Raid Rx: Best practices for healing heroic Chimaeron
by Matt Low 
Mar 25th 2011 at 9:00AM
Next big test on the raid list after taking down heroic Halfus is the heroic multi-face boss (commonly referred to as Chimaeron) in Blackwing Descent.
No, Chimaeron isn't the dragons that are pictured above (although they're all in the same place). I haven't been able to get him down yet, since he is one tough dude. The reason why I've found Chimaeron more challenging than Halfus is because the Halfus encounter is over in a minute, if your raid can survive the initial rush. In Chimaeron, the healers are working overtime. We've been able to consistently get him down to the final phase. I imagine we're not the only ones who are still struggling with him (or it).
When we were first learning the encounter, we brought in eight healers. We learned quickly that it was one healer too many, because it tipped us past the enrage timer. Eventually, we settled on using seven healers: two of them assigned to the soak tanks, the other five on the raid. Those raid healers will be called on to heal specific players and specific groups.
Spend some time beforehand spacing people out. Make sure people in the same groups are relatively close to each other so that healers can cast their AoE spells on all of them.
Our mistake
Our first few tries at this boss relied on splitting up the five healers and making them responsible for any Caustic Slimes that were in that group. I realized after spending many hours on it that placing healers with that kind of responsibility may not have been the best idea. Not many healers can react or respond to the dreaded three-slime scenario. If it happened to my group, I would have cast Flash Heal on two of them and then hit the third target with a Penance or a Holy Word: Serenity. Even that was cutting it close, as a Massacre would hit a second right after.
Imagine three targets in your group all hit with a Caustic Slime that drops their health down to 1. You have a maximum of maybe 5 seconds before the next Massacre or Caustic Slime reaches the group. There is little margin for error.
I'm able to catch these incoming hits on my priest and keep up said players on my own without additional help, but I realized that some members in the guild were struggling. It may been due to a simple class healing imbalance. The diverse array of spells makes priests the go-to choice, followed by paladins and shaman. Druids just seem to have the biggest difficulty; my guess is that it's due to the way HoTs and the other druid spells function. Any awesome druid healers out there willing to offer some insight on how to handle Caustic Slimes that are immediately followed up with a raid-wide Massacre?
Our renewed efforts
After that, it was back to the drawing board. It turns out the biggest thing for us that did the trick was the automatic marks that were placed on players by your boss addon of choice. We assigned one healer to look after one mark. If their mark was already above 10k health, they were free to check on and heal anyone.
Skull Priest
Cross Priest 2
Square Resto shaman
Moon Resto shaman 2
Triangle Paladin
But that's not all. Your healers need to stand in such a way that everyone is in range of each other. It wouldn't do to have one bookkeeper on the side. The problem I had was telling people where to stand. Naturally, I told the healers to stand in the middle and allow the DPS to adjust to their positions.
Check your distances. I learned that one as a form of survival. It took me a few tries before I was able to really get it. If the healers are spaced out, there is a chance that their marked target won't be in range for them. That's why we moved every healer to the middle area and made sure the crew was able to handle themselves.
Inefficient healing becomes inefficient
I received numerous tips from multiple players who suggested using fast heals against targets hit with a Caustic Slime. The trick is to get players above the 10k health mark fast. You're not casting fast heals all the time, so you don't run the risk of burning through all your mana.
Stick to casting one fast, inefficient heal for each target until the next Caustic Slime or Massacre hits. If a Massacre does hit the raid, each raid healer should heal his own designated party once or twice to get them above the 10k health mark.
Feud!
Feud phases are fun!
Since your tanks actually take damage during this phase on heroic, I really advise getting every healer to hit that one tank with one healing spell each, to drive up their health to full. Have your five raid healers start healing their assigned groups. If one healer manages to get his group's health leveled off, he can swing over and help with another one.
We're on pace for four Feud phases before Chimaeron pushes into the last phase. When you get to the last phase, have a discipline priest or two begin placing shields on everyone. This is the Heroism/Bloodlust phase. Every healer starts piling on the DPS spells.
Normally, I'm the one who's offering advice and help to both newer healers and veterans. In this case, I'm not sure if I'm qualified. We're close to getting it down, though. Any additional insights or tips in the comments would be invaluable.
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.
Filed under: Raiding, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Chokaa Mar 25th 2011 9:16AM
Darn. I was really hpoping for a ' heres how to win' button!
My raid has been struggling on this as well. We have halfus and atramedes down, but chim is being a doucher.
LeFort Mar 25th 2011 9:24AM
As a Druid healer, natures swiftness is a godsend in this fight. You need to prehot your targets to prepare for a 3 slime combo. Pop swiftmend on one, natures swiftness + nourish on another, and nourish on another. Prehotting comes in when NS is on CD.
