Boss Tactics: Opera Event – Wizard of Oz aka The Crone

As a side note, I realized that I forgot the loot section on a few of the previous posts; this has been corrected!

This is one of the more rare Opera events, for me at least. We get BBW most of the time, Galadria says they did too. Between the two of us we’ve probably seen this one 4 or 5 times! This one seems complicated on the surface, but if you get everyone coordinated and doing their job it will go smoothly. You actually fight 6 mini bosses in this one; Dorothee, Tito, Roar, Strawman, Tinhead, when those go down The Crone spawns.

Encounter Mechanics

Phase 1

When the curtain goes up, Dorothee, Roar, Strawman, and Tinhead will be standing there. They become active in that order in quick sucession. I can’t find hard data, but it seems like Dorothee spawns Tito sometime after Strawman enters the fight; if someone knows when she summons him please comment! 

We’ll start at the top with Dorothee. She has no aggro table and cannot be tanked. She will shoot Water Bolts (can’t be interrupted) at random raid members until she dies. You should kill her first.

Roar is next, he will has an AOE fear but is susceptible to fear himself. A Warlock or Hunter fear (the cooldown on Fear Beast will mean he’s going to be unfeared for about 10 seconds, have an OT hold him or the Hunter’s pet deal with it) is best for him. He will sometimes run out of the doors when he is feared and has been known to bug out, there doesn’t seem to be a way around it. He should be killed after Dorothee.

Strawman has a high chance to get a disorient debuff when hit with Fire damage. A Mage or Warlock can easily tank him, and sometimes kill Strawman by himself. If you don’t have a Mage or Warlock a Searing Totem and Fire Elemental from a Shaman can do the trick in a pinch or you can kill him first and heal through the Water Bolts from Dorothee. You can save him for last, there shouldn’t be much left when you get around to him.

Tinhead hits rather hard and needs to be tanked. He gains a rust debuff as the fight goes on and will walk progressively slower allowing the tank to kite him. This tank will need a healer early on but shouldn’t take many hits as rust debuff stacks up. Tinhead should be killed after Roar, have the tank continue to kite him as he is being killed; there’s no reason to use healer mana when the tank doesn’t have to take any hits.

Dorothee will summon Tito at some point. He silences casters and should be tanked. Have an OT pick him up when he spawns. Finish off whatever target you are killing when Tito spawns, kill him and return to the kill order. It doesn’t really matter when you kill Tito, just make sure Dorothee dies before he does or she will enrage.

Phase 2

After all of them are dead, The Crone will spawn in the middle of the room. A tank should be ready to pick her up. She has 2 abilities, a chain lightning and cyclones. The chain lightning is cast on random raid members and can chain up to 5 targets. It is unavoidable but easy to heal through. Her cyclones will move around the room and pick up raid members. They no longer cause damage but you do take falling damage. Also there is no stun so instant cast spells are still available. These can and should be avoided. You will need to assign one person to watch the tank and instruct him/her to move when necessary (tanks can’t always see their surroundings!)

Getting through Phase 1 is the hard part. Once you get to The Crone it’s all downhill from there!

Shadow Priest Specifics from Vladvin

The only thing I can think of for a Shadow Priest is to help the OT if he has trouble picking up Tito. Throw a MF to slow him so the OT doesn’t have to chase him quite as far. Of couse this meant Tito will be coming for you… but if the tank needs help with a pick up I consider the risk worth it.

Holy Priest Specifics from Galadria

This fight has a lot of raid damage. You should consider assigning one healer to heal the Water Bolts. Any healer can do this job. Set Dorothee to be your focus and make an assist macro (/assist focus). Then hit the macro throw that person a heal and hit the macro again. Rinse. Repeat. A Renew should be sufficient to heal up the damage unless they get double targeted.

Your Warlock or Mage shouldn’t take any damage from Strawman, but keep an eye on them just in case something goes wrong.

Priest Loot

• Blue Diamond Witch Wand
• Ruby Slippers
• Wicked Witches Hat
• Trial Fire Trousers
• Ribbon of Sacrifice

Object of the Encounter

As I’ve said several times, the Opera events are easy but chaotic. A small test of coordination before moving on to Curator!

Boss Tactics: Nightbane

As a side note, I’m going a little out of the order I had planed on but these are the fights I have good screenshots for.  Deal with it 🙂 

Nightbane is usually one of the last fights a guild will attempt. You have to complete the Medivh’s Journial quest line order to summon him and it’s usually a good idea to have the Prince fight mastered before you attempt Nightbane. If your tank can handle Prince and you have enough DPS to get through it, Nightbane isn’t much harder.

Encounter Mechanics

Nightbane is an alternating 2 Phase fight; he takes off into the air at 25%, 50%, and 75% health. Positioning is key for this encounter. The tank needs to stand in a specific spot in order to pick up Nightbane when he lands. What we call the “magic skull” is in the picture below (Yellow Circle on the right). It tends to shift in and out of view so you may have to move your camera angle to find it. Have your tank stand on the outer wall directly across from that skull for a clean pick-up (Green Circle on the left, also the guy marked with the circle in-game). Everyone else needs to stand at max range to avoid getting squished if the pick-up isn’t perfect.

Ground Phase 

Nightbane has a frontal attack and a tail swipe so the raid needs to stay at range and Nightbane needs to be positioned properly:

He should be perpendicular to the railing so that melee can get close enough to attack and ranged won’t get hit by the frontal or tail attacks, as shown above. Melee should aim for his ribcage. In addition Nightbane periodically does an AOE fear, Tremor Totems are helpful and Fear Ward should be on the tank whenever it’s available but stance-dancing is a must so that Nightbane stays in the correct position (if the tank runs in fear, Nightbane is going to follow him and tail-swipe the raid). The strategy we use is to have the ranged split up between the north and south sides of Nightbane, with at least one healer on each side. That way if one side gets feared or gets trapped behind Charred Earth out of range, the other side is there to keep the tank alive.

