Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing tips for tier 11 heroic mode raids
by Dawn Moore 
Jun 6th 2011 at 4:00PM
In previous weeks, Spiritual Guidance has tackled how to heal the various raid encounters in tier 11. This week, we're going to revisit each boss on heroic difficulty. Once more, I'll be examining which spec is better equipped to handle the fight while also examining the differences in the new encounter and how to deal with them. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get started.
First, I want to point out that a major difference between any heroic and normal mode encounter is that abilities in heroic do an increased amount of damage. In order to avoid being redundant, please keep in mind that when I point out the differences between modes that the need for more healing will be assumed. If the increased damage significantly impacts the strategy of the fight, however, I will explain how.
Blackwing Descent
Magmaw Preferred spec? Either, though holy might be a tiny bit stronger here. Power Word: Barrier is almost useless on this fight if you use a spread strat (not all guilds do). Power Word: Shield is good for keeping low-health targets from dying to random Magma Spit, though. Holy priests have a slight mana advantage over disc priests when Magmaw is spiked, since they recover more mana while standing around doing nothing than disc priests.
What's different? More adds and splash shadow damage on random targets sub-30%. This doesn't make a big difference for healing if your raid spreads out properly. All the same, plan to use abilities like Divine Hymn after 30% to help keep your raid up. Lightwell is great, since players are spread out. If you're really having trouble, try to arrange your spread so that players in the same group are standing closer together. This will ensure that you don't lose range on some players with Prayer of Healing.
Omnotron Defense System Preferred spec? Either. There is plenty of raid damage, both AoE and single-target, and having one of each priest type is ideal for dealing with all the different kinds of damage.
What's different? Each golem has received new abilities in its repertoire. The victim of Acquiring Target will be hit harder, which means you'll want to use a tank cooldown like Guardian Spirit or Pain Suppression on him. Raid damaging abilities are obviously harder to deal with, but the one to use Power Word: Barrier on is Shadow Conductor. Incineration Security Measure isn't nearly as devastating, and a Holy Word: Sanctuary works out quite nicely on it. Priests of both specs should also keep in mind that you can save time by using Leap of Faith on the target with Shadow Conductor to get him back into the raid sooner.
Maloriak Preferred spec? Either. Holy is strong during the black phase for healing the raid damage, while disc could almost be considered mandatory for Scorching Blast on the red phase, since the damage is now quite strong.
What's different? A new phase, the black phase, requires a lot of raid healing, since the Dark Sludge spawned by the Vile Swill isn't always avoidable by melee. That's good for holy priests and spot healing disc priests. A new ability in this phase, Engulfing Darkness, is channeled on the main tank and reduces healing. A disc priest shield is very helpful to get the tank through the duration of the channel. Lightwell is still great on blue phase.
Atramedes Preferred spec? Holy, though Atramedes is very popular for discipline priests trying to shield spam their way to a record healing parse on World of Logs. There is a lot more random raid damage in the fight than anything else, which means holy shines. Being able to move around faster with Body and Soul is also helpful when you need to dodge Sonar Pulse. You can dodge them no problem without Body and Soul, but the speed bonus means you can get where you're going faster and start healing again sooner.
What's different? Almost nothing. To date, the fight has been nerfed so many times that the differences between heroic and normal for healers is insignificant. Making sure your raid is topped off before Searing Flame is a little bit more important, but even if half the DPS die during the span of the encounter, you should be able to down the boss. (You can use Power Word: Barrier on Searing Flame, too, but that would imply you went disc for this fight, silly.)
Chimaeron Preferred spec? Discipline. The fight isn't dramatically harder on normal if your healers check their egos and work together. Disc is ideal for spamming Power Word: Shield in phase 2 (when players become immune to healing), but a holy priest specced into Soul Warding is plenty effective.
What's different? The major difference is that when Finkle's Bile-O-Tron robot is knocked offline, Chimaeron will attack the tank instead of fighting itself. Plan to use a tank cooldown, Guardian Spirit, or Pain Suppression whenever the bot is down. You can also use Barrier and Holy Word: Sanctuary to deal with the increased damage from Caustic Slime while the bot is offline.
Nefarian Preferred spec? Discipline. The increased heroic damage makes reoccurring abilities like Electrocute extremely dangerous to your raid's well-being. Disc will be strong because of Power Word: Barrier, which takes the edge off Electrocute. After that, disc single-target healing is preferred because raid damage is relatively light (outside of Electrocute) and because most of the time, your raid is separated into smaller-sized groups.
