A quote from Gurgthock of the Elitist Jerks guild:



This is a fight where stacking healers = win.

This is stupid.

For a group with only 2 dedicated healers (Priests) and 2 feral druids, we found beating him to be impossible. There just wasn't enough healing, period.

For the first time in our Karazhan group, we may have to stack the raid and force someone to sit out. Our typical group runs with:

2 Priests (holy)
2 Druids (feral)
1 Warrior (prot)
2 Warlocks
1 Mage
1 Rogue
1 Fill-in (varies, but never a Paladin cause there just aren't any)

This has had no trouble clearing everything steadily up to Nightbane and Ilhoof. Each week has had progression with new bosses down. But Nightbane seems tailor-made for a Paladin. We could survive flying phases no problem, but our healers would be gasping for mana - and when one stopped to try to regen, someone would die.



Also, we're going to need heavy consumables on the main tank (flasks, ironshield potions, etc). Sorry, Tal.

I just think it's ridiculous to read of groups bringing 5 dedicated healers to Nightbane and then crowing about how "easy" he is. That's not easy; that's broken. Half your raid is healing?

Tips welcome.

-Bolty

Am I the only one amused that Alliance can't find paladins?

Just to elaborate, now that it's the "morning after" and I'm not as aggravated...(but I still am)

This fight isn't hard. We have it figured out, but still can't do it, which is why it was so aggravating. It's the first encounter in Karazhan that had us give up and move on due to group composition.

Ground Phase: thanks to our sexy Dwarf Priest (me), we have Fear Ward for ZOMGEZMODE ALLIANCE. Fear Ward does trivialize the ground phases by removing the sudden chance of Nightbane wafflestomping anyone but the Main Tank. We were running with 3 healers (why not 4, with 2 feral druids? See below). If any of those 3 healers took a break to try and regen, got too close and got feared, or had to move for a Charred Earth, the Main Tank could bite it (and did).

Still, it's simplistic and a steady drain down to the flight phase, mana considerations aside.

Flight Phase: this is where it all falls apart (of course, since it's the "hard" part). It's a controlled chaos. We all run to the inner wall and group up near the Main Tank, so that no one winds up too far away from Nightbane and gets Fireball Volleyed. Whomever is selected for Rain of Bones moves to the outer wall. Skeletons spawn and the Main Tank/feral druid corrals them. This is why we couldn't have four healers; we found the additional feral Druid was necessary to keep the skeletons off the healers, especially since we're running with two squishy Priests. The skeletons hit Priests for over 1k a smack.

When the Smoking Blasts hit, if it targets a Priest and that Priest also has aggro from the skeletons, good night; they crumple like wet paper. If not, the damage is healable; the stacking fire DoT gets dispelled. But it all costs a ton of mana. The three healers are forced to heal:

1) The Main Tank, tanking the skeletons
2) The feral Druid, tanking the skeletons
3) The Rain of Bones target
4) The Smoking Blast target (which changes, because we don't have a Paladin to stay on top of healing aggro)
5) Anyone else who decides to get wacky and take more than zero damage during the phase (grr, lern2bandage)

We'd get through the first flying phase and I'd be down to 2k-3k mana. Ok, I can shadowfiend, pot, etc, and maybe stay in it, but the feral Druid that's healing is just bone dry - meaning we're down to 2 healers, effectively.

We're boned (pun intended).

It seems odd to me that Blizzard would design an encounter this way. Without an enrage timer, you could just bring 8 healers, one tank, and one DPS to slowly kill the skeletons. It's Molten Bore all over again. Sure, the kill would take half an hour, but wiping would be almost impossible.

So the very fact that if we had a Paladin and a resto Druid along with our 2 healing Priests, we'd be standing over a Nightbane kill makes me upset. It's bad encounter design on Blizzard's behalf, in my opinion. Ilhoof and Aran seem much better designed, real skill-based encounters, while Nightbane is pure snore. Bring more healers and it's trivial.

If it weren't for every guide I've read calling for Paladins and other statements from the likes of Gurgthock saying how the fight is insane without 4 healers (or 3 healers and a shadow Priest), I'd agree maybe we need to lern2play, but I know that's not it. I've read of gimmicks like launching a snake trap right before a flight phase, making Nightbane target a snake for Rain of Bones instead of a player, but that screams "exploit" to me.

-Bolty

I believe you missed the point of the post.

I'm off wed morning so I'll be scouring for Gromsblood and the like. Not sure when I'll get a chance to fish for stonescales.

To add to what Bolty said, we tried to somewhat simulate the use of a Paladin for being the target of the Smoking Blast by having the tanked out feral druid (me) deshift and spam heals as soon as Nightbane takes off. This usually made me the target for Nightbane when he starts firing, then I would shift to bear and be taking ~700 damage per tick rather than the normal ~1650 if he is targetting a healer. The only drawback to this is that when I shifted I could no longer heal. Thus, I'd eventually lose aggro to another healer and then he would start blasting that healer. I think this really helped out at the start of the phase because I could both eat his blasts and tank a bunch of skeletons, but when he shifted off to target one of the actual healers, then things got a lot harder.

As Bolty says, this whole deal would be mostly trivialized by using a Paladin to eat all of the blasts while still being able to heal and perhaps tank a lot of the skeletons (via consecration). But since we do not have any Paladins available to us, things are a lot more difficult. As such, we are basically left needing either another tank (so I could help heal) or another healer or two. It is very unfortunate that this fight requires so much more healing/tanking than most of the rest of the instance because you just don't have much leeway in a 10 man instance to bring people just for one fight unless you're stacking the raid (which we really don't want to have to do).

He mentions 25% overheal as a good thing? I'm sure your group Bolty has done better with the overheal numbers than that, but have you checked mana efficiency and HPS as well as the overheal numbers? I thought the whole point of having set raid groups was to get to know each others' behaviors and anticipate their reactions to situations, but with having a set raid group, you really should be able to get below 25% overheal, even with stacking HoTs doing strange things.

It really does suck to not have a paladin or a shaman or a shadow priest in your raid group Bolty and not seeing the fight yet, I can't help with specific tips, but having "only 23% overheal" on a shaman in a raid is nothing to be pleased about. You can expect a jump in overheal from five mans to raids, but that much?! In five mans, solo healing, Mogo has between 5% and 9% overheal and between 6 and 8 hitpoints healed per mana spent (I don't remember the hitpoints healed per second though) now. If I'm not solo healing but still main healing, the overheal can go up above 10%, but generally not higher than 15% depending on who is "backup" healing and how hyper active they are with healing. Mana efficiency generally drops to right around 6 though because I don't have to use chain heal as much. I will shamefully admit that there was a Botanica run where somehow I hit 30% overheal for the entire run and we didn't actually kill Warp Splinter on that run because my healing was just that far off the mark that run. I do wish I had remembered to look at my numbers after our last Karazhan run to see just how far up I jumped since Dunar and I don't usually get to heal with each other often and both of us admitted that our timing was off the entire run, but even in the old raids, 25% overheal was not an acceptable number (except for specific encounters and granted, this may be one of those encounters).

