a full crit build. You'll also need to be sure you have an on use trinket for this, the valor point one is superb.

    When the plate is not up, you'll want to keep dots rolling on the amal, as amal damage is always important (except for the first amal, which is limited by blood spawn rate). Don't aoe bloods unless your raid leader / tank calls for it, as bursts are liable to kill people. You'll want to be single targetting down specific bloods so that the healers don't get overwhelmed, especially later in the fight when the max health of the raid is very low. Always be sure to help break the grips on the corruption with spike / blast, but its imperative that you do not overburn the corruption, as it will screw up the timing of the whole fight.

    When the amal is about to fall over, you'll want to start prepping yourself for bursting down the tendon. Starting saving up orbs, as shadowfiend won't have 100% tendon uptime. As soon as the tendon is targettable, you want to pop archangel, trinket, do a mind spike, then pop shadow fiend and do 2x mind spike, mind blast, then go into a mind spike / mind blast rotation. The focus of this fight is maximizing tendon dps, followed by amal dps.

    Going to add the rest of the bosses tommorrow, need some sleep now .
    Last edited by Jellyphant; 2012-01-28 at 02:10 AM. Reason: Added Spine

  2. #2
    Stood in the Fire
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    I'd add to Yor'sahj that you should use your Barrier on the purple phases with high damage (Purple, Black, Red or Purple, Yellow, X) and use your Divine Hymn on the Red, Yellow, Black combo.

    On Zon'ozz, if you're using a strategy where you dispel the debuff, make sure you have good communication with your other healers. Assign two dispellers, and have the other healers top the people with the debuff before you dispel them. Someone sitting at <40% health will more than likely die if they get a DoT tick right before the dispel. You can ask your Shadow Priests to help with Divine Hymn during the black phases where your cooldowns aren't as strong (for example, I Hymn during the 1st and 3rd, so our SPriests Hymn on the 2nd).

    Morchok, you can easily pre-stack Divine Aegis on the whole raid, or at least two or three groups before you pull to completely absorb the first stomp, basically.

    Ultraxion, you can't get the Fading Light debuff as a healer, unless a lot of the raid is dead (at which point it's a wipe anyway), so just focus on using your button when he's casting Hour of Twilight. I drop my Barrier as I'm running for the red buff, and then it's back up for the 7th Hour of Twilight, where damage starts to get insane. If you need more DPS to kill the boss, you can go AA/A spec and support with damage until just after the red crystal/just before the green crystal, depending on how comfortable your healing is. The red buff doesn't increase your healing via shields, so try to avoid using it for anything other than Rapture.

    Blackhorn is simple, really. Just make sure you're sharing the small barrages with others, or you'll more than likely die. Avoid those charges at all costs. Use your Barrier on the Twilight Onslaughts, and have a cooldown rotation set up for phase 2. Ask a Druid to heal Consuming Shroud, as their HoTs will heal gradually damage the raid, rather than causing big bursts of damage.

  3. #3
    Mechagnome
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    Thanks for this info! I love threads like these.
    Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.

  4. #4
    The black blood phase is an ideal time to use mana hymn, as there is nothing to dps and your healers may be low on mana... NO dps? We make sure our ranged are definitely not standing with their thumbs in their ass. DPS during blood by ranged is a must.

  5. #5
    Deleted
    Awesome guide. STIKKY PLZ.

  6. #6
    -patiently waits for Hagara and Ultraxion-

    Thanks for posting this.
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  7. #7
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Ashleycakez View Post
    -patiently waits for Hagara and Ultraxion-

    Thanks for posting this.
    I posted some stuff for each boss when PTR was out, most of it's still relevant, you can find it here
    http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...agon-Soul-Disc

    NVM THATS NORMAL MODE

    also 10 man

  8. #8
    I do raid 10 man and I did check out your post before 4.3 hit live (;

    Oh dang, just realized the OP is posting about 25 man. D:

    Well, nothing from the healing perspective seemed too off from what I was doing in 10 man... so far.
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  9. #9
    Deleted
    Well if you can take information from PoV videos without text explanation then you can check out my youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/Xynnqt
    Got some povs of stuff, ranked <50 on every progress hc boss we've done this tier so i guess im doing something right

    The only video that's not going up is ultraxion, I sit out from that every week since I've got the only BiS item I need from it (offhand) and I played shadow on the kill to soak, which I forgot to fraps now we have a mainspec spriest (with my 10 man's 3rd legendary and 100000x better gear than my off off spec) i just sit out of it
    Last edited by mmoc700620a63e; 2011-12-30 at 06:27 PM.

