Spiritual Guidance: Controlling heroic Razuvious
by Matt Low 
Apr 5th 2009 at 6:00PM
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Need help with heroic Razuvious? Matt's here to help!
I've received a lot of emails and requests for help regarding the heroic Razuvious encounter. It's a unique encounter in that Priests have to mind control mobs in order to to tank successfully.Unless your guild has a team of extremely experienced and talented Mages, then having two Priests on hand is a requirement to be able to do Razuvious.
The first thing I want to emphasize here is this: You don't need hit gear to do the encounter if you're a Priest on Mind Control duty.
Not every guild has the luxury of having two raiding Shadow Priests. Chances are as a healer you're going to have to get into the hot seat and do it yourself. One of my Shadow Priests took an extended break from vacation. This left us with three Priests: 1 Shadow, 1 Discipline, 1 Holy. The other Holy Priest did not want to do it. It was up to me. Here's a few tips I want to share with new Priests who have no idea what expect.
Disable your UI. I had trouble with this initially. I wasn't able to properly release my pet with the current UI configuration I had setup. I simply canned whatever unit frames and resorted to the stock UI in order to manage the MC process. It's not like I would have to heal or anything.
Break your MC intentionally. I've observed Priests who simply let their Mind Controls expire. They try to stretch that Mind Control as long as possible before the students eventually break free. Who do they gun for? That's right, they head straight for the Priest. The reason why Priests get caught off guard is because they're not expecting the Mind Controls to break after 40 or so seconds.
The MC'ing Priest has the ability to break it early. Don't stretch out the MC and let it break on its own. Break your own MC after your student has served its purpose.
After your taunt and bone shield cycle is over, right click on the portrait of the mob and release pet.
Communicate. This is where I notice the difference between good Priests and bad Priests. Bad Priests hardly say anything and expect their partner to intrinsically know. This may be okay in some guilds. But when starting out or when in a pickup group, it's helpful to start talking to the other Priest.
Key phrases:
- "I got <shape>"
- "Taunting Raz"
- "Bone shield is off"
- "Releasing <shape>"
I'm assuming that your raid leaders are marking the students with different shapes. By doing this, your tanks know when you plan to MC and when you are releasing the students.
Watch your cooldowns. The one you should pay attention to is Bone Shield. Assuming you're not using any timer or cooldown addons of some sort, you can observe the progress of the cooldown. When you hit Bone Shield and the indicator is at 50%, cue your partner to taunt.
Bring the students to the tank. We set up our tanks in such a way so that there is one on the left side of the room and one on the right side of the room. The students are divided the same way (two on the left, two on the right). When a student is done tanking, it is run over the nearest tank and dropped before snatching up a new one.
Above all, don't panic! Most Priests have never been in a situation where they have had to tank or use their MC in an encounter situation. It's going to take a few wipes and attempts to properly get it right.
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! And don't forget to check out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries!Filed under: Priest, Raiding, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Schuyler Apr 5th 2009 6:14PM
They really shouldn't make it so just priests can control the students in heroic mode, it makes it so you MUST have 2 priests in which admittedly isn't a hard thing to come by, but still. Plus, if both priests are fail, your boned.
Max Apr 5th 2009 6:25PM
"They really shouldn't make it so just priests can control the students in heroic mode"
because raiding wasn't already easy enough, right? I think we should also start handing out free epics to everyone whose name starts with the letter G
epsilon343 Apr 5th 2009 6:43PM
Blizzard already said that they dropped the ball on this encounter by forcing raids to saved at least two spots for Priests. But really, most raids have at least one Priest, if not two. The hard part is dealing with them when they're refusing to do a basic mechanic of their class so that they can pew pew.
Rdx Apr 6th 2009 2:30PM
I agree, this goes against blizzards "Bring the player and not the class"
nasents Apr 6th 2009 9:22AM
You actually only need one priest if your dps is any good. Just tank 3 of the understudies and have the priest chain mc one. Keep bone armor up as much as possible and put all heals on the mc'ed understudy.
As long as healers can keep the US up for 25% of the instructors hp per US it's cake. This will be hard for under geared teams but easy mode with gear.
Kyle Apr 5th 2009 6:18PM
What amazes me is you have to explain this fight to people after being in this current stage of content for so long.
uncaringbear Apr 5th 2009 7:26PM
What amazes me is that you actually took the time to share your awesome opinion with the rest of us. Bit of a leap to assume everyone is at the same level of progression as you, no?
Kyle Apr 5th 2009 7:30PM
Considering that Ulduar is being released in a few weeks, Naxx has been out for the better part of five months, its just hard to believe that people don't know about the fight yet. I honestly think it was a wasteful article on priests and should have been covered some time past as we should be focusing on the new content and our role as priests in it, not something which is becoming obsolete.
epsilon343 Apr 5th 2009 7:34PM
His point is still valid. We're what, 4-5 months out from the expansion came out and people are still completely in the dark about the entry level raid.
It takes me five seconds to bring up WoWwiki or any other WoW source to look at how a boss fight works. It is the responsibility of the player to know the mechanics of the fight before they enter the instance. And if they don't understand the fight, they should ask the raid leader. I've been leading them for a few months now and at this point in time it's a little annoying to have someone ask how to do Grand Widow or Gluth but that annoyance pales in comparison to watching a group wipe because that person was just hoping everything would work out well.
