Holy Priest on Nefarian 10

[Tichy]

We have a paladin, shaman and a druid. Unfortunately the shaman is DPS mainspecced and a weak healer generally. So relying on our druid who's about 10 ilvls lower than me to keep the raid up will only force us to wait longer between each crackle only for the sake of me going Discipline.

The problem is that, yes, discipline is a favorite if i'm one of the 2 Tank healers. However i can't be. I'm the best geared healer in the guild right now with the 4set bonus clearly favoring Holy spec for maximum efficiency and the druid and shaman are both weaker than I am at raidhealing so going Disc would be a bad choice since noone would be able to heal the raid as quick as i currently can.

The raid doesn't have to be healed up "quickly" until P3. In P1, you only need two crackles and the time constraint is insignificant in that phase, so you have optimal time to push 2 crackles and get the raid up. In addition, you can weave PW:S between heals on the tank to protect people who may dip too low or will die from an impending crackle. P2 you can push one crackle or two. If your healers already have raid healing issues in P1, I would only push one, because very few classes will have CDs for another crackle in that phase. In P3, the two healers healing the nef tank + crackles have so much time to do it because the healing is so stupid easy unless you are healing the add tank, meaning you wouldn't need to be pumping as many raid heals. Disc has a lot more utility for that fight and would be worth considering.

[Archicortex]

A lot more utility?

Disc has a bit stronger shields. PW:B and PS. While Holy has Lightwell, Body&Soul speed (add tank), Guardian Spirit and better uptime on the 4 set bonus. Not to mention stronger aoe healing.

Considering Discipline for raidhealing is not going to happen, Holy is superior. One or two PW:Bs for electrocutes won't change that to Discs' favor. I would run Disc if I was tankhealing, but as I've stated earlier; I can't since i'm the strongest raidhealer we have (Hpaladin and a 348ilvl geared Restodruid aren't quite as strong).

[Deleted]

-Chob
Is your shaman using an addon which tells him which spell to use next?

Why is there a need to heal everyone up so fast after a crackle in p1? I just drop a PoH and then heal everyone up with Heal, saving mana for p2.

[Archicortex]

By throwing 4 back-to-back PoHs and a CoH inbetween and one after plus 2 Heals, i'm getting the next Electrocute message.

By the time the first Electrocute hits, the guys are already hard at work burning Nefarian down to 80%. Back-to-back PoHs are obviously a bad idea, but it was a reflex reaction trying to get both groups up as soon as possible before the next one came.

How long does it take your guild to bring Nef from 90-80%? Take that time, and subtract the time until the raid actually takes damage from the first one. That's the time i have for the second Electrocute.

Also, due to duoble-tailswiping early and also getting hit by Onyxia's electricity (they must be since some players drop to 50% hp fast) i usually was almost throwing back-to-back PoHs even before the first Electrocute to get everyone up.

One of the problems is me not being entirely comfortable with the fight yet. We also changed from Druid to Resto shaman midraid so it also affected the way things went. But aside from perhaps preshielding a few before the first electrocute i'll probably have to get our raiders up as fast as possible before the 2nd one since the DPS isn't excactly slowing down for every week we spend gearing up further.

I'm only going to ask them to slow down DPS on nefarian if it means people dying due to too little time to heal everyone up.

[Felade]

You'll need to Serendiptiy those POHs and the rest of your healers need to help out after topping off their tanks. No one should get more than a glancing blow from Ony's electricity.

The time it takes to go from 90-80% is exactly as long as we need it to be because we ask our DPS to stop DPSing.

It really isn't a DPS race. The only enrage I'm aware of is the one that is liable to kill your tank in p3 if the adds catch up to him and your healers are OOM, and you can eliminate that one by having the boss in the middle of the room and have the OT kite around the room. You can keep that up till next Tuesday or until your healers run out of mana, whichever happens first.

Your DPS' gear doesn't matter. Tell them to stop pushing buttons. You have to stop DPSing if you are killing people with Crackles. It makes no sense to keep DPSing if your raid is just going to wipe because they took back to back 100k hits.

You have to tell your DPS to slow down. Or you're going to be stuck on Nef till next tier.

