Anub-Arak 25 HM – Healing Stance
From a healing standpoint, this fight is cake til p3, so skip p1-2 for me…
First & foremost, I would point out that if you do not have the “Penetrator” addon, you fail as a healer 
This addon only works with grid, so healers… YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO CONVERT… I’m sorry, but after having a chat with a few other healers, this is the way to go…
Secondly, healers need to be specific on who we assign to do what. Penetrator allows one to do that. It marks each person with an raid icon… one can then assign the raid icons to specific healers & that’s their specific responsibility… EVERY time… much more consistent & quicker with keeping people up.
If you really, really don’t like penetrator, there is another route. It still requires all the healer to have grid, but a bit easier if you don’t like looking over 25 people for 1 icon. Another blogger posted their heailng strat, which we have also tried and liked: Hunting Anub’Arak. This is a very straight forward strat and may work better for your raid healers.
Either strat will work, it’s what your healers are comfortable with.
Next, most of the logs I’ve seen has 2 palys in the raid (the only 2 tank healers), otherwise they’ve gone with 7 healers (mainly so 4 are still raid healing in p3). Oy, I don’t want to lose a dps to the healing, but if a raid can’t get 2 palys, they’re going to have to 
. It’s too much for 1 healer to keep the MT up in p3. (We have tried using just 1 healer, the tank goes through too many of their cd’s too quickly – it’s just not safe)
That being said… the raid also need disc priests… ONLY disc priests… as many priests as the raid might have, they ALL need to be disc – overstated… no – here’s why:
1. Bubble absorbs ~8k+ dmg…
2. Bubble is INSTANT with no CD!
3. Divine Aegis absorbs dmg (with T9 4-set it’s a bit more)
4. Pain suppresion absorbs dmg…
5. Renewed hope absorbs dmg (granted same as Sanctuary & they don’t stack)..
* and if you happen to have a handy dandy legendary mace… that’s more dmg absorbed…
Seeing a trend? This fight isn’t about how much healing priests can do in p3, it’s how much dmg can priests prevent in p3.
The only thing a holy priest brings to the raid is the speedy bubble – that’s IF they spec into it. Their renews/fheals are too strong for p3 (downranking is available, but not viable for healing dots), their bubbles are too weak and priest wings only save 1 person every 1 minute (if glyphed – 3 otherwise). And looking at my logs from Sat night vs Sun Night – I actually did MORE healing (heals & bubbles combined) as disc than holy…
If priests can prevent the damage first, then allow the “slower heal-types” like druids & shamans to come in & finish out the heals, the healers could keep a lot more people up with a lot less stress.
The only other thing I noticed was that many of the classes have some way to “prevent” their own dmg – ie mages w/frost ward & ice block or rogues w/cloak… IDK if other classes can “talent” something like that, but it may be beneficial – it honestly just depends on how much dps is lost vs overall survivability (kinda like going for Naxx Immortal – so everyone went a survival spec). That’s just a thot, I’m not a dps’er, so I honestly don’t know if it’s worth the talent changes.
Now that I’ve had the opportunity to see this fight from beginning to end, I’m going to add some of the nitty gritty.
First, other than dots & tanks, NO HEALING happens in p3. The raid keeps themselves up with JOL & healing totem. Healers have to have a shaman with healing totem in their group, since they don’t get JOL. We also split the priests up & downranked holy nova. If the shaman dropped, priests would holy nova about every 5 sec or so. Any more healing than that & anub heals for too much himself & dps cannot keep up. This phase is all about the healers & how they can control their healing.
We really analyzed the strengths & flaws of each healing class & assigned healing accordingly. We downed him with the following healing comp – 2 Paly’s (on tanks), Shaman, Druid & 3 Disc. Priests. Priests bubbled their assigned target, then everyone & shaman/druid would help cover small heals. My specific job was to heal the 3rd person DOT’d in the rotation & keep tanks up with inspiration. Also, we had to heal locks so they could life tap (top ranked penance is great for that), etc. We probably didn’t need 7 healers with 2 paly’s healing the tanks; however, our dps wasn’t struggling, so it just made sense to have an extra healer to help out.
Obviously, 3 disc priests could be considered overkill, but you need at least 2 (bubbles & Inspiration alone are very important). It just worked out for us that all 3 of our priests had a disc off-spec (well, mine’s main spec) & knew how to play it well.
DPS – Talking out of my @$$ – Anub « Priestly Ways – A Healing Priest's Blog said,
October 22, 2009 at 1:45 pm
[...] I discussed in my Healing Stance post, healers have it pretty easy until p3. This is relatively true for DPS as well. The race [...]
BobTurkey said,
November 2, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I haven’t done the hard mode version of Anub yet, but all disc sounds overkill to me. 2 disc priests can maintain shields on the entire 25 man raid (allowing for Weakened Soul). I’m not sure what the extras would do that other classes can’t.