The last hurdle in the ground phase is that patches of Charred Earth will appear on the ground that will damage anyone standing in it. The picture above is a little hard to see, but you can see the patch of Charred Earth, and Deadly Boss Mods has put “Charred Earth” in the middle of my screen.  If you’re having trouble seeing the Charred Earth, turn your Spell Detail up. Keep moving away from the Charred Earth until the warning goes away since the visual edges of the area aren’t quite the same as the actual edges.

Air Phase 

When he takes off into the air, a few things happen. Nightbane will cast “Rain of Bones” and you will get 5 non-elite skeletons that need to be killed. They have about 13.5k health.

 

It is best for the raid to stack up on one person to the side of where Nightbane was so that the tank can pick up the adds easily. As you can see, we are basically standing on top of each other and the Restless Skeletons are all in easy range for the tank to pick up.  We have found that it works best for the adds to be focus-fired down as AOE tends to be too mana intensive. Choose one DPS and assist them (create a macro that says “/assist PlayerName” or if you want to be more generic, “/assist focus” and set your focus to whoever your raid chooses). You do need to be careful about where your raid stands, anyone who gets more than 40 yards away from where Nightbane lands will get hit with Fireball Barage, it hits for about 3k a second.  If you split the raid the other side should still join the group for the air phase and stay until Nightbane is properly positioned. Then they can run through Nightbane’s ribcage to the other side.

The person with the highest healing aggro in the air phase gets hit with Smoking Blast. This is mitigatable by armor so if you have a Pally they should spam heal to take the damage (read Galadria’s article about it, most of the good info is in the comments). Nightbane will also cast Distracting Ash on random raid members.  This does very little damage and is’t really worth the mana to dispell.  Once the adds are down, the tank should return to the pick-up position and the raid stay at range until Nightbane is positioned properly.

A big thing to realize here is that most healing groups can’t be responsible for EVERYONE’s health. Nightbane hits like a freight train and healers need to conserve mana to make sure the tank stays alive. DPS needs to carry heave Netherweave Bandages, use Healthstones if available and if possible save potion cooldowns for health pots.

This fight requires everyone to be on their game. Tanks need to know how to effectively work around the fear and have the gear to deal with a heavy hitter. Healers need to be able to heal the tank and deal with possible widespread raid damage. Most importantly everyone has to be aware of their surroundings! Each person is responsible for knowing if they are standing in Charred Earth and get out of it as quickly as possible.

Shadow Priest Specifics from Vladvin

In this encounter you might want to be careful about using SW:D. If you’ve just gotten a crit and Charred Earth comes up right below you it could mean bye-bye mana battery. I’m not telling you not to use it, just be careful. Use your bandages and healthstones. This fight can be very healing intensive so be responsible for your own health bar. Be careful with range. You’re going to have to be closer in order to be within Mind Flay range so you have less wiggle room to get out of Charred Earth and not get close enough to be tail swiped. Just be aware of what’s going on around you.

Holy Priest Specifics from Galadria

This fight can be very healing intensive. Nightbane hits really hard and if you have raiders who aren’t used to being mobile in boss fights there can be a lot of raid damage from Charred Earth. Priests are probably better for raid healing in this encounter. Keep a Frisbee and Renew on the tank and throw heals to anyone in the raid who needs them. In phase 2 you’ll need to hold back on doing anything for a little bit. Let someone with more armor take the aggro for the Smoking Blast. Right when the Rain of Bones starts I like to Frisbee my self, Fade, and Shield. If you do get some attention from Nightbane in phase 2 make judicious use of Binding Heal, it’s got less threat and will heal someone else who needs it. This can be a long fight so it’s a good idea to use your Shadowfiend and potions early so you can use them again late in the fight.

Key Players

Any player with any ability to provide protection against fear is nice in this encounter, especially if your tank isn’t a Warrior.

Some strats out there will tell you to take up to 5 healers. That simply isn’t necessary, in fact you’re more likely to get good use out of extra DPS to make the fight go quicker. This fight (as do many others) tends to get harder the longer it goes on.

Priest Loot

• Emberspur Talisman
• Nightstaff of the Everliving
• Robe of the Elder Scribes
• Talisman of Nightbane

Object of the Encounter

Nightbane and Prince are what I would call “raid check” fights. These encounters will tell you if your raid is ready to move on to harder content. Your tank has to be able to handle a hard hitter. Healers need to be able to handle the incoming damage. Your DPS needs to be strong enough to get you through the fight at a reasonable pace. Everyone has to be mobile and aware of their surroundings. All of these are important for moving on to 25-man content.

SuperCoolPoints

Guy: Listen to me ___. I’m not the first guy who fell in love with a woman that he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground.
Girl: I know. It all sounds like some bad movie. 

 

Boss Tactics: The Curator

In order to get to Curator you’ll need to go in the back door.  After leaving the front door, go down the path a little ways and you’ll see a small river on your left, cross the river and go around the corner of the building.  Go up the stairs, and up, and up, and up until you cross a small bridge and enter the back door.  Once you get inside go to your left and up the ramp, then up more stairs, until you get into Curator’s room. [Edit: see comments, there is a second way to get to the back half of Kara]

Encounter Mechanics

Curator is an alternating 2 phase fight. Once you have cleared the trash pulls around the room Curator pats in (be very careful, his agro radius is HUGE, you mostly have to glue your butt to the wall) you need to organize your raiders before pulling. All ranged DPS and healers need to spread out in 2 or 3 rows, using Deadly Boss Mods to space yourselves properly (you won’t be able to space out all the way before pulling and DBM won’t show up until you engage, but you need to be organized and know which row you will be in before pulling).  You can see our group spread out behind Curator in the screenie.

Every 10 seconds Curator will spawn an Astral Flare (shown by the yellow arrow above). The flares have a chain lightning that will damage anyone near and chain to others. Melee can follow the flares around and help kill them, but it’s important for the ranged to stand still. They will get hit with the lightning, but if they move around it will just spread the lightning around to more people. Flares need to be burned down quickly, if you get 2 or 3 Flares out at the same time it can easily wipe your raid. To facilitate targeting it is a good idea to use a targeting macro: /target Astral Flare. Once a Flare goes down start spamming the macro and as soon as you get the next one targeted resume DPS.

