Cataclysm Raid Tactics

These will be added as I complete them. Wouldn't want to tell you how to kill a boss I haven't managed to kill myself yet *ahem*.

Table of Content;

Dragon Soul
Firelands
The Bastion of Twilight
  • Halfus Wyrmbreaker 10 Man [HWB]
  • Valiona & Theralion 10 Man [VOT] 
  • Ascendant Council 10 Man [ATC] 
  • Cho'gall 10 & 25 Man [CGL]
Blackwing Descent
  • Magmaw 10 Man [MMW]
  • Magmaw 10 & 25 Man Heroic [HMW]
  • Maloriak 10 Man [MLK] 
  • Chimaeron 25 Man [CMR] 
  • Nefarian 10 Man [NFR]
Throne of Four Winds
  • Conclave of Wind 10 Man [COW]

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      [HWB] - Halfus Wyrmbreaker 10 Man
      My guild and I managed to down Halfus Wyrmbreaker the other day, and it gave me an idea about how raid healing might look for holy priest healing at least. I chose to play as a holy priest because crazily enough that turned out to be way more mana effective than disc healing. Being able to refresh the duration on my renews with heal and Lightwell turned out to be the tipping factors and I will discuss these and the fight overall from a healer perspective here. Wyrmbreaker is basically a gear check kind of fight, and as such there are few mechanics to look out for, they instead deal alot of damage. To manage this boss your healers must heal alot, dpsers must dps alot and your tanks must be able to take a pounding. Less emphasize is put on movement and avoiding nasty stuff.

      Our raid comp that finally made it was as such;
      • Protection Paladin
      • Blood Dk
      • Holy Priest
      • Resto Shaman
      • Holy Paladin
      • Shadow Priest
      • Feral Cat
      • Unholy Dk
      • Frost Mage
      • Affliction Warlock

      Our average gear score was about 343 (I had 339).

      First of all it's important to note that the fight changes from week to week. You get a random choice of three out of five dragons each week, which will change the way you have to handle the fight pretty much (although I noticed that Malevica over at "Type H for Heals" had gotten the same setup, I don't know if he plays on the same server as me, otherwise this indicates that everyone gets the same setups). We got a pretty devilish setup in the Nether Scion, which increases boss attackspeed by 100%, Time Warden, which shoots fireballs at everyone in the raid all the time and the Storm Dragon which will occasionally knock everyone back (every 10 seconds?). Every tactic we had read on the matter, which were still pretty scarce, told us that the Nether Scion would be the most annoying dragon since he'd make tank healing really difficult. But those people can't have done the fight with the Storm Dragon because I can tell you right now, that guy is without a doubt the most horrid dragon in the game. He is horrible because he makes the skills of the other dragons even more difficult to work with, since you'll be constantly interrupted. This is the main reason that we had to use three healers. Two healers just couldn't keep up with the healing in the first "phase" with all the interrupts. Having two resto druids might change this however.

      EDIT: The reason I haven't mentioned stuff like positioning is because they don't matter. People can basically stand anywhere they like as long as it facilitates healing and allows for avoiding Fire Balls/Meteors. 

      We didn't have a good healing setup for dealing with the Storm Dragon.
      With a resto shaman, holydin and me, we only had me for good instants, which made the constant knockbacks a real issue. The storm dragon made us wipe insanely much even before we had gotten down the first dragon because the aoe damage from the Time Warden became totally unhealable when we all where constantly interrupted, and keeping the tanks up was equally much of a problem with the interrupts. We tried many different tactics, but the one that finally worked was this.

      Preparation
      The first thing you have to do is decide how many dragons you want to get rid off, and in which order. We didn't have dps enough to kill more than two dragons before the enrage timer hit, so we had to leave the least annoying one. You want to pick the dragon that is using up the most mana for the healers, not necessarily the one with the toughest skill, but the one that combined with the other dragons skills is the toughest to deal with.

      Step 1 - Killing the first dragon
      We chose to kill the Time Warden first, because we just couldn't handle the aoe damage with all the interruption. So the aoe wasn't a big problem, but combined with the interruption it was. These are the kinds of things you will have to take into consideration when choosing your first dragon. As soon as we got rid of the aoe, the interrupts became less of a problem. After the first step everything eased up. All the healers were completely oom, but we had time to use mana skills to get back to some 20-30% mana which we kept for the remainder of the fight. That is how crucial the first dragon was. Activating the Time Warden meant to be able to see where the fireballs would land, which reduced raid damage in that everyone could move from them. It did make healing even tougher though since not only were we interrupted, we had to stay constantly on the move from the fireballs. Once the dps managed to nuke the dragon down before us healers had let someone die, we managed to get the fight, so getting this right was imperative.

      Step 2 - Killing the next dragon
      Totally depending on your dragon setup, this will either be easier or tougher than the first step. Preferrably easier, since you want to get rid of the toughest dragon as soon as possible. We chose to kill the Storm Dragon, because as soon as we got rid of the interrupts, healing became fairly easy. You still have to keep an eye out for the Meteor, but that's about it. You could also go directly for the boss on this step, or even the first step of course. It all depends.

      Step 3 - Killing the third dragon, or the boss
      Here you have to decide whether you'll have enough dps to kill the third dragon before the boss enrages. We didn't. Fortunately, the 100% attackspeed didn't actually turn out to be much of a problem. There is another factor to take into account during this step however, and not dealing with it properly made us wipe once. The boss will when below a certain percent (50%?) start to do a raid wide stun, four times and then a nova. Apparently you can have someone interrupt the nova if they can manage to break free from the stun. We had a mage blink just between the third and fourth stun so he could counterspell the cast. Unfortunately I don't know of any other good way to deal with this, but perhaps Cloak of Shadows? This also meant you had to keep everyone topped off, because the stun did damage and you still had to keep an eye out for meteors. So if you were low on hp and got a meteor on your while stunned, there wasn't much you could do about it. This killed me once.

      Pointers
      Having the Storm Dragon meant having to time your heals very precisely. You had to get a cast off inbetween the stuns, because the instants usually wouldn't cut it. This of course gimped most of the casters dps significantly, which made burning down the first dragon even more difficult. As you will have noticed from heroics by now, you will want to have all and any dpsers who can to contribute with healing when needed. This means Tranquility and Hymn of Hope, and it wasn't until our dpsers used this properly that we finally managed. When the entire raid is down low, a tranquility will allow for the healers to waste less mana with expensive fast heals to save people. Also make it absolutely clear to everyone that they have to handle their own hp bar. Healing nowadays means prioritizing like never before. If I've got a lightwell up and I see a dps at ~50%, I will expect him to use the lightwell, and not to wait for me to heal him. Most of the time I will have to conserve my mana, or use my gcd somewhere else. This also means using cooldowns to reduce damage taken. Once you've started raiding, hopefully all your dpsers will have realized that dpsing is very little about simply dealing raw damage anylonger. If people don't move from shit on the floor, heal themselves through lightwells or step into pretty circles on the floor and use any cooldown they can to help the raid, you will have a very tough time downing raid bosses right now.

      Holy priest healing

      Priest Specifics
      Above is the healing for the kill. As you can see, Heal is lower on healing done than it probably would have been, hadn't it been for all the interrupts (I have about 16% haste raid buffed). Renew will always be high on healing done as it really is the core spell of Holy healing. But I want you to especially note Lightwell. Recount actually tracks how much your lightwell heals, no matter who uses it, so this is a great way to check it's effectiviness and also who are using it and who aren't. Third on healing done with 17% of my total shows something of the potential of this skill. That is from two casts, or 12000 mana! I've also noticed that mastery is great for holy priests and I would stack this over crit right now. Holy Word: Serenity is the instant heal you get from being in the Chakra: Serenity stance, and I strongly recommend it since it is insanely handy. It is instant, fairly big and very mana efficient. The only drawback is the cooldown, which isn't too long. Any priest who healed alot in Wrath will note how little I used Prayer of Mending, which used to top my meters as holy. The reason I chose not to use it as much as I usually do is because I can't control the way it heals. Raid healing right now is alot about knowing exactly where your mana will land, so to speak. If you know people will get hit so that PoM will jump it will be good to use, but on this fight you never knew who of the dpsers were going to take damage next, and each PoM could be potentially wasted if it doesn't jump at least twice. Also note how even us healers are in healing done. I can only hope that this is a hint at Blizzard actually succeeding in balancing healers, or maybe this fight specifically was equally punishing to us all.
      The dk tank did insane amounts of self healing, as you can see. This wasn't due to some fight mechanic, but just something dk tanks do nowadays through Death Strikes and Death Coils. This helps with healing tremendously of course, and I can only speculate in that this was a major reason that we had so little trouble with the attackspeed buff. Tank healing wasn't a big problem.

      Discipline priest healing
      Update 4/1: I did this as a disc priest the other day and I must say it worked great. Halfus will take increased damage for each dragon add that you kill, and that makes your Atonement heal for insane amounts if you start smiting him, making you the best tank/melee healer for the last nuking (the extra damage from you is a bonus of course). I had smites that hit for 20-30k damage, and critted for even more. Considering Smite has a fast cast, this quickly turn out to really high hps on anyone close enough. Eventhough disc is slightly less efficient at dealing with the aoe damage in the first phases (where you kill dragons), as long as that damage isn't murderous I recommend going disc for this fight if you can. 

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      [VOT] - Valiona & Theralion 10 Man
      I joined in on my guilds second kill of Valiona & Theralion the other day. Overall the fight differs alot from the first fight in Bastion of Twilight, Halfus Wyrmbreaker which I wrote about a couple of days ago. If Halfus is a gear check, Valiona & Theralion can be seen as mainly a skill check. As such it is both more fun and easier than Halfus, totally depending on the skill of your group and your gear (with really good gear, Halfus is probably easier, but in the gear we have now, V&T are easier). It also means that the difficulty of the fight is mainly decided on how good your raid is at working together, moving from stuff on the ground and other fight mechanics like it, because V&T has plenty of them. It can become healing intensive at times, but I'll talk you through it and hopefully you'll have a good idea as to what to expect!

      Our raid group looked as such;
      • Blood Dk
      • Feral Bear Druid
      • Holy Priest (me)
      • Resto Shaman
      • Holy Paladin
      • Arcane Mage
      • Feral Cat Druid
      • Affliction Warlock
      • Elemental Shaman
      • Shadow Priest

      Our average gearscore was at about ~347, I had 344.

      Preparation
      Although raid setup won't make or break this fight (as long as you bring skilled people) there is a slight advantage to bringing an even amount of melee and casters. Around 4 people in the melee group and 5 people in the caster group is an ideal setup because of the Meteor and Fabulous Flames in phase 2, which I will explain shortly. You also only need one tank for this fight, but we had a backup Bear (dpsing) just in case.

