Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing strategies for Maloriak and Nefarian

It's a very special occasion on Spiritual Guidance today; spring has come, which means for the first time in months, you get to read about priest healing while simultaneously anticipating that the weather is going to be nice soon. What? That isn't exciting? Okay, fine, whatever ... I tried. I'm just going to go use the last of my Blossoming Branches on Fox right before the tank pulls so I can screw up his DPS rotation then. No! Okay, seriously, today on Spiritual Guidance we'll be finishing up Blackwing Descent with the last two bosses in the raid instance, Maloriak and Nefarian.
As you know, we've been steadily working through all the tier 11 raid bosses and examining how to heal for them as a holy or discipline priest. After you've read this, you'll be able to heal your raid to victory and finally stop dealing with that damn elevator.

Maloriak
Maloriak is the token mad scientist boss for tier 11 whose main gimmick revolves around his alchemical cauldron. There are two phases to the fight. During phase 1, Maloriak will throw different-colored potions into his cauldron to create a different set of conditions that your raid will have to deal with. If you want to know more about the encounter, check out WoW Insider's Guide to Maloriak.
For healers, Maloriak is relatively simple encounter in comparison to the fights we discussed in previous weeks. The easiest way to examine the fight as a healer is break down the encounter by phases. Before I do that, though, I should point out that I won't talk too much about tank healing because tank damage is never anything to worry about on this fight, though it does require some attention. Depending on your raid size, you'll either want a dedicated healer for each tank or want every healer to be responsible for providing the tanks with heals. The off tank, in general, is going to be the more difficult to heal, since he will be moving more frequently.
Red phase When Maloriak initiates a red phase, your entire raid will stack up in one location to deal with Scorching Blast. Scorching Blast is one of those abilities that distributes a massive amount of total damage over multiple targets. The more targets it hits, the more manageable the damage will be per target, so it's ideal for your entire raid to get in one location and split the damage across everyone. The amount of damage Scorching Blast does is huge, though, even when split across your raid, so your focus in red phase is going to be preparing and recovering from each Scorching Blast.
Before a Scorching Blast, disc priests may want to use Power Word: Shield on as many targets as your mana can comfortably handle. Disc priests can also use Power Word: Barrier just before a Scorching Blast, though when Maloriak uses the ability is never precise, so it takes a bit of practice to find the right time to use the ability. Holy priests can try putting down pre-HoTs, but I found a well-timed Prayer of Healing is much more effective before the blast. Again, getting the timing right will take some practice. After the blast, both priests can clean up with Prayer of Healing and their tree-specific spells (Circle of Healing, Penance).
Holy Word: Sanctuary is usually overkill because of the mana cost, but there are times when it can be useful, particularly if you're short a raid cooldown. Most raid teams will try to use something like Power Word: Barrier, Anti-Magic Zone, or Aura Mastery before each blast, but since it's possible to get up to three Scorching Blasts per red phase, 10-man raids may sometimes have trouble coming up with that third raid cooldown. In those cases, placing a preemptive Holy Word: Sanctuary can be helpful -- even if it doesn't soften the blow of Scorching Blast -- by topping off any stragglers and helping to heal up everyone before the next phase.
Blue phase In this phase, your raid will spread out in order to prevent doubling up Flash Freeze, a chaining ice block ability. As long as players are spread out and the ranged DPSers are on top of breaking out the frozen target, you'll only need to worry about healing the initial damage. Penance, Holy Word: Serenity, and any fast, single-target spell will work just fine. (I've seen priests use Leap of Faith to pull targets out of the ice block, but I'm pretty sure this is superficial and DPS still have to kill the block to save the target. That said, I've never actually seen a player die to Flash Freeze, so I'm not sure. Anyone know?)
You'll also need to do a little bit of raid healing on the melee when Biting Chill goes out. Biting Chill is an ability that will target one melee player, and anyone close to that target will take damage as long as they're stacked on top of one another. The Biting Chill target will run out to a designated location to reduce the damage the other melee takes, but you can still expect everyone to take a bit of damage. Make sure your groups are sorted so that melee players and tanks are all in the same group, and you'll be able to easily deal with this damage using Prayer of Healing. If you're in a 25-man raid (and thus more likely to be out of range of certain players), holy priests should place a Lightwell in the area to which the Biting Chill target is moving.