Curator’s other ability in Phase 1 is Hateful Bolts. He will throw a Hateful Bolt to the raid member (excluding the tank) with the highest health. This can easily be healed through. If you have a tank with some Arcane resist gear you can have him be the bolt soaker, just make sure to have a healer assigned to top him off. Since the Bolt soaking tank will need to be at high health all the time he needs to stay with Curator and not DPS the Flares.

When Curator runs out of mana, he goes into Phase 2, called Evocation just like a Mage, and regens all of his mana. He takes 200% [Edit, see comments: WoWWiki says 300% damage, I’m not sure I belive that, but the point is that he takes LOTS of extra damage!] damage during this phase and there is no aggro so all out DPS is called for. However, any remaining Flares need to be taken care of before DPS on Curator; some groups will have melee peel off and move to Curator early to help with running time. When he has regained all of his mana he returns to Phase 1. Rinse and Repeat (In our early attempts we would go through 3 or 4 Evocations, now we get him down to about 10% in the first one).

[Edit: At 15% health Curator will enrage and stop spawning Astral Flares.  The Hateful Bolts will come more often and his melee attacks hit harder.  However with no flares it goes quickly!]

As a side note, Curator is immune to Arcane damage so all you NElf’s out there won’t be able to use Sharshards.

Key Players

Tree Druids are helpful in this encounter. The damage from flares is not significant but is wide spread and HOT’s on everyone will take care of it. I also recommend no more than 3 melee in this fight unless you have OP’ed and/or very skilled healers. An Arcane resist tank is helpful but by no means necessary.

Some arcane resist won’t hurt anyone in this fight (the trinket from one of the Kara quest chains comes to mind) but it’s not necessary and I’d almost say that it’s better to maintain higher DPS than to reduce incoming damage. If you have weak healers, it’s an option to consider.

Shadow Priest Specifics from Vladvin

This is the first fight where I’ve got something special for the Spriest! Stay on Curator the whole time. In order to be a good mana battery you need a target that will stay alive long enough to get a VE up and do some damage to it. Even with an undergeared group the Flares will only be around for 10-15 secs. That’s not enough time to do anything worthwhile. If you stay on Curator the whole time you can use your normal spell rotation and be a good mana battery (to yourself and the other casters in your raid). You do need to save the extras for Evocation. Wait to use Devouring Plauge if applicable, trinkets, and your Shadowfiend for the Evocation since they will all be more effective with Curator taking extra damage.

Holy Priest Specifics from Galadria

My usual role in this encounter is to heal the Melee DPS and keep the Hateful Bolt soaker topped off. This works quite well for us. I keep Renews on all of the Melee (and the MT) and throw a Flash Heal if necessary. When the Bolt soaker takes a hit, Greater Heal and Renew to make sure he’s topped off for the next Bolt. I also like to throw a Lightwell in the middle of the area where the ranged are standing, that way Melee can make a quick tap right after a Flare goes down and get a little extra healing before the next one. Just like the SPriests, save your Shadowfiend for Evocation, you’ll get a full mana bar with the extra damage curator takes. [Edit: Keep an eye out for the enrage, the tank will be taking spike damage, but there will be no more Flare damage]

Priest Loot

• T4 Gloves – Handwraps of the Incarnate or Gloves of the Incarnate
• Staff of Infinite Mysteries
• Pauldrons of the Solace Giver

Object of the Encounter

This encounter is a gear check to see if your raid is ready to progress into the back half of Kara. Curator hits reasonably hard so your tank needs decent gear. The Flares have 12000 HP and need to be taken with in 10 seconds before the next one spawns. That means your raid needs to be doing at least 1200 burst DPS, not hard to achieve but not easy for an under geared group. This fight can be tough on healers if the DPS isn’t fast enough, but the larger hurdle that I see is healer organization. There is widespread raid damage so it can look like the healer assigned to heal the raid isn’t pulling their weight. The MT healer needs to trust that the raid healer will get his job done because if he leaves the MT to help heal the raid too often the tank can die. This is a common problem among healers and a fight like this really brings it to the surface.

Boss Tactics: Opera Event – Romulo and Julianne

These two star-crossed lovers are probably the easiest of the 3 Opera events, and if you’re not a Tailor, probably the most desired by Holy Priests; the Masquerade Gown is quite mice (and very pretty to boot!)

Encounter Mechanics

This is basically a 3 phase fight. You fight and kill Julianne, then Romulo, then both together (sound familiar anyone?). In the last phase, if they don’t die within 10 seconds of each other the remaining one will resurrect the other and you have to kill them all over again.

Julianne is a caster and can heal. She has a couple of ranged attacks that she will cast on random raid members. Romulo is Rogue-ish. He has a cleave-like ability and can also attack behind him.

Phase 1

When the curtain comes up, you will fight Julianne by herself. Her casting should be interrupted whenever possible. If you are light on players that can interrupt, focus on the heal, Eternal Affection. It heals for about 50k so this can really hurt if she gets the cast off. Devotion should be your next priority, it is a buff she gives to herself that increases her Holy damage by 50% and casting speed by 50%. Her last two abilities are Powerful Attraction and Blinding Passion. Powerful Attraction is a 6 second stun. This can be a problem if it lands on a healer, but otherwise is not a big deal. Blinding Passion is a painful DOT that totals for about 6k; it shouldn’t kill anyone that’s topped off, but whoever gets it needs to be healed.

For easy pick up in phase 3, make sure Julianne dies in a corner, I like to put her in the front right one. When she is getting low, have your Romulo tank move to the center of the room to pick him up when she dies.

