Raid team setup - 2 or 3 healers? ToT Raids

[Hound02]

Hey all, our raid group normally raids with a 2-healer setup.. However, after looking up fights in ToT I know 3-healing will be needed, so I was wondering what you guys recommend for each boss individually to 2 and 3 heal!

So for we're up to Tortos and still progressing with him with only 3 attempts under our belt (we we're dieing from the quake followed by the rockfall raid damage). We have 2 healed everything up to him also, so the ones before are no problem. I have no logs to show, however this is our raid setup:-

Tanks -
2 Blood DK's

Healers -
Disc Priest
MW Monk
Holy Pally (Normally 2 heals with the Disc Priest)

DPS -
1 Fury Warrior
1 Ass Rogue
1 Enhancement Shaman (he will be our 3rd healer with OS - 3 melee with a 3-healing setup works out to much)
1 Elemental Shaman
1 Destro Warlock
1 Survival Hunter


With this setup, we have all buffs available to us as well as a wide range of raid cooldowns.. Our average Ilvl as a raid group is 506 and all our DPS are at around 110k overall, depends a lot on the fight - but I feel our DPS are strong.

So I was hoping for a list of each boss and how many healers you strongly recommended to use. Also, would be great to know which bosses only require 1 tank!

I really appreciate everyone's help and I would be even more grateful if you help advice us on how to deal with each boss with the recommended setup


Thanks a lot for your time in reading this!

[Deleted]

in normal you can 2 heal everything. I wouldn't really recommend using 3 for any specific boss.... maybe primordius if you have low dps, (though dmg seems to have vanished entirely lately?)

Megaera used to be a little tough to 2 heal, but should be np these days. Iron qon initially looks like 'omg', but in the end 2 is easier. You MIGHT want 3 on twins, but I'm not sure...

[Valech]

Drop a Melee if possible, will ease things up a litte^^

OT:
Tortos can be two healed if people avoid those spikes with maximum distance. You always want a minor healing CD up for the earthquakes.
Megaera is hard to two-heal, unless your damage is godly, which would shorten the fight. You will need support of non-healers in the rampage-phases unless your healers are excellent.
I wouldn´t recommend to two-heal Durumu, to many ways a healer is stunned/has to move in a crucial Moment. Light Spectrum Phase damage is fairly high.
Primordius can easily be 2-healed - if people don´t fuck up. Our DDs tend to tunnelvision once fully mutated, so we bring three healers.
Animus is a question of positioning. One healer for two tanks tanking two adds is problematic, as long as the tanks can´t manage it to keep the adds away from each other. Which proofs to be difficult form times to times.
Qon.. if your healers survive Phase 1 they´ll make it. Be sure to let them use the warlocks portal.
Twins are easily healed by two healers, despite there are some tremendous damage spikes if attacks happen to be at the same time. Be sure to use serpent´s blessing always as intelligent as possible to restore maximum mana. My suggestion is P1: Tiger P2: Ox, Crane, Serpent P3: Tiger, Crane, Serpent, Ox.
Lei Shen is easily healed with two healers. The non-transition-Phases can almost be solely healed with a good disc priest. Last phase is an all out phase anyway.


@ the tankthingy..
Tortos can be one-tanked. But it´s tough for healers, tough for the tank and very tough for the hunter who has to misdirekt.
I heard Durumu is also possible with one tank and some Paladin bubble shenanigans.

Stick with two. Will be better.

[Deleted]

2man heal every thing except megaera..
Also, get one of your tanks to reroll paladin, and get your warrior and enhancement shaman to reroll mage and boomkin.

[zaneosak]

2man heal every thing except megaera..
Also, get one of your tanks to reroll paladin, and get your warrior and enhancement shaman to reroll mage and boomkin.

I adore advice like this.

[edlike]

Do what feels best for your comp. If healers are twiddling their thumbs, run with 2. If people are dying due to lack of heals, run with 3.

I'm gonna list the bosses that, in my opinion, are more easy to 2 or 3 heal

I think the following fights are made easier by 2 healing:
Horridon
Ji-kun
Lei Shen

I think the following fights are made easier by 3 healing:
Council of Elders
Tortos
Meg
Iron Qon

The fights not listed can be done either way. you just have to experiment.

[RohanV]

The easiest thing might be to have your Disc priest focus on Atonement healing, and leave the actual targeted healing to the monk and paladin. That way you don't have to make major changes to your group, and the Disc priest can backup the other two if necessary.

[Deleted]

I agree on Magaera being 3 healed, but other than that one, I think most are easely doable 2man healed

[edlike]

I agree on Magaera being 3 healed, but other than that one, I think most are easely doable 2man healed

I agree with you. We 2 heal everything but on normal progression (week 1 and 2) with the gear we had at the time we 3 healed a lot more bosses. Sometimes having that extra healer is a good buffer against mistakes while learning.

I also agree that having a disc as a 3rd healer atonement healing is very nice.

[Deleted]

On normal they can all be 2 or 3 healed but the fights that I'd recommend 3 on for smoothest learning curve are Magera, Council, Iron Quon, Animus and Twins. Again, all of them can be 2 healed but at least while learning the fight I'd start with 3 and lose 1 if you feel its ok.

