Heroic Chimarion 25man -- *Holy Priest Healing*

[Kirara]

First I'd just like to note, this thread was made to discuss holy priest healing for heroic Chimarion, not to argue whether Disc or Holy is better to use on the fight, capiche? Kk now onto the question . . .

My guild has been progressing on Heroic Chimarion 25man, and hopefully we can down him next week, we even had a few 1% wipes this week, which were really frustrating. My question per say, is about the "correct" holy spell rotation (spell usage?) a holy priest should be using for this fight in order to use mana efficiently, but at the same time, keep dps and tanks alive for this fight and max out their hps. (And when I say max out, no I don't mean constantly topping ppl off or anything like that, I mean healing to the best of their classes ability for this situational fight.)

Our Raid Makeup is like so for Healers in 25man: (we were running 8 healers, even though I think we really only need 7?)
-Two Holy Paladins
-One Holy Priest (me<3333)
-One Disc Priest
-Two Resto Shammies
-Two Resto Druids

Healing wasn't as much an issue for us and thats not why I"m posting this thread. Our overall healing was fine, even though I think it would be better to run 7 healers instead of 8 to max out some more dps....but I'm wondering if my holy priest strategy for healing is all wrong, or if it's actually valid with the way I'm thinking. I've looked around on the forums, and honestly I"m kind of worried my healing style for this fight is quite off from what apparently other holy priests have been doing. My strategy is basically this:

-Use a lightwell at the beginning before boss is pulled so I can use it repetitively during the actual encounter.
-I basically stay in the PoH Chakra State for the entirity of this fight.
-Keep PoM on tanks everytime it's off CD so it's bouncing around.
-Use CoH everytime its off CD.
-If two or more people in a group drop health, use PoH to get them past 10%.
-When I drop health, use Binding Heal to get me and another raiders health back above 10%.
-When people are sitting close to 4-8ish%, use renew to top them past 10%.
-Keep a renew rolling on both tanks.
-A lot of times though, when people take damage, but it's like only one person in a group, I find myself throwing renew on multiple people, and then casting on anyone else I see that is low or whatever. In between the massacres I really do find myself using Renew a lot. From what I've read from a couple posts on different forums though, many holy priests only use Renew on the tanks, and occasionally use it to top people to above 10%, but even then seem to focus more on just throwing out PoH all throughout the fight.

For Feud's:
-drop my Sanctuary Circle.
-Use PoM on tanks and keep it bouncing.
-Use PoH on groups, but don't double use PoH on a group without letting the PoH Glyph tick first.

As much as people talk about using PoH PoH PoH, I find myself mainly using PoH during Feud's but in between massacres, honestly Renew, CoH, PoM, and the occasional Flash Heal are my besties to go too. If theres not more than one person in a group whose health is dropped, I honestly feel bad using my PoH. . . I feel like its a huge waste of mana using a group wide heal, that will only affect 1-2 people as far as overhealing goes. (With the initial goal in mind of keeping people right above 10%, and anything over that being a waste of mana.)

Plus here is my thinking behind using Renew way more often than apparently other priests do:

Holy Priest Specced into:
Improved Renew -- Increase the amount healed by your Renew spell by 10%.
Divine Touch -- Your renew will instantly heal the target for 10% of the total periodic effect.
Rapid Renewal -- Reduces the global cooldown of your renew spell by 0.5 sec.

Also, if you are staying in your Prayer of Healing Chakra state for majority of the fight:
-Increases the healing done by your Area of Effect spells and Renew by 15%, plus it helps CoH come off CD quicker.

Also!! If your glyphed for "Glyph of Renew" -- Increases the amount healed by your Renew spell by an extra 10%.

So many benefits and healing percentage increases towards renew, and yet so many people are saying only keep it rolling on tanks, and throw it on the occasional dps when it will quickly top them above 10k. The last few attemps on Heroic Chimarion, the strategy I listed above was what I used, and (even though recount/skada can only show so much and isn't always the definition of whose doing more healing....no arguments please) I was usually top on Healing meters.

Could you other holy priests throw out your own opinions/advice about this boss encounter, and what you think about the type of healing strat I'm using. Should I be doing something totally different, am I doing it all wrong? Any and all advice would be appreciated, and I hope people have actual discussion about this, because thats exactly what I'm looking for here.

This really is bugging me a lot though, and its really hard to find an actual thread that discusses this specific topic concerning Heroic Chimarion healing on 25man, so like I said any and all advice/comments/opinions is appreciated!