Green phase As long as your tanks and DPS are on top of things, you'll only need to worry about healing your main tank and off tank. Everyone will take increased damage in this phase, but only your tanks should be getting attacked, and it's not that strenuous when all your healers are focused on one target. Thus, this is a good phase to restore mana, and if you're a disc priest, you can do some saucy Smite Atonement healing since Maloriak is also taking increased damage.
Phase 2 This phase is chaotic but not complex at all to heal. Just spam raid and single-target healing and play whack-a-mole on your raid frames. Try to watch out for players who are standing in imminent danger, and if you can, life grip them to safety. Imminent danger can take the form of standing in front of the boss (in danger of Magma Jets), standing too close to the off tank or Prime Subjects (taunt-immune adds), or standing too close to an Absolute Zero frost orb. (Tip: Turning off projected textures in your graphics settings makes it much easier to see Absolute Zero.) Most imminent danger can't be healed through, so just heal whoever is alive, since they'll be taking unavoidable damage from Acid Nova.
Discipline or holy? Honestly, both healing specs are completely appropriate for healing Maloriak. Discipline's cooldowns are especially ideal for the red phase, but holy's Circle of Healing is good for the pandemonium in phase 2. Go with whatever you're comfortable with or with what your raid needs.

Nefarian
At long last! You've finally made it to the last boss of Blackwing Descent, the black dragon Nefarian. This encounter will surely challenge your healing abilities more than any other before it ... right? Yeah, no, it won't. For some reason I can't figure, Nefarian is the most underwhelming final raid boss I've ever encountered. Now mind you, there is still healing to be done -- but for a last boss, there just isn't a lot of complexity or urgency for healers. The fight consists of many small windows of time when you'll need to heal hard, then many larger windows when you can take your time with the damage that is dealt. Before I go over them, make sure you know the basics of the fight by checking out WoW Insider's Guide to Nefarian.
Phase 1 During the first phase of this encounter, both Nefarian and his mangled zombie sister Onyxia plus the Animated Bone Warrior adds will be present in the arena. The additional mobs and double dragons shouldn't mean too much extra damage, though; once your tanks master picking up the dragons and adds and learn how to spread them apart to the right locations in the room, you'll have very minimal raid healing to attend to. In the learning phases, there will of course be a lot of damage on the raid, but your tanks will eventually sort that out and make it manageable.
In phase 1, you'll also experience Electrocute for the first time. Electrocute will occur when Nefarian reaches 90% and at every multiple of 10% after that (80%, 70%, etc.) Electrocute deals massive nature damage to the entire raid and is best dealt with by using some kind of raid cooldown. That means Power Word: Barrier is ideal again; if you're running holy, your fast and powerful raid healing is going to be useful (especially when you're close to the transition into the next phase).
It's important that you know when Electrocute is coming so you can properly dish out cooldowns or preemptive HoTs or shields. To do this, I recommend you set your focus frame on Nefarian and set your unit frames to display percentages instead of numbers. (To do that, go into the Interface menu in your game menu and make sure to check Display Percentages in the Status Text window.)
Phase 2 The next phase begins when Onyxia is dead and the room fills up with lava. Everyone needs to master getting out of the lava and onto the three platforms; to buy everyone more time, make sure all the players around your designated platform are topped off and (if you have time) have pre-shields or HoTs. The best thing you can do at this part of the fight to help healing is master how to get on the platform yourself; then you can spam heals on everyone else.
Once you're on the platform, this will be the most hectic part of the fight. Throughout the phase, Nefarian will hit your entire raid with Shadowflame Barrage; while not terribly hard to heal, it will keep you busy. What's hard about this phase is that between dealing with Shadow Barrage, you have to prepare for Electrocute. See, your ranged DPSers will still be busy doing their thing on Nefarian, which means you'll push through the 70% mark during this phase. Since everyone needs to be divided up on separate platforms, though (for interrupting Chromatic Prototype adds), you can't just have everyone pile under a single Power Word: Barrier.
To survive the phase, you'll need to get your fellow raiders to use their own defensive cooldowns for Electrocute and (if you're a holy priest) yell at them to click Lightwell. (Seriously, yell at them; remind them it's no different than using a Healthstone.)
