Priestly troubles on Hex Lord.Follow

So Im not as gung ho for raidding as I used to be when I first hit Karazhan (time contraints mainly). I have been spending a majority of my time in Heroics.

So, the other night a call goes out in guild for a healer spot on Hex lord. I say that I can go and have the available time. With +1820 to heals I still have a bit to go before I would feel comfortable going into ZA normally, but the guild asked and I said sure.

I had to respecc to get COH as that is the main reason they needed me. Also, remeber this is my first time seeing Hex Lord so I'm not familliar with the fight.

They have already cleared all mobs up to Hex lord so I figured they had wiped a few times prior and people left and this is a second recruitment for another try. My duties for the fight, as they where explained to me, would be to heal the raid through shadow bolts and to keep the undead mob shackled, along with healing Main Tanks as needed.

Another mob was being CC'ed via Banish from one of our Locks. I died a few times to that damn banished mob coming out of Banish =(.

So here is where I was having the problem. I would try to throw a shackle on the undead target just prior to Shadow Bolts, then I would COH the raid and then top off tanks and then try to reshackle, rinse and repeat. A few times shackle broke real early and I wasnt able to reshackle. A few times I died from Rain of Fire =(. I think most of the other people at the raid had all been there before.

So we didnt down boss and at the end in Vent I hear everyone blaming the whole thing on not being able to shackle properly. I felt bad but then also know that a holy priests shackle isnt the most reliable spell. Was I just to much of a noob in ZA to be healing Hex Lord? What did i do so drastically wrong so that I dont do it again.

Any critizism would be appreciated.

Sounds like you were unlucky to some extent. Shackles don't break more because you're holy, they're just more likely to be resisted initially as we don't stack any +hit. I'm not usually made to shackle throughout (though have a couple of times due to lack of other crowd control), if there's a shadow priest they are generally made to shackle throughout, if there's only holy priests guildies don't like to take the risk of shackles breaking during spirit bolts. I re-apply shackles when I can, probably not the best idea to do it only just before spirit bolts in case it gets resisited.

Hex Lord isn't an easy fight at first, takes a bit of learning. I switch to a stamina kit for it so I've got about 10k hp - I don't know if perhaps your stam is a little low and not helping your survival? Btw, I'd think 1820 +heal is fine for ZA.

Holy priests always have early break issues on this fight, best to have a shadowpriest shackle it. If one isn't available you can simply have it tanked and killed before you get onto hex lord.

I'm almost always shadow and I rarely have difficulty keeping the undead shackled throughout the fight. When I go as holy it's an entirely different story. Darn thing always breaks early. Not to mention I think it's a bad idea for healers to be doing CC in the first place.

Your +healing is fine for ZA. Hex Lord is a very tough fight. It's common for us to one shot the aspects, wipe on hex-lord a few times and then one shot Zul'jin. Shadow resist definitely helps a lot during that fight.

I found that tossing just a few CoHs out during the bolts and then a prayer of healing out after they are done was a better way to do it for me.

All I'm going to add to this Vomica is hurry up and get something sparkly-purple in that chest slot of yours your Mp5 is still low.

Woot, look Cococj, I finally replaced my Hallowed chest piece. Some reason the two +18 healing gems arnt showing up in the slots.

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

I think the Heroic I ran with two pallies the other night had my Mana while casting at 259 with Kings and wisdom. I was one happy FULL MANA Priest. =)




Personally, I treat my healing as a full time job and dislike wasting mana for anything other than healing and dispelling. But If someone presures me into CC'ing I will, it just never turns out well.

I think this was my biggest problem. It was my first time to Hex Lord and I just ran in there without any warmup pulls to get settled, as they had already cleared everything.

With more experience in ZA Im sure ill be able to rock it the way I rock my Heroic runs and Kara (when I get the chance to even go).

P.S. Random thought: If a day was 48 hours instead of 24, would that mean that I would have to work for 16 hours strait?

I had a few questions about ZA, so I think I'll tag them on the end of this thread rather than starting a new one.

