Sanguine/Grievous nightmare

[Amariw]

Ok so I'm not saying I'm the greatest healer in the world but was this week designed to give healers a nervous breakdown?

From what I can see, even dps with 15+ exp sometimes dont understand that the pools take 15/30/45/60% of their health per second and seem to expect me to heal right through it. Put grievous on top of that, and as a holy priest I'm really struggling. Just did a TOP +5 and it was worse than a +11 SD last week.

Any tips? It doesn't help that for whatever reason Divine Hymn/POM/Sanctify don't act like their shaman/druid equivalents in removing stacks but is there some trick to this?

Saw a video there by Growl and he is basically saying you have to just focus on one person at a time and if dps aren't prepared to use their defensives that's their tough luck? And to ignore trying to do any damage this week because at any moment a bunch of trash die and someone is carelessly standing in a pool of crap that's going to kill them in 2 seconds you dont want to get caught halfway through a holy fire cast or whatever.

The idea with bursting in general, not just holy priests, is to focus people as much as possible to keep stacks low or stacks-free. In emergencies, you use mass dispel and pat yourself on the back.

For general play in high stacks situation if dps are too stupid to avoid 6 stacks: Prayer of mending before heavy stacks, not during, its a good spell but its more about long term healing and not immediate savig. Sanctuary the entire team (or atleast 3 people), Serenity someone, activate apothoesis, repeat those two holy words, then spam flash heal. the Heal-buffing legendary (which makes Heal much faster and stronger then Flash Heal) helps a ton here and in general is great for holy priest, but if you dont have it just spam flash heal. Avoid prayer of mending it doesnt heal enough per cast time to save people in heavy bursting, and consider avoiding circle of healing if someone will die in two gcds.

The idea is, spam your biggest hitting heals in triage and use over time stuff before damage gets bad and not after (so if you Divine Hymn, do it when stacks are starting to apply and before people are super low, that will help people stabilise without endagering anyone whereas if you do it late someone might die). Good luck and have fun, i personally enjoy grevious weeks because they give me a reason to actually heal the entire group often rather than just put the ocasional heal and dps, which is fun healing practice.

[ifrah]

From my shallow experience in mid-range stuff only, grievous week is when you are probably the most under the mercy of your group. Assuming you're not doing "autopilot keys" for your skill & gear level, it's sure very challenging and requires vastly different playstyle. With a good group who's not soaking every single damage source and chainpulling towards pride when you're starving for a drink, can be sort of a fun challenge for a while. With the stereotypical pug, yeah, there will be a lot of pain and people shitting on you. Either people don't understand or don't care that snowballing is the thing in grievous, and every well placed dodge/interrupt/stun/dr counts. Nothing better than people sitting on their cd's and spamming the party chat with "healer wtf?"
Bursting, as much as I loathe it as a non-priest, people usually won't nuke the group too many times per run as too many stacks is even theoretically unhealable. Grievous is just a small innocent bleed. Until it isn't of course.

[Raisei]

Ok so I'm not saying I'm the greatest healer in the world but was this week designed to give healers a nervous breakdown?

From what I can see, even dps with 15+ exp sometimes dont understand that the pools take 15/30/45/60% of their health per second and seem to expect me to heal right through it. Put grievous on top of that, and as a holy priest I'm really struggling. Just did a TOP +5 and it was worse than a +11 SD last week.

Any tips? It doesn't help that for whatever reason Divine Hymn/POM/Sanctify don't act like their shaman/druid equivalents in removing stacks but is there some trick to this?

Saw a video there by Growl and he is basically saying you have to just focus on one person at a time and if dps aren't prepared to use their defensives that's their tough luck? And to ignore trying to do any damage this week because at any moment a bunch of trash die and someone is carelessly standing in a pool of crap that's going to kill them in 2 seconds you dont want to get caught halfway through a holy fire cast or whatever.

