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A reader writes in with the following:
I’m a raiding Resto Druid. And I do quite well. I’m one of the guild’s strongest healers (11/0/50). But I battle to heal a heroic. *sniff* Some heroics are fairly okay, but something like Magister’s Terrace gives me leaf curl. What am I doing wrong? I have more than 2K +Healing when buffed (1.9K unbuffed), and mana isn’t a problem. My average ping is 400ms, a result of where I live and where the server is situated.
I’ve reached a stage where I actually don’t want to heal heroics for my guildies … but I’m too scared I’m going to be the cause of a wipefest.
It feels like I just can’t cope with splash damage, and I’m doomed to always have a back-up healer in my groups because I can’t cut it on my own. Rolling Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, NS + HT, SM — you name it, I’ve tried it and I’m using it as best I can. It feels like we survive by pure luck … not because I can heal.
*serious case of Resto Blues*
Any suggestions would be welcome.
Dealing with splash damage can certainly be tricky for a Restoration Druid, though not unfeasible. You’ve mentioned some of our most well known techniques (NS + HT, Swiftmend) above, but there are a few other things I would recommend that you try, particularly with respect to Heroic Magister’s Terrace.
Selin Fireheart
There are two encounters where party-wide damage is distributed at regular intervals. The first such fight is Selin Fireheart who performs an ability called Fel Explosion after each crystal is drained. You will know it’s coming because he shouts, “Yes! I am a god!” but just before he starts to drain a crystal, he’ll yell, “My hunger knows no bounds!” That should be your cue to start throwing a Lifebloom on each of your party members. These Lifeblooms should end up blooming just after he’s started damaging your group, and you should have no trouble putting up a LB on 3 of your groupmates before refreshing the LB stack on your main tank, leaving you to top off just one other group member. This type of preemptive healing via cheap and fast-casting Lifebloom is a great way to deal with damage you know is impending.
Vexallus
Vexallus can be a particularly tricky fight, depending on your group’s composition. The strategy relies upon having one or more groupmates or their pets available to soak up the charges of Energy Feedback debuff from the Pure Energy adds that spawn throughout the fight. Because this debuff increases the amount of damage taken (and due to Vexallus’ periodic AOE), it’s important to get rid of these charges periodically. There are several methods of doing this:
- Have a Hunter pet or Voidwalker soak 2 rounds of the debuffs before allowing it to die
- Have a Paladin kill the adds and then use Divine Shield
- Have a Mage soak the debuffs and Iceblock and Cold Snap/Iceblock (when available)
- Have a Rogue soak the debuffs and use Cloak of Shadows
Either way, you’ll want to coordinate with your group to decide who will take which round of charges. You should be able to heal most players through 2 rounds of debuffs (2 mobs per round = 4 total debuffs) before he or she needs to use the appropriate special ability to remove them, though some are certainly more squishy than others. One additional ability at your disposal as a Restoration Druid is Rebirth. You can opt to use one of your DPSers to kill the Pure Energy and soak the debuffs, allowing her to die after two rounds, then cast Rebirth on her so that she can do so again. This will often buy you enough time to kill Vexallus, at which point the debuffs are removed automatically.
Priestess Delrissa
This is a tricky fight and one for which you definitely don’t want to be using Tree of Life. It’s also a great opportunity to show off your amazing crowd control skills with 1-2 mobs that you can effectively crowd control at a time. If you happen to get Garaxxas the Hunter and his ravager pet Sliver, you can keep the pet locked down with Hibernate until your party is ready to deal with her.
Perhaps most valuably, you can cycle Cyclone between all of the other adds with the exception of Priestess Delrissa herself. Your groupmates will invariably be switching targets throughout the fight so just pick who you’re opting to take out of the fight for 9 seconds and let them know not to worry with them. I find Cyclone to be especially helpful on Yazaai the Mage as it interrupts long-casting spells like Blizzard (don’t forget you can shapeshift out of his Frost Nova and Polymorph) and for stopping the massive damage from the Rogue or one of the two Warriors who have elected to pick on a clothie groupmate. Just don’t forget that Cyclone only has a 20-yard range.
