Why can't I heal SL boss fight?Follow

Day before I ran Shadow Labs as a DPS, we had a Restro healer and finished. I ran Shadow Labs today as the healer and we had problems and could not get past Grandmaster Vorpil (2nd to last boss). To much AOE damage and I could not heal everyone fast enough or I would die first.

My plan was to stay Feral spec (I just hit 70) and work on my gear, rep, etc. then go Restro once I get gear for Kara. I have been healing as a Feral about 40% of the time since level 40 so I thought I knew how to do it. I have +785 healing (self buffed MotW) and 96 mana/5 and never had a problem running out of mana. Of course now I am begining to wonder if I am just a crappy healer.

I could not keep the group alive for Grandmaster Vorpil. Everytime he ported the group took too much damage and either someone died or I got aggro trying to heal fast and then I died. Finally we gave up. Everyone knew to get out of his AoE after the port but after the port everyone was down to 30% or so.

I don't know if is just me or being Feral Spec. I know it should be harder with a Feral spec, but still. Our Tank appeared well geared (maybe even over geared).

Is there some trick to healing that fight or is it simply too hard unless you are true Restro?

Attached is my Armory

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Rexxar&n=Sigram


Thanks

The trick isn't the healing of the fight...it's the tanking of the fight and whether or not you dps can keep up.

Tanked properly, Vorpil hits for very little real damage and your dps will avoid the overwhelming majority of the AoE. What hurts in that fight are a) players who stand in the rain of fire after a teleport, b) the shadow bolt volley on players who stood in the rain of fire too long and c) players too close to voidwalkers that explode.

Problem 'a' is solved by players being mobile, anticipating the teleport, and getting off the platform. Done properly, they'll take at most one tick of damage from the rain of fire and the shadow bolt volley will be easy to heal through.

Problem 'c' is solved by properly tanking Vorpil and having your dps anticipate where the tank is going (not hard) and not get left behind in a cluster of voidwalkers.

When I tank the fight, I explain to the party where I'm bringing Vorpil off the pull, where dps/healers should be standing, how I'm going to move him, and what positions will be like after the teleport. Doesn't matter how well I explain it...I always seem to glance up and find one or two dps standing in the middle of a pack of voidwalkers.

You can use a mod like LittleWigs that will give you a warning when his teleport cooldown is up, but more than that, the teleport isn't quite instant. You'll notice a brief pause, then a flash of light come from the ground under Vorpil as well as each party member. It's only 1-2 seconds of warning, but it's more than enough to get people (who are paying attention) into "get off the platform!" mode.

I've run Shadow Labs countless times and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm the first tank I've seen who truly knew how to handle Vorpil off the pull. (I've run it many, many times on my hunter and my shaman in addition to tanking it on my druid). The temptation for most tanks who have a reasonable understanding of the fight is to pull Vorpil from max range and then wait for him to close the gap and start tanking. Once Vorpil closes to melee range, they start pulling him back. That works, but it leaves groups vulnerable to a ton of AoE damage from voidwalkers that spawn in bad places and if the group is taking damage from exploding voidwalkers, chances are good that Vorpil is also getting healed by a fair amount. Also, the more you have to move Vorpil to keep him away from voidies, the more everyone else is having to move. Casters who have to move can't cast. Melee dps who have to move quite often lose out on a bunch of dps potential. There's a better alternative.

If you pull Vorpil fully half way down the hall, you'll never have to deek him around voidwalkers that spawn behind the tank. They'll all spawn behind Vorpil, and they move very slow. It becomes easy to pull Vorpil further back if the voidwalkers start getting too close and you can do so without disrupting healer's/ranged dps, and you can minimize the number of moves so that even melee dps aren't disrupted very much with each move. When he teleports the group, most tanks will pull him to the north hall, but they don't pull him far enough. What I've found to be extremely helpful is to pull him 2/3-3/4 of the way down the north hall before you stop and start tanking him. Again, it means that he's stationary for that much longer before you have to start moving him to keep him clear of the voidwalkers. The longer he stays still, the more threat the tank builds and the more dps the rest of the group can put on him.

The easiest way to see how far you need to pull Vorpil both at the start and after each teleport is to look at the runes on the ground that appear when he starts summoning voidwalkers. The runes themselves always seem to spawn in the same location. Off the pull, I don't even stop and start tanking him until he's several paces beyond the last rune in the southern hall. After a teleport, I pull him well past the last rune in the northern hall before I stop moving and really start tanking him. If your tank is having to pull Vorpil around/through voidwalkers, the tank didn't pull him far enough before he stopped and started tanking.