      Phase 1 - Valiona Grounded, Theralion Flying
      You will only ever fight one dragon at the time, Valiona going first. In the tactic that worked best for us we engaged Valiona where she was standing, with the tank having her face away from the rest of the group. Have the rest of the raid spread out behind her. None of the dragons have a Tail Swipe or Cleave Mechanic, so there is no need to take any regard to this when positioning yourself. In the first phase you will have to think about;

      • Engulfing Flames - Valiona will turn towards a random player and do a breath which engulfs about 45% of the room. You'll have a couple of seconds reaction time before she does this, so everyone should simply run out of the way by getting behind the fire (aka behind her head). This works exactly as when you fight her in Grim Batol.
      • Twilight Meteorite - Throughout the phase people should stand spread out. 10 yards apart is ideal. This is because of the Twilight Blast that Theralion with throw at a random raid member, dealing 30k damage to everyone within 10 yards of the target (and the target of course).
      • Blackout - Two times during the first phase (depending on dps), you will get a Blackout on a random raid member. It is a debuff that absorbs 20000 damage, so it can either be dispelled or healed through, the previous definitely being preferred. Have people stack up on melee some 2 seconds before this debuff is applied, and dispell it as soon as possible. Have a designated dispeller for this! This is the only thing you need to dispel throughout the fight. The damage done is divided among everyone within 10 yards, so if you're less than 4 people grouped up this will really hurt (250k divided between targets)! If you're around 6-7 people this is fairly easy to heal back up. After the grouping and dispelling people must spread out asap to avoid stacking damage from the Meteorite.

      Tank healing will be easy in this phase, so the trick lies in handling the Blackout primarily (and everyone moving from the flames). People will take alot of damage from Blackout, so you want to be prepared to top them off just afterwards so they can survive a Meteor strike.

      Phase Transition
      It's not a transition per se, but the short time when Valiona will go up in the air and Theralion land. Have the tank meet him in the middle of the room, where you will want to tank him. Have a designated ranged on which all ranged stacks up asap. Valiona will start to place huge pink swirls on the ground which you must avoid. You can stand in it for some 2 seconds before you get transported into the Twilight Realm.
      • Twilight Realm - If you do get in here, you have to find a portal to get out, while avoiding the pink shiny things on the ground as they are mines, and probably will kill you if stepped on. You can also be hit by the phase 2 meteor here (not the same as phase 1 meteor), and that will kill you for sure.

      Phase 2 - Theralion Grounded, Valiona Flying
      If you're a holy priest like me, this is where you will want to pop a Lightwell. This phase is a lot about movement for the caster group, so be prepared to pop instants. There will also be alot of raid damage, so placement of stuff like Healing Rain/PW Bubble/Sanctuary will be important.

      • Fabolous Flames (aka Void Zones) - Theralion will target a random ranged member and place a void zone on the gorund underneath. Everyone has to move out of it, in a group, asap. Move in a circle motion around the dragon, decide which direction to run beforehand! If there are no ranged, or ranged are standing too close to melee, a melee target can be chosen.
      • Engulfing Magic - Will deal damage to everyone within 10 yards equal to the healing/damage you inflict, divided among all targets. This means some people will deal alot more damage when having this debuff than others. As a holy priest I usually only had one renew up, on the tank. It ticks for some 4k, divided among 5 targets. You still want anyone who gets this debuff to run out of the group asap. Some people, like dpsers, will do alot of damage to the group if they don't move fast enough. You will see who is targetted some seconds before the debuff is cast, so everyone has some seconds of reaction time to move out of the group.
      • Meteor - Another meteor (for which I don't know the right name) will be cast during this phase. You can see who is the target by an arrow that appears above their heads, and everyone should stack on that person asap (although everyone should already be stacked). It is not like the one in phase 1. This Meteor needs to have it's damage split, 3 or less people will probably be killed if hit, depending on hp. The person who gets Engulfing Magic can get targetted by the Meteor! If he does he has to stop all casting at once and group with the rest. If the person happens to be someone who has alot of hots/dots up, pray you have a better solution (I used wings on our affliction lock when this happened).
      • Deep Breath - Just before you get back to phase 1, you'll have Valiona do Deep Breath on the raid. It looks alot like the one Onyxia does, only it leaves fire on the ground. She will do it either on the upper or lower third of the room (seen from the entrance). Standing in the fire will do damage and send you into the Twilight Realm. You can tell which side of the room she will breathe in well in time, giving everyone a good chance to move out of the way.

      This will be the most healing intensive phase,
      and the phase where you'll wipe the most (at least we did). What killed us most times was people not running away fast enough with the Engulfing Magic Debuff. If you get hurt by this and then get a meteor strike or faboulous flames, you'll probably die. Keep people topped off as much as possible, be ready to place aoe heals as soon as you've moved out of one Void Zone (Faboulous flames) and have people use the lightwell (if you have one). In the new phase transition, have everyone move to prepare for Phase 1 again.

      Rinse and repeat! It usually only takes 2,5 phases to get this done.

      Holy priest healing (10 Man)
      Disc priest healing (25 Man)
      Priest Specifics
      Above is the recount for healing on this fight. As you can see this fight is mainly about raid healing, so I chose to use Chakra: Sanctuary for the bigger part of the fight (especially in the second phase). I also reglyphed, replacing Guardian Spirit with Prayer of Healing glyph, and that worked alot better! In the first phase you will have to concentrate to heal people up after a Blackout. If everyone moves like they should, this phase is fairly easy and you can depend on Heal.
      The second phase is a little trickier, in that the raid healing becomes alot more intense, while you also have to concentrate on more things happening, and movement. It is also easy to forget the poor melee, but remember that they too are targetted by Meteors (but not by Engulfing Magic or Fabulous Void Zones if your ranged are doing their job). Having them use the Lightwell is perfect in this phase, so place it so that they at least have easy access to it. Ranged will probably move away from it sooner or later, but as long as they can target it they should use it too of course. As disc you can do wonders by timing your Barriers with the Blackout blasts, or when people get Engulfing Magic. This phase will require alot of Prayer of Mending, Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing (if you're holy), and I was really greatful that Blizzard had doubled our mana regeneration through talents, it was needed!

      Good luck on the fight, it's lots of fun :)

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      [ATC] - Ascendant Council 10 Man
      We are travelling deeper into the various raid instances, and the other day we managed to down the Ascendant Council. AC resembles Maloriak in Blackwing Descent alot in that it consists of part "handle it" and part "nuke it" phase. Yet again the fight isn't that tricky once you get the hang of it, because alot of the damage is avoidable. Healing only gets really intense in the nuke phase.

      Our raid comp was;
      • Blood Dk
      • Feral Bear Druid
      • Holy Priest (me)
      • Rest Druid
      • Resto Shaman
      • Fire Mage
      • Affliction Warlock
      • Feral Cat Druid
      • Balance Druid
      • Survival Hunter

      Our average item score was about 352 (I have 351)


      Preparation
      Because of how the nuke phase works, it's apparently alot better to use casters than melee for this fight (see further below for why this is). We had three melee and the nuke phase worked really well (no one died!). I think using four melee shouldn't be a big problem, so it might be that this warning is mainly aimed at people who are trying heroic modes. You also need a couple of people with good interrupts, but otherwise this fight feels like it's fairly forgiving for any raid setup.

      AC consists of four bosses; fire, water, earth and wind. You will fight fire and water in phase one, wind and earth in phase two, and in the final phase the remaining hp of all the four bosses, who share hp (fire and water share, wind and earth share) will be combined into one boss that has to be nuked down.

      Phase 1 - Water and Fire
      Water - Feludius
      Hydrolance - Also called Ice Lance. Is interruptable, but generally only a problem when it is combined with other skills. You can let it go through until the bosses start doing their aoe, that is when you want someone to interrupt it because the aoe and the lance combined can kill a player.
      Waterlogged - Every now and then Feludius will spout out balls of water, kind of like Rotface exploding goos. Unlike Rotface exploding goos these are avoidable though, but being hit by them isn't the end of the world. You will get a debuff that if it stays on will have the player freeze in place for 10 seconds, also dealing alot of damage. Everyone has to remove their debuff by walking into the fire streak made by the fire boss (see more about that below).
      Glaciate - When Feludius screams something along the lines of "I will freeze the blood in your veins" he'll do Glaciate, a skill that does intense damage to anyone in melee range and freezes anyone affected by the Waterlogged debuff.
      Heart of Ice - A dispellable debuff that deals increasing frost damage. People who get close to the one affected by this debuff will get a buff that make them deal more damage to the fire boss. Some people will have the player affected by this debuff run to anyone fighting the fire boss (which usually is melee, see below), but we just dispelled it asap and that worked well too. You have to evaluate your dps and see if you need this extra buff to get the bosses down enough.

      Fire - Ignacious
      Inferno Leap and Inferno Rush - Ignacious will jump towards a random ranged player and back to the tank, leaving a trail of fire. This is the fire in which you will have to remove the Waterlogged debuff. If your ranged group stands too close to the boss, he will not jump! In that case you won't get any flame trail and you won't have any means of removing the waterlogged debuff. Trust me when I say this is a very sad way to wipe on this fight. The leap does a knockback, so if a healer is targetted and knocked away from their healing target, or an interrupter from their interrupt target, make sure to say so for everyone else to be ready. Anyone can be jumped to as long as they're far enough away.
      Aegis of Flame and Rising Flame - Every now and then Ignacious will use a shield on himself, absorbing 1 million damage. Once cast he will start doing a rather nasty aoe on the entire raid. At this point everyone has to target the shield and nuke it down to interrupt the aoe asap, think about how the shield on the Twin Valkyrs worked in ToC, this is very similar. Getting this to work fast enough turned out to be one of the trickier things in this fight!
      Flame Torrent - Just after you've interrupted the aoe damage, by nuking down the shield, he will cast Flame Torrent. It's a frontal cone attack which is unavoidable for the current target (the tank). The longer he gets to channel Rising Flame, the more damage Flame Torrent will do. If you let it channel too long it will one shot the tank (unless your raid is already dead because of all the aoe damage).
      Burning Blood - Just as with the water boss, Ignacious will place a debuff on a random player that deals increasing fire damage. When players come close to the one affected they will get a buff that increases their damage done to the water boss. Yet again, we just dispelled it. If you feel like you need it you can have the affected player rush to the ones dpsing the frost boss (usually ranged, see below), but ideally you won't have to bother with this.