Also, be sure that your tank pulls ALL of the groups that come before the Gazebo area, including the two small groups tucked into the enclaves on either side. One or more unlucky Fear uses and you’ll have 3-5 more mobs to deal with.
Kael’thas Sunstrider
There are several things you have to watch out for during the Kael fight. Don’t stand on top of the flaming spheres that indicate an incoming Flamestrike, don’t stand within melee range of the Phoenix, and keep strong healing focused on your tank during the ground phases. During Gravity Lapse (the phase where everyone is thrown upward and can “swim” through the air), you’ll notice beams that connect each party member to Kael’Thas, draining their life away. For these phases, I find it most helpful to “swim” back and forth behind his stage area (affording a significant amount of coverage from the orbs) and throwing a Lifebloom on whoever is in range before moving back across. Make sure that your groupmates know that they must be in range of one end of the stage or the other and that they shouldn’t travel toward the door if it can be avoided.
General Tips for Magister’s Terrace
In addition to the fight specific tips above, I’d also give the following general advice:
- You can often view Tranquility as a fight “reset.” If group healing ever gets out of your control, pop Barkskin and use Tranquility to restore your whole group to full health again. And then don’t let it happen again for another ten minutes.
- To maximize the benefit you’re getting from abilities that have cooldowns (Nature’s Swiftness, Swiftmend, Tranquility), I recommend using the addon Ghost Pulse. Originally recommended to me by reader Ammeli, GP flashes the icon of any ability as soon as it becomes available.
- Ethereum Smugglers can be very annoying, teleporting into the middle of your group and exploding all over everyone. Stop them from doing this by casting a Cyclone on him just after he teleports. The ability is on a cooldown, and he won’t be able to do so again immediately.
- Make sure someone in your group takes out any Warlock Imps that come with trash pulls. They’re very low health and can be dispatched with 1-2 hits by most casters but can harry you mercilessly if left to their own mischievous devices.
- Have all your ranged stand as far as possible when fighting the Sunblade Sentinel. Their Chain Lightning AOE won’t hit outside of a certain range, reducing the amount of group-wide healing you’ll have to do and letting you focus more on your tank.
- During the packs of Brightscale Wyrms that lead up to the fight with Vexallus, do not start casting HoTs on your tank too early. If you pull them away from him too soon, he’ll have trouble regaining aggro on them and you’ll die. A better option is to wait until he’s about half life and then hit him with a larger heal.
- Whenever possible, your tank should pull any groups around a corner. Many of the mobs in Magister’s Terrace are ranged casters who will happily blast away at you or your tank unless forced to run around a corner to reach you.
I hope that this advice is helpful to you! Magister’s Terrace can be a very fun instance to run as a Resto Druid once you’ve learned enough tricks to help you deal with splash damage. Of course, even the best healer can’t make an instance successful if her groupmates aren’t supportive. Make sure you nudge your tank, CCers, or DPSers in the right direction if something they’re doing is making your job harder!
Does anyone else have advice to share from their time in Magister’s Terrace?
