Jin'rokh HC healing tips for storm

[luckystone]

So my guild just started working on the first boss heroic mode (10-man) and we were not able to survive the storm phase reliably, most of the time half of the raid would die. The main part of our issue is of course bad with ball dodging - that we will keep practicing, but I'm hoping to get some help with the healing as well. I read several guides and many forum posts (here and other websites), so I thought we had the right idea, i.e. (1) assign healing CD's for each phase (2) myself as a disc priest put up spirit shell ahead of each storm.

In our attempts though, I noticed that
(1) my spirit shells got eaten away almost as soon as I put them up
(2) once the storm started, i could only manage to throw out PW:shields, mending, a few penance and cascade.
(3) the worst part: from the damage received summary, even when ppl were doing okay with ball dodging, they still slowly died to storm damage due to lack of healing.

So as a priest, what do you think i can do to be more effective? Specifically
i) are you able to put up spirit shells that will last a few more seconds into the storm? any tip for the timing?
ii) in the middle of storm, what do you usually do? (i read a certain strat where everyone group up near the statue and move every few seconds, to allow easier heals. any other ideas?)
iii) is holy better for this fight? i've played disc all the time, but this fight got me thinking maybe the burst healing from holy is more useful for this boss?

p.s. our healing team is disc + hpally + shaman

[Fenixdown]

1. His AoE he does to the raid from the tank will likely eliminate SS, and then the other issue is you don't have the timeframe to apply SS before you need to move out to start dodging balls. Your best bet if you're trying to rely on SS for transitions is to move out maybe 5-8 seconds beforr they start and start applying SS, and just hope some of it remains active.

2. It's more than just raid CD's, your entire team needs to be using personals to ensure survivability. Use Smoke Bombs, your shamans should be running HTT, shadows should save Halo for this or even spec Cascade (DPS should NOT be an issue), DKs and warriors should swap to Blood/Def stance, paladins using personals, everything. Rotate things effectively and efficiently and avoid taking balls to the chin.

Change glyphs, talents, anything to increase survivability should be done. If DPS ends up being an issue with the entire raid alive, then you should go back to normal. Period. The enrage is pretty lenient. I'd even say go three healers if you're not.

3. No, not really. It could provide more between the extra instant cast of CoH and Lightspring, but otherwise there's no real difference. In fact, I'd say losing out on Barrier and replacing it with Hymn is a negative. Barrier will be up for two transitions (first and third).

As for your theory of trying to stay in a relative grouping area, yes, that seems to be most efficient. Also, teach your raid members how to a. change their camera angle and b. strafe. Basically go to the one opposite of your current pool. So if you start southwest, go to northeast. Then have the boss throw next to Northwest, and then go southeast. Then the third throw should be northeast, and then go southeast again.

[Deleted]

I usually start spamming shields on the raid when there is around 6 seconds left to the storm, when the storm hit i start off with a dmg reduction cd (barrier on first, ps on second) Then i shield + pom myself -> offensive penance -> cascade/star -> spiritshell with AA and start casting PoH's. I keep using pom on myself and penance(offensive)/cascade/star on cd, as long as you are on higher health than others, offensive penance is always good.

Also if you having range issues, make sure your raid goes to the same side of the pool when storm is coming.

And as Fenix says above, it's alot about other players using there defensive cd's, even if you pull off the healing perfect, people may die from not using there own defensives.

It is however by far the easiest hc boss, work as a team and you will get it down, Good Luck!

[Temp name]

I play a paladin so I can't give you priest specific stuff, but are you having the entire raid stack up on the grids at the very outside of the arena? Basicly the idea of this is that the further away from the boss you are, the less balls there'll be and the less ways they'll come from so they're easier to dodge.

[tsokin]

Hmm, I typically have time to get at least one prayer of healing off during that phase with focus on it. keeping pom out is hugely helpful. Having your raid "stack' near a single area is also helpful ensuring everyone is in range for what heals are going off. Here is a link to our logs from this week if you want to check it out. http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...e/?s=423&e=689

[luckystone]

Thank you all for your input. We tried again last night with these tips and did much better - still not good enough to get a kill but seems possible now.