      Because of the above mechanics you'll want to set melee on the fire boss and ranged on the frost boss. The water boss does a melee range aoe, and having the melee moving from it is an unecessary dps loss. Make sure to have someone who will interrupt the Hydrolance during the heavy aoe from the fire boss. Since all dps should be focused on dpsing the fire boss this means that interrupter will have to have the water boss as focus (or have the tank tanking the water boss do it). As soon as one of the bosses hits 25% hp, the next phase will begin. Making sure that they're equal in hp all the way down to 25% is the key to this fight, as any hp they have left will be combined for the final boss in the last phase.

      Phase 2 - Air and Earth
      Throughout the phase there will be at least one hurricane and one sinkhole moving around in the room. The hurricanes will get you airborn, and the sinkholes will get you grounded. For some of the skills the bosses do you have to be either airborn or grounded to avoid intense damage. Having someone calling out which one to be at all times helps alot on this phase. The hurricanes and sinkholes deal a small amount of damage, so try not to be hit by them unecessarily. Keeping track of them at all times is the key to this phase, since you want to get grounded/airborn as soon as possible when necessary, without accidentally slipping into the wrong one.
      Air - Arion
      Thundershock - Deals intense damage to anyone not grounded. Usually doesn't one shot players, but is an unecessary load on the healers and should be avoided as much as possible.
      Lightning Rod and Chain Lightning - Arion will mark one player who will be attacked with Chain Lightning. Anyone close to this target will take loads of damage, so have the targetted player move away from the rest of the raid (but not out of range of healers of course).
      Disperse and Lightning Blast - Every now and then Arion will disperse and move to another location in the room. Just after this he will blast whoever is tanking him for a big amount of damage. This is usually no trouble at all as long as the healers are ready for it.

      Earth - Terrastra
      Quake - Deals intense damage to anyone not airborn. Same as with Thundershock, it usually doesn't oneshot players.
      Gravity Core -  According to wowpedia this does "Applied on entering a Gravity Well (Sinkhole). Crushes an enemy with intense gravitational force, inflicting 10000 Physical damage every 2sec for 10 sec. While the target is affected, the gravitational field periodically hinders the movement and actions of nearby allies. " But I've never noticed it during a fight.
      Harden Skin - Terrastra will ocassionally cast a shield upon himself that lowers his damage taken by alot. This is interruptable and should be. You could also let it be because dpsing through it will deal alot of damage to Terrastra, but it also increases his damage done so it's usually a better idea to just interrupt it.
      Eruption - Spikes coming through the floor, dealing damage and knocking people into the air. Just avoid it.

      Just as in phase 1, you want to keep the hp of the two bosses as close to eachother as possible. As soon as one of them hits 25% the third phase will begin. This phase is usually considered a regen phase, in which healers gets a small break from intense healing to regen mana enough to handle all the damage in the nuke phase that comes after. If people are good at avoiding damage healers can regen alot during this phase, and this too is a key to succeeding with this fight.

      Phase 3
      Elementium Monstrosity
      Lava Seed - Rains fireballs randomly across the room. Don't be hit by them and don't stand in them.
      Liquid Ice - Is the main reason ranged are better on this boss than melee. EM will place an ice patch below himself that will grow and deal more and more damage the more players that stand in it. Having few melee who have to deal with this skill therefore make this fight alot easier to heal. A few melee can avoid it by running on his sides and dpsing.
      Electric Instability  - EM will cast chain lightnings at random players, which will jump to nearby players. Try to spread sensibly, ie so that you don't get too many people hit by chain lightnings without being too spread for aoe heals. This is another reason you don't want many melee, because if they have to stand too close they will kill eachother with the chain lightning.
      Gravity Crush - Will bubble a random player, stunning them, lifting them into the air and drop them (but not high enough for a levitate to work). The target is stunned and takes damage equal to 120% of their max hp over 6 seconds. They need to be healed enough to survive the bubble and the fall, but not so much that the rest of the raid dies from lack of healing.

      This is without a doubt the trickiest phase. Healing is alot easier with as few melee as possible, as mentioned above, but this is a minor issue in normals (as long as you don't have more melee than casters).


      Priest specifics
      Yet again this is a fight where we'll mostly deal with aoe damage. In the first phase we have to be ready for some occasionally intense tank damage, and the fire boss aoe (have everyone stack up for it). In the second phase healing becomes rather easy as long as the one affected by the Lightning Rod debuff moves away from raid and everyone gets grounded/airborn when they have to. The real deal comes in the last phase, where you will hope that the dpsers can burn down the EM before the damage becomes too intense. After a while the damage becomes so high that there just won't be enough gcds to handle it, even if you still have plenty of mana (and mana shouldn't be a big problem if your raid knows how to move from fire). We had healers assigned to one tank each and one to raid, and that worked really well since the damage is about one third each (except in the last phase where it is mostly raid damage).

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      [CGL] - Cho'gall 10 & 25 Man
      It's funny sometimes how you can bash your head against a boss for a couple of weeks and suddenly he just goes down, like that. We hadn't been doing that many tries on Cho'gall actually, but more than the average boss so far for sure. Therefore it was extra fun to manage to down him as fast as we did this time around. Had we really improved that much? And then, a couple of days later, we one shot him in my 25 man group. Half the raid were doing the fight for the first time and we haven't one shot a single boss so far, and this was a raid who wiped several times on Ascendant Council due to people not moving out of the raid with the Lightning Rod debuff, so that's just hilarious. What that tells me is that this fight is alot easier on 25 man than on 10 man. The tactics are the same, but there is one important difference (Worship) which I will discuss further down.

      Cho'gall is a fight, just like Magmaw in a way, mostly about moving out of "shit on the ground" and handling the adds. Once you've got that nailed down, he's a goner. Unlike Magmaw however, Cho'gall doesn't just have two shit on the ground, and not just one set up of easily aoeable adds. Magmaw can be seen as Cho'gall light, but Cho'gall really has alot of things to think about. It still means however that he favors a raid group which can handle adds in a smooth way so yet again - a ranged heavy group is favored here. There are a range of tactics out there and I am not saying this one is the best - but it worked and we downed him.


      Our raid comp was;
      • Prot Warrior
      • Prot Paladin
      • Holy Priest (me)
      • Resto Shaman
      • Resto Druid
      • Feral Cat Druid
      • Balance Druid
      • Affliction Warlock
      • Fire Mage
      • Unholy DK

      Preparation
      Like I've mentioned, Cho'gall is yet another fight that favors ranged dps. You want dpsers who can handle adds in a ranged manner because you want to avoid players getting too close to the small adds that spawn (more explanation further below). Cho'gall is a fight divided into two phases which differ quite much from eachother. The first phase is a typical "either be spread or stacked" kind of phase, like Maloriak. The second phase is a burn phase with some things to think about, again pretty much like Maloriak. Alot of the damage can be avoided, but you do need a certain amount of dps to be able to handle the adds fast enough.

      Phase 1
      This is the more difficult phase in that there will be alot of things to think about. When Cho'gall reaches 25% he will go into phase 2.

      Corrupted Blood - Most damage taken will increase your Corrupted Blood meter, kind of like the sound meter on Atramedes, which will increase your damage taken by the aoe that Cho'gall does every once in a while. Corruption will also give you further debuffs the more you have, getting to a 100 Corruption will make you unhealable (among other things) but you should preferrably never even get to 50. Sufficient to say you should try to keep your corruption as low as possible at all times, and you do this by avoiding "shit on the ground". If you want to know exactly what every level of corruption does, check it out here. The Corruption seemed to stack alot slower in 25 man than in 10 man, so making mistakes was less forgiving in 10 man.

      Shit on the ground - Cho'gall will empower himself with two different buffs during phase 1. The first one is a fire buff which will make him hit harder and spawn lava pools on the ground. Don't stand in them. The other is a shadow buff which will make his melee swings deal aoe damage and needs to be dealt with accordingly. This aoe damage is not very heavy in fact, and can be dealt with by a single focus aoe healer and one off aoe healer.
      The big adds, also known as Corrupting Adherent, will spawn from the purple portals in the room. They will do a classical shadow crash with the benefit that you can see exactly where they will land, since there will be a purple swirl, just like on Valiona & Theralion, in that location. Move out of it.

      Buffs and debuffs - There are a couple of debuffs and buffs (on the boss) that needs to be handled in a special way. Fury of Cho'gall will make the tank take alot of extra damage. To avoid having this on the tank currently tanking Cho'gall you will need to do a tank switch after this is cast. The new offtank will be the one handling the big adds. Accelerated Corruption is a debuff that looks just like the Corruption icon and is cast on players who have reached 25% corruption. This should be dispelled asap. Conversion, also known as Worship, will stun two/five (10/25 man) random players (not the main tank) and have them cast Worship. If they finish their cast Cho'galls damage done will increase for a short period. Worship is one of the trickiest things to get right in this fight, since it requires players to interrupt eachother. As far as we tried, any typical pvp interrupt will work towards doing this (Typhoon, Fear, Kick, Dragonbreath, Mind Freeze and so on). The interrupts used will stay on their targets for their full duration unless removed! This is really important to note because that means you want to use the interrupts that will interrupt the target the shortest amount of time. Fear for instance will stay on for 10 seconds unless dispelled. Hammer of Justice will have the target stunned for 6 seconds and so on. This was alot easier to handle in 25 man because wherever you were, someone else would be close to interrupt. This wasn't so in 10 man where it is alot easier to spread out and get out of easy range for your fellow raiders, so keep this in mind.

      Adds - There will be one big add (Corrupting Adherent) spawning from the purple portals that need to be handled by the offtank. As soon as they are up, the raid should spread out to avoid shadow crashes. Remember to not spread out too much since you want to be close to someone in case you'll get the Worship debuff, which needs to be interrupted asap. They need to be killed before Cho'gall casts Fester Blood, otherwise they will wipe the raid. The Corrupting Adherents skills will also increase your corruption meter, and their skill Depravity should be interrupted. When Cho'gall casts Fester Blood, and if the big adds are dead, which they should be, 5 adds (Congealed Blood) per dead Adherent will spawn from the pool of black blood from the dead Adherent. These need to be nuked down asap, and you should avoid getting into melee range with them. Think oozes on Professor Putricide. Being hit by a Congealed Blood won't kill you, but it will increase your corruption meter fast. The Congealed Blood move very fast, so ber ready for that.