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I think the most important thing to remember about instances like Magister’s terrace and fights in general is that Druid healing is almost always preemptive rather than reactive. This is why we continuously roll HoTs on our tanks. Having HoTs up are the safety net to deal with damage taken. In the same way, once you have seen what’s coming in an instance (Selin Fireheart’s AoE for example) you know when to throw out HoTs early to the whole group to help deal with splash damage. This isn’t to say that you’re always going to be able to catch the damage before it happens. For example, the glaive throw that some of the mobs in Magister’s Terrace do comes without any type of warning. What I find helpful is to start by refreshing your tank’s HoTs and then using your 7 second cycle wisely to toss out lifeblooms on other members of the party. Unless they have aggro from another mob, the healing from the lifebloom tick as well as the final bloom should be enough to deal with most of the splash damage. The moral of the story is that it takes a bit of time to fall into the pattern of the damage that’s going to be given out especially in a new instance. Perhaps even more importantly is to USE YOUR 7 SECOND CYCLE AS EFFICIENTLY AS POSSIBLE! As resto druids with several instant casts HoTs, the 7 second cycle associated with rolling lifeblooms on the tank is essential. Be liberal with extra lifeblooms on members of your party to help deal with the splash damage and it’ll all work out. It’s a heroic so don’t worry a ton about mana conservation as if you were in a raid. Better to be liberal with those HoTs than to keep losing people (which we all know is a pain without an OOC rez – curse you Blizz!). Try not to let the resto blues get you down!
I healed Heroic Magister’s Terrace today with a Warrior, Mage, Hunter and Rogue. With ample CC, the instance becomes a lot easier to manage.
I’ve had a lot of problems with Magister’s Terreace in the past so I followed all of Phaelia’s suggestions above as well as a threw in a few of my own tricks.
On the 1st boss, Selin Fireheart, we skipped burning down any of the crystal and relied on healing to get through the AoE damage. I LB stacked the tank and then hit everyone in the party with Regrowth (27 seconds, 33 seconds with 2-piece T5) and then Rejuvenation (12 seocnds) near the explosion. I found that this buffer really helped through the burst damage and allowed me to Swiftmend anyone who got too low. We finished just after the 2nd AoE and no one even came close to 50%.
As Phaelia noted, one thing to be careful about is the hallway to the 2nd boss. The mana wyrms aren’t bad if you get one, but if you get more than one, you’re going to die and if you die, everyone is likely to die. So, definitely make sure that your group holds off on AoE damage until your tank has a good amount of aggro on the wyrms. This includes your healing. Watch Mages as well as they like to commit suicide during this portion. If they pull too soon … let them die. ^_^
On Vexallus, I would suggest hitting everyone with Regrowth again early in the fight. This is also the portion of the instance where you’ll probably want to hit your Barkskin and Tranquility right as Vexallus Overloads to handle the massive amounts of AoE damage.
On Priestess Delrissa, since aggro seems random, hitting everyone with Thorns seems like a good idea.
Heroic Magister’s Terrace is one of the more difficult 5-main instances. It’s not just your healing that’s going to make or break the instance. It’s also having the right crowd control and not having people pull aggro from the tank. Your job becomes a lot easier when everyone coordinates efficently and keeps the mobs off of you.
i don’t see this as being about mgt…she said all heroics can be troublesome. basically at this point in the game all heroics should be a joke to you.
the only troubles i have EVER had as a druid in a 5 man is rebirth. usually i bring a shadow priest or pally tank (sexy) along with me and it makes the runs a lot nicer because people are allowed to die more than once every 30 minutes.
other than that…with aoe heals, fast and instant heals, and the ability to heal multiple people at once through hots…druids should never have trouble with anything. i thought heroic mgt was really easy. you need to figure out if this is your issue or your groupmates. either you have no skill or your group needs work:
what sort of gear is your tank in?
how much cc do you have?
are you ccing the easy mobs and not the ones tossing out aoe fireballs? (i dunno what the trash in heroic mgt does, i had a lot of cc when i went)
does your group know how to play?
if you’re in a pug with a tank in blues and greens and your party consists of fury warriors and elemental shamans who don’t know what omen is…then you need to realize that mgt is a harder heroic that requires more cc/skill than that.
however, if you have a pally in t5 with a rogue mage and warlock…maybe start researching how to heal with a druid more (elitist jerks, talking to druids in t6, etc etc)
you also said that you do fine in raids but stink in heroics? healing in a 25 man i think can be a lot more passive than a 5 man (if you go afk the raid does fine, go afk in a 5 mans and lulz). maybe if you’re in a 25 man pretend you’re the only healer and try to be more aggressive and get more practice with other spells (regrowth is awesome)? meters don’t really mean much when you can just roll LB on 4 tanks to launch yourself to the top of the meters.
