What Resto Druids Need to Know for 5.3

Posted on May 21, 2013 | 1 Comment

5.3 is today! Generally, I don’t care about patches that don’t include new raid content, but Druids are getting a fair number of buffs. Here are the changes that resto Druids need to know about.

buffs

A number of Resto Druid abilities have been buffed, or improved in some way.

Tranquility now targets 12 raid members (up from 5) each time it heals when used in a 25-player instance. This change also applies to players using the Symbiosis version of Tranquility.

This is a nice change for 25s. During times of really heavy raid damage, sometimes Tranq doesn’t seem to make much of a dent in healthbars, so this should improve. Holy Priests are receiving the same buff for their Divine Hymn (so they’ll still be better than us).

Force of Nature is no longer on global cooldown and summons a single Treant. The Treant immediately casts Swiftmend (which does not require or consume a HoT) on the Druid’s current target when summoned, and accumulates 1 charge every 20 seconds up to a maximum of 3 charges.

This talent will now be completely under the player’s control, and no longer subject to dumb pet AI. Still, it doesn’t compete with Soul of the Forest or Incarnation.

Ironbark now has a cooldown of 60 seconds, down from 2 minutes.

This is great. You are now able to keep IB up on someone (like the active tank) for 20% of any encounter. The shorter cooldown should also make you feel more free to use IB on non-tanks when needed.

Swiftmend area-of-effect component now heals injured allies within 10 yards, up from 8 yards.

Swiftmend will now heal within a much larger area. Hopefully more people will stay in it for heals if the green circle is bigger.

Wild Mushroom: Bloom: Healing from this spell has been increased by 100%, which includes all bonus healing from Rejuvenation overhealing. In addition, the radius has been increased to 10 yards (up from 8).

For the fights that mushrooms excel on, they will now be even better. For the fights where people are spread out or moving frequently they’ll still be clunky and of limited use.

Mark of the Wild had its mana cost reduced to 5%, down from 10%.

Not a huge deal, but will make rebuffing someone after they’re rezzed less easier on your mana bar.

My Resto Druid Guide has been updated to reflect these changes.

Some of these, like the reduction on the Ironbark cooldown, are nice quality of life changes. The buffs to Tranquility in 25s, and the range on Mushrooms and Swiftmend are really just band-aid solutions for our outdated, outclassed toolkit though. More numbers are nice, but don’t solve the problem that the other classes can put out healing faster and more efficiently than we can.

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Smart heal, dumb heal, boring heal, cheat heal?

Posted on May 15, 2013 | 18 Comments

I have to apologize for this post in advance because I’m feeling whiny and spiteful. This post is terribly biased.

Last night I participated one of the least enjoyable raids I can remember. It had nothing to do with my raid group – we were having fun on Mumble and though things were occasionally a little sloppy, we did okay at killing bosses. It was all about healer balance and my performance in particular. First of all, I was dead a lot. I may as well have been trying to catch the Lightning Diffusions on Heroic Jin’Rokh, I couldn’t have done any worse at that. But what really made the raid unenjoyable was trying to get any healing done with 2 Holy Pallies an 2 Disc Priests healing in the raid. Ugh. 

I’m going to admit something here – I love topping meters. I know, I know, that’s not what healing is about a lot of the time, but I don’t care. I want my orange bar on top. Seeing myself 4th or 5th on a list feels shitty. Hell, I don’t even like to be 2nd. For the first time, taking into consideration my toolkit and the toolkit the other classes have, I don’t think it’s likely I’m going to see my name on top of any meter no matter how hard I try. Unless I sit half my healers to give my HoTs a chance to actually do something - but that’s not very nice.

Last night’s raid put two thoughts into my head.

First, raiding has a huge fundamental flaw. As you progress, you get more gear, you get better at handling mechanics. DPS players are rewarded for this progress by being able to put out more and more damage and watching their number soar. Healers, on the other hand, are rewarded by watching their overheal numbers inflate, having less to do and maybe even losing their raid slots as raid leaders sit them to bring in more dps. No idea how to fix this, but it sucks.

Second, (and this is where I become irrational and  take out my frustration on everyone else) I think some classes just have it easier. I’ve written about how I think too much healing is “smart” before. Spells which require very little effort, thought or skill do the bulk of most class’s healing. Druids are not excluded from this, but we do have the distinction of having our heals be very much dependent on what the rest of the people in our raid are doing.

