Tuesday’s raid ended with us wiping at 1% on Maloriak, mostly due to two disconnects (one by a healer, one by a DPS) and a lack of Remedy dispels.
On our second attempt on Thursday, we kicked that guy’s ass.
And then, it was time to face Chimaeron.
It’s sort of like the worst parts of heroic Anub’arak, plus the insanity of healing the ENTIRE raid to full like with Gluth, in Naxx.
I tend to sort of “adopt” a fight, each instance or tier, that I just *KNOW*. I mean, I know all the fights, but there’s usually one that sticks out for me that I know every single detail about. It was Sindragosa in ICC, it was Anub’arak in TOGC (that damn tank who insisted on solo-tanking those adds… MAN, that still pisses me off!), it was probably Hodir in Ulduar, it was… maybe Heigan? Or Loatheb in T7.
I have a feeling that Chimaeron will be That Fight for me in T11, or at least in Blackwing Descent.
After the first wipe, I asked my healers how they felt.
Me: Okay, how’s it feeling for everyone? hahaha
Disc priest: FML
Me: Apart from panic inducing?
Resto druid: I need a pancake
Disc priest: All I use is GHeal
Disc priest: And I’m sad
15 attempts, we got from “oh god FML” to getting the boss to 40%. Not easy. The worst part is when he casts Massacre and there goes the Bile-o-Tron. I just don’t know if we have the healing, to be honest. Not a knock against my healers, but maybe we need more time before worrying about him? I don’t know. Maybe we’re getting to the point where the class really is making a difference. Maybe resto druids just aren’t cut out for this fight, maybe I should stack priests. I’m not even sure. It’s going to be fun to do research on that fight over the next few days.
Sunday, it’s back to Bastion to knock out Halfus and Valiona & Theralion again, with any luck. And maybe even pull Council, if we’re lucky? I should probably put up info on that fight before Sunday. (read: I should actually look at the fight myself before Sunday.)
I’m seriously proud of the Maloriak improvement between Tuesday and Thursday. There was some outstanding work by everyone on that fight. And some kick-ass healing on Chimaeron, don’t get me wrong. Just not quite enough.
In other news, we’re definitely looking for a resto shaman — one who will drop their Mana Tide when assigned, unlike the one we currently have. ;D — so please do app if you’re around 338 ilvl equipped in your resto gear, have a desire to push content and be challenged and don’t mind a holy paladin as your healing lead. Oh, and can make our raids! We’re swapping people around and are pretty good at it, so you might not be in for every single fight ever, but you should be in fairly often, depending on your level of play, of course.
(Fad, Fug, I miss you both desperately!)
A couple things to note about Chimaeron (from a 25s perspective):
1. More healers is a huge bonus. We typically run 6 on most encounters, but for Chimaeron we run with 8.
2. Surviving Feud is all about coordinating raid CDs and having all your non-healers use their group healing spells. Ret and Prot pallies should be hitting HR. Elemental and Enhance Shaman should be dropping Healing Rain. Feral druids should use Tranq. Personal CDs also make a huge difference, along with a raid leader who screams “click the lightwell!!”
3. For quick and easy topping, handle “Low Health” like you did Penetrating Cold–assign healers to specific groups. (Priests on ranged, R-Sham on melee).
4. Lastly, if you’re confident enough in your druids, pull your pallies off tanks and put them on picking up Low Health targets. Holy Shock and WoG are amazing quick-top tools.
Best of luck to you and hope to be reading about a kill soon!
Matticus also stated he has been running with 8, when I talked to him last night. I kind of scoffed at it, but now that I hear it may be the number of choice for others, I think it bears reconsideration.
Lightwell use was highly disappointing last night and I sincerely hope that’s addressed in a raid review. I can understand with the healers spamming heals off the GCD that it may be difficult to do that, so I can see exempting them (even because I didn’t use it as much, because I couldn’t leave you guys alone for that second to click it). Why a large portion of the DPS didn’t click it even once for all those attempts was shocking and could help the situation quite a bit.
Overall, I think it was a fight that people just underestimated. They didn’t realize how having one person or even two people dead vastly affects the way the grouped up damage spreads out and will lead to a wipe. I think people underestimated how much damage was really going out and may have a hard time dealing with so much damage going out – not to mention it being really foreign to just watch your group and only your group.
