2nd time I've done this encounter and lost (over and over). We had 1 priest with Circle of healing, 1 paladin healer and moi. It was easier when we had a shammy versus paladin. But I tried to cover my group's spirit bolt damage. It gets rough.

Just curious if any druids out there have any techniques they use for this? I was using 1 LB + rejuv to keep up with the SB damage but thinking it might make more sense to use Regrowth, even though the casting time is longer, I'm getting punished by 2 1.5 sec GCDs with my other technique. I try to start casting the Rejuv's about 5 seconds before the SB's start.

Suggestions?

The key is to get everyone as close to 10k hp as possible. During spirit bolts you just keep your HoTs running on any players taking direct dmg from mobs. Once that's done just use your remaining GCDs to throw a LB on each player in both groups. One CoH from the priest on each group and you're ready for the next Spirit Bolt.

We had issues with Hex Lord's Spirit Bolts until we made sure everyone was over 9500hp.

On a side note: Magic Resistance potions give 50 Shadow Resist and are very cheap to make. Use them. I do every fight. They help.

Make sure that you are assigning healing for Spirit Bolt.

Examples of how we've done healing assignments in the past:

Druid/paladin/Imp. DS priest - During Spirit Bolt, the priest would PoH the caster group (which the paladin was in for Imp. Conc. Aura), while the paladin and I would focus on the melee group. It was easy enough to keep at least a stack of Lifeblooms going on the MT while still passing Lifeblooms.

Druid/paladin/shaman - We ran into trouble with Spirit Bolt healing the first time we tried Hex Lord because we were just whack-a-mole-ing it. I told the paladin to focus on g2, and that I would focus on g1 (while the shaman Brain Healed, of course), and it made healing so much easier.

My general strategy is keep my Lifebloom stack up on the MT (i.e., let Rejuvenation drop) while putting Lifebloom on as many people in my group as possible (that is, three people per Lifebloom cycle) and letting them bloom. If someone is getting low then I WILL put a double stack of Lifebloom on them right away.

Regrowth will give you a bigger kick and you should use it if someone is getting perilously low and the ticks from a single or double Lifebloom stack will not be enough to keep alive, however, I would personally use Lifebloom under normal Spirit Bolt circumstances because you can cast Lifebloom every 1.5s and Regrowth only every 2s. These half seconds add up fast and translate into a lot of extra Lifebloom casts.

Make sure you start Lifeblooming your assigned group a couple of seconds before Spirit Bolt actually starts, especially if you see that some people aren't at full health--this head start makes Spirit Bolt MUCH more manageable.

Also, don't forget to blow Barkskin/Traquility at some point during the fight. Discuss rotation with the other druid in your group if there is one.

Thanks! Lots of good pointers here. I run with one priest that is resistant to accepting any sort of healing assignment. She's an awesome healer but I think she ends up blowing a lot of mana overhealing because she won't coordinate with others. But I think even she realized during this fight that we had to have some kind of coordination.

I'm also going to try to wear a couple of pieces of shadow resist gear next time, maybe that'll help keep my own hit points up.

With the priest buff or pala aura and 3 shadow resi-gear items i get to 200 SR and take about 50% damage of the bolts.
So you could try it.

If there is a lock with you, he should need very little healing at all. Siphon Life and Lifedrain will mitigate all incoming damage for him.

Other than that, AoE heals go. Also, make sure your dps dont suck. The quicker his adds go down, and the quicker he goes down, the easier it is to heal (i know this is obvious).

And if people don't bring health pots to raids, tell them to.

I think a lot of the problem was we needed more DPS. We were a bit melee heavy for that fight and they had to run out of consecrates and things.

Thats a big factor right there. More ranged DPS will make your life infinitley easier as a healer there.

And bring a Priest and Lock with u.
Banish and Shackle 2 adds and crush the boss.
Maybe sheep a 3rd one if damage is not enough to kill 2 adds fast.

For the life of me I do not understand why people don't just kill all of the adds. Healing through Spirit Bolt is very manageable when Malacrass doesn't have the increased damage buff yet (i.e., he is over 80% HP). Also, it will always be a challenge to reapply CC because you know that it will always break during Spirit Bolt (and the lock can't reBanish until the previous Banish is up).

I don't either, Pookies! It makes sense to me too.

The thing is, that if your group has low dps, it is easyer to CC the adds, and kill the boss,
because the spirit bolts increase in damage over time, so if you don't kill the boss soon,
you are putting a lot of stress on your healers.
Similar thing is on Moroes, the only difference is Garrote/Spirit bolts.

They don't increase though until the boss is below 80% right? They are fairly easy to heal through at first.

After the Hex-Lord reaches 80%, his Soul-drain also gives him a stackable buff which increases his size and the damage of his melee, Soul-drain abilities, and spirit bolts. The longer you take to kill him, the harder he becomes.

We tried this again yesterday with Paladin, priest (no CoH) and moi. Very frustrating... we have issues with our paladin healers, they're just not doing all that great on MT healing. Maybe I should put him on raid healing and I heal MT and backfill on raid. His biggest problem is he relies on Holy Light instead of his quick heal, then I think he interrupts himself when it looks like he doesn't need to heal, and his heals land too late when there are damage bursts. I'm guessing, I should go through the log and try to figure it out.

Oh yes, I did manage to get them to kill the adds first and I think it helped. We just need more DPS, not sure why we have such DPS issues on this fight since we have most of our people in Tier 5 gear. Our hunter usually gets well over 1000 dps but on this fight he's doing a lot less, same with the mages and warlocks. Not sure why.

