Discipline priest & other healer tips for heroic 25m grand empress shek'zeer

[Zolvolt]

Hello MMO! My guild is starting heroic grand empress 25m next week and I'm looking for as many helpful tips as I possibly can get.

Right now our comp is looking like this more or less:

Healers -
Disc priest
Disc priest
Monk
Shaman
Shaman
Druid
Paladin
Paladin
Druid (if 9 heal)

Tanks
Druid
Paladin
Warrior


cooldowns usage, things to be aware of. Stuff like that! I heard it was a relatively simple fight but it was hard on the healers. thanks in advance!

[Tavin]

Rotate raid cooldowns in p1. Rotate tank cooldowns on the tanks (if they are stacking the adds, that means a Lot more damage, so make sure they always have a cd on themselves), you dont need them for p1.
Use some aura mastery or make ppl use their cd in the end of p2 early p1 as you should have all the raid cd's ready for p3, pretty mad damage there.
Shouldnt be all that hard with 9 healers though, we only go with 7.

We found it easiest to have one tank tanking the 2 big adds behind the raid were no one is. And the other 2 tanks split up the adds on each side. If they are good and can rotate their own+healers cd on them, you can group up the small adds for a short time and aoe them down. Then just split up again before you use all the cd's. Or just keep them split at all time

[Deleted]

http://www.howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2842 might be useful.

[snaxattax]

it's a pretty annoying fight to heal, imo. phase one you really are going to be most concerned with the corrupted zone. you don't want people pushing the zones until one corrupts. once one corrupts have a warlock or two dip in/out to help push it while you keep aoe healing the raid.

you're going to want to have your healers overhealing like mad for the first zone because the random raid aoes (make sure people spread, as these are pretty brutal on heroic) combined with the corrupted zone damage make it hard to have the raid totally topped off for the first explosion. you should be able to devo aura all of your corrupted zones, and rallying cry at least one. do you have a dps warrior to go along with your prot war? stacking rallying + devo for each corrupted zone like 3 seconds before the explosion makes the damage much more manageable.

depending on how it works for your guild, you will either want to use one spirit shell per zone or both on the first (corrupted) zone. as long as people are topped off for the 2nd explosion, you should be fine (if someone gets cry of terror, have them stand in the zone but not cast if you still need to top off the raid after the first explosion). you may also need to have a coordinated healthstone click for the corrupted zone if it comes to that. remember that it's an extremely long fight, so warlocks can re-place a soulwell for people to use going into each retreat/p2.

phase 2 just have tank assignments for each healer, and use warlock portals (if available) to let your fixate targets move quickly from each stack point (where each trap will be) and a point 30+ yards away from where each tank will be. if you go to the wrong side of the room with your fixate add, the stacking buffs can end up killing people. tank damage can be quite spikey in this phase, so you really have to be on point with cooldown usage. aoe stuns/knockbacks are generally a bad idea when you're tanking the adds as it synchronizes their melee swings.

[Zolvolt]

We do have a dps warrior in addition to our tank warrior. Thank you for this info. When you say one coordinated healthstone click do you just mean use healthstones as a raid-wide cd or something along those lines?

Would you mind explaining the warlock portal thing to me a little bit more in depth? The kiters are kiting the adds to certain places in the room. They need a portal to move into the trap area or out of the trap area? and the trap has to be 30+ yards away from the tank or do the kiters need to be 30+ yards away from the tank?

Do slows work on the adds?

[snaxattax]

We do have a dps warrior in addition to our tank warrior. Thank you for this info. When you say one coordinated healthstone click do you just mean use healthstones as a raid-wide cd or something along those lines?

Would you mind explaining the warlock portal thing to me a little bit more in depth? The kiters are kiting the adds to certain places in the room. They need a portal to move into the trap area or out of the trap area? and the trap has to be 30+ yards away from the tank or do the kiters need to be 30+ yards away from the tank?