Hmmm, I have actually been healing a few 5s on my new Holy Priest (ilvl 195) this week but I can't say it was a huge problem. If you are running Flash Concentration your single target output is pretty insane compared to other healers. Monks can burst more but will loose halve their Mana pool on that, while a Priest can cast dozens of "Heal" without that issue. Add Trail of Light for cleave healing and you should be okay.

Hymn and PoM will not remove stacks as they are not "direct heals", not 100% sure about Sanctify as I am pretty new to the class as well. Technically it should remove 1 Stack on everyone hit. But in general in M+ the single target heals are your friends and should help this problem more then aoe healing. Hymn is too slow to safe the group as the ticks will likely not be able to overcome the Grievous ticks and get people to 90% health.

With Flash Concentration you start off with 5 Flash Heals around the group (switching targets to profit from Trail of Light) which is fast and good healing. Once you have the 5 stacks of Flash up you switch to Heal for fast, strong and cheap heals. That should allow you to fill everyone up in just a few seconds. You can use Sanctify with the Conduit for heal increase on top, and if someone drops very low you Serenity them.
If the situation is really critical I would go for Apotheosis to have more Serenities but the gist remains the same. Single Target to save people, Aoe for support or small topping off.

The difference between M + healing and raid healing is that you are not supposed to really conserve Mana. Technically you can (and should) drink after each group even if it is only for 3 seconds. This means that if damage is ramping up, use your high cost heals freely. Better to have people survive and ask for a 5 sec mana break after then having to cast 10 sec rez.
When I was Tanking 15s on my Monk and was really struggling I kept noticing that the healer was barely touching their mana pool, a clear sign that they haven't been casting enough expensive stuff for the incomming damage. This is quite a common problem when a healer has mostly done raid healing. They are used to be conservative so their mana is enough for the whole 5-10 min fight. It's not easy to switch from that mindset.

Of course this is assuming that your group is not deliberatedly standing in Sanguines. If someone does and doesn't move out of it, you let them die, it's not your job to heal through avoidable mechanics, because your dps feels like it's not their problem.

Growl is a very experienced healer and he is completely right. DPS are fully responsible for their own survival. If they feel they don't need to use the survivability tools at their disposal then they will die and it is their fault.
There is a great example for this. The big red Mask guys patroling in DoS. During Fortified weeks in high keys the "Rage" cast they do is incredible high damage. No way you can heal through that if your group doesn't assist you with Defensives, Self-Heals, Potions and what not.

One of the reasons why I think M+ is such a great tool to learn is because it forces people to learn to your their toolkit completely. No other game mode does that.

[Twdft]

With the stereotypical pug, yeah, there will be a lot of pain and people shitting on you. Either people don't understand or don't care that snowballing is the thing in grievous, and every well placed dodge/interrupt/stun/dr counts. Nothing better than people sitting on their cd's and spamming the party chat with "healer wtf?"

If you really want to piss off your pug healer on top of taking all kinds of avoidable damage you have to stand beside the drinking healer, not eating yourself with grievous ticking you down, and /p let's go let's go I need this timed

/s

[erifwodahs]

From a tank perspective: Grievous, necrotic, and storming are skip weeks. I am kind of surprised grievous isn't a skip week for healers as well, there's nothing remotely entertaining about that nonsense.

Necrotic I could understand, but grevious or storming? why?

Storming is annoying, but you just move around it, if you can move around well, it's a non-affix, unlike bolstering or raging, where you get smacked into the face with a sledge hammer. Any non-empowering week is good. Even this week is not that bad for pushing medium to higher keys in most dungeons if you have right tools/can utilize LoS mechanics. Probably not good on 23s onwards, but 20-21s are doable for sure.

Grievous does nothing for tanks, we have enough self sustain to reset the stacks all the time. Poor healers tho

[callipygoustp]

If you really want to piss off your pug healer on top of taking all kinds of avoidable damage you have to stand beside the drinking healer, not eating yourself with grievous ticking you down, and /p let's go let's go I need this timed

/s

I sit here laughing to myself because ..... god dam mother fucking puggers did that too me so often last week. Pugging last week was a bit more challenging than I was expecting. Started the week off doing a couple 14s and 15s with some friends: seriously easy peasy. Then deeper into the week I ran some pugs in the 14-15 range to get to a 10 count. God dam, the number of times I was blamed for people dying to sanguination, or taking ridiculous amounts of avoidable damage but complaining that "the healer has to drink again!" Oh man, good time pugs last week.

