Lieutenants Skipped in M+

The tank in this SOA 16 earlier had us skip two lieutenants, one where I’d have gotten a 50% boost to self healing, the other to eat food fast.

Now when we got to the last boss, I could not run to mana orbs (you move very slow on the last boss if you skip one or the other lieutenants), and because of spamming Shadow Mend on DPS I found it super hard to move to dodge the boss charge as well.

As a result we could not do the boss. In 9.1 when having all 4 anima powers this boss is a snap, easy as pie. But when you cant move and everyone is taking heavy damage unable to move, it is a real nightmare. This does not mean it is impossible, but with an average group, it is not something I like to heal because my stress levels go through the roof. I don’t see why ten seconds to down a lieutenant is a big loss to the key either, and it makes me really mad when tanks decide this without keeping in mind the difficulty it causes for the healer (I only speak for disc priest because I don’t currently heal any other healers).

In a group minutes ago I asked the tank before we started if we were going to skip any and he said maybe Soggodon. I said to not do that, and explained that it made healing hard. And then he said that it makes for increased melee damage to the tank, but he was a bear (need I say more). I then left the group.

But lieutenants do not cause a permanent handicap to anyone do they? And the anima powers are extremely valuable in my view.

So what is up with this skipping tactic? I don’t see how a few seconds to down one is a loss that is much of a trade off for very valuable anima powers.

i have yet to see this in a pug. it seems risky in a pug and totally pointless in a 16 at any rate.

Yeah. Because I’ve seen this at SOA three or four times, I now ask all tanks before starting if they plan on skipping any. It’s either that or just quit if they do.

I mean, disc can be so incredibly mana hungry in pugs. And tanks never ever stop to let you drink, so I mean…

Ive skipped the mini bosses before in there. Just got to make sure you dont get hit by the charge on tyr weeks.

As i said before, swap to NE, meld drink. Stop butting your head against the wall hoping for change. Take charge. I also have enji and drums so i can hero and rez cause mages and shammies tend to forget they CAN hero for some reason and druids and lock sometimes dont bother rezzing

My main is horde. So many more good groups have keys on offer. I do have an alliance alt or two, but my current main alt is a mechagnome. I love it for the semi-cheat death, seeing as disc priests are very weak on defensives vs other healers.

Not to knock your advice. When I get bored of keys because my main is max geared and the declines above 17 continue, I just may just have to roll one.

Skipping 2 lieutenants (slowing+physical damage) is more of a thing for high keys. The first time I tried healing that I died multiple times, but since then I learned the pattern.

People can’t be stacking on-top of each other and need to spread around her otherwise it creates problems for everyone. Now if people are properly spread… if she does charge towards you just move left-or-right and don’t stop at all until she passes. If you hesitate and start moving left then right you die. Pick a direction and commit to it. As long as you move and don’t stop you won’t get hit by her.

You can collect mana orbs while she’s up in the air because the slowing debuff only applies if there’s hostile targets around you that you’re engaged with. In Plaguefall last boss intermissions as long as nobody hits the trash you can run around without the slowing debuff.

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Interesting. Thanks for the info. In the fail group earlier today people were stacked and were getting the debuff plus getting hit with quaking. It was a real mess. I was down to about 15% mana when we wiped with the boss at more than half health and this after spamming shadow mend virtually non-stop, with very low damage.

In all honesty, I am not patient enough to do this in pugs. By the time the average pugger figures out how to do this, Tormented will be history and replaced with another affix that tanks will use to stick it to healers somehow–like they do in a lot of keys now–I mean, for example, with disc mana issues.

If I had a regular group I’d explain it to them myself. I was literally shaking and had to logout and workout to stop shaking after trying to heal this 16 earlier today. I simply do not want to deal with what I consider to be an illogical nonsensical tactic that puts incredible stress on healers when the fight could be an otherwise easy cake and icing walk in the park.

In the end I blame mentally challenged tanks that have not only never healed as a disc priest, but as a healer in general for even one minute. And I hold Blizzard responsible for making Disc Priest a mana hungry sub-par healer vs other healers like Holy Paladins that have no mana issues, strong defensives (vs the nonexistent in the case of disc priests), great utility (vs. below average utility), and do nearly double the damage (vs disc priests) in the hands of a good player.

I doubt skipping two lieutenants would make it difficult in SOA. Why are you even spamming shadowmend in intermission?

It’s not a few seconds, it could be as much as two to two and a half minutes of extra time skipping the commanders depending on key level or if people aren’t using cooldowns on them. My group skips them all the time in 18-21s. It’s not worth the time lost and if 50% increased physical damage is too much for the tank then it’s a tank issue.

The commander you should skip depends on the dungeon but it’s not that big of a deal. If you can’t manage your mana without orbs for one boss fight then you are wasting your mana on something.

If you don’t want to skip them then I suggest pulling them with a pack of mobs or a boss and using dps cooldowns to kill it. Skipping them is not a big deal especially if you need the time and I skip coldheart and sogg (slow and physical damage buff) in SoA all the time.

It was not in the intermission in this one group. It was after you run for cover–when two get a debuff and the damage can be high. These guys were all stacked up, getting hit by quaking and the spear. I was madly spamming heals to keep them topped off because spear was hitting them, and would kill them unless they were topped. The quaking was hitting them too. And my mana was crashing and I could not move to get orbs easily at all because if I stopped spamming heals they died. We had three goes at this boss, and two the previous–the group was horrible.