Let’s take a look at how much thought or effort Druid spells require.

Rejuvenation – Usually does 20-30% of healing. Doesn’t require a whole lot of thought, but if you are careless with it all you’re going to get is a whole lot of overheal and run yourself oom. Takes 12 seconds to complete the heal. (As a side note, we’re the only healer who has the bulk of their healing done by a targeted, single-target heal).

Wild Growth – Usually does 20-30% of healing. Requires next to no thought. Don’t cast on someone standing in a corner by themselves, don’t cast when everyone is at full health and you’ve done your job with WG. Takes 7 seconds to complete the heal.

Tranquility - Usually does 10-20% of healing. No thought required.

Swiftmend (both components) – Usually does 10-20% of healing. Swiftmend often involves making a choice. Do I SM the tank who’s dipping low and end up with the ground effect only healing 1 person? Or do I SM someone who doesn’t really need it, but is standing in a group of people? Placement of the ground heal important, but so is the ability to use it reactively for an instant, large heal.

Lifebloom – Healing really depends on fight and assignment. Can do 5% of total healing, can do 20%. Can be proactively and reactively swapped around to whoever needs to most. Needs to be refreshed often.

Wild Mushrooms – Again, healing depends on fight. Isn’t used at all on some, can make up 20% of healing on others (really only on one other fight though). Need to be positioned properly, need to be charged fully, need to be used at the right time, and you can’t get out of range of them. One of the trickier spells to use.

Regrowth/Healing Touch – Usually makes up about 5-8% of healing. Requires decent reaction/timing.

Now lets look at the heals other classes get that piss me off the most and make my silly little HoTs seem like a waste of time and effort.

Illuminated Healing – This can make up 50% of a Paladin’s healing done. And it’s completely passive. And it procs from overhealing. Seriously.

All of the Priest T6 talents – Instant, only one of them requires a target (and the target really doesn’t matter because it likes to bounce to people really far away). Hit a button and watch your raid take half a million healing in 2 seconds.

Circle of Healing / Light of Dawn – Sort of the equivalent of Wild Growth except they heal instantly so are less prone to overheal. They also trigger Illuminated Healing or Echo of Light for extra free healing.

Prayer of Mending – Instant, super cheap, bounces around on its own! Subject to overpowered set bonuses.

Renewing Mist/Uplift - RM is just like Rejuv. Except it’s cheaper. And it generates a Monk’s secondary resource. And it spreads to extra targets by itself. Is the HoT not doing enough on it’s own? Uplift for burst healing!

Atonement – I’m a Disc Priest. I could literally just Penance/Smite/Solace the boss for the whole fight and still outheal other healers with Atonement and Divine Aegis (especially on bosses/adds who take more damage).

Druids have their share of mindless healing (plus we only have 7 healing spells to use! Give us more!!!). But we also have to actually pick a target for our heals a lot of the time, which is an affliction most classes don’t suffer from :P

I’m ready for my cheat heals now.

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Healing Throne of Thunder – Halls of Flesh-Shaping

Posted on May 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

Here are some tips for healing the third section of Throne of Thunder as a Resto Druid, including the best time to use cooldowns and which talents and symbiosis targets are optimal for each fight.

First, a few general tips:

  • Feline Swiftness is the level 15 talent that I recommend on most fights.
  • Nature’s Swiftness is the level 30 talent I recommend for any fight. Remember the cooldown is only 1 minute. It makes your next heal instant, 50% bigger and mana-free, so use it often.
  • The major glyphs I usually recommend are: Glyph of Wild Growth, Glyph of Lifebloom and Glyph of Regrowth.
  • For the good of the raid, using Symb on a tank is a good bet in most cases (a Paladin or Warrior would be my last choice since, really, who wants Cleanse or Intimidating Roar on a boss fight?) If you use this on a DK or a Monk, be sure to use IBF or Fortifying Brew during the encounter.
  • Carry lots of Tome of the Clear Mind. Which talents are strongest can change from fight to fight. It you want to maximize your healing potential, you will be changing talents often.

