Raid Rx: How to heal Hagara on heroic mode
by Matt Low 
Mar 5th 2012 at 4:00PM
For most guilds, the next step after taking down heroic Mor'chok is either Hagara or Yor'sahj. I'd say both are similar around overall difficulty level but stress different raid aspects. You're coordinating movement and position heavily in an encounter like Hagara, whereas with Yor'sahj, straight-up brute force is all that's required to do the job.
I'll break down each major phase with some of the approaches that can be used to handle the different mechanics and outline anything that's considered critical for healers to know. The 10% buff should make these bosses much more accessible now.
The DPS requirements on this encounter seem to be on the high side, since you need to break the crystals during the frost phase or else your raid group will succumb to attrition. If your healers excel, you can get away with five healers, although for learning attempts, I suggest pulling in six healers instead for the extra stability and longevity.
Intermission phase
Don't you love the intermission phases? The thrill of having healers possibly losing line of sight with the tank when Ice Tombs are up is so exciting! Luckily, you won't have to worry about that during the first phase when you start the initial pull.
Some boss mods out there are able to place icons on players that are about to get hit with an Ice Tomb. Drop shields and HoTs to buy as much time as possible for the rest of the raid to break them out of it. Compared to normal difficulty, keep in mind there's an extra tomb out there on 25-man. If you're a healer who gets stuck in a tomb, urgently signal that to the rest of your healers.
Focused Assault can catch inexperienced healers off-guard. Don't take it for granted, and load up the affected players with HoTs and mitigation abilities as needed.
Ditto for Ice Lance. Feel free to take two or three hits of them before strafing out and letting another raider take the hits. Unlike normal mode, the damage steadily increases.
Frost phase
I've heard methods starting with ranged players staying inside the bubble and DPSing outward to strategies involving running around the outside in multiple groups. My raid group stuck to having two groups on polar opposite sides of each other and relying on individual ability to weave in and our of Ice Wave as needed.
Dispel handling is the trickiest. Frostflake slows down players, and it needs to be removed so that they can continue staying ahead of Ice Waves. However, when dispelled, it leads a patch of frost on the ground that slows down movement speed of anyone standing on it. One wrong move, and the newly cleansed player ends up slowing down everyone near them.
We instructed affected players to run inside the Watery Entrenchment bubble during this phase and yell out for audible dispels (in the form of "Dispel,
If you feel confident enough, you can duck inside the bubble to let a wave bypass you if you don't think you can outrace it. As a healer, I was able to strafe inside the bubble while I get my own healing spells active and ran back out when the coast was clear. The downside is that you might end up being too far away from the rest of your group to help sustain them.
Oh, and watch out for falling Icicles. As a joke, I once got Leap of Faithed into a falling block, which shot me towards another falling block and bounced me into the Ice Wave, causing instant death. We did end up having a good laugh about it afterwards.
Lightning phase
The best method for dealing with Hagara's lightning phase is using the plus method. What we ended up doing is using six players arranged in a line from the middle of the room to the four Crystal Conductors on the outside. (If you look at it from the top down, it looks like a cross.) We kept at least one healer in each group. There's going to be one or two groups that will have an extra healer (and that's OK). Be prepared to use a raid-wide cooldown or two to buy a few additional seconds for the lightning strike to travel through the group and neutralize the crystal. Once your tank drags the elemental close to the center of the platform, it shouldn't take more than a few seconds at most to get through this phase.
If you're not sure how to array your players, I suggest keeping melee players near the middle as a start. Since they'll be adding DPS to the elemental when it's up, it makes sense for them to assume a position that's close by as opposed to forcing them to run all the way to the back of the line. Your healers can take the middle spots for the sake of healing accessibility to the group. Lastly, the ranged players can hold down the anchor at the points furthest away from the middle.
Storm Pillars aren't really much of a threat, especially if your players are spaced out appropriately.
Repeat each phase about two times and you should be able to take down this ice queen relatively easily. A typical guild can expect to spend anywhere between three to five hours.
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)
Noodlenose Mar 5th 2012 4:16PM
This plus method sounds cool. How close do you have to be to each other to make the lightning chain?
Royal Mar 5th 2012 4:52PM
I believe it is ten yards max.
For practice I would suggest before clearing the trash; line up the raid and assign positions. We had people /range 10 and look at the ground for a distinguishing marker to quickly find that spot again during the fight.
It can be rough to get 25 people to line up during the fight and figured out the range. It was funny the first couple of times watching all the lines shift around but it made the phase last way too long.
Assigned positions ensured the shortest lightning phase possible.
Also after trash is cleared you can't do practice line ups.
hwacha Mar 5th 2012 4:29PM
Wow, lightning phase in 25man sounds absurdly easy :(
I would suggest adding tactics for 10man as well. Our group splits into 2 teams of 4 and meet at the far pillar. Our healers stand toward the center for easy reach, unless we have an rshaman to run with us (helps a lot!)
rayketh Mar 5th 2012 7:24PM
Hah. It is. My boyfriend and I are in a 10man guild but he runs an alt with a 25man guild on our off nights. The difference between the 2 versions is ridiculous.
