Okay..So the new boss of the week for us is Zon'ozz. Looking for some input. We experimented tonight and heres what I can tell you: we used 1 holy priest (me), 1 disc priest, 1 holy paladin, 1 resto druid and 2 resto shm. Going to be lacking the disc but gaining a druid on our next try. We had a strat that kinda went like this:
-Each group had a heal and that heal was responsible for their group. The main tank group had 2 heals in it. Rest had 1 heal.
-For tonight, we had a warrior as main tank. we have a blood dk but he wanted to see how the war worked.
-Had 2 mages and 1 or 2 shadowpriests bouncing ball (cant quite recall who)
-We started by stacking on boss and then each group ran to one of 5 markers before the adds spawned. Heres where the issues arise..
Unless it was the mage/shadowpriests, we did not dispel disrupting shadows but healed through it, not a big deal really. The problem was when the groups had to move out from boss right before the adds spawned. Wasnt a far run but with people taking damage from the disrupting shadows debuff and then having adds, some healers werent able to get their group healed up in time and the group died or one by one people died (Mostly with the shaman healing his group for example).
Is this just an issue the healer has to work on or should we be doing a totally different strategy? The run time to where the adds are seems to be what the healers are having issues with. I didnt have any real issues myself but then, I have the spell array to get all of us close to being topped off. Any input would be welcome. thanks!
The run time should be done while the ball is heading back to the boss. Get in position before black phase starts.
As for disrupting shadows if the healers can't keep up while people are getting into position the safer bet is for people to be dispelled.
As for the tank being used. Warriors can do it but Blood Dks are really good. Their toolkit is much better to deal with Zon'ozz than warriors. Having Vampiric Blood for every black phase is great.
Dealing with tentacles properly is very important. Flails should die 1st. Then eyes. The claw should die quickly as is from cleave damage from tank and the dps assigned to stay on Zon'ozz.
What we found really helped was having the last orb soaker adjust their distance based on how long was left on/until disrupting shadows. We go with a 7/5/5 bounce strategy which leaves us with about 5 seconds of wiggle room on each orb phase. We get the 4th tentacle phase just as the berserk timer goes off and then just heal through the last tentacle phase whilst we burn the boss down.
Using this method we never go into a tentacle phase with more than 2 seconds left on Disrupting Shadows.
I've done both a 5 group strategy with a healer assigned to each group, as well as a 2 group strat where you have one go clockwise the other counterclockwise with the healers split up between the two groups.... both work. The 5 group strategy requires a lot of independence from your healers individually. If one of them messes up, their whole group is in Jeopardy. The 2 group strategy is a little bit more forgiving on the healers as they will always have at least 1 other if not 2 others to be working with them in their half.
That said, you MUST time the transition into Black Phase to not have Disrupting Shadows debuff out. Either hold the bounce for the debuff to wear off, or speed it up to stop him from casting it again.
Im not too familar with the 2 group deal. We were spread out in 5 groups and the issue we had all night tonight was that all the heals popped CDs for the first phase but 2nd phase, without any cooldowns, we couldnt keep healing up. So I experimented: during first phase, I didnt pop my Hymn and just tried to aoe prayer of heal the group. They died. I have to Hymn and aoe prayer of heal and spam the hell out of it to just skim by and by the 2nd phase, its not gonna happen without my CDs up.
Any idea what we could be doing different? How does the 2 group deal work really?
We Killed this on Monday this week. We 7 Healed it, 2 Holy Priests, 2 H Pallies, 1 Resto Sham, 2 Resto Druids. We split into 4 groups each group is assigned to position by the flail that spawns. I solo heal a group with 4 ranged dps, other groups have 2 Healers each.
First black phase, I drop a lightwell while we're positioning, drop a sanc, and Hymn, then PoH spam and PoM on CD. 2nd Black phase I drop lightwell (if it's not still up), drop a sanc, PoM on CD, and PoH spam. I do the same for 3rd black phase as we have all healing CD's for the last black phase. Other groups alternate CD's, so in a phase with no hymn a druid will tranq. It's important to do these almost at the start of the phase as that is when damage is highest.
