Heroic Dark Shaman - help! (Resto Druid)

[Tia 0]

I'm having problems resto druid healing on heroic Dark Shaman 10. Our healing comp is Holy Pally, Disc Priest, and me, the resto druid. Our raid sends 2 tanks (pally & bear) up top with the holy pally & disc priest. I am down below with the DK tank, and our dps: ele sham, hunter, mage, warlock.

 

My problem is keeping people healed up specifically when their iron prison is going to expire. I have barkskin for myself which I use, and I try to keep the iron bark available for our hunter since he can only deterrance twice during the fight. I keep rejuv's rolling on everybody as much as possible and swiftmend and wild growth on cooldown. Am I doing this wrong? Any other fight I'm fine on - just not this one!!

 

Here are the logs from that fight: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/ewprxos2yfi2hu7u/

 

Here's my armory link:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/hyjal/Lanaiiya/advanced

 

I've healed this twice with this group. The first time we got it on the 4th try. The difference was we had a shadow priest below who would put a bubble on anybody that didn't have their own defensive cd ready for iron prison expiry. 

 

This past week we didn't have the priest bubbles and we had 10 wipes before I finally gave up and we brought in the previous "retired" druid healer and they one-shot it.  

 

I know from experience and forums etc. that disc priest is best for the "below" group and I've done this on my disc priest with no problem (just pws people before their iron prison expires). So I know how to heal the fight - just missing something on my druid that's preventing us from getting the kill when I'm healing it. Obviously if the other druid can heal it with no problem, I should be able to as well. 

 

Any suggestions or help is greatly appreciated! (This post was originally posted in dungeons & raids - copied it here, so hopefully its in the right place!)

[Kazistrasz 216]

There's almost no excuse for someone to need a PW:S when their Iron Prison is going off. Every class has at least some defensive ability. Hunters only have Deterrence on a 2-min CD. It's two charges, so if they they get repeatedly picked for Iron Prison, they're going to need your Iron Bark. Shadow Priests have the weakest protection, but they have Fade for 10%, Dispersion, and their own PW:S that they shouldn't need to use on anyone else.

 

If someone in your group dies to Iron Prison and you had them healed beforehand, tell them to stop being bad. There's not much you can do to fix other people's stupid. Just keep them topped off and watch them in case they get hit by something in the last few seconds before their debuffs are going to expire (e.g., they walk into a slime before it hits). If you can call it out 8-10 seconds before debuffs expire and who they're going to expire on, you can help them remember to hit their buttons. Other than that, there's no miracle work going on besides just keeping them topped off and hoping they don't decide to be dumb.

[Krazyito 521]

As Kaz said, everyone has some sort of ability they can use to mitigate that damage.  They can even call out for an external since as Vigilance or Hand of Sacrifice.   If people are dying below to Iron prison, its more than likely their own fault.  

 

 

Secondly, with your gear you should easily be able to solo heal up top, once you fix the small things with it (seems you got a new staff recently and are below your haste breakpoint).  I don't know why you would send 2 healers up top anyway, especially in a 10 man.  1 healer up top, and 1 down below is perfectly fine.

 

Here is a video I made of me recently healing the top part if you care to watch.  If you want, Next week on Tuesday I can record the bottom.

 

[Pinkis 12]

I can only agree to Kazistrasz, you can't save people if they're dumb. 

 

However it seems weird for me that you have to heal prisons and not the disci priest. Our tactic is completely different. What we do is let our DK tank and disci get the bottom boss with prisons, and it not only is easy, but as they say "it's the most boring fight in whole SoO" for them. And everyone else (3 ranged dps, 1 melee, 2 tanks and 2 heals(me resto dudu and resto shammy)) goes up. First half of the fight is extremely boring, when it gets to meteors it gets a bit more interesting, and at the very end when they use lust, you have to heal a bit. 