Looking forward to the easy week this week. Gonna feel like I'm vacation.

[sponge5307]

Ok so I'm not saying I'm the greatest healer in the world but was this week designed to give healers a nervous breakdown?

From what I can see, even dps with 15+ exp sometimes dont understand that the pools take 15/30/45/60% of their health per second and seem to expect me to heal right through it. Put grievous on top of that, and as a holy priest I'm really struggling. Just did a TOP +5 and it was worse than a +11 SD last week.

Any tips? It doesn't help that for whatever reason Divine Hymn/POM/Sanctify don't act like their shaman/druid equivalents in removing stacks but is there some trick to this?

Saw a video there by Growl and he is basically saying you have to just focus on one person at a time and if dps aren't prepared to use their defensives that's their tough luck? And to ignore trying to do any damage this week because at any moment a bunch of trash die and someone is carelessly standing in a pool of crap that's going to kill them in 2 seconds you dont want to get caught halfway through a holy fire cast or whatever.

Have people bring hp pots, use their own heals if they have it, use food that heals out of combat etc etc. on my druid I always heal myself if need to. As a dps it was so bad but now this week my god......

[Raisei]

Have people bring hp pots, use their own heals if they have it, use food that heals out of combat etc etc. on my druid I always heal myself if need to. As a dps it was so bad but now this week my god......

Yep, people doing what they can to stay alive is the minimum I expect from a group that wants to do harder content. That means Food, Potions, Self-heals keybound, Defensives used, evading evadable things.

Obviously no one is perfect and mistakes happen to everyone, that is something a healer can and should help with (if possible, nothing you can do about a one-shot because someone stood in a cleave), but purposefully not doing what you can to prevent and heal damage yourself because you think it isn't your job is stupid and no amount of healing can fix stupid.

[Nephod]

Last week was not at all difficult imo, and I felt very comfortable as a holy priest pugging 15-16s.

Flash Concentration legendary + Trail of Light talent makes a huge difference. Spam that Heal! Alternate between targets to get the additional 35% healing "copy" from Trail and you will do immense amounts of healing when several party members are going down. We can almost never do anything with players standing in bad shit, but when they do and we have Life Grip: use it.

I did record a few runs during sanguine/grievous if you want to have a look. I will not use this thread to spam my youtube, but if you are interested I'll send you a link. I make tons of mistakes, but since we play the same spec I think it can be useful to have a look.

[ifrah]

this week is so much worse with pugs... nobody dispelling enraging... people stacking on quaking...

The worst affix for the time being seems to be "TBC classic cleared the LFG." :P

[ifrah]

i haven't had problems finding groups but i have trouble finding people who actually know the affixes...

i just had 3 people run into me during a pride when i was tanking on my dk and put amz up... they all fucking died and then blamed me for "running into them"... i was standing still on my spot since the pride spawned... then they all stacked on the healer when we were waiting for the mist to disappear after mistcaller... and blamed the healer because they all died... i was so tempted to just leave...

Prides are awkwardly difficult and borderline annoying way too often. Not following the golden rule of "don't fucking move when you get targeted" I'd understand for relatively new people, but those with dozens of runs? Also happy times when people decide that any short range AoE stuff like AMZ/healing rain is not for you, nah, better to be blasting from max range and optimally create LoS issues if your fellow ranged class(es) do the same but just towards a different bearing.

