My guild has been struggling on the Zon'ozz fight in 10 man normal. Our healers include 2 Disc Priests and a Paladin. We generally ask the Paladin to focus attention on the tank with the priests trying to help with the tank as best we can and also raid heal (assuming the pally will also help with some raid heals in the black phase as well).
The healing numbers are pretty lopsided with the paladin generally doing 20 - 25 % of the heals and the priests doing generally around 33 - 35% of the heals (each). The raid damage is quite heavy for the fight, but the Paladin healer insists that we (the priests) need to be doing more heals on the tank.
My questions are:
1. What is the best way to utilize a paladin healer on this fight with our healing make-up?
2. What are the best Paladin spells to effectively heal the fight and manage mana in the process?
3. Do you see anything glaringly wrong that we could fix (either with the pally in question or other aspects of our healing / raid)?
* Strat:First of all, what was your bounce strat? If you do too few, the ball spawn after the aoe damage phase is delayed (or so I've read), resulting in much more tank damage.
* Tank death:Looking specifically at the tank's death log there, what happend to your pally healer? He just doesn't heal the tank for like 10 seconds before his death. Were there range issues? Also, make sure your tank is using cooldowns for the Psychic Drain ability, especially as the boss has more stacks of his damage buff. Glyphed divine protection and Mirror of Broken Images will go far for that.
* Mana:If your pally healer is having mana problems, try letting him sit in melee so he can get some wacks in on the boss. His judgements of the pure uptime could also be improved, which would help both his healing and mana.
* Cooldowns:Your pally isn't using his cooldowns. At all. Literally two divine pleas, and no Guardians of Ancient Kings, Divine Favors, Hand of Sacrifice, Aura Mastery or Avenging Wraths in your 17 attempts. Improving that will be *huge* in his throughput.
* Raid healing as a pally:Your pally seems to not have gotten the memo that they are phenomenal raid healers now - he has very few holy radiance casts and no light of dawns. It is my understanding that LoD's beacon transfer is still better than WoG if it's healing its 6 (or 4 glyped) targets. This literally is to the point which I would suggest trying, if he was actually comfortable with it (if he's not, ignore this) having one of your priests tank heal more with the pally focusing on the raid instead, and just giving some support on the tanks with holy shocks and his holy power finishers. Regardless, He *certainly* should be utilizing the HR-HR-HS-LoD rotation during the black blood aoe damage phases.
* General aside: Do either of the priests feel comfortable playing holy? It might be worth considering on a fight like this with the tons of aoe damage going out, and the large bursty aoe damage phases where the raid can clump.
I tend to write novels in posts, so sorry about that. Hopefully some of it is useful!
Also, you can compare your healing logs to my group's: WoL
We did the achiev, so our numbers are somewhat inflated due to way more incoming damage, but the general types of healing should be comparable.
Strat: We tried a few different things. The first night we were going for 7 or so bounces with evenly split groups. This seemed totally out of control, so we moved an extra person (the paladin) into melee and cut back to 5 bounces (with our current healing, I was hoping from some 3s). We were not very good with the bouncing for a good portion of our tries, but after all of our practice I think we are getting better.
Tank Death: This is our biggest issue. The pally seems to be just not casting heals in those 10 seconds. I suspect it may be mana concern that makes him try to conserve and only start casting after he sees the damage taken. He uses Divine Light mostly (I'm not sure if that's right). Should he be able to spam that on the tank continuously, or should he be switching off to a more mana efficient spell when the tank is topped off? I don't think he was having range issues, since he was in with the melee.
Mana: He was in melee range for the logs that I linked. For Judgement, he seems to cast it 2 -4 times a minute sometimes, but I'm guessing not at the right times if you would consider his uptime low. Now that it lasts a minute, are his extra casts also wasting mana?
Cooldowns: Thanks for this info. I'm not very familiar with Pally cooldowns so I'll look these up and help suggest times for him to use them.
Raid Healing: The info you provided is exactly what we needed. We finally forced him to "raid heal" at the end with me focusing on the tank. We seemed a little more stable on the tank, but then our raid health level was too low. I think he had missed the memo on raid healing all together.