WTB 10-man version. We've been hitting our faces against this wall for a few weeks now. We actually skipped her and worked on Ultraxion first and got him down but we want to kill Hagara before Warmaster.
Diatenium Mar 5th 2012 4:41PM
A heads up for paladins: Hand of Freedom -does- dispel frostflake -and- it bypasses the slow effect of watery entrenchment, as a holy paladin this should be helpful when you just want to bypass the shenanigans of the outer rim with relative ease and for any other spec of paladin it means you should be able to clear it off you yourself (Unless you, say, get two consecutive frostflakes.
Lannden Mar 5th 2012 4:59PM
My 10 man guild has a Holy pally and a prot pally (me) doing this, it helps a lot.
TTFK Mar 5th 2012 6:42PM
"Drop shields and HoTs to buy as much time as possible for the rest of the raid to break them out of it. "
The players can continue to receive heals while in the tombs. A bigger concern is that untombed healers need to pick up slack on the tank until people start getting broken out. Watching positioning ahead of time is important to as to not lose LOS.
"We instructed affected players to run inside the Watery Entrenchment bubble during this phase and yell out for audible dispels"
The callouts can actually be eliminated altogether if healers set up their bars to show both Frostflake and Watery Enchantment, then only dispel if both debuffs are showing. Any little thing to keep the voice channels clear can help.
"What we ended up doing is using six players arranged in a line from the middle of the room to the four Crystal Conductors on the outside."
This can be done with 4 people for each conductor, especially if you have a pally stand on top of Hagara and Bubble dead center. The lightning has a 10 yard jump range, so any time you can have less people get hit, the less damage that will jump around.
The rest of the people? Stand FAR out of the way. This goes double for any pet classes, as they can cause additional jumps. We normally have pet classes position themselves at max range between the conductors on the outer ring.
As for healing the actual lightning, take the time during the add burndown to get HOTs on as many people as possible. With the damage that can fly around, especially if it takes an extra jump somewhere, every little bit helps.
Shade Mar 5th 2012 7:44PM
My guild's 25-man strategy, just for more anecdotal evidence:
Frost phase: The entire raid stacks (very) loosely around one crystal, killing it before ice waves come out. Ranged and healers then stack exactly on Hagara, from where ranged dps can attack all three remaining crystals without moving and healers will be in range to heal and dispel melee as they duck in and out to avoid the frost walls. This allows DoT casters to tick away on every crystal, making things faster for melee. Melee move in the same direction as the ice walls to kill more crystals while ranged work in the opposite direction.
Lightning phase: We use a variation of the plus method. Groups 1-4 form up in lines as usual, but group 5 forms a ring around Hagara. The ring puts more people in range of heals and allows the line-makers to have more flexibility in their spacing, most importantly keeping things quickly salvageable if someone dies.
Tips:
1) We don't use PW: Fort - it increases damage taken in the bubble during frost phase
2) The line segment connecting the originally-charged beacon to the center will take the most damage during lightning phases: try to keep your stronger healers in range of them, and stack the group with classes that have good defensive cooldowns
3) Pets count for lightning jumps - let them fill in on missing spots, but beware since they will cause an extra link if placed too close to group members
4) Ice Blocked mages count for lightning jumps as well
Grimtar Mar 6th 2012 12:09AM
We use the same frost strategy. It's far more healing-intensive, so perhaps not suited to groups low on AoE heals (lacking Shamans, Priests etc). However, it makes a perfect opportunity to use localised healing cooldowns such as Barrier and Spirit Link. It also seems to be higher DPS, and has far less probability of failure when it comes to dispels. This is because, of the melee classes, only Warriors, DKs and Shamans cannot dispel themselves. This means your (25-man) raid is only going to have 5 or so people that will need to be dispelled. Everyone else either is in the bubble and doesn't need to be dispelled, or can dispel themselves.
I should note that SLT can heal people trapped in blocks, so you may not want to use SLT in the frost bubbles. Be sure to have a position marked for stacking up blocks. The boss should be positioned so that this spot is immediately behind him, so that the tank will not get LOS. The position we use is in the middle of the triangle with it's corners in the middle of the room, the spawn point of the lightning add, and the Ice Crystal we will be blowing up before the ranged run to the centre.
As for lightning phase, we found a U strategy worked far better than the +. It's actually a lot faster if people move to positions once the add hits 50-40%, and the phase does less damage overall. The trick is to make sure you have Warriors, Warlocks, Mages or Hunters positioned on either side of the Conductors to break completed chains ASAP. Blow raid-wide tank/healing cooldowns during this phase (including off-spec Tranquility and Divine Hymn).
Jeanne Mar 5th 2012 10:04PM
Watery entrenchment is a debuff.
If the healers cleansing configure their raidframes to see Frostflake AND watery entrenchment at the same time, cleansing is ez mode. For example, I have Grid set to outline names in light blue when they're in the bubble, and put up center icons for the magic debuff. A+B = Cleanse magic, works like a charm. Note that any two indicators will work for this purpose.