Durumu

Durumu tests everyone’s ability to stay out of the bad. The first phase is fairly simple to execute with minimal raid damage and only a few bad things to avoid. The second phase is tougher as the raid needs to learn how to handle 3 different coloured beams that split damage between anyone standing in them. The raid needs to be split between the three different beams while looking for Crimson Fogs to uncover and kill and avoiding uncovering Azure Fogs. The fights also features a somewhat evil maze running phase.

Here are the major damaging abilities to be aware of:

Durumu

  • The tank will be taking damage from Hard Stare, which applies two debuffs. Serious Wounds reduces healing taken by 10% per stack, requiring tank swaps (or a Pally tank who can clear all these stacks often). Arterial Cut is a DoT that will stay on the tank until they are healed to full.
  • Lingering Gaze will launch a shadowbolt at random players which will leave a small void zone on the ground. Damage from this is minimal as long as people don’t stand in the void zones.
  • Life drain will target a random player and channel a damaging spell on them for 15 seconds. The damage increases over time and the player is stunned during the channel. This needs to be intercepted by other players before the damage gets too high. The target will need some heavy healing.
  • Durumu also casts Force of Will, but people just need to get out of it (or die) you can’t heal them through it.

Light Spectrum

  • Three beams will spawn on random players. Each beam will do significant damage, split among the players inside it. In addition  each beam applies a stacking debuff, increasing damage taken by that beam so damage will increase as the phase goes on. 
  • The tanks will continue to be hit by Hard Stare through this phase.

Maze

  • During the maze, there are three sources of damage to worry about. Eye Sores are the dark purple patterns on the floor, which do very heavy damage per second to anyone standing in them. Mind Daggers do moderate, constant damage to random players. Lingering Gaze needs to be avoided as much as possible, though the void zones will likely be in the maze path at least some of the time. 
  • If you get hit by the Disintegration Beam, you die.

 The damage in this fight comes in waves. Light Spectrum and the Maze can be quite healing intensive, while the phases in between give you a bit of a break.

As always, keep up full HoTs on the active tank. During the first phase, the only other thing to heal really is the minor damage people take when targeted by Lingering Gaze. During Light Spectrum, the damage gets more intense. Use WG on cooldown, use Mushrooms when you can, and try to keep Efflorescence down. in spots where people will stay for more than a few seconds (like on people in the blue beam who will not be moving, or under people in the red beam when it is stopped on a Crimson Fog).

The maze has a lot of damage going out. I try to keep Efflorescence down in melee as they will stay in it for longer. Use WG on cooldown, don’t be stingy with Rejuvs.

Talents

Level 60 - Incarnation for sure. It’s amazing for the maze.

Level 90 - I like Heart of the Wild for this fight. There is almost no damage going out at the start, so you can take time to do some damage.

Symbiosis

I use Symbiosis on a Shaman so I can use Spiritwalker’s Grace before I cast Tranq.

Cooldowns

Wild Mushroom – I set up Mushrooms where the Blue beam will be positioned (my raid has set spots for each beam to go and the Blue one doesn’t move). They can be bloomed during each Light Spectrum phase.

Tranquility - Use during Light Spectrum (closer to the end of the phase). If you can, use Spiritwalker’s Grace first so you can move while casting.

Incarnation - Use during the maze. Take full advantage of being able to have multiple LBs up and cast Regrowth while running.

Ironbark - Use on the active tank when their Serious Wounds debuff is getting high (4-5 stacks). You could also use this on Life Drain targets.

HotW - Use at the start of the fight when there is very little damage going out.

Stampeding Roar – Use during the maze to help people get away from the beam faster and negate the slowing effect from running though Lingering Gaze.

Primordius

I don’t have a lot of interesting tips for this fight. My raid has been doing it the easy (read: mega boring) way for a long time. This method involves not killing any oozes and turning the fight into a tank & spank. The boss stays in the middle of the room and the raid spreads out around him.

Here are the major damaging abilities to be aware of:

As oozes reach Primordius, he will evolve and gain new abilities. He will have up to two of these at a time.

  • Ventral sacs does constant, low levels of damage to the whole raid for as long as it is active.
  • Gas Bladder splits a large amount of damage between anyone within 25 yards of Primordius. 
  • Acidic Spines do heavy damage to random players which spalshes to anyone within 5 yards.
  • Pathogen Glands puts a DoT on a random player which deals heavy damage over 10 seconds. They will need focused healing.
  • Erupting Pustules does very heavy damage to people every 10 seconds. This damage splashes to anyone within 2.5 yards. This is the worst ability of the bunch and can easily wipe out people if they are too close together.

