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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsRaid Rx: Healing heroic Northrend Beasts
by Matt Low 
Oct 12th 2009 at 6:00PM
Welcome to the NBE encounter. And no, I'm not referring to Megatron. NBE is shorthand for the Northrend Beasts Encounter. It's a straightforward engagement on normal. Once the switch is toggled to heroic, the fight goes into over drive. There's a few changes that us healers need to grasp. For one, there's a strict time limit on each set of beasts. Can't kill Gormok quick enough? Too bad! Ready or not, here's the twin snakes!Setting up
If you're starting out the first time, I strongly advise bringing in 6 healers. As your raid continues acquiring more gear, you'll be able to slowly drop down to five. But even that might be a tough stretch. Coming in with three strong single-target healers and three raid healers should be enough to withstand the demands of the fight.
Phase 1 - Gormok the Impaler
The damage has increased substantially. The debuff on the tanks have had their duration lengthened slightly.
Setting up
If you're starting out the first time, I strongly advise bringing in six healers. As your raid continues acquiring more gear, you'll be able to slowly drop down to five. But even that might be a tough stretch. Coming in with three strong single-target healers and three raid healers should be enough to withstand the demands of the fight.
Flasks - This is a relatively short fight. I would suggest Frost Wyrm for increased throughput. If you want to give yourself an advantage, down a Stoneblood for some extra health. This will help buy some time if you happen to get caught in a fire or a poison or something. It just increases the survival buffer.
Important:If you're having disconnecting problems during the encounter (particularly due to the fires), see this thread on some possible solutions to resolve it. The issue seems to occur when fires are tossed out. There doesn't seem to be a permanent fix for it yet. It's happened to my main tank and some of the DPS a few times. If it happens repeatedly, there's nothing more you can do other than call someone up from the bench and sit the player with the disconnect issues.
Phase 1 - Gormok the Impaler
The damage has increased substantially. The Impale debuff on the tanks will stay on slightly longer. So when one tank taunts Gormok, the previous tank is still going to suffer and is still going to need heals.
Fires that get thrown around hurt a bit more. This is especially dangerous for healers. If you're not paying attention, you can die really fast. A Discipline Priest who is in the "zone" may be able to squeeze off a Shield on a player who is on fire. It should be enough to absorb at least one tick.
Two Paladins with beacons on different tanks will shine. Resto Shamans will wish to to target players within melee range and dishing out Chain Heal. Other than fires, ranged DPS and healers won't be taking any damage.
Snobolds are an even bigger threat than before. Make sure you're spread out. Just being near a player with a Snobold will trigger the occasional interrupt. If you're lucky enough to have one o these gremlins on you, run within melee range of Gormok. The point is to allow incidental AoE attacks (a la Chain Lightning or Divine Storm) to strike the Snobold and Gormok.
Remember, you guys are on the clock.
Phase 2 - Acidmaw and Dreadscale
Unless you're a super guild, odds are good Gormok will still be alive when the snakes enter. Leave one or two healers on the tank who is finishing off Gormok as the rest of the healers get set up for the snake tanks. I suggest two on each.
Tip: Heroism or Bloodlust used when Acidmaw is stationary might result in a DPS loss for melee if they get hit with poison. If you're having DPS difficulties, call for a hero after the first submerge when Acidmaw becomes mobile and Dreadscale is stationary. Acidmaw's tank should be the only player getting hit with poison allowing free reign to your melee.
The tricky part here is if multiple players (like seven) get nailed with Burning Bile. It's up to them to get clear of everyone else. It's up to you to keep them alive long enough for that chance. Run to the edges of the arena if you get it. If you see a player with it running in your direction, get out of their way.
If your group is fortunate, Acidmaw will fall over while both snakes are submerged which won't trigger Dreadscale's enrage. In most cases, he will enrage. This is a good time to pop some defensive cooldowns.
There may be a slight overlap at this point. Icehowl could debut while you're finishing off Dreadscale. Coordinate with the tanks on this one and find out who will be grabbing the oversized yeti. Take two or three healers up by the boss entryway and stick them on Icehowl's tank.
Phase 3 - Icehowl
Congratulations! If you've made it this far, you've reached the home stretch! Something to watch out for is Icehowl's Arctic Breath as it deals more damage and there is a very real possibly that it can kill a few players! You may wish to divide healers into two groups. Each group should stand well apart from the other to ensure that there's at least three healers that won't be locked down and frozen.
When Icehowl leaps in the air and crashes down, players will not have the benefit of a run speed buff. Where you stand when Icehowl crashes could save you. Try not to position yourself in such a way that you get thrown into a doorway. You might not be able to make it out alive.
If he gets stunned, pile on some DoTs or other offensive spells if you have them. Weave them in after your raid is healed up. Get him stunned two or more times and the DPS will have the encounter in the bag.
Want some more advice for working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered with all there is to know! Looking for less healer-centric raiding advice? Take a look at our raiding column Ready Check. Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Raiding, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Starkore Oct 13th 2009 1:19PM
Another Matt article with little or no actual insight from a healers perspective. Heroic mode = damage increased, awesome Matt, we never saw that coming.
