Forged Alliance

Here is what I saw happening:   First, we had way too many melee for learning this fight.  Melee is constantly taking aoe damage, and it was real intensive to heal through.  Doable, but very intense.  Second, we need like 2 more healers for learning this encounter.  Healing was our main problem after we got the spine looting and using down.    This is what happened each time: Shield goes up, we try to heal up the raid. 6, 7, 8 seconds pass, everyone is topped off, and then someone calls out using the spine.  Spine is used around the 10 second mark, all melee drop to 1k hp, then he starts his aoe after 10 more seconds and gibs all the melee who didnt instantly get a heal or pop a HS or potion, or bandage.  All the while he is healing himself... What we need to do is: As soon as the shield goes up, everyone who can heal should heal the people under the mark.  What else are you doing in this time?  He is immune, so you are sitting on your hands waiting for a heal to top you off.... If you are below the mark, after 5-7 seconds we NEED to use the spine, and you are dead if you are not above the line.... DO NOT LIFETAP.  He is not doing any raid damage during this 5 seconds, just hitting the MT who should be well above 8500 HP anyways.  Then at 5,6,7 seconds we pop the shield, every raid member instantly bandage.  There is 10 free seconds of no aoe, PERFECT timing for bandaging.  Shamans chain heal STAT to get the melee up before he starts his aoe again, and non-shaman need to heal their groups up with group heals or flashes.  Rinse, repeat, win.   Next time we attempt him, if you do not bandage (non-healers), you will have to wear a ridiculous hat and everyone will mock you.  If you do not use your healthstones, everyone will mock you.  If you pop the shield before the 5 second mark, everyone will mock you.  If you do not have at LEAST 10k hp buffed, everyone will mock you.  PVP epics = welfare so go grab some.  We seriously have plenty of dps to do this, even in a couple pvp pieces.  But people need to stay alive.

Also, after some more reading, frost resist totems and auras would be good.  Frost pots might be useful too.  I thought all of our attempts got better and better, but we need to get that shield down quicker.  Our final attempt we did 2.7 million damage, and he only has 3.3 million HP, but he sure as hell wasnt at 20%, because he healed himself too much.  Just more food for thought....

Ok, more strats: During his shield, he is not doing any damage except to the MT, so healers *should* be able to heal everyone up before the pop.... So then everyone can bandage after the pop.  We can all have a big group bandage session. Since it was our first night of attempts, I am not going to call anyone out on this, but there are people who did not use bandages OR healthstones during some of the attempts.  Thats not acceptable.  We are talking about 212k of raid damage at once... Throw us a bone people, help us out and bandage.  There is a FULL 10 seconds after shield pops before he starts with the aoe, everyone should be bandaging during this time (casters included!). One more thing - when the shield goes up, warlocks should NEVER lifetap.  ever.

With respect to healing that fight, I died twice to the spine impale on our good attempt (after positioning was improved).  First time I had a soulstone, so I was able to pop back up, but the second time I was down for the count. The raidguru layout has three raid healers in the middle.  While three may be overkill, we do need to make sure that the ranged group healers have a healer in range of them.  I'm not sure if it's possible to have the ranged group healers in range of each other without compacting the raid too much.  The alternative is that the spine must be looted very quickly since there will be no incoming heals on the impaled healer. Not sure if having a designated spine looter and backup per group is a good idea.  Since the ranged are spread out, a worst case may come up where a ranged has to walk to the other side of the group to loot.  I do want to note that as a healer, I won't move to loot a spine unless that person has a lot of HP; my first instinct is to start the healing spam on that person to cover until someone else in the group loots it.  If we do place a designated raid healer(s) in the middle, this changes the story since they could cover for me while I loot the spine.  Guess we'll see how it goes next time.

Yeah I think 2 more healers would have made a world of difference in that fight.  Certainly the most healing intensive fight I have experienced yet.