Healing Baleroc (video guide)

What better way to start off my Tier 12 videos with a guide on the healing encounter in the tier?! I’m suffering a tad from allergies in the commentary, so if I sound a bit stuffy you’ll have to forgive me 🙂 While I usually post tips and tricks for the encounter below the video, I did a fairly through write up in the comments to Monday’s post that I’m going to quote. Additionally, since this was only our second kill, there are things that I can still improve on doing, so I am going to outline those below.  I’ve also included my power aura exports for both Vital Spark and Vital Flame.

A friendly reminder that this video will be best viewed at one of the higher resolutions and and in full screen.

Power Auras

Vital Spark

Version:4.21; icon:INV_Elemental_Mote_Fire01; buffname:Vital Spark; x:-156; alpha:1; owntex:true; size:0.3; y:68; stacks.enabled:true; stacks.y:41; stacks.x:-141; stacks.h:0.88; stacks.Texture:Monofonto

Vital Flame

Version:4.21; icon:INV_Elemental_Primal_Fire; buffname:Vital Flame; x:-1; alpha:1; owntex:true; size:0.45; y:166; timer.h:1.89; timer.Texture:Monofonto; timer.enabled:true; timer.cents:false; timer.y:126; timer.x:-35; timer.UseOwnColor:true

 

Always room to improve!

As stated above, there are still things that I can do to smooth out my performance on this fight, so I wanted to outline them below so that everyone else knows to look out for them as well!

• My Lifebloom uptime is pretty abysmal.  For this particular kill I was at 62% – which is, frankly, pretty poor on my part.  I’ve already made a little note to myself to keep it active.
• From time to time I lose my Nature’s Bounty buff – yet keep healing instead of refreshing a rejuv or two for the faster casts.  I’m still torn on which is better – I suspect taking the couple of GCDs to refresh for the hasted nourish will prove to be more effective.
• I do not maximize my Shard of Woe.  At all.  I should use this towards the end of my tank healing rotation, right before I do things like refresh my rejuvs and hit the tank with a final swiftmend for the extra ticks.
• I could do better with maximizing my Nature’s Grace.  Timing it so that it’s up during my tank healing stints would not only give me faster Healing Touches, but extra ticks on my HoTs.
• I fail at being a troll.  And by that I mean I never remember to berserk.  It’s at the point that I think I need a power aura for it.  It’s not a massive buff, but every little bit helps!

Some comments on strategy:

First and formost, for the healers to do their jobs, the DPS with the torment stacks needs to effectively do their job as well. If they don’t, it’s going to be hard for healers to gain stacks of sparks! The way that we handle this is to make 6 groups – three melee groups and three ranged groups. Each group as two people (so 12 DPS total). We make sure that each group has one person that has the ability to hold torment longer than 9 seconds (DKs, Moonkin, S Priests, Feral Druids, Warlocks). Then what we do is assign an order for the torment shards. There will be two shards up each time they spawn – and there will be one melee group and one ranged group that deals with each shard spawn. One person will hold the shard for ~9 seconds, and the other will hold it until it ends (one of those listed above). Rotate your three groups out as each shard set spawns, and make sure they have good communication about swappping.

It’s important that your ranged stay relatively close together (your healers should be near the ranged as well) so that torment shards dont’ spawn in BFE. Additionally, we have the melee all start on the left foot and then move to the right foot once the shard spawns, save the person who is supposed to take that first torment. Then rotate that for each spark.

Next let me talk about the tanks (I’ll get to the healing! Honest!).

We use a “fire weapon tank” and a “decimation taunt tank”. The decimation tank starts the fight, and holds the boss until he’s at ~250k life. Then the main tank will taunt the boss back. The taunt tank will take the boss everytime he uses decimation – and the main tank will take it back to build stacks in between. Now, and this is pretty key, the first two decimations can very hard to deal with if they come early because healers don’t have a lot of spark stacks and aren’t pushing huge numbers and able to get the tank topped off. We solve this problem by having a LoH rotation for the decimation tank for the first two decimates. We use a Ret paladin (Do not have him take torment stacks, because it causes reduced healing) and have our Prot Paladin LoH for the first two decimations – you can have holy paladins do it as well, just know that it may throw off their rotation for gaining sparks. Not a huge deal, but something to consider. However, the LoH to stabilize the tank on those early decimations is a life saver.

Additionally, if one of your two tanks is a prot paladin and you have him as the flame/main tank he can sac the decimation tank and that tank will take reduced damage. THe MT has so much life that the damage back to him pretty much only tickles – but do note that this will only work if it’s the tank using sac, as it will kill a holy or ret paladin.

Onto the healing!

We use 7 healers. We break the healers into three groups – one group of three and two groups of two. We call them group 1, group 2 and group 3.

The group of three (group 1) will always start on the tanks (as there are three healers). The other two groups will start with healing torment. After about 15-20 seconds of the first shard spawning group 2 switches to the tanks (decimation possible here) and group 1 starts healing torment. At 3 seconds left on group 2′s Flame (I’m in group 2), the call is made for group 3 to heal the tanks. Group 2 switches back to torment. ~12-13 seconds in the call is made for group 1 to switch to the tanks and group 3 swaps to heal torment. We rinse and repeat this. (Note that I’m not johnny on the spot with calling switches for anyone but group 2 – as I can see my own timers. I do my best, but sometimes one of the groups will be on the tank longer. It’s not the end of the world, but do try to be somewhat consistent so that everyone can build sparks equally).

Now, sometimes with a decimation or towards the end of the fight when the damage is really high, we will overlap so that there are two groups healing the tanks and only one stacking torment for tank stability. I do try to limit this, and only have one group on the tanks at a time, but sometimes I do put two groups on the tank and then stagger them back off.

The next trick is building spark stacks. This is important. You want to build stacks as quickly as you can, so you want to use a faster heal on the torment target to build stacks. It’s tricky because you also do not want to run out of mana. So use haste buffs and whatnot to help you get stacks faster. I’m not 100% sure what other classes use, but here is how I heal:

I start with stacking LB and putting a rejuv on the Decimation tank (that’s who starts the pull). I then Rejuv the MT and the first two targets for torment, so that I have nature’s bounty effecting my nourish, bringing it down to a very cheap 1.3 second direct heal. While I am healing torment targets, I spam them with nourish – trying to remember to keep Rejuv up on at least 3 people and refreshing lifebloom on the tank. I will toss a regrowth on the torment targets when OoC procs.

When I swap to healing the tank, I will use a quick direct heal or a swiftmend to get my flames debuff straight away. I will then attempt the following rotation: Spam HT on the tank for the first 10 – 11 seconds. The last 4-5 seconds before my flames wear off I refresh my HoTs on both tanks, so that they get the increased healing from flames even after I’ve moved off the tanks. I will use trinkets, time NG or berserk (If I remember…) as I HoT the tanks and/or SM so that they get extra ticks from the extra haste. I will also ToL during a tank heal rotation for the healing boost.

When I swap back to torment targets, I try to remember to put up a third rejuv for hasted nourish.

Rinse and repeat.

I am sure that other classes have their tips and tricks for stacking sparks and healing the tank – however for tank healing, I believe eveyrone wants to start with their largest direct heals and at ~3 swap to faster heals so that they don’t inadvertantly reset their flames debuff and are able to swap back to stack sparks again.

Also, don’t be afraid to rez a fallen tank during the fight as they will retain their buff from Baleroc through death.