As I discussed in my Healing Stance post, healers have it pretty easy until p3.  This is relatively true for DPS as well.  The race begins in p3.  There are specs/glyphs/gear that dps’ers can get that can improve their AOE dmg (to continue dmg’ing the adds & anub) and improve their survivability.

This is a recent post that I put on our website regarding mages in the fight.

I was thinking about that too Bru…  I know you & merren go a specific spec to help benefit the AOE dmg.  I’m curious to know if other classes do the same thing.

I’m not calling anyone out, but b/c I know mages, I’ll use mage as my example.

Mages have great AOE, but our best aoe is ice based.  So it would seem that although frost spec is low single target dmg, it would be beneficial on so many levels for AOE.  Just some of the talents that would help are in the first 4 tiers, like:
[url=http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=29440]Precision[/url]
[url=http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=28332]Frost Warding[/url]
[url=http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=16758]Arctic Reach[/url]
[url=http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=31669]Frozen Core[/url]
[url=http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=43039]Ice Barrier[/url]

I’m no expert, but it seems to me this would be a great spec for this fight.
This is kind of a spec I thot about:  [url=http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0i0uZf0cZbIffsfucfzxb]16/8/47[/url]

Very horrible single target dmg, but the aoe dmg would be really good.  Again, dunno if it’s worth the switch, but if it means super better aoe, it might be worth a try.  This was just my example, or at least, what I would try for an attempt or 2 to see if it is better for the fight.

It also may be worth it for others to look for their aoe talents (like how the DKs switched to Unholy for the aoe dmg).

Any other thoughts?

My only issue was that the ONLY mage we currently have bashed this post saying it’s stupid to do this spec.  I could see that it’s not the best dps spec, but this same mage is the one who dies (guaranteed) every time to PC in p3.  Now… it seems to me that if you’re dieing a lot in p3 – you’d want to do things to fix it.  Sadly, at the time I wrote the post, I truly wasn’t calling him out.  I was just pointing out the ability of mages to survive in p3 is rather easy if you go that spec or something similar, while not hurting your AOE (Blizzard) dps.

Our locks are currently switching specs to Demo, our DKs switch specs to Unholy (using Blood Pres).  All of this helps boost aoe dmg, but also survivability at the same time (imp health & reduced dmg from locks, imp anti-magic shield for dks).  The mage states that a FFB spec is best for this fight.  I see the small improvements that could be from this spec; however, overall dmg would be lower & cost more mana than the ice spec I proposed.  Also, there would be many more chances for the mage to stay alive, esp with coldsnap & imp frost ward.

I know this is a healing forum, but I’m stumped at how to approach the mage with the possible changes.  He’s very quick to make recommendations to healers on what they should do, but when a recommendation is made for him, he insults my intelligence.  Ugh, maybe I’m just venting, but I don’t see the harm in trying a spec like this to see what happens.

Most of the other classes in our raid (ie, locks & dks) change their talents to improve their survivability for p3.  Am I talking out of my @$$ regarding mages?  I don’t think I am, but like I said before, it doesn’t hurt to try something different.  Just because others aren’t doing it, doesn’t mean it won’t work.  I’d also have to point out that other mages aren’t DIEING the instant they get the dot – prolly b/c they’re constantly keeping FW up & IB’ing the first/second dot.

Ok, rant aside – let me know what you think.  What are your mages/dps doing on this boss?

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.

Here’s my (one of many) most recent fubar, well not ar, but still…

We were killing Anub’Arak (10-man HM).  Our tank & a few others ran out of food, so they got the mats & b/c I have the chef hat, I popped the hat on & made the food.  Only problem was… I didn’t take the hat off.  In any case, about 3 attempts later, I happened to look at my character screen & see that I had the hat on… BIG FAIL…  I was wondering why my throughput wasn’t as much as it had been earlier…