It was not my key, but on a fairly high key earlier, I guess the adds were reaching the boss and empowering its damage on Naraxas at Neltharion’s Lair–or something, because we wiped three times despite my healing reaching 100k+ HPS or so. I just could not keep up and kept thinking the keyholder needed to invite those that can dispel poison–a shaman with poison totem or whatever it’s called would have helped. A monk, a paladin, a shaman, or an aug evoker and we’d have probably aced it!
If there is nobody in your group that can dispel poison, is there some other way around that, like some kind of potion that removes the poison debuff? Or outside of the obvious like raw healing, healing CDs, DR CDs, personals like Fade with damage reduction and Desperate Prayer what else can a priest do on that fight to not only survive but get the group through?
I guess it’s a pipe dream to hope priests will ever get a poison dispel. Has anyone got any good strats for this boss to help with the very bursty damage if you dont have a poison dispeller in your group?
But if your 3 DDs fail the boss mechanic to focus down the adds, you should stop looking for mistakes on your end.
Imagine Brackenhide the totem at the endboss going off being your fault.
That’s a tank mistake if it spawns in the cloud or a DD/group mistake if it doesn’t receive enough damage.
People always flame the healer when they die, but I can’t heal stupidity.
I had a neltharus 20+ where at the endboss people never dodged the swirlies during magma shield. They close to one shot you.
It was my fault according to the tank…
Edit: can you tell the key level?
Would be easier to know how much damage you need to heal. Only did it up to +20 since afterwards there are no rewards and healing PUGs makes my hair gray.
This fights a pale comparison compared to what it was before they nerfed it. I couldn’t even heal it on a +22 Tyrannical because the damage was too intense. I’ve done it on a +25 and even then it still keeps you on the edge of your seat.
You have to stack poison cleansers for that fight and people need to use defensives when Rancid Maw comes out because that’s usually when you get smashed with rocks. Clothies take more damage due to having less armor so the Mage in the group should be a high priority target to heal.
The damage patterns are predictable though. They cast Rancid Maw and then the group takes a whole bunch of incoming damage. You need to defensive that and just be ready to burst out some heals.
It’s just endurance more than anything because if your group has low dps it can take 4 minutes on Tyrannical.
It’s one of my least played dungeons I think, I just don’t like some of the mechanics and bosses in there and yeah I think Naraxas is probably the one I dislike the most.
That said it was a lot worse before the nerfs, but even after I’ll still only pug it if I see at last 2 poison dispels in the group, if it’s my own key and I get to choose I’ll take at least 3. Now I think the last time I ran it we only had 1 but it was a guild group and we were in discord so it wasn’t so bad.
As for tips, aside from stacking poison dispels, the damage comes in set intervals and happens 3 times between each Spiked tongue (when it tries to devour the tank) during that phase you get a bit of a break so use it to catch-up but don’t panic and blow anything significant there. I usually try to help with the adds (so I can snipe a SW:Death) but it’s really more on the DPSers to kill em in time.
Movement generally not too intense but it does come at the most awkward moment possible which is when you are trying to burst-heal during the high damage phases and a puddle spawns under you, this is pretty consistent so consider modifying your burst rotation slightly and delaying Penance a bit (should only be a couple of secs) so you can use it while moving out of the puddle.
Pretty spot on really. Us healers do a lot of mistake undoing, but it gets progressively harder the higher the key. Shrug.
We actually wiped three times and I was the last one standing every time because of defensive use. I’m not sure what you can do with these noobies doing higher keys who still dont get that they need to use ALL of their abilities in these harder fights. Shrug.
I guess there is nothing you can do in these learning groups except hope that people know what they need to do. A lot have learned it wrong in previous xpacs when a lot could get away with “stupid.”
A bit off-topic but at least for me wanted to point out that pugs felt particularly bad this week. Not sure if it was just bad luck or a combination of players getting inflated IO due to god-comp or what but just like unbelievable fails to the most basic of mechanics with full 2.7k+ IO groups, some even more like 2.9k… And kept happening trough the week…
Up to this week most of my runs tend to go pretty smooth and very rarely seen any disbands… For context I’m not pushing score I just tend to fill vault or at least get 4 keys done on the 3 toons I actively play (Disc Priest, Prot/Holy Pally, WW Monk)… The key-level is usually in the +20 to +22 range.
But this week it’s been like at least 6 disbands and to the most basic stuff like for example had not one but two Bracken groups where we wipe on the first boss due DPS just not killing the totem, in one of those we were able to recover by committing 2 Brezes just to have the totem come up again and they again completely ignored it (the tank and me were just sitting there helpless typing “kill totem” “kill totem”)… Or for example on UR, 442 mage doing literally 35K DPS and not helping with any mechanics on bosses 3 and 2.
