Healing spirit bolts without a priest… Can it be done? 9k on 10 people every 30s is pretty out of control when you have a comp without a COH priest. How are others handling it?
Absolutely healable without a priest. We had 3 groups go into ZA last night. Myself and a Priest healed one team. Another Shaman and a Paladin on a team and a Paladin and Druid pair on the third team. All did fine
Yeah we did it with a shaman and paladin.
We only get like two of the spirit bolts before he is dead. He just melts.
Dont think it actually can kill you. We didnt have a priest, as long as people are topped, you’ll get through it?
I mean if your HP is over 9K anyway?
Yeah if you HP is over 9k. Shouldn’t be too bad on mains but alts that could be hard. Now that there are more logs I am seeing how they are doing it. Not as worried.
Did Druid Druid first day in. Wasn’t easy but you are able to.
looks like they do increase with his buff as well so the first one might not be too bad but the second would be deadly
It’s doable. We had three teams run it last night, two teams of mains, one team of alts, and we didn’t have exactly optimized tank/healer combos, but we made it through on all teams. If you ask me, was more fun not being optimized, because there were awkward things to compensate for 
Don’t remember team 1’s comp, I wasn’t on it and it went same time as group 2.
Team2 was double druid tank, and a pally/priest healer.
Third team with alts was double pally tanks, and a druid/shaman healer.
All three teams blasted through the content fairly easily, but hex lord was definitely most challenging.
I think a lot of people have a misconception of this ability… it’s 9k damage which is typically what people’s health pool should be. So it’s not necessarily a matter of healing through the ability but making sure people are topped beforehand. Part if this is being aware of the amount of health people have in your raid so you can use instant cast abilities to ensure the spirit bolts don’t kill those people.
Additionally here are some things different healers besides priests can do to make it easier:
- Paladins typically spec for 70% resistance to spell push back in their talent tree so they should be casting flash of light instead of holy light. Holy light takes too much time to cast and you do not need to keep top them but rather just keep them above the 9k damage threshold.
- Paladins can also bubble and free cast, but they really don’t need to with 70% push back resistance. They should use Concentration Aura (for everyone in their party) or Shadow Resistance aura if there is no priest.
- Shamans spec for 70% spell push back resistance. Additionally, Earth Shield does give them 30% spell push back resistance. This is also a great time to use Nature’s Swiftness for low hp pool raid members.
- Druid’s have Barkskin and Tranquility. When tranq is down they should be putting lifeblooms on targets (especially low HP pool targets) because it’s a fast ticking hot with a short duration for the bloom which keeps people topped. One stack of Lifebloom will prevent someone from dying.
- Something that could help is casting Amplify Magic, if you have a mage, on low hp targets temporarily. They will get more healing and spirit bolts are unaffected by amplify/dampen. However, it’s only for spirit bolts and that takes a lot of coordination so it might not be feasible.
Aside from healers, raid members should do everything they can to stay alive during these phases. Shadow priests using PW:S, feral/boomkin druids using tranq or even throwing out LBs if needed, Shamans using healing stream totems, Paladins judging light, healthstones, or anything that mitigates the incoming damage to make it easier on the healers during and after the spirit bolts.
The misconception of having to heal through the damage sometimes prevents people from being proactive and topping the raid beforehand. Healers just need to be aware of low HP characters so they can focus them a little more than higher HP characters. Hope that helps!
Edited for correct information
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Yeah, of course it can be done. Learn the game mechanics. There are several features in the game that reduce spell push back. Take advantage of them.
What are you talking about? Not specing for 70% spell push back reduction means you’re bad. It’s one of the best talents in the restoration tree. Do you play in some kind of dad guild?
Look up all the top performing restoration shaman logs. They all run spell push back.
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Firstly, chill. You could just point it out trying to fire shots over it.
You’re correct. I don’t play resto shaman and was under the impression that they didn’t spec into it. Even more of a reason why shamans don’t have trouble with this, especially with earth shield.
Yeah pretty much all shamans spec that. When I go into this fight, I have earth shield on myself so I have 100% push back reduction. Makes Spirit Bolts much easier.
Hmph. Had the wrong character there.
Don’t know why it had Azshaula selected. Oh well.
A Resto Shaman would be enough with their Chain Heal, the only time you’d see an issue is if all your healers are Paladins.
And now I realize that this post is 1 month old… Has ZA really been out that long? Damn.
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