As a holy priest, I loved that fight and I can’t wait to go back and do it again. I feel confident in what I am doing and what I bring to the table where I don’t dread doing this as much as some might and I completely understand why they would. I’m just not one of those people!
:)
Congrats on Maloriak! He’s who we’re going after on the next raid day (Sunday). Can’t wait!
Sorry to hear about Chimaeron. Sounds like you have him REALLY close though. At 20% so long as everyone is alive it’s almost a guaranteed kill. You guys are so close and I’m very confident you’ll get him!
I don’t know how 25 man handles compared to 10 man so I may be speaking out of my butt – but we put a rotation on the massacre phases with Bile-o-tron knocked down (can I just say I absolutely love that guy’s voice? it cracks me up). We ignored the first two times he got knocked down since the healers seemed to have the mana (and mental stability) to AOE heal the crap out of those. On the third a druid popped Tranq. Fourth I used Divine Hymn. Fifth we went back to praying.
Can I just say as a side note – assigning a holy paladin to raid heal still feels so weird for me to do.
Grats on the progression!
We’ve found that we didn’t have to heal to full at feud, but only to around 100k, then remaining HOTs and aoe ticks leave everyone just over 10k for the massacre (could be different on 25m, my computer won’t let me do them anymore).
We were on Chimaeron last night too, on 10m – we got him as far as 20%, but since he did his last Feud at 22%, we didn’t make it out of that in time to survive, sadly. We had a paladin on the tanks, so my disc self was healing the raid along with a resto druid (who said it was stressful but manageable, although all of our healing druids have been doing quite well since Cata). I found that on 10m binding heal is (although mana intensive) pretty awesome for a quick ‘get two people past 10k’ heal, since we’d set it up that I’d pick up specific raid members plus myself. Coordinated cooldowns seems to be essential – PW:B plus Tranq was a nice pairing, for one. I think the frustrating part for me was how exacting the fight was for us – when I’d miss a heal by so much as a second, someone would die, and that would be that.
I’m doing 10’s this time around, but I’ll tell you that healing coordination is the key.
Assign specific healers to players/groups so people aren’t whack-a-moling already healed players.
Assign your major healing cooldowns for the Caustic Slime.
Have your DPS bandage when you collapse for slime. It DOES help.
Warlocks can pretty much take care of themselves.
Hunters with MM spec can help stabilize themselves and other raiders (it’s not a DPS race).
We’ve been raiding with two paladins and a resto druid, so even on larger content, I don’t think stacking a particular class should be necessary (even if priests ARE OP for this encounter ^^)
We 2 heal this fight – resto druid and Holy Pally. We have an ele shaman in our ranged group, and a spriest in the melee group. We also tap heavily on the self healing that so many classes have. We don’t heal the retadin, the shaman, or the rogue generally – because they can all quickly top themselves over 10k (especially with the spriest/healing stream). On the collapse we blow all our AoE healing, as well as our mana regen tools (except DP).
Of course it’s 10s, but I can’t imagine that there isn’t enough other self healing in a 25m that you can’t get away with fewer healers.
We downed Chimaeron on 25man for the first time this week ourselves. We spent pretty much the entire night working on that one boss. Watching videos and such beforehand I “knew” it was a healing-intensive fight and all about the healers, but actually getting in there and experiencing it was something else altogether. It’s times like this I’m glad I’m not one of the healers. =)
Our raid used 8 healers as well – we started the night trying with 7, but ended up having to use 8. Priests do definitely seem to have an edge here and druids struggle. I was the main tank and between me and the “double strike” tank, we were kept up almost exclusively by a Beacon on each and one resto druid – the other 7 healers were on the rest of the raid.
It’s a heck of a fight. DPSers being smart about grouping up at the right time, popping their personal cooldowns, and helping out with healing during Feud will make a huge difference.
Is the damage cap still 10k on 25m? I guess I’m struggling with why 8 healers instead of 4 or 5 – especially if 2 are Paladins.
So my first question is – how many people get hit by the poison bolt in 25 (during P1). In 10s it’s 2 – so I’ll assume 5 for 25m (1 per 5 ppl).