Phase 2

When Julianne Dies, Romulo will spawn in the center of the room, your tank should be there to pick him up. He has a frontal cleave (Deadly Swathe) and a backwards attack (Backward Lunge) that has a knockback. For this one, instead of having the tank with his back to the wall, turn the other way and allow melee to put their back to the wall so they don’t loose time running back and the ranged just need to stay out of the Swathe. Be sure to heal through the Backward Lunge. [Edit: see comment from Mal, you can put Romulo’s back to the wall and Melee stand beside him, avoiding the cleave AND Backward Lunge]  He also has a poison attack that reduces all stats, be sure to remove this if possible since it stacks. Lastly he has a buff that he gives to himself that increases physical damage dealt and increases attack speed. This should be stolen or dispelled if possible.

We like to put him in the back left corner (basically as far away from each other as possible for phase 3). Just as before, your Julianne tank should move to her body when Romulo is getting low.

Here is a diagram showing positioning. Since I can’t seem to get an Opera that’s not BBW, you’ll just have to ignore Grandma in the middle 🙂

Phase 3

All the same abilities and interrupts apply to this phase, you just have both at the same time. There are a couple of strategies that all work for killing both within 10 seconds of each other.

First, you can split DPS. Have half your raid go to Julianne and the other half to Romulo. The RL will need to watch the health of both mobs and move DPS around as necessary. A Mage or a Hunter are good choices to move around if they aren’t going down evenly. When one dies, all DPS go to the other to make sure they die quickly.

The other option is to burn one down to about 10% and the switch to the other. When they die, switch back and finish the last one off. There are arguments both ways for which one you kill first. IMO it doesn’t really matter. Whatever you do, make sure there are enough that stick with Julianne the whole time to interrupt her. She will heal Romulo, but if you keep them separated, he should be out of range.

Key Players

Players that can interrupt are nice. Julianne casts a lot of things and if you can interrupt them all, why not do it. All of the interrupt effects work except for Silence. It is also recommended for a Mage to steal Julianne’s buff since it increases casting speed.

Shadow Priest Specifics from Vladvin

If you are the only player available to dispel, it’s probably a good idea to dispel the Blinding Passion. That’s all I’ve got!

Holy Priest Specifics from Galadria

Neither Romulo or Julianne hit very hard on the tanks so it’s not difficult to heal them. When fighting Julianne, keep the raid topped off so that Blinding Passion won’t kill anyone before you can heal them. Same thing with the Melee when fighting Romulo. You don’t want the Backward Lunge to one-shot anyone. If you have a trinket or Will of the Forsaken if you’re Undead use it to get out of the Powerful Attraction. Having a healer stunned can be difficult to deal with.

Priest Loot

• Masquesrade Gown
• Trial Fire Trousers – shared
• Ribbon of Sacrifice – shared

Object of the Encounter

As I said with BBW, the Opera encounters aren’t very difficult, just a little chaotic. This one is probably the easiest and will test your raid leaders ability to manipulate raid assignments on the fly, and your raiders ability to follow directions.  However, Netherspite is a much bigger test of this concept!

SuperCoolPoints

For 10 Points:

“[talking to Anna about Bob Marley] He had this idea. It was kind of a virologist idea. He believed that you could cure racism and hate… literally cure it, by injecting music and love into people’s lives. When he was scheduled to perform at a peace rally, a gunman came to his house and shot him down. Two days later he walked out on that stage and sang. When they asked him why – He said, ‘The people, who were trying to make this world worse… are not taking a day off. How can I? Light up the darkness.’ “

Boss Tactics: Maiden of Virtue

This fight is optional, you don’t have to do it unless you want to get Keanna’s Log for the quest and even then you don’t actually have to do the boss to get to it, just some difficult trash pulls. The hallway leading up to Maiden has 3 rooms on the left side; you’ll need to hug the right wall as you move down to avoid the trash in the rooms. The middle room (with the Lions outside the door) has the Log in it. If you don’t want to deal with the trash, wait for a soft reset (30 mins after leaving the instance) all the trash associated with a boss will despawn if the boss has been downed. To get the Log all you need is a buddy. Get another person to form a raid group with you (open your Social tab, default key is “O”,  go to the Raid tab and at the top is a button “Convert To Raid”) they don’t even have to go into the instance you just have to be in a raid to get through the instance portal. Go in there after a soft reset and loot your Log!

Encounter Mechanics

 

Maiden is a single phase fight with a couple of abilities. She is a Pally and does an AOE called Holy Ground (like a Pally’s Consecrate), and is therefore hard on melee. She casts Holy Light (just like a Priest’s Holy Light but Fire damage) on a random raid member; this must be dispelled immediately as it will kill very fast. She casts Holy Wrath, a chain spell (again on a random raid member) that will chain to nearby raid members, increasing damage each time it chains. Deadly Boss Mods will tell you if you are too close (you do have DBM right?).  Every 30 secs she stuns everyone for 12 secs (Repentance). Damage will pop you out of the Repentance so this isn’t an issue for tanks and melee because of the Holy Ground. I’m sure you can see the issue here; healers are stunned. The best way to deal with this is to have a Pally cast Blessing of Sacrifice right before she casts Repentance. This will share all incoming damage and pop the Pally out of the repentance to continue healing the tank. If there is no Pally, one healer needs to put himself into the Holy Ground just before Repentance so he will be broken out (or the tank can move Maiden to the healer), move back, and continue healing. As a side note, she won’t cast the Holy Fire or the Chain during Repentance.

The usual strategy is to have all ranged pick a pillar and stand in front of it (you can also each stand between 2 pillars, doesn’t matter, just have everyone do the same thing).  You will be spaced well enough to avoid the chains and when Maiden is tanked in the middle of the platform you will be outside of the Holy Ground. Melee stand just at the edge of range in a triangular or square pattern to avoid the chain. We also have our melee run out and bandage periodically to lighten the load on the healers. If you can keep the tank alive through Repentance and dispel the Holy Fire quickly it should be an easy win.

