1. #1

    25 Man Heroic Maloriak- Tips for Priests?

    My guild just started to work on Heroic Maloriak and I was wondering if any of you have any tips you could share. We are going through the typical learning curve that I think many guilds go through with kiting and DPSing the new adds (Vile Swill) and people avoiding the dark sludge in the dark phase. The dark sludge right now seems to be the biggest problem, we have some people that just can't seem to stay out of that #$%^. It's eating through healer mana so when we make it to the first Red phase most of the healers are down to about 25%. I am also curious about whether you use strict healing assignments (groups) or rather just FFA raid healing. We have been using a FFA raid healing approach and I think that may be part of the healer mana issue as well.

    Our raid leader mentioned today that levitate works against the dark sludge. Has anyone used that successfully? I sort of doubt Blizzard would allow this but hey if it will save our mana I'm all for trying it. Anyway, I would appreciate any tips or advice as we are just learning this one.
    Last edited by Aliahna; 2011-03-10 at 08:20 PM.

  2. #2
    I highly doubt levitate works but it wouldn't be difficult for you to test that out.

    What my guild does is have all the ranged dps stacked right before dark phase, and the tank kites the adds around the room in a circle with the dps following. This helps the tanks not have their kite path filled randomly with sludge on the ground. Your dps just need to learn to pay attention, and it's very very easy with DBM yelling at you whenever you're standing in stuff. They need to realize that the DoT ticks fast and hits hard and they can't afford to "finish their cast" or something dumb like that. If they can't/won't get out of it, replace them. I tend to lag slightly during dark phase, and I know at least one other person in the guild does too, so if that's the case, they just need to back off a bit and stay away from other people so they don't constantly have to move.

  3. #3
    Yeah, I will try levitating some of the raid members that are sludge challenged tonight and will find out. We haven't really tried having the DPS grouped up, we've been trying more of a spread out and stay out of the tank's kite path approach.

  4. #4
    Deleted
    Keep us posted. I'll be testing it tonight too. But I woudn't count on it too much.

  5. #5
    I suppose I should ask, who is it that has trouble getting out of sludge? Is it the ranged dps? the melee dps? the tanks?

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Aleysia View Post
    I suppose I should ask, who is it that has trouble getting out of sludge? Is it the ranged dps? the melee dps? the tanks?
    The ranged DPS are probably the worst about it, followed by a few of the melee. I don't think they realize that it hits for 15k/.5 sec before resists/mitigation and if you are within range of multiple puddles the DoT stacks.

  7. #7
    If you're melee heavy, this fight becomes a lot more difficult as the probability of puddles spawning near the tank increase a lot, forcing them to move more. You can't really force people to move out of the sludge so if they can't move out of it, then you will never get him down. We usually have a shaman assigned to melee healing and the rest is generally a FFA. As holy, I like to stay in serenity for the black phase as the instant heal can be quite useful as there shouldn't be much AoE damage (if an arcane storm gets off, blame the bad interrupters). The MT should also be calling out over vent when the flame debuff wears off to spam the crap out of them. If you don't have a disc priest in group, always shield the MT on CD.

  8. #8
    Yeah, we are taking as few melee as we can on this fight, and we do seem to get a few arcane storms that go off which sucks. We have good healers luckily that know to watch the Engulfing Darkness cast bar and it's our disc priest that is on the Maloriak tank so that is going well. If levitate works to negate the sludge damage that would make this so much easier which is why I'm doubtful it will work but I'm looking forward to trying it tonight.
    Last edited by Aliahna; 2011-03-13 at 05:34 AM.

  9. #9
    Few things to note about this fight:

    1) Discipline is far superior on this fight if you don't have a discipline priest in the raid. Shielding vile swill damage + barrier for scorching breath makes things alot easier.
    2) Interrupts have to be perfect. Ticks during blue or red phase is mostly likely going to ensure a death or even more. It's a very unforgiving mechanic if interrupts are awful.

    People really need to be aware of dark sludge on the ground and kiting has to be good. Make sure people arent standing in the direction of the kiting path, just makes things more frustrating. Our tank starts by picking up the adds and kiting them to the left side of the room and then goes around the edge of the room to the stairs, then the other side of the room's edges. By you reach the opposite side, adds should be near dead. Make sure people swap off low HP vile swills to higher HP ones.

    Other than that, everything else is the same. Make sure you rotate cooldowns on people for scorching breath. Cooldown with a barrier, divine guardian, aura mastery, etc. During blue phase shield the melee that get the frost aoe debuff. Make sure you're watching the adds tanks HP, when they're 6+ adds out, thats when he starts to take alot of damage assuming hes getting hit by them. Pre-shield for scorching breath and keep an evangelism stacks for red vile phase. It's always good to use archangel as a source of mana return when you have power torrent or lightweave active.

    Phase 3, people need to really pay attention, use tranquilities for the AoE poison damage and people need to make sure that they dont get hit by frost bombs, itll be another reason your raid wipes.

    Happy Raiding.


