Healing Morchok and Warlord Zon'ozz
by Matt Low 
Dec 2nd 2011 at 5:00PM
A new month and a new patch means new raid bosses to learn! It means new mechanics to learn, new players to work with (for some of you) and new challenges. I'm pretty sure that it's safe to say most of us were getting a little ... burned out on Firelands.
The opening bosses should present a nice warmup for the rest of the instance. We'll start with quick healing setups for Morchok and Warlord Zon'ozz. The Raid Finder iteration of these bosses shouldn't be a problem for you if you already have a history of raiding. Normal versions might present a bit of a step up.
I'm not planning to do any full breakdowns of the different bosses you'll face within Dragon Soul. What I will do is offer specific healing advice and tips that you need, as you generally don't have to worry about anything too challenging.
Morchok
Morchok is an extremely straightforward encounter to heal. If you've managed to give this boss a shot in the Raid Finder, then you'll already be familiar with most of the abilities. The main difference you can expect between the Raid Finder difficulty and normal raids is the fact that there is going to be a little more damage involved. In my experience, one tank healer is usually enough to keep the tanks alive and sustained. With the close proximity of the melee to the tank, incidental AoE healing should also help with the healing.
When Morchok pulls off his AoE earth grip (and pulls the raid toward his position), start standing behind the nearest spike. Make sure that spike is in between you and him. Back off a few yards in case you need to. I've seen first hand players still getting hit with the black slime stuff, even though the spread moves quite slow. The point is to keep those shards between you and Morchuk so that you don't get affected by the stuff on the ground. This is a great time to heal the players around you and recharge with mana cooldowns if you need to.
Once Morchok drops down below 20% health, he'll start attacking way faster. Great time to burn your healing cooldowns. Your raid should have enough options to get you over the top. Shouldn't take you more than a couple of attempts.
Loot
- Petrified Fungal Heart This is a great neck for every healer.
- Robe of Glowing Stone Personally, I may use these for my priest and pass on the tier chest for a bit.
- Mycosynth Wristguards Solid bracers for our druid friends (as well as bandage spec rogues).
- Vagaries of Time It doesn't have any spirit or anything but could still serve as a decent upgrade, especially off an opening boss.
- Pillarfoot Greaves Boots for paladins!
You think this guy is easy? Wait until you get to hard mode. You'll be getting more Morchuk, if you know what I mean.
Warlord Zon'ozz
Once you take out Morchok and head into the ruins of Wyrmrest, you have your option of heading either to Warlord Zon'ozz or to Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. I'd suggest taking down the Warlord first, but either boss will do the trick.
Once you parachute in and clear out all the trash, you'll be staring down the Warlord himself. Most raid groups will divide the raid into two groups to bounce the large void ball. Make sure the Void Diffusion doesn't hit the outer walls, or your group will be in for a real hurt.
Place half the healers with one group and the other half of the healers with the other. You can get away with having one healer on the tank, but just watch out for Focused Anger. It may be wiser to add a second healer as the encounter goes on.
Handling Disrupting Shadows This ability is a bit of a pain. While it is trivial in the Raid Finder version, Disrupting Shadows can be lethal depending on when it is dispelled. Note that it'll deal around 60,000 damage to affected players and knock them back. Make sure you heal up the player before you dispel them (or if you're an awesome priest, throw a shield on them before the dispel).
I may have killed people this way.
Definitely an accident, though.
Once the Void Diffusion runs into Zon'ozz, you will trigger a shift in the encounter and start phase 2. Collapse and merge with the other group, and start healing your butt off. You're going to need it. All in all, you should only experience four to five of these types of phases. Plan your raid cooldowns around that. This phase lasts about half a minute before it promptly boots you to the first phase again.
Loot
- Grotesquely Writhing Bracers These are for our shaman. Sadly, other than tier pieces, there aren't that many healing pieces that can be obtained off of this boss.
- Seal of the Seven Signs This is an awesome trinket. Congratulations to those of you who manage to score one! I'm jealous.
- Finger of Zon'ozz No spirit here, but the haste and mastery means you don't need to burn any points on buying a wand (or at least, not until you get other important pieces).
That's all there is to it! Next week, we'll take a closer look and summarize any healing-relevant notes on Yor'sahj and Hagara.