Last week after convincing the group that I could, I've managed to heal it solo (567 resto ilvl), having a couple of wipes when people just failed and got pretty much oneshot. So if you want it to get easier just switch with disci.

[Krazyito 521]

To clarify, it seems you have Kardis near the throne room, and Hammron near the gates to Nazgrim (like normal) but you have your whole raid up top with Hammron. Am I right?  I'm going to base what I say next off this.

 

Well, the reason everyone does it different is becasue why would you put the whole raid upstairs constantly having to move for tombs.  Its a lot less movement (hence more raid DPS) if you're downstairs moving from tornadoes.

 

Second, to most groups, the Foul stream (that Hammron does) does a lot of raid damage and is annoying to coordinate with that many people, on top of you not having very much room to move around.

 

Lastly, you have to do even more movement the longer the fight lasts (which is going to last a while more than others becasue you're moving so much for tombs) because of the Ashen Walls.

 

Overall, its just a lot less movement doing the opposite of what you're saying you are doing.  Though, don't change your strategy because of me, I'm just explaining why others do it the other way.

[Pinkis 12]

I honestly don't remember boss names, but as everything you said is correct you must be right about our tactic. We've chosen this because we have a melee shammy who would suck at the bottom boss, so it would be another dps loss. Which one is bigger - dunno.

 

You're pretty much right about movement from tombs, it does make things a bit inconvenient. But as we have one melee who couldn't care less about tombs, and 2/3 our rdps can dps while moving (hunt and ele shammy) this is not that much of a loss.

As we're always standing stacked in same 2x2 yd square in order not to flood our space with tombs, moving out for streams is fairly easy, we don't see that as a problem at all.

 

One big thing is walls. He he. It's like we do not get them. Only our tanks notice that they exist. It's because we "split up" our top group into ranged (rdps and heals) and melee (mdps and tanks). Ranged people stand on top of the ramp, and melee stand down, close to the main building where shamans originaly spawn (I hope you get what I want to say). In this way tanks place walls so half of the ashen wall goes into building, and the other half goes at the ramp direction without reaching ranged.

 

So summing things up, we basically just stand stacked all the time, move out for tombs, then stack up again. Its like ~12 yd of movement, which I bevelieve could be compare to moving out of tornados. As we're stacked foul stream means only 1 person has to move, which is totally acceptable, and as I've explained before - we do not get ashen walls to bother dps. 

[Tia 0]

Thanks for all the input so far - and yes I agree 100% that the disc priest should be healing below.But... raid leader says that's the way we're gonna do it so that's the way we do it. And your right Krazy - I've solo healed the top with another group with no problem.

 

My biggest concern is why did our other resto druid go in and one-shot it - same group, same strat etc?. I mean if he had come in and they continued to wipe then I'd push the idea of disc staying bottom. His gear is about the same ilevel as mine - only about 3 ilevels lower so no big difference. But what I need to figure out is what is he doing differently than me? Why was he able to heal it with that strat and I wasn't? I talked to him the next day and he mentioned one thing I was missing and that was using genesis on people just as their iron prisons were expiring so the rejuv I had on was that much more effective. There's got to be something else though.

 

And yes I finally got my heroic weapon! I haven't had a chance to gem & fix my reforging - once I do that I'll be back at the 13163 haste rating. Should I go for more mastery? Will be sitting at 34.54% (according to amr optimization). Spirit is probably higher than usual @ 18k but I seem to need it with progression - we just got Thok and are working on Blackfuse.

 

Not being able to do this one fight successfully it just driving me nuts!

 

Also - thanks for posting the video - I'd love to see one from "bottom healer" perspective if you get a chance to record that!

Edited August 22, 2014 by Tia

[Krazyito 521]

With the same group, I can only assume that they were smart and used their CDs for the prison. There's nothing a resto druid can do to prevent that, other than using ironbark.

As for stats, go to 13k haste and try to go lower in spirit. It really isn't needed, just a matter of pacing yourself and making good decisions.