There can only be a certain number of voidwalkers spawned at any given time. Each time a voidwalker reaches Vorpil and explodes, it means another voidwalker can spawn in a bad spot. By pulling Vorpil so far down the south hall on the initial pull, chances are good that none of the voidwalkers will explode. This means that when you pull him into the north hall after the first teleport, all of the voidwalkers in the south hall will start moving north again...takes them forever to get anywhere near Vorpil. There's risk of significant damage if Vorpil lives long enough to do a second teleport and your party is too slow getting off the platform. There will be a lot of voidwalkers nearby that will start moving to Vorpil right after the port, but as long as your party is on the ball and gets off the platform and south down the hall asap, the damage they take will be minimal.

If Vorpil survives to a third teleport using this strategy, it means your party is badly undergeared and/or isn't making the best use of their dps potential. He's got less than 90k HP in normal mode and as level 70 dungeon bosses go, that's nothing to burn through.


Edited, Jul 30th 2008 4:09pm by AureliusSir

Good clear strategy, thanks.

One other thing I learned is when doing PUGs don't be too quick to assume you messed up. While you have to consider the possibility you had problems the group as a whole makes such a difference and it is not always obvious until you get into the instance.

For example, I did Crypts with two different groups tonight and I healed both times. The first group was 4 lv 70's and 1 lv 69 with 3 CC (Mage, Rogue, Hunter) and we wiped 3 times before the first boss and could not even kill the first boss after ~4 tries (yes 7 wipes in that run with no bosses down). Looking at lv, gear, and CC we should have done just fine. But we did quite the opposite.

I ran it later with a group of 3 lv 67's and 2 70's (lower overall level group) and only 2 CC's (Hunter and Rogue). We made it to the end and killed the last boss no problem. You would have thought this run would have been a little harder. Again, quite the opposite.


I have noticed that it is harder of off-spec heal the higher lv 70 instances.

gonna thread jack here a sec, since this is about healing. on heroics do ya'll have rolling 3 stacks of LB on tank before he even pulls?. i had a druid healer do that the other day when i was tanking feral. seems 9 times out of ten if anyone pulled it was him and normaly at start like if had to get casters also he would get casters asap then i would loose the melee getting the caster constantly playing catch. dont think i ever had another druid have hots ticking before the pull. so just wondering how ya'll start the first set of heals.

@ Punkspider

I have run my drood as resto up to 1704+heals and then just recently went back to feral.

Anyway, sometimes when I knew that I would have to wait a few seconds to throw heals in order to allow the tank to pick up a large pull (mostly when it was a druid or warrior tanking) I would throw a regrowth/rejuv/1 lifebloom on the tank before he pulls.

The key here is to have the HoT on the tank before he pulls, because any healing those HoTs do will then be counted as threat caused by the tank, not by the healer.

The difference is if I were to throw a 3 stack on a tank and then he pulled and I decided to refresh the stack before it ran out, then I immediately have a full 3 stack worth of healing threat being put out to all the mobs. On the other hand I could just let it run out, which would give him the large bloom to heal him and then begin my healing rotation. At this point I might want to swiftmend the rejuv for a decent heal or just start my usual 3 stack and rejuv rotation with a regrowth/swiftmend if needed.

The druid that was healing you was most likely refreshing the lifeblooms and causing himself to gain a large amount of threat (250ish hps on a 1 stack compared to 750+ hps on a 3 stack (random numbers :-) )

If he had just let them run out and given you an extra couple seconds to gain aggro, the HoTs he put on you would have the duel effect of giving you more threat and keeping you alive till he could begin his healing rotation.

yeah i know the whole tank dies healer healer dies tank dps die they are morons. prot pally was my main this all around druid is becomeing main i think. but i just wasnt sure how ya'll normaly start out heals. it was mainly the ones where you have the purple non kos mobs that add that would go for him or 2 pulls before 1st named where the two guys are spread out some on doorway and one would take a sec to get to me. but i changed how i do that by SF MF far mob X then fairie fire skull followed by mangle swipes. i'm gonna be working on healing set now that i can dps boomkin in kara pretty good and can main tank it. so this also helps my healing info since i'm very lacking when comes to healing haven't had to do it much.

The "bloom" half of lifebloom adds to the target's threat, but I think HoTs you cast before the pull still give you threat as soon as they actually heal (overhealing, from HoTs or nuke heals, doesn't add threat). I usually start with 1x lifebloom so it will bloom once the tank is on each mob's threat list. Then Rejuv, Regrowth, and stack Lifebloom.