Keep up full HoTs on the active tank. Erupting Pustules are the only really damaging ability during the fight. Otherwise the fight is very dull.

Talents

Level 60 - Incarnation or SotF are both fine.

Level 90 - Heart of the Wild.

Symbiosis

I use Symbiosis on a tank, usually a Monk or DK so I have an extra cooldown to use.

Cooldowns

Wild Mushroom – Mushrooms are really buggy on this fight. When I place them in the circle in the middle of the room they have a tendency to disappear. Because of this, I set them up outside that circle and try to get them in range of a few ranged/healers.

Tranquility - Erupting Pustules and Acidic Spines are the most damaging abilities, so use Tranq while one of those mutations is active.

Ironbark - Use on the active tank when their Malformed Blood debuff is getting high (8-9 stacks). You could also use this on Pathogen Glands targets.

HotW - Use at the start of the fight when there is very little damage going out.

Dark Animus

This fight features a ton of adds that need to be controlled and killed in the correct way and it can be quite chaotic. 

Here are the major damaging abilities to be aware of:

Golems

  • During the first part of the fight, everyone will be tanking an Anima Golem. They do hit fairly hard, but have a very slow swing timer, so keeping everyone healed up is not difficult.  The danger comes from Acceleration Link – if 2 Golems get too close together their damage goes up an incredible amount and they’ll make short work of any non-tank. So don’t let them get close together.
  • Your tanks will soon have Massive Anima Golems to contend with. These do more melee damage plus cast Explosive Slam in front of them.
  • Matter Swap is the biggest nuisance in this fight. This is a dispellable debuff that lasts 12 seconds. When the debuff wears off or is dispelled, the affected player has their position swapped with that of the raid member who is farthest away from them at the time. Damage equal to the affected player’s maximum health is split between the two players, with the portion of damage that the other player takes increasing the longer the debuff remains on the affected player. To deal with this, people with the debuff should be topped off then dispelled when there is 6-8 seconds left on the debuff.

Dark Animus

When the Dark Animus activates, he starts syphoning off energy from any golems still active in the room. He also gains new abilities based on how much anima he has.

  • Touch of the Animus is a debuff on a random raid member, which deals a moderate amount of Fire damage every 5 seconds for the rest of the fight.
  • Anima Ring creates a ring of spheres around his current target (the tank), which closes in on the target. Coming in contact with a sphere consumes it, applying a stack of a debuff that increases damage taken from melee attacks by 50% for 15 seconds. My raid has melee step in and soak a sphere so the tank can get out unharmed.
  • Anima Font causes one of the players debuffed by Touch of the Animus to also deal damage to allies in a small area around them.
  • Interrupting Jolt deals a large amount of raid-wide Nature damage, and it interrupts the spellcasting of any players (also silencing them for 8.5 seconds) who are in the middle of a cast at the time. In my raid, he’s always dead before he gains this ability.
  • If he reaches 100 Energy he casts Full Power, which will quickly wipe the raid.

In phase 1 raid damage is low. WG and a few Rejuvs is more than enough to keep up anyone in range. As the Massive Golems activate, keep HoTs on whichever tank is in range. Your focus should be on topping up those with the Matter Swap debuff and dispelling at the correct time (6-8 stacks).

Once Dark Animus is active you will have both him (it?) to worry about, plus one of your tanks will still be tanking a Massive Anima Golem. The Golem tank will be taking more damage due to the debuff from Explosive Slam, so swaps (or clever kiting) may be required. I keep LB up on the Golem tank and focus raid healing on those with Matter Swap or Touch of the Animus. If people are doing their jobs right (not standing in Anima Font or in front of Massive Golems) there’s not actually that much to heal aside from tank damage and Matter Swap.

Talents

Level 60 - Incarnation or SotF are both fine. I lean towards Incarnation so I can keep LBs on both tanks for some of the fight.

Level 90 - Heart of the Wild so you can do some damage to your Anima Golem.

Symbiosis

I use Symbiosis on a tank, usually a Monk or DK so I have an extra cooldown to use.