Also, comparing to Tsokin's log, I think we were still getting hit by lightning balls a bit too much. More practice I guess.

Again thanks everyone. If you have more tips, please continue to share, much appreciated!

[Sakamae]

I'm not sure what classes your other healers are, but for my group (first kill this week), I dropped a barrier for 1st and 3rd on our resto druid, give him a pain suppression and he just stands still and channels tranquility. He can get hit by balls and doesn't have to move at all. I pre-stack spirit shell for all of the phases, and it seemed to ensure everyone was topped off going into the phase, which was a big help. I move out of the pool early to make sure I can stack as people are moving into position. I would not go holy over disc on this fight, as you should be solely atonement healing outside of the thunderstorm phases. The damage bonus from the pools is too good to pass up. During storm I made sure PoM was always bouncing around, PWS, cascade and used glyphed penance. If I felt safe, I would squeeze in a few binding heals also. I didn't have it glyphed, but that would probably be a better choice for next week. The only real healing is during the storms, so you can stand to be less conservative with mana to make sure everyone survives.

[Brightmist]

In our first kill, I used a lightspring for first and second storms. Used GS for channeling divine hymn on first and third storms while having sanctuary/mending/divine star going around. I had the highest peaks/most healing done during storms as holy in 25M HC.

Also you might wanna save your desperate prayer/healthstone combo for storms to be able to finish your poh cast after getting hit by couple of balls.

[Spotnick]

People should be intelligent and not need heals. You can use raid cooldowns and personal cooldowns, that's it.

Personally I just penance/holy fire the boss, shield myself and prayer of mending/cascade on cooldown.. that's it.

[Deleted]

Another thing I did when my group was fresh on this boss and noming balls like no tomorrow was to glyph binding heal and spam it during storm: it allowed me to stand still and heal targets with WS while the self heal was keeping me alive. However, its a mana destroying strategy, so you need to be careful, but it can save some asses.

[Janvs]

usually i use pw:s on every player, while i run run run through the ballz. pom and cascade when ready. (WS glyph helps)

[kouby]

Start spirit shelling 15-20 seconds before the storm, throw out bubbles while you're running out of the pool at the last minute, stick your barrier somewhere comfortable, and spam shields / pom / cascade and either glyphed binding heal or poh whenever possible, use penance & holy fire on the boss to heal melee who are out of range.

[snaxattax]

for 10 man you can just PWS/cascade everyone going into each storm and atone/pom while dodging balls. build spirit shells 6-7 seconds before each tank toss.

but, yeah, people need to not get hit by lightning.

[luckystone]

Thank you all again for the great tips. As I said earlier, my guild tried again for a second night on this boss, did better but not well enough to kill him. Later that night we had to switch back to normal so we could clear the instance (we just killed normal leishen the week before so the concern was we might struggle and not have enough time to clear ToT), surprisingly we one-shotted almost everything - I guess all the Jin'rokh practice made us better? LOL.

From what I learned here, I'm pretty hopeful for our attempt in next reset. In addition to all these tips and normal CD rotations, and more practice of ball dodging, we should be able to do it.

I also want to try something crazy (if my RL allows) - kinda similar to Brightmist's "undying holy angel" approach. I would like to try pain suppression and barrier myself, minimize my own movement and use both instant heals and heavy spam of PoH. I did a quick calculation, i should be able to live at least 10-12 seconds (assuming i get hit by 4-5 balls or less) with just my own heals + healthstone + glyph of {dmg reduction 6%} + talent {angelic bulwark}, perhaps longer with some HoTs from fellow healers. NOT TOO SURE about this but seems a crazy fun idea to try. What do you think of this?

[Janvs]

Maybe u'll find bulwark on cd after ionization dispel? DP should suite better? Never attempted to do like this tbh... I hate gtfo alarm lol