Holy priests in general will have a much easier time dealing with the damage in this fight because of all your AoE healing capabilities, but be careful not to overdo it and go OOM. Holy Word: Sanctuary is still overkill, but you'll want to hang out in Chakra: Sanctuary stance regardless for the reduced cooldown on Circle of Healing. Make sure groups are set up for Prayer of Healing, and use Renew or Flash Heal when Prayer of Healing isn't ideal. Obviously (and I shouldn't have to say this), you'll want to keep Prayer of Mending going, as you would on any fight.
If you're a disc priest, you'll be able to use your barrier on your own platform, which will ease the damage from Electrocute, but you'll also have a harder time keeping up with the Shadowflame Barrage damage with Prayer of Healing as your only (good) AoE heal. You'll probably want to use a lot of shields and (obviously) Penance and Flash Heal. Don't forget Inner Focus and Power Infusion.
For both specs, this is a mana-intensive phase, so feel free to use a Mythical Mana Potion and your Shadowfiend on the Chromatic Prototype if you don't think you'll make it through without going OOM.
Phase 3 If you made it through phase 2, you're pretty much done with the difficult parts of the fight. Phase 3 is exactly like phase 1, except Onyxia is gone and has been replaced with a crawling ground fire called Shadowblaze that you just need to stay out of. You'll still have to deal with Electrocute at every 10%, but since your raid will be together, you can handle it the same way you did in phase 1.
The hardest part of phase 3 is actually just keeping heals on your off tank, who may occasionally move out of range during an Electrocute and require some extra topping off or cooldowns to survive the temporary loss of heals. Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit are about on par for this task, so use whatever you've got and encourage the tank to communicate what he needs.
Discipline or holy? Nefarian is another one of those fights where you can go either way, depending on your tastes or raid needs. Power Word: Barrier is great for dealing with Crackle, but holy priests are great at cleaning up after it. Holy priests are fantastic for healing on the platforms in phase 2, but disc priest shields are also just as effective.
And now you're done! Enjoy your shiny loot, and I'll see you next week for the rest of Bastion of Twilight. As always, if you have any additional questions or contributions, hit the comments.
You may also be interested in reading Priest healing tactics for Omnotron Defense System and Magmaw and Healing Chimaeron and Atramedes as a priest.
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Matrillik Mar 21st 2011 4:16PM
I had a lot of trouble with 10-man Nef healing on phase 2 as a holy priest because I had 4 people on my platform and i was using sanctuary chakra to heal that part. I came up with a much better strat that had me ending the phase with full mana and keeping everybody up fairly easily:
Use single-target chakra. Roll renew on everybody. Then spam Heal on each person once until there is a burst of damage on one or two people. This is a good time for serenity->GHeal super crit (hopefully) that should get them back up. Doing this should keep renew refreshed on everybody for the entirety of the phase. Refresh renew only if it falls off somebody. If it is about to fall off of somebody, you're better off using an insta-serenity to refresh it. Remember: Binding Heal refreshes the hot on you and your target, very good for catching up on renew refreshes.
Tell everyone to use lightwell and flash heal people as necessary just before crackle to top them off and you should be fine.
amnbrownie Mar 21st 2011 5:03PM
For people who do not have unlimited mana resources (I'm a holy priest, and healed with two pallies...no mana tide or innervate) Here are a few tricks I used to get through the encounter.
In phase 2, I had two others on my pillar- I put up a Lightwell and stayed in Serenity. PoM on cd, renews, and used heal + serenity to keep everyone topped. People clicked the Lightwell frequently.
Phase 3, when my lightwell was available again, I put it down, switched to sanctuary, and I actually (gasp) used the Sanctuary spell. Why? Between that, and the lightwell, people could heal themselves up to full while I spent that time regenerating mana (fiend + hymn, or concentration pot). We had CDs for a good portion of this; AMZ, and everyone popped personal CDs (ams, cloak, etc.) At any rate, Sanctuary is pretty efficient if you don't heal over it, and you have the time to spare to allow it to work. If you need time to regen, try it.
When I didn't need to regen, I used Circle and PoH, then topped the last few stragglers with heal.