Key Players

As I’ve mentioned, this fight is much easier with a Healadin for Blessing of Sacrifice. A Shaman dropping a Grounding Totem will help with dispelling the Holy Fire. The only requirement is to have 2 players with the ability to dispel the Holy Fire. The players directly across the circle from you will not be in range for dispelling so you need to position your 2 dispellers 180 degrees apart (I have read that if everyone comes up the steps just a little, everyone will be in range and out of the Holy Ground but I have never been able to make it work, I still recommend at least 2 Dispellers placed 180 degrees apart)

Shadow Priest Specifics from Vladvin

The main thing to note here is to make sure to refresh your DOT’s before Repentance. Even if you are overlapping them, it’s better to maintain the DPS on the boss while you are stunned. I’ve never tried this, but aparently if a Priest casts SW:D during the .5 second cast of Repentance the knockback will break you out of Repentance since it occurs after the global cooldown.  It would require some fancy timing, but a neat trick and no harm done if it doesn’t work.  Since you have the ability to dispel Holy Fire, you may need to do so to help out if a healer goes down or if your group doesn’t have enough that are able. Raid utility comes before personal DPS output!

Holy Priest Specifics from Galadria

Either a Priest or a Druid should be assigned to Raid healing.  Keep HOT’s on the Melee, but ask them to run out and Bandage if the HOT’s aren’t keeping them up.  There are several ways to aid in Dispelling Holy Fire.  There are a couple of addons that will show you who has a dispellable debuff, the one I use is SmartDebuff.  Most UI’s and Raid Frames will have an option to show who has a dispellable debuff, I use XPerl and anyone with a Disease or Magic will flash red (and most UI mods will have options for notifing you of dispellable debuffs).  Deadly Boss Mods will also flash on your screen who has it.  Your main job in this fight is to make sure no one dies from the Holy Fire.  Dispell it and get them at least close to topped off incase they get Holy Fire twice in a row.

Priest Loot

• Shard of the Virtuous
• Bands of Nefarious Deeds
• Bands of Indwelling
• Boots of Fortelling

Object of the Encounter

This fight is a healer check. Moroes gets a little hectic when you get lots of Garrotes but Maiden is the real gut check for your healers. Holy Fire must be dispelled very quickly and Maiden is the first boss to hit reasonably hard and you have to deal with the Holy Ground on top of that. Your MT healer has to be on the ball to make sure they don’t get stunned by the Repentance, or all of your healers have to make sure the MT has fresh applications of ALL available HOT’s right before Repentance just in case the assigned healer doesn’t make it into the Consecration to come out of the Repentance.

SuperCoolPoints

One of my favorite lines from this movie:

“Spartan! ”

“Yes, Milady?”

“Come back with your shield, or on it. ”

“Yes, Milady.”

Galadria: Shared Topic #1

Shia, who writes Banana Shoulders, over at Blog Azeroth had the great idea for shared blog topics.  The first sugested topic was

What do you enjoy about the class you play the most?

First and formost I love playing Galadria because she is so very pretty!  Primal Mooncloth is gorgeous and it just looks fabulous on the NE model.  I know, I know…  hey, I’m a girl…  I’m allowed to think like that!

For a more serious look at this topic, I’ll give you a little history.  My husband and I started playing WoW because a couple of friends played.  He had thought about starting over Christmas but never got around to buying the game and when he went back to work after the holidays found out that several of his co-workers played WoW.  We bought the game gave it the good-old 10 day trial.  I originally wanted to play a Hunter; the idea of having a pet was very appealing to me.  However, as he usually does, Mr. Galadria stole my idea and said he wanted to be a Hunter; if I said that too I’d just be copying…  Druid was my second choice; shape-shifing sounded really cool too.  Since our friends played Alliance, I had to be a NE and Mr. Galadria rolled NE too.  After playing a little and reading a little and talking a lot, we decide that we need a healer…  look at that, I play a class that can be a healer!  Then I made the mistake of listening to some forum trolls that said Druids would be mediocre at anything they tried to do because they’re hybrids, and guess what Priests are the best healers…  Druid abandoned, Priest rolled.  Eventhough the reasons were crappy, I still think the move to a Priest was better for me.  I love having a spell for absoutley ANY situation.  I need a heal, Binding Heal on tank and heal both of us.  Entire group needs a heal, Prayer of Healing.  Bad tank and I’m having aggro problems, cast Frisbee every time the cooldown is up.  Mage AOE’ing and pulling lots of aggro, Shield, Renew and spam Flash Heal.  If we’ll be stationary, throw out a Lightwell and let people heal themselves.  I get to heal after I’ve died for cryin’-out-loud!  There is a tool in my toolbox for any situation.

In short, why do I enjoy playing a Priest?  Versatility.  I can do just about anything!

Boss Tactics: Moroes

The next boss after Attumen is Moroes.  After you go up the stairs becareful of the single mobs that patrol the perimeter of the room.  The entire room doesn’t need to be pulled, just enough to get you into Moroes’ room on the left. 

Encounter Mechanics

Moroes is a single phase fight with 4 adds.  There are several ways to deal with the adds. They can be Shackled for the length of the fight; I recommend one target for each Priest in the raid (even if they are healers). A Rogue can Evasion tank and 2 can do it without ever taking damage. A skilled hunter can chain-trap for the length of the fight (and even kill one on their own). A Warlock can chain fear, but it’s best if that target is picked up and burned down. Lastly they can be off-tanked, which I recommend for one of them.