Snobolds DO NOT die from AoE damage unless you have targeted the snobold with an AoE attack. So yes, stand near Gormok, and AoE the snowbold if you wish, but you won't affect the other snobolds in range. Better to set aside a ranged 5 man snobold dps team, have affected players move to a chosen spot in front of this team and single target the blighters down. Command/Alt V should be used to see enemy health bars, it's much easier to see the snowbolds with that on.
I've read that melee dps shouldn't bother having snobolds removed at all and keep smashing Gormok.
We've got to Icehowl a couple of times but haven't cleared this encounter yet. The big stress point we have is at the end of the Gormok section, your tanks will have the debuff and will have to engage the worms straight away or simultaneously. I've read that Hand of Protection removes the debuff entirely and if that is correct it should be used on all tanks as soon as the worms arrive.
Getting out of Icehowls way can be helped with Fate Rune of Fleet Feet which can be stacked with Swiftness of Zanza if you have the Zandalar rep.
Dysmorphia Oct 13th 2009 1:29PM
"I've read that melee dps shouldn't bother having snobolds removed at all and keep smashing Gormok."
No, that's a bad idea. Rising anger seems to be related to the number of snowbolds out. My guild was wiping on Gormok repeatedly until we got the snowbold situation under control.
(If I'm wrong about the snobolods-rising anger correlation I hope someone will correct me, but that seemed to be what made the difference between RNG hits that one-shotted our tanks and getting Gormok under control)
Tridus Oct 13th 2009 6:08AM
One of the frequent causes of tank death on this fight is the tank being gibbed on Gormok by a 20k+ melee hit followed immediately by an application of impale, which once Rising Anger is stacked to 4 (or 5 if someone causes a snowbold to jump around, but thats not supposed to happen) can hit for 40k, followed by a DoT tick.
A trick I found to help reduce the odds of that death is to throw Prayer of Mending on the tank when Impale has a bit more then 1 second left before landing (like 1.2, lag depending). What will happen is the melee hit will happen, trigger PoM for a heal, and then the impale will land. Since you're guaranteed a heal between the two hits due to PoM being reactive, you've got a better chance of the tank living.
We also hero on the second worm. Technically you can get more DPS if you use it on Icehowl, but if you have the entire raid up on Icehowl you don't need it, and getting Dreadscale dead before Icehowl shows up makes the transition drastically easier.
cbehring35 Oct 13th 2009 9:06AM
Even though AOE from melee does not effect snowbolds, if people with snowbolds on them run to just in front of melee then all dps can easily switch to snowbolds for a quick easy burn of them, returning players back to action.Having a healer waiting on only 5 dps to burn down a snowbold on their back could be deadly for the raid. There is a thread on tank spot that mentions a Hand of Protection rotation with stacks of impale to minimize the amount of stacks that build on the tanks. It works pretty well. When Dreadmaw is enraged be ready for chain devine sac's because if melee get hit with the AOE swipe and burning bile it's sure to kill a few melee. Make sure everyone is topped off before getting throw into the walls it can easily kill members of your raid, and expect that an artic breath can come just before the throw. so healers have to be ready for rapid heals to top off.
Brad Oct 13th 2009 9:44AM
i hate this fight
Koukalaka Oct 13th 2009 9:49AM
Healing this fight is reasonably trivial from my experience, there are a few things that obviously this article washes over because its written by someone with a moderate experience of the fight from what I can tell and goes on rumours from people in their guild most likely.
Gormok: a) either have priests keep levitate up, its a perfectly viable strategy in 25 man since the dps requirement to get gormok down before the worms appear is reasonably low, this simply means the fire doesn't spawn but you take the initial damage, simply re-applying levitate to the person and surrounding person and theres no fear from people dying due to being slow to run out
b) If you get targetted by snobolds as a healer, the first thing is you should probably time about 10 seconds in between kicks, if you happen to be a priest/shaman you can cast mind blast/shadow word death to make sure you don't get locked out of your healing schools, as a paladin its best to pop aura mastery pretty much immediately in which you should gain about 20 seconds of cast time. The next step is to move in range of all your range dps, simply put its a hell of alot quicker for ranged dps to burn your snobold down and if you aren't in range of all of them, well your going to be locked out for a while.
c) Healing the tanks is rather simple as long as you have some sort of debuff tracker on the tank, Usually I'm a paladin healing this fight with a secondary paladin and we use 3 tanks simply for a much smoother phase 2, I keep beacon on the current tank and the other paladin keeps beacon on the weakest tank, usually the dk or the warrior. Then we have a disc priest keep the physical damage reduction buff on the tanks and thats the tank healing set really. With a levitate strategy there is almost 0 raid damage in p1 and its best for druids to keep hots on the tanks.