General: I actually went holy the first of the 3 days that we were trying Zon'ozz. I grew up holy and was excited to give it a try. Unfortunately, I found that I need a little more practice. My healing output wasn't what I was hoping for on that night, so I switched back to Discipline. I think I will start running Holy in LFR / 5 mans to regain my comfort level (mostly re-find my Circle of Healing that I couldn't seem to remember to use that night). My other option is to bring my Druid healer instead to provide constant Lifeblooms on the tank and good raid healing. I was thinking that might also provide some more stability.
Thanks again, I really appreciate your help!
~Daff
he's beaconing one of your priests... I don't know what to say to that... that's a HUGE problem... With the Tower of Radiance talent, he should be beaconing your main tank - and casting Divine Light on that tank - this will proc a holy power for him, 3 holy powers and he can either Word of Glory the tank for single target healing, or he can Light of Dawn to heal the melee, which will then transfer to the beacon (which should be the tank). So if he's not beaconing the tank, then his Divine Light is not generating Holy Power, which means he's not being efficient. And since he's not using his CDs either - I'm not really sure what he is doing...
Also, our holy radiance - while healing everyone around the target and shielding said targets with our mastery bubble (small but still helpful) NOW ALSO generates a holy power....
He needs to be judging once per minute, and he needs to be using Power Auras, or some way to track that - doesn't matter how, but anything more than that, and he is wasting mana.
Pally beacons the tank, and casts divine light on the tank, Holy Radiance on the melee when the tank is nearly topped off, casting Word of Glory with 3 holy power if the tank is low, or else use Light of Dawn on the melee.
For the AoE phases, he should be using Wrath and Divine Favor personal CDs. He will then pick three targets in the raid (since the raid is stacked) and cast Holy Radiance on each one - then Light of Dawn after 3 holy powers generated - and then recycle through Holy Radiance on those three people - this will be fantastic AoE healing during that phase - since there will be so much AoE healing going out, he doesn't even really need to focus on the tank - if he's nervous he can always Hand of Sacrifice the tank, or throw a WoG or Divine Light on the tank if he sees him getting low...
Don't let your Pally tell you that you guys need to heal the tank, or heal more - your Pally is playing wrong, and needs to correct that if he's to continue...
sorry - not trying to be harsh - I just can't stand people who redirect failures on other players when they are completely clueless as to how they are supposed to be playing...
I had alot of trouble healing this on my druid (tank healing on my Alt) which I'm not very experienced with. The damage intake is spiky because of the mechanics, specifically Psychic Drain and the stacking Focussed Anger. For example:
The stacks grow the longer you're playing ping pong so mistakes that increase raid damage due to excessive bounces also leads to increased tank damage. Its all in the Dungeon Journal but sometimes its not obvious, like Cho'gall and how many stacks of Devotion he was getting due to bad interrupts. This is our kill, illustrating the stacks of Focused Anger on Zon'nnoz:
Not a great image but if you take a peak at logs you can see it stacking. We had several mess ups with Focused Anger stacking up to 10. Best advice? Somebody needs to make a Power Aura just to track it for healers and the tank so you can plan around the incoming damage a bit better.
Edit: Just realized this is in the Pally forums but methinks my post is still applicable, healers (and tanks) should be watching this. Responded to a similar question in the DS forum.
Thanks Surgical. I always appreciate your thoughts (and generally I'm not posting in the pally forums). I think I will definitely make the raid more aware of the Focused Anger. I had looked at your logs from your first kill on Zon'ozz and it looked like you were being fairly conservative with the number of bounces. I'll start watching the Focused Anger on the boss during the fight (and not just in the logs afterward) and suggest we use it to determine the number of bounces and also when we need to be using cooldowns. I know I was probably using my pain suppression too soon (on the tries I remembered to use it) when it would be more of a help once the stacks get higher.