What's different? Explosive Cinders in phase 2 will require players to temporarily leave their platforms so as to not kill your group with the detonation. These players will require hard healing but nothing unmanageable. You'll want to use Pain Suppression (or Guardian Spirit if you choose not to follow my advice) when you or a fellow healer on the same platform gets Explosive Cinders. This will help to ease the amount of extra healing required from Explosive Cinders when a healer is preoccupied. I would recommend grabbing Desperate Prayer in the holy tree for this fight in case you have to jump in the lava more than once.
Throne of the Four Winds
The Conclave of Wind Preferred spec? Either. In general, this fight isn't about what spells or abilities you have in your toolbox, just that you use some sort of healing spell at the right time in the right place.
What's different? There are new abilities in the fight, but nothing that will dramatically change the way you heal. Just focus on being where you're supposed to be and dodging Wind Blast if you end up on Rohash's platform.
Al'akir Preferred spec? Holy. Serendipity is strong on most fights, but on this fight in particular, being able to heal bomb a player with a speedy Greater Heal is almost essential to surviving the duration of Lightning Strike. Your single-target Chakra shines here because of Holy Word: Sanctuary, which beats out Penance by being instant. Being able to sprint with Body and Soul is also great for moving in for Wind Bursts and out for Squall Lines. You'll want to grab Soul Warding so you can have a little bit more healing during Lightning Strike than you would normally.
What's different? Lightning Strike, as I already mentioned, is especially volatile because of its 30-second duration. Nothing else should stand out for healers though.
The Bastion of Twilight
Halfus Wyrmbreaker Preferred spec? Discipline, though not because of Smite spamming (that has ceased to be necessary or viable like it once was.) Instead, you want to use disc because there are so many tanks required for the fight, and a Power Word: Barrier can be used to apply a cooldown to all of them at once. Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit are handy here as well.
What's different? Having all the drakes out at once means tank damage is intense at times. You can deal with this like you usually do as disc or holy, but try to stay ahead so you don't end up having to use your cooldowns outside of when the tanks call for them.
Valiona and Theralion Preferred spec? Either. Disc is good for placing Power Word: Barrier when your group gathers up for Blackout or to port down to the twilight realm. Holy priests are good at keeping the raid heals going while dodging the various stuff on the ground. Holy will want to shy away from spamming HoTs, though, in case they get targeted by Engulfing Magic.
What's different? A shadowy twilight realm was added to the fight, but nothing about it is specific to priests. There is still plenty to heal, though.
Ascendant Council Preferred spec? Holy. The sheer amount of random raid damage is best tackled by holy priests. Body and Soul is extremely useful for getting to a Gravity Well or tornado (Call Winds).
What's different? There are extra abilities added to the first two phases. Gravity Core in phase 1 is great for priests of either spec. Simply have your priest stand outside the raid stack and use Life Grip on the player who receives the debuff. This will ensure the ability doesn't tick inside the raid. In phase 2, Leap of Faith is also useful for grabbing players to an ideal location to kite frozen orbs through flame patches.
Cho'gall Preferred spec? Holy, for the same reasons I stated in my original guide to Cho'gall. The ability to switch between Chakra stances lines up perfectly with the cooldown on Chakra (something we still need to be mindful of, even when the duration is unlimited). Disc priests can be useful, however, if your raid decides to force one player to Corruption: Absolute. Fully corrupted players are immune to healing, but they can still be shielded.
What's different? Unfortunately, very little. I guess the developers thought the normal version of this fight was interesting enough for healers already, that raising the tuning on it all was enough.
Sinestra Preferred spec: Holy, because of how you can use Guardian Spirit on your first Wrack target. By dispelling Wrack later, you make all the derivative dispelling easier, so if you Guardian Spirit a player who is about to take a lethal tick of the first application of Wrack, you'll be buying yourself more time later.
What's different? Wait a minute ... There is no normal mode! If you've made it this far, congratulations. Your talent and hard work that has gotten you to this point should get you through this fight. Prayer of Healing is ridiculously good on this fight, particularly before Flame Breath. If you learn to time that up right, you'll be in good shape. Do keep in mind that in phase 3 Essence of the Red will eventually wear off. Healing will get very intense at that time, so plan your mana regen cooldowns around that part of the fight so you'll have enough mana to heal the damage.
Spiritual Guidance has the inside line on pre-raid gear, valor point and raid gear, and healing strategies for bosses such as Atramedes and Chimaeron. Newcomer to the priest class? Look into Discipline Priest 101 and Holy Priest 101.