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: Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nazu Dec 2nd 2011 5:23PM
Good Luck Morchuk
Magicslime Dec 2nd 2011 5:35PM
"I'm pretty sure that it's safe to say most of us were getting a little ... burned out on Firelands." (Burned italicized)
Wow...that was real subtle.
I've always said that subtle was your middle name!
(And your first and your last in case they didn't get the point)
Matthew Dec 2nd 2011 5:55PM
Thanks to the Raid Finder, I'm finally seeing current content on day 1! Then I'll be more prepared for normal mode. Thanks for addressing all iterations in your article.
Everclear Dec 2nd 2011 6:31PM
Our guild is having difficulty on this one currently, and it's mind-boggling. We have a Holy Priest, Resto Druid and Resto Shaman. Between Healing Rain, Wild Growth, Efflorescence, Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing and Lightwell, we should be fine, right? But we keep wiping. From what I've seen Divine Hymn outheals Tranquility now, so I've had our healers take turns on cooldowns.
1st phase two: Tranquility and everyone AoE heals.
2nd phase two: Divine Hymn and everyone AoE heals.
3rd phase two: Spirit Link and everyone AoE heals.
And so on and so forth. They're all ilvl 378 and above. We take 5 stacks of void each time (any less and we won't make the enrage timer). Are we doing it right? Any suggestions?
TimR Dec 2nd 2011 6:42PM
I'm a resto druid. It took us about 2 hours last night until we finally downed it. Your healing makeup is identical to ours. Our group was only in 372-374 gear though. 5 ping pongs of the ball is the minimum, we might have done 7 once. We did Divine hymn on phase 1, and then both Spirit Link and Tranquility for phase 2, and then popped heroism and I popped tree for phase 3, and he died shortly after that.
The things that were wiping us were: groups not moving together to hit the ball, me dispelling the debuff at the wrong time (whoops), melee not moving far enough away when we are hitting the boss with the ball, and then just figuring out how to heal through the insane raid damage on the dark phases. We tried saving Tranquility for the third phase, but we were coming out of phase 2 so low that people would die soon after.
Everclear Dec 2nd 2011 6:49PM
Awesome! I'll take your strat into consideration, thanks. =)
As far as dispelling goes, what's considered the "right" time to? Just after you top the person off? Like, as soon as they get the debuff, big heal then dispel then re-heal again?
Finnicks Dec 2nd 2011 6:55PM
My group was doing horrible at Dispels on our few attempts.
But I'm given to understand that you want to top them off before dispelling. Also, have your priest put a PW:S on them before you dispel.
Also, you need to pay attention to the Void orb. If a person in the melee group is debuffed but the orb is heading for their group, hold off dispelling until after the orb hits them and you top them back off.
Finnicks Dec 2nd 2011 6:52PM
What blew my mind about the Warlord fight... is that the damage output is SO much higher than Morchok.
I just don't understand Blizzard's logic. The first boss hits like a complete pansy, even against a Firelands-normal geared raid in full 378 or less as opposed to 391s from heroic firelands, setting up a raid with a confidence that is then brutally and efficiently destroyed by the intensity of Warlock Zon'ozz.
The other healers and I in our 10-man finished Morchok with full mana, easily. By the time we hit the enrange timer on Warlord we were healing on fumes and the boss was still at 26% health.
WeWhoEat Dec 2nd 2011 7:21PM
I'll explain the logic. Bliz probably didn't like that so many guilds were stuck at 0 kills for weeks in firelands. With at least one "intro" boss you can start to creep gear into the raid to assist with progression.
priestessaur Dec 3rd 2011 1:21PM
I expect Blizz intended for the first boss to be "easier" in order to get guilds into DS with some early success, but normal Morchok feels under tuned. However, Blizz tries to avoid making an encounter harder once it has gone live, so it will likely stay the way it is.
Andrew Dec 2nd 2011 9:54PM
Anyone else having trouble controlling the ball? We found that it was just bouncing randomly. We tried so many different strategies, and have committed about 4 hours to making this work. We had a 5% wipe, which we were completely unable to recreate.
It seems that after hitting the ball it will move forward and then wobble a bit and go where ever it feels like
Very frustrating raid night
priestessaur Dec 3rd 2011 1:23PM
The ball bounces depending on how its hit, just like a real ball. Try to hit it in the center to keep it straight. Hitting it on the edge will put a spin on it.
