Raid Rx: 2009 Boss healing awards
by Matt Low 
Dec 31st 2009 at 2:00PM
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related.
Welcome to the 2009 healing awards where we look back on some of the craziest healing encounters introduced in Wrath of the Lich King. Which fights frustrated healers the most? Which ones involved a ridiculous amount of healing? Which boss went directly against our role as healers? The judging panel should have consisted entirely of gnomes, but Wilfred Fizzlebang was unable to make it at the last minute and I was asked to step in at the last minute to help finalize the results.
Most tank heals spammed
Patchwerk (Naxxramas)
An early test for raiding healers, Patchwerk was a measure of pure healer throughput and mitigation. There were no gimmicks. There were no tricks. No fires to avoid, no special abilities to watch for, and no mobs to run away from.
It was all pure healing.
Your raid group lived and died by the ability of the healers to keep your tanks alive. And man, at the time, Patchwerk hit like a freight train. The Abomination provided an excellent method for testing the discipline and trust of healers to not overlap or deviate from their assignments.
Most healing needed
Deconstructor (Ulduar)
The pre-nerf iteration of Deconstructor was the first real challenge of Ulduar. My guild was able to take this bucket of bolts down during week 2 (largely due to server instability plaguing week 1 of Ulduar's release). What was really special about Deconstructor was during his Tympanic Tantrum phases. I knew that healing this, I wouldn't be able to get more than one party up to full health. Healers had set party assignments with the goal of keeping the party alive as opposed to topping them off.
His hard mode was a great indicator of healer endurance. Healers had to deal with the Tantrums, Sparks, Void Zones and other nasty stuff. I distinctly remember one of our kills pushing us down to the last 5 seconds before his enraged timer expired. Most of the healers were running on fumes at that point. I had to stop in order to regenerate mana. My fingers hovered over Guardian Spirit with the tank targeted just in case.
Most raiders saved
Hodir (Ulduar)
How many times do you remember bailing out players who were caught with an Icicle falling on their head? How many players failed to reach the snow mounds that you complained about while trying to keep them alive long enough for your DPS to break them out?
The big blue guy represented a stumbling block for many guilds as they were progressing through Ulduar. Healers had a tough time trying to outheal the various frost related damage. Not only that, Dispels had to be dished out as fast as possible to get players out of the firing zone of any falling icicles. I went Discipline specifically for faster Mass Dispels. Unless you were able to find a campfire nearby, you had to keep moving around to shake the stacking Cold debuff. For Druids and Priests, it wasn't that big of an issue. The Paladins and Shamans who were with me became disgruntled at the amount of running they had to do.
Of course, whenever they were hit by falling icicles, I made them do laps around Dalaran.
Most chaotic
Mimiron (Ulduar)
Want to know what it's like to heal chaos? This would be it. Pre-nerf Mimiron was fun and exciting fight for progression healers. The first phase was easily handled. Anything after that was a crapshoot. How hard and fast can you heal through the Heat Wave and Rapid Bursts? Can you dodge Rocket Strikes? The first few times, I managed to get drilled largely due to tunnel vision (and I haven't been hit by them since). Could you handle the incoming mechanical robots of phase 3? More importantly, could you adapt quick enough to heal the occasional threat pull by DPS? Yes, the fault of pulling aggro will forever be a debate between tanks and DPS players. Reflexive and strong heals would immediately remove that as a problem.
And then there was phase 4 which was the grand-daddy of movement and standing-out-of-crap fights for Wrath of the Lich King. Spinning up? Move. Incoming rockets? Move. Is he about to explode? Move. Tank on the other side? Move. If you had a hard time watching out for little things, this fight was not going to be easy.
Most confusing
Anub'arak (Trial of the Crusader)
Anub'arak on heroic was my personal Achilles heel. For whatever reason, I had the hardest time healing the final 30% phase and it would take multiple repeated attempts before we finally got it down. Anub'arak gave us a slight glimpse into what healing in Cataclysm would be like. The goal is not to blast players to full health as he would drain more of it. The objective is to keep players high enough that Penetrating Cold wouldn't destroy them but low enough that his Leeching Swarm wouldn't cause him to gain too much health back either.
I know I did a double take the first few times when I was asked specifically not to heal at certain points.