But, that's more about what he quoted and really doesn't help you and your team Bolty. I just had to vent about a shaman being happy about "only" 23% overheal.

Edit: And yes, Mogo's profile on the armory right now should have her in her healing gear, depending on how quickly they update the page after logout. If you see The Oathkeeper in her weapon slot, it hasn't updated yet.

I didn't look at the numbers for our run, but I can understand why they might not be as nice as possible. Nightbane tends to kill the tank in a matter of seconds so you're better off healing too much than too little. There isn't a whole lot of room for error in healing so I can see where the overheal might not be as great as one would hope.

This reminds me that I should really try and get forecast working on my computer, again (it was bugged out last time I tried).

Well, yeah.

I don't really know what my overhealing was during the short set of Nightbane attempts (about 2 hours) before we realized it just couldn't be done with our raid makeup. But the healing game has really changed in TBC.

Originally I had thought that Cleoboltra would be semi-powerful in PvP with people as fresh 70's until itemization once again started diminishing her power. This was completely and utterly wrong, as damage has continued to outpace healing by ever-increasing margins even with poorly geared 70's. The new Stamina itemization was supposed to help correct this, but it doesn't.

In heroics and raids, bosses will routinely smack around tanks for large chunks of their hit points, which is impressive considering how many more hit points they have compared to pre-expansion. Nightbane can and does smack poor Shalandrax around to the tune of 7,000 to 9,000-point crushing blows. As a result, you need several healers spamming max-rank large heals on the target to keep him vertical. You obviously can't wait for the tank to take damage and then heal him; two crushing blows in a row can kill him in 2.0 seconds. Don't even get me started on Prince Malchezaar, where he has a move that allows him to score 3 hits on a main tank in less than one second - I forget what the move is called, something like "Thrash" - which can obliterate 16,000 hit points in a flash.

As a result, you will occasionally drop a 6k healing bomb on your main tank, with 100% of it being overheal. That can seriously skew your numbers.

Healing just hasn't scaled well. You need to heal for a heck of a lot more than you had to pre-expansion. When I'm using max-rank greater heals on a rogue, something's up - pre-expansion, that would only ever be even considered if a rogue was at 10% life, since it would be gross overheal otherwise.

One of the nasty side effects of all this is that healers generate a lot more aggro than ever before. This is readily apparent in heroic mode dungeons, as tanks on some pulls will need 5,000 or more healing within seconds of a pull. Blizzard buffed Fade on Priests for exactly this reason - it just wasn't good enough - but with the incredible fragility of a Priest in the expansion, I find myself hitting the pavement time and time again. What am I going to do, not heal? When heroic trash hits as hard as raid bosses, having a tank lose aggro to me is an instant wipe.

It's stimulating, and more challenging, yes, but ultimately it's less fun. Pre-expansion, if I pulled aggro off a tank in an instance, it was an "ok, Fade, that didn't work, shield, self-heal until he taunts it off, I'm good" situation. Now it's "ok, Fade, that didn't work, oops I'm dead". It was amusing to get crit by a trash mob in heroic Slave Pens for 11,280 yesterday. I guess. Think of what 4-5 of those do to your main tank in the first 2 seconds of a pull and explain how he can hold aggro against the 8,000 healing I need to dish out to keep him alive in the first 10 seconds. Either your tank is superman, or you wipe.

In a raid environment, you have healers stepping over each other to keep the tank alive while you watch his 13-17,000 hit point bar fly back and forth like Einstein using an abacus. Overheal's the end result.

-Bolty

I'm not up to Nightbane yet (we're working on Aran) but I can confirm that even tanks can take a lot of damage very quickly. I have 22k armour and 14k+ hitpoints (depending on buffs) and it only takes a little lag from my healers to mean a run back. If my first hit gets parried or dodged and therefore I don't hold the mob it's healer pate as well. I remember my priest taking 23,000 damage in one hit (non-crit) while doing heroic underbog.

And how different is this from Twin Emps where a tank could take a single hit for 80% of their life? Queue and cancel shouldn't have changed that much and that is still one of the best mana conserve methods there is. How is it different from other Naxx fights were the same things could happen?

Sure if the healer gets aggro they are much more likely to die but I still can't see it being that much different from stuff that people already learned in raid healing or were already practicing in 5 mans. Yes, on harder hitting mobs in 5 mans I anticipated damage, I would queue and cancel if not needed. That meant I pretty much always had a heal 2 seconds from landing since most of the big heals took 2.5 to cast and you would cancel with about .5 seconds left and start casting again. A healer should pretty much never wait for damage. I thought that was pretty much accepted practice by now. That still means you'll end up with a heal that you don't cancel that was overheal from time to time but I don't see it as that different from the tanks perspective. It's much more dangerous for the healer to pull aggro (that's any healer as well, a paladin in full healer gear isn't going to have 11,280 health and while the hit won't hit that hard a 7520 hit (60% mit vs your 10% mit) on the pally could still very well be a one shot as well if they pull aggro or the 8773 it would hit the shaman for or the 10K the druid took in tree/caster form).

There are more auto-reactive heals (HoTs, earth shields, prayer of mending) than before but yeah they still don't matter.

I don't know I'm not convinced that healing has changed that much. Be proactive not reactive and stay tight on the mana. Tight on the mana is harder since as you mentioned you don't get to downrank as much, but my paladin had 7 different heals hot keyed before I'm sure he still will so that I can still hit closer to the target, even if I have less opportunities to do so.

Dunno, I'm getting much closer to that content, maybe it still is different from that, but it doesn't seem it's going to change much for the healer other than if you get aggro and the fact that there are more situations where that is more likely, that you are more likely to be dead now.

In one of our more notable wipes to Romulo and Julianne (pre-nerf), Anadrol took roughly 17k damage in 2 seconds (Gotta love the Deathnote mod).

On our last Gruul attempt, didn't Maulgor one-shot Anarem, as well?

TBC isn't a good place to be a healer concerned about overheal.

And on Twin Emps I saw Seiki and Anarem get 2 shotted as well. A one shot has nothing to do with overheal.

But when you hear people say the healers are running out of mana, being concerned with overheal is the first place to look, if you can and I admit that you simply may not be able to (but then again top guilds used to say that you couldn't worry about overheal on Twin Emps either or tanks would die and I saw that proven wrong), in so that you can up longevity.