I have done that boss in similar cases, but was exhausted from having gone oom the previous boss because I did not have the fast eat anima power because two lieutenants were skipped. The tank pulled that boss with me at below 50% mana and we wiped cuz I went oom. These guys were low skill and poor at mechanics–two or even three of them getting that nasty debuff, for example, when only one should get it if they simply move out.

NO way it’s that much time. And unless the group is above average, the time gained means I may not have fast eats, and if they need a lot of healing because they do mechanics poorly, miss interrupts, and/or the tank pulls too big, then the time I have to spend drinking is a problem. Most tanks do not pause even a little for you to drink, and when you do drink and then rejoin the group, you have to spam Shadow Mend to catch up heal, but this kind of healing is high mana cost, which perpetuates the mana problem, so that you will forever have to pause and drink after most packs.

I will qualify this though–falling behind has a lot to do with things like mechanics, interrupts, how squishy the tank is, how much versatility your group members have, etc. It is not cut and dry, really.

NO way it’s that much time.

It sounds about right, 2 mins or so gain on dungeon cause those powers suck.

It is literally that much time. I have seen it in more dungeons than I can count. Coldhearts powers are basically useless and sogg’s doesn’t contribute to damage. You don’t need them to win the dungeon. They fall over in 15s and 16s. When you’re doing 18s, 19s, or 20s you are wasting time killing them.

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I timed them when running a 15 Mists, and they took about 25 seconds each. And as for the powers? Disc priests gain a lot from them in average groups. If you have to spam heal cuz your dps are monkeys, you can simply move to mana orbs and replenish. The same goes for eating fast.

As for 240 Crit or Mastery and 50% more self-healing–those are incredibly good for Disc priests. The stat bonus is potent, and since disc priests have poor defensives vs all other healers, the self-healing bonus is incredibly good.

Those are my opinions, and maybe you disagree. That is fine, but I quality my opinion by saying I have healed roughly 100 timed 15s and over in 9.1 and I completely disagree with that view.

I’d also add that I like to watch high level players like Moadmoad heal the highest keys disc is now doing. His groups do skip one lieutenant sometimes, but other times they skip none. To me, a 25 second time gain is not worth it. And when they do skip the Coldheart one, it just makes movement really hard and slow on the last boss. In those instances Moadmoad cannot move to mana orbs and can go very low on mana when he starts calling for innervate. In my opinion the time gain is not worth the struggle and inconvenience and resulting mana issues. Oros Coldheart offers disc priests Portable Feeding Trough - You eat food faster. Much faster. This power is incredibly strong in a lot of groups that take avoidable damage, miss kicks, etc. Of course if you always group up with first rate players, maybe this is not an issue. In my case, I usually join pug groups, or groups with one or two friends. There is almost always at least one monkey in these groups. And yeah, on the rare occasion the group is first rate, and I rarely have to pause for mana, but in most cases, most pugs you join in LFR are such that you will have to stop and drink–maybe often.

I timed them when running a 15 Mists, and they took about 25 seconds each.

This is misleading because even if they died in 25 seconds, they didn’t take 25 seconds. Cooldowns spent there means time lost elsewhere in the dungeon.

I love it when you bust this out if someone questions your play. :rofl:

You really shouldn’t be skipping lieutenants at +15s… we were timing +15s at season start in 226 iLvl gear with all the lieutenants up. It’s not until +20s and higher you start skipping them and most of the dungeons you’re usually skipping at least 1 or 2. If you don’t want to skip any then you just pull the lieutenants into trash so you’re not really wasting any time.

Maybe to someone like you experience means nothing. I’m just pointing out I’m not talking out my butt. Maybe in your world it is bragging, but I could care less what some forum poster thinks of me. If some random forum poster thinks I’m the cat’s meow, it means squat to me in my life and makes no difference whatsoever to the quality of it.

If you want to know what does though, I will just say that when I ran with your group, I did not enjoy it at all at times–mostly because of rude comments–like yours. And some people in your group always talking about parsing high meant nothing to me one way or the other–but simply conveyed you guys are more competitive than I care to be. To me parses for dps and in some cases healers (along with overhealing) are simply a tool to tell you you need to work on your rotations or whatever. What counts to me is whether you got the boss down or the key timed. Also, did you have fun? Also, did you improve? That’s it.

It is also not “my play” here that is what this is about. I have done the last boss at SOA having skipped the Coldheart lieutenant. I have done it successfully, too, but not in pug groups with monkeys.

The whole point of my original post is to question the value of skipping lieutenants. I still do not see any merit in it in pug groups doing 15-18s. I also question whether it is of any value to people doing 24s and higher with a disc priest or holy paladin. Watching Moadmoad play both his disc priest and holy paladin, I just think it is a silly tactic that offers no gain. It is simply an exchange of a little time in exchange for powers that can be extremely valuable plus a significantly harder end boss. It’s like giving up two apples in exchange for one, if you ask me.

I will add though that in BFA I hated healing bosses when Awakened was skipped because you had a tough mob to deal with on the last boss. I did grow to see the merit though, but I doubt I will ever come around to seeing much merit in skipping lieutenants in pugs.

Skipped - 1 once in at HOA - it worked out. No biggie

Yeah, no big deal there, unless it is a high key and Tyrannical. I have seen the statues one hit people, and a lot don’t bother with, or don’t know how to dodge.

Eh, was kinda unnerving when first dealing with statues that one shot. Just a case of git gud.