Cooldowns

Wild Mushroom – Mushrooms aren’t great on this fight. I set them up around myself and others close to me before the pull in case I need a quick heal while tanking the golem.

Tranquility - I use this as an emergency heal while Dark Animus is active. There’s no specific time when many people in the raid are taking heavy damage, so I use it reactively after people take unnecessary damage or a particularly nasty set of Matter Swaps.

Incarnation – Use at some point during phase 2.

Ironbark - Use on the Massive Golem tank. Alternatively you can use it on someone with Matter Swap who doesn’t have many of their own cooldowns.

HotW - Use at the start of the fight to put out some decent damage on your Golem.

Happy healing!

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Looking for More

Posted on May 6, 2013 | 1 Comment

Apotheosis is recruiting!

We are an Alliance 25-man raiding guild on Eldre’thalas.

We are specifically seeking healers and ranged dps:

  • Resto Shaman (seriously, I’d like to keep one for more than 3 weeks)
  • Resto Druid (someone who reads this blog must want to come play with me… please? I’m lacking a resto buddy.)
  • Mistweaver Monk
  • Warlock
  • Plus 1 or 2 other ranged dps, open to pretty much any class

We raid 9 hours a week – Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, from 9pm ET until midnight. We are currently 1/13 heroic in Throne of Thunder. If you are an awesome healer or ranged dps and want to kill some new bosses with us, come apply. 

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Progress vs. Gear

Posted on April 29, 2013 | 20 Comments

How much raid time should be dedicated to farming for gear from bosses you’ve already killed and how much should be dedicated to learning and defeating new encounters?

I’m sure that’s a question that has plagued many raid and guild leaders. I’m also sure the answer depends on the type of guild. Blood Legion’s not going to clear through an instance multiple times on normal when they could be working on a new kill. Likewise, a more ‘casual’ guild is going to want, and maybe even need, that extra gear before they progress further in a lot of cases.

My guild falls somewhere in the middle of those two examples. We finished Tier 14 at 8/16H.

In Tier 14 we cleared all normal modes before doing any heroic modes. We did kill Heroic Stone Guard only a couple days after defeating Sha of Fear, but we never took a detour from normal mode content in HoF, for example, to work on MSV heroics. When I asked our raiders for feedback at the end of the tier, one of the most common responses I got was that we had spent too much time farming for gear and not enough time pushing progression. Noted.

In Tier 15 we’re currently sitting at 1/13H. This tier is a bit different than last. While Tier 14 consisted of 3 smaller raids, Tier 15 is one big raid. In Tier 14 if we wanted more time to work on a new hard mode in Heart of Fear we could skip one of the other raids for the week. We can’t do that in Throne of Thunder. With only 9 hours of raiding each week, we need to make some harder decisions about how we’ll be spending our raid time. At this point, it would take us about 1.5 raid nights (raids are 3 hours each) to fully clear on normal. I think we will get more efficient at that, but that’s where we’re at right now. Plus, repeating heroic kills will generally take a bit longer, so we want to give a bit of a time buffer so we can be sure to get all the way through Lei Shen.That only leaves us 3 hours (we can maybe push this to 4) to work on new things. That’s really not a lot of time.

Since so many people had said they wanted to spend more time on progression this tier, the officers tried to make good on that. The week after our first Lei Shen kill we spent half a raid on Heroic Jin’rokh, then went through the rest of the raid on normal to ensure we got a repeat kill of Lei Shen. My idea of just working on H. Jin’rokh until he was dead, even if that meant not full clearing that week, was outvoted. In hindsight, probably a good thing. The next reset we decided that we would keep our raid lockout for 2 weeks so we could spend a good 3-4 raids on progression fights, before wrapping up normal modes at the end of the following week. I thought this was the best idea. Everyone in the raid had a Lei Shen kill and everyone in the raid wanted to progress through this tier faster (I thought).

Apparently not. It seems, to some people, that farming for gear is more important than progress at this point. The officers got a number of complaints about how we were ‘wasting’ our raid lockout.

I think I have a pretty good idea about the capabilities of our raid. Yes, gear always helps, but having the best possible gear is not a requirement for getting down heroic bosses, especially the early ones. If we were failing dps checks, then definitely, we need more gear. But that’s almost never been our problem. More gear doesn’t make people not stand in Rockfall or hit their Crystal Shield at the right time. Practice does. (Also, if I’m going to upgrade my gear, I’d rather upgrade it to heroic gear).