But since I've only been in Kara once and only 1 heroic I obviously have no idea how the game plays. Just like I was told that tanking and healing in MC would be completely different in 5 mans when I first went in there and it was close to the cutting edge content and I didn't heal or tank all the differently (I did tank different because it was easier to tank since I only had one mob to worry about and more rage but none of the fundamentals changed it just meant I had rage to use on things on things like HS) and I only had to heal differently because other healers didn't trust me. Then I heard that the the tanking and healing game were completely different in AQ40 and it wasn't. The same fundamentals still applied. Then I heard that tanking and healing in normal TBC 5 mans was different and it wasn't. So forgive me when I hear that it is completely different yet again when everything else that was completely different in the past was very minor adjustments if you paid attention to game mechanics.

Hunter DPS is much more different in TBC than healing or tanking is because steady shot is a different timing mechanic than the old aimed shot cycles.

But yes there are still times where you don't need to worry about overheal. You generally didn't on the mage for AoE pulls, you generally didn't where the fight wasn't going to be 10+ minutes and HP per S was more important. But then again that only mattered until gear caught up or if you didn't want to burn as many consumables. TBC seems to have flattened the end game gear so that you can't outgear stuff as fast, but getting better at mana conservation is still one way to get rid of using as many consumables. But yeah it may not be possible.

They may have done something as stupid as have 5 healers and make the fight last longer or get a tank up to gearing levels that you can't reach yet. I'm not saying I'm not wrong in this case, but generally in the past when I heard this stuff I never experienced it.

That was my point, Gnollguy. Healing like that only used to be required for the biggest, toughest, raid mobs in the game (1 target). Now, a pack of trash mobs in any heroic instance will require massive healing on the MT, and it is very very difficult to hold aggro on 5 mobs when thousands of healing aggro is rolling in.

Imagine if, on Razorgore, every one of those Legionnaires and Dragonkin could one-shot a healer. Good luck, tanks.

-Bolty

Yeah, and Cleoboltra is the one who taught us to do pro-active healing, but... The problem isn't that healers could be saving a bunch of mana, the problem is that the healers are burning a lot of mana keeping people alive under Nightbane's Scorching Blasts in the 'flying' phases.

Now. The odd thing is that Scorching Blast is physical damage, thus mitigated by armor. I'm guessing it's bugged. Maybe they will fix it to be fire damage (and thus resistable), making this a fire resist fight.

This is going to sound like an odd idea, but also... How much armor could you shoehorn onto a priest or druid, through consumables?

Let's say your average priest has 1k armor. Ironshield potion adds 2500 and lasts for 2 minutes. Elixir of Major Defense adds 550 for 1 hour. A Scroll of Protection (V) adds 300 armor for 30 minutes. An Elixir of the Mongoose or Greater Agility adds 25 agility (50 armor), an Elixir of Mastery adds 15 agility (30 armor). You could, stretching a point, take some R.O.I.D.S (25 agility, 50 armor). You could get to 4400 or so armor in this manner.

That changes your mitigation from... 13.6% to 41%? That changes those initial 4.5k hits to about 2.7k which seems slightly more manageable.

But wait. If it's physical damage...

Do Limited Invulnerability potions work against it?

If so, you should get hit with zero physical damage from each of his Smoking Blasts for the 6 seconds that it's active, leaving only the cleansable fire DoT. Cooldown is 2 minutes, and uses the same timer as Ironshield so you'd have to pick one or the other.

Then it's a matter of timing each phase of the fight to take at least 2 minutes, so cooldowns are up for the next fligiht.

So that probably means the rest of the group has to do something different. Like you need to kite stuff from the start or frost nova at the start so that mobs can't move right to the healer as fast giving the tank more time, or you slow down some of the mobs and not others.

It doesn't change the basics of, if you don't make it through the fight with mana you either get better gear, better consumables, cut down the overhealing, up the DPS, or cut the incoming damage.

Scroll of protection and pot of defense don't stack. I think all the rest of the stuff stacks though, but I'm not sure. I am quite sure about scrolls and pots though.

For the priests, Inner Fire adds 1580 more (untalented).

It's a gear differential thing. Healing gear hasn't scaled well with the amount needing to be healed.

In AQ40, the Twin Emps would hit for, what, 10k? At that time, my Druid had 950 +heal.

Queue TBC. Nightbane is hitting for 16k in the same time the Twin Emps were hitting for 10k. Sirreal/Bolty's gear is sitting around, say, 1400 +heal. That's a 37.5% increase in damage taken but only a 32% increase in healing. In fact, it's even worse, since that increase in gear is tacked on to a base heal value. But, I just got out of an exam and am too tired to punch numbers.

Oh, but guess what, we're talking 10-man raids instead of 40-man!. Now, we have 2-3 healers trying to take care of that 37.5% increase in damage output on the tank with their sub-par 32% increase in gear and also heal everyone else.

Whereas, in AQ40, we had 3-4 healers on one tank, a couple healers dedicated to keeping DPS alive, etc.

See how the problem compounds?

This is spot on. The difference is really the fact that the tanks are taking the same amount of damage, but you have 1/4 the raid size. So where you still have roughly 1/3 of the raid being healers, you go from having 4 healers on one tank and up to 9 other healers taking care of other roles to 3 healers, all trying to keep the main tank vertical while trying to deal with the stupid 360 cleaves on melee DPS and trying to keep everyone up with the various AoE damage that is going on. Throw in the fact that health has scaled upwards while damage has also scaled upwards, but +healing has not, you can see where the problem comes into play.

And as Bolty stated, healers get aggro now a whole lot easier. I've watched KTM a few times and seen Bolty skyrocket in aggro because of the sheer amount of healing he's pouring in on the MT while the rest of the players are doing their DPS, it's nuts. Healers really do have some real issues now with aggro in the Heroics and in Karazhan without the proper reducers (like Salvation and Tranquil Air).

Yes, but I was directing at mana conserving when possible. Paying attention to overheal can still matter.

And yes damage is worse, not as bad you are making it out though. That +1400 heal is more than 1400 since healing talents now apply after +heal instead of before so it should be at least 1540 for a holy priest and maybe even more depending on talents. Sirreal and Bolty can both have a renew running on the tank when they could only have one before, PoM gives some non cast time chewing reactive healing. I'm not saying it's keeping up with everything but it's obviously kept up with everything up to Nightbane since they've killed all that. I'm aware that healing gear hasn't kept pace with damage, but some of that is because healing gear was getting way too far ahead, it still may very well need to be adjusted. But some of the other changes mitigate some of the claims you are making about how far back it has fallen

I'm not saying that OMG you should be able to do Nightbane with 4 healers (only 2 heal spec'd) what's wrong with you!!!?one!! I was mostly addressing this whole "it's radically different". I ran MC before ZG/AQ20 or Dungeon 2 were in the game. I remember when we felt we needed 2 healers per tank on the domo guards, and then looking at the fact that raid overheal was pushing 35% on that fight and thinking no, we don't need that many per tank, we need to heal better. And healer gear didn't drop for us in the early days of MC. I also ran MC when we were so overgeared that one priest probably could have healed domo on his own. I fully believe that mana usage is as tight as possible for the people running Kara in that group.