Asami Apr 6th 2009 10:50AM
Well the thing is that Blizz has this amazing habit of getting more people to join the game. They level up and hit 80 then start to raid. They don't alway come knowing the fights or looking up the fights. Just because the content has been out for 4-5 months does not mean that they have been 80 for 2+ months like a lot of us have been.
Gothia Apr 6th 2009 2:40AM
Do you guys read what you are posting before sending it? You sound like elitist asshats that assume everyone has run Naxx for 5 months. Frankly you are bored aren't you and you think Uldar will change that, but it won't. Get over yourselves!
Max Apr 6th 2009 2:57AM
They aren't elitist asshats. They're right. I'm a very casual player, and I'm bored as hell with this recycled content. It's been out for 5 months people. If you don't know it now, you probably never will.
And if you're new to raiding...it takes two seconds to go to wowwiki and learn a boss fight.
Kyle Apr 6th 2009 7:46AM
I'm not elitist nor do I have the time or desire to be such. Between working for the military, taking care of my family, and managing a house hold I play WoW; I only have 1 80 that I raid with and I have several alts I play with friends on an RP server. I never did say I was bored with the content because my guild is still working on Malygos25 and Sarth w/ additional drakes. In the next patch priests (shadow) finally have a chance in PVP and I'm liking that. My only point here is that this article had no meaning to me and a lot of people because its information that's damn near copy/pasted from any other site. Everyone has access to this knowledge and I'd rather hear insight that's not run-of-the-mill.
Kyle Apr 6th 2009 11:17AM
Asami, one of the driving points behind this spree of comments is the fact that the information in this article is readily accessible anywhere else. Though your point is valid, it is my opinion that a player who has just hit 80 and started raiding would be aware of this site. Again, my opinion, as I see this site as something your casual player or fresh 80 wouldn't be familiar with. As said, the information here is known by almost any guild running the content save a group who say, created a group of new 80s into a guild yesterday.
Axeldevout Apr 5th 2009 6:18PM
Hey mat, fellow priest here, I got a question for you.
I'm in a raiding guild and we regularly clear nax and are working on 2 drake sarth, and it's full of a lot of fun people I enjoy playing with but I've got a little problem. We don't use healing assignments. Everybody insists we don't need em but on hectic fights I can get close to going oom due to constant overhealing, and I know for a fact we are not going to clear Sarth 2 drakes or 3 until we get organized, so how do I convince my guild to start using healing assignments?
cente_ddr Apr 5th 2009 6:28PM
This is going to be even more apparent when 3.1 is out: If you're OOM then your raid is not doing it right. Something is causing the raid to take way too much damage. Unless you're straight-up undergeared for the instance you're in you should never go oom pending proper healing skills. Healing assignments are not needed imo- proper strategies and people not being careless are more to blame. Overhealing will happen regardless of assignments (and should; you should be around 33% if you're being effective). Work on your raid's strategy and find out what's nuking people.
Eliseth Apr 6th 2009 12:40AM
Does your guild use tanking assignments? I know this is kind of a silly questions, but maybe it'll help you make your point--I seriously doubt your guild goes into an encounter like OS with drakes up, tells your tanks to 'just pick up whatever,' and expects good tanking to happen. Why should healing be any different? It may not need to be extremely detailed, but it helps a lot to break it down at least a little bit. This is also key for encounters where multiple groups/targets are taking different amounts of damage.
For example, on OS+3 drakes, my guild assigns healers to three groups: main tank healers, raid healers, and a healer to go through the portal. If we didn't do that, we might have all the healers jumping on the MT when he's low, and letting the raid or off-tanks die. Or maybe 5 people would go through the portal, leaving no healers on the MT. Making some kind of assignments is important for that kind of fight--your guild needs to make sure that someone is responsible for each part of the raid that's going to take damage, just like you probably already make sure that someone is responsible for tanking each mob.
cente_ddr Apr 5th 2009 6:23PM
For priests starting out on this, if you want to take all the guesswork out you can make three macros. One is readily available from wowhead's forums and will cast the taunt and bone armor at the exact same time. It then sets a stopwatch and counts down, doing a /raidwarning TAUNT NOW when the bone shield is up (20 sec). We also built in a five second warning for when they should taunt.
The other two we use a) Drop MC and announce it to /raidwarning so the tanks can taunt off you and b) do the actual mind controlling off the focus.
I very much recommend you use your focus with this encounter. I had all my priests install these three macros and the raz fight has gone off without a hitch ever since.
Spazmoosifer Apr 6th 2009 1:23PM
I completely agree with the use of macros on this fight.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Instructor_Razuvious
has a set of macros that work very well if you are not familiar with the fight at all.
I personally suggest the following on this fight:
1. Make sure that all of the Understudies and Raz have a mark on them. This will help ensure that you have the right one selected.
2. Use Mind Soothe on your target, it will give you an extra 10-yard cushion that will allow you to get closer, MC, then attack w/o going out of range.
3. Focus on the target (right-click, set as focus), and use the following macro:
/tar focus
/cast Mind Control
4. Like the article says, make sure that you are dropping the MC, instead of letting it drop by itself. It can be helpful to run it directly at a tank for them to pick up, or if you don't have a capable tank picking up the understudies, run it to the back of the room (toward the hall going toward Gothik); this should give you enough time to retarget if necessary, and recast MC.
Steven Albert Apr 5th 2009 6:27PM
What's very fun is using 0 priests, and having 3 hunters kite him around till he's dead...we've been successfully doing it for about a month now, it's rather easier imo. If you're curious, youtube raz no priests and see the fun way of cheating blizzard :)