Oh, and I also have Blessed Resilience for this fight-- uptime is close to 25% of the fight. Makes healing myself a lot easier.
vicknat Mar 21st 2011 4:42PM
It was easier going as holy in Nefarian! And PWB on Maloriak is OP! Great post btw!
Prissa Mar 21st 2011 6:25PM
I went into this fight undergeared and in an unfamiliar disc spec so I have to say this fight was really really challenging to heal.
I wanted to mention as far as jumping onto your platform goes, do NOT spam jump at the top of the lava, it causes your stacks to build quicker every time you hit the surface again. It is best and easiest to sit on the floor till the lava is at least halfway up the pole, then swim forward and up in one movement, one jump, and you're set.
Phase 2, Binding Heal is your friend. As disc, smite heals aren't too bad if your group isn't too big (I only had 3 on my platform including me).
And if you're looking for a good moment to pop a potion of concentration or Hymn of Hope (ie. long uninterrupted periods of calm) phase 3 is good for this. Just after a crackle. Stabilise the raid, not necessarily to 100%, then you've got a some good room to breathe till the next crackle. Your other healers should be able to cover whatever dmg there is if you need to regen before the next crackle.
Pryn Mar 21st 2011 7:55PM
AA Disc spec works really well for me for Neffy 10man. P2 have 3 on my platform too and I find Binding Heal is really efficent, Smiting for Atonement heals with PoM flying around between us, and the ease of keeping up three shields in terms of mana cost make this a very steady phase for me and not an utter destruction of my mana.
The only issue I've had was just last night, was while healing a new tank who was training on tanking Neffy. The healing was very very difficult and as I started to pay close attention I realised that my usually clever atonement heals were landing on any target BUT the tank. Turns out the tank was standing on the very edge of the dragons hitbox, and for some odd odd reason this meant that the calculation of his distance from the dragon was >15yrds and as a result was out of range of the atonement heals. Soon as I asked him to take a few steps closer it was business as usual and the healing was smooth and steady again.
So be sure and tell you tank to suck up the dragon's bad breath and get in close if they want those yummy smite heals!
guest42 Mar 21st 2011 6:46PM
I strongly agree with what Matrillik said Re: renews + Heal spam on phase 2. It works so well that I have an ear-to-ear grin while doing it.
That said I've only healed nefarion as disc with actual boss kills involved. Here's a few other tips:
Right now you can get 3 barriers off if you use the first one on your first or second crackle. The second can be used on the pillar (usually during the second pillar crackle) leaving the third ready to go in phase 3 right around the time you are wishing the fight were over. The fight lasts approximately 8min 40sec so once they nerf barrier you will only be able to use it twice in the fight! (cd being increased to 3mins, up from 2)
During P1 people may be looking to you (the priest) to protect the kite group who gets the skeletons to die in a pile. Holy shields can give the kiters a nice speed boost while disc shields give them a nice cushy absorb amount. It will also behoove you to pre-shield yourself and the other healer healing the ony tank prior to tail swipes. A poorly timed tail swipe with crackle is often a death. A pre-shield eliminates that from the fight equation.
My first crackle barrier goes in the center of the room for the heals and ranged. Our holy pally stays with the ony tank to keep him up during the crackle. In exchange for his dedication to the ony tank i keep him topped off and shielded. So he never has to fear for himself during the p1 crackles. As soon as I book it for the cetner to drop my barrier I give the ony tank a pain suppression which further helps out our holy pally. Having an ony tank and dedicated healer that don't have to fear p1 crackles makes the phase much more smooth. The rest of us enjoy the barrier while the nef healer doesn't have to fear tail swipes or moving.
The second crackle gets shield spam. To help mitigate the mana cost I use it with power infusion. That's 20% off all bubbles for a limited time only! Pretty much every time Power Inf is up I see it as a giant glowing sign that says 'ready to spam bubbles!'
I hymn of hope the moment ony dies. If at all possible i save divine hymn for a p3 post-crackle. As disc, its the one shot you have to get the raid back on its feet. Shadowfiend goes out p3 ASAP. I don't want to be worrying about mana when we have 5 more crackles to look forward to. If things get rough for the last 20% I use my conc pot and hymn is usually up again.
Pryn Mar 21st 2011 8:14PM
Just wondering G42, are you 10 or 25?