I also don't disagree that the encounter itself may be designed poorly in that you might need 5 healers with 3 or 4 of them heal spec'd to get through it. But I also think Kara was designed a bit more with the 1 of every class + whatever idea behind it so the group Bolty is discussing isn't exactly ideal. As the quotes he mentioned elude to, that group doesn't really have any of the group mana returning classes, no paladin for the blessings or judgements (not that the judgement looks like it could be used) no shadow priest for VE/VT, no resto shaman for mana tide/mana stream. Mana tide = 24% of the parties mana every 5 minutes. Mana spring = 37.5 mana/5 the rest of the time (since the shaman would have the talent to get mana tide). Blessing of Wisdom without talents is 41 mana / 5. Those are all significant additions. The shadow priest cuts the amount of healing the decidated healers may need to do and can get mana back for them. The paladin helps get mana back and has less mana issues from being healed by others. The shaman provides a little bit more AoE healing, some fire and forget reactive (earth shield). You lose an innervate caster.

It's disheartening to hear that a group that isn't exactly ideal may be screwed. However I'm still not convinced that the healing game has changed all that much. Sure I've only healed a few of the early regular instances on my enhancement shaman, but I have still solo healed in TBC. I fully expect that to main heal a raid or heroic you need to be heal spec, that was something you didn't necessarily have to be before hand at least for the earlier raid instances (and you don't need to be for most of the non heroic 5 mans either in TBC). I'm just not sure the sky is falling or that healing is that radically different.

Oh well I'm not adding any value to this discussion. It'll be a month or more at best before I even see the encounter in question.

Not radically different?

Normal mode instances: Cleoboltra casts Renew and Prayer of Mending, then scratches her butt and comments on how her father always used to say, "Shut up and get out." Once a minute or so, she casts Greater Heal. It's so laughably easy compared to heroic that it's quite normal for us to be on such a run and constantly go "on heroic, these guys hit for such-and-such" and "wow, this is a joke." Your whole perspective on instances changes once you start running heroics.

Heroic mode instances: Main Tank starts a pull of 5 mobs, one of which is sapped while the other will be sheeped. Prayer of Mending is already on him. Mobs approach. Cleoboltra queues a max-rank Greater Heal. BAM ZOMG Main Tank is hit by two mobs for 7500. Greater Heal lands for 4.5k. Cleoboltra gets aggro. Decision - hit Fade and suffer the 1.5 seconds of global cooldown, risking the Main Tank's life, or keep healing the Main Tank. I decide to Fade. Aggro returns to the Main Tank. BAM ZOMG the Main Tank, still getting slammed, is down to 3000 hit points, one-shot range. Flash Heal spam. Massive aggro build. Fade runs out, I have aggro. I'm one-shot for 11,000+ damage. At no time do I have the TIME to engage in defensive activities; even casting Psychic Scream costs me a 1.5 second global cooldown which sometimes leads to a tank's death. Prayer of Mending? Generally useless, because spending 1.5 seconds to heal a tank for 1500-1600 only gets him killed. We wipe.

Mana is very, very rarely the concern in heroic-mode instances. Any idiot can drink potions and use some tricks to keep going. It's sheer incoming damage that's the problem, damage that outpaces healing.

Nightbane is simply a numbers game. You must have this much healing to enter, and only 2 members of the raid spec'ed for healing without any kind of "mana battery" players to help can't be done.

I know you mean well, GG, but you're trying to pass judgement on things you haven't tried yet.

-Bolty

This has been stated earlier in the thread, but to reiterate about the healing differences, it really comes down to one fundamental difference: Tanks are taking as much damage (comparatively) as they were in old raid instances (say… Twin Emperors or Nefarian for the first time you fought them) but you have a fraction of the number of healers available (10+ healers in the old raid instance versus 3 in our recent Nightbane attempts and 1 or 2 healers, max, in a heroic instance). Thus, the fact that mana regeneration isn't too different from the old game, healing has not scaled very well, the tanks are taking huge chunks of damage and you have fewer healers means that each healer needs to really be pouring on the healing. They cannot sustain that sort of output without pounding consumables (which is annoying and expensive) or adding more healers.

More healers means more total healing throughput, better longevity and better chance of having your heals land in that instant where the tank just got smacked for 10k damage and another 10k is on its way in a second or two. All of those help to make things drastically easier as far as healing goes. Before there were tons of healers available, now there are few... Thus things work out harder than before. All of the heal-cancelling strategizing in the world won't save you if the tank takes a huge damage spike when several of the healers just started casting their heals because he might well die before the casts finish. It's harsh but very true in the TBC raid/heroic healing game.


And, to get back to Nightbane, adding more healers is certainly a way to go. You don't really need a whole lot of DPS on him. You really just need 2 tanks, a couple DPS classes and then a bunch of healers. The big problem with the encounter is the fact that Karazhan, as a whole, is designed to be done with 3 healers, 2 tanks and as much DPS as you can bring to the table. Nightbane is the big exception due to the lack of an enrage timer, hence the problems we have had. We do not want to (and generally cannot) stack the raid just for his fight, but it would definitely make things easier, particularly in light of the lack of Paladins in our raid.

I'll address this part, as I'm not a healer and healing isn't really my forte. But as I've run through a good chunk of Kara with less than optimal groups (some times 8 or 9manning stuff) you tend to see what encounters are designed for what.

Attumen: Pushover. As long as you have two tanky types and two healy types, you are fine.

Moroes: You want at least 1 priest here. Two priests makes it much easier. 3 almost makes it a joke. A skilled hunter can also trapdance one of the adds.

Maiden: Blizz can't decide what they want with this boss, but she's never been THAT hard. Just about any group can/should take her.

Oz: There are a bunch of different strats for this fight, so a mixed group should have no problems here. Just figure out what works best for your crew.

Big Bad Wolf: Pushover. If your raiders can kite in a square, you can win this fight.

Romulo and Julianne: Two solid tanks, and 3 solid healers. Not neccessarily healer specced, but you want them with good healing gear.

Curator: Straight up DPS fight. Bring as much as you can get away with.

Chess Event: As long as someone plays the healers, it's "lolfreepurpz". But a lot of fun. I always have a blast playing that event.

Aran: Bring a warlock. Or two priests (Fear rotations). Or expect to wipe here for weeks. For Lolezmode Aran, bring 2 warlocks. For "That was a boss?" mode, bring 3.