      How to handle it all - this is how we did it;
      1. Have tank A tank the boss in the middle of the room. You want to be placed stacked behind the boss, make sure you've arranged who is interrupting and who is interrupting the guy that is interrupting in case he gets into Worship. 
      2. As soon as Cho'gall casts Fury of Cho'gall, have tank B taunt the boss, standing in the same place as tank A. 
      3. When Corrupting Adherent spawns, tank A picks him up and tanks him towards the entrance. Not too close to the door since that will reset the fight as we noticed. All the way up the stairs does work though. Make sure to be in range of a healer, we had one healer follow that tank around. All dps will nuke the big add and interrupt the Depravity. 
      4. As soon as the Corrupting Adherent is dead, everyone stack back up behind the boss. During all this you must remember to interrupt Worship. 
      5. Just before Cho'gall casts Fester Blood, have all ranged ready to handle the Congealed Blood. There will be more Congealed Blood the more Corrupting Adherents you get, since 5 will spawn from each corpse. That means you'll soon be overwhelmed by Congealed Blood, and should aim at not getting more than 4 or so Corrupting Adherent during phase 1. 
      6. Rinse and repeat until phase 2.

      Phase 2
      This is a typical burn phase, but with a few things to think about.

      Cho'gall will have a damage aura during this phase, which means there will be alot of aoe healing. This damage is in itself not overwhelming however, so don't waste your mana needlessly. Cho'gall will spawn four Darkened Creations, aka Tentacle Eyes, that need to be burned down asap (untankable). They cast a Debilitating Beam on a random raid member that reduces healing and damage done by 75%, deals a moderate amount of damage and stacks up Corruption (on your Corruption Meter).

      This phase isn't too tricky actually, and if you get the first phase done in a smooth manner (ie don't get hit by stuff) this phase will be simple.

      10 Man holy healing
      25 Man disc healing

      Priest specifics
      Movement isn't that important in this fight, since you only have to either stack or spread (and move from the occasionaly fires/crashes), so I chose to use Inner Fire. In phase 1 most of the raid damage is avoidable, except when Cho'gall gains his shadow debuff. The aoe damage in phase 1 is fairly simple however, instead the tank healing is a little tougher. We had a designated healer for each tank and one who focused on a little bit of everything. The tanks will be spread out alot when the Corrupting Adherents come, so you might not have all healers in range for both tanks at that time. The tank can drop quickly and all healers should be ready for that. In the last phase there will be mostly aoe healing, but not so much that one has to spam aoe heals continously (not like last phase on Ascendant Council for example). Switching between stances for the tank heal and aoe heal is nifty on this fight, but you can get around with just being in Chakra: Serenity. For 10 Man I recommend holy for mana efficiency. Disc worked well in 25 man, and you can help out on adds in the last phase, but as you can see the healing throughput is alot lower and should be taken into consideration. I don't think recount can see the Bubble however. This fight isn't that tricky actually, because a failure isn't the end of the world. Instead all the failures add up into making the fight more and more difficult until it becomes unhealable. Except for getting aggro from boss/Corrupting Adherent, there are no one shot mechanics in this fight or attacks that deal a big portion of damage in one blow on anyone but the tanks.
      -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      [MMW] - Magmaw 10 Man
      My guild managed a double kill of Magmaw the other day (two 10 man groups) and I was part of the first kill. Magmaw is interesting because you'll probably either love or hate the fight. The first couple of times you try him you definitely get the impression that he is basically impossible. I oomed when the boss was at 80ish % all the time, the aoe damage is completely murderous and you feel like you don't have a chance in the world to kill him with current gear. But Magmaw perfectly illustrates what a huge difference a good working tactic will do to a fight. Magmaw is alot about being on your toes constantly throughout the fight, much more than the other two fights I have been writing about earlier - Halfus Wyrmbreaker and Valiona & Theralion. In that way it resembles the Lich King fight alot, since every slow thought actually could lead to a wipe.

      Fortunately, Magmaw only has two "phases", of which only one is difficult (but on the other hand that one is really difficult). Those are a "handle the shit"-phase and a "nuke the boss"-phase.

      Our raid composition was;

      • Blood Dk
      • Restoration Druid
      • Holy Priest (me)
      • Restoration Shaman
      • Balance Druid *2
      • Arcane Mage
      • Frost Mage
      • Feral Cat Druid
      • Affliction Warlock

      Our average item level was about ~347 (I had 343).


      Preparation
      The thing that needs to be handled in the Magmaw fight are the Parasitic Infections (aka Larvas). Once you've got those under control, most of the rest of the fight is fairly simple and straightforward. Because of this you'll want to pick some dpsers who can help out with slowing and kiting the Larvas. We had boomkins and a frost mage, but other options include elemental shamans and hunters (slowing traps) and basically any dpser who can do the above. Because of this, this is a fight that heavily favors casters. You don't want melee to attack the larvas, so bring as many casters as you need to be able to nuke the larvas down within a 30 second period (which is the time you get before more larvas spawn).
      Some tactics will tell you to have a tank for the larvas. This is only recommended if you don't have dps who can slow and kite. Having the dps handle the larvas themselves worked alot better for us, since any player who gets into contact with the larvas, even a tank, will complicate stuff (explanation given below).

      Phase 1 - Handle it
      This phase is about handling the larvas and intense incoming aoe damage. Get this right a couple of times and you've got this sucker.

      • Lava Spew - An unavoidable aoe attack to every player in the room, deals about 100.000 damage to everyone over 3 seconds. As a healer this is the trickiest part of the fight, no doubt. This is tricky because you have to be able to together dish out 100.000 healing over 3 seconds, and most importantly, not oom while doing it. It will seem impossible the first couple of times, but you will find a way. When we finally managed to kill the sucker I never oomed, and didn't even go below 50% mana (using mana cooldowns of course). You will have to learn just how much aoe healing to push out, and try to limit it to that. Dpsers with aoe heals can also help out when needed of course.
      • Pillar of Flame - Every 30 seconds Magmaw will spew fire on one raid member. It will spawn a pool of lava under that persons feet, and after a few seconds (4?) errupt into a pillar of flame. This can be on either melee or ranged, so everyone has to be ready to move from it. The Larvas will spawn from this pillar.
      • Larvas (Parasitic Infection) - Anyone who gets bitten (attacked) by a Larva will eventually spawn another larva. This means that if you don't handle the larvas in a ranged manner, you'll soon be overwhelmed by them. Once bitten, you can't get rid of the infection, you will spawn a new larva throughout the fight. This is the singlemost important thing to deal with properly during the fight. Getting too many larvas will quickly make everything else in the fight impossible to deal with.
      • Ignition - Ignites half the room, have everyone move out of it.
      • Random Spit - A skill not mentioned on wowpedia is a random Lava Spit he does every 10 seconds or so throughout the fight (not when stunned), dealing about 30.000 damage to the target. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it hits 3 targets, and I know the damage is individual, aka stacking or not stacking doesn't change it.

      Magmaw also has a couple of attacks that make him deal massive damage when no one is within melee range. This is easily handled by always have the tank tanking :P

      The best way to deal with the above mechanics is to have all ranged stack up on eachother. This makes it easier to handle with the aoe damage, and alot easier to predict where the pillar will land. As soon as a pillar has spawned, have everyone move some 30-40 yards away, ranged dps dealing with the Larvas while healers try to heal up the massive aoe damage. When a new pillar spawns, move back to the original location, rinse and repeat.

      UPDATE: There is also another way to deal with phase 1, which some feel is easier. Instead of having all the ranged in one group, it suffices to have one ranged outside (10 man) and the rest stacked up in melee. This way you know exactly where the Lava Spew will land and also only one person will need to move from it, reducing the risk of failure. The handling of the adds is just as important, and you should always have as many ranged needed to kill them down easily.

      Phase Transition
      To get into the nuke phase, you have to have two dpsers shackle Magmaws head to a spike on the ground (ouchkerbibble). After about 1,5 minute you'll be able to jump on to his back (you'll notice the regular mount up mouse over). As soon as you have people do this, Magmaw will start chewing on the tank (Mangle), dealing massive amount of damage. Assign at least one healer to deal with this! The tank won't be stunned while chewed upon, and should use any means necessary to stay alive (heal self, use cooldowns).

      The riders will get a marker (green circle) which they have to aim on the spike on the ground to shackle down Magmaws head. The faster they do this the better, since you don't want to have the tank Mangled for longer than necessary. It is worth noting that you can start doing this as soon as you've mounted, eventhough Magmaw hasn't finished his emote yet.

      Phase 2 - Nuke it
      Once Magmaws head is down, finish off the final larvas (they should preferrably be all dead when this happens), and have everyone start nuking Magmaw. Dpsing Magmaw at any other phase isn't unecessary, but it will overall make the fight more difficult since you want to save mana and brain power to deal with the larvas during Phase 1. If you have dpsers who are really low on mana and Magmaw still isn't close to death, it is better to have them regen than nuke during this phase. Dealing with the larvas the next time is still top priority!

      There will be no damage going around, so this is the perfect time for healers to just stand around, take a breath, and regen mana through any means necessary. We had one assigned healer who topped everyone off during this phase (the shaman, since he could LB up his mana during this phase), while the others just stood idle, regening. Be ready for massive incoming aoe as soon as this phase ends, as it goes right back to phase 1 again. Just after this nuke phase, he will do a melee hit on the nearest target in melee. To avoid having a melee dying from this, have them stand as far away from Magmaw as possible when nuking. Once the tank has aggro again (there might be an aggro reset here) they can stand in their regular position again.

      The first phase 1 is the trickiest, since after you have shackled his head once, you can do it again faster than before. If the first phase 1 takes about 1,5 minutes, the ones after only take about 40 seconds, so if you get the first phase 1 right, it'll only become easier (as long as you don't oom).


      Priest specifics
      As you can see from the healing recount, aoe healing is what you'll do during this fight. The trick is to be able to deal with the aoe healing, while moving from the  Pillar of Flame, and as mentioned not oom. On the other hand that is all you have to deal with. Our Sanctuary, Healing Rain and Efflorescence did some good aoe healing, but it also made seeing the Pillar of Flame a little tricker. Overall it is worth it however. Have someone assigned to look after the tank, someone to focus on the aoe healing and one who does a little bit of both, and you'll be set. The lightwell is gold in this fight, since it can be used while moving between the two assigned areas. I stayed in Chakra: Sanctuary throughout the fight, and actually used Inner Will for the extra movement (and to ease up mana consumption on all the CoH and PoM I used). Use PoM every cooldown, use CoH basically every cooldown, tell everyone to use the lightwell and use a buttload of Prayer of Healings. Prayer of Healing is a really mana efficient spell when you've got so many to benefit from the heal, like on this fight. When moving between places you can spam some Holy Nova, which is a great aoe heal on the run (it's not on the recount because I forgot to use it :P ). Once you have figured the bare minimum you have to heal everyone, which is based on how your other healers heal as well, you will probably have found a good way to keep mana at a reasonable level and still keep people alive. People will be low on health. Most of us healers know now that that isn't an issue. You should try to keep everyone above 30% at least, so that they won't die from the next Lava Spew aoe.