Nina Katarina Mar 25th 2011 9:42AM
Another thing you might look into - how integrated are the dps and tanks further in your the healing decisions? Most classes have some sort of self-heals, everyone can have warlock candy and healing pots. Better coordination within the healing groups can alleviate healer stress and save overhealing.
furry Mar 25th 2011 9:45AM
I would say that it isn't worth it to shield up everyone before the last phase. most dps will get slaughtered as soon as the boss reaches them anyway, so its better off to just spend the time with either regular healing or being sure you still have enough mana to spit out a few thousand DPS for the last phase.
We actually did assign each healer a group, but with the caveat that others should help on caustic slime.
Also, we assigned two players to each feud phase (including dps druids and shadow priests, and the like) to do their big-cd heal (tranquility, etc), and we also made use of the warlocks.. Healthstones cool down immediately after use and the Soul Wells last 5 minutes, so we make sure every player has a healthstone before we start and we also have a warlock throw up a new soul well near where we all stack up for feud. That way, everyone can use the healthstone for that feud then pick up another (it will be ready to use by the 3rd Feud).
Those stones are a pretty good heal, especially for not even costing a Global Cooldown!
Prissa Mar 25th 2011 10:01AM
I don't have a whole lot of help regards to 25man. Our guild just got this down on 10man tonight after tweaking strategies a fair bit. I was disc on our successful attempt. The tips I can get specific to that is:
-glyph of PW:S is pretty good for getting that instant heal on someone if you're desperate.
-Disc priests make sure you keep a bubble on the Double Attack tank for rapture, otherwise your mana dwindles very quickly.
-Feud saw our holy priest take care of the bulk of aoe heals. I helped as best I could with spot heals but prioritised the tank over the raid here.
-Our holy pally who was on tanks was struggling with mana by the end as he couldn't find a good spot for Plea or Concentration Potion. Regular mana shot potions are better than none. And I had to make a point of using my Hymn of Hope for the pally instead of for myself.
-Remember there aren't actually a huge number of moments where the raid needs to be ZOMGHEALNAO. There are timer bars for caustic slime after a massacre. If you manage to get the raid to full immediately into a feud, they can afford to dwindle a little bit. Remember that in the end any excess health will get knocked to 1 anyway. Remember to breathe and stay calm. If you're in a spot where you're freaking out, you're either overreacting, or it's already a wipe.
-The last phase, prioritise bubbles on people with the highest threat and highest dps and unlike usual, healers are the last as priorities. Chances are their dps is negligable. That might need a few goes to rewire the reflex to triage tanks>healers>dps.
frdmg Mar 25th 2011 10:04AM
As a current 3/13 heroic (halfus, atremedes, Chimaeron) holy priest, we were just able to get this clown down on 10 man last week after many nights of horrible luck. While your write up is 25 man, maybe this will help those doing 10s.
We run Disc, Holy Priest, Druid for our heals. With everyone just inside the 6 yard limit for slimes we keep everyone as close as possible for attonement heals. This really helps us get those people up after slimes. A quick PoH usually is enough to get people over the 10k, if not use a CoH as well, although i usually save the CoH for right at a massacre. A quick PoH, and even a renew (with divine Touch), will even get one up over 10k.
Now, we use a dps dk to soak break stacks, with the MT taking double attacks until the after the first fued phase. As soon as a stack is called, every healer heals the MT to full with their fastest biggest heal, then I (holy priest) start spamming raid with everything i have, while the other 2 keep the MT up. The key is the timing of the tanks CDs here.
After feud the dps dk takes chim again for breaks, and now the OT takes double attacks. Switching tanks taking double attacks always ensures they have enough CDs available for fueds, and a little lighter healing.
Hope this helps some, and good luck to all those working on him.
Pamplemoose Mar 25th 2011 10:05AM
What we do is very simple. We have 7 healers, 2 on the tanks and 1 for each group. To deal with the dreaded "3 slime scenario" we have a very simple rule. When healing people in your group, if you can't get them all up with an AOE heal then heal your group in alphabetical order. That way if someone else has capacity to cross heal yuor group you don't all heal the same guy.
If you're a Priest on this fight then it's an absolute piece of cake. One PoH from a well geared priest can bring an entire group above 10k health (with PoH glyph of course - everyone has this right?)
It worked brilliantly for us and we got this down on heroic within 5 pulls.