Seraphin, as usual I am not sure how to fix your raid. But I can tell you what we did in case there is something in my experience that will help you.
We first tried the 2 group strategy but it didn't work well for our raid. Our healers kept dropping people. We tried this for part of one night. The second night we tried it a bit more then we switched to the 1 healer per group of dps strategy where we split into 4 dps groups who are assigned a position by the flail that spawns. I think this strat worked better for us because the healers stopped moving so much and simply healed and our dps movements seemed more contained so no one out ranged us.
We used 7 heals- 2 holy priests, 1 disc priest, 1 tree, 2 shaman, 1 paladin. Our MT was a Paladin and our dps-tank was a DK. Our raid is always split up in to PoH friendly groups to optimize our priests. Our shaman were tank healing.
We end up killing Zon'ozz in the final black phase. For this we stacked up in the middle instead of spreading out as usual and pop our 2 dps tranqs, barrier, AMZ, hymns, SLTs, set-cds, AM-- pretty much every cd we could.
We didn't formally split up our raid CDS, however we did have the 7th healer float. They went the direction of the group that had the most debuffs on members of the group to help out healing. We worked really hard to have everyone healed up going into black phase and we entered it with a few seconds on the debuff remaining. We usually only had one person low on health-- the rogue taking the orb. We made dps aware that if they had the debuff on themselves, they needed to pop personal cds when black first came out. Some dps and healers would even clear it off themselves if they were not near anyone else while they were running to their spot to dps the flail. Raid CDS were popped informally at the discretion of each healer or tank, but everyone tried to save them for the very last black phase if they could. (We sometimes will micromanage our CDS to maximize them, but we didn't for this fight once we switched to the 2nd strategy.)
For myself, the key to keeping my group up was to figure out exactly how they were moving so I could plan where to stand for optimal healing and minimized movement. Before I figured this out my healing wasn't consistent. We also all ran to our spots while the ball was heading back to the boss, before the sky turned black.
I was a holy priest this fight. I would renew each person in my group before black while running to my spot. (I usually Body and Soul myself as I run). If the debuff was on me I would dispel it, taking care no one was around me. Then black would come out and I would finish up my renews on the tank-healer and the tank. (so 7 total). Then I would go back to working on my group with pohs, flash/bind while they were moving and to build Serendipity for a faster PoH, and renew while I was moving. (poh is glyphed). My movement consisted of: run to the first spot, move a little bit to towards their next spot, move a little bit more to their 3rd spot, run back to the boss. If there were 3 debuffs I would hymn right at the start of black and the floating healer came to my side to help out. I could heal through 2 debuffs without help as long as I was ready. I did have a shaman within range so I most certainly had help from SL totem occasionally. (For this fight I decided to gear for a 2.0 second PoH, with no talents in shadowfiend since we have 2 tides.)
Thank you for the replies; extremely helpful. Let me ask you all this:
I noticed different things happening when we ran to our spots: People's debuffs would generally drop off by the time we got in place for the black phase. Rarely, to my remembering correctly hopefully, we did not get another debuff at the black phase. But this seemed rare, more often then not, a 2nd debuff occurred moments after the black phase started and this resulted in heals barely able to keep people up without popping cooldowns.
We tried dispeling this 2nd debuff and this worked to a degree for *some* healers, but not for others. Once the dispel hit, some healers were unable to get the lower health people back up quick enough when the black phase started.
We also have been using six healers. I am wondering if we should bump it up to 7 based on the replies here. But with 5 groups and 7 heals, how are you placing healers in groups?
When you mention a druid tranqing at the start of the phase, how does that work since everyone is spread out at their groups? Wouldnt that druid only really be hitting their own group?
Druid tranq is quite effective actually if you have it going with the druid being close to the middle at start of black phase. It should hit everyone save a few melee that end up out ranging it going for dps on the eyes.
Disrupting Shadows lasts 20 seconds and is cast on a timer. To avoid receiving the debuff on the way into a black phase you will need to time your bounces better so that you enter black as the current debuff is at or near expiration.
