Anyways I have had over a month of blogs and forum posts to sift through in the last week and let me tell you…ugh!

First off: Holy priest gear…where the eff is it? I suppose I should have went over the forum posts BEFORE I started to make my BIS list and the easiest way to obtain this gear. I thought to myself “why oh why can I not find the FULL list of gear? This cannot be everything, blizzard really doesn’t hate hpriests that much do they?”. Ha, so I went to the healer forums and started sifting…there were two main posts that had maxed out on replies QQing about the gear list. I could not begin to even read all of the “I am quitting wow, EFF you blizzard” vs “STFU the gear list is fine”. I found myself thinking about whether or not to QQ or just go with the flow. Blizzard has been known to in the past give you what you want after you whine enough but did I really want to take the energy to do that?

So I put my little BIS project on hold and just decided well I will try to get in on a couple of runs and see what drops. El oh El! It wouldn’t have mattered if I had made the list or not..everything that dropped was plate, leather, plate, more plate. And then there it was, a beautiful trinket from Majordomo Staghelm. I had no where near close the amount of dkp to compete with the other healers for it but it gave me the motivation to make my list. I am not going to make a list of BIS gear in this post, but there will be one shortly!

Secondly: This goes hand in hand with the gear, many many posts about holy priest mana regen. Shadow fiend not picking the right target to attack, hymn of hope only giving marginal returns..blah blah blah.

Lastly (for now): I know healers claim to “not watch meters”. Give me a break! Yes you do, there are just different things that we analyze than dps. So I was hearing all this “holy priests suck now” so I headed over to World of Logs.  I am all for having good healers in my raid but all resto druids? Really? Of course there were a couple of holy pallies mixed in there but few and far between. For normal modes (25 man) that I looked through the top 150 healers; here is the spec for priests that do well:

Beth’tilac: Holy (This may change once they “fix” Holy Word: Sanctuary)

Shannox: Disc (hello smite spec!)

Rhyolith: Holy (PoH/PoM/CoH spam on stomps and P2)

Baleroc: Disc (super powerful bubbles)

Alysrazor: Disc BUT holy can also be viable if you can pump out the numbers for when everyone is grouped up

Majordomo: Disc (preventative healing rather that throughput for scythes is win)

Ragnaros: Holy (if you spam renews it appears holy is great for this fight)

So number wise it appears that holy and disc are pretty close on viability of healing per fight. I think that the gear check comes into play for the mana regen for holy, yes there is less gear for holy priests but with more intellect on pieces and the usefulness of reforging you can still reach a comfortable level for regen. The argument of “well I am sacrificing reforging to haste/mastery” is just something we are going to have to deal with.

So death to the holy priest? I don’t think it’s quite that extreme. We may not be as powerful as we once were but that’s just what happens. My advice is to learn both disc and holy so that you as a player can do what is needed to help your raid succeed rather than pouting in the corner saying “but I am a holy priest and my Holy Word: Serenity doesn’t scale with the flame buff on Baleroc.”  Learn both specs and be a great PRIEST!

Up next: My late BiS gear list for both disc and holy and also as I become involved in more kills the “how to” heal each fight in each spec.

Here is our Teir 12.

Head: Obsidian Arborweave Cover

Shoulders: Obsidian Arborweave Shoulderwraps

Chest: Obsidian Arborweave Vestment

Gloves: Obsidian Arborweave Gloves

Legs: Obsidian Arborweave Leggings

My gear list as of now:

I should note that I listed two choices for the shoulder/leg slot due to offset options. Leggings is the best way to go if you want to go offset, but if you’re looking to grab additional hit then picking up the Resto teir shoulders is the way to go.