Do slows work on the adds?

yeah, you want slows on the adds. just split up your melee on each side of windblades (yous hould be doing this anyway for interrupts) and it should be enough.

for the portals, the idea is that if you're staring at the platform where shek starts, you want the room to look something like this for phase 2: http://imgur.com/lvBSpJb

idea being that you have ranged+heals start off stacking on blue until a trap is formed, then on red until the 2nd trap is formed. if you get fixated from tank2's pack, you'd use the blue side portal, and if you get fixated from tank1's pack, you'd use red side. fixate lasts long enough that you'll always be able to use the portals to move in/out for fixates. the colored ovals are the warlock gateways.

your tank2 might have to shift his pack of adds towards red after the first trap is formed so that he doesn't range his healers, but be careful not to get too close to tank 1.

once all your windblades are near death, you trap each reaver and finish off the windblades. have your warlocks re-drop a soulwell so you can always have a 3 charge healthstone going into each phase 1.

having your entire raid (other than tanks/rogues) hit their healthstones right before a sonic explosion can be a make/break in this fight.

[Zolvolt]

oh I understand now. My only question is why are we excluding the rogues from using their healthstones with the rest of the raid? Are they doing a special assignment?

[snaxattax]

feint pretty much negates the explosion damage. our raid was most successful when we put our 3 tanks + 2 rogues in a group so that we could focus on POH/SSing the remaining squishier raiders.

[Zolvolt]

We (finally) attempted Express for the first night and one of my concerns was that while we had one disc priest spirit shelling/PW:S the people inside the zone (2 mages that iceblocked every one) They would get very low in hp very quickly. I started spamming spiritshell's poh (and even tried flash heal with SS) and it just doesn't seem like spirit shell is going on them.

So I guess my question is, can you really spirit shell them once they are already in the field? One answer i got was that the shell is being depleted immediately so you can't ever see it but I don't feel liek my spamming is helping the mages any as they would still die from time to time.

Could I get some clarification on this?

[Dianthe]

It is normal for the mages in the fields to get low on HP, heck ours still die from time to time when they noob out.
Normally other healers should be healing them some (or you, with PoH, mending and shields if you are not SSing for that explosion), while you cover the raid with SS for the zone's explosion. Generally, I find it difficult to keep my SS up for the explosion because of the massive amount of damage from Sha zones that precede it. However, if your SS helps keep the raid topped off prior to the explosion, it is still doing its job.
The mages should use Ice Block to prevent taking damage from the explosion - you can also BoP them if needed, but generally, if they are constantly dying you should see what the actual reason is - are they getting no healing? Are they playing recklessly and killing themselves? Are they failing their blocks? Are they not in one group so PoH is not hitting all of them? There can be many reasons...

[Zolvolt]

Our other disc priest brought up prayer of mending while they're in the zone and I Wasn't sure whether or not it was actually helpful. But it looks like other priests are doing it . Does it surpass the absorb in the field?

[Hapes]

Spirt shell to my knowledge doesn't work for people in the field with prayer. Single target i believe it may have.
The only significant thing i found to help was a shield.

[Annoying]

BoPs and disc bubbles on the corrupted fields. Rotate cooldowns for the explosions.

Our video shows us dropping bubbles and bopping the cry targets who stay in for explosions. The bubbles are for warlocks to decay the corrupted field faster.

We (finally) attempted Express for the first night and one of my concerns was that while we had one disc priest spirit shelling/PW:S the people inside the zone (2 mages that iceblocked every one) They would get very low in hp very quickly. I started spamming spiritshell's poh (and even tried flash heal with SS) and it just doesn't seem like spirit shell is going on them.

So I guess my question is, can you really spirit shell them once they are already in the field? One answer i got was that the shell is being depleted immediately so you can't ever see it but I don't feel liek my spamming is helping the mages any as they would still die from time to time.

Could I get some clarification on this?

I bubble sprint them in. They dip in and out for heals as needed.

[Rorschachs]

My tip : stack DA

1-)Spam POH all day long and try using spirit shell pretty much on cd.
2-)On the adds phase you should still stack absorbs because of the rng damage on random people.
3-)Don't hesitate to flash heal because the tanks will be taking a lot of damage.
4-)The last phase is not as intense as the previous phases so don't save all of your cds for that phase.

[Deleted]

My tip : stack DA

1-)Spam POH all day long and try using spirit shell pretty much on cd.
2-)On the adds phase you should still stack absorbs because of the rng damage on random people.
3-)Don't hesitate to flash heal because the tanks will be taking a lot of damage.
4-)The last phase is not as intense as the previous phases so don't save all of your cds for that phase.

Just wanted to post to say I found pretty much the opposite of this.