    "Gearscore is like a bikini, what it shows is suggestive, what it hides is far more important!"

  10. #10
    Thanks Memoryz for all the suggestions. We run this with our normal healing team, 2 palis, 1 disc priest, 2 holy priests (I'm one of them), a druid and a shaman. The disc priest we have is great and he is usually on the Maloriak tank managing the engulfing darkness mechanic. I generally only go disc on Heroic Halfus and Heroic Atramedes. We got to the first red phase a few times and quickly realized the need for a raid cooldown rotation for the scorching breath, we are using Barrier, DG, and AM. I think the plan is to try to save tranq and hymns for the final phase so it sounds like we are on the right path.

    We did assign groups to heal for the holy priests during the Red phase and that seems to help but it definitely looks like raid cooldowns are required in addition to massive amounts of burst healing.

    Our biggest problem right now it seems is the ominous sludge and interrupting all those storms. Heck, sometimes we haven't been good at spell stealing Remedy, but we will get there. It is funny how on normal mode you can just hammer the encounter with enough DPS and HPS and still get it done, but on heroic mode the simple mistakes wipe the raid.

    P.S. I'm wondering if having a second disc priest for this fight might be a good idea.

  11. #11
    It's a little hard to tell what's going on with the bouncing nameplates you have, but the damage patterns looks fairly similar to what I've seen with my guild. It does seem like your tanks aren't kiting the vile swills much though, and imo constant movement is going to help melee/demo locks because of all the graphics on the ground. Between hellfire and exploding mushrooms and nameplates, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little trouble seeing where they could move to.

    AoE dps seems to be lacking slightly as you had swills up when blue phase started. Also, I'm not sure what the benefit is of having your ranged group stand so far back during red phase. There is no reason the pw:b should not be able to cover both melee and ranged. Also, hope you have a holy pally for aura mastery, it helps for the 2nd breath.

    Sometimes your use of flash heal and poh seemed unnecessary, like during blue phase. This should be kind of a regen phase.

    Edit: Okay, you have 2 holy pallies, excellent. 2 disc priests could be nice, but unnecessary with double aura masteries. Have one of your mages install an addon that will alert him when his target has a spell-stealable buff. You might as well stay holy for the extra healing during red phase. Better stacking will help with that as well.
    Last edited by Aleysia; 2011-03-10 at 10:29 PM.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Aleysia View Post
    Sometimes your use of flash heal and poh seemed unnecessary, like during blue phase. This should be kind of a regen phase.

    Edit: Okay, you have 2 holy pallies, excellent. 2 disc priests could be nice, but unnecessary with double aura masteries. Have one of your mages install an addon that will alert him when his target has a spell-stealable buff. You might as well stay holy for the extra healing during red phase. Better stacking will help with that as well.
    Thanks for the tips. I agree, I have found only a few fights where having a second disc priest seems to outweigh the benefit of holy's burst healing. The times you saw me casting Flash heal was either on the add tank who was low, or on the person with Flash Freeze. But part of why I make these videos is to see what I can improve on, and yes, I often casted two heals on a flash freeze person when one Greater Heal or just one Flash would have been enough....that was a note I already made for myself to do different tonight, along with less use of Renew.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Aliahna View Post
    Thanks Memoryz for all the suggestions. We run this with our normal healing team, 2 palis, 1 disc priest, 2 holy priests (I'm one of them), a druid and a shaman. The disc priest we have is great and he is usually on the Maloriak tank managing the engulfing darkness mechanic. I generally only go disc on Heroic Halfus and Heroic Atramedes. We got to the first red phase a few times and quickly realized the need for a raid cooldown rotation for the scorching breath, we are using Barrier, DG, and AM. I think the plan is to try to save tranq and hymns for the final phase so it sounds like we are on the right path.

    We did assign groups to heal for the holy priests during the Red phase and that seems to help but it definitely looks like raid cooldowns are required in addition to massive amounts of burst healing.

    Our biggest problem right now it seems is the ominous sludge and interrupting all those storms. Heck, sometimes we haven't been good at spell stealing Remedy, but we will get there. It is funny how on normal mode you can just hammer the encounter with enough DPS and HPS and still get it done, but on heroic mode the simple mistakes wipe the raid.

    P.S. I'm wondering if having a second disc priest for this fight might be a good idea.
    A second discipline priest isn't always a bad thing. One can focus tank heals on the main tank, the other on the add tank. Two pain suppressions and two barriers basically make scorching breaths a joke. Having shields for vile swill phase really helps out alot. When weakened soul and a group is taking damage, I use Prayer of Healing. Other wise, I will just flash heal individual people affected with weakened soul.

    Most wipes are just due to lack of interrupts and people standing in dark sludge. Once you get past that, Im sure youll achieve a kill soon enough.


    "Gearscore is like a bikini, what it shows is suggestive, what it hides is far more important!"

  14. #14
    As I suspected, levitate does not work.

    We didn't get a kill last night but we did get to 36% once so it is getting better. We only raid 3 nights a week for a total of 9 hours so it will have to wait until next week.

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