Disc Healing 10M Heroic Spine & Madness Questions

[Eiffel]

So I have been on a raiding hiatus for a couple of months and ended up running through 6/8 Heroic last night with ease. However, I was hoping to get some tips from other healers about heroic spine. Our guild has downed the encounter twice before, but we haven't really nailed down the strat that works BEST for us, it seems to change a lot, or at least thats what I gathered from mumble chatter last night.

I know disc isn't the best spec for the fight, but when healing with a holy paladin and a resto druid, what works best to help offset their jobs. They are mainly dealing with plasma while I tend to handle the odds and ends. I do all the dispelling and I do DPS during the tendon phase. The last couple attempts we had, I started stacking DA with PoH before Superheated phases and before the big roll on the 3rd plate. I haven't really found where to use DH, mainly because I was saving it for the big roll on the 3rd plate, but that never worked out well since it always seemed to line up with a fresh round of blood corruption.

I decided to swap out the glyph of smite for the glyph of dispel magic for tonight's attempts, I figure that with as much dispelling there is and the fact we aren't really having a problem with dps during tendon phases, I could get away with it.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-dmyae9qosvk1kzer/

Also, if anyone could give some good tips for healing heroic madness, I would appreciate that as well !

[zakaluka]

Couple of misconceptions you have:

Holy is better than disc - it's barely even true from a throughput standpoint. There are big differences in execution and utility, though, meaning you could go either way if you needed to.
Rank 40 disc 10H spine: 23.7k HPS, using AA/A to burn off debuffs and spamming PoH for DA.
Rank 40 holy 10H spine: 24.6k HPS, using chakra:serenity with rolling renews and Serenity/GH to burn down debuffs. Even this bit of execution is debatable, many even in 10 stay chakra sanc and maximize sanc/renew usage for efficiency. Which approach is better depends on how quickly your debuffs are healing off.

So as you can see there's less than a 5% difference in total throughput. DA, barrier, and PW:S have incredible utility on spine, so depending on your healcomp disc might actually be better.

If you're trimming bloods and dumping residue with rolls, the best time to DH might be right before the 3rd roll, right as you're popping a bunch of bloods. DH is really good at blanketing your whole raid with inspiration. Except, of course, that coincides with the moment two new debuffs just went up. If you're letting your add tank kite 40+ bloods, well, I don't have a whole lot of input because I don't like that approach

[Ellumina]

Hi there! I personally heal Spine as Holy but I have a Resto Shaman healing buddy compared to a Resto Druid. I originally progressed Spine as Disc, thinking we need the damage on the tendons, and doing a lot of Smite healing for the debuffs. Disc and AA/A healing this fight is perfectly viable. Our problem is we would end up a bit behind on the healing. We would have 2-4 debuffs out at a given time (maybe even more) compared to 1-2 debuffs. Also, being able to Divine Hymn every roll is absolutely wonderful (combined with SLT). Knocks off majority of the debuffs, and keeps us caught up with healing this way too. Then again, you do have a Tranq so that may cover it, although using Tranq + Divine Hymn for every roll would be like heaven. If you choose to stay Disc, Divine Hymn on the 3rd roll would most likely be the best idea (either than, or for the last Nuclear Blast since everything is usually a mess by then). Have someone cover on dispels when you hymn (usually our Shaman dispels debuffs, and our Pally is backup dispelling during rolls). Also, I find Fade to be your best friend on this fight. I'm forced to use Glyph of Fade because bloods love to crush my face (healing aggro woo~). If you have this problem like me where you get aggro constantly, you might want to consider using the Fade glyph over the Dispel glyph.

[Deleted]

I tend to use my DH right before we roll and right before the corruptions starts dying on the last plate. The amount of plasma comming out of the 3 corruptions can be pretty high, and divine hymn hits those. That way you can simply PWS/FH those who need help badly while dispelling the debuffs while your paladin and druid use tranq + HR to do the major healing in the pits.

I dunno why zakaluka is dragging healing ranks into these fights, as they are prone to be pumped by deciding who gets to heal the blood burst for spine and the catalysm healing for madness, and you can really inflate those if you want to.

Aside from the 2nd roll there's almost no need for your healing before the 3rd plate, aside from maybe a pws or three when the amal starts nuking on the people with plasma, you should focus mainly on attonement healing till then imo. It will speed up the amal deaths and you will have less blood on the 3rd plate when shit starts to get tough.

Also we roll with the same comp as you druid/pala/disc.

[Brightstar of Korgath]

I dunno why zakaluka is dragging healing ranks into these fights, as they are prone to be pumped by deciding who gets to heal the blood burst for spine and the catalysm healing for madness, and you can really inflate those if you want to.

I dunno why you would call out someone that gave good advise like that. You are correct they can be artificially inflated, but he was not using them as an end all be all guild line. He was just showing that Disc can have quite good output compared to holy. His post was well thought out and accurate.

[Ducem]

Since you have a druid I would stick to Disc. I find Holy is only really great if you need someone who can tackle the Searing Plasma really well. Since you have a druid you don't have to worry about it as much.