• Baroness Dorothea Millstipe (Diamond, we trapped her and she mana burned the hunter on this run, 2nd kill) – Shadow Priest (Mana Burn, Mind Flay, SW:P) – She is the most dangerous of the adds because of the Mana Burn; it will take most of your mana bar.  She is a clothie and dies quickly.  WoWWiki says she doesn’t need a tank, but I prefer to have her tanked to avoid the mana burn.  She is also a prime target for Evasion tanking by a Rogue since she dies quickly.
• Lady Catriona Von-Indi – Holy Priest (Greater Heal, PW:S, Dispell Magic, Holy Fire) – Also a clothie and dies quickly.  Be sure to have someone interrupt her heals and burn down.  Since she is a caster and a healer I don’t recommend using any CC since the first thing she is likley to do is heal Moroes or another add.  Burn her down and move on.
• Lady Keira Berrybuck (Skull) – Holy Paladin (Holy Light, Cleanse, Divine Shield, Blessing of Might) – Since she wears plate she will take a while to kill.  Any form of CC will work, she is an excellent target for Shackle.
• Baron Rafe Dreuger – Retribution Paladin (Hammer of Justice, Cleanse) – He also takes a while to kill and isn’t very dangerous so is a good target for CC.  He will stun his main target so it is important to keep a close watch on him.  He tends to stun and run after a healer so it is important to keep his CC active at all timies.
• Lord Robin Daris (Star, my Shackle, however I don’t recommend that for an unexpirenced group) – Arms Warrior (Mortal Strike, Whirlwind) – This guy hits hard and because of the MS needs to be killed.  If you have him, he should be 1st or 2nd in the kill order and tanked or chain-trapped and then tanked and killed.
• Lord Crispin Ference (circle, off-tanked and 3rd kill) – Protection Warrior (Disarm, Shield Bash, Shield Wall) – He doesn’t hit very hard but has high HP and armor.  He is a good choice for an off-tank to use to help generate rage to mantain aggro on Moroes.

(The examples from our run don’t match my recomendations.  Most of the people on the run were in T4 and T5, this was a badge run to get us all Fire Resist gear, and to gear up an up-and-commung hunter.  I do sugest you stick with my recomendations if you are new to the encounter to make things go smoother)

I am most often assigned one of the Pally’s to Shackle, as I mentioned be extra careful with Dreuger as he will stun you and run for a healer.  If we are using a Rogue for evasion tanking, one of the Priests is the best choice.  Either of the warriors make good targets for traping or off-tanking.  Daris however should be killed to avoid the Mortal Strike, Ference is excellent for a “rage battery” for your 0ff-tank.

Moroes, like a good little Rogue, has a few tricks up his sleeve. He will periodically vanish then return to the tank (read no aggro wipe), putting a Garrote on a random party member. This debuff is a 5 min DOT that ticks for 1,000 every 3 seconds. A Pally bubble or Blessing of Protection, Dwarf Stoneform, and Mage Iceblock are the only ways to remove it.  It can be healed through, a Renew from a Priest and HOT from a Druid will usually do the trick. He will periodically Gouge the MT and move to the next person on the aggro list. If you have your OT take the one of the Warriors he will have a constant source of rage (or mana regen for a Pally) to maintain 2nd on Moroes aggro table.

The basic strategy is to use CC where available for the adds and burn down whichever ones that need to be, then all DPS on Moroes. If this fight drags out for too long it can get hairy for the healers to keep up with several Garrotes. It is very important to be below the OT in this fight because Moroes will 1-shot anyone but a tank if he goes anywhere else after Gouging the MT. When Moroes goes down you can either finish off the adds or run out of the room and reset them (it appears that Blizzard may have stealth-patched this, we were not able to reset Moroes after an accidental pull last night, hopefully it was a bug and he is still a boss you can reset).  Once Moroes goes down, the Garrotes go away.

Key Players

As usual, there aren’t any requirements for this fight. Priests make it very easy. Other than that, you just need 2-3 forms of CC; Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks, Priests, and Off Tanks. You can get away with 2 CC if your OT can handle 2.

Shadow Priest Specifics

I’d recommend being grouped with healers (as opposed to mana using DPS’ers) to help out if the fight goes long. Since aggro can be very touchy, I don’t like to keep VE up unless I see that it’s getting tough for the healers.

The main thing to be aware of is your Shackle target. When the tank cocks his gun to pull Moroes (you have a macro right?), start casting, your target should end up around position #1 on the picture (I want you to be able to see the picture, so I’ve left it big and this is a thumbnail, click for the larger immage).

Move to #2 and keep an eye on your range indicator to make sure you’re in range, but far enough away to have some reaction time. Shackle will break early, expect it. I refresh my Shackle about every 15 secs and it usually only gets loose once or twice. Once you get settled, keep your DPS on Moroes and pan your camera so you can see your Shackle target (again a thumbnail).

A few things to notice from this picture.  My shackle (in the green circle) is on the stairs and I am at max range from him (other green circle) yet still in range for Moroes.  In the red box underneath my party on the left side, you will see that I have my target set as my focus so I can use a macro for casting Shackle and not have to switch targets from my DPS target.  Also, what I mentioned in the previous paragraps, my camera is looking in the direction of my Shackle, not Moroes (he’s under the big Hunters Mark on the left)

Holy Priest Specifics

The same things mentioned for the Shadow Priest about Shackle, apply to a Holy Priest.  Use a Focus macro and keep your Shackle in your field of vision. 

In my (Galadria’s) opinion, Heal Priests are best for Off Tank and raid healing in this encounter.  Throw Renew and Prayer of Mending around like they’re candy.  Flash Heal if a little extra is needed.  A Lightwell is unfortunatley not practical.  The most likley source for damage is the Garrote and it will cancel the HOT that a Light well applies, only allowing half (at most) of it’s healing.   

This fight can be mana intensive for healers so you need to manage your cooldowns carefuly.  Save your Shaodwfiend for immediatley after a Vanish to ensure that Moroes doesn’t Vanish while your Shadowfiend is still around.  If you can time it properly, you can get anywhere from 5-15 seconds outside the 5-second rule during a Vanish and regen some mana.

Priest Loot

• Nethershard Girdle
• Signet of Unshakeable Faith
• Shadow Cloak of Dalaran

Object of the Encounter

Moroes will test your raids coordination and planning. Tanking Moroes is not especially difficult and the healing isn’t either if the fight doesn’t go on for too long. The CC needs to be assigned appropriately (no Shackle for Millstipe since she will mana burn you into oblivion for example) and each player assigned to CC an add has to keep track of his target and make sure not to let it kill him or anyone else. All the DPS has to focus fire the adds down quickly so you have time to get Moroes down before you are overtaken by Garrotes. It can be quite hectic until you master the fight. Good communication (and no panicking!) is key.

