I’m getting my butt handed to me with this challenge and I feel like I’m missing something.
I’ll admit I don’t normally heal so I’m no expert, but I’d like to think I’m at least decently aware. I’ve done several challenges one day after dinging 70. Mage, Druid, priest (disc), and warrior (actually boosted a warrior just for the challenges)
Usually I study the pattern and learn what cds to trade and when, but with this challenge I feel like I’m constantly behind in heals and I can’t catch up. I’m desperately trying to keep someone alive while a mage is casting and needing dispel, there’s a soldier knife dancing, and an archer is about to mana sting me, which will need a dispel too.
I know I’m playing the spec wrong. I have to be. I’ve watched videos and they make it look so easy. Just heal and dps when needed. Meanwhile I’m over here panicking and smashing heals trying not to let anyone die.
I’ve heard it gets significantly easier after the first phase, however I can’t make it past the first phase
Does anyone have any tips or advice for the challenge? It’s the last one I need and I just can’t get it.
(Also on a side note: Are there any spells I don’t need for this challenge? Holy has so many spells and I think maybe that’s part of my struggle. Not knowing what to use and what I can kind of ignore)
Also also, why does this challenge seem so insanely long compared to the others? The other ones I’ve done are like 2-3 phases max, this one is like 7
I have to imagine you’re not watching guide videos, but kill videos? Look up a few guide videos. You’ll need to dispel Mana Sting immediately from whomever it hits, interrupt Knife Dance, and cc the adds that chase you. All while dpsing in addition to healing.
The holy priest one got significantly easier come dragon flight in shadowlands it took some of the best holy priests in the world a few hundred attempts. I reccomebd doing it on another healer (except disc ) is you’re more comfortable with them.
But otherwise yes the first phase is the worse, the arcane nages need to be focused and dispelled. Pain them and ur npcs will focus it. You need to shackle knife dance when you can and line the hunter mana drain to the Jarod. It’s very difficult.
The first phase and last phase are the hardest for holy. The biggest piece of advice I can give is make sure you’re using shackle undead to your advantage. Shackling one on the 3-person add waves is immensely helpful.
Good example is mage, rogue, rogue. Shackle one, stun knife dance on the other with chastise, and keep the mage purged.
You can also use apoth offensively assuming the build you’re running has it.
Healer mage tower is a lot easier if you are aggressive. You want to use ccs to prevent the casters from ever going to 2 stacks and whenever a caster is up you’ll want to get damage in so they go down fast, if I remember correctly the trick was chastise at the end of their second cast and basically just smash them each time you have a caster wave and if you do it right they should die before they get to 2 stacks after chastise.
When the scouts come in you’ll want to hard cc them out of the aoe channeled attack they do for solo ones I recommend using shackle undead for this, with the exception of the double scout round where you will want to use psychic scream followed by getting as far as you can from them as possible in anticipation of having to kite on the final wave you should be able to scream one kite phase once it comes back off cd. One important habit to get into is sandbagging the end of each wave so you can get chastise back up, also make sure to take chastise stun because without it your npc friends will go haywire sometimes because they don’t want to break cc. Save apotheosis and shadowfiend for the final two waves allocate one to each, note apotheosis resets chastise and use that.
I recommend watching someone do the p2 and onward up to the last phase the mechancis aren’t bad, but its a horrible feeling to get through p1 to wipe in p2-6 and most of those phases are the same thing every time. P2 is kill things while at full health and making the most of your damage with a bit of add healing in the middle though for the solo archer you can just hard cc the mana arrow. phase after is just make sure everyone is topped off and save holy words for the side ghosts.
Final phase you’ll probably want to have revive from ghost form and you’ll want to prioritize keeping shadowsong up while keeping your self around 50-60% health. A big part of the final phase is it takes way longer then it did in legion so space management is important so just stand at the edge of previous slams and as a holy priest you can even intentionally pop ghost at the end if you want.
Did the holy mage tower again just to make sure this isn’t outdated. A few things that stuck out.
New empreal blaze is very strong, you can carry the buff from one wave into another and dump 5 buffed holy fires into a mage, this and the chastise involved is enough to make sure the mage will not be a threat. That said new empreal blaze killed me in p2 when I tried smashing the inquisator at the end and the holy fire cleave killed two orbs barely in range so make sure to get those orbs at the end of that phase before even touching holy fire.
The adds do not need to and should not be kited only use shackle undead to stop knife dance or w/e its called. Try to stand in the melee so you can just sanctify your feet to cover that damage.