      With less than 1000 mastery, I want you to note how awesome mastery seems to be for us holy priests. At nearly 10% total healing done this sure makes a difference during an aoe intense fight like this (more than PoM although PoM was up every cd). Right now I prefer mastery over spirit and crit for sure.

      ----------------------------------------------
      [HMW] - Magmaw 10 & 25 Man Heroic
      For this guide on how to fight Magmaw hc, I will assume that you already are familiar with the normal version - if you want a quick recap, you can check out my 10 man guide on the matter. Therefore I wont talk about how to deal with everything that works the same as in normal, although you can assume that everything deals more damage (like Mangle). This guide will put emphasis on the differences to normal and what you have to think about extra carefully to get this fight right.

      What is new?
      Both 10 man and 25 man heroic have the same game mechanics, but you might choose to deal with them slightly differently, because you have less people to spare in 10 man.

      Phase 1
      Animated Blazing Skeletons will spawn from additional Lava Pillars, or rather a Meteorite called Blazing Inferno, they need to be handled by a separate tank. You can see where the Blazing Inferno will land by an effect simliar to the Lava Pillars, you should avoid them in the same way. The Lava Pillars that spawn ABS also spawn a Trail of Fire that moves slowly around the room and that needs to be avoided. The ABS cast Armageddon once they reach 20%, and should therefore be nuked at that point, regardless of how you choose to deal with them before that.

      Phase 2
      Nefarian will hurl shadow bolts (Shadowflame Barrage) at random raid members, which increases the aoe damage taken during this fight significantly. This is still considered the easier of the two phases since you don't have to bother about adds anylonger.

      General
      There are two ways to handle the pillars both in normal and in heroic. You can either have ranged stand ranged and move from the pillars in a group, left and right, or you can have everyone except a minimum stand in the melee group, which means only a few people have to run to move from pillars. The fight is usually easy enough on normal that either tactic makes little difference, but on heroic there are more pillars and more things to move from which means the fight is a lot easier with the latter tactic. Videos of the fight in heroic will show some doing the first and some doing the second, but I really do recommend the second. As long as the few ranged keep their distance and the melee group stay grouped up, it really does the handling of pillars and adds a lot easier.

      25 Man
      What you need;
      • 1 or 2 Magmaw Tanks: To switch between Mangles. You don't actually need an extra tank for when the MT is being mangled, since Magmaw doesn't attack anyone during that time. He does however still do the occasional melee swing, which can be avoided by melee stepping out a bit. It also wipes the current tanks aggro. To make things easier you can just have an offtank taunt Magmaw during Mangle to make sure any such melee swings land on them. Since you usually can spare the extra tank in 25 man I recommend using it if you can. If you do, it is preferrable to use a second Magmaw tank who can deal some decent dps while not tanking, like a feral druid.
      • 1 Animated Blazing Skeleton tank: Will stand in melee and pick up all the ABS adds.
      • 1 Larva Kiter (Lava Parasites): Since most of the raid will have to focus their dps on the ABS adds and Magmaw, you will have less time to spare for the regular adds, the Larvas. The best way to handle the Larvas is therefore to have someone kite them, while also slowly killing them. This is a key task in this fight and a frost dk with Howling Blast is ideal. Of course, any kiter up to the challenge can be used, but Frost Dks really have an upper hand here. If you feel like you can spare the dps, anyone can help out on killing the Larva adds when needed of course, but if the kiter does his work well, it shouldn't be needed.
      • 1 Misdirecter: Having someone who MDs the ABS to the ABS tank is highly recommended on this fight. The fight is manageable without one, but it makes it alot easier.

      How to do it;
      Phase 1 100-30%
      • Have everyone stand in melee range, except for 4 (some say 3 is enough in 25 man, we usually go with 4 just in case someone dies) people who will stand outside to make sure that the pillars land outside and not in the melee group. It is very important that you make sure to keep these groups up, the melee group should stand close to the boss and the outside group must keep their range. Getting a Lava Pillar in the melee group usually ends in a wipe unless everyone reacts very fast.
      • Every 35 seconds, Nefarian will throw Blazing Inferno at the raid (which should land outside if you've done everything correctly) that will spawn an ABS and leave a trail of fire. The Trail of Fire slowly wriggles around the room, but is fairly easy to avoid. As soon as the ABS spawn they should be picked up by their designated tank, who could be aided by an MDer to do so.
      • The ABS start casting Armageddon when they reach 20% hp, which means that once they reach that health, you must be ready to be able to burn them down asap. Which way you decide to deal with the adds is really up to you, most people burn them down asap as long as it's not during a "Head Down"-phase. If you have the dps for it you can kill them through splash-aoe, and burn them only when they reach 20%. It's not recommended to tank more than 2 adds at a time, but it depends on the quality of your raid of course.
      • If you have two tanks for Magmaw - Whenever the first tank gets mangled, the next one taunts Magmaw off him, and tanks until he gets Mangled, rinse and repeat. 
      • Larvas will spawn and work exactly as in normal. Because you usually don't have the time to focus dps both the ABS and the larvas, you will kite the larvas. Have the Larva kiter pick them up and run them around, trying not to be hit and infected of course, avoiding the Trailing Fire and not get out of reach of the healers. Like mentioned, this is a key role in the fight, and one of the trickier.
      • It is recommended to have at least one healer in the outside group, to make sure the Larva Kiter always has someone in range to heal them. Preferrably someone who can deal with healing and alot of movement - druids or priests for example. Making sure the outside people is getting enough heals will be one of the things to focus on in this fight.

      Phase 2 - 30-0%
      • When Magmaw is closing in on 30%, make sure to clean up any adds still left, both ABS and Larvas. No new adds will spawn during the last 30%. You should also try to time his head going down with you entering the last phase, allowing you to burn his head at once and hopefully spend alot less time in the last phase.
      • As soon as he enters 30%, Nefarian will start hurling shadowbolts at the raid. I haven't found any evidence to it in tooltips, but they splash damage, which mean that you want to handle them the same way you do fireballs on Halfus, and spread out. The best thing is to start spreading out ahead of the 30% so that you're not in one big group when he starts casting the shadowbolts, as that can do a lot of unecessary damage.
      • The raid damage at this point is heavy, but definitely not crazy like Chimaeron Feud or Maloriak Red phase. Make sure to have everyone stick to their assignments, because it is easy to forget about point healing when raid healing seems to be tough. Assign a cooldown rotation to make sure not all healers burn their bubbles/hymns/tranquilities at once, since that will turn into unecessary overhealing.
      • As soon as you get his head down and are in this phase, is usually the best time to use Bloodlust.

      10 Man
      What you need;
      • 1 Tank for Magmaw
      • 1 Tank for ABS
      • 1 Kiter for Larvas

      How to do it;
      The big difference between 10 and 25 man is that you have less tanks to spare, because of this you usually don't have an extra tank to handle Magmaws random melee swings when the MT is being mangled. This can be dealt with by the melee group trying to step out a little from melee range and be careful on aggro.

      Phase 1 - 100-30%
      • On 10 man you only need 2 people outside to make sure all the pillars stay out of melee, these two people should be your kiter and preferrably a healer. If you don't have a healer who is good enough to run and heal a dpser works just as well, but you will have to keep an extra eye on the kiter to make sure he gets his heals.
      • Adds are handled pretty much as in 25 man, meaning that you can decide whether you burn them down when they spawn or let them die on splash damage. They too need to be killed asap when they reach 20%, as they will cast Armageddon which deals massive damage to the whole raid.
      • Larvas will be kited around the room by the kiter.

      Phase 2 - 30%-0%
      Just as in 25 man;
      • Try to get his head down in time with him reaching 30%.
      • Start spreading out slightly before he hits 30%.
      • Have some plan for how healers use their cooldowns, and don't tunnel vision on raid healing.
      • If you have the head down, this is a good time to use Bloodlust.

      Pitfalls - things to pay extra attention to
      I've mentioned a couple of these already, but it could be worth mentioning them again.

      • If you use the tactic with only a few ranged (and you should), make sure those ranged always get their share of the healing love. They are easy to forget!
      • The Mangled tank takes some burst damage just as in normal (but more). It's usually easy to handle as long as you're ready for it.
      • Make sure to be ready to nuke the ABS if you splash them to 20%, you really don't want that Armageddon. This seems to be extra important in 25 man, where people tend to go "ah, those guys are dpsing him already, I can continue on Magmaw".
      • It's really important to keep your groups intact - melee with melee and ranged with ranged. A pillar in melee is a fairly sure wipe. Don't forget to replace ranged that die (unless you can res them of course, which usually is better)! 
      • If you don't have someone who can MD ABS adds to the ABS tank, he might have to move around to get into range for taunting. This does indeed make ABS handling a lot trickier, and opens up for dangerous situations (like healers getting aggro) and everyone will make sure to help the ABS tank out.

      Good luck!

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      [MLK] - Maloriak 10 Man
      We finally got Maloriak down the other day. I say "finally" because eventhough this actually is a really easy fight, he proved to be quite the challenge. The last phase is basically a "burn him down before you die" phase and we had trouble getting the dps we needed, even when doing everything else perfectly. In that sense you can see this as the first fight that requires you to both have decent gear and decent skills. This is how we finally made it.

      Our raid comp;
      • Prot Warrior
      • Blood Dk
      • Holy Priest (me)
      • Resto Druid
      • Resto Shaman
      • Fire Mage
      • Elemental Shaman
      • Balance Druid
      • Assassination Rogue
      • Feral Cat Druid

      We had an average item level of 348 (I had 349).

      Preparation
      Like I mentioned, Maloriak is divided into two different portions. The first portion of the fight, or the first 75% of his health he'll go through various phases which have to be handled differently. There will also be adds. So the first portion of the fight is about dealing with fight mechanics. When he reaches 25% he'll go into a soft enrage, which isn't too difficult. Actually it's easier than the first part of the fight because there is way less things to think about. The trick is to down him before his real enrage which comes after 6 minutes. If you have enough damage this shouldn't be any problem and this fight will be cakewalk. We noticed that we had just about exactly the amount of damage needed and that made the last 25% a little trickier. Try to get about 100k total raid dps and this shouldn't be a problem.