 

Edit: This only matters if they are DYING to prison (especially when topped off) if they don't die to prison but then die shortly afterwards, it's your fault.

 

I'm gonna go through and tell you what each of these players should be doing for a prison based on the comp in your log.

 

• Mage: Ice barrier/Greater Invis/ cauterize(not recommended)/Flameglow - Should have something for everyone, no excuse
• Shaman: Stone Bulwark Totem or Astral Shift, Shamanistic rage (dps only) - DPS should have one for every single one, Resto would only have it for every other one, unless they are good at using their Stone Bulwark totem.
• Hunter: Deterrence - with talent, should be able to soak 2 in a row then if they get a 3rd in a row they may need an iron bark or other external.  Most of the time, a hunter should be able to deal with it.
• Warlock: Soul link or Sacrificial Pact (better), Unending Resolve - Should be able to get every single one, no excuse.
• Druid: Barkskin, Survival Instincts (agility druids) - Barkskin is up for every single one. No excuse.
• Death Knight: Icebound fortitude with this glyph - allows for every other one to be mitigated, cannot handle 2 in a row.  I don't think they have anything else.  They would need an external if they get 2 in a row.
• Paladin: Glyphed Divine Protection - No excuse, should be up for every one.
• Priest: Power Word Shield, Glyph of Fade - No excuse.

It seems the only ones that have an excuse are sometimes hunters, DPS death knights, and resto shamans. And that is ONLY if they get 2 in a row.  the first one should never kill them, and every OTHER one shouldn't kill them.  If they get 2 in a row, ask for a defensive, (BoP, Ironbark, Sacrifice, Pain Sup, Offspec Shields, etc) if they get a 3rd in a row, they should have their normal cooldown up and if the RNG god really hates them and they get a 4th in a row, use the externals again since it should be back up.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Krazyito

[Kazistrasz 216]

Genesis isn't really a big deal. There are only two things you can do for people to help them not die to their own stupidity (because that is the only thing you can die to as a DPS on this fight other than awesome graphic bugs that make tornadoes invisible).  The first is Iron Bark. I always kept it saved for our hunters and would only use it if I knew our hunter would be okay and someone needed it (the hunter and I talked midfight to communicate when he'd have me bark him instead of him using deterrence). The second is to just have heals ready for them. It happens every 30 seconds. At about 8 seconds left throw Rejuvs on both people about to get hit and watch them closely. Keep your Swiftmend and Sage Mender procs ready. If one or either of them decides to run into something idiotic in those last 8 seconds, you've got an instant or near-instant heal ready to get them back up before it hits. 

 

That's literally all you can do for them.

[Krazyito 521]

Ok, Like I said I got a video of me healing Kardis side (downstairs)

 

http://youtu.be/Dqiw9db6uqs?t=59m48s

 

I need to take a day to split it up, at about 59m into the video is Dark shamans.

 

 

The entire video consists of a 3 hour - one night clear of 10 man if you're interested in watching / skimming through most of it.

Here are the logs for the night: http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/M6JLp3cvAYmqGk2w

 

 

Although I have to admit, it was a terrible attempt for me heh.

[Pinkis 12]

Thank you :) I'll watch it and hope to get sth usefull out of it, when I get back home. However, it's still weird for me that you get to heal Kardris... Yesterday I've healed Haromm without a problem (except when one of the tanks fell asleep and was standing on the ashen wall for a while, i couldn't keep up with that).

[Krazyito 521]

I've healed both. When I came to this 10man Kaz was the Resto druid and he couldn't / never healed Hammon. The Holy Paladin did it. It's not a big deal, just how they managed to work around difficulties.

When I'm healing with our disc priest I have to go upstairs because he can't / never done it.