Head: Obsidian Arborweave Cover (Balance T12)

Neck: Flowform Choker (Staghelm)

Shoulders: Obsidian Arborweave Shoulderwraps (Balance T12) or Obsidian Arborweave Mantle (Resto T12)

Back: Rippling Flamewrath Drape (AoH Rep Reward)

Chest: Obsidian Arborweave Vestment (Balance T12)

Wrist: Glowing Wing Bracers (Baleroc)

Hands: Obsidian Arborweave Gloves (Balance T12)

Belt: Firescar Sash (AoH Rep Reward)

Legs: Obsidian Arborweave Leggings (Balance T12) or Firecat Leggings (Staghelm)

Feet: Ethereal Footfalls (Crafted)

Ring 1: Infernal Signet of the Avengers (AoH Rep Reward)

Ring 2: Crystal Prison Band (Shannox)

Trinket 1: Darkmoon Card: Volcano (This trinket is still showing to be BiS in FL)

Trinket 2: Necromantic Focus (Baleroc) or Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor (Ragnaros)

Relic: Soulflame Vial (700 VP)

While MH/OH was the focus for T11, many people are suggesting sticking with a staff for T12. I highly agree with this since there are not many options for a MH weapon. With that said, I’ll list options here for both MH, OH, and 2H.

Staff: Sho’ravon, Greatstaff of Annihilation (Ragnaros)

Of course the legendary staff (I’ll go into more detail below) is the way to go, since it is by far the highest dps weapon out of the T12 options. However, if you can’t get your hands on said staff then the staff above is the second best thing.

Main Hand: Ko’gun, Hammer of the Firelord (Ragnaros)

Off Hand: Goblet of Anger (Shannox)

Legendary Staff

Casters (including myself) are rearing up to try their luck at getting the new caster legendary that Blizzard so graciously bestowed upon us. I thought I would go into a little more detail on how to acquire it and what the proc is all about.

First and foremost, here’s the beauty herself: Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest. Just look at all those delicious red sockets/stats. :D

This staff is the end result of a quest line that is several chains long, and is pretty similar to the one that produced Shadowmorne. It should be made clear that the staff is purely a DPS staff (sorry healers), which is made clear by the sheer amount of hit on it and the nature of its proc: Wrath of Tarecgosa. It should be noted that the proc has absolutely no global cooldown, making it a great choice for dot classes as well burst dps classes screw you mages.  You will have to collect 25 Seething Cinder off Firelands bosses in order to complete the staff.

The quest chain is pretty long, so instead of typing it out I will direct you to WoWhead which has already done so!

Staff Guide Click Here!

That’s pretty much it for now. Feel free to leave feedback or start discussions in the comment section. Thanks for reading!

~Shinobu

Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath).

As far as play style goes, I can’t see this change drastically affecting single target fights that are mostly in a “stand still and nuke this” type fashion. I can’t say the same about multi-dotting fights, since we will be gaining lunar/solar energy at an increased rate now. More testing/researching will have to be done on my part. I see this change essentially takeing away our decision whether or not to sit in a certain eclipsed state. I could potentially see this hurting Moonkin damage on AoE fights where sitting in Solar Eclipse not only buffs the damage on our Sunfire and Insect Swarm, but also buffs Wild Mushroom. Sitting in Solar Eclipse is still possible; we just can’t use Sunfire in our AoE rotation anymore.

This has upset many Moonkins, however Blizzard basically responded with “tough luck” in their response to the Moonkin community:

“Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath).”

There has been talk of just skipping the talent all together when the new patch comes out. Because Lunar Shower only accounts for a very small percentage of our dps, I don’t see a reason why this wouldn’t be a viable option in the future. However, as Graylo put it “The forums have been very busy talking about the possibility of dropping Lunar Shower from the talent build and I’m sure Blizzard has seen it. The entire purpose of this change is to prevent us from staying in Eclipse and doing Multi DoD AoE and Moonfire spam. Blizzard won’t want their efforts to be avoided.” So one can only assume that Blizzard will change some other mechanic that will make having this talent mandatory.

Another observation that was brought up was the fact that “movement” is no longer addressed in the new Lunar Shower tool tip. This may mean that the buff may be stacked with multiple applications of Moonfire, as opposed to just moving around like before.

In general, I’m strangely comfortable with this change (which is weird, cause I normally hate change), and think that it requires more testing before the Moonkin community rises up in arms against the Blizzard Devs. Keep in mind that Blizzard still has 2-3 more weeks to play around with the numbers on the PTR, and I wouldn’t worry to much about this change until it goes live.

1. Body and Soul~ For all the bouncing in between Nefarian and Onyxia to heal raid or tanks in need as well as for getting to my platform in P2.