Most boring
Loatheb (Naxxramas
A boss that was earlier in the Wrath expansion was this guy. Traditional tank and spank right? Except, you know, healers can only do their job for seconds at a time. The rest of it was spent twiddling our thumbs wanding or DPSing. Disc Priests had the slight edge since shields could still do something most of the time. Many progression healers started working on perfecting the timing of their heals so it would land just as the debuff wore off allowing another heal to go off within that window of opportunity.
Most frustrating
Faction Champions (Trial of the Crusader)
And the award for most frustrating healing fight goes to these guys! You can't really plan a strategy around them. You have to rely on your desire to live, your ability to think on the fly, and your ability to run. Every attempt could end up being different than the one before it. Causes of wipe would vary. The fight was easily won within the first few minutes. For healers, that was the breaking point where every cooldown had to be used and the survival of everyone actually mattered. I know I broke down once because it was either our Warlocks or Druids that would get just get chain focused by all of the Champions. Sometimes we just had to helplessly stand and watch them die due to convenient Silences or Counterspells.
Most technical
Sartharion with 3 Drakes (Obsidian Sanctum)
At the time, I viewed Sartharion as the most technical fight. There was an astonishing amount of cooldown coordination required between tanks and healers. This was especially true if your guild did not have a Death Knight tank available to tank Sartharion. His powered up breath could one shot tanks. Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, Hand of Sacrifice and other tanking cooldowns needed to be used and timed with less than seconds of advance warning. This encounter forced healers to pay more attention to the position of his head then the raid frames (if his head snapped up, he was about to breathe).
Most healing efficient
General Vezax (Ulduar)
If your healers have yet to learn how to conserve mana, the General here presented a great lesson on that topic. Mana regeneration simply was not possible. Cooldowns and potions were ineffective in restoring mana. You had to rely on puddles to stand in to gain mana back at an exponential rate that was also toxic to your health. I bet more than a few healers learned that greed is bad when they tried to stay in for an extra tick thinking they could survive it. I was one of them. I couldn't do more than 7.
Good friggin' luck if your DPS players weren't up to par or if they fell early on in the encounter.
And those are your winners for 2009! Let's all give them a round of applause before we down them next! We still have more Icecrown Citadel bosses to take care of in the weeks ahead and let's see what kind of new encounters 2010 holds.
Are there any award categories or bosses that you would have nominated instead?
Want some more advice for working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered with all there is to know! Need raid or guild healing advice? E-mail me at matticus@wow.com and you could see a future post addressing your question. Looking for less healer-centric raiding advice? Take a look at our raiding column Ready Check. Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Barak Dec 31st 2009 2:08PM
I wonder, what award does the COH/WG nerf get, or was that late 08?
Knob Dec 31st 2009 3:24PM
Way to try and make this into something that it isn't.
I think Anub'arak's Leeching Swarm will go down as one of the best, unique and downright awesome mechanic from this expansion. It literally forced healers to do something that they've been specifically programmed not to do since the first time they started healing. It's been one of the successes of this expansion in my opinion.
Allison Robert Dec 31st 2009 4:24PM
Unless it's Leeching Swarm on Anub-25 heroic, which is an answer to the question Blizzard developers surely asked themselves after Mimiron-25 Firefighter: "Is it possible to make healers *more* miserable?"
Chukie Dec 31st 2009 2:16PM
heh A certain green dragon in icc was a bit late to make this list... a shame as she fits the bill for making healers do a completely different role.
Astetic Dec 31st 2009 2:30PM
Valithria Dreamwalker deserves her own catagory, it definately wins "Most anticipated fight" for me as a healer. it's a take on healing that I hope blizzard goes after again even after the next expansion hits
zappo Dec 31st 2009 2:43PM
I'm not sure what's interesting about that fight. You are basically just healing something that isn't in your group.
Jake Dec 31st 2009 3:25PM
Couldn't you say the same thing about DPS in any other fight?
It's about how awesomely you can heal with the resources you have and the distractions you may face. Recount will be interesting as the healers boast about beating other healers.
zappo Dec 31st 2009 4:32PM
Yes, because that's basically what dps does, but there is no effective cap on what dps can do. Healing is already about using your abilities and dealing with distractions. There isn't anything challenging about healing something with a big health pool that's just sitting there. And for that matter if "healing meters" rear it's ugly head again, you're going to see a lot more of why meters are a bad measurement in the first place - people ignoring responsibility to top meters. And good luck topping those if you're not a holy paladin.