And, as the group I run with tends to not have a warlock, or 2 priests in it, that's as far as we've gotten. So I can't speak for Illhoof, Netherspite, Prince or Nightbane.

You're going way crazy with the Heroic mode instances, Bolty. While the mobs DO hit hard, I've never had any mob (or even bosses in their enraged state) hit me for more than about 4,000 or so in a single hit (well, I've had Capacitus hit me for 5700 during his brief enrage.) Even on pulls where there's more than a couple of mobs to tank, I can usually secure enough aggro to keep a peel from occuring after the first heal. I haven't yet done Shattered Halls on Heroic (I've primarily been corraled for Mechanar and occasionally some Slave Pens), so maybe this is where you're seeing hits for 7500 (the gladiators, maybe?) I still think that you pulling aggro on the first heal is the tank's problem, not yours, however.

Heroic Blood Furnace. The 2-Felguard pulls near the end. Each Felguard hits for 8k. It's only doable with 1 healer if you have a Warlock, and even then it's tricky. Mathom (feral Druid), Midori, Kateley (Mages), Bevock (Paladin), and I, all strong players, did it without a Banish available. Mathom was being literally one-shotted by the 2 Felguards hitting him at once - Bevock (a holy Paladin) and myself (a holy Priest) had to heal spam like you wouldn't believe.

The trouble is that, for instance at the outset of Heroic Underbog, you have two hard-hitters like this both hitting for that much, and a healer mob to keep them alive. This zone is not doable without some kind of CC that works on the elementals.

As far as heroic Ramparts goes, you have to identify which of the mobs are the hard hitter and step up your healing when they're on, i.e. the Raveners have some kind of switch under which they will do greatly increased damage.



Oh hey. So call it 6k armor on the thoroughly potioned priest: that'd be 48.59% damage reduction!

I think it's weird and Smoking Blast is bugged if it does armor-mitigated physical damage, but I'm greatly curious to hear if this might actually be a viable strategy. (We've previously seen a wand that does physical damage)

Kind of argues that Blizzard isn't testing their games properly though, if they missed the damage type - their testers can't have missed the amount of damage that Smoking Blast does.

Tuft, the damage that Smoking Blast does is the nerfed amount. It used to do a lot more and Blizzard tuned it down in a hotfix a few weeks back.

Which clearly means they intend for it to be physical damage, making Priest healers a liability in the fight due to their fragility.

-Bolty

Should have remembered this, but Defenders in heroic Slave Pens do hit for that much too. And of course, the Felguards are particularly nasty.

There're heroic Bog Overlords at the end of Underbog that can two-shot your tank in an instant too - they do a 7.5k knockback or so, followed by a 7.5k attack (edit: on PLATE). For those, since they come alone, it's simply a crapshoot whether you'll make it or not.

Those said same Felguards hit cloth for 12.5k (that's hit, not crit or crush) which one shots any clothie, leather wearer, and some mail.

How many mobs have you had hitting you and how much CC did you have on those runs? Try some of the other mobs in other instances like the Bog Giants in Heroic SMV, 3 mobs hitting you at once (like Heroic SH, the guantlet at Murmur, areas in Botanica, and Sethekk Hall guards) and see how much damage you take then. Your basis here is pretty limited as Mechanar and Slave Pens are considered the joke heroics compared to others (I've heard Heroic Mechanar referred to as Tokenar).

This is very likely a zero value post as well, but I'm venting and what I'm venting about very isn't likely what I'm going to type, I understand displacement theory and I know that I'm pissed at things in life not in game so you probably just want to skip this post.



If mana isn't an issue then why did you quote people talking about being out of mana? Why did you say you can't do it without a mana battery class?


And once again, if damage outpaces healing then you need to do something else besides changing how you heal to keep up with it.

This hasn't changed. If damage outpaced healing in MC you brought more healers, got better gear, used more consumables, split the pull with FD tricks from the hunter (not that there were usually more than 1 or 2 mobs in MC, but there were actually pulls that were normally looked at 2 or 3 pulls that could be split). Or you do some kind of off tanking so that incoming damage to the one source is slowed. That isn't different. It's more prevelant but it isn't different.

Maybe the mis understanding is that I'm looking at things at a much simpler level. The game is simple. And healing hasn't changed. You put out more healing per second than damage per second and you do that for the whole time the mob is alive. Again I'm looking at things on the very base level here. I freely admit the damage rates in Heroics may require you to have 2 healers in the group or a ton of CC in the group for some pulls. That is not different from when you had 3 - 4 healers per tank when you first started doing Twin Emps or 2 healers per tank for domo. The basics of you need to heal X HP/s for Y time on Z targets is the same. It's not radically different that a priest can't sleep at the keyboard. Not for what I'm talking about.

This is also why I said I wasn't adding value because I couldn't help on the specifics and the basics should be pretty well known. My definition of radically different is not the same as yours. As talked about in another thread the impact of the healer and tank on the group has been lessened, but the mechanics of what they do haven't really changed. As I said the mechanics for how a hunter does damage is a bigger change than the mechanics of healing or tanking. As you said in the other thread, good use of CC or off tanking or higher DPS is now more important than they had been. Tradtional tanking might not work as well, you may have to kite the mob, pull with misdirection to make sure the tank has more aggro than the heal will put out, etc, but the job of the healer hasn't really changed you play whack a mole, you decide which type of heal to use, you determine if HP/s is more important than HP/mana. You whack more moles or you whack moles faster depending on other things, but it hasn't changed. The difference is that you the healer might not be able to do anything different and the rest of the group has to.

So yeah I don't know why I'm bothering. I admit that without seeing the fight I can't really offer anything else. Why heroics even came up in the topic I don't know.

And yeah I haven't really done heroics, but I've done regular 5 mans with a pet tanking, so lower aggro, less HP and mit on the tank. Yeah it's not the same damage per second that you see in heroics. It's not the same.

And yes, deadmines is not the same as AQ40, but lessons you learned in deadmines still apply to AQ40. The basics of beating the deadmines still apply to beating AQ40. But since I haven't seen all of this I guess I should throw out what I know, what I've used since day 1 to figure out how to handle new stuff. I guess the toolbox that I used for 5 mans and the old world raids without issue just isn't good enough. Sorry. I'm done even if directly responded to.

And yet, the mole whacking paradigm changes in some way in the raiding game, because whacking the mole is no longer effective after the mole has popped up, you have to start whacking the mole before it pops up.

The current dispute seems to be that the moles are getting bigger than the mallets will allow you to whack.