I usually am a PoH spamming Disc. Priest, but with this fight I found I tend to stick to using Shields when Superheated is going off, have Mending bouncing at all times and then just Greater Healing. I rarely find that there are enough people low on health to warrant PoH.

When to use DH is really tricky since a lot of cooldowns depend on what you have available from the raid as a whole and what your strat is. What my guild saw when working on Spine was that doing a clean-up pre-roll into the 3rd plate didn't get as many bloods dead as we wanted before we were forced to actually roll. What we decided to do is speed that process up and do a clean-up post-roll. So we would kill plate 2, kill one corruption then roll immediately. We then kill a corruption and wait for grips to go out before cleaning. This allowed me to pop a barrier and do DH on the raid while the other healers did a cooldown as well.

What made that easier was that we were able to use DPS healing cooldowns during the roll from a feral druid and shadow priest to keep people up. If I had your comp. I would probably have a tank cooldown (or both), and your Holy Paladin do cooldowns during that roll and then save the rest for the cleanup after. With a Barrier, DH, and Tranq. you should be able to handle killing all the bloods once on the 3rd plate. If you can spare it, having a tank cooldown for that would make it even easier.

If you're just going to clean-up before rolling into the 3rd plate I would just swap the order on what I said.

I have no idea what strat. you're using, so I hope some of this is helping. In general though, I would use DH whenever you're doing your final big Blood clean-up. That's where a lot of people will be dipping from bursts.

Time to go into Madness. I have only killed it once, but hopefully what I say helps.

DPS the first 3 platforms. The 3rd can be a bit tricky depending on how people are spread out and what is going on, but do your best to DPS as much as you can on that one. I found there are two points on the 3rd platform that will most likely require your attention. First being the Bloods that spawn. They put a stacking debuff on the person tanking them and by that time you'll probably need to help out healing the tank if they have the stacks getting too high. This only really matters depending on your strat.

By platform 3 and 4 when the Parasite goes on someone you have to help healing at this point especially if the Parasite is on a healer. Have your healers figure out assignments for this. My group had the paladin on the tank (impale is usually coming out about the time Parasite is) and the other two healers making damn sure the person with the Parasite doesn't die.

Cooldowns can be pretty relaxed up until platform 4. Since you're going to most likely be taking the bolt explosion on this platform you'll need to figure out cooldowns for the explosion and then for the end of the Wing. My group had our Holy Paladin, and tanks blow cooldowns for the Bolt and then I used Barrier, DH, along with the shamans SL during the last 30% of the Wing.

Use Pain Supression on the 3rd platform since most likely that is when tanks will have problems with cooldowns during an Impale.

On Phase 2 you can Life Grip a tank who has Terrors and they can kite for a little bit to get their stacks off. This only really matters if you're single tanking the fight.

Until you have a strat. in mind that's probably the best I can do for Madness. This whole post got a lot longer than I intended. I really hope you find something in it that is of use.

[Eiffel]

Thanks for all the input everyone, I appreciate it! If anyone else has some input, feel free to add!

[zakaluka]

I said something stupid, DH doesn't give inspiration.

Also the healing ranks are merely to demonstrate that holy doesn't really win by a wide margin, disc's utility is better than the 'rankings' can show. I think yilar thought i was actually supporting the notion that holy is better, but I was trying to argue that the opposite might be true.

I am disc/AA for this fight, currently heal with a hpala and a rsham. Wouldn't switch specs unless we started having a really easy time on this fight. Ellu's point is very accurate: if you have a disc priest in your group you'll be behind on debuffs. It's a tradeoff between raw healing and mitigation. My idea is that if you have another class with strong hots (druid), and another class that's really amazing at burning off debuffs (paladin), disc brings something new to the table that holy can't.

--
I looked at the logs, do you have any mana troubles near the end?
Your rapture interval is about 25 seconds, I also seem to have difficulty getting a good rapture interval.
Archangel though, you can pop wings at least twice per up, actually 3 times if you're a bit robotic.
As disc I try to keep my AA uptime really high, because doing so slightly improves throughput and really kicks mana return into high gear.

I do it like this: every time holy fire is off CD I use it, unless it's a heavy aoe moment.
Every time I holy fire I pair in a smite - unless wings are up (smite with wings up is a big waste, HPM and HPS both)
If there's a debuff target pegged low that your atonements are likely to go to, penance that person on CD (grace has a huge effect on atonement)
This behavior will result in 4 stacks of evangelism every single time AA comes off cooldown. Use AA greedily almost every time it's available, except you want to save one for about 10 seconds before that final grip when the amalg tank moves in to lift the plate.

If you do it right you'll get 2-3 AA per burn, and 1 more per roll. AA can top shadowfiend on your manareturn chart. Just general rules, but like I said that's all a bit robotic. Although this fight really IS about just consistent sustained HPS you can't always be a robot.

[Eiffel]

Ya, its kinda hard to have precise rapture returns with our tanks mitigating so much damage and keeping the amal with no stacks till its about to die.

Thanks for the suggestions about AA, I wasn't really smiting at all except on burn phases, but after doing some other research and other peoples input, I'll probably be smiting a lot more and using Gheal less.