Thank you all for your help. I wanted to give an update. We struggled yesterday on this fight, but tonight we one-shot the boss. Basically, I went Holy and the other Disc priest took over primary healing duties on the tank. The pally's output stayed about the same, maybe a little better, but we were able to power through it (I even got ranked as Holy since our healing was lopsided).
I realized that I was missing a key new talent, Heavenly Voice, for Holy, which made my initial attempt at going holy not very successful. Being able to use Divine Hymn multiple times really boosted my holy numbers.
We are continuing to work with our pally to improve his numbers, but at least we are past this boss for this week. Thanks again.
First of all, what we found extremely helpful (though it's not done in the above kill) is to have the tank healer stand off to the side, so that they don't have to move at all. We kept on losing the tank on the last bounce of the orb, as all the healers had to move from melee range to let the orb hit the boss, and it is the exact same time that the tank takes insane damage. Having the tank healer off to the side really helped with that.
The only other thing I noticed, as I was looking at Holy Radiance casts, is that Mitsui cast Holy Radiance 3 times or so, I am guessing he did that during the black phase. Maybe he knows something I don't on how to time it, but as far as I know the boss continues to melee the tank during that phase, so any kind of cast is bad, since it prevents blocks/dodges/parries. Maybe he's still in the mindset that HR is instant-cast?
Now on to your pally, a lot of good comments already made, and just to reiterate them, he's not using his CDs. He has two main CDs: Avenging Wrath and Divine Favor. I would use those at the dark phases, or starting shortly before them, with probably one on each. If you guys are getting 4 dark phases, he can use AW on 2 of them and DF on the other two probably. My pally uses Fiery Quintessence, which I think Maldor can get too, and that provides me with a third CD to couple with the others. I am also an engineer so I have the Synaptic Springs CD to couple with that as well. The damage is minimal outside of the dark phase and the last few seconds of the orb phase. He also has Hand of Sacrifice, which can considerably lessen the damage that the tank takes at the end of the orb phase (admittedly I didn't use this one either on our kill, but it's a great CD). Divine Protection is also great to use to reduce his own damage during at least 2 of the black phases. Also Aura Mastery. He did use it once near the end there, but he could have gotten more uses out of it.
As far as mana CDs go, he has Tyrande's Favorite Doll, but hardly uses it. I would macro it into Divine Light or something of the sort, to get max usage out of it. Finally, as far as Divine Plea goes, I always pop it as we exit the dark phase, since the healing requirement is minimal at that time. I got to use it twice on our kill.
While the use of CDs is a big problem for a pally, his other problem is that he's just not casting enough. Sure he should be casting a lot more Holy Radiances, I essentially spam it with LoD interspersed during the dark phase, and he can get by with casting Holy Light a lot more, especially at the first half of the orb phase, but it's the sheer number of casts that is low. As a comparison, here are my pally's and Maldor's number of casts in our two respective kills, with have almost the exact duration.
Me:
Holy Radiance: 40
Light of Dawn: 15
Holy Shock: 33
Word of Glory: 10
Divine Light: 9
Holy Light: 17
Total of:
40+9+17 = 66 slow casts
15+33+10 = 58 instant casts
Active time: 99.7%
Maldor:
Holy Radiance: 9
Light of Dawn: 4
Holy Shock: 28
Word of Glory: 14
Divine Light: 32
Holy Light: 2
Total of:
9+32+2 = 41 slow casts
4+28+14 = 46 instant casts
Active time: 89.4%
So that's the first thing he can do better, "always be casting." If noone's taking much damage, cast a Holy Light at the tank, just for the mastery shield it will put, or cast it on someone else that needs healing and get the heal transfered to the tank. But as it stands, he's casting 2/3rds the number of spells he could be (our haste is almost identical).
His spec is fine, only a couple of things I would do differently. I find little reason for the third point in Protector of the Innocent, I would instead max out Last Word. Also I prefer Glyph of Divinity over Glyph of Lay on Hands, for the 10% mana return. I also prefer Glyph of Divine Favor over Glyph of Word of Glory.
Well that's about it, hope some of it helps. Good luck with your future raiding!