GG, in those instances where mana is an issue, you can't kite, because you're dealing with a boss that can do 2 or 3 special moves simulatneously, if the tank isn't at 80%+ health, these special moves can, and will, kill the tank (we've seen Tal go from near full health, around 16k fully buffed, to less than 5% health in a split second). You also cannot kite in this type of instance cause you're typically dealing with a boss. Raid bosses under 10 man and heroic hit on the same order as some of the 25 man bosses, but the difference there is with those 25 man bosses you have 2 to 3 times as many healers giving you the leverage that you do not have in a 10 man or a heroic.

Nightbane is literally a fight where if you do not have a Paladin, you're screwed. With a Paladin, the fight would probably be a lot easier as the Paladin can pull all the skeletons onto themselves, while maxing their healing threat to take the breath attack from Nightbane on them while he's flying thus leaving the other healers time to regen mana or help deal with whoever gets rain of bones or help the pally keep topped off. Fights should not be designed around having very specific classes in mind to be there like Nightbane (Aran being designed around having atleast one warlock, Netherspite being designed around having a warlock, two tanks, a rogue, and a feral druid, Moroes requiring one priest, if not two).

So in the end, while is sounds good on paper that you should be able to depend on things you learned in the past, that's not always the case and very likely some of the frustration that we're feeling on certain fights may be felt by you when you get to some fights. While you may have an easier time on fights that we're finding difficult because we don't have that special class, you may run into fights were you're having difficulty because you don't have that special class where others may breeze through because they do have that special class. Karazhan is an instance that has a lot of interesting boss fights, but it also has some of the most frustrating boss fights in the game. Likewise, healers are also becoming more frustrated because they cannot keep up in relative power to the damage being handed out in Karazhan and heroic instances where trash can do a ton of damage and bosses can flatten a tank in a heartbeat.

deleted

Bog overlords are a DPS race to down them before they grow to unmanageable buff stack. Defenders in slave pens are easily kited and there is only one pull that includes two defenders and more than one other mob. (A skippable pull) Two out of three of these mobs have clear strategies to make the pulls less rough. Nightbane comes right out of the gate looking to two shot your tank. This fight makes me breath a sigh of relief when it's over for the week, the prince is probably the only other khara fight.

Like GG, I probably shouldn't be responding to this thread, but I feel I needed to point something out:

Please don't spread misinformation. Those fights are designed to have certain abilities available.

The fact that Shackle is simply the most direct ability of CC on Moroes adds' does not mean it was built assuming one would be along. I'm mildly suprised to hear you feel you need to have three specific classes on Netherspite when, with mediorce raid composition, no voice communication, and people that didn't know each other all that well, we've defeated him during a beta semi-pickup run. He's an execution fight, I don't feel that saying it's built to have *those classes* along is wise as it's likely to close peoples' minds to variance in [e.g. what class eats what beam]. From what I observed Blizzard has not been designing TBC fights with specific specs/classes along. It sure as hell IS easier to drop Netherspite with a warlock along, but that doesn't mean it's "required" in any sense of the definition.

Cheers,
~Frag

What's the difference between saying "we need x ability for this fight" or "we need x class (who is the only class who can perform that ability) for this fight"?

Hi Been a while..

On a sidenote.. I don't get to raid KZ that much due to odd working hours, so I stick to my 34/27/0 hybrid build with imp spiritbuff and PI. (Love the build... Love the bugged Surge of Light

Cuurently, I have most experience with underbog heroic, but have also tried Setthek Halls, Old Hills, and ShH. I've been main healer in SeH and OH, and even with my build (and 3 pieces T2, 3 pieces Pmooncloth + borderline epix) I didn't find healing those 2 heroics that hard. We had a shammy along with us, but there was no use of Tranq Air. Especially SeH was a breeze.. We managed first boss even tho shammy got dc right at the pull, and last boss was no prob even tho 2 of the others missed the AoE (don't ask) leaving me + tank + shammy to finish of the last 50%

In UB and ShH I've been dps, mindcontroller and backup healer, bringing 3 different sets of gear depending on the situation. Mind controlling acolytes (or is it oracles) in ShH is great.. Insane PoH, PW:S, and a shadowres buff (110iirc) that stacks with the priest buff. They're often selfbuffed tho, so dispel them before MCing.. Bring some +hit and Spell Pen, and they're yours forever If they're not around.. pick up a darkcaster and rain some fire on them... Anyways.. I can see ShH being a pain for a clothie to heal in.. we had a pala, and he took some beating from time to time, despite salvation being on all the time. I have a hard time imagining ShH w/o threat reduction, or MASSIVE cc.

Underbog, another great place for MCing before secong boss, has those Bog Lords that required both me and a totally holy priest to spam flash heals. The was not a chance that he could keep the healing up by himself.

Well.. I generally consider myself being a very good hybrid for heroics. My mana was at least enough to keep constant dps on last boss in ShH (just use pot, ManaMonster and Inner Focus ASAP, dont wanna waste them coming off cd), and I DO good dps. Esp with a pala around. I can juggle dps, PoM, Renew and PoH to support the main healer, and IMO, Mindcontrol really shines in BC. Wardens and Mages in OldH, Menders in Botanica, Oracles in Steamvaults (silence the sirens , Shadowpriests and Oracles in SL, Healers in Underbog... Well... the list goes on.. Maybe I should start taking notes and put a list together...

Bedtime. Just thought I'd throw a few words in, tho I'm really not replying to anything, just rambling a bit about priests and heroics

cyas

oh btw... AC is for cowards!

The difference is that sometimes, what people view as a neccessary class, is actually just a neccessary function that can be provided in an alternate way via some other class. Simple example:

Priests on Moroes (for Shackle).
Depending on mob-type, you can have these classes sub for that very direct method of CC:

Rogue - Anti-cast lock & kite.
Mage - cs, burst down & kite.
Hunter - trap, pet-tank, self-tank & kite.
Warlock - pet-tank, drain-tank & kite.
Warrior - tank-tank (it's a joke) & kite.
Druid - bear-tank (+anti-cast), dash, cyclone spam / rotation with other methods.
Paladin - fear, tank, heal-spam, stun.
Shaman - Elemental, FROST SHOCK! kite.

I think that's every class, and each one of them has a way to take little or low amounts of dmg while keeping an add occupied. As said earlier, that's simply an easy example of a concept that can be applied to most encounters.

Please keep in mind, I'm not advocating deliberately making an encounter harder (unless you're into that side of things ) what I'm advocating is trying to keep an open mind when approaching the new content. I've personally seen, or ancedotely heard of nearly every imaginable group composition completing Khara. About the only thing that seems out of whack to me (and something we didn't catch in beta as we used consumables like water. A few select people transferred over the guild bank a few times...) is consumable use. Hopefully the cliff-hanger Tigole threw us addresses that.