Like all are the types of things you hear and don’t believe could happen or believe that may happen in like a +9… But nah, consistently trough the week in +20s and up with supposedly qualified players for that range. For the Brakenhide one like how do these guys have completed +20s before without killing the totem?, did they always had a Shadow Priest to mass dispel or what?.
Idk I think I used to call the +14 to +17 range the “keystone hell” level, meaning that mechanics start to hit hard enough to potentially kill you but players still either don’t know them or don’t execute them properly… I’m starting to feel this groups might have reached +20s now. (Again, might be coincidence or bad luck but Mages have been particularly bad)
Was just in a group on one of my disc priest alts just now for that boss. It was only a 16 and that priest is 429, so fine for that level key, but I put PW: barrier up and the hunter was literally less than two feet away, and had the bleed, making it pretty tough to heal him up, and a few of us had the bleed. The hunter literally did not move one inch to get into it. I dunno but does barrier not help with that or not help anything or something? Do people just tunnel so much and/or lack knowledge of the game so much so that they have to appear to troll or is it me? Are Disc and its abilities just that alien to people? Maybe Barrier needs a big sign on it that reads: “Get in this you lame brain!!”
Fortunately we did it, but I was the only one who used a healing pot and popped all of my defensives.
Actually I made a post in this forum about carries. This is one of the reasons I dont like them. I get the impression in pugs all the time that lots have no idea about a lot of things they can do to help their groups. Hence, I am always wondering if these people got carried all the way up so that they have no clue.
Yeah idk in my case this was not my usual experience, most groups I’m used to get in the +20 to +22 range usually do mechanics decently well, and I mean mistakes happen but it’s usually some accident or mechanical error and not due to lack of understanding of what the core mechanics are.
Also while not every DPS or Tank is particularly great in general I feel everyone tends to be at least decent with some standouts here and there but very rarely do I find a DPS that can barely beat a healer (at 440+ item level) or this week also had a couple of tanks that were just awful both at mitigating and routing.
None of them seemed like they were carried to get their score, well I didn’t look into everyone’s profile but the most suspect ones that I decided to inspect a bit more, at least from their RaiderIO site they seemed fine or at least good enough for a +20.
Like maybe I just had terrible luck this week I guess since again, this is not my usual experience.
Actually, in the group that prompted me to make the first post in this thread, the paladin tank in it needed intense healing almost the whole run. I was constantly using everything I had to keep him standing, which I found highly unusual for a 20–and he was not undergeared or particularly inexperienced as a tank for the key (having done a fair number of 20s and in the lower range too). That said, with less than 3000 achievement points in the game, maybe he is new to the game.
Anyhow, his damage was also fairly high so the whole time I was focusing a ton of healing on him I was wondering if he noticed I was doing that and so slacked off on the tanking part to pump more damage. That is not a big deal to me if it helps time the key, but I think sometimes tanks get carried away.
Actually looking at the numbers here from that whole run, the tank was doing very very little healing, the whole group was taking a lot of damage (me the least by a mile). And my defensive use of Fade (reducing damage taken by 10%) plus Desperate Prayer numbered 37 times, while the hunter used his defensives 7 times, and the others, even the tank did not use such abilities as much.
I think very few people actually track “Damage Taken” with meters, but I do. And I think I take the least damage in 99% of my runs. I really dont think people pay attention to things like that and really are too busy looking at damage meters as if that is all that matters.
Usually I think “avoidable damage taken” is what we should look at, some addons track it. I can see it in details but not sure if it comes bundled-in or might be another addon (thinking maybe comes from details-elitism plugin) but not sure
Yeah, that is a good one to track. You can do it with Elitism Helper. I used to use it and even post the results after runs, but people would get really mad sometimes.
I think you can also track all damage. Sometimes mitigating unavoidable damage can matter a ton. I use Fade and Desperate Prayer a ton no matter what the incoming damage is. Healers also sometimes have to make the call regarding what is avoidable and unavoidable depending on how you look at it. That is, your tank might be on the verge and if you opt to avoid the “avoidable damage” and the tank dies, it can sometimes be the key.
Unfortunately Disc just isn’t suited to some of these bosses the way other healers (cough Hpal) are so there isn’t any magical advice that can make some of these bosses more manageable other than to reroll to Hpal which has the buttons to deal with mechanics like Rancid Maw.
I don’t think it should be an issue before maybe 22-24 Tyran keys, depending on group and affixes.
The whole fight is really about the DPS doing their job to drop the pools to slow the adds correctly and killing them before they empower the boss then it’s on you as the healer to keep the group alive through each Rancid Maw.
I’ve been pushing into 25/26 keys this week and wouldn’t even consider inviting a Disc to any of them. Holy Paladins have a CD for every mechanic and Disc has one fairly bad 3m CD and one fairly bad 90s CD. They just aren’t capable of healing the content at the highest levels because they lack the tools to do so, especially in pugs.