Please and thank you! x3

[Zodisius]

Although I do heal this in a 10-man and I think I can address a few of the points you brought up.

You start out by saying that healing isn't a problem and that you think you should be 7 healing this. Bring that up with your raid leader. You've said that you've already had 1% wipes. With that 1 extra dps you could have gotten a kill.

You bring up questions with renew and how you're specd into so much renew talents. The reason many priests don't take Rapid Renewal is because it's really only useful if you plan on rolling renews on everyone. This isn't a viable option anymore.

Here are my tips for healing the encounter, I'm coming from a 10-man view but I can't imagine it being to different.

Overall how you heal the encounter seems fine and from what you stated it doesn't seem like you need to change the way you're healing. I don't like to use CoH on CD because of the wasted healing on people above 10k so I save it more for what you use renew for. Use it as a way to get people above 10k quickly and if they're close to the top. I also start out in Serendipity instead of Sanctuary because of the instant heal is just 1 more person you can get above 10k super fast and efficiently. Then I switch to Sanct. Right before the 2nd massacre. (I don't think you can get feud on the first massacre but correct me if I'm wrong please) Then it lasts for about 20-25 seconds and I switch back into Seren. Sometimes you do run into problems after that first feud but I don't have trouble. I've also heard priests staying in Sanct. from that first feud, but it's a personal preference.

Hope this answers a few of your questions! Sounds like you're healing just fine though. :P

[Danner]

In my guild we're pushed to 6-man heal this to meet the enrage timer. I would love for 7 healers, and 8 almost always takes us to phase 2. But then we're like 30% short on the enrage timer. It's a combination of less-than-stellar DPS and people dying that gives us this predicament, and thus we're stuck with 6 healers. We wipe a lot with this setup, as there are no margins of error, and a single healer sneezing means someone will die. But it's not impossible.

My guild is running with the following setup:
- 1 paladin for tank healing (Mainly the OT, secondarily the MT)
- 1 random healer (preferrably druid) to help the paladin out.
- 2 priests to heal group 1-4 (covering two groups each. Prayer of Healing really rocks)
- 1 shaman on general raidhealing. This guy helps the priests out if the pressure gets too heavy, also heals the last group.
- 1 more discpriest... I'll get back to this guy later.

We split the raid into different sections.
- Meleers are arranged around the boss.
- Any ranged in G1+G2 are spreading out in the SW corner of the room
- G3 spreading out in the SE corner of the room
- G4 spreading out in the NE corner of the room
- Tank in the NW corner of the room.
- Healers sticking to various spots depending on assign.

The MT healers have a stressful life. The OT often takes insane amounts of damage, and outhealing that with just two healers often require luck with crits. I think it should be doable as long as there is no feud phase going on, but it's really really tight in our runs, despite the druid and paladin complementing eachother well. So we ended up putting the discpriest on MTs as well, to help the paladin and druid out. This however usually is overkill for the non-feud phase, and the tank is never remotely in danger of dying.

For the feud phase however, it isn't really enough with 3 tank healers. We found that it helped massively by leaving the paladin at the feud stackup position, as the tanks tended to die once the paladin stopped casting, despite feud stunning the boss for 2-3 seconds. All healers with a cooldown is assigned a rotation to keep the tank up in the feud phase. A guardian Spirit really makes a massive difference on this phase.

The two raidhealing priests need to be pumped full of caffeine before this fight. One priest will handle meleers + G2, the other priest handles G3+G4. Reaction time is paramount, and I will recommend reforging massively to haste to mitigate this. It is imperative to be able to squeeze off 2x Prayer of Healing in the worst case conditions, keeping your two groups up. In case a priest is "lucky" and gets few debuffs, that just means someone else is unlucky. A priest will pretty much always have to blow mana countering the goo. To help out the priests, we have a shaman. The Chain Heal can really make wonders with the goo healing, and complements a priest very well here. But when the massacre hit, only Prayer of Healing can save the day. I don't usually use renew much - it's just too slow. CoH is interesting though - it may just save the day, nudging a full group above 10k in one instant cast - and it may just cause you a wipe failing to do so. I try to not rely on it in the goo phase, but it's good to have in a pinch.

In the feud phase, the shaman is usually sent off healing the tanks. As I said, three tankhealers isn't really enough in the feud phase. That leaves the poor two priests to outheal around 1.5 million damage each spread over five groups within 20 seconds. Of course, this is not remotely possible. But a priest can get amazingly far by just spamming Prom+PoH+CoH on his two assigned groups. Still, this is where everyone else has to step up. Shammies of all flavours putting up healing rain, druids using tranquility rotations, paladins conehealing, raiders being told to use lightwells or die, bandages going on, healthstones, shadowpriests calling down divine hymns - whatever it frickin' takes. You can be amazed how much offhealing you can get out of a raid if it tries. We usually start the feud phase with everyone topped off quickly, and we usually end it with very small margins and lots of lucky shots. But it's doable.