I'm 10s. My P1 Barrier I drop on the melee at Neffy and we can usually manage to have myself (Nef tank healer) plus the raid healer, all the melee in there easily our ranged tend to fold in very smoothly too. Only the tanks, kiter and Ony tank healer are beyond the safety of the barrier. I use pain supression and shields or those beyond the bigbubble too. Mind you we tend to run melee heavy and I'm close to Neffy anyway to be sure my smites land efficently. It suits us to keep the momentum up with the melee safely remaining stationary and hunters/warlock shifting inwards to the barrier, both classes can manage to keep up dmg on the run for those few seconds of movement. (Yes, no handy frost mage for us - ever!)
shadowhowl1900 Mar 21st 2011 6:47PM
ive seen PWB save a lot heals during electrocute in nef, but i wasnt healer so i dont have first hand exp
Deius Mar 21st 2011 6:53PM
I don't want to sound like I'm bashing you Dawn (or the rest of WoWInsider), but why in the world do you guys think it's appropriate to make an article about these bosses so late into this patch? If a priest is your main, these articles are basically of no value, and that's who the class columns are supposed to be for, people with that class as their main. (Again you're definitely not the only one who does this, this was just the last one I could stand seeing)
Merch Mar 22nd 2011 12:41AM
What if a priest isn't a persons main? What if they started raiding late? What if they wanted to see how someone else approaches the fight?
Just because YOU find no value, doesn't mean its valueless for everyone else.
Arcane Death Mar 21st 2011 7:44PM
Wow, I must have missed the memo that said that all people with a level 85 must be decked out in full epics and have finished all current raids!
Thanks Dawn for these articles. I do not have all the time in the world for playing and am still enjoying heroic 5 mans for the time being. I hope to be able to raid with my priest in the future and when I do, I am glad that these articles will exist so that I can read them and learn how to best approach the encounter.
Dawn Moore Mar 21st 2011 7:55PM
Well, believe it or not, not everyone has killed Nefarian. If you check out WoW Progress there is a huge drop off in normal mode Nef kills. I also did a poll a few weeks ago and found the majority of WoW Insider's raiding readership is working on normal modes, not heroics. That means Nef and chogall are road blocks for some people, even if they aren't for you.
This guide is actually a bit early, in honesty. One of the trends you learn working at WoW Insider is that the number of comments a guide gets in the first few hours it's up is a reflection on how relevant the guide is to our daily readers. Last year, I did a guide on healing Lich King and it had almost no comments because the majority of the readership wasn't working on LK yet. When I talked to other columnists about it they said it was the same for them; the further you go into a dungeon, the less comments you get. As the months passed I got more comments coming in from people finding the guide through google, or people who had bookmarked it and were able to use it later. Then when I went to blizzcon months after that, almost everyone who approached me specifically thanked me for my LK healing guide. Things are just funny like that. *shrug* I think that articles get more comments when readers have something to add. If readers haven't experienced the content yet, then they won't have much to say yet.
As for you, do take in mind that the average person who checks WoW Insider and other sites daily are much more likely to be ahead of the progression curve. But you'd be surprised how much traffic our articles get from people using the navigation bar at the top of the page, or google searching "disc 101" or "nefarian guide." You might not think about our articles after they leave the front page but they do continue to get used by people out there searching for the answers to the questions they have. We're encouraged as class columnists to write articles that have that kind of use and longevity.
That said, I'd agree that there are some problems with using a blogging update format when it comes to releasing guides. I have one set time slot a week to write a long priest article, but that time slot can't always be used for a guide since I have to cover news too. I am allowed to make short news posts outside of my column time slot, but it's preferred that I keep them under a certain word count if they aren't part of my weekly column. In the past when I have tried to do that I feel it cheapened the quality of my analysis. Thus, I choose to cover current events and guides in my weekly column, which can push my boss guides back by several weeks. I could opt to write two articles a week and get a second time slot to fix this (much like Brian Wood used to write two hunter articles a week) but that would imply I -always- had a lot to write about, which I don't. Sure there is a lot to write about at the start of a major content patch, then things taper off toward the end. I agree that it'd be nice if all these guides had been available at say... the end of December, but that would require an entirely different website format and for me to drop everything in my life for about 2 weeks to write guides - neither are likely to happen anytime soon.