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Flolyn Jun 6th 2011 4:30PM
Under Al'akir I believe you meant Holy Word: Serenity, not Sanct.
BB Crisp Jun 6th 2011 6:13PM
"... though not because of Smite spamming (that has ceased to be necessary or viable like it once was.)"
Did Blizzard hotfix a nerf to it or something? It was my understanding that it became much, much stronger after 4.2 when HF was buffed and added to the mix. The only reason I'm not using it right now is I prefer to go holy for the 4-piece bonus and my other spec is shadow for those oh-so-rare instances I'm needed for dps.
aMac Jun 6th 2011 9:14PM
The thing about Atonement not being as useful now is that the bonus damage (and thus healing) is only applied once a dragon actually dies, rather than when it's released.
This means that by the time Atonement healing becomes overpowered, you've already killed 2-3 dragons and the damage going out is much lighter than it was. Basically, the hard part of the fight is the first minute or so of the encounter when atonement is of no use.
It's still great to smooth the fight out after you've survived the hard part of the encounter making it pretty much a guaranteed kill (assuming no one misses interrupts or tank swaps) but it's no longer essential.
Artemisian Jun 6th 2011 11:43PM
I believe there's also a cap to Atonement healing now, but I might be confused about that.
BB Crisp Jun 7th 2011 2:17AM
Ah, so that was more so a reference to that specific fight rather than atonement healing in general. I forgot about the damage buff against Halfus making it overpowered.
oestrus Jun 6th 2011 7:10PM
A few more additional holy pointers, if I may:
For Maloriak, while disc is great for preventing damage from the Scorching Blast, holy is also great for cleaning up the damage afterwards very quickly. I usually drop a Lightwell shortly before it hits and people can suck down the charges to help the healers get them back up to full. That combined with all of our other AOE healing tools makes that a breeze for us. I've actually never considered using the Lightwell on anything other than the red phase, but I'll certainly give it a try during the blue phase some time.
Again, I also found having Lightwell to be useful for Halfus, specifically for the healing that can be gained from it while stunned. Very big help there!
I don't think there's a fight I've encountered so far that I thought I couldn't handle as a holy priest, so I'm really glad that you covered both angles and included a little something for everyone.
Nice work, Dawn! :)
Yams Jun 7th 2011 4:58AM
"Holy will want to shy away from spamming HoTs, though, in case they get targeted by Engulfing Magic."
Except, you know, our mastery stacks HoTs on every person we heal. Watching a holy priest with Engulfing Magic is like watching a hundred mages standing on top of each other spamming Arcane Explosion. Quite fancy!
kaosgrace Jun 7th 2011 6:20AM
Yeah, a couple of Renews on the raid are the *least* of our problems there. I think we explode worse than druids...I can have a 1-secnd-tick Mastery hot and a 3-second-tick Glyph hot going on all 10 people in the raid at the same time plus all their pets, plus my always-up Renew on the tank, plus Lightwell on whoever decided to click it just then...yeah.
chrissie Jun 7th 2011 5:29AM
Oh, awesome! Haven't found much on this site yet regarding the strategies for harder fights, so I was happy to see this post. :))
Since the focus here seems to be on Holy, popping in with some notes from tank-healing in 10-mans as Disc:
Magmaw -- Power Word: Barrier is actually pretty useful in that it gives you an external cooldown for the Magmaw tank by alternating Pain Suppression and Barrier after every spike phase, when s/he still has the Mangle debuff up and Lava Spew is coming out. Probably not as big a deal in 25-mans, but great for 10-mans, where you might be the only healer with any external CDs at all.
Atramedes -- Shield spam is boring, but effective on this fight, and there's no real need to stop healing on the run when most of what you're casting is instant. The main thing is mana management. You can use Prayer of Healing for Divine Aegis instead of blanket shields before a big AoE pulse; it absorbs less, but probably enough to ensure that nobody gets gibbed, which is our main job. Let the Druids top the meters getting people up in between (or, if you're really good at timing it, do it yourself with more PoH! I, sadly, am not.)
Al'Akir -- Phase One is mostly very light damage interspersed with bursts of very intense damage; what this means is that it's fine to blow through some extra mana during the intense periods, because you'll more than likely have enough time to regen it back afterwards. Don't be afraid to make liberal use of Flash Heal; mana can always be regained, while death can only be cured once per pull. I usually go into Phase Two with almost full mana after a Mana Tide, saving Shadowfiend for just before the Bloodlust to push Phase Three and Hymn of Hope for the brief lull at the beginning of Phase Three. A well-timed Divine Hymn (make sure you use it right after a Squall Line passes, and not within range of Static Shock) with Bloodlust up, followed by Tranq and Barrier, can put raid health in a nice spot for Phase Three.