So don’t be too hard on yourself. Healing a 22 Tyran NL is probably similar to healing a 26 on a Hpal and even then the Hpal is far more forgiving.
Has anyone got any good strats for this boss to help with the very bursty damage if you dont have a poison dispeller in your group?
Naraxes remains the boss I least want to fight in a dungeon in this entire S2 pool. Even if I manage to pump enough HPS to keep the group alive (and yes, it’s often 110-120k at a bare minimum) I’m usually scraping oom by 10-20% on tyrannicidal and just praying we can limp over the finish line as one or two DPS drop. If it’s my key - and Naraxes gives me so much anxiety I’ll brick someone else’s key that I basically only push on my key - my first pick when making the group is a poison cleansing tote- I mean, a shaman. My second is a guardian druid or prot paladin for tank-crutch off-heals.
If the dps don’t defensive their green pool drop and you get unlucky with the RNG rocks of death (which: terrible encounter design experience), it’s just goodbye. I’ve had DPS - and once or twice myself if I was out of personals - die in less than 1.4 seconds dropping to zero from 80-85% HP.
Ask your DPS to poison cleanse, rotate your CDs, do your best, and don’t sweat it too much overall. From everything you talked about in your initial post, you’re using all your options. IDK if other classes have it easier, but for a holy priest it’s currently what I find the hardest fight to heal.
I’ve found bosses like this is what really sets Holy Paladin apart from the rest.
If I go into Freehold, for example, my tools as a healer really don’t matter. I bait the poop and heal up whoever gets shot on the first boss. Whether that is with Penance or Holy Shock or Riptide really makes no difference. I pray we have a Paladin to Freedom the barrel, move to middle to avoid Eudora’s shot before she jumps and heal up whoever gets randomly shot while pew pewing damage. Again, which spells I have to do this doesn’t matter much. I don’t do much on Turtle or Trothak because all their damage is avoidable except healing up the physical DoT on Trothak. On Harlan I exist solely to blow every CD I have into every Whirling Dagger past phase 1 and rely on my group to use personals and pots to live.
Which healer I’m playing in a dungeon like FH really doesn’t change much as far as moving health bars back up after unavoidable damage.
However, in a key like Nelth’s Lair and Naraxus in particular I’m at a huge disadvantage not playing a healer that has multiple strong CD’s and good healing on the move, particularly spot healing to have an answer for the RNG damage that goes out 1 or 2 seconds prior to the unavoidable damage mechanic like Rancid Maw. Holy Paladin in this situation is an order of magnitude stronger than other healers. Being able to trade a GOOD CD into every Rancid Maw like DT or DB or AM and to be able to have Wings or TD to rely on if I feel like I’m falling behind or if I get targeted a few times in a row and run out of personals is the kind of toolkit I wish other healers had. Being able to do all of that while moving is cheating compared to something like a MW.
Holy Paladins after 10.1.5 were the most blatantly overtuned healer in the games modern history. Just counting today’s nerfs they’ve probably received a -25% healing/damage reduction in total for keys. I don’t think any other healer has been nerfed as harshly before. They obviously need more, but Blizzard should NOT have released H Pals in the state they were in.
That should obviously tell you a lot. You weren’t faceroll healing those fights because of your skillset: you were faceroll healing because your spec was overtuned. The more the nerfs pile up the more you’re going to see the fotm rerollers drop the classes or get a reality check that it actually should be difficult to heal some of these fights.
Rdruid/Prevoker early S1. Rsham post 10.1. Rdruid and Hpal throughout the entirety of Legion. Hpriest throughout the last two seasons of Shadowlands. I remember Prevokers and Rdruids in S1 being 2 or 3 key levels above the next highest other healer, similar to what Hpal is right now.
It’s pretty common that one or two healers are 15-30% stronger than the rest. 10.1.5 felt like a larger gap due to Aug buffing their groups healer by another 20% so the difference between what an optimal group could heal jumped massively going from 10.1.0 to 10.1.5.
I played Holy Priest throughout Shadowlands. It was ranked C/D-tier in Seasons 1 & 2 then in S3 they get a +10% dps/hps buff and the world first guilds stack them and its all of a sudden a FOTM spec and OP.
With S1: the main issue with healers underperforming at the start of the season was because Blizzard rushed the beta and they overnerfed a lot of the healers. Holy Priests had like a -50% dps nerf on-top of -20% hps nerf and by the time 10.0.5 came out they literally reverted the hps nerfs, added hps buffs, and added new dps talents.
With Holy Paladins it was a revamp in the middle of a season and they were in a complete league of their own when the came out. Just the scale of the nerfs they have received is what sets them apart. No other healer has ever had to be nerfed by close to 25% hps/dps in just a couple of weeks of a patch.
Major class revamps really should be done on major patch releases instead of mid-season minors to avoid this kind of issue happening again.