1) Atonement / smart heals outside of explosions are great. Saving Spirit shells for the first explosion of each set and using DA for the 2nd.
2) We assigned 2 healers to each tank + 1 healer on the raid (7 healed)
3) We found with 2 healers on each tank that penance + atonement was more than enough, used this phase to regen mana
4) There is a lot of damage to heal here, predictable. Mana was an issue - we rotated cooldowns. Visions handled with tremors + heart of fear by a tank. If it went wrong it was spikey raid damage so DR cooldowns helped.

[Docta]

we assigned 5 range to blow up the corrupted dissonance w/ the cry, full ss on them from 2 disc before they jump in and it blows up before they have to get out/ensures the 2 dissonance will explode timed far apart.

[Rorschachs]

Just wanted to post to say I found pretty much the opposite of this.

1) Atonement / smart heals outside of explosions are great. Saving Spirit shells for the first explosion of each set and using DA for the 2nd.
2) We assigned 2 healers to each tank + 1 healer on the raid (7 healed)
3) We found with 2 healers on each tank that penance + atonement was more than enough, used this phase to regen mana
4) There is a lot of damage to heal here, predictable. Mana was an issue - we rotated cooldowns. Visions handled with tremors + heart of fear by a tank. If it went wrong it was spikey raid damage so DR cooldowns helped.

Here is why you are wrong

1-) You might be healing damage with atonement. But healing damage and creating absorb shields on people is way more benefical against explosions. A high amount of spirit + a high amount of DA can negate a lot of the explosion.
2-) You don't need 2 healers on the tanks, I don't get how this has anything to do with what I said tho but still..2 tanks on a tank is not necessary is the healer healing the tank knows what he's doing. You might need to assign backups tho is a tank healer is fixated.
3-) This is true but like I said there is a lot of damage going on the raid and most of it happens very quick. I think you put a lot of weight on your raid healers shoulders for the adds phase.
4-) There is almost no spikey raid damage here, most of the damage is calamity. We had some people dipping pretty low but it wasn't as spikey as the adds phase. Mana could be an issue, but as it is not as intense as the previous phases : you have time to rotate mana cds.

[Zolvolt]

I appreciate all the feedback. Currently for healing assignments, besides the disc priests's spirit shells, and the druids pre-hotting our mages we didn't assign people to raid vs. tanks. We didn't find it necessary because the tank damage wasn't high enough for one person to just sit on them, (especially with the explosion damage going out) (at least in phase 1, in phase 2 we have tank healers assigned)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the more people you send into the zone, the faster it explodes, right? We've been sending two mages and thats it, but we have some sketchy mage deaths if they fuck up or if our druids don't get their pre-hots off and such. Also I'm pretty sure theres been a problem with pre-shielding them into the bubbles. But that will certainly be fixed.

I would like to suggest we make our warlocks go in or throw some more mages at it but I'm just not sure if its a good idea or not. I know some of us are against it, but I also know a lot of guilds are sending different amount of people in. I've seen everything from 1 to 5 to even 7 people and I guess in order to push for more people I need a valid response to "why should we throw more people at it"

If it doesn't' make it explode more quickly then I don't see the point though.

[Deleted]

Here is why you are wrong

.

can't really say I'm wrong... since it's what we do and we kill it. Not saying you're wrong, just saying what I found to work was different to you.

[Docta]

The corrupted dissonance does alot of raid AoE damage while it is up. The quicker you get rid of it, the less damage you will take and the easier it will be to stabilize prior to the second field explosion. If you send in 5 people (we sent warlocks & spriests) we were able to blow it up before spiritshells are eaten thru (2 dpriests poh the group for full ss). Keep in mind if you have trouble spacing out the field explosions, the people whom have Cry can stand in the field and simply not cast to keep from speeding up the wrong field. You can do the dissonances with 2-3 people, but if they get bad targeting for the random aoe, they will have to dance in and out getting heals/wasting gcds because the debuff can be a little touchy, and it prolongs the corrupted dissonance aoeing your raid prior to it blowing up. 2 Disc spirit shell and push the first one hard, the second dissonance will be very easy and almost no chance of raid deaths with good cry management/spreading of range. We used a comp of 2Disc/1MW/1HPal/2RSham/1Rdruid/1HolyDPS (he dps'd the fight outside of DH casts).