I agree with Vandie… mostly, rolling LB to top the meters is perfectly acceptable when priests get to spam CoH and shammys get chain heal on the melee
. If the other healers are any good they’ll still give you a run for your money. Especially the resto shammys… they are my enemy…
HoT up the group if you know an aoe is coming, and remember to HoT the low stam/armor members before the high ones after an aoe and I’ve never had an issue. It might also be because I have 2100 healing and 250 mp5 unbuffed : /.
Pally tanks are sexy. Good CC is also sexy, as is omen. I never run heroic MgT without a mage and a T5+ tank. Pally tanks can have T4 so long as their HPs are above 11000 unbuffed.
Pugs are fail. I usually run with guildies.
Maybe get an addon that lets you know when a party member gets aggro? I use grid for this, it’s VERY useful for us druids that heal preemptively. Xperl has one too, but I prefer grid. If I see a party member get that little red square, they’re getting a rejuv (provided the tanks HoT’s are good).
So yeah, I’ve never had an issue healing heroics, provided it was a guild run and not a PuG. Make sure that you have good group composition before blaming yourself as the healer. No sheep make healer cry.
Heroic Mgt is one of the few instances my druid gets to run (and was the first heroic he ever healed.)
The one thing I would say is its probably not your fault, its almost always group composition, if you bring 2 warriors or an under geared tank you will probably wipe a few times on the harder pulls. CC is king in Mgt. Also in MGT there are many magic buffs and debuffs that need to be removed (eg. on of the mobs has a buff that does 2000 extra damage per hit)
The easiest remedy is to befriend a shadow priest and have him mind control troublesome mobs through out the whole instance, its amazing how many amazing damaging abilities the mobs have, you can effectively cc 2 mobs this way if the shadow priests mob Tanks another mob. Also this priest can dispel and res for you.
Vexallus was always a pain. Shammys with heroism also work well on that fight. Mostly I pre stacked lifeblooms and spamed regrowths like a mad man. Another thing that i found that helped me on that fight was later on in the fight I would Barkskin/Tranquility which gave the rest of the group some good time to finish him off. Don’t feel bad if at first you wipe allot on this guy. I don’t think any other boss has given me so much trouble. I think that fight was designed to make us healers feel bad. I know i did everytime someone died.
When my guild was learning the Priestess it was just one big clusterf%#& to be honest. The worst set up is when you get the MS naga with a low CC group. Some people say resil helps on this boss but I never found it helpful. CC and getting down the Priestess are definitely key.
In general there is certainly quite allot of splash in H MGT. I find X perl with it’s aggro warning to be quite helpful. Every time someone lights up red i just toss a lifebloom on them.
Something to keep in mind is that Rebirth is a Nature spell. So you can cast Nature’s Swiftness + Rebirth during Vexallus to revive a fallen party member (probably the one soaking up adds) without diverting more than a second of your attention from healing everyone else.
I also tend to run toward the center of the party around 20% on Vexallus to pop Tranquility shortly after; it’s at about that percentage where the damage begins to overflow to a dangerous point.
For Kaelthas, if you survive to the Gravity stage and the phoenix is dead, you win. I’ve had everyone in my party die save myself and a hunter when Kael was at 37%, and we downed him. I wouldn’t doubt that a skilled resto druid could one man Kaelthas after the gravity stage begins (stack LB, avoid the energy orbs, cast Moonfire while swimming and Starfire while on the ground).
One of the most important things for me when healing a heroic is to know who has aggro. Find an addon(Pitbull Unit Frames for instance) that will change the color of group members when they get aggro. For pitbull, they light up red. If I see someone turn red, I throw up LB and Rejuv asap, even if they arent getting hurt. If the tank is fine, I will precast regrowth. Preemptive healing is so important in this instance.