Still Wingless Mar 25th 2011 10:27AM
This is a great fight to be a holy priest. As someone already mentioned, one PoH can get a whole group taken care of during the massacre phase, and we're excellent raid heals during feud... It's a lot of PoH spam on rotating groups (I also raid in 25s). I stay in PoH chakra, keep PoM and CoH on CD as usual, keep Renew on the tank, and throw out Renew as needed for cleanup on folks not in my assigned group.
PW:S with BnS is pretty awesome during the last burn phase too. It doesn't protect for as much as a disco shield, but it helps the aggroed raid member kite for a few more seconds. When they're in range, you can always hit them with a lifegrip too.
The goal for me in this fight is to minimize my healing. Idle time during massacre? You're healing it right. It'll give time for your mana to regen as well.
One of our resto shamans also recommended showing the "Low Health" debuff on our raid frames. It goes away as soon as a raid member is back at 10K+ health, so you can tell who needs heals, and who is safe.
drochon Mar 25th 2011 11:15AM
As a druid healer (Lazydragon@Frostmane), we've downed heroic Chimeron with using a druid as a group healer (we use the group assign strat at this point, although considering switching). Generally we have two druids, one of which is on the tanks and one is assigned a raid group for caustics.
First off, many druids will want to respec/glyph a little for this fight. Strongly consider taking http://www.wowhead.com/item=40912 , and one or more points in http://www.wowhead.com/spell=17076 . The trick here is to abuse your mastery by ensuring a hot is constantly running on all five of your group members without draining your mana. Do this by applying a regrowth to everyone and keeping them BELOW 50%. I tend to apply these using clearcast procs when we're first setting up. Run your usual 3 stack of lifeblooms on yourself as well for CC procs and to remove yourself from the healing equation (LBx3 will heal 10k in 4 seconds).
- So if you get hit with one caustic, do w/e you want.
- Two caustics, regrowth one (mastery = +20% strength, with Nature's Bounty it'll have a large crit chance, but even w/o it should tick to over 10k within 4sec) and possible proc http://www.wowhead.com/spell=61346 as a bonus. Then nourish the other (saves mana & does the job when time not as pressing)
- Three caustics, regrowth on first, regrowth on second, swiftmend third.
- Four caustics - pick your least favourite person to die.
It's a rather un-druidlike way to heal, but unfortunately hots are just too slow for this demand. I tend to do the above while keeping rejuvs on each tank as well, occasionally letting them fall when I get stressed w/ multi-caustics.
Note this is all from a 25m raiding environment perspective.
leooyama May 14th 2011 8:58PM
Agree with droch on tacs for druids in this fight, glyph of regrowth helps a lot more than the lifebloom one would do, particularly in increasing the number of targets that can be swiftmendable by having the regrowth dot continually ticking between feud phases. Definately stack haste for this fight I would suggest (if you are raid healing), even if you cant get over 2004 (although this helps).
On 10man, I would suggest you cover the first feud with tranq, 2nd with ToL. This should mean that your tranq will be off cd to help heal the raid up before P2, and then your ToL should be back in P2 as well so you can help add extra dps with wrath.
NS/HT can help get a quick tank heal off during feud phases and allow you to get back to healing the raid.
rlspaulding Mar 25th 2011 10:44AM
The difference between success and failure in my group is pre-emptively casting PoH when I see the Caustic slime timer dwindling down....that way once it goes out, your PoH pops right after if your timing is right, and no need to waste mana on any more annoying flash heal dumps. I stay in serenity chakra for the hard hitting insta cast spell, but swap to sanctuary for Feud.
It's also helpful to push the last phase mid feud before massacre hits. No massacre, everyone topped off, last phase beginning = win.
Chmmr Mar 25th 2011 10:45AM
Some tank tips for all modes and both group sizes, that helps immensely for the burn phase is to make sure the tanks do three things. 1- Stack more dodge than mitigation on this fight, and, save +dodge trinkets/talents until 20%. 2- Have people start backing up to the walls of the room at around 22%, and have the tanks split up, so that the boss has to cross the room to get to the 2nd tank. Make sure they BACK UP to move, do not turn their backs to the boss as obviously they can't dodge an attack from behind. 3- Coordinating tank cooldowns and guardian spirits at 20%, in order to keep the tanks up as long as possible, seems to have the best return for us, in terms of getting through this phase. When it's done right, the tanks seem to stay alive for magically long periods of time.. when it doesn't work out, they're gone in 4 hits and your dps starts dropping like flies.