2. Chakra~ To be able to heal the tanks in P1 comfortably but then to switch to raw raid healing in a push of a button.

3. Holy Concentration ~ More power to the spirit regen! This is a long fight and this talent is a god sent!

4. Lightwell~ On the platform when things are getting overwhelming it’s a simple click for a nice heal!

5.  Serendipity ~ Binding Heal + PoH = more bang for your buck on heavy raid damage (IE: Crackle, Tail Lash, Cinders, Magma, Shadow flame Barrage)

6. Guardian Spirit ~ Tank is taking a ton of OH SH*T damage, GO GO 40% more healing to him!

7. Circle of Healing ~ When is this not useful?

8. Surge of Light ~ Healing the tanks and getting a free Flash Heal for Serendipity, oh hell yes!

9. Rapid Renewal ~ The ability to use Inner Will, Renew Glyph, and Rapid Renewal for some guilt free HOTs to boost up healing on platforms!

Now here is where it gets sketchy. Healing Nefarian as Disc. My first thoughts were YUCK! Let me tell you, my first attempts at it didn’t go so well, I had no power auras set up the first night so tracking CDs in a spec that I wasn’t completely comfortable with was less than awe inspiring. I think I went through an entire attempt without using Inner Focus because I forgot about it.  I was more comfortable the next night having had practiced a bit in some random heroics with pug tanks that had less health than I did.

1. Power Word: Barrier ~ Crackles? Oh those are supposed to hurt? Not with this bad boy placed at the right time and place.

2. Power Word: Shield ~ Well this is a no brainer, damage absorbed whenever it is needed on people.

3. Divine Aegis ~ PoH on platforms + Power Word: Shield and you have yourself some serious damage reduction!

4. Inner Focus ~ Free spell + 25% more crit to it? USE on CD every 45 secs (less if you are specced for it)

5. Penance ~ 3 instant stacks of Grace (healing increased by24%  on a target), renew and then proceed to smiting!

6. Archangel~ Well at first it was hard for me to weave this one in there but I made sure to Holy Fire on CD and pop my “wings” at crucial points of the fight (IE: pre Crackle, on CD while on platform, on CD in P3)

7. Power Infusion ~ Well depending on my mana situation I either used it on myself for some Bubble Spam, or watched to see when our power players had high stacks from dominion, not going to lie…I was usually selfish with it!

8. Atonement ~ Love Love Love, if things are going ok in the raid and I am not a dedicated tank healer, I will spam holy fire/smite for the added benefit of DPSing=Healing. I haven’t quite figured out my rotation with it yet but it looks a little like this: Bubble, Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Bubble, Smite….etc. Tracking the Rapture Procs along with using Borrowed Time seems to be a win win for me. Like I said though, I need to use it more often to be able to judge what is most beneficial for me.

9. Pain Suppression ~ Well pretty much a nice mitigation CD for my tanks when timed right!

So depending on what your group make up is and the amount of experience you have, having at least two disc priests is a must have. To have so much damage reduction happening when this a heavy damage fight is a no brainer. Holy is great for raw healing but lacks the essential “don’t die I will save you!” spells that Discipline provides.  If you are a holy priest I highly advise learning all of discs little quirks so that you can be of help with it for when the fight mechanics call for it!

Next off we have Binding Heal able to proc Surge of Light. Always good to add more spells to cause procs IMO. Other than those 3 things, priests in general had a few changes. Inner Will/Inner Fire now last until canceled.  Awesome, the previous version didn’t really bother me too much, no fights lasted more than 30 minutes so to me it was always easy to remember to refresh pre-pull.  Something less for people to track was the aim for this one I suppose.  100% push back protection while channeling Divine Hymn or Hymn of Hope is a good change, these are cool downs that should be highly utilized and having them go for full duration is a plus!  Healing priests now have the Absolution ability, therefore being the main dispellers for offensive dots/hots. In PVE shadow priests rejoice! Although I am sure it’s a sad time in PVP.

So overall holy priests really didn’t gain or lose anything to lose sleep over!

When I first started raiding I was using this spell on CD to help with anytime people were grouped up but soon realized that it was a mana drain and a POH provided more throughput rather than placing it. So I then started using it on the major AOE events only (such as feuds on H Chimaeron or on the pillar for H Nefarian) but it just was not meant to be, I couldn’t justify using it when I could waste my mana on other spells.