[Chob]

-Chob
Is your shaman using an addon which tells him which spell to use next?

Why is there a need to heal everyone up so fast after a crackle in p1? I just drop a PoH and then heal everyone up with Heal, saving mana for p2.

I have no idea what addons he uses, feel free to drop a line on the video and I'll point him there to reply if you want to know about his UI (presuming you saw it on my video).

When I suggested discipline over holy spec, I suggested that with raidsetup in mind. If you go discipline you'd be the tankhealer, and the add-tank healer in p3. Discipline is not strong enough for raidhealing on nefarian because your DA procs from healing up crackle will most likely have dropped off before the next crackle hits, save maybe 1 or 2 in p3 where he's being bloodlusted down. Either way, holy has always been the superior raidhealer where disc has been the superior tankhealer.

Play to your strengths and your setup.

[Mazi]

You'll need to Serendiptiy those POHs and the rest of your healers need to help out after topping off their tanks. No one should get more than a glancing blow from Ony's electricity.

There really is no *need* to Serendipity just to PoH before a Crackle. You know exactly how much damage is coming in and you have time to heal it up. The only time you should use BH/FH is when people need it to live. It's a waste of mana and time to get Serendipity up when you can just watch the timer and pre-cast.

[Felade]

There really is no *need* to Serendipity just to PoH before a Crackle. You know exactly how much damage is coming in and you have time to heal it up. The only time you should use BH/FH is when people need it to live. It's a waste of mana and time to get Serendipity up when you can just watch the timer and pre-cast.

True, but you can definitely game it. Use a few flash heals on the kiter in p1 or one of the tanks if they get low, and you've got a nice stack of serendipity ready for your crackle. Since the raid damage is light besides crackle (just tail swipes during electrocute mostly), you can spend time regenerating some of that mana you spent on flash heal, and have fast POH's ready to go.

[Mazi]

True, but you can definitely game it. Use a few flash heals on the kiter in p1 or one of the tanks if they get low, and you've got a nice stack of serendipity ready for your crackle. Since the raid damage is light besides crackle (just tail swipes during electrocute mostly), you can spend time regenerating some of that mana you spent on flash heal, and have fast POH's ready to go.

If someone needs Flash, sure. If you're doing it solely for the sake of doing it then no, it's wrong. You can spend that extra .5 seconds pre-casting and saving your mana instead of wasting it on building up Serendipity - because if you're doing it just to do it your are A. wasting more time and B. wasting more mana than you will gain from Serendipity.

[hikamiro]

I'm currently a bit over geared for this encounter, but here is my 2 cents.

I can understand both Disc and Holy being very viable for this fight, It combines a lot of opportunity for Pure AoE healing, Tank healing, and mitigation possibilities. Play what ever spec you like most, both work very well on this one.

Personally i like holy, and i play it on every fight (except Maloriak-H). I find for Nef that Renew is my best friend. I'm typically not a renew heavy player, but between keeping it on the tanks (i run back and forth to them throughout the first phase) and being able to quickly toss one on others whilst running is very important. Typically when a crackle hits I already have a PoH timed to hit a group as soon as it lands. Then i trade 2 PoHs on each group, and just focus on getting people up between renew and heal after that. For phase 2, i find it very easy to keep up my pillar (4 people on my pillar with no nature resist) by just using Serenity Chakra, rolling renews, and refreshing renews with heals, binding heals, and HW:Serenity. I also place my lightwell on another healers pillar in phase 1, because i have 0 trouble and want to make their job a little easier. By 0 trouble, i literally mean 0 trouble, Heal is mana positive, and if everything is smooth on interrupts i can enter phase 3 with 100% mana, and Sfiend coming of CD soon.

Phase 3 is really the only phase that is a bit tough on my mana, and i think thats because i need to focus a bit harder on raid and tank healing as my other healers tend to get a little mana tapped in ph2, But between Gheal and Prayer of Healing spam on the groups, crackles are easily handled. Really the only chance of wiping is poor fire placement or poor add kiting.

Here's my armory if you're interested: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...amiro/advanced

[Felade]

I'm not advocating wasting mana on Flash, and pre-casting is a good point. However, I've found that Nef's Crackles can sometimes be hard to gauge (specifically, they always take a bit longer to hit than I think they will after the emote's out) and if that is your experience, you can make up for this with a few serendipity'd POHs.