Ben Mar 25th 2011 10:45AM
As a druid healer, the problem is that even with mostly epics and one heroic piece of gear, there's not any options other than Healing touch (~2.2s in my gear), or swiftmend, with a 15s cd and requires regrowth or rejuv to be there for getting people over 10k. Regrowth, if talented, can crit ~80-90% of the time, depending on gear and buffs, in which case it heals for more than 10k, but that's not a risk you want to take too often, and there's not enough time for the hots to get someone all the way up. If you have 3 people down, you probably just have to regrowth 2 and rejuv+sm the last, which for me would take about 3.5 seconds, assuming nature's grace isn't on cd, about 3.7 seconds if it is. Add in a half second of delay and you are getting very close to getting massacred, and you still run the risk of missing a crit.
I only do 10man myself, where getting everyone in range of the healers isn't an issue, so we do it by frame order. If it's possible to do the same on 25man, that's probably the best way to do it.
Banoo Mar 25th 2011 11:01AM
All being well and healers have the slimes and feuds sorted, the one thing that can cost a kill is timing on pushing the last phase. We had several wipes before our 1st kill due to impatient dps pushing the last phase before the raid had been sufficiently healed. It is vital to go into last phase at as close to maximum hp as possible as Nefarions shadow bolt damage effectively becomes the enrage timer. We now call for everybody to bandage themselves before pushing, this gives time to the healers to heal up and also means the dps can't push it too early as they are channeling for 8 seconds. :P
As a shaman drop glyphed Stoneclaw Totem on cd in last phase it really helps to keep you up for a longer time. Also if you are dps shaman macro Wind Shear into your shocks, I usually go into last phase below some of the healers on threat using this trick. :)
Tannanna Mar 25th 2011 12:27PM
Having an addon set up to show the "Low Health" debuff on your healing frames can be an invaluable way to avoid overhealing, as it will mark those who are below 10k health.
G33ksquared Mar 28th 2011 4:07PM
There is an option to adjust grid or healbot for this fight so it highlights targets below 10k healk or whatever threshold you want.
Teki Mar 25th 2011 12:27PM
We've had this guy on farm now for err 8 weeks or so, but he can still be annoying :)
Our setup is usually 1 rshaman, 2 hpalas, 2 rdruids and a disc (replace one rdruid with another disc if possible)
stick the palas on the tanks, and the other 4 healers on groups. the rshaman takes melee, the hpalas beacon either hunters (who are counted in melee for us) or another healer to make healing easier as they dont have to think about themselves leaving only 4 groups to heal. (one less healer = boss dies faster! :D)
For the gathering phases we use Lay on hands from the hpalas + one from the tank and one from the ret to make gathering fast and easy as healers can just start aoehealing. The order is of course predetermined. We go with 3 tanks, a DK(1) a bear(2) and a protpala(3).
tank1 starts tanking, tank2 takes over at 3-4 breaks (never taunt before a doublestrike or you die) and tank3 taunts and gets a LoH on taunt and a pain supperssion or hand of sacrifice +he pops his own CD. He keeps the boss till 3-4 stacks and tank2 taunts and keeps it till next gather where tank1 taunts and gets a LoH(+cds), keeps it till 3-4 stacks, tank2 taunts and so on. We almost never loose tanks with this method, remember for tankhealers you don't have to top the tank, just keep him above 10k and use the cheap low heal. Only time you _must_ top him is before a double strike (mentioned before, taunt before double strike and die, couse you wont be shielded/topped) For the group healing your approach is already good, if you get 3 targets to heal from a slime, 2 fast and a desperate one for the 3rd. (flash heal flash heal holy shock (daybreaked) another shock, for example) shamans are perfect for melee as they can CH, rdruids keep rejuvs on their targets and swiftmend/nourish, and priests do what you said.
try to get the transition to p2 to happen right at the end of a gather, just keep everyone hugged after his last massacre and SPAM aoe heals, make every eat their lock stone (cookie) and get your tanks to diagonally opposite sides of the room. after the current tanking tank has tanked for 3-4 sec, give him a Hand of protection. this will make the boss go to the second tank (who should be second on threat) and trek across the room for 3-4 sec. as he reaches the second tank you either HoP him too or let him die, and the boss will go back to the first tank, giving dps a full 10-15-20 sec (depending on your kiting) of uninterrupted dps where noone dies. after tanks die, you can HoP dpers, making him kite other players, spriests disperse, hunters deterrence before FD rogues evade, you name it, anything to dodge a hit.
meanwhile the priest(s) are spamming shields, have druids innervate him for more mana, and make casters gather at a spot for PW:B.
BL at the start and pray :D
Hope this helps you a bit :)
bonethrower03 Mar 25th 2011 12:48PM
A geared spriest will do almost as much healing by just continuing to dps until the caustics actually start going out....only difference being that they will only be healing their group.