SuperCoolPoints

“Ever fired your gun in the air and yelled, ‘Aaaaaaah?’ “

Boss Tactics: Attumen the Huntsman

I had a billliant idea this morning in the shower!  I was thinking about this post and it occured to me that Galadria and I should collaborate.  She’s going to write some recomendations for a Holy Preist for each boss (and make sure I’m not saying something competly wrong on the other parts!)  We’ll start with the first one you’re likely to encounter, Attumen the Huntsman and his noble steed Midnight.

Encounter Mechanics

 

The encounter begins when a tank picks up midnight. You can see him up there in the stables.  Phase 1 lasts until Midnight is down by 5%. This first 5% goes very quickly and aggro going into Phase 2 can be touchy so I just wand for the first 5%. No one needs the mana battery and your DOT’s won’t have time to take effect.

(I managed to miss this phase, but I don’t really want to delay posting this article for one screenie so I may add another picture next week)

Phase 2 begins when Attumen spawns. Most groups will need a second tank for Attumen, but if your tank is OP’ed (I’m talking T5 here) they can tank both at the same time. Attumen does a frontal attack so all melee needs to stay behind Attumen and you can have the tank put his back to a wall to turn him away from the raid.  At this point you can DPS Midnight, Attumen or both.  When one gets down to 25%, Attumen will mount Midnight and wipe the aggro table, the resulting health will be equal to the higher of the two when they join.  The picture below is just at the moment when the tank picked up Attumen.

In Phase 3 Attumen will charge a random party member outside of melee range and curses a random party member every 30 secs, decreasing their chance to hit with melee, ranged and spells by 50%.  This should be removed quickly by a Druid or Mage as it can really hurt your DPS. He also continues the frontal cleave.  If you have all ranged stack up behind Attumen he won’t charge (this is not a myth, it works, I’ve done it) but of course you have to watch your threat. If you have a hunter, this is not possible because of range, but he’ll be the only one getting the charge.  Continue DPS until he dies (and never drops Handwraps of Flowing Thought).

Key Players

While there is no one class that is necessary for this encounter, there are a few that make things easier. All of the trash leading up to Attumen is Undead so a Priest or 2 with a Shackle makes the larger trash pulls towards the end easier (don’t forget your Shackle Macro!). A Mage or Caster form Druid to dispell the curse makes the fight go faster as the debuff really hurts your DPS.

Shadow Priest Specifics

There’s nothing specific for the SPriest in this encounter.  Try to time your SW:D for right after a charge so you know you won’t SW:D yourself and immediatley get a charge, which might kill you.  If you are light on healers be sure to keep VE up to help with healing through the charge. This is a relativley short fight so mana consumables aren’t much of an issue (we do this fight in about 1 min 30 sec, my first time in Kara it took 4 or 5 mins). If your group is undergeared and are going a little longer, take a Mana Pot as soon as it will fill your mana bar. Use your SF early in Phase 3 since that’s when you can really open up and burn him down (paying attention to threat of course!).

Holy Priest Specifics

This fight is usually easy on healers (if you have 3).  Keep a Renew on both tanks during Phase 2 and mantain it during Phase 3.  Aggro can be touchy during phase transistions so hold off on heals for a few seconds during pickups.  You can also use the Frisbee to help keep threat off of you.  If you are assigned to heal charges make sure to get them topped off.  It is not uncommon for Attumen to charge the same person twice.

Priest Loot

• Handwraps of Flowing Thought
• Gloves of Saintly Blessings
• Harbinger Bands

Object of the Encounter

This encounter is meant to test the gear of your entire raid.  Attumen is not a mandatory fight (as a matter of fact, Curator is the only boss that is REQUIRED in order to move on to further bosses) but it will tell you if your group is ready for the rest of the instance.  As for skill, the only real test is on the tanks.  The transitions between the phases are both aggro dumps.  Your tanks must pick them up promptly or your raid can wipe.

One last note, once you are Honored with the Violet Eye (rep goes really fast in there) you can repair just behind the room that Midnight was in, at an NPC named Koren. There is a large pull in front of him, but it’s worth the trouble to get the easy repair. Waiting for someone to hearth and be summoned back FTL!

SuperCoolPoints

Galadria insisted on a movie from this actor seeing his untimley death yesterday:

Girl: Sir ___. What are you wearing to the ball tonight?
Guy: er… nothing…
Girl: Well, we shall cause a sensation, for I shall dress to match.
Guy: [annoyed] Don’t you ever get tired of putting clothes on?
Guy’s friend #1: [whispers] I think she’s talking about taking them off, sir.
Girl: A flower is only as good as its petals. Don’t you agree?
Guy: A flower is good for nothing. You can’t eat a flower, a flower can’t keep your warm…
Girl: And a rose never knocked a man off a horse either.
Guy: You’re just a silly girl arn’t you.
Guy: Better a silly girl with a flower, than a silly man with a horse and a stick…
[she walks away]
Guy’s friend #2: It’s called a lance… hello…

Little Bit of Theorycraft

I’m going to cut and paste the forum article that inspired this post here.  This came from Kemerogh, Dark Fallen Regin, Lightninghoof (US) in their guild forums.

Two shaman are raid healing. one with 1900+ Heal and 86 mp5, and thee other with 1650 + heal and 160 mp5. Let’s assume for my timelyness that both have exactly 10,000 mana. and are casting Chain heal , Let’s give both shaman the benefeit of the doubt and say Chain heal hit’s all three jumps and does no over heal. Chain heal at 1900 + heal on the first jump heals for 3,000 then 1,500 then 750 or 5200 total heal per cast. Chain heal at 1650 + heal hit’s for 2,800 then 1400, then 700. or 4900 per cast. Now Let’s set a constant Time period, assume the average boss time for an on farm boss is 7.5 minutes or 450 seconds. 450/5 = 90. So through your 7.5 minute boss encounter you get 90 ticks. 90*86= 7,740 mana regen through your boss encounter. Essentially through 7.5 minutes allowing for a mana pool of 17,740 mana. Take that mana pool and divide it by the cost of chain heal 513 mana. 17,740/513 = 34. Now multiply by the average heal amount of 5200. 5200* 34=176,800. So with 1900+ Heal and 86 Mana per 5 seconds you can heal for 176,800 Best case senario in 7.5 minutes.Now Let’s Run some number for 1650 heal with 160 Mp5. Again we take the constant of 90 ticks, But multiply instead by 160 . 90*160=14,400 mana regen through 7.5 minutes, allowing for a base mana pool of 24,400. Now again divide by 513. 24,400/513 =47. Now again multiply the average heal amount of 4900. 4900*47=230,300. So with 1650+heal and 160 mp5 you can heal for 230,300 best case senario in 7.5 minutes.