You can’t please all the people all the time. But I try to. At this point I don’t know if anyone, besides the officers, liked the idea of extending the lockout. Because really, no one sends feedback when they’re happy about something, only when they have something to complain about.

So that brings us back to the original question. How do you split your raid time so your raiders get gear, but you can still make progress at a good pace? Where’s that magic point where doing farm content every week is no longer necessary? Do you wait for everyone to have their 4-set before you start extending lockouts or skipping normal mode kills? Until everyone has weapons? Until Lei Shen gives me that trinket I want?

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Utility

Posted on April 26, 2013 | 6 Comments

Just a mini-post of some thoughts I had about Druids while doing heroic Tortos for the first time last night…

People have been pretty down on resto Druids lately, and for good reason. Our output potential is pretty lousy compared to most other healing classes (though it’s amazing how much better we can look on a fight like H. Tortos when overhealing isn’t really an issue). I’ve also seen people complain about our perceived lack of utility. After planning for the fight last night I have to say – we have a ton of utility on the right fight. I had so many ideas about how I could be helpful to the raid.

  • I can put out a ton of healing – Rejuvs on my group will charge the Crystal Shields quickly and efficiently, while still supporting the MT.
  • I can take Faerie Swarm and help to slow Whirl Turtles.
  • I can take Ursol’s Vortex and use them on the bats before the Quake Stomp so they can’t get to the kiter.
  • I can move around quickly using things like Displacer Beast, so I can kick turtle shells.
  • I have a lot of options for Symbiosis. I can use Spiritwalker’s Grace so that I can channel Tranq without having to worry about interrupting it to move out of rockfalls or away from turtles. I could take Iceblock for an immunity. I could take Leap of Faith for if the bat kiter needs grips.
  • I can use my superpower (massive aggro generation) to help make sure the new bats that spawn all go to one place.

Whether it’s reasonable to expect to be able to do all these things along with keep everyone alive I’m not so sure about yet, but this fight really highlights how much utility Druids have.

Another thing that struck me about the Tortos fight was that it’s much less about healing than I thought. I actually think this fight should be easier to heal than normal if everyone is using the shield mechanic correctly. So if you’re planning to tackle this fight soon, make sure you understand it!

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Healing Throne of Thunder – Forgotten Depths

Posted on April 22, 2013 | 1 Comment

Here are some tips for healing the second section of Throne of Thunder as a Resto Druid, including the best time to use cooldowns and which talents and symbiosis targets are optimal for each fight.

First, a few general tips:

  • Feline Swiftness is the level 15 talent that I recommend on most fights.
  • Nature’s Swiftness is the level 30 talent I recommend for any fight. Remember the cooldown is only 1 minute. It makes your next heal instant, 50% bigger and mana-free, so use it often.
  • The major glyphs I usually recommend are: Glyph of Wild Growth, Glyph of Lifebloom and Glyph of Regrowth.
  • For the good of the raid, using Symb on a tank is a good bet in most cases (a Paladin or Warrior would be my last choice since, really, who wants Cleanse or Intimidating Roar on a boss fight?) If you use this on a DK or a Monk, be sure to use IBF or Fortifying Brew during the encounter.
  • Carry lots of Tome of the Clear Mind. Which talents are strongest can change from fight to fight. It you want to maximize your healing potential, you will be changing talents often.

Tortos

Mechanics-wise, Tortos is one of the least complicated fights in ToT, but it does require very good execution and a lot of awareness. The fight involves extremely heavy, spiky tank damage as well as high raid damage at frequent intervals throughout the fight. Throughout the fight your raid will need to deal with Tortos himself along with smaller Whirl Turtles which will spawn and spin around the room and Vampiric Cave Bats.