  10. #10
    Yeah I was trying to look at the voiceovered guides in your sig but my browser was like "OMG THIS IS A BLOCKED PAGE IN AD-BLOCKER" so I got scared and didn't allow it to go through >_>
    Ashleycakez ||<Barracuda> || Twitter || H2P Mod
    <Barracuda> is recruiting! Mythic raiding! Mature environment!
    T17: 16/17M | T18: 13/13M

  11. #11
    Very helpful, thanks for the info.

  12. #12
    Shadow Priest:

    On Morchok, you definitely DPS during black phase.

    On Zon'ozz, you are better used if you soak the last orb bumps. After the 7th bump, make everyone else go into melee camp, at 9th bump you disperse it. Shielding yourself is a waste of a GCD. You keep the shields for when you move out to dispel yourself from the debuff.

    On Yor'sahj, you defnitely want to do your hymn of hope for the first blue slime. After that it doesn't really matter, so use your CDs to maximize dps like usually.

  13. #13
    Thanks for all the advice guys, I'll be sure to add it in ^^

  14. #14
    Puts the "Super" in Supermod Venara's Avatar
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    This guide is mainly focused on 25man raids though, right? I noticed you mentioning "6 healers".

    For 10man heroic, at least on Morchok, Holy is the more viable option if you have to keep one 5 man group alive alone. Disc can not handle the damage spikes as well as Holy can in this scenario.
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Venara View Post
    This guide is mainly focused on 25man raids though, right? I noticed you mentioning "6 healers".

    For 10man heroic, at least on Morchok, Holy is the more viable option if you have to keep one 5 man group alive alone. Disc can not handle the damage spikes as well as Holy can in this scenario.
    Ah thanks for the advice. Yes, this guide is directed at 25 man raiders. Unfortunately I lacked 10 man experience =/

  16. #16
    AA is still terribly good for purple, you just only get to use it once during that 50 second period. 15% bigger GH fits the needs of deep corruption perfectly - notably, more healing + fewer casts. My disc spec still carries AA/A.

    As kelesti said, though, my guild was having so many problems with purple/red/black that we have chosen now to kill purple and heal through a yellow/red/black. With one fewer purple combo I'm better off running Holy. Yellow/black is bad for sequencing, though, so I'm not sure how this will play out in the long run.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Vorend View Post
    On Zon'ozz, you are better used if you soak the last orb bumps. After the 7th bump, make everyone else go into melee camp, at 9th bump you disperse it. Shielding yourself is a waste of a GCD. You keep the shields for when you move out to dispel yourself from the debuff.
    I disagree. Mages take the same amount of damage regardless of the base damage of the spell (they go to 40% and take 48% of their max hp every time). In addition, mages have movement cooldowns, which makes it easier for them to get to the orb quickly. Shadow priests suffer more from movement, so its nice to be in position when the first orb comes out.

    Depending on where you're soaking the orb, you may not waste a GCD. If your guild chooses to soak the orb far enough away, you will likely be out of range of the boss anyway. However, there is no real need to shield yourself if you are topped / don't have the debuff.
    Last edited by Kelesti; 2011-12-31 at 06:57 PM.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Jellyphant View Post
    I disagree. Mages take the same amount of damage regardless of the base damage of the spell (they go to 40% and take 48% of their max hp every time). In addition, mages have movement cooldowns, which makes it easier for them to get to the orb quickly. Shadow priests suffer more from movement, so its nice to be in position when the first orb comes out.
    Sorry, I was mostly talking about a 10-man raid without a mage. Didn't notice it was 25-man.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    Man, this is awesome. TYSM.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Eldarc View Post
    Man, this is awesome. TYSM.
    Appreciate the support ^^

    Spine will be added soon

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