[Mazi]

I'm not advocating wasting mana on Flash, and pre-casting is a good point. However, I've found that Nef's Crackles can sometimes be hard to gauge (specifically, they always take a bit longer to hit than I think they will after the emote's out) and if that is your experience, you can make up for this with a few serendipity'd POHs.

DBM has an actual cast bar of when it's going to go off - it goes off about 0.5 sec after the cast bar completes, no reason you can't time it as soon as it goes off. If I can do it every time so can you

[Archicortex]

I'm inclined to believe that dropping a Holy Word: Sanctuary is more mana efficient than Flash Healing for Serendipity

---------- Post added 2011-03-05 at 04:00 AM ----------

[QUOTE=Felade;10626282]1. We don't CC the adds at all we usually just put a Hunter on the adds (p1, 10 man). We shackled for awhile, but that seemed to just make it harder for the Hunter to pick them up, and they'd sometimes end up getting stuck on a tank or a healer (BAD tanks, no AE!). Having a Holy Priest on Raid is really helpful for kiting in p1, thanks to Lifegrip and B&S.

Questions regarding this; How? Does he keep running around even if he's risking getting hit by onyxias electricity? And he will get caught up by them at some point since the place to run around is fairly limited with 2 dragons.

Also, tanking nefarian in the middle...Where are the adds placed in P1 to be picked up for p3?

[Felade]

I'm inclined to believe that dropping a Holy Word: Sanctuary is more mana efficient than Flash Healing for Serendipity

You'd be wrong. Remember Serendipity reduces the mana cost of POH too - and if you're standing around, you'll regen the mana you used on any Flash Heals on, say, that kiter in p1. Now, its still not a very efficient way to heal - but it does a lot better than HW: Sanc, especially on a fight where you can't really guarantee the raid will be stacked. HW: Sanc ticks for *hundreds* of health, POH *direct heals* for *thousands*. You aren't going heal anyone up with HW sanc - its just a nice buffer spell. It costs almost twice what POH does!

Question 1: our tank turns Ony away from the raid (tail is in the raid) so electricity is nowhere near our kiter. Adds are usually dead. We did it tonight with an Ele Shaman specced into the root totem thingy. He'd only done it once before, never on a kill. His words "that wasn't so bad". We do use a Shadowfury now and again, and I shackled at the start for him. But its not really that much CC. Not like something we massively plan, anyway. I Body and Soul him all over the place and he seems to do fine. Same for hunters.

Question 2: That's what Lifegrip is for. Although I haven't had to use it much anymore. It may be a case of the Warlocks using Shadowfury more than I'm seeing, but even when we weren't it wasn't a huge deal.

Question 3: We don't actually do it this way, but the strat I've heard ( and we tried a few times) is that you put nef in the middle, and put the adds on the outside all clumped up. As the add tank goes around the room fire should stay on the outside. Just make sure to turn Nef so he doesn't breathe on the adds, and the raid needs to move with Nef so they don't get tail swiped. Same goes for add tank. It helps eliminate fire in the middle of the room and if you do it right the add tank never catches up with the fire on the ground so he can keep going around the outside of the room forever.

We actually put the adds over where Ony was and Nef on the other side, and our add tank does figure 8s on the far half while the rest of the raid minus his healers is over by Nef. Sometimes we lose that tank before we can kill Nef (not tonight though). Usually, though we just kill him. Our DPS was pushing hard tonight and I was thinking of this thread. They pushed a crackle right at the beginning of phase 3 and I was at like 20% mana because our Fury Warrior has a giant target for damage on him for p2. Whatever, we still killed Nef. Took 3 pulls tonight but we were tired (gave up on heroic Chim this week and spent the last hour killing normal Chim, Maloriak, and Nef - got the achieves for Chim and Maloriak too without even trying - that made me feel better after all the wiping to Chim on heroic! )

So kiter - try some Shadowfury. Or some root totems. Be careful because if you CC an add in the wrong place it can get breathed on or it can run loose in the raid. Our Resto Druid tends to pull aggro on one or two when they are almost dead.