The post gauntlet ghost phase was the easiest phase, keep prayer of mendings up on partyuse holy words on ghosts as needed and spam heal on your party to maintain mastery and reset holy words no real risk of going oom even if you keep casting and you can drink after phase ends.
Final phase is awful, it took 2 minutes and 50 seconds(shadowfiend had 10 seconds left on cd you see) the floor was almost entirely covered despite me living in the fire because my health would just not go down between shadowfiend and mastery I was using power word shield on shadowsong just to be safe, and this was with me holy firing and chastising the boss on cd. Just make sure to always be casting and note your positioning, power word shield is actually useful for this phase since you can either use it on yourself to have more effective health without it turning to damage or to increase sahdowsong’s effective health just in case. I swapped from divine word to return to life from ghost form for this phase because I could but I didn’t need it, it was nice to have the option to play dangerously with my health though.
There are quirks about your party in phase 1 that you have to work around. The most agitating for me was that hard CCs used for important interrupts act as an aggro dump for my party, taking pressure off of priority mobs, so to the extent that you can avoid using shackle for mobs you actually want to have die first, I would do so.
(Specific gear isn’t required obviously, but there are some pieces that can make a difference. In particular, the 8pc bonus on the Night Fae covenant set works inside the tower, and provides substantial additional healing to the group.)
It’s very much about learning the encounter and gaining muscle memory to get through the first phase. Once you’re through that, though, you really are over halfway through what is difficult. I don’t remember holy having much difficulty with the ghost healing phase (at least compared with some of the other specs in Legion) so it then is mostly about learning the health dance in the last phase. So take heart!
Do not be afraid to face tank fixates. I don’t remember for sure everything I did, and talents have changed in 10.2.6, but as always the Timewalking Discord helped me.
Thank you all so much for the tips and strategies. I had no idea I could shackle the adds I’m definitely going to
One more question, are there any specific talent builds to make this easier? I’ve watched some guides but they’re all from previous patches and the talent tree looks different
Supposedly the HPriest challenge is like Mythic raid “final boss” level difficulty, even dedicated top 1%ers of the class such as Automaticjak struggled to beat the fight
I would recommend swapping to a random Pally alt and respeccing it to HPally for this fight, that’s what I did anyways
That’s the build I’ve been using. I took one point out of desperate times and put it into Miracle Worker. Having 2 charges of holy words has saved my butt so many times
Group with no tank, against enemies that choses targets randomly combined with the expectation that you need to both heal, cc and dps. Leads to a situation where phase one can quickly end because all the mobs decide to target the same npc and there is nothing you can do about it.
Then there is the later phases where you got no camera space to keep track of things. yay.
Um, no? The challenges are hard but not thar hard. The highest-damage dealing enemy is the Mage. The challenges are designed where you always have CC’s for every situation.
The built-in “cheese” abilities of a Paladin alt really come in handy for this…
On my kill run a timely bubble basically allowed me to close out the fight/finish off the boss. It was close
I remember the floor was basically down to 2 open “safe zones”, I bubbled and sat in a pool of bad JUST to squeeze in a few more globals of DPS. The boss basically landed on me and spawned a pool of bad/fire right on top of me just as he died… if the fight had gone on for 5-7 more seconds I would’ve wiped for sure
Seconds absolutely matter in that last/final boss phase, it’s super tight as far as the “enrage” mechanic goes
I wasn’t exactly complaining about difficulty. Rather that the healer challenge is plagued by gameplay issues such as the random behaviour of the enemies that will guaranteed a loss cause the npcs won’t survive if they are ganged up on, even if you manage to keep healing, cc and damage going.
Tho maybe they’ve changed it a bit since Legion.
And the camera issue was also an issue during m+. There are multiple locations in that dungeon that has the space to zoom the camera out further, but for some reason there is an invisible barrier the camera isn’t allowed to pass through forcing the camera to stay closer to your character than should be needed.
While CC is important remember that putting in DPS can make the challenge a lot easier. For example the archers should only ever start to cast one mana drain. It’s important to try and make the archer dead so you aren’t wasting CC or having to keep the warrior up with a DoT going into next phase. The entire first phase is staying ahead of the demand because once you fall behind you have to play twice as hard.
I’m saying there really is nothing they can do that can guarantee a wipe. You have tools for every scenario. If there’s a doible fixate, you have chastise and shackle undead. You should also be dispelling the mage each time so it gains no stacks.
I’m definitely going to