This is awesome and very timely! The Sidhe Devils are running MgT tonight and guess who gets to heal! Me! ^_^
Wraaken stole the words from my mouth. A good raid frame is invaluable. Grid is my absolute favorite but Pitbull, sRaidFrames, Xperl are good also. They can show you who is being targeted and that’s all you need many times to get a preemptive heal going. Grid even shows you who is high on the threatmeter if you get the right extension to it.
If you are having trouble healing Vexallus, and you are running with a disciplined party, consider the following approach. It is a bit mana intensive, but you mentioned that mana was not an issue.
1. Take boss down to 85%, at which time the Pure Energy adds will spawn. The party should kill those adds and then wait until the debuff disappears. While waiting, you will simply need to keep up tank and the party member with the debuff.
2. When debuff disappears, take boss down to 70% and kill the Pure Energy adds again. Repeat at 55%, 40% and 25%. (The Pure Energy adds spawn each time the boss’s health drops 15%; they are not on a timer.)
3. From 25% to 20% put at least 1 lifebloom on each party member.
4. As the boss’s health dips below 20%, Vexallus will begin its AoE Overload damage to the party. Pop your +healing trinkets, Barkskin and Tranquility.
Ok. Unless they nerfed it there are candle sticks before the stairs at the second boss. If your tank tanks him at the stairs and you have your ranged dps hide behind the candle sticks and kill the adds, then none of the dps get the debuff. All you have to do is heal the aoe dmg which isn’t much without the debuff. This works on heroic on reg (unless they nerfed it) For the 3rd boss have everyone use pvp gear if they have it. The resilience and stamina is golden for that fight also pvp trinkets will help alot I can’t tell you how many times they helped me get a heal off that would otherwise resulted in death.
I’ve healed, tanked, and caster dps on my druid and this is the most challenging heroic there is and is the most fun because of that in my opinion.
I have run Heroic Magister’s Terrace quite often, as I lust after the special fluffy birdy mount off Kael. Some things that are counter-intuitive work in there. For example, on Vexallus and to a lesser extent Selin, the tank (if he’s in T5/ZA gear like ours) is the one who needs least healing. I don’t worry about keeping a perfect 3X lifebloom on him. For Vexallus, it’s more of a race to heal the dps enough. We usually have at least one mage who can iceblock out of it. On Delrissa, I play this exactly like PvP healing. I put on all my resilience gear (including trinket so I can get myself out of sheep or blind), and I run around like a nut (hmm, maybe a walnut, if walnuts could run). I make macros to target lifebloom to each of the players in my group, so I can run around with one hand and heal with the other. I play with a laptop on a couch (tiny apt–no other space) so I commit the sin of keyboard turning, but it hasn’t killed me yet. I tend to cyclone once or twice early in this fight and otherwise heal/rez the mages. The best Delrissa kill ever (from the standpoint of nutty) was me, a holy priest with no resilience, a feral druid, a mage, and a prot warrior. The priest died immediately, I rezzed her, she died again, the mage died, and I died. The prot warrior and druid were standing there TALKING until I said “we can still win! keep trying!” Well, I got a battle rez from the feral and we proceeded to polish off the last two adds, ending the fight with the three of us at full health. It’s a fun boss and I’ve never failed it yet with a group. Druids have all the advantages that we enjoy in pvp in that fight. As for Kael himself, he’s pretty easy if you have great dps and terrible otherwise. Some of my groups have killed him, and others have not. I do think, however, he trained our guild a little bit for the real Kael’thas in TK, who surprised us not at all with his gravity lapse. We just got our first kill on him last night.