@ Mazi - yay me I got off my POHs at the right time tonight. Still ran out of mana even though I went into p2 with like 80% of my bar left every time. Crackle coming right out of p2 hurts!

[hawtlol]

Disc AA spec is your best choice with the druid going resto and shaman dps'ing whether the druid is geared or not.

P1 - We have me and the resto druid stack on the side of Nef while he throws a rejuv on the tank while I throw PW:S on the tank and penance him on cd which will provide your 4p then the rest I just smite to heal the tank. We also have all the dps stand on Nef's side grouped up other than a hunter dps'ing Onyxia standing near the holy paladin, this reduces damage from tail swipe. First Electrocute I throw out PW:B to reduce the damage and inner focus PoH while the resto druid picks the rest up with wild growth and rejuvs, if he can't get them to 100% by the next crackle I'll throw out a couple PW:S. Then for the 3rd crackle I PW:S everyone so minimal damage is taken and a smooth transition happens.

P2 - To heal the platforms is very easy as disc as you should just PW:S the 2 people and you while healing through atonement with penance on people getting back to back shadowflames and a desperate prayer on yourself if needed. And this is also where I blow my shadowfiend and hymn of hope. There should be no problem this phase.

P3 - The first Electrocute in P3 can be negated with PW: B and PS on Nef tank with bubbles on the add tank and paladin while you heal through smite. Just like in P1 Inner Focus PoH after electrocutes. Just healing the tank by throwing PW:S on him with penance on cd while atonement healing you should have everyone up for each Electrocute. Then whether you want to use it during the 20% or 10% Electrocute use PW:B to kill Nef.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEXZLgUl4WM my guilds first nef kill and how I healed it if you din't want to read the explanation. Also I don't use 4p and each week after the first we haven't had one person die.

[Archicortex]

Disc AA spec is your best choice with the druid going resto and shaman dps'ing whether the druid is geared or not.

P1 - We have me and the resto druid stack on the side of Nef while he throws a rejuv on the tank while I throw PW:S on the tank and penance him on cd which will provide your 4p then the rest I just smite to heal the tank. We also have all the dps stand on Nef's side grouped up other than a hunter dps'ing Onyxia standing near the holy paladin, this reduces damage from tail swipe. First Electrocute I throw out PW:B to reduce the damage and inner focus PoH while the resto druid picks the rest up with wild growth and rejuvs, if he can't get them to 100% by the next crackle I'll throw out a couple PW:S. Then for the 3rd crackle I PW:S everyone so minimal damage is taken and a smooth transition happens.

P2 - To heal the platforms is very easy as disc as you should just PW:S the 2 people and you while healing through atonement with penance on people getting back to back shadowflames and a desperate prayer on yourself if needed. And this is also where I blow my shadowfiend and hymn of hope. There should be no problem this phase.

P3 - The first Electrocute in P3 can be negated with PW: B and PS on Nef tank with bubbles on the add tank and paladin while you heal through smite. Just like in P1 Inner Focus PoH after electrocutes. Just healing the tank by throwing PW:S on him with penance on cd while atonement healing you should have everyone up for each Electrocute. Then whether you want to use it during the 20% or 10% Electrocute use PW:B to kill Nef.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEXZLgUl4WM my guilds first nef kill and how I healed it if you din't want to read the explanation. Also I don't use 4p and each week after the first we haven't had one person die.

You have the following:
PW:B
AMZ
DG

And by the looks of it those are being rotated (aside from the AMZ/PW:B communication fail in p2 due to panic) on a constant basis.

Your druid is about 7-10 ilvls better geared with PT instead of HS enchant on the weapon, i'd say that alone gives him/her stronger throughput than what our druid can produce. Not that it seems like any of you are having problems keeping people up anyway.

Mainly because you're taking the edge off the Electrocutes almost on a constant basis aside from maybe 1 where the raid gets hit for the full damage (as far as I can tell). Unfortunately i don't have that luxury.

Sure, i can spec into Disc, and I might even try and see how it goes, PW:B is stupidly overpowered and strong shields for a P2 Electrocute are lifesavers.