Here are the major damaging abilities to be aware of:

Tortos

  • Furious Stone Breath is what Tortos uses when he reaches 100 fury. This must be interrupted by kicking a turtle shell at him. If this is channeled on the raid for more than a tick, it’ll be a wipe.
  • Quake Stomp is cast about every 40 seconds and deals raid wide damage along with stunning everyone.
  • Rockfall is something that happens throughout the fight, and more so right after a Quake Stomp. These will appear as blue circles on the ground. These will kill anyone standing in the blue circle, and do moderate damage to anyone within 20 yards.
  • Snapping Bite is the main attack on the tank. It hits for a ton, so it’s best if the tank has a cooldown up for each one. It is also a good idea to have a Pally or Priest as the tank healer so some of the damage can be absorbed.

 Whirl Turtles use only one damaging ability: Spinning Shell, which will constantly spin around the room and knock people around. Getting slows up on the whirl turtles as they spawn makes avoiding the damage much easier.

Vampiric Cave Bats also have one major ability (other than strong melee attacks) to worry about: Drain the Weak. If the Bats’ target is not near full health the attacks will heal the bats. The bat tank needs to be topped up as much as possible. Cooldowns are useful, and stuns on the bats are great.

There’s a lot going on in this fight and a lot of damage to heal. At the start of the fight I like to keep LB rolling on the Tortos tank to help smooth out damage. Make sure the raid is topped up before any Quake Stomp and be prepared to deal with the damage afterwards. This includes having mushroom set up where people are grouped up and getting Swiftmend down under a group of players just before the Stomp hits. Use WG and ample Rejuvs to deal with the continuing damage from Rockfall. As bats are spawning I like to move my LB stack over to that tank.

Talents

Level 45 – I like Faerie Swarm here. If your group is short on slows or one of the turtle gets missed, you can use FS to help out.

Level 60 – Either SotF or Incarnation are useful here, though I prefer Incarnation. The instant RGs are very nice while you’re running around dodging Rockfalls.

Level 75 – Ursol’s Vortex can be placed under or just in front of Tortos as Whirl Turtles spawn to slow the turtles moving though. The pullback aspect of this spell doesn’t work though. If you don’t want to use this (I actually find it of limited value) you can use Disorienting Roar on the bats frequently to give the tank a brief respite.

Level 90 – Either Heart of the Wild or Nature’s Vigil can be used here. There won’t be much of a chance to use the HotW cooldown to help with damage, but the passive Intellect is always good. Nature’s Vigil will allow you to help put out a little damage while also giving you a weak healing boost that can be used pretty much on cooldown.

Symbiosis

I use Symbiosis on a Shaman so I can use Spiritwalker’s Grace before I cast Tranq.

Cooldowns

Wild Mushroom – I set up Mushrooms under the melee and bloom them after Quake Stomps. Spread then out a bit, as melee will also be spreading out due to Rockfalls.

Tranquility – Use after a Quake Stomp. If you have it, use Spiritwalker’s Grace first so you can dodge Rockfalls without having to interrupt the spell.

Incarnation – Use while damage is heaviest – Rockfalls are happening frequently, the bats are out. Keep LBs on both tanks and get out as much group healing as possible.

Ironbark – I save this for the bat tank.

HotW – If you take this, the only time you may be able to use it to dps a little is at the start of the fight.

Megaera

Megaera is a healing intensive fight against a hydra. The goal is to kill 8 of her respawning heads. The fight isn’t too complex but does involve heavy damage to two tanks at once along with very heavy raid wide damage every time a head is killed. There’s also some dispelling to do.

Here are the major damaging abilities to be aware of:

  • Rampage happens whenever a head is killed. This is the biggest source of raid damage in the fight and cooldowns will be needed.
  • Cinders gets applied to a random player and deals heavy damage to them. This must be dispelled, but the target must get out of the raid first, as it leaves behind a fire patch when dispelled.
  • Torrent of Ice targets a random player and chases them with a frost beam that does damage to anyone it touches and leaves damaging frost on the ground. These ground two effects will cancel each other out if placed on top of each other.
  • Acid Rain will target a random player and launch an acid globule at them, doing very heavy damage at the point of impact and less damage as players are further away. Players need to be moving away from this.
  • Tanks also get debuffs from the head they are tanking, necessitating swaps.
  • Each head also does a cone breath attack, but no one but the tanks should be hit by this.

Keep LBs on the tank taking the most damage – fire and poison heads tend to cause more damage than ice. If you are a dispeller, make sure the target has run out of the raid before getting rid on Cinders and put at least a Rejuv on that person as soon as the debuff is applied. Outside of the Rampage, the biggest source of raid damage during this fight is the Acid Rain. Keeping Swiftmend under the melee stack is a good idea and be liberal with your Wild Growth and Rejuvs. 