However, I will say that the worst part of MrT is the trash. I often apologize for being a druid if we’re low on CC. If I get glaive thrown by those stupid mobs, I just can’t keep up and someone usually dies. I used to cause a few wipes this way, but now I’ve gotten enough practice that it’s usually just one sacrificial victim, who sadly has to walk back because I can’t rez.
If you get the rogue on the Priestess fight, don’t forget to use faerie fire, so he can’t stealth.
Also… I heard that certain mobs during that fight are programmed to go after certain classes. I for one, noticed that running once on my toy mage, the rogue ALWAYS zoomed straight after me, no matter what we did. Anyone else have anything similar happen?
I have a question on the Priestess fight: Comments so far indicate that you need to play like you do in PvP/Arena. What if the group as a whole has little or no experience in that aspect of the game? I know … sounds strange, but being from an RP server, there’s enough of us running around that have never set foot in either a battleground or an Arena.
@vandie: You’re making the assumption that the druid’s group is in T5/T6 or badge equivalent gear. What if this isn’t the case? Should the druid then still learn to play druid or is it a group setup thing.
*treehug*
Chaen
@Chaendryn: If you bring enough CC and some decent dps then the Priestess shouldn’t be a problem. My standard heroic group consists of the following: pally tank, ice mage, ele shammy, combat(?) rogue, resto druid (me). We never did any ‘real’ PvP (just some BGs for honor) and i seriously doubt that you need PvP experience for that particular fight. May I ask with what setup you’re running heroics atm?
The important thing, for you as a healer, is that you need to be aware of what is happening, and start throwing out lifeblooms and rejuv as soon as you see someone being targeted. The aggro display from grid is great for that. Remember that the cloth dps will get hit hard so act accordingly.
My group is in kara/za/badge gear (EU Server Antonidas – Ecelsor, Xyrus, Magus, Guza, Lauser), we are not running any 25-man raids atm. I was able to heal heroic mgt with around 1.5k +heal, probably lower. Right now I’m at ~1.9k and can even do some tiny resto dps on the trash fights
We don’t have any problems with heroic Mgt, a run takes around 45 mins.
Of course, it’s always a group effort. If the dps/cc/tank is slacking it simply won’t work.
@Lauser: Last MgT run was bear tank, fire mage, combat(?) rogue, affliction lock and resto druid (me). Vexallus vexed us and Delryssa was a nightmare. Mainly Kara and some badge gear. Mage was a bit crit-happy which didn’t help. Will be trying tips Phae posted above … see if that helps. I’m running x-perl and healbot, so can see who has aggro. Though on Delryssa everyone seems to light up simultaneously
*treehugs*
Chaen
@Chaendryn: I’ve heard that the strategy Candlelight described for Vexallus works pretty good. The fight takes longer but it should be a lot easier to heal if the group has 1-2 debuffs max. Never tried it myself though.
With the group you described you had: polymorph, sap, banish, fear, sleep and cyclone (I suggest only using it when everyone is at almost full health though). Try to CC the high dmg adds (rogue & warrior), burn down the healers first (Shaman/Priestess) and take down the free/CCed ones after that (with focus fire of course, slap your dps if they don’t pay attention
).
I hope you find a good strategy that works for your group, best of luck to you on your next run
Cheers,
Lauser
Thanks to everyone for all the additional tips and information. I know I’m looking forward to the technique of dealing with Vexallus described by Candlelight above.
Re: Priestess Delrissa fight and a lack of PvP experience, it’s recommended that players have such experience because the fight is both reactive and preemptive (lots of CC necessary, random targeting, etc). You can definitely learn to deal with it without having any PvP experience, you just have to forget the traditional model of “heal the tank and anyone else who is incidentally damaged.”
Even though im not a healing drood… i would like to say something… for Vexallus fight, from my point of view “im a prot tauren warrior” 16000k hp/ za geared… i tanked him and i took the debuffs from the adds… after 4 stacks i poped shield wall and we raced to burn the boss… right after the 6th debuff i poped my last stand… never died in MGT