The first disc priest provides Renewed Hope and if you’re minimising heals Divine Aegis isn’t going to be a huge benefit. But I suppose re:Divine Aegis and Pain Suppression every little bit helps on a hard fight.
re: Penetrator – couldn’t you just assign healers to groups?
Gobble gobble.
healingbuddy said,
November 3, 2009 at 9:37 am
You’re right that it seems like overkill, but unfortunately, holy priests just have TOO much healing for anub in p3 (we’ve tried
). You can downrank spells, but then you risk not healing enough, etc. You only want to be healing any one individual ~2-3k health max. The raid as a whole should be sitting at ~ 1k health, preferably lower if manageable. You also have to consider that you have < 3 sec to prevent/heal the dmg the person with the dot is about to take when it's first applied. Bubble is a great way to do that, but with GCD you can only get 2 bubbles off before the dot ticks. Although a bubble will prevent the initial damage, you still have to continue healing (usually I downrank my penance & use top ranked fheal). Which is mainly why disc priests are just overall better.
Some other strategy things that happen in this phase, the tank is taking a shit ton of dmg and it helps when the disc priests can throw bubbles up on the tanks & make sure they maintain Inspiration.
Also, assigning groups can get very hairy when 2 or 3 people get the dot in 1 group… Can’t quite assign 1 person to that… We used the “outdps” strategy listed where we assign everyone a number. The penetrator addon helps with tells to an individual so they’re aware they have the dot & can take their own measures (pots, HS, talents & spells).
I’ll add a bit more to my strat about what to expect healing.
BobTurkey said,
November 4, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Wow! Anub 25 heroic sounds hard.
Keeping ppl alive but under 3k would be pretty hard.
Isn’t this more of a not-enough-dps type issue? Perhaps with too many healers?
Gobble gobble.
healingbuddy said,
November 5, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Honestly, our dps is awesome! In the p1 stages, they can typically get him down 30-35% each time. Usually after the 2nd burrow, he only had ~10% to go b4 he’s in p3.
The problem with p3 is the fact that dps has to continue aoe’ing adds and dpsing anub. Anub Leaching Swarms for a shit ton if each person is giving him even 1k health back (if everyone’s at 10k health) – that’s 25k health. Plus the tanks are typically always topped off, so he’s getting roughly 5k health from each tank all the time (15k health every tic). Also, you have to remember the 5 people who have the dot are also healed for more – we usually try to keep them 1/3 – 1/2 life during the dot. Keeping people below 1k means that the raid is only giving him 100 or less health per tic. Even 3k is 3x as much healing that he’s doing than 1k and it’s noticeable.
If you’re keeping people at 3k, then you heal anub (every tic, mind you) for 7.5k. Most dps can dps thru this, once or twice, but not continuously. Also, sad to say, but people do die in this phase, it can be very hard to keep people up.
Think of it this way… Anub has ~27M health. In our downing attempt, he healed 8.5M health from leeching swarm. That was 8.5M additional dmg the dps had to break through. Multiply that number by 3 if you keep them at 3k instead of 1k.
BobTurkey said,
November 5, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Ok those numbers are making sense. So you’d need 3 disc priests to cover the Penetrating debuff (+bubble/Inspire tanks) and a couple of healers for the tanks.
Interesting. Your original post makes more sense now. Sounds like a pretty challenging fight.
Did you try stacking Nature resist at all?
Gobble gobble.
healingbuddy said,
November 5, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Yep, a shaman covered nature resist & a paly covered frost resist. We also used frost protection pots at the start of p3 & kept health stones very close… The Penetrating Cold debuff ticked for around 4k with resists.
yeva said,
November 28, 2009 at 4:23 am
Hi.
Im a holy/disc priest. In 10HC at Anub in the p3 i cannot keeps the partys life…
Holy pala on the tanks, im on the raid.
The pala can heal the tanks, but the raid is dying…
Please help: How can i keep my patys life?
Holy? Disc? Renew? PoM? CoH? Shield?
healingbuddy said,
November 28, 2009 at 9:29 am
I would recommend disc for Anub. Bubbles are so much more powerful than renews. I’m usually linked with a shaman or druid, so they typically heal the dots & I heal tanks w/ bubbles on the dots…
The biggest thing is healers have to be ON TOP of their stuff. If the paly is healing the tanks, he needs to pop some heals to your dots as well when the adds are not up. He should have Beacon on the mt anyway, so extra heals on others will be just fine.
Lastly, you’re not done healing until the dot is off – even if anub throws more dots out before the last tic is off. So, don’t just bubble & look away. I usually bubble first target, penance second target – then bubble, go back to first target & fheal. Then just pop fheals between the two. Timing the bubbles the way I do allows me to heal precisely when their bubbles are dropping. Also, check your glyphs, you should have Glyph of Penance, Glyph of Power Word Shield & Glyph of Flash Heal – this one’s interchangeable with others, but it helps with this fight.
Lastly, make sure you’re spec hits the points from my disc spec page. All are key to making this fight a lot easier.
yeva said,
November 29, 2009 at 2:13 am
Thanks.