Talents

Level 15 – Displacer Beast can be very useful on this fight to quickly move out of the group if you get targeted by a frost or fire beam. Alternatively you can use it to get back to the group faster on the way back.

Level 60 - I prefer Incarnation since I find this fight very hard on mana. 

Level 90 - Either Heart of the Wild or Nature’s Vigil can be used here. There won’t be much of a chance to use the HotW cooldown to help with damage, but the passive Intellect is always good. Nature’s Vigil will allow you to help put out a little damage while also giving you a weak healing boost that can be used pretty much on cooldown.

Symbiosis

I use Symbiosis on a tank (preferably a Monk or DK so I get a damage reduction cooldown).

Cooldowns

Wild Mushroom – Set up Mushrooms in the spot the raid will be grouping for each Rampage and bloom during it.

Tranquility - Use during Rampage.

Incarnation - I use this outside of Rampage, so I can keep LB stacks on both tanks and do more reactive healing to poison bolts.

Ironbark - Use on tanks who are taking high damage.

Ji-Kun

Ji-Kun is a really fun fight that involves jumping and flying to platforms to deal with adds, periods of heavy raid damage and a lot of movement and spreading out. You fight Ji-Kun in the center platform, where everyone must be spread out to avoid AoE damage abilities.  Throughout the fight nests around the room, both above and below the main platform, activate and eggs on them need to be killed. My raid assigns one group of 3-4 dps and a healer to handle certain nests each time – one lower and one upper.

Damaging abilities to be aware of:

  • The tank will be taking damage from Infected Talons, a stacking DoT and Talon Rake, which needs tank swaps.
  • Caw sends out sound waves at random players that will do heavy damage to anyone within 5 yards. People need to be spread out for this.
  • Quills is the big raid damaging ability. This happens every minute. It’s best for everyone on the main platform to group up for this, then  spread back out again immediately after it ends.
  • Feed Young, if not intercepted, will leave a slime puddle on the ground which will deal damage over time to anyone who stands in it. However, standing in these for 3 seconds also removes the puddle, so it may be necessary for people to stand in these - preferably tanks or people with immunities/good damage mitigation cooldowns.

You may also have to deal with damage on the nests. If eggs hatch into Hatchlings, they will do light melee damage. If Hatchlings grow into Fledglings they will bombard random raid members with heavy damage.

Druids are a great choice for healing nests on this fight, so a lot of your healing is going to be focused on your group. Keep LB on the active tank while you’re on the platform, but feel free to move it to someone in your group while you’re on a nest. WG and Swiftmend are both great for keeping your nest group healed up since the platform area is so small.

Make sure you have a good handle on when you can use your Feathers to fly. You’ll likely have extra charges and will be able to use one during Down Drafts so you can ignore that whole mechanic. You do not need to use a feather when jumping down from a high nest (there’s no fall damage), so don’t waste charges on that.

Glyphs

You may want to consider replacing Glyph of Regrowth with Glyph of Stampeding Roar for this fight. Using Roar on the raid during Down Draft can be very helpful.

Talents

Level 60 - I prefer Incarnation for this fight. It’s a good cooldown if your group is on a nest during Quills.

Level 75 - Disorienting Roar can be somewhat useful if you’re dealing with Hatchlings in a nest.

Level 90 - Either Heart of the Wild or Nature’s Vigil can be used here. 

Symbiosis

I use Symbiosis on a tank (preferably a Monk or DK so I get a damage reduction cooldown).

Cooldowns

Wild Mushroom – Pre-pull I will jump down to my nest and place Mushrooms so I can bloom them while my group is down there. After that, I’ll try to put them in the center to have them ready to use for Quills. However, if they are in the center and you fly off to a nest, they’re going to despawn because of range.

Tranquility - Use during Quills.

Incarnation - Use so you can keep LBs on your whole group if Quills happens while you’re on a nest.

Ironbark - Use on tanks who are taking high damage.

Stampeding Roar – Use just before Down Draft to help out the raid.

Heart of the Wild – If you take this you can use it while on a nest and help kill eggs/hatchlings.

Happy healing!

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