Cheerio,
~Frag

A number of comments:

Firstly, the quotes from Gurgthock are referencing the old, un-nerfed Nightbane, where Smoking Blast hit for 4000 physical damage every second and Nightbane landed crushings on the tank for between 11,000 and 13,000 points of damage. If you didn't get Smoking Blast on to a paladin, you died, and Nightbane's hits were so massive you basically had to chain max-rank heals on the tank to keep him up. In that context, 23% overhealing is fantastic.

The current Nightbane is another thing entirely. But taking the subject back to the old one for just a second: healing was different. Damage incoming is part of it, but I see the difference as being also partly in the way tank hit points have scaled up dramatically, as well as there just being fewer healers all around.

In the AQ40 and Naxx cancel-heal days, on emps and Patchwerk, yeah, bosses could two-shot tanks. In the AQ40 days, 7.5k HP on a tank was great, and if you got Unbalancing Strike for 4k followed up by a 4k crit, yeah, your tank was toast. You still cancel-healed to save mana, though, because there were four more healers lined up behind you that would land heals fractions of a second after you cancelled your heal, any two of which were sufficient to max out the tank's hit points and allow him to take another huge hit. The boss simply wasn't going to hit your tank again before at least two heals landed and pushed the tank to 100%. So long as your tank didn't get one-shot from 100%, you were good to go. For a lot of situations, especially in BC 25-man content, this method of healing still applies. For that matter, it's still valid in a lot of Karazhan, because most bosses just don't spike tanks that heavily (although you have fewer healers).

The old Nightbane, however, was a nightmare scenario for cancel-healing. He hit so hard, and you needed so much healing to top the tank off again, that cancelling could mean death.

On Emps, for example, let's say you cancel your heal 0.5s from the end, and 0.2s after that he Unbalances the tank for 4k damage. Your heal could have been useful - but it's OK, because a fraction of a second after your heal would have hit, the tank takes 8k healing and is back to max to take the incoming crushing. That you cancelled your heal was less than optimal, but far from a disaster.

Now let's take the old Nightbane. Your tank has 15,000 HP, and you're cancel-healing. At 0.5s from the end of the spell, the tank is at 100%, and you cancel. 0.2s after you cancel, Nightbane crushes the tank for 13,000 points of damage. In the referenced Gurgthock post, he has only three healers in the raid, so assuming that, only two healers are in the queue after you. Let's say their timing is impeccable, so they both land 4,000 point heals immediately after the crushing blow, bringing your tank up to 10,000 HP. Nightbane then crushes the tank for 11,000 points, your tank dies, you wipe.

The point of the numbers and examples is this: in two situations where, functionally, the exact same things happened, in one of them, the tank lives, and in the other, the tank dies. With up to 13k on a crushing, you chain max ranks on the tank and you let them go off, you don't cancel, because if you do cancel, the other two healers may not be enough to get the tank's HP up high enough before your next heal can land. As I said, however, Nightbane has been nerfed since.

That said, the basic design of the fight is relatively unchanged, and Bolty's right - it's basically a huge mana drain from start to finish, and having efficient healers helps a lot. This group composition is definitely trying to do it the hard way.

I actually just got my first experience healing on Nightbane tonight, on my questionably geared alt paladin (the raid was nine alts and one main). We lost our rogue on the first flight and our shadow priest at 68%, but wound up with a kill anyway. We had only three players healing; two holy paladins and a resto shaman, and the resto shaman wasn't even in the same group as the other healers because we needed alternating tremor totems to compensate for lack of Fear Ward. By the time he touched down for the third time, our mage and warlock had joined the other two players in death, but we were able to hang on for the last 25%.

There's something to trying to reduce overheal on the current incarnation of this fight. Nightbane doesn't hit extraordinarily hard, nothing that will require heavy spam-healing, and Titans + Ironshields should reduce that even more. Light consumable use (Fel Mana Potions) might be something to look into as well (flasking Mighty Resto is an option but a distasteful one). Also, your comment about any of the three healers taking a break to regen or all getting feared resulting in tank death doesn't fit with my experience at all; frequently, all of our healers would wind up feared and we'd just throw big heals on the tank the moment fear broke. Nature's Swiftness helped us on a couple of them, but it wasn't up for all of them. During the last 25%, I had to stop and regen for about 15 seconds to let my potion cooldown come back up, and the tank wasn't in danger of dying.

Grouping up during the Rain of Bones also sounds strange to me. It does light physical AE damage, so grouping is just making sure you all get hit. Fireball Volley requires you to be absurdly distant; it's not something you should be worrying too much about. Basically, if you're in range of Nightbane or in range to heal his tank during the ground phase, you won't be hit by Fireball Volley during the flight phase.

Ultimately the solution may be finding a paladin or getting a druid to respec. Group composition truly plays a bigger role in TBC raid content than in anything that was in 1.0, mostly because raid sizes are smaller. I think it's doable, though difficult, with the current composition, but from here on out it really does start to get significantly more difficult without a well-composed raid.

I'd agree with Frag in that I do not think that there is any case where there is an ability exclusive to one class. For example, Moroes is completely doable with zero priests: just bring skilled Paladins who know how to properly employ Turn Undead. For that matter, Moroes is tricky but even doable without any Priests or Paladins at all (but then he is difficult). It's easy to underestimate the range of capabilities available to a raid group.

For Aran, specifically, lacking a warlock is a significant loss but not immediately fatal. I don't know much about your group's composition, but it obviously has a hunter since you're in it. Scour the AH for some mail greens "of Frost Protection", then at ~42%, feign and macro-equip the entire set. Once the elementals pop, immediately shift focus to firing on the elementals and drawing their aggro towards you (click off Salv if you have it). Especially with a control strategy, there won't be any pressing need to have DPS on Aran while the elementals are out because you've presumably forced the poly earlier. With ~250 or greater frost resist (a paladin or shaman in your group can raise your resists easily, and a Magic Resistance potion works well if you don't have either of those), the elementals will all fire waterbolts at you and inflict very minimal damage. With all the stamina on the "Frost Protection" gear, you'll be very easily healable, and all you need to do is outaggro healing threat split five ways.

For groups lacking a hunter, a rogue can do the same trick with vanish, but being melee they're obviously disadvantaged. A paladin healing with Righteous Fury and employing Righteous Defense in moderate frost resist gear can also reliably draw aggro on all four elementals if no one else is touching them. For groups lacking hunters, rogues, and paladins, get a warrior or bear druid to gear up in frost resist from the start of the fight and have him run around sundering/clawing elementals once they spawn. If your warrior has trouble with it, get another one to do it too. You'd be employing a control strat again, which isn't DPS reliant, and you can interrupt in frost gear as well as you can in normal gear.