Dawn Moore Mar 21st 2011 8:09PM
Anyway, I understand where you're coming from, but understand that you're ahead of the curve and not everyone else is. If you're annoyed with seeing guides you can't use then at least take solace in the fact that you've accomplished a lot on your own and maybe you don't even need guides like these to play the game. You don't think the priests in Blood Legion are waiting at the edge of their seat each week for my column, do you?
Fact is, progression raiders are actually in the minority. Not everyone is in an organized 5, 4, or 3-day raiding guild. Some people raid 2 days a week, some people raid with whoever is online on a Saturday night in their 400 person guild (and some of those players might have never raided before.) Some people raid with really really really bad players, but those players are their friends so it doesn't matter. It's really easy to think that progression raiding is the norm because we're a tight knit, talkative little community of people, but we're actually not that normal. There is a huge community of wow players who raid, but they aren't on the same schedule as you or I. They balance their wow time around a whole bunch of different things - family, friends, school, work, and cool things like rock climbing. I wish I could rock climb =(
Pryn Mar 21st 2011 8:28PM
Another point strongly in Dawn's favour for this style of article, is the option to examine and consider the fight from the perspective of another spec. Afterall, the diversity between the playstyles of Disc & Holy is pronounced and not everyone carries dual healing specs and has the oppertunity to try both for each encounter. The comparissions in this series so far have been well researched and easily explained, even just for that alone this makes them a valuable resource.
In addition, reading the comments here is a direct link to others without the boundaries of where our B.Net allows us to post. It has generated a specific discussion which opens a dialogue oppertunity to those with an interest in the topic. I often pick up interesting little suggestions, tips and a variety of opinions from others here.
I've Neffy kills tucked under my belt already, yet I still thoroughly enjoy reading the perspective and insight of someone like Dawn who clearly works hard and seems to me, to love her priest just as much as I love mine.
Christine sessionWorkflowbasketWorkflowbasketSelectionbasketPerson[1]bookingPersonpersonsurname Mar 22nd 2011 11:28AM
This is in fact, exactly where we are at this very moment:) we only raid 2 days a week. TY Dawn for your pace, insight, and clear writing:)
Deius Mar 22nd 2011 11:35AM
Thank you for your response Dawn, I can see your side a little better now. But to Merch well if a priest is one of your alts then yes this would be quite nice, but what I was saying is that I just don't think the class columns are really written to help people with their alts. (Also sorry if I did come off a bit too angry/flammy)
Deius Mar 22nd 2011 11:38AM
...with their alts as that class.* (WTB EDIT BUTTON)
Artemisian Mar 22nd 2011 9:32PM
As someone with a Discipline priest as a main, who's only just gotten up to working on Nefarion, I greatly appreciate this guide. Not everyone is a hardcore-progression-type raider; some people have lives and wish to enjoy them.
Also Dawn, do you have a separate priest-orientated blog anywhere? I've started reading most of the ones you've referred to in previous columns, but I'd just be interested (I'm a fan ^_^).
rwilki Mar 28th 2011 2:38PM
I'm one of those still bashing my head against this fight and this guide has come at just the right time for us. We are a casual 10 man guild currently 11/12 and about 20th progressed on our server.
We get through P1 fine, but P2 is murdering us one way or the other. I run holy priest and we have resto shaman and holy pala. I was considering going disc for the fight, but on reading this I feel I have a better chance in my more familiar spec with some of the tips gained here.
Our kiters (frost mage or blood DK ) seem to have major issues picking up the adds - having 200% aggro doesn't apparently mean they come to you - and a number of our better geared members have 'got bored with pve' or decided healing is not for them right as we try to finish the last boss on normal mode - so we are running with less geared members which hits us.
Thanks for the guide and look forward to many more :-)
Gilomor Mar 21st 2011 7:01PM
Everyone seems to have no trouble with Maloriak, but he's giving my guild fits. As soon as our add tank gets 9 adds the damage gets so heavy we can't heal through it. In your article you say
"I should point out that I won't talk too much about tank healing because tank damage is never anything to worry about on this fight"
Any idea what we could be doing wrong? We've tried a pally, warrior and DK tank on the adds, with the same results for each. We kill up to the double dragons in BoT so I really don't think gear is our issue. I'm at a loss . . .