So with 25 people and 2 Paladins (we’ll call the other 3 healers a druid, priest and shaman to be PC) you wind up with this.
Pally Healer 1/2 – no heals needed
Tank 1/2 – shouldn’t need direct heals. It looks like both your tanks were Paladins – but even DKs have great self heals.
Warlocksx3 – shouldn’t need direct heals.
Shamanx4 – can hit themselves quickly for 10k, plus that’s 4x HS totems
Roguesx2 – I don’t know what the spell is, but our rogue can self heal for 5k a tick ( we basically don’t have to worry about him). Looking at your logs it must be Recuperate, and both your rogues were using it liberally.
That right there cuts your healing requirements down by 10. Looking at the 4min fight (last attempt) you had 5 Paladins, but only 3 cast Holy Radience at all. Only 3 of 4 shamans used Healing Rain, I see only 3 Healthstones used, one heal pot, 2 deathcoils, and 2 gift of the Narru.
I guess my point is that there is a lot of potential healing in the group that you can tap to make your lives a lot easier.
Grats on Maloriak!
I like to read your blog, but excuse my poor english – it’s not my native…
We got down Chimaeron 25ppl last night, and I’ve compared logs from our kill and your attempts – so, few thing to make this fight easier for you:
1. Take 8 healers better than 7: 5 healers each for a group, 2 healers for active tank(NOT paladins, priests or druids do this great) and 1 for OT and to help others.
2. Paladins stay in meelee(one at the left side, one at right) to get some additional mana, so they have no problem to switch on HR not only on Chimaeron’s Massacre, but every time they see too much people are “low health” in the nearest groups
Right before phase2 at the end of last Massacre paladins can use LoH on 2 top DPS to bring up also 2 tanks with beacon(but I forgot it, ha-ha)
If you want you can take a look on our log, but cause I’m russian – all spell names there are in russian(or I don’t know where to switch language on worldoflogs): http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/0tdb5txuz4whiprq/analyze/hd/source/?s=7670&e=8072
Anyone else tired of dps commenting, “healers just need to step it up”? Argh! Chimaeron is mainly about the healers, but fights like Atremedes and Cho’gall can’t simply be “healed through” when the dps are screwing up. Blizz needs to make a special banner healers can put down that says, “stand in fire FTW”.
We also run with 8 healers for this encounter. We have a shadow priest that goes Holy for the fight.
As to your comment for resto druids on this encounter…don’t discount them! Both of our kills so far have been 3 druids, 3 priests, 1 paladin, 1 shaman. So it’s absolutely possible with druids in the raid. They have to use some unconventional healing for spit targets, and during fueds have them work out a Tanq/ToL cycle. They should not utilize both CDs for the same fued. For example: Fued 1: Druid 1 Tranq, Druid 2 ToL, Beru ToL; Fued 2: Beru Tranq, Druid 1 ToL, Druid 2 heal; Fued 3: Druid 3 Tranq – the other two ToL when it’s up and if it’s needed.
You don’t even need to have resto druids doing the tranqs – have your ferals and your chickens worked into that rotation as well. For that matter – anyone with a healing spell should toss out some assistance during that phase, as a fairly nasty reduced hit debuff pops out during fued making DPS almost futile for those hit with the debuff. Also don’t discount raid cooldowns like “raid wall”, PW:Barrier and Anti-Magic Shield (omg – a use for this finally!) when the Bile-o-Tron is off line.
I also wanted to reiterate what Vixsin said above about making specific healing assignments. Our healing team doesn’t usually use really strict assignments – but for this encounter we assigned everything.
We assigned a healer for each group after Massacre, with Priests taking two groups each for Prayer. We assigned specific person per group for “spit” targets, and then went over what to do if there was multiple spits in one group. (We used an alphabetical system – for what it’s worth).
I’m sure you all will get it! Feel free to give me a nudge if you have any druid specific questions and I’d be happy to help :)
How you doing? On Magmaw I was assigned to heal 2 meele and the tank (we only used one tank). I put the bacon on the tank for some extra heals in hope that it would save me mana but others suggest that I should put the bacon on one of the meele dps. What’s your take on this? I always thought that if you put the bacon the tank it would save you mana because he’s the main target.