I'm not saying doing something different isn't good, it's just that once you get there it won't be as interesting as it looks. As far as I can see it'll be a lot like healing those vehicles in trash pulls before Mimiron. Just a raw dump of mana into hp but on a timer. Hopefully blizzard will think of some new things for healers to do, but the game isn't very conductive to that. For instance imagine that you had a trash pack you had one add that had to be healed or it would kill someone or do something else bad. They're not in your raid frames. And yet you also can't tab target them either. You'd have to manually click on nameplates or come up with some sort of special focus macro (and requiring a macro would show a design failure though). They get paid to do this stuff though, so I'm sure they'll think of something.
Jenn Dec 31st 2009 2:27PM
I really enjoyed healing the Faction Champs encounter. I think it tested a my knowlege of my class' abilities. As a resto shaman, I had to know who to offensively dispel and when to do so, I had to handle defensive dispels of curses, poisons, and diseases. I had to remember to keep my grounding totem down, my tremor totem down, as well as know which totems were more effective for a given make up. On top of this I had to have the usual situational awareness and be in sync with the rest of my healers.
When it went well, it was nice. And when it went poorly... it was excrutiating. We had the majority of our party die on one occasion and rather than wiping it, we pushed on... through three Heroisms, and more Mana Tide Totem CDs than I can recall. It was a ton of fun, however.
Tridus Dec 31st 2009 2:57PM
I really hate healing hard mode Faction Champions, because this happens:
1. Four champions focus on someone
2. Someone takes so much damage that they explode, and no amount of healing on the planet can save them
I've been bursted from full to dead in under 1 second on that fight. It's BS.
Sarco@DS Dec 31st 2009 2:32PM
My comment is regards to Most Healing Needed:
Deconstructor was a challenge initially and your statements on the hard mode are very accurate. You really had to be able to last the entire fight. Having said that, I feel the Twin Val'kyr fight required the most healing, specifically in the hard mode. I have seen the main healer in my guild (a druid) cap out at 13k HPS. That fight was easily the most intense healing experience of the year for me.
ambermist Dec 31st 2009 2:51PM
I stopped healing back in Naxx, but I remember the Loatheb fight very well, and I certainly think it deserves its award.
I would literally just sit there and watch the timer, throw HoTs on people who were hurting right when it was about to fall off, and then throw in one good Nourish before I was stuck staring at the timer again. There was nothing else to do except perfect your timing. I could get Lifeblooms to bloom right before the silence restarted, and that was the best part of the whole darn fight.
tatsumasa Dec 31st 2009 3:56PM
you could always dps during the non-heal times so that the fight doesn't last so long...
Finnicks Dec 31st 2009 6:30PM
This.
I perfected my timing to the point where I could get 3 full-stack lifeblooms' bloom, a swiftmend, and a nourish to go off all on different targets all during the 3-second healing window.
5 party members healed per round.
I love that fight.
Unholysmiter Dec 31st 2009 3:10PM
Tbh loatheb wasn't too bad for me. As a holy pala, it let me act like a dps for the most of it, without being yelled at by the raid leader ^^
macster Dec 31st 2009 3:19PM
If you think healing the Faction Champions is frustrating, you should try being a Warlock on it. I now have nightmares where I'm run over by a trainload of Tauren Shamen.
Sean Jan 1st 2010 1:40AM
Indeed. I respect this fight and appreciate that it was included in Trial of the Crusader. However, no matter what I seem to do on this fight I will invariably find the rouge behind me, get stunlocked, and then focused by all the melee within one or two gcd's. Even if I manage to get off a Howl of Terror or teleport away, I now have the attention of three or four guys with axes and daggers, each vying to flay me alive. So far I've been on the losing end of such weapons more times than I care to admit.
Desmentia Dec 31st 2009 4:15PM
Most in need of Discipline Priests: Deathbringer Saurfang
For those that have cleared it out already, we already know just how important it is to minimize the Blood Power gain. Well, fully-absorbed hits don't generate Blood Power, and even partial absorbtion on the tank reduces the splash damage to the marked players, if any. Switching a healer out for a Disco Priest is like turning off Heroic mode.
Carcus06 Dec 31st 2009 5:54PM
Or you can just let the first two people that get Mark of the Fallen Champion die! We BoP them let them DPS/heal until they die. It makes that fight a complete joke.
Barak Dec 31st 2009 5:15PM
to those that downranked me,
I was simply wondering where Matt would put those two "nerfs" in the scheme of things. you can't say it didnt change healing in lk at least for priests and druids.