You don't want to use your instant heals on the 2nd caustic slime. You want to save them for the 3rd, because that is the least amount of time you have after a caustic to get everyone up above 10k before that massacre comes knocking. You can use them on the 1st as long as they are short enough cd's to be back up for the 3rd caustic.
Dreadmist Mar 25th 2011 1:07PM
Here are a few tips I would have. Sorry if these are repeating some earlier posts; some of the tips are probably ones you already know, but I just thought I would put it out there. As important as healers are for this fight, a little bit of pitching in by DPS can go a long way. We've downed H25 Chimaeron a number of weeks in a row.
1) Healthstones are very useful this fight, obviously. You can have DPS save them for instances where Massacre is about to hit with them still being below 10k for whatever reason. If you drop the Soul Well near the stacking area for Feud *right* before the pull, it will still be up for at least one feud phase, meaning raid members can use one and get another for the fight.
2) Self healing classes can use quick heals as well to help out during Caustic Slime/Massacre. Granted, you don't want this happening all the time as you need sufficient DPS to beat the enrage timer.
3) Along the same lines as above, help with heals during Feud can be offered by all. As a DPS shaman, I tend to drop Healing Rain when we stack, particularly on the 3rd and 4th feuds, as healer mana is running lower and raid-wide damage CDs are getting scarce. Even non-healing classes can bandage during this time, as the boss first casts Caustic Slime about halfway through Feud.
4) You may already be doing so, but be sure all healers know which Feud phase to use their raid CDs (e.g. PW:Barrier, Tranquility). Have DPS also involved in terms of spreading out abilities like Hymn of Hope.
5) 90% of our tank deaths happened during Feud. While raid-wide heal CDs need to be spread out, also ensure that tank CDs, whether intrinsic (Shield Wall, etc.) or extrinsic (Pain Suppression, etc.) are spread out for the tank during Feud.
6) When stacking (e.g. for Feud) damage from Caustic Slime is spread out among ALL targets within a small radius. This means that abilities that summon extra targets (e.g. Army of the Dead and Snake Trap) will help mitigate damage. You can have DKs pop army for Feuds later in the fight, and each Feud a hunter(s) can drop a Snake Trap on the boss.
7) For the final phase, contrary to what someone said before, Absorb shields like PW:Shield work very well; this is because of the ticking DoT that is present on heroic mode. Whilst healing is reduced by 99%, the absorbs prevent the damage in the first place, which means more DPS survives - and ultimately this phase is all about DPS.
8) Also in reference to the final phase - we found that a good strategy for us was to stack when the boss was between 20 and 25% and heal everyone to full as soon as the Massacre went out. If your DPS is decent, usually you can push him before you get too much Caustic Slime damage (if any), even if he is 23-25% when you stack. As well, rather than spreading out for the final phase, we found that staying stacked was a better move for us UNLESS movement did not affect your DPS. As an Ele Shaman I would pop Spiritwalkers Grace and move a distance away, and if you have a similar ability that allows DPS with movement go for it. Otherwise, staying stacked allowed the maximum possible burn time to get the kill, and as well you stay in range of Disc Priests for PW:Shield.
9) Finally, for individual DPS, changing around glyphs can help out. For example, as an Ele shaman I glyph for extra mana return on my Thunderstorm (because I end up helping here and there with heals - Healing Rain during stack phases, etc.) and I glyph Stoneclaw Totem for a defensive CD (an absorb shield). Many classes have some defensive glyphs, etc. that can make the difference in this encounter, and with the new glyph system, it is easier than ever to switch them around at will.
Lyacanthrope Mar 25th 2011 1:18PM
As a druid healer this fight is one of my worst. After downing him a second time tonight on normal I had gone through quite a few strategies for getting casutic slime targets back up above the 10k mark.
~The first involved using wild growth and nourish combo. While mana efficent this takes far to long and truthfully wild growth is more or less usless ticking for 2k at the start and nourish having a 2 sec ish cast 1.8ish with procs.
~After that we split our raid in two and each healer got a group with one healer tank healing and floating. I switched to regrowth spams on my flock of dps'er and found i was oom shortly after fued 2
~Finally I went Wraith style and let the 3.3k mana rejuv's fly at will and it worked beautifully, With GotEm this gets dps above 10k in a hurry at a manageable mana cost. Granted at the burn phase I went oom from spamming dots and mushrooms of death.
~As for other strategies, druid may be the greatest godsends for Fueds. Argue priests all you want but having a tree form for 2/3 fueds that can throw lifeblooms like its gong out of style, switfmend/effo, and wg to 8 targets and you have the almighty tranq to make fued 2 feel like a tickle.