I'm not in my healing gear on the armoury, so here is a warcrafter mock-up of my priest: http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/46137

We've had a bit of a healer shortage recently in my guild, so I've taken my priest alt to a few raids now and really don't feel that I'm doing as well as I could be.

The CoH macro tip above sounds handy for Hexlord (we kill the adds first, so I had no trouble keeping him shackled), but I was hoping for some advice on Zul'jin and generally staying alive. I've got a lot of experience of the fights from a dps point of view and the rest of the raid is normally T5+ geared, so it's not as hard healing as it could be, I just find it rather stressful.

Anyway, onto the questions:

a) Zul'jin - grievous throw and claw rage. I normally cast a greater heal on the target and hope the other healers can keep them topped up while it lands. Should I try and stick to flash heal instead? (I'm concerned about going oom though, or FH not healing for enough with my gear), also what do you do when you are targetted? For claw rage I generally try to shield myself, but with my lack of stamina I tend to die a bit quick if the other healers aren't on the ball.

b) Zul'jin - that bloody eagle phase. I normally try and do a greater heal on one target followed by a PoM or Renew on a different target. Is there any point in trying to use PoH/CoH or is it likely that people will be too spread out to benefit from that?

c) I'm trying to boost my stamina if I can, but as it's an alt I don't really want to spend hours pvping for upgrades or a lot of gold on craftables. I'm planning to get the neck from SSO when I've got the rep, but other than that I'm mainly looking to Kara (which our guild doesn't run much) and badge loot for upgrades. Does anyone have suggestions for relatively easy to get upgrades that I may have missed?

Also, do you think it would be worth enchanting Two-toed Sandals with stamina and keeping them for the fights where I need a bit more survivability? Currently I'm stuck with switching in some dps peices if I need to boost my health (and those are even lower level than my healing kit, so not a good thing).

Any help is appreciated.

Edited, Sep 8th 2008 6:06am by Tynuv

Either is fine for this honestly. I'm personally raid healer on this fight 90% of the time since we do this with 1 tank and a stronger geared druid on MT heals. I usually drop heals in this phase only at throws so my mana regens completely either way by the time it matters for the next phases. Flash+heals from other heals will be more than enough to full heal the person unless your healers are complete trash.



Even though people are spread out I can almost never get a greater heal off on anyone in this phase. I use renew and PoM on everyone I can while CoHing when I see more than 3 people near one another as well as using flash heals only. I try to stick to running and instant heals in this phase. You'll never get off a PoH so don't even mess with that. You mana will die on this phase badly, Pot early pot often, I use shadow fiend here about 1/2 through the phase.



Anything from kara shoulder wise if gonna own primal mooncloth. I refuse to use this past early kara (pre-having gear) because of its lack of stam. I stick with T4 shoulders atm but I'm sure badge shoulders are better than that. Get a Belt of the Long road>your primal mooncloth belt for more stam as well. SSO neck is indeed nice but unless your exalted with aldor and even then in most cases Guardian neck will prove better imo. ZA neck is even better despite the lack of stam. There is a cloak in Kara that has stam on it and healing I believe it drops off prince. In general full badge gear will put you better than most gear you can get from below t5 raids.

I use boar's speed on feet myself for various reasons. I'd stick with the long road boots myself. Look to up your stam in pieces that have no stam already. Don't put on dps gear for upped survivability imo My hp is at 8kish and I rarely die on anything anymore. Though I run with a good group that communicates well so we generally don't have trouble with a lot of people taking damage when they shouldn't.

Overall, Get badge gear where you can. Just remember your hp is always gonna be low. I have the lowest HP in every raid I've done. I only get hit with AoE though so it's not a huge problem. Your biggest problem will be bird phase and bad luck. My group has 1 shotted hex and gotten wiped by zul'jin 5-6 times. Also if your group is having serious troubles consider dropping your off tank on that fight for another healer. Puts more stress for you main tank to not die but with 4ish healers you can survive the bird better. Seriously that bird phase sucks.