      100%-25%
      During the first 75% of the fight, Maloriak will use different abilities. He'll either use a blue vial, a red vial or a green vial, and depending on which he'll use you'll have to react differently. He'll always start with either red or blue, then use the other of the two (i.e, if he starts with blue, red will be next and vice versa) and green vial will always be third. There will also be adds that have to be dealt with in a special way. Rinse and repeat until he gets to 25%.

      Red Vial - During this phase he will do a flame breath on the tank, which does 750.000 damage split among the targets. This means everyone except the offtank tanking adds must stack up on the tank during this phase, or the tank will be one shot. The aoe damage isn't too horrible if everyone is stacked up, so keep some healers to focus on tanks at all times. Especially the add tank can drop low when you least expect it.

      Blue Vial - During this phase he will randomly ice block one person, dealing 50k damage, and the block will jump to any other target within 10 yards, also dealing 50k damage, so have everyone spread out enough to avoid this. The target in the ice block must be freed. The ice block only has 5k hp, so this is easily done by just about anyone, but when the ice block breaks whoever is in it, and any target within 10 yards will take an additional 50k damage. Breaking the target free asap isn't advisable, you must make sure he'll survive the extra 50k damage first so communication is imperative. Deal with this as you would a mix of the blocks on Sindragosa and Kel'Thuzad. You could have a healer focus on the ice blocked targets (as one usually had on Kel'Thuzad). He will also put a dot debuff on a random player, which will deal a low amount of damage to the target and anyone else within 8 yards.

      Green Vial - Maloriak will throw a debuff on the entire raid, and all adds, that make them take 100% more damage. This is the phase in which you will nuke down the adds, so have the offtank(s) gather them up for everyone to aoe. Maloriak will also buff himself with a spell called Remedy, which must be dispelled/spell stealed asap as it heals him for a million hp each second, this could make or break a try.

      Adds - Maloriak will spawn 3-5 sets of 3 adds each phase. We had different amounts for some reason, so this is a factor that could make the fight easier or more difficult. There are 18 adds at the beginning and when Maloriak reaches 25% he will release all the remaining adds. You want to get rid of all the adds before 25%, which means you have to release 9 before each green vial (this is what you have time to do before the enrage timer). Our tank couldn't take the damage from 9 adds, so we had our Feral Cat Druid tank up the last 3. Whether you use one or two offtanks is really up to you and what your raid could handle. We chose to use two, or maybe rather one and a half.

      Let Maloriak spawn 9 adds between the red and blue phase and make sure to interrupt the subsequent casts. Have the offtank(s) kite them around (making sure not to be ice blocked with someone during the blue phase) and kill them off during the green phase. Do this again for the next red and blue phase.

      Each add has a buff that makes other adds in the vicinity hit 20% harder and take 20% less damage, so the more they get the harder they hit. This also means you never should let the adds get close to Maloriak who also can be affected by this buff.

      Arcane Storm - Throughout the fight, until he reaches 25%, Maloriak will use Arcane Storm, a really nasty aoe that needs to be interrupted asap.

      25%-0%
      Once Maloriak reaches 25% he will go into soft enrage, releasing all the remaining adds (which all should be dead) and two additional bigger and meaner adds. The bigger, meaner adds will fixate on someone, but they could be tanked as usual. It is recommended that you have the offtank do this because they hit hard and will hamper the raid if the roam free. Same deal with these adds, tank them away from Maloriak or else they will make him hit 20% harder and take 20% less damage. Maloriak has some new skills during this phase;

      Magma Jets - A sort of flame wake targetted at a random player that deals damage and leaves a dot. Move away from it. You will notice him doing hit by him raising his hands. Even the tank must move away from it.

      Absolute Zero - An ice sphere that deals a little damage and does a knock back. I honestly didn't notice this once during the fight, but keep an eye out for it nonetheless.

      Acid Nova - Aoe damage that needs to be healed through.

      Each of these skills aren't difficult, it's just if one person happens to get them all at once that you'll have a problem.



      Priest Specific
      The trickiest part of this fight was keeping the various tanks alive. The addtank(s) could really take alot of damage and you had to be on your toes at all times. Boss tank too could take some heavy blows occasionally. This made me really love Holy Word: Serenity, which also worked wonders on the ice blocked targets. None of the other skills were very difficult to handle. The aoe damage on Magmaw is alot more difficult than the one on this boss so if you could down him you can handle this. Having one good aoe healer focus on raid during the red phase and the other two focus on the tanks is a good idea, depending on your healing setup.
      As you can see from the recount, Heal was on top for the first time since I started raiding. This is because good single target healing is the key in this fight. Only in the final portion of the fight will you have to use both alot of aoe healing and single target healing, so make sure your healers know what to heal. I switched between using Chakra: sanctuary for red phase and Chakra: Serenity for the blue and green phase. Mana depended alot on how people handled stuff like the Arcane Storm. On some tries I had issues with mana, on our kill try I was at full mana when we got to 25% (but oom when he died). For some reason the resto druid kicked our asses in healing done. Shamans seem to have issues with healing overall at the moment (although our resto shaman was awesome), their throughput is generally lower than other healers right now. I think the reason is that when a fight is focused around single target healing, druids come out stronger. Holy priests still seem to excel in aoe healing.

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      [CMR] - Chimaeron 25 Man

      This will be the first tactic I write from downing a boss on 25 man (although I posted a 25 man tactic yesterday, that post was initally written as a 10 man tactic and I added the 25 man parts afterwards). There is no special reason for this, only perhaps that our 10 man groups have been progressing faster than our 25 man group. Note that there is no difference to the tactics whether you are 10 or 25, beside the obvious - you are more people and Chimaeron has more hp to counter that. Some skills deal more damage too since there will be more healers to deal with it. But the tactics are exactly the same.
      Chimaeron is one of those fights that require minute preparation and execution to be able to pull it off. It's probably as far from a fight where you can "wing it" half the fight, as possible. Although we have seen this pattern for many Cata raid bosses, I couldn't say it is more true than when fighting Chimaeron. If you don't know everything about his abilities, you will wipe and you will wipe fast. As most other bosses, Chimaeron has two different phases of which the first one is a "handle the shit"-phase and the last one is a "nuke him down" phase.

      Preparation
      When you start the fight you will get a buff called Finkle's Mixture through the Bile-O-Tron. As long as this buff is active, no skill or attack done to you while you are above 10k health will be able to be a killing blow. The first phase revolves around this fact and all healing will have to be done with this in mind. This fight is a healer fight. Whether you have good or bad healers will make all the difference here, and they will all have to pull their weight for you to be able to pull this off. We used 7 healers and assigned one healer to each group and the remaining two to the tanks. Sticking to your assignment has never been more important, because you will never know when you'll need that gcd to save someone. As a healer you will just have to trust your fellow healers in that they are doing their job, dpsers should of course help out whenever they can. In any case, make sure you have covered who is healing who in greatest detail and make sure people stick to it. Everyone will have to spread out 6 yards apart and you should have the position of everyone in the room set before starting the fight. Everyone will have to remember where their position is and make sure to get there after the aoe.

      Phase 1
      - 100-20%
      Keep complete focus on your healing and make damn sure not to overheal, and this phase won't be so horrible. Because of the Bile-O-Tron, you don't have to keep anyone at more than 10k health as long as it is active, with the only exception being the off tank. When Chimaeron gets to 20%, he will enter phase 2.

      Caustic Slime - The reason you should stand 6 yards apart is because of Caustic Slime. It is thrown at 4 random players for 280.000 damage (10 man) and approximately 400.000 damage on 25 man (don't have exact numbers). Because of Finkle's Mixture this won't kill you, but bring the affected players to 1 health. These players need to be healed above 10k hp asap, so that they will survive another throw of the Caustic Slime (if they are unlucky enough to get it twice in a row) and most importantly, to survive the Massacre (explained below).
      Massacre - All players take maximum damage. This means the entire raid will be at 1 hp, and need to be healed above 10k asap to survive the next Caustic Slime.
      Feud - Chimaeron will stop his melee attacks for 15 (?) seconds, giving you time to heal everyone up to max health to deal with the massacre when the Bile-O-Tron is inactive.
      Double Attack - A really annoying buff on Chimaeron which will have him strike twice on his next melee attack. The offtank needs to taunt asap and be at full health to be able to take this blow.
      Break - A debuff placed on the current tank that will increase the damage taken by 25% and healing taken by 15% per stack.

      How to handle it;
      1. Have everyone spread out 6 yards apart. 
      2. The tanks will be taking the most damage in this phase, except during the aoe. Make sure everyone knows what to heal and that everyone has an assigned healer. 
      3. Stack Break on Tank A, as soon as Chimaeron casts Double Attack, have tank B taunt to take the blows. Tank A will taunt back asap (but after the blows of course) to make sure that Tank B doesn't get any Break debuffs, so that he will always be able to take the Double Attack when needed. For this reason Tank B has to be topped off at all times. 
      4. Deal with anyone who is affected by Caustic Slime by healing them above 10k. Healing them anything above this is a waste of mana! 
      5. As soon as Chimaeron casts Feud, have the entire raid stack up on a designated target and start spamming (yes spamming) your aoe heals to top the entire raid off. Use any aoe heals necessary, but don't waste mana of course. Chimaeron will still be casting Caustic Slime, and you have to be stacked to spread the damage to be able to survive it (remember it does several hundred thousand damage per slime, spread amongst the targets). 
      6. As soon as the Feud is over, spread out again. Make sure everyone are keeping their range to eachother. 
      7. Rinse and repeat until 20%.

      Phase 2 - 20-0%
      Healers really get to relax here when compared to the first phase. When Chimaeron gets to 20% he will cast Mortality, which will reduce all healing done by 99%, meaning it will be completely useless to throw any heals whatsoever. Therefore, all healers should instead start dpsing in any way they can. He will also take 10% more damage, so this is a burn phase if ever. The Bile-O-Tron will be active so everyone in the raid can take two blows from Chimaeron before they die. He will also do his Double Attack, which will one shot the target. You basically have two melee strikes times the amount of people in the raid and any time you can gather from kiting him on you to burn him down before you wipe. People will die during this phase, but all cooldowns should be used and anyone who becomes the target of Chimaeron during this phase should try to kite him as much as possible, buying time for the rest of the raid to burn him down.