As a healing priest, I would recommend against using Divine Hymn at the feud phase. It's just not good enough. Prayer of Healing gives a more directed and stronger healing. Save the Divine Hymn for when you are starch dry of mana. It's really not good at this fight. I would also somewhat recommend against using Sanctuary if you are a holypriest. The healing is minor, but it may just be what you need to survive the feud phase. And still, the cost and cooldown involved is simply better used on PoH. But make damned sure to stay in the AoE chakra for the feud phase. This is the difference between a kill and a wipe!

The good thing about using only 6 healers is that the healing isn't really a lot heavier than when using 7 or 8 healers. Except for the feud phase, where even 8 healers is going to be lacking - you need help there anyway. With 6 healers, the DPS will be pretty excellent, and the fight will go fast. I think this is a boon on this fight - less chance of messing up as a result. Mana will be tight though - this is a gear check and skill check for healers. I believe the 4-set bonus would've been amazing on this fight, but I wouldn't know. None of our healers have it. As a priest, I end up using everything I have, but since I cannot really use Hymn of Hope in this fight (no time to stand around for 8 seconds!), the manapot is vital.

When phase two beings you want to top off the raid quickly. We blow our last bit of mana at this point. We try to hold back our dpsers here to ensure everyone is topped up before entering mortality, but this often both backfires (more massacres by stopping too soon) and fails (there is always someone who fails to stop). It's a mixed success tactics to be honest.

Then it's time for the REAL challenge. To heal the raid with shields in P2. This is where the discpriest really get to shine, and one will really make the fight easier. I recommend blowing as many innervates as you have on the discpriest at this stage and your priests should help him out with hymns if possible. You also want a barrier and/or anti magic zone to mitigate the incoming raid damage.

And then you win. Maybe

[Aliahna]

We run with seven healers on this fight, 2 palis, 2 holy priests, 1 disc priest, one shaman, and one druid. The priests and the druid are assigned groups to watch for Caustic Slimes. As a holy priest it is pretty simple to to ensure no one in your group dies. First off you just want to make sure you have range on all members of your group so PoH hits everyone. The most EFFICIENT way to complete your assignment is to use PoH. You can start casting it the second you see the slimes being thrown and cancel if it doesn't hit anyone in your group. I usually follow up with a CoH to help out any remaining people in other groups that still have Low Health. I typically will throw my PoM on the tank taking the Double Attacks on cooldown, and keep Renews on all tanks (we use three). We have a tank cooldown rotation set up for the priests to use to save the active tank at the beginning of the offline (fued) phase. That's where groups usually lose a tank if they are going to.

During Fued you want to spam the heck out of PoH, I usually hit my assigned group two times to stack up a nice EoL HoT, CoH on cooldown, and PoH another group or two, after the slime, rinse and repeat, then spread back out. We typically have our healers closest to the collapse point so they have the shortest distance to run for grouping up and spreading out since they have to immediately start healing once they get into place.

The biggest adjustment I think for most healers on this right is learning the proper amount of healing that has to be done. You just need to keep people above 10k health during the spread out phase (bot online) phase and nothing more, the tanks are the only exception, and during the offline, if everyone is properly stacked up you just have to quickly heal everyone to about 70k health in time for the next slime to go out. People just have to have enough health in time to survive those two slime hits and anything more is wasted because they will be taken down to 10k health with the next massacre anyway. I honestly would not waste the mana on Renews on raid members. The exception to that is when you push him into phase 2 and you want the entire raid topped off as much as possible and that is when you want to use Tranq and Divine Hymn.

For phase 2 you can assist by either putting shields on people to prolong their life from the DoT ticks or simply help with DPSing him down. Good luck.

P.S. Lightwells are great, especially when you can get people to use them. I'm finding that our team uses them less and less once stuff is on farm. /sigh

[Deleted]

my 2 cents (I'm normally shadow but off-heal this fight on heroic):

7 healers makes this fight easy, 8 makes it trivial. No-one should ever die if the healers get them to 10k fast enough.

2/3 Tank healers (we have 2 Paladins who get prime position so they don't really move much for feud)
5 Group healers, each one responsible for 1 raid group. Holy priests are number one choice here, but any healer can do it.