So the patch came out and I was excited to see just how well it would work now. It sure is pretty but the numbers are just not there. I would use Holy Nova over Sanctuary, at least then I wouldn’t need to yell at people to “stand in good stuff”.  It may be possible that it is part of the patch day problems just like placing the circle or placing Lightwell but I very much doubt that. Thank you for more spells that I will never use Blizzard <3

This boss ended up being a bigger pain than expected. To be honest I just don’t think people were too focused while we did the first few attempts.  There were arguments on vent over where to run when you had the Sonic Breath. There were arguments over who was doing the gongs, there were arguments over holy priests using Body and Soul. By the time we downed this boss I was completely drained and not too happy with our overall group coordination.

To start we ran into problems on our initial strategy of the whole raid grouping up on the gong. There was slow reaction times, bad visibility (because Blizzard thought it would be funny to put a bright lighted gong on top of him that didn’t despawn.), there were range problems with healing the tank. After a lot of grumbling and finger pointing we decided that hey, let’s try this the way we did it on normal.  That was one of the best calls made all night.  Our first attempt at trying it the way we normally spread out by the door we got him down to about 15%. After that it went downhill.

The main problem we had was the Sonic Breath.  Atramedes would choose someone and they were to kite the breath in a circle around him without getting caught. Most of the time that person was safe but anyone in his path that wasn’t paying attention died. Then spawned the blame game. Well you were too close and he went to fast and the person couldn’t move, or you used Body and Soul and you aren’t suppose to use a run speed boost for kiting. OMG after minutes of debate we finally got it through to everyone that if you have low to no sound you can use any type of run speed boost as long as you DO NOT run through him causing him to wig out. While I understand that melee has a harder time coordinating together due to his butt being in their face most times, blocking all view, there are still boss mods that have handy things called timers. I admit at first I may have died once or twice to being caught between the Sonar Pulse discs and the flame breath, I learned to watch the timers like a hawk making sure I was always in a safe place when Sonic Breath was about to go off. At first there were issues with the person having the fiend maxing out on sound but I believe that was worked out fairly early. Once we had most of the kinks worked out for this phase came the kiting of the Roaring Flame Breath.

Sigh. So the first person targeted would forget all reasoning and just run. Sometimes they would run the right paths but more often then not they would cut right across the room causing a flame wall that made positioning when he came down a pain in the butt. I always try to Body and Soul the kiter and we also decided to use life grips (correct term is Leap of Faith) on the kiters due to the fact that we have at least 4-5 priests in our raids at any given time. Until we got the hang of when and where to do this it caused a whole new set of problems. Life grips would end up causing the target to land in a pile of Sonar Bombs maxing out their sound, or the angle would suck and the flame would catch a couple people in its path. Or the priest that life gripped would get it done perfectly but they themselves would get caught in a bomb/fire.  After awhile we got the kinks worked out of this phase and were able to work on the fight as a whole rather than as phases.

So now onto my point of view for healing the actual fight. Each group had a side of the room where they were stationed to “group up”. A few raid members questioned why we were to stand like this. It is for the simple fact that we have 3-4 healing priests, so to get more bang for you buck, you are stationed near other members of your group to gain PoH. My lightwell is usually positioned between my group and the melee so either group has immediate access to it. Also it is near the middle of the room for the simple fact that if you are dipping low on health during the air phase it is a simple click.

Most of my time is spent in Chakra: Sanctuary, seeing as there isn’t a lot of need for single target heals from me. Depending on my mana situation I will put down Holy word: Sanctuary for right before the Searing Flame to have those additional ticks of mastery/heals. I make sure I have the Serendipity buff for my group when Searing Flame goes off, Fheal/Bheal a lower member and then PoH another group that is low. There is really no set time to use Guardian Spirit so it is more at my discretion if a tank is getting low. Divine Hymn is the same way, I either use it during a Searing Flame or near the end when people are getting low and healers are running on fumes. I prefer to use it when I have a decent amount of mana and/or we have Heroism for the simple fact that the lower members get 10% more healing done to them. I always have a renew rolling on the tank and for this fight ProM is always on CD. CoH is usually on CD always, mainly being used on melee.