      Priest specifics
      This fight was iffy because I felt like I wanted to be disc to handle the Caustic Slime and the burn phase, and holy to handle the horrible aoe damage during Feud. This is one of very few fights in Cata so far where I did go very oom towards the last phase, because the aoe healing is pretty intense. It is imperative that you keep track of the hp of your assigned targets and don't heal a drop above the amount necessary, 10k, to save as much mana as possible. Having an UI that will help you with this is recommended. Remember that any heal above this amount is both wasted mana and a wasted gcd, since it won't do any difference whatsoever if the target is at 10001 hp or 90000 hp. I liked this fight actually, it gave a fresh take on healing, really putting emphasis on the Cata way to deal with things. Maybe a good way to get your raid healers to learn how to conserve casts and mana? Chimaeron isn't a fight with alot of movement, unless you happen to be positioned far away from the stack target during Feud. Therefore I recommend Inner Fire. Try to switch to Chakra: Sanctuary before the Feud, to get as much aoe healing throughput as possible. I think Disc could handle this fight well, as long as there is someone else to pick up the aoe-healing somewhat. You could use the bubble during one or two Caustic Slimes when the Feud is up, but it won't compensate the Lightwell, CoH and Sanctuary. If you got a choice between the two I recommend Holy (when writing this, before the disc buff 4.0.6 patch). Alas, aoe healing is what cata raids are about, and aoe healing is what holy priests do best.

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      [NFR] - Nefarian 10 Man
      Nefarian proved to be quite the challenge, and that's good right? He's supposed to be this really evil dragon and if he'd be too easy that'd be no fun. He's also called back Onyxia, that poor girl never seems to have gotten enough. Eventhough this fight was quite tricky, and we had many, many wipes due to one persons mistake, the tactics seems alot more overwhelming in theory than they are in practice. When you read about what you have to do you think "omg, this is just too much to think about", at least I did. But as often is the case, once you are there doing it, it's really not that difficult. The problem with Nefarian instead is that the different fight mechanics are crucial and don't allow for much margin. Overall a really fun fight!

      We had bashed our heads against him in our 25 man for some hour, then again in a 10 man for a whole raid night, then we decided to give him another go after a 25 man raid with our 10 man group before the reset. Our 25 man raid ended 23.30, and we didn't kill Nefarian until 2 in the morning. On a wednesday! Can't believe our whole 10 man group are people who don't have to get up to work. Well actually some of them did have to *ahem*. But we finally downed him, and it felt really rewarding. We had wiped some 40 times alltogether over the week and our final try was flawless (unlike all the preceding ones).


      Our raid comp was as such;
      • Blood Dk
      • Prot Warrior
      • Disc Priest (me)
      • Resto Druid
      • Resto Shaman
      • Feral Cat Druid
      • Balance Druid
      • Unholy Dk
      • Survival Hunter
      • Assassination Rogue

      Preparation
      This fight is about assignments, assignments and more assignments. For many periods in the fight will people be spread out, and you will rarely be in range of everyone. Therefore it is important that everyone know exactly where to be and what to do in order to get this right. It wasn't until we managed with that that we finally downed this, and we had several areas in which we had more trouble than others, I will try to highlight them in this guide for you to think about. Another really important part of this fight was positioning.
      In some tactics they suggest taking 3 electrocutes in phase 1 or one electrocute in phase 2, we noticed we had a lot easier time dealing with the extra electrocutes in phase 3 instead. What you choose to do depends alot on your raid setup. If you have a good add kiter in phase 3, it's not much of a problem to take electrocutes in that phase. If you have good healers, you'll probably be able to take an electrocute in phase 2. Druids are great in this fight for reasons I will discuss in the healing section at the bottom of this post.

      Phase 1
      In this phase you will fight Onyxia (who dies really easy), Nefarian and some Skeletonadds.

      Assignments
      Tanks: 1 tank on Onyxia, 1 tank on Nefarian, 1 tank on skeletonadds (we had the Feral Cat Druid tank them as bear, it is ideal if you can have someone offtank them in this manner).
      Healers: 1 healer on Onyxia tank, preferrably one with alot of hots (ie druid), 1 healer on Nefarian tank, 1 healer on skeletontank/raid
      Dps: Enough dps on Onyxia to kill her before Nefarian reaches 70% (if you don't she will wipe the raid), in our case the hunter sufficed with the balance druid going in and helping towards the last percent.


      Positioning
      Onyxia Tank - Needs to tank Onyxia facing away from the raid. Onyxia has two abilities (see further below) of which one should be avoided at all costs (Electric Discharge) and one won't be (Tail Swipe). If your tank can handle it, have him turn Onyxia, alternating having her tail facing the raid (to avoid Electric Discharge) and her side facing the raid (to avoid Tail Swipe). This is tricky to do however since Tail Swipe doesn't have a special timer.
      Nefarian tank - Should stand behind Onyxia, along the opposite edge of the circle, far enough away to not be hit by the Tail Swipe.
      Skeletontank - Will gather all the adds, that spawn all across the room and run to the back leg of Nefarian. Do not stand in front of Nefarian! His breath will awaken the adds, making them hit harder.
      Onyxia Tank Healer - Will stand in the middle behind Onyxia.
      Nefarian Tank Healer - Will stand by Nefarian.
      Addtank/Raid Healer - Will stand by Nefarian.
      Onyxia Dps - Will stand in the middle behind Onyxia.
      Nefarian Dps - Will stand by Nefarian.

      To watch out for;
      • Every 10% of his hp, Nefarian will do an Electrocute which does 100k nature damage to everyone in the raid. It is important to have everyone topped off before this, so dps and healers need to coordinate this between themselves, so that dps don't push Nefarian below a 10% mark when healers aren't ready for it. Everyone should try to use cooldowns to mitigate the damage as much as possible.
      • Electric Discharge come from Onyxias sides, and therefore the tank should try to have Onyxia facing toward the edges of the circle, with the tail pointing towards the middle.
      • Tail Swipe - Onyxia has a tail swipe, and anyone standing behind her will take it. It doesn't deal much damage at all however, and this isn't much of a problem as long as you don't get it exactly before Nefarians Electrocute. By having a healer with hots on the tank, the tail swipe is alot easier to deal with.

      Amount of Electrocutes in phase 1 - 2.

      Phase 2
      In this phase the room will fill with lava which means you have to get up on one of the three pillars surrounding the room. On each pillar there will be an add that does Blast Nova, this needs to be interrupted. You need to spread the raid across the pillars in a way that allows you to deal with the Blast Novas. The adds do not need to be tanked.

      Assignments & Positioning
      • At least one interrupter on each platform.
      • Druids with tranquility are good to separate as well, although we tried to save our tranquilities for the last phase instead.
      • One healer per platform.
      • Enough dps on each platform to kill the add before the healers oom.
      • There will most likely be 3-3-4 people on the platforms, try to position the 4 where you have your best healer (ie the healer who can deal with that healing situation the best, in our case the hotting druid).

      To watch out for;
      • This phase is easy in theory and in my opinion the most difficult in practice, at least for the healers. You have to make absolutely sure to interrupt all the Blast Novas. Getting even one off could, and probably will, wipe the raid.
      • Getting up on the pillars is no easy thing the first couple of times. Be prepared on alot of wiping due to people failing on this. The easiest way to get up on the pillar is to stand some yard away from it (do not run towards it), wait for the lava to fill up, and pressing forward as soon as it has.
      • Make sure people are ready for the first interrupt, that was usually the trickiest to get right. Once interrupted the Blast Nova has 12 second cooldown before being cast again. It is raid wide damage.
      • During phase 2, Nefarian will use Shadowflame Barrage on 3 (?) random raid members, which deals some 25k shadowfire damage. This is fairly easy to handle, as long as the same person doesn't get too many of them in a row (which can happen!).
      • People should try to use any damage mitigating cooldowns as possible during this phase, especially the first couple of seconds before the healer has everything under control.

      Amount of Electrocutes in phase 2 - 0. (1 if your healers think they can handle it, otherwise make sure dpsers don't dps Nefarian at all).

      Phase 3

      You will be fighting Nefarian and the skeletonadds. We tried several tactics, but on our first try with Nefarian in the middle instead of on the edge of the circle, did we down him, so that seems like a good tactic.

      Assignments
      Tank: 1 Tank Nefarian, 1 tank skeletonadds
      Healers: 2 healers on Nefariantank and raid. 1 healer on Skeletontank.
      Dps: All on Nefarian.

      Positioning
      Nefariantank will be standing in the middle with Nefarian, making sure that Nefarian is never facing the Skeletonadds, for the same reasons as in phase 1.
      Skeletonadd tank will be kiting the skeletonadds around the room in a circular motion.
      Nefariantank/raidhealers will be standing in the middle, at the side of Nefarian and with melee.
      Skeletonadd tankhealer will be running around the room with that tank.
      All dps will be standing in the middle, at the side of Nefarian.

      To watch out for;
      • If you follow our tactic and don't push an Electrocute in phase 2, there will be one coming fairly soon after Nefarian lands in phase 3 instead.
      • This phase is "easy" in that you only have to make sure the tank lives and the raid lives, by spamming heals. Every 10% there will be Electrocutes, so manage all the cooldowns the raid has to make sure no one dies.
      • The trickiest part in this phase without a doubt is the kiting of the adds. Until the addtank as got the hang of this you will probably wipe a whole lot of times. Remember that you don't actually kite the adds to avoid their damage, that is impossible since they have 300% runspeed. You kite them to make sure they don't get into Nefarians Shadowblaze which he aims at the Skeletons. The way our addtank did it was that he stood still with the adds until he saw that Nefarian was casting Shadowblaze, at which point he moved them, in a circular path around the edges of the room.
      • The Shadowblaze will cover a fair amount of the room towards the last percent. It deals alot of damage so make sure not to stand in it!
      Amount of Electrocutes in phase 3 - 6

      Healing Specifics
      Many healers, me included, will feel like Nefarian is a really tough nugget to heal. Why is this really, setting aside the massive amounts of damage that people take all the time? Everything in Cataclysm has taught us the value of triage healing, and most boss fights also require good triage healing to do a good healing job. Only rarely are we told to nuke heal and even more rarely to keep people topped off (except the tanks of course) continously. Chimaeron during Feud is a rare example, and that is only during a very small portion of the fight as a whole. What makes Nefarian so tricky however is that healers require to keep the entire raid, not just the tanks, topped off at all times, to make sure everyone will survive the Electrocute which deals some 100k damage. Even small amounts of hp loss could lead to a death, especially if you as a clothie only have some 120k hp. It doesn't leave much hp as a margin. For most healers this becomes a problem because our heals aren't designed to work this way and handle this kind of damage. Our cheap heals are slow and small, and don't work well to keep people constantly topped off. Instead we often have to resort to our fast or big heals, which will make us oom fairly fast. This is especially true during phase 2. Druids however, with their hotting system, do very well on this fight. Druids often have a lot of overhealing, because their healing work in the way that they keep people (usually tanks) topped off through rolling LB, and also keeping rejuvenation and WG up (which works on the few amounts of targets that each healer has in this fight). Shamans and priests (I don't know about paladins) that work mostly through direct healing, will have more trouble in this fight for sure.