Here are my problems with your strategy and why i think it's weaker for my raid group than your:
- We don't have Divine Guardian (our Prot Paladin most likely is not coming back, he's been demoted to trialist for being away without saying anything for an extended period of time)
- We don't have AMZ (because our DK is tanking Nef)
- You're healing the Nef tank with support from the Druid and most likely a Beacon from the paladin healing the Kiting Tank.
- You only have 2 instead of 3 people on your Pillar and one of them is conveniently a Death Knight who can sustain himself without a single heal (i know ours did) except for when he gets hit by Electrocute/crackle.


I might be wrong, but i'm fairly certain the strain on both your mana, and the amount you need to heal is dramatically reduced because of the points mentioned above, making it much easier for you to avoid a "Oh SNAP!" moment where some people are really low for quite some time without you being able to cover them due to having to heal the tank or otherwise.

[hawtlol]

We haven't used a DK since that kill because lack of skill. But on my platform now is a shadow priest and elemental shaman. Nor do we have a prot paladin anymore either due to lack of skill. As for add kiting our paladin keeps beacon on himself or the add tank like it should be so he can follow him around and holy wrath adds. For P2 you paladin should be healing the 3 people platform because of beacon. Even without the strain I'm ending fights now with around 50% mana. Again I don't have 4piece so your mana regen is prolly better and can pick up some of the resto druids slack.

[Archicortex]

Yeap true. Tried an AA Atonement spec today in HCs, seems fine to be honest. But i can't say it's better than Holy.

For that to be the case we need more damage reduction or damagereducing cooldowns to take the edge off (everything's easy once the fight is on farm on normal mode, but until then i'll probably have to heal a ton more than i should).

For instance, you guys have the fight down. Furthermore, on your platform now you have a 12% reduction Elemental Shaman and a 15% damage reduction Shadowpriest with a selfheal along with nature resistance totem.

I'd say that if the fight had less spikes as a result of having a better 10man setup then i'd probably run Disc for the extra PW:Bs and fun time spamming smite whilst healing the tank. But i'm not sure if that's such a good idea until we actually nail the fight. Might be better off simply staying Holy for now.

As for the AA spec itself, i could technically run a Holy AA spec for the 15% extra healing for the electrocutes to avoid having DPS stop up so I can top everyone. Will definetely try it. 15% is a monster amount of extra healing.

[notasgudasyou]

A lot more utility?

Disc has a bit stronger shields. PW:B and PS. While Holy has Lightwell, Body&Soul speed (add tank), Guardian Spirit and better uptime on the 4 set bonus. Not to mention stronger aoe healing.

Considering Discipline for raidhealing is not going to happen, Holy is superior. One or two PW:Bs for electrocutes won't change that to Discs' favor. I would run Disc if I was tankhealing, but as I've stated earlier; I can't since i'm the strongest raidhealer we have (Hpaladin and a 348ilvl geared Restodruid aren't quite as strong).

lol this is soooo wrong... in my guild we've now killed nef 3 times on 10man and we run the following setup: Hpal (Myself) on our bear tank with nef, Rshaman on our war tank with ony/kiting adds, DISC PRIEST RAID HEALING...

now im not going to link the first kill (lol cheesed it with mage and hunter alive only xD) but here's a link to our second, cleaner kill 2shot that with that setup.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/1cd8k6o32n8ywke3/

see for yourself, this whole "Considering Discipline for raidhealing is not going to happen, Holy is superior" may be correct but both specs are viable and bring different strengths

also want to add, for P2 we have the Rshaman healing the pillar with 4 players (enh shaman, hunter, himself and war tank) and the disc priest healing herself, ret pal and mage with my platform being myself (hpal) bear and frost DK

[Sokaris84]

Fix your groups so they work with your PoH better. For example.

Group1: Nef Tank, Pally Healer, DPS with a good survival cooldown (ret pally, dk, any dps druid), Kiter, Kiter Healer.

Group2: 4dps+you.

This way you can have a PoH hit group 2 straight after crackle hits, CoH, Binding Heal the tank, PoH your group again. Done. Group one will need very little healing since the Pally Healer has so much self healing and the Kiter and the Kiter Healer are tending to each other.