[Kazistrasz 216]

When I switched to my resto druid for our guild, it went from being my weekend normal clear alt run character to my 11/14 Heroic clearing and Siegecrafter progression character. I was stepping into heroics with a 563 item level. The first healers to do the fight, a year and two weeks ago, did it between 555 and 558. So, 563 wasn't undergeared, but it's certainly not as ridiculously overgeared as coming to the fight with a 575 or 580 item level. The first time Krazy healed up top for 10-man, he was around 575 I think. He came to us at 570, but it was a while before he did up top IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong, bro).

 

We had a disc priest for a week before me, but she had to leave for whatever reasons. So, I switched mains and started healing. Previously, she'd been downstairs, and we wanted to try putting our holy pally down there because absorbs OP. The problem is that resto druids have craptastic toolkits for tank healing. Since the very beginning of WoW going through Molten Core, the resto druid niche has always been raid healing via HoTs. It's never been direct healing, and it's certainly never been tank healing. So, it was really rough. Having ticks of Toxic Mist line up with the Froststorm Strike and an auto-attack was more than I could do with that level of gear. I tried switching talents every pull, and it just wasn't getting better. I tried switching to a more crit-heavy build for Living Seed the next week, and that didn't cut it either.

 

The differences between my first H Shamans kill as a resto druid at that gear level and Krazy's from this week... his Rejuv and WG heal for about 50% more, and his Healing Touch was also about 50% more (for maximum, our averages aren't as comparable due to difference in frequency of use).

 

So, we switched to having Wov up time, since he had the better toolkit for that job, and I went downstairs where I was dealing with the type of damage I have a toolkit designed for. Nowadays, you can heal anything. Even with it still sitting at 576, I could get on and heal up top. Having 13 more item levels is the difference between having normal level gear and heroic level gear. It's a lot. It's probably easy now, but if you're doing it without overgearing the snot out of it, it's a totally different ball game.

 

So, the reason Krazy and I usually do the bottom is simply a result of when we cleared the content and being more optimized towards what our specs are good at. We change things up now on farm sometimes, but a lot of the time we just go with what we've always had for the sake of efficiency and having a smooth, easy clear on Tuesday nights to free up our Wednesdays.

[Krazyito 521]

No I came there with MUCH more gear. (585+)  Though I'm sure I could have done it just the same. 

[Pinkis 12]

Hmm :) As i've stated before I've managed to heal this (upstairs) with 567, which is more than you had. But I was also healing 8 ppl (including myself) so it probably required more output. When talking about tank healing - tanks nowadays can do magical things when they want to.. Our pally (well yeah, he's overgeared atm) as far as I remember was always able to put out a lot of self healing, so at the shammy fight if everything goes smoothly (unline this Thursday...) and tanks swap at 5 stacks I barely have to heal him, just put rejuv on and forget. There's different story if tanks mess up and he gets like 7 stacks+... The only time I really have to put effort when our monk tank (he's usually ww, just swaps for shammies so he's got like no experience) gets beaten. Sometimes he messes up his rotation (or w/e stuff that keeps him alive) I have to use NS on him even if he has 3 stacks+.. And yeah, I agree that tank healing is not the best thing for resto dudu, treant has always been and still is quite efficient raid healer. That's why I'm healing top our 8 ppl :) If it was only tank healing I'd let our shammy do the job and go boomkin as I usually do, but when we first tried solo heal (we progressed 8 ppl top, shammy and dudu resto and 2 tanks and whole group except for DK and disci downstairs) it was a difficult task for him (to solo heal upstairs).

 

And I totaly agree that the way you do stuff while making progress sticks so hard that switching one thing may cause a lot of wipes :D

[Kazistrasz 216]

No I came there with MUCH more gear. (585+)  Though I'm sure I could have done it just the same. 

 

Wowprogress lies, then. Dirty liars. Telling lies. 

[Krazyito 521]

Wowprogress lies, then. Dirty liars. Telling lies. 

 

I more than likely logged out in Boomkin gear that day then.