      Disc priest healing 10 Man (pre-4.0.6)
      Disc priest healing 25 Man (post-4.0.6)

      Priest Specifics

      I played disc for this fight, because believe it or not I actually thought it worked alot better. The reason is simple, Nefarian is alot more about point healing than aoe healing (although in the last phase there is alot of aoe healing) and the Barrier just works magic to mitigate damage from the incoming Electrocutes. This is how I did my healing on our kill;
      I was assigned to the Nefarian tank so I made sure to stay close to him at all times. I also helped out on raid and addtank when damage seemed ok on the Nefariantank. I did not have range to the Onyxiatank, but had to trust that the assigned healer would make it alone (which he did just great). I kept my tank shielded, rolled Heals, PoM and Penance on him and Greater Heals when he went down low. I also helped with Prayer of Healings on the Electrocutes. I didn't use Barrier to mitigate the first two Electrocutes in phase 1, instead I saved it to make sure no one died on my platform in phase 2. People will be going low on hp from being in the lava (no matter how fast they are at getting up) and the Shadowflame Barrage will start coming at once. As soon as I had jumped up I popped the barrier to give me time to top everyone off. I kept everyone shielded, rolled Heals, Penance and PoM on us to keep us up. This is also a great place to use a Lightwell when being holy. If you cast Lightwell right away in phase 1, the cooldown should have come off once you get into phase 2 (which depends on your dps). As soon as phase 2 ends, have everyone gather up in the middle to be ready for the incoming Electrocute. Phase 3 is mostly about rolling Prayer of Healings, Barriers to mitigate Electrocutes, PoM and Pain Suppression on the tank to mitigate Electrocutes.

      Good luck!

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      [COW] - Conclave of Wind 10 Man
      We managed to down Conclave of Wind in Throne of the Four Winds the other day and I thought I'd help other people who are interested in doing this fight by talking about the tactic that worked for us. As with many other fights, Conclave of Wind is alot more about skills than gear and because of this it is a good starter boss for people looking to gear up for the tougher encounters.

      I really liked Conclave of Wind actually. It is tricky and requires good timing from most people involved, without being too repetative like I felt Magmaw became pretty fast.

      Our raid comp was;

      • Blood Dk
      • Feral Bear Druid
      • Holy Priest (me)
      • Resto Druid * 2
      • Arcane Mage
      • Fire Mage
      • Fury Warrior
      • Balance Druid
      • Subtley Rogue
      Our average item level was about ~347, I had 344.

      Preparation
      You'll be fighting three bosses at once, each one on their platform. This fight is alot like Four Horsemen in Naxxramas in that the raid will have to split up to handle the bosses, and no boss will ever have to be left alone or there will be hurt. One big difference to the Four Horsemen fight is that the bosses differ significantly from eachother in matter of skills, and must be handled very differently. Some tactics we saw and read recommended using a DK tank for the Frost Boss, Nezir, since a Dk tank would be able to remove the frost debuff with Anti-Magic Shell. Either our dk tank sucked (which he doesn't, he's awesome) or they've fixed it since, because that didn't work anylonger. This means you will have to switch tanks between platforms, and that does make the fight tricker. It's still not a very tricky fight, and I especially like it because it's equally challenging for all involved, be it healer, dps or tank. Everyone has to think about alot for it to work, without it turning into an RNG fight like Lich King. Passive raid buffs won't reach across the ramps, which makes stacking melee and casters into the same groups preferrable. Since the groups are rather small on this fight however, I don't think it will make a huge difference. Just remember that bringing a certain class for their pasive  raid buff is a little wasted on this fight.

      You get to the boss by jumping onto the ramps. The ramps work by increasing your movement speed, so if you're a class that can already increase your movement speed (mage blink, cat/rogue sprint, rocket boots) you might fly off so fast that you miss the platform. Out of fight this doesn't matter since you'll me transported back to the first platform again, alive. In combat this could be troublesome since it wastes alot of time.

      Each boss has an energy bar that when loaded to 90 (why 90 and not 100?) will have them do an ultimate attack that has be dealt with in separate ways. I will discuss this as a final. The bosses don't share hp, but have to die within 1 minute or they will kill you. The fight also has a 8 minute enrage timer, and each energy build up takes about 1,5 minute.

      The bosses
      Anshal - Life Boss (West when entering) - Tank, Healer, 3 dps
      Anshal has two abilities which need to be handled properly;
      • Soothing Winds - Looks pretty much like the druid skill Efflorescence, only bigger and with some added textures. It heals Anshal and his adds for alot, so you don't want to have him or they to ever stand in it if you can help it. Have the tank kite Anshal around the platform edge. You don't want the circle to get into the middle, since that will make things difficult when Anshal goes into his Ultimatum (more explanation below).
      • Nurture (aka Adds) - When Anshal is about 30 energy he will start summoning adds. I don't know if the summon is energy dependant or time dependant, but it was always around this time we got the adds. You can clearly see where the adds will spawn, as they first pop up as little flowers. All dps on the platform should go for them asap, and nuke them down with single target dps. You don't want to aoe them down since that usually goes too slow, giving the adds too much of a chance to heal back up (which they do when crossing a green circle). They do an aoe damage, which is manageable by a healer. Each dps could tank one add, but the tank should try to aggro as many of the as possible. Just note that having one or two slip won't be the end of the world. In the case of a wipe these adds don't always despawn as they should and can be found aggroable on the platform. They can safely be killed without engaging the boss.

      Nezir - Frost Boss (North, behind Al'Akir, when entering) - Tank, Healer
      Nezir too has two abilities which need to be handled;
      • Permafrost - Cone attack. Have the tank face the boss away from other players on the platform (which in turn should avoid getting in front of Nezir). This attack won't kill non-tanks, but it hurts.
      • Ice Patch - Nezir will place an Ice Patch underneath a random player of the group. Try to avoid getting it exactly where the jump ramps are. It will slow anyone in it and deal a fair amount of damage, so get out of it asap.
      Nezir also stacks a debuff that increases frost damage taken. It will become unhealable on the tank at 15+ and should be dealt with between each ultimate (more info on how below).

      Rohash - Wind Boss (East when entering) - Healer, 2 dps
      Rohash has hurricanes going around the platform throughout the fight, these need to be avoided of course. Rohash is the easiest boss, you don't need a tank here and you can safely put your least geared healer to do the job, as long as they're fairly good at moving and healing at the same time. You'll want to avoid having melee dps on Rohash, since meleeing him and avoiding the hurricanes is alot trickier than being ranged.
      • Wind Blast - Every now and then Rohash will do an attack similar to Mimirons "Spinning Up". He'll face a random direction and start doing a Wind Blast, going slowly clock wise around the platform. It doesn't deal much damage, but it will knock you off the platform and should be avoided.

      Ultimates
      Each boss has a special attack that they do when reaching 90 energy, and that has to be dealt with in a special way. All bosses transport to the middle of their platform and channel their Ultimate. Because of this you don't want a green circle ever in the middle of the platform where Anshal is, since it will heal him while he channels his ultimate.

      Anshal - Zephyr - Heals all targets on the platform to full health and increases their damage by alot. You must have all adds dead before this happens. This is a great opportunity for the healer on this platform to regen some mana for a short while, since Zephyr deals no damage. Just afterwards, Anshals damage will be greatly increased however, so both the tank and the healer should be ready with cooldowns. Kiting Anshal is tricky, and it worked better for us to just bite it through.

      Nezir - Sleet Storm - Deals about 30.000 damage to all targets on the platform each second, this damage is divided among all targets. This is the most difficult Ultimate to handle. When the bosses are at 75-80 energy have all dps jump over to Nezirs platform. This is also the best time to do a tank and healer switch, which is the only way to reset the stacks you get from him that increase frost damage taken, stacking. The tank and healer from Anshal and Nezir will switch at the same time as the dps are jumping over to the frost platform. Timing this is crucial, since anyone left behind on the platform for too long will risk being killed by the rampaging boss. You also don't want to leave a platform empty of players since the bosses then silence everyone which will lead to a wipe pretty fast. The bosses don't hit so hard that a non-tank is one shot. I could survive two strikes as a clothie (the third killing me). Once everyone has landed on Nezirs platform, have them stack up. We did this in melee range so that we could get some dps on him while he channeled. Ice Patches will still be thrown out and must be cleared asap. There will be heavy aoe damage, so have anyone who can help out with some aoe healing. Once Nezirs Ultimate is over, all the dps will return to their platforms but the tank and healer will wait until the next switch.

      Rohash - Hurricane - Is pretty much what it says. A hurricane launching people in the air, but not knocking them off the platform. This doesn't deal much damage (~ 40.000 over 15 seconds) and can easily be healed through.

      This tactic will allow you to get the Wind Boss and the Frost Boss fairly low. Once they're at below 10% (depending on how much your dps can burst), you'll want to nuke down Life Boss, then Frost Boss and finally Wind Boss. Anshal goes down low too, but will self heal during each Ultimate, which means he has to be re-nuked, although not entirely from scratch. The bosses don't have much hp, so handling the various mechanics is alot more important than nuking each boss down. The healer that starts at the Frost Boss should be your best geared healer, since that is the one that will have to handle the most Slate Storms, and therefore oom fairly easy.

      Priest Specifics
      Unfortunately my recount decided to die on this fight, so I didn't manage to get any data on my healing. I was one of the healers jumping between Frost and Life and overall my healing depended much on which platform I was on. Life required more single target healing (although the dpsers took damage from the adds occasionally), so I chose Chakra: Serenity here, and Inner Fire. Frost mainly needed single target healing as well, except during the aoe damage of course. Timing a Chakra: Sanctuary for the incoming aoe damage did help alot. Ideally I should have switched to Inner Will when on the frost platform, since that would've allowed me to get out of Ice Patches faster. Unfortunately I wasn't skilled enough to think about this during the fight ^^. Fortunately that didn't make a big difference. I'd recommend using the Lightwell on the frost platform during the aoe damage. Don't place it too close to the boss since his footplate is alot bigger than he is and that obscures targetting the Lightwell. Placing it on the Life platform isn't a bad idea either since it allows dpsers to heal themselves when they had aggro from adds. People were pretty spread out on that platform, and having range to everyone was difficult at times. Being ready for the various amounts of incoming damage was the key here, and we wiped a couple of times because I was caught off guard. When healing Life/Frost, remember Anshals increased damage after the ultimate and don't underestimate the amount of damage that your raid will take from Sleet Storm. Good luck!