I think the following fights are made easier by 3 healing:
Council of Elders
Tortos
Meg
Iron Qon

I gotta disagree with Tortos. The extra DPS for turtles/bats reduced damage for us so much that 2 healing was easier than 3. Council is also a toss up for me but I can definitely see how it'll be 3 healed by some people. But like a lot of other fights we did start Tortos with 3 and eventually went down to 2 for our kill.

[Deleted]

Short answer : yes no problem to 2 heal (or 1 heal some fight) everything in normal mode.

Long answer :
Honestly, the only one who's harder when you have 2 healer is Megaera. Despite what people say, if you're progressing in normal mode, maybe you lack dps to kill Zul before first empowerment, so with 2 healer, you shouldnt have any problem to kill him before that, just use CD when the frost one is empowered and it's easy. With all the nerf this fight took, if your healer is geard, this fight can be solo healed without problem now (with some gear).

Other than Megaera, Raid damage will be significantly lower with one more dps. For Megaera, killing the head too fast mean your CD could not be up for the rampage. Just play however you feel ok.

For hardmode, Iron Qon / Megaera / Council are really hard to 2 heal.

[Spotnick]

You have a disc and a mistweaver. Do you really need an answer? they can both dps and heal at same time... you can 3 heal everything without any issue.

[Deleted]

You have a disc and a mistweaver. Do you really need an answer? they can both dps and heal at same time... you can 3 heal everything without any issue.

Because spamming smite and fistweaving for 12 bosses is so much fun. They are a casual guild... do you not think their healers might want to enjoy themselves???

[reflection]

Either your raid groups are super hardcore or we are super noobs, but we did every fight with at least 3 healers (first kill megaera with 4). Of course you can steamroll through content if you already have an average raid itemlevel of arround 515. This is where we are after several weeks of T15 raiding and NOW we can also 2 heal some fights where we had 3 healers before. But if you come with an ilvl of arround 500 it's nearly impossible to 2 heal any fight in there (or our healers suck completely what I can't believe). And I also wouldn't recommend 2 healing.

Jin Rokh: Doesn't matter anyway.
Horridon: Easily doable on normal mode due to nerfs on adds
Council: There is some damage going on till sul dies if you don't switch tanks the stun is also dangerous -> Sul also dies with 5 DDs
Tortos: A lot of damage going on especially during learning
Megaera: Can be done with even 4 Healers (was our first kill)
Ji Kun: Perfectly doable with 3 Healers -> necessary if your tanks don't have that good equip. Sometimes he hits like a truck + you can send one healer to the platforms
Durumu: One healer for every beam. Enrage shouldn't be a problem if beam is handled correctly
Primordius: Boring anyway
Animus: Boring till last phase then quite a lot of damage
Iron Qon: Easily doable with 3 healers
Consorts: At least in our case we need 3 Healers. I have no idea how anybody could kill here with only 1 healer, because the damage in the day phase seems and especially when both are up can be pretty harsh
Lei Shen: No idea. Will hopefully die tonight. But I assume that you have to 3 heal him, because there are a lot of damaging abilities arround

There isn't any boss that does have a very close enrage timer (maybe durumu in the beginning) that would require to 2 heal. I would just go with 3 healers, because that usually makes it safer. For the other bosses just remember the hints that are arround in the forums and you are fine.

[Bookofblade]

I run a modest raid group we just got 12/12 normal due to some raiders quitting wow but we have our shaman bounce between healing and ele quite a bit

Here are the fights we do with the split per number of heals

2 Heals
Jin'rokh
Horridon
Council
Ji-Kun
Durumu
Dark Animus
Twin Consorts
Lei Shen (We were getting close with 3 heals but weren't hitting our benchmarks so we put the ele along with a shadow priest and a tank on one quarter during the first transition and the other tank soloed a quarter this kept the first transition clean and allowed the dps to hit the timers we wanted resulting in our kill)

3 Heals
Tortos
Megaera
Primordius
Iron Qon

I have no doubt the fights we 3 heal could be done by 2 we just find it easier

[Spotnick]

Because spamming smite and fistweaving for 12 bosses is so much fun. They are a casual guild... do you not think their healers might want to enjoy themselves???

I still don't understand why people think atonement is spamming Smite. It's like Penance and Holy Fire doesn't exist lol

Yeah, it's a 3 button rotation, Shadow is 4 or 5 max, not like it's that much more exciting.. but you don't do that full time, you still do spirit shell and shields etc. I really fail to see why it would be seen as boring, I do it full time when we 3 heal stuff.

[takolin]

It depends on your team. If you have great healers but mediocre dps, you should 3 heal the majority of the fights and if you have great DPS but meh healers the other way around. It'll also depend on how many raid CDs your dps/tanks can bring to the raid to easy the load.

[Deleted]

I still don't understand why people think atonement is spamming Smite. It's like Penance and Holy Fire doesn't exist lol

Yeah, it's a 3 button rotation, Shadow is 4 or 5 max, not like it's that much more exciting.. but you don't do that full time, you still do spirit shell and shields etc. I really fail to see why it would be seen as boring, I do it full time when we 3 heal stuff.

There'd be absolutely no need to do spirit shell or shields if 3 healing as atonement on any boss in the instance.... and ok, holy fire and smite.... It's still boring enough that our priest whines at me every time she's assigned to do it!