Now, having two warlocks makes it cake, and one warlock still helps a lot. Other solutions are obviously inferior, and I don't deny that. However, though other solutions are more difficult, that doesn't mean that they're impossible. It's not possible for Blizzard to tune an encounter to be equivalent difficult for all reasonable permutations for a 10 man raid group, but it is possible for there to be enough ways out of a jam that no raid group is completely screwed. One of those ways out is consumables, and on Nightbane it may be the only way out, which is distasteful in a number of ways. But every other fight has options.

Skan, just a nit: Gurgthock is indeed referencing the new, easier Nightbane. Check the link again.

Thanks for the comments, though; we'll try not grouping up for the start of flight phases and we'll *have* to find at least one more dedicated healer.

-Bolty

Yeah, this is what we'll be looking at this week for Aran. I've been saving any resist gear I've found as I've tooled around the Outlands, and have a decent (but not great) set so far. Should be interesting.

Oops. You're partially right, he's not talking about the old Nightbane which I was talking about. I'm partially right, too: he's not talking about the current Nightbane, either.

Nightbane actually underwent a series of hotfixes all relatively close together, so there were actually four versions:

Nightbane 1.0: Skeletons have a 900 point immolation aura. Nightbane crushes for 11000-13000 damage. Smoking Blast inflicts 4000 damage per second.

Nightbane 2.0: Skeletons no longer have immolation and are immune to non-holy magic damage. Nightbane crushes for 11000-13000 damage (unchanged). Smoking Blast inflicts 1400-1600 damage per second. Nightbane fears during the flight phase (bug).

Nightbane 2.1: Skeletons are no longer immune to non-holy magic damage. Crushings and Smoking Blast unchanged. Nightbane no longer fears during the flight phase, but instead does "fake" fears where he begins to cast and interrupts himself at the end.

Nightbane 2.2: Crushings reduced to 7000-9000 damage. "Fake" fear issue mostly fixed.

2.0 came with patch 2.0.10, 2.1 was hotfixed in on the next Tuesday, and 2.2 was hotfixed in the week after. Gurgthock's comments aren't, as I erroneously said, talking about 1.0, but he is talking about 2.1, which is not the current version of the fight. He's still talking in the context of bigger hits on the tank than you're experiencing, but he is talking about the nerfed Smoking Blast and easy skeletons.

Actually, I would disagree with the bolded. Blizzard is designing these fights based on having one of each class making up your raid with a filler of some kind. Blizzard did not leave much leeway in a number of fights if you don't have a certain class along for the ablities that class presents. Try Netherspite without atleast one Warlock in the blue beam and then with a Warlock in the blue beam. The healers do have to pay attention to the person in the blue beam, but if it's a Warlock they don't have to worry as much because the Warlock will be self healing through use of Drain Life where other classes will require a lot of attention. That are several fights in Karazhan that if you don't have that class ability you're in for a world of hurt. (The only fights I can definitely say for sure that what classes you bring makes little difference in difficulty would be Attumen, Maiden, Curator, Illhoof, and Prince, the other fights become significantly easier if you have the right class there or mixed your group with one of everything with a filler.)

I wouldn't say the issue is whether the fight is possible or not, but whether the difficulty is reduced. As has been noted, two warlocks on Aran makes it easy, three it's a joke. Two warlocks on Netherspite makes dealing with the blue beam easy, one makes it a little bit problematic when you have a non-warlock taking the beam, but not too bad, no warlocks means the healers have to be paying attention to who's in the blue beam. Nightbane is extremely difficult if you do not have a Paladin or Shaman along (easier for the Paladin because of more armor for damage reduction than the Shaman, but the Shaman can still get close to 50% damage reduction). Blizzard definitely designed Karazhan around having one of every class.

Ideally, I see the optimal Karazhan group as:

Warrior that has atleast 15 to 20 points in protection
Druid with a lot of feral talents and a good number of resto talents
Warlock any flavor
Mage any flavor
Priest that is either Holy/Discipline or Displine/Holy
Paladin that has a mix of Prot and Holy talents
Shaman that has a mix of Enchanement and Resto talents
Rogue any flavor
Hunter any flavor
and the filler being a Priest that is Shadow/Discipline.

edit: changed second Netherspite to Nightbane.

I would agree with Lissa that Karazhan fights are designed around a raid group with certain classes in it. Our first tries on Aran were without a warlock, and it was quite painful, we didn't get him down. We managed Wizard of Oz without Warlock with a fear rotation from the priests, that wasn't too much of a problem, Aran is definately a lot harder.

What bugs me most about Karazhan, class issues aside, is the randomness of some fights. You can have nigh perfect execution at Aran and then he decides to camp his Blizzard. Bummer, either melee takes the considerable damage and continues to interrupt, draining healer mana rapidly, or you let him stand there and shoot people, using up his mana and the mana of your healers and approaching the poly/pyro annoyance.

Illhoof. Now I might be a nub, but I haven't found a pattern to his sacrifices, they seem random (haven't read everything about him, it kind of spoils the fun of the first try, which was great). Today I (main tank) got chosen for first and second sacrifice on two consecutive attempts, both times causing an eventual wipe. The offtank simply hadn't had enough time to get past the healer aggro on Illhoof. Apart from overall suboptimal performance from our side, the randomness of the sacrifice, while making the fight interesting, can wipe you without much you can do about it. Or so I think.

Prince Malchezaar. I watched a video where almost the entire raid stood totally still for the entire duration of the fight, just once the maintank had to move about ten yards sideways to avoid an infernal. All other infernals happily piled onto the right side of the platform, almost on top of each other. Obviously the fight is a hell of a lot easier if you don't have to juggle your raid around the hellfires. Too bad if the opposite happens and the infernals space themselves out nicely and set you up for a burn or shieldwall escape with option to wipe. Grrr.

While not as nasty as Aran, getting the first three garrotes from Moroes on your healers makes the fight quite a bit harder too, in my opinon.

Now, I totally understand that there needs to be some random element to keep the fights interesting. Nothing wrong with that, but to have situations where your raid can barely, if at all, react to a change of the rules has been the reason of much frustration among our raiders, especially while learning new encounters.

On one hand you have pushovers like the Maiden, on the other hand you get wiped by some random fight mechanic. Evil. I suppose this will become less of a problem as we get to know the encounters better, get better gear and also improve our playing, but it is very annoying if something seemingly unavoidable ends the encounter in desaster for you. The whole trashmob madness adds to that.



Offtopic ftw
Sorry, had to vent a bit. I have not seen Nightbane yet and can't contribute

take care
Tarabulus

Funny how Lissa perfectly describes our Karazhan group, yet last night was our 4th solid night of wipewipewipewipewipe on Aran.

*cry*

I've done Mechanar without warlocks or mages and had no wipes