Spread the raid out so no more than one person gets hit by the slimes. All run in during feud and rotate raid healing cooldowns each feud (Hymm, Tranq etc) - Also have a rotation for GS/PS for the tank that stays out of the Feud AOE spam healing.

As a Holy Priest my priority during P1 is:

0 Glyphed Lightwell on every CD
1 person in your group gets hit - Flash heal them (tbh I just binding heal as I'm lazy)
2 people hit including you - Binding heal them
3 people hit - POH (I _always_ use the AOE chakra for this fight.) make sure your whole group stay in range of POH on you (they should never move outside of feud).. easy to miss this.

You have time to get 2 fast heals off, so you can help out any other group that needs it once your group is good, throw around POM's if you see other healers barely making it each time.

Most of the time with good healers you'll find that you have LOTS of time to POM/Shield the tank (its probably not even needed if the tanks understand the break mechanic, but what else is there to do?)

You shine on the Feud phase as you can drop the normally crappy ground AOE heal then spam POM and POH/COH any any groups that need it.

Shield people in P3 and that's it..

/Unger

[Aliahna]

Kirara, I gave some more thought to what seems to be your real question which has to do with why so many priests don't use Renew more to deal with Caustic Slime and low health during the spread out phase is that correct?

Here is my opinion on that, and yes, I only use Renew on the tanks. While Renew CAN get the job done, I don't think it is the most efficient use of mana and here is why. CoH can hit up to 6 people and specced into Test of Faith, will hit those people for about 10k and costs 21% base mana. PoH will hit 5 people for 26% base mana, while Renew is relatively cheap at 17% base mana once you cast more than one to deal with the slime (low health) there was probably a more efficient spell to use. The other issue I have with Renew, besides the cost, is that it can be a gamble. Chances are it will tick fast enough on the first person you put it on, but what about the 2nd or 3rd? That's too risky for me and which is why I stick with the PoH followed by CoH strategy.

Renew will look good on the meters since it will rarely overheal but it's not the most efficient way to deal with low health in my opinion. Again, it's possible, I just don't think it is the ideal way.

Edit: Another way to look at it is 3 Renews cost 51% base mana and will take care of 3 people (and not guarantee their survival), whereas with 47% base mana spent casting PoH and CoH you have potentially saved 11 people.

[Kirara]

wow ty Aliahna >_< your post was exactly what I was looking for, at least that sort of explanation. And it totally made since. . . I feel dumb as a rock for not even thinking about the mana cost from multiple renews to that of poh and healing multiple people up. And what you said about gambling with renew ticks, at least on the next two or three people you throw them on, may not heal enough to keep them up for the next attack.

So tyvm for that. It was exactly what I was looking for, and you srsly helped me put the whole renew thing in a better perspective, and it really makes since. I"m definitely going to try to lessen the renews next week on Chimarion and change my healing style up just a bit. Hopefully I will even see some improvement and we'll get him down!

Thank you again!

[Deleted]

I'd like to add that you should swap around your healing assignments. We had the exactly the same setup of healers just like you did and what benefits the strain on mana here is to not use group assignments, but to let your Paladins and shamans take care of Low Health. There's a total of 5 persons getting hit, each shaman and paladin got cheaper heals and alot faster than if you'd have to use Flash Heal. This way it'll leave you, your disc priest and resto druid with more mana due to the easy healing on tanks.

With your setup, you reaaaallllyyyyy shouldn't be taking care of Low Health, it will make your life a whole lot easier to not care about ( unless you get it yourself and B.Heal like you said) in Feud, we use a LoH rotation on the tanks cause do note that the tank WILL survive if he's topped off the moment Chimaeron starts to hit again [including Pain Suppression,GS,HoS etc.]. Due to this the healers don't have to worry about the tank and given more time for the raid. [Note: He will need heals, but not as consistently if he hadn't been topped.]

The way you're stating is correct, the Feud consist of PoH spamm with PoM on CD and CoH on CD aside from that there isn't really much to do as holy priest. Since when Bile'o'tron is back online you pretty much won't have anything to do ( if you change your assignment as I suggested ) will save you mana, and stress. Most likely assist the other priest and druids to keep DA tank topped.

Renew = Better HPS since it heals for more, Renew x5 > Prayer of Healing but HPM wise Prayer of Healing > Renew.

But since I suggest you shouldn't heal Low Health, you should do nothing else but Renew the tanks and PoH in massacre. Feud is already mentioned.

Good Luck & I promise that if you sort the assignment around, you'll save alot of mana and strain on each other among your healers.