By sacrificing 250+ heal for mp5 You can increase your healing done by 230,300-176,800. or 53,500. Also Please consider. Assuming No latency at a 2.5 second Cast time chain heal Can be cast 180 times in a 7.5 minute period. leaving Room for vast improvment as shown above at 160 mp5 you will only be able to cast it 47 times before you OOM. 180/47=3.829. 3.829*230,300=882,000 Possibly healing in 7.5 minutes. Now of course this number wouldnt be attainable without nough Mp5 to keep you with mana the whole fight requiring almost 1,000 mp5, I use it simply as an example of the room that is available if Mp5 is prioritized.

Now For Priests.  I will say that I played around with Warcrafter this morning and I’m having trouble making the #’s work right.  It seems that Blizzard understands that Priests need more MP5 and a lot of the healing gear has those stats, so I could not replicate the same #’s using that tool.  If anyone wants to post their raid buffed +Heal and MP5 in the comments so I can get some more accurate examples to work with, I’ll re-do the math with some more realistic stats for Priests.  I’m going to use 1.5k +Heal with 250 MP5 and 2k +Heal with 150 MP5.  For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to pretend that your spamming Flash Heal (I know that’s not terrbily realistic, but I think it will demonstrate my point), costing 470 Mana (according to Warcrafter).  I’m using the spreadsheet that I linked to in my Links section to produce the average amount healed for Flash Heal. 

With 1500 +Heal FH will go for 2245 on average.  Using his 7.5 min boss fight, with 250 MP5 you would regen 22,500 mana (7.5 min*60 secs/5 secs*250MP5) giving you a total mana pool of 32,500.  That would allow you to cast 69 Flash Heals (which would take you aprox 103 secs compared to the 450 secs the boss fight will take), giving you a total healed of 154,905.

With 2000 +Heal FH will go for 2525 on average.  Across the 7.5 mins and 150 MP5 you will regen 13,500 mana (calculated the same way as above) giving a total Mana pool of 23500.  This will allow you to cast 50 Flash heals (which would take 75 secs of the 450), giving you a total healed of 126,250.

The point of this post?  Once you get to a high level of +Heal MP5 becomes much more important.  With 100 more MP5 you will heal for almost 30,000 more for the life of the boss fight.  This also doesn’t account for the 5 sec waltz and you can see that there will be a lot of time OFSR using the time spent casting I talked about up there).  If I were to incorporate that I think the difference would be even more drastic.  Hopefully someone who is much better at this stuff than I *cough*Kirk*cough* can figure out how to incorporate time OFSR to get a more accurate picture.

Before I close this post, a small disclaimer.  As with almost all theory crafting, this took a lot of assumptions.  I think I did a good job of stating what those assumptions were so you can use the appropiate amount of salt with this information.  Also please don’t flame me if some of my #’s are a little off.  My point isn’t the numbers, it’s that MP5 may be better to itemize for once you have high enough +Healing.  Go out there and have some fun!

Some New Stuff

Last night I fiddled around with my buttons and added some new macros. The first looks like this:

#showtooltip

/stopcasting

/castsequence [target=player] reset=6 Power Word: Shield, Renew, Flash Heal

This allows me to interrupt whatever I am casting and shield myself and heal myself, then resets if I decide I don’t need the Flash Heal. I’ve had a problem where I’m dying too much. Last week we put in several attempts on Shade and I died before the wipe on 3 of the 6 attempts and in one case my death was the downturn. My husband thinks I’m not healing myself enough. We went and looked at the WWS and the other 2 healers get more than 50% of their incomming healing from themselves and I’m the opposite. I’ll get to try this out in a raid on Thursday and I’ll let you guys know if I like it.

Here is my “Oh, C$%! Tank needs a heal!” Macro:

#showtooltip

/stopcasting

/cast sequence [modifier:ctrl,target=focus] reset=10 Prayer of Mending, Renew, Flash Heal, Greater Heal

The modifier allows easy casting on the tank if I don’t have him targeted and allows me to use it on another player if I would like. Again, the reset allows me to decide if I need to use the entire macro and have it reset if I don’t want to use all of it.

2 little ones that I had before, but are worth mentioning:

#showtooltip

/cast Fade

/s ***Priest is Fading***

#showtooltip

/cast Resurrection

/s ***Resurrecting %t***

The first gives the tank a visual cue that something has happened that I needed to Fade. This has worked wonders in the past, my tank and I really like it. The second simply lets the other healers in the raid know who I’m rezzing.

I also added some down ranked heals. My over healing is entirley too high and I think it’s because my +Heal is high enough that I don’t need to be using the highest ranks most of the time. I took Kirk’s idea and named each with the aproximate ammount it heals for. I have my UI set up to only show me players health deficets so it works well. I can easily select the appropiate heal for the ammount of damage they have taken. I added a macro to each spell to allow me to cast on a different target depending on modifiers (also from Kirk):

#showtooltip

/cast [modifier:crtl, target=focus][modifier:alt,target=player] Spell Name

/cast Spell Name

[Edit: in order to actually make this one work I had to add the line “/cast Spell Name” to the end, otherwise it only worked for the 2 modifier conditions, if anyone knows a better way to do that, let me know.]

Please add any other macros you find useful in the comments. These are just the ones I use!

SuperCoolPoints

[Heroine holds up a cross] “So this is your defense? Your puny faith?” “No.” [the cross ignites in flames and she tosses the cap off a hairspray can] “My keen fashion sense.” [she sprays the flames, shooting them at his face]

Name that movie for 10 points!!