Eladonra Dec 8th 2011 1:40PM
My guild ended up having to reset the instance to get the ball to behave properly. Our issue wasn't direction - it was that the ball would pass through the boss instead of deactivating (or whatever it technically does). We kept assuming it was user error and eventually did an attempt where we didn't even try to kill the boss. The entire focus was on getting the ball to blow. After focusing entirely on the ball and seeing that the mechanic wasn't working, we left and reset. We had to kill the trash again, but got 3 epic patterns so it was worth it! :-)
The reset fixed the glitch and we downed him.
David Dec 2nd 2011 10:50PM
Did this on raid finder, not attempting Dragon Soul on normal until next week. What did worry me on raid finder was that as Discipline in around FL normal quality gear I still found raid damage hella stressful. I only swapped spec from Holy a fortnight ago but now feel I might be needing to go back to it. Any Discos out there who feel this fight is still fine?
ash.p.liu Dec 3rd 2011 12:06AM
On raid finder disc raid healing the warlord isn't that stressful for me with an ilvl of 376--Manage to usually come in first or second in HPS. Glyph Prayer of Healing and PoM, keep PoM on cooldown and just spam PoH in phase 2. If you're AA/A spec, build up 5 stacks of Evangelism in phase 1 then unleash Archangel when you enter phase 2. PW:S or Penance anyone who's lower than the rest of their group and make sure your PoH is overhealing as little as possible. It might be useful to chain cooldowns: AA + PI, then AA + PW:B, then AA + Divine Hymn, then AA + PI again.
Stilhelm Dec 10th 2011 8:23AM
The raid finder version of Zon'ozz is a complete joke compared to the normal version. Anytime I've been there on LFR, heals range from 9-12k hps. On our mains run on normal, 2 healers were at 20k hps and the 3rd (mostly on tank) at 15k. Our alts can easily do Morchok and Yor'saj on normal, but aren't even close on Zon'ozz.
Oneiromancer Dec 2nd 2011 11:52PM
My 10-man raid group found Zon'ozz to be very tough to heal on our first night in the new raid. After 4 tries we went to Yor'sahj which we killed on the 3rd try, and found it to be a much easier and more forgiving fight for the healers. I'd say that Yor'sahj is a better "second fight" for the raid than Zon'ozz.
ZephyrSP Dec 5th 2011 4:41PM
Our guild is up to 3 downed in Normal DS, and it also represents my first time raid healing (Resto Shammy) in a current-content situation. Previously, I'd only healed on BoT, T4W, BH, and a whole boatload of 5 mans. That being said, my resto gear is very solid (gave the t12 helm token I got with Enhance to Resto spec for the t12 4-set)
Morchok was cake - I like the "hide behind a pillar" mechanics, so I thought it was a fun warm-up.
Yor'sahj the Unsleeping gave us a couple wipes, but wasn't too bad once you have the right priorities on killing the adds. A good chunk harder than Morchok, but nothing too bad. And I picked up a 397 dagger, joy.
Zonozz was a whole different ballgame for us though. We spent our entire raid time last night working on him alone, and I would guess we wiped at least 6-8 times.
The critical moment usually came for us in the 2nd ping-pong cycle. Specifically, after the 2nd bounce on the melee group - we did 1 holy priest on the range, my resto shammy and a holy pally on the melee/tank.
After that second bounce on the melee group in the second cycle, everything seems to hit at once. He's throwing out Disrupting Shadows, which compounds with the 2 pingpong strikes on the deeps. Meanwhile, he's blasting the tank with Psychic Drain while hopped up on Focused Anger melee strikes. And finally, this is the moment melee group has to move out of the way of the ball so it can hit him. And this is the phase between the black, which we're already having to allocate our CD's to (side note, Spirit Link totem is god for the black phase)
We finally downed him on our very last try of the night - looking forward to a change of pace with Hagara before getting rocked by Ultraxion
Suffice to say I'm not the one complaining about how easy the new raid is. Enjoying it, though!
Bubblez Feb 2nd 2012 12:54PM
I am healing this boss as a holy priest, I am doing in this fight about 18k hps as well as my counterparts a holy pally and a resto druid. We are stuck! I am healing my ass of as well as trying to dispell the dot. Divine Hymn after Cool down. I am looking for a more healing approach forum or tips.