[kamuimac]

i haven't had problems finding groups but i have trouble finding people who actually know the affixes...

i just had 3 people run into me during a pride when i was tanking on my dk and put amz up... they all fucking died and then blamed me for "running into them"... i was standing still on my spot since the pride spawned... then they all stacked on the healer when we were waiting for the mist to disappear after mistcaller... and blamed the healer because they all died... i was so tempted to just leave...

well a lot of people took 2-3 weeks of to enjoy TBC. or in fact a lot of people (me included) took break untill 9.1 off because if you are spaming dungeons at this point you either really enjoy m+ (but if you enjoy m+ you would be doing like 19/20s ) or lack KSM or are masochist

i mean is it really worth the nerves etc to get that extra 1-2 overall itlv before 9.1 lands ? imo it isnt thats why im on break till next tier lands.

[sponge5307]

Prides are awkwardly difficult and borderline annoying way too often. Not following the golden rule of "don't fucking move when you get targeted" I'd understand for relatively new people, but those with dozens of runs? Also happy times when people decide that any short range AoE stuff like AMZ/healing rain is not for you, nah, better to be blasting from max range and optimally create LoS issues if your fellow ranged class(es) do the same but just towards a different bearing.

Depends of the group. There is a steady group I run with on discord and is pretty easy since I ran with them over 50 times already. We know how other plays and etc etc. It works out so well we know who use CC, stuns etc etc first senc and when to slow the mobs, when to use pots to bypass certain trash, who shoudl ran out to aggro the mob and died while the rest run pass them and rez him later. Makes life so much easier.

With pugs yea if I got the pride and I don't see people moving or adjusting their position I move. I rather not dps for a bit and move to a save spot then to hit people. I remember in HoA with this pug(well not a pug but a guild run that i hardly run with) the mobs to the 2nd boss that's around the starway you can easily bypass if you use your stealth or invisible pots. So me thinking we will do this use my pots and run straight up the stars. The tank freak out I was like dude use your invisible pots to bypass it. Nope they decided to aggro everything -_- Then on the 2nd boss when I usually do is when you have the stone debuff is have the tank group all the mobs into a corner and the person with the stone debuff move there . But nope this group wanted to tank everything spread out in the center. Me not knowing decided to to the corner when I got the debuff -_-. I feel like is so much easier to run with people I normally run with even then running with my guild. In the end I just left after the run is over.

[Asrialol]

Grieveous isn't really a healer only affix, it requires dps / tanks to use defensives (if you see people use a defensive in a pug on a low key, it's usually after they've taken the initial hit..). They don't use health pots either.

Proper defensives, pots and stuff makes grieveous fairly easy to deal with. If anything it's a man's drain more than anything else.

[sponge5307]

you don't even need invis pots to get past that...

I use all the time. Coz after you get up the stairs there are 3 mobs to avoid ant least and using invisible pots to by pass them all is so much easier than kill them.

[Twdft]

I use all the time. Coz after you get up the stairs there are 3 mobs to avoid ant least and using invisible pots to by pass them all is so much easier than kill them.

Different dungeons: you talk about SoA and quoting something about HoA.

[Temp name]

Different dungeons: you talk about SoA and quoting something about HoA.

You also don't need invis pots to get by the mobs on the stairs in SoA though

Just need a priest/rogue/DH/Monk


And also he was talking about HoA too

[Armael]

Sugarcube got confused by which stairs he was referring to. Must've thought he meant stairs where the 2 gargoyles alternate stone form at the bottom of and not the stairs immediately to the left of Halkias.

[Mickb]

I started this thread and I must admit as the week went on I found Grievous quite easy to deal with and the Sanguine got easier after the first couple of days as people got used to it. Also, the Tanks could effect Effectively control where the pools spawned.

This week on the other hand. Quaking is a nightmare. You can’t control when it happens and if it happens in an already movement intensive phase of something (or as I just experienced in PF, when everyone is stacked to avoid insta-death plague crash), it’s just a nervous breakdown. I don’t know how many times I’d move to dodge something, begin casting a heal, then quaking happens and you have to move again. Certain places it’s just impossible. Although I do admit, I have t found it as bad on my resto Druid where you can maintain lots of hots without having to cast.

[Twdft]

Quaking is a nightmare. You can’t control when it happens and if it happens in an already movement intensive phase

Quaking has an internal cd of 20+ seconds, just get a weak aura to show when it comes off cd to be prepared.