Desperate Prayer is your friend on this fight!
For Phase Three, um, I admit to being terrible at judging distance in 3D, so I cheat by keybinding Follow and spamming it on our raid leader (or, if he gets Lightning Rod, someone else whom I trust not to lead me to my death.) >_> I still need to do a bit of moving about after getting tossed out by Wind Burst, or if I get Lightning Rod myself, but it means less time spent with my own horrible depth perception. Probably not necessary for most, but for those who share my problem, it can be an option.
Valiona and Theralion -- While PW: Barrier is indeed OP for Blackout, Prayer of Healing spam when the Blackout cooldown dips under 15 secs also means a strong enough Divine Aegis on everyone that Blackout damage is minimal.
Ascendant Council -- This is the only fight where I wish I were Holy, and the reason is Body and Soul for orb kiting. Lacking that, there's no reason not to switch to Inner Will in Phase Two -- damage is pretty negligible when it's not a one-shot -- and points in Inner Sanctum would probably help, too.
Also, as Dawn mentioned, Life Grip is incredibly useful in Phase Two for helping out orb kiters trapped in unfortunate positions.
Cho'gall -- Atonement spec not only helps with the berserk timer, which is fairly strict, but also means an extra healing CD for tricky fire or shadow phases with Archangel. It does mean you'll be doing less healing in between while building up Evangelism stacks, but with proper timing, it shouldn't be a problem.
Sinestra -- Haven't tried her yet, aside from one pull with half the raid already hearthed out. :( Looking forward to it!
kaosgrace Jun 7th 2011 6:24AM
"For Phase Three, um, I admit to being terrible at judging distance in 3D, so I cheat by keybinding Follow and spamming it on our raid leader"
Yeah, I have alternate hotbars set up for p3 with /follow tankname macroed into all my spells.
reginald.drummond Jun 7th 2011 10:29AM
Dawn what happened to CoH pod cast?
Dawn Moore Jun 7th 2011 12:04PM
I haven't made a statement about it yet so I'll go ahead and give you the full heads up.
We're recording a new podcast today or tomorrow (I just got back from MLG) but with new commitments I don't have time to edit it anymore in our current format. I've been talking with Kina a lot about solutions and we don't have a solid one yet. We're going to talk about it on the show today.
The problem is production of the show, for me, takes at least 9 hours of time, if not 12 . About 3 hours are spent one day recording, and then the other 6-9 are spent on another day to edit. That means I'm basically losing an entire work day to put the show together, every week. Once I add in work, wow insider, and raiding, it becomes a lot harder to manage. Kina and Matt have offered to help in any way they can, but the help that I need taken on is either too much of a time commitment or too technically advanced for them.
Anyway, the problem is the sound quality you guys have become accustomed to is not something that just came about from buying new mics, it came about primarily from me changing the way that I record and edit the show. In the old format from last year, I could cut the show in 30 minutes and post it, but to get the quality we have now I have to individually manipulate each track of audio, and there are at least 2 tracks for me and Kina every show. More people, means more tracks. I've looked around endlessly for software with a magic button that fixes the background noise but it really doesn't exist.
Solutions are various... We could hire someone to do the grunt work of the editing, but it's not a fun, creative, or rewarding task to do, so I don't see myself finding a competent editor who would take the job up voluntarily. I could pay someone, but that would imply there was money to pay them with. We could construct some sound proof enclosures but that requires space neither of us have, and again, money. The best no cost solution we have is recording late at night, and that will cut Matticus from the show entirely. It also means we're alway recording when we're tired and having guests becomes very difficult. I could also, as the most extreme option, dump more time into the show, make it into a podcast + vid cast, and hope that we get more viewers/listeners to the point that I could get a sponsor to help with the time sink cost of it all, or get enough views that we could get partner on youtube. Getting partner on youtube would require switching to a general wow cast instead of a healing cast though, since healing and raiding are too niche to get the viewership you'd need on youtube to apply.
I know that most of you would prefer regular updates to perfect sound quality, but I am not the kind of person who is happy to release something with very poor quality. I don't like people complaining about the audio being bad every time I put up a new one, which happened prior to me taking on this new production method when we relaunched in December. Many people who listen to our podcasts do it in their cars, not on headphones, and that means the audio has to be top notch to sound good over road noise and four, probably cheap, speakers.
Anyway, we're still discussing solutions. We'll be discussing it on the show so you can hear our thoughts on it all.