I think you’re right, our grip breakers just have to be a bit more on the ball. We lose most of our “attrition” deaths to grips on the third plate or blood aggro, neither of which are really in our healing crew’s control. Based on what you run, I may up my spirit just a smidge, switch to 4 piece and see how it goes. The extra tide in our raid & two more hymns should make up for the loss of 2T12.

Thanks!

I am hoping to get to it tonight, but I don’t want to make any promises!

I run at about 2600 spirit, with just under 20 mastery, 4T13 and just one Mana tide in our raid. Before I answer any other questions, however, my first question to you would be to inquire what trinkets you are utilzing for the encounter? If you have a Jaws of Defeat – even if it’s just the normal version – I would recommend using it for this encounter. If you do not have one, make sure that at least one of your trinkets is regen based. My second question would be to ask if you are slipping in a concentration potion and if your priests (of all specs!) are hymning early enough into the encounter that they can do it again later in the fight.

With regard to your gripped targets, 80% of the time, they should be out of the grips before they require any significant amount of healing. This is especially true the further into the encounter you get, as by the third plate slow grips have a significantly higher chance of killing people.

I will try to get the guide up sooner rather than later

There are the usual things like nature’s grace, CD usage and assignments, but I think I have that mostly ironed out. Specifically for me, I was wondering how much spirit you take to the encounter. I’m currently trying about 2000, with 2-piece T12 and two mana tides in the raid. It’s working fairly well, but I’m challenged towards the end of the fight because my low spirit, nourish & hots healing style is reliant on steady throughput while my co-healers provide burst. I’m ill equipped to save people from grips, because frequent use of regrowth/HT is simply not an option.

I’m hesitant to throw numbers around because it’s so reliant on gear, healing comp and assignments, but the above is netting me enough hps for a respectable WoL ranking on our attempts that reach the fifth Amalgamation, and I still have enough gas in the tank to finish the fight.
I’ve toyed with upping my spirit so that I have the freedom to regrowth/HT a bit more, or switching to 4-piece T13. Would you recommend this? In your experience, do all the healers need to be capable of burst-healing the gripped targets? I’ve found that it allows me to focus my healing and rejuve more liberally but provides noticeably less “background” healing to the raid as a whole due to my lesser mastery. It’s also lowering my HPS, but that’s probably player error because it’s a stylistic change for me to avoid nourish since I’ve always had extremely low spirit by most players’ standards. That’s fine – if it’s clearly better I’ll adjust.