Oh! I wore an Ambusher's Cloak of Shadow Protection and got my shadow protection just over 100 and I avoided taking 100+ damage from each spirit bolt. There's a neck piece I'm going to have made but our Jeweler isn't around. That'll be another 40 or so resistance.

Another thing that irritates me is the warlocks and shadow priest using life tap right before spirit bolts. I asked them not to but it seems like an ingrained habit with them. I'm not sure what was going on with the Shadow Priest but she seemed to go down faster than anyone in the spirit bolts.

Ok, we finally, finally got him down today! Then we got Zul'Jin to 36% on our best try.

It seemed to work best with shammy, CoH Priest and me on MT and backfilling raid.

I was healing the majority of damage though, about 10% ahead of everyone else. I'm not sure why but it just feels like the other healers are so slow to respond.

We had some very good DPS with us today too.

Grats Zute! What strat did you end up using with respect to the adds?

Grats Zute. We've been farming 3 chests for a while, just got our first bear mount from the 4th chest on Saturday.

On Hex, Warlocks shouldn't be a problem to heal... tell them to drain life through the shadowbolts. Shadowpriests likewise... make sure they have shadow protection buff up, and are getting heals through VE.

Not sure why the dps of the group would be dropping, other than that this fight potentially requires a decent amount of moving around (i.e. avoiding concecration, traps, hellfires, w/e aspect he takes).

Grats on ZJ. You should have him down in no time - hes pretty easy. First phase, nuke, and make sure whoever gets hit with greivous throw gets back to 100% asap. Second phase, everyone stack on eachother so that your priest can Mass Dispel. Third phase is just stupid and annoying... just stay away from cyclones, and make sure casters arent chain casting (unless its a lock, who can drain life to mitigate the damage from the shock). Casters can 'piggyback' casts, i.e. shadowbolt followed by corruption = 2 casts, 1 charge. Fourth phase Nuke the hell out of him - blow CD's, bloodlust etc. the faster he drops that 20% the less frantic healing you will have to do. And he reset's aggro each phase. Final phase is a tank and spank race to the end, which is easy as long as people know to stay out of floor fire. Keep that up and he'll be down in no time.

During p3 concentrate less on avoiding vortexes and more on healing ... you can "tank" this phase by rolling a stack of Lifeblooms on yourself and just healing like a mofo. Just make sure you keep those Lifeblooms on yourself. A Rejuv wouldn't hurt either for those times you get bounced around between a couple of vortexes and need a quick picker-upper. p3 is really trivialized with a resto druid, the make or break phase, IMO is p4 ... it really tests the reflexes of your healers.

Pookies - Can you explain the last post a little better? Specifically, "tanking" phase 3. Do you mean that by rolling lifeblom on yourself the vortexes concentrate on you and leave the others alone more?

Isn't casting every 1.5 seconds and getting hit with 1500 dmg for every cast kind of deadly? I don't think even a full stack of hots can keep up with that dmg.

Actually, you can cast a Rejuv or Regrow then a LB on someone and only get hit once as long as you do it immediately when the GCD is up. You get hit almost immediately after that second spell is cast. (I usually have ~60-80ms latency.)

Is it 1500dmg? Can't remember.

But if you get your LB stack on yourself immediately when the fight starts, then refresh it every 6 seconds on yourself that's about 800+ hps. If you are taking 1500dmg, you should be able to recover that health in 2 seconds. Letting you cast LB/Rejuv several times on 3 other people in the LB Cycle.


Sample starting 20 seconds into the fight.
20.0 - LB Cast (Self)
21.5 - LB/Rejuv Cast (Other)
~21.5 - 1500dmg to self (Previous dmg healed by now)
23.0 - LB/Rejuv Cast (Other)
24.5 - LB/Rejuv Cast (Other)
~24.5 - 1500dmg to self (Previous dmg healed by now)
26.0 - LB Cast (Self)
27.5 - LB/Rejuv Cast (Other)
~27.5 - 1500dmg to self (Previous dmg healed by now)
29.0 - LB/Rejuv Cast (Other)
31.5 - LB/Rejuv Cast (Other)
~31.5 - 1500dmg to self (Previous dmg healed by now)

Let me try to explain my post a little better, lol.

The generally accepted strategy for phase three involves everyone standing as spread out as possible to minimize damage taken from contact with vortexes while only casting when absolutely necessary to minize damage taken from being zapped by the vortexes.

An alternate strategy (which I use) still has everyone spread out to minimize damage from contact with the vortexes, but involves the resto druid keeping a Lifebloom stack on himself for the entire phase, raid healing for the entire phase, and simply eating the zap damage. The Lifebloom stack heals you through the zap damage.

I hope that makes sense.

[Edit]

700-800 HPS should be more than sufficient to get you through this phase. If it isn't (i.e., you're getting hit by more vortexes than expected), just add a Rejuvenation, as mentioned above.

Hmmm... interesting. I'll try it.

Hmmm... interesting. I'll try it.

You should. It really does ease the healing load for the other healers in your raid. And on top of that ... IT'S JUST DAMN FUN! :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

Zot! I might be one electrified piece of wood at the end of that.

at this phase i only heal with regrowth.
zap-damage has to be minimized.
so casters use bandages and stuff.
if casters are low -> use wand till healed^^

Serg - you should be able to 'piggyback' a rejuv at the end of the regrowth.

By casting rejuv the second that regrowth is finished casting, you will only get hit with 1 zap, but have casted 2 spells.

that is, if you actually need to.