Not One but Two Jormungars:
a) Positioning is all important here, you don't want more than 2-3 people getting burning bile or paralytic toxin, simply put tracking these debuffs is essential. We tend to set up with our healers in the middle and the ranged spread around the outside, we split our melee in half and 2 per side so only 2 can be hit by the debuff at the same time, as long as you don't have bad tanks keeping 2 per side, much like thorim is easily possible. This then means the worst that can happen in this phase in terms of dps dying is the melee on the stationary target get a whirl and then the stationary target hits out his debuff and (if unlucky) can hit 6 people) this is the perfect time for paladins to work out a divine sacrifice rotation and pop it every time this occurs, along with a fire resist aura mastery if burning bile is the affliction.
b) We use 3 tanks primarily for this phase, this means we have 1 tank dedicated to each mob, each with a beacon on them (since beacon has a 60 yard range that target is always covered) and the third tank always goes on the moveable mob. When the first tank gets the debuff the second tank taunts off and the first tank either goes to free others if the moveable mob is dreadscale or waits to be freed if the movable mob is acidmaw. This provides a dps increase for 2 reasons. 1) it means nobody needs to move if dreadscale is the moveable mob 2) It minimises people running around crazily wondering who they need to cleanse/be cleansed by (yes I know as a healer/dps if you get the debuff you run to the tank, but people still don't seem to catch this fact).
c) Healing wise, 1 paladin per tank (pairs of tanks), 1 disc priest keeping physical damage reduction buff on the tanks tanking the moveable mob. Raid healers heal the debuff with spot heals by the paladins. Again, the only real time some people take real damage is if the stationary mob whirls and does its special spit, otherwise the healing is relatively small.
Obviously Acidmaw is taken down first, however you can time this (since dreadscale always submerges before acidmaw) so that acidmaw dies as dreadscale is submerged, this stops dreadscale from enraging and can allow healers some downtime to prepare for Icehowl.
Icehowl
a) Again Positioning is what wins the day here, Melee in 2 groups of 4-5 at icehowls rear along with the spare tanks. Healers/Ranged Spread evenly in Front of Icehowl but far enough away so that they don't hit swirl. Putting 1 healer behind each of the melee groups can be advisable so they are topped up before the massive crash if it occurs right after the whirl.
However, One can argue that its better to tank him against the wall and have melee spread out in front of him, since he isn't parry-hastable, to increase their dps uptime since they dont get hit back by whirl and meaning its much easier to heal them.
b) Healing wise theres relatively little to heal here again apart from the burst of ferocious butt and making sure everyone is topped up before a massive crash. Using aura mastery and frost resist aura is a good idea if lots of people get targetted by the frozen breath and using divine sacrifice (if you have left from phase 2) if people are low before a massive crash is also a good use of the cooldown. The Crash itself is best spent by a holy paladin regenning mana by meleeing the boss with seal of wisdom is up and moving in front so that he will be in range of the tank after the whirl comes. For other healers prehotting the tanks and using mana regen cooldowns, or indeed laying some dots/dps onto icehowl is a good idea in this phase.
Personally we don't use bloodlust/heroism since wednesdays and thursdays on our server means whenever you pop heroism one tends to get server lag, however if you can use it its definitly best to use it in p3 since this is the only part which is tight on enrage, especially if you've lost some dps in p2.
I've healed this from a paladin perspective, probably quite obviously from the article, however the only difficulties I have in the fight is in p2 when 4-5 people get bile/toxin and people panic, otherwise the healing is quite light, especially using 3 tanks since you only get 2 stacks of the impale and people have toxin debuff is very minimalised and the only danger is burning bile really.
Dysmorphia Oct 13th 2009 1:34PM
Thanks Koukalaka for the specific advice on Annoying Worms positioning. Positioning in this phase has been the main issue wiping my guild's raid (IMO) that and "lack of heals" which, uh, yeah you'll have if you keep running around out of range. Anyway thank you, I'll be be passing this bit on to The Management of the raid crew.
Steve Oct 13th 2009 2:20PM
On the Snobalds, should clarify this. Incidental AoE does not hit the Snobalds. That is, if you're hitting Gormok, the Snobalds will not be hit by any AoE.
However, Incidental AoE does hit Gormok, so if melee is switched to Snobalds, Gormok will be hit.
Also, on another comment on Rising Anger, yes, each Snobald out will give Gormok a stack of Rising Anger, 15% more damage. However, killing a Snobald will not remove the Rising Anger, you are stuck with it the rest of the fight.
The Snobalds are timed though, so if you're fast enough, you technically won't get that high. But the remaining Snobald(s) will jump off his back and are free roaming and should be killed by raid.
To handle Snobalds, if your ranged is good enough to burn them then no melee help is needed and they can concentrate on Gormok. What we do is priortize too, if a Snobald is on a healer, high priority to burn down, other casters, secondary priority. If it's on a hunter/ melee, lowest priority. So if a Snobald is on melee, another jumps on healer, everyone switches to the healer one.
This sometimes leaves us 1-2 snobalds left on melee after Gormok is down. That's fine, just kill them inbetween before the Worms show up.
tipster Oct 14th 2009 4:02AM
You might want to try putting levitate on your range for Gormok just as he is coming into the arena. That gives you two mins where any fire thrown at the range players will do very little damage and not put a fire patch on the ground.