Wanting insight on this Halfus kill.

[HolyTerror]

My guild had it's first Halfus down this week. (Drakes setup was Slate, Storm, Whelps)

It's seemed a bit "stressful" on us healers. I'll be checking the logs tomorrow of our successful attempt to go over everything, but I'd really like any insight that I can get from you all as well concerning the healing aspects of our kill. (Insight on dps would be appreciated too, but that isn't really the highest priority for me at the moment.) If you take the time to go over things it'd be greatly appreciated.

LOG --> http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-3q...=10119&e=10482
for the successful encounter.

Thanks to all whom take the time to provide any insight!

[Airowird]

Define "stressful"? Was there a high healing requirement? Was it raid damage or tank damage? Did you have mana issues?


First of all, your Priest probably is better off at this time (in raiding) going Holy.
But even as Disc, he/she only seems to have used Greater Heal & Shields and about 4 Penance casts. While big heals are tempting, they do OOM you fast.
Your Druid (who I think was raid healing) seems to be doing pretty ok, although it looks like he/she went OOM at the end as well.
Your Paladin is probably using all his tools, while using Divine Light a lot, he/she apparently had mana left at the end to Holy Radiance etc, probably because he/she used a lot spells to their full potential, like Holy Shock (41 casts vs those 4 Penance earlier) & Word of Glory (free casts yay!)

Overall your Drake setup seems pretty annoying, considering you had a lot of raid damage from the whelps and annoying tank healing because of Slate. Halfus is probably the most interesting fight simply because it requires a slight change in tactics & execution every week, which is what I love about the fight . You'll get the hang of it after a while, but don't fret yourself over this fight, it is mostly a tactics/healer fight imho.

[Ridan]

First up the setup U faced is really healing intense but still it seems abit odd looking at your disc priest mainly. I wouldnt say its wrong to go disc I would however look abit more closesly on HOW to play disc.

Thoose numbers I c on your priest dosent really add up in my book.
Smite Heal Prayer? and yes penance ftw spec with 5 stacks and 3 grace.

[HolyTerror]

@Wartotem
Thank you for the insight. I'll clarify what I meant for you as well as other potential posters on what I meant for stressful. Our druid was raid healing, priest helping on raid healing, and I was mainly in charge of tank healing. There were many points where things got a bit hectic for us healers which is where I got "stressful" from. (I should have been more clear on that I'd say)
As far as our priest goes, he normally plays holy but decided to try disc after a couple of failed attempts. He isn't fully versed in Cata-style disc healing so I think that could account for the mistakes made. (Currently learning more about it) Where our druid and myself (pally) are concerned, anything that anyone can see that could be improved upon?

(For the large amount of divine lights used during the encounter - This was because I was mainly in charge of the two tanks myself, so at times it was much more necessary to ensure that the tanks were able to survive, especially once the tank switch was made and our pally tank was taking increased damage due to tanking the dragons with the mortal strike debuff)


There also seemed to be a few times where our interrupt would go off during the shadow nova casting, yet it wouldn't interrupt (those on interrupts were hit-capped to ensure they didn't miss) and when it happened the CD on the interrupts would be reduced compared to what it normally is. Anyone have any insight on this?




@Ridan - As I stated earlier, our priest isn't well versed in cata-style disc healing, but after reading the responses we have so far he is going over a couple things and reading up on it both here and on EJ.

[Tiata]

Ok, Holy, thanks for the insight. I'm not the best at analyzing logs yet, but that log did show me a few things.

Your newly-minted Disc Priest is trying hard. But it's a square peg trying to fit through a round whole. A thorough read through the Disc Priest Guide should point him in the right direction. Essentially, he's continuing to use a variant of the Holy rotation/decision-tree. The Wrath-version at that. This is bad.

Penance & PoH should be his main heals, not GH. For a properly spec'd Disc, Penance is MUCH higher efficiency, procs Grace, and has the added benefit of turning the caster to face the target. PoH should be INSANE. Flash Heal got almost as much healing as Penance. Have him remove that FH hotkey from the keyboard entirely. And how did Spirit of Redemption show up at all? Did he switch specs after getting rez'd?

Regardless, you guys deserve credit. Both for getting the job done and for having the humility to look in the mirror to fix the issues. But please keep in mind, Disc healing is not the same as Holy. Not even close. Might as well be a different class.

BTW, once he gets up to speed, put him on the Tank(s). It should go much better.

[tohan]

How many interrupts did you guys miss? The more interrupts missed, the more "stressful" the encounter will be as raid damage will sky rocket and be unhealable with too many missed interrupts.

With your raid comp, the pally should be on the tanks and the druid on the raid. Looking at your Disc Priest's logs, he used a lot of Greater heals. Was he healing the tank with those Gheals? Best bet is to stick the pally on the tanks, druid on the raid and have the disc priest float between raid and tanks.

Your priest should take advantage of Prayer of Healing to its maximum potential. It is extremely powerful now and can keep 1-2 groups up easily with just PoH spamming. Use Power Word: Shield on the tanks to support the Paladin and if the tanks are getting low, toss a Penance on the low tanks plus a couple Gheals on the tanks to let the paladin catch up. PW:S should be used every 12s to get the maximum Rapture procs (maga regen).

If the disc priest is raid healing, majority of his heals should come from Prayer of healing. If he's tank healing, it should come from gheals (if he is tank healing, make sure he gets Train of Thought - lowers Inner focus cooldown per Gheal cast).

How was the mana usage between the paladin/druid/priest? Were all three of you completely tapped? If so, I have a feeling it's due to the avoidable raid damage that can be mitigated with: moving away from fire and interrupting aoe shadow blast.