Now I will admit this was one of those fights where I just wanted to scream over vent (I rarely ever speak on it) at people that just weren’t getting it. But it also showed that we as a guild were able to overcome the cattiness and get it done. Now that we have killed him more than a few times on  heroic, things have gotten easier and the arguments are almost forgotten.

Big Wigs is nice for the customization of what your role needs to be most aware of. For example, as a healer I need to know on Heroic Magmaw when the tanks will get Mangle so that I can have my Gaurdian Spirit ready. As a raider I need to know when the skeletons/lava parasites will spawn. Dps classes will want to have different timers emphasized. Such as when the Magmaw’s head is about to come down so that they have the right dps increase cool downs up or when they need to switch off on the different Omnotron bosses.

DBM is nice for the simple fact that as a healer you do not need another raid frame addon for the boss you are fighting. It has one built that is movable to anywhere on your screen. Also it’s handy to have the built in “say announcer” for when your player has a certain debuff where people need to get away from/group up on you.

Both of these boss mods have customizable bars/fonts/placement/range finder/colors and alerts. At the beginning of a tier release it’s always nice to have both up and running for accuracy, sometimes one is more updated than the other, you just have to find out the hard way.

On to raid frames! This is all about customization of what you as a healer want to see. I know quite a few people who stick with just the default blizzard frames. For me those are just not enough. There are many healer customizable frames out there. The most used are: Grid/Clique, Healbot, and Vuhdo. I personally use healbot so I will start there with the advantages to it.

Healbot has a completely customizable interface. You can change the color of the health bars, the color of the names, the size, the shape, and placement of where you want it. You can make it show when players are missing your buffs or show when they have a specific debuff that you want tracked. I have already mentioned this in my previous post but as an example I track when my raid members are standing in the black ooze puddles on Heroic Maloriak. You just need to find the correct name of the debuff and you can make the entire raid frame change color while someone is afflicted by it. In this case it is “Dark Sludge”. This is one of the main reasons I like healbot, you don’t need to know the icon for every single debuff out there.  As a priest I use on an average fight 12 different direct healing spells. That is not including my chakras or holy words. Healbot allows you to shift/click, ctrl/click, alt/click, and combo of all three for each of your mouse buttons. There are many other features that I haven’t even touched upon but this isn’t a how to, it is just an overview.

Grid alone is a customizable raid frame addon, showing names, health, mana, debuffs, icons, etc. You can change the color of the frame, where the debuff and aura icons are shown, filter through classes, and many other statuses. Combine this with the addon Clique and you have something similar to healbot. Clique allows you to bind all your spells to mouse keys or key binds to interact with your unit frames (they don’t have to be grid, it’s just a common combination).

Vuhdo is also a similar addon. You can view all player buffs/debuffs, status, health, aggro, and HoTs. You can bind any type of macro, usable item, spell to 40 different mouse click combinations.It also allows you to sort frames into different rolls.

Each addon has a user guide and “how to” on setup. It is recommended when you are not familiar with one to browse through these until you feel comfortable customizing on your own. Each one of the three I have listed each come with a function to decurse/dispel also. A recommended addon for dispels is Decursive. This is a compact addon that allows you to place small boxes to wherever you prefer so that it is just a simple click on a box to dispel/decurse raid and party members.

Power Auras is great addon to alert you when there are certain spells available to you, when you are low on mana, when you have a certain amount of stacks of a buff, pretty much anything you want to track is able to be done. I personally use it to track CDs, when my Darkglow and Power Torrent procs, when I gain heroism, and when I hit around 40% mana. It is just a helpful reminder type tool so that you don’t consistently need to sort through your buffs. It can also be used to track a certain debuff that you want to be watchful of.

If you aren’t a fan of the Blizzard default cast bars I recommend Quartz. It allows you to place where you would like your casting bar, your targets casting bar and your focus’ casting bar. You can change the color, the font, the effect, and the size.

To track your healing done, compare your spells to other healers, and to just an overall judge of perfomance you can use either Recount or Skada. Both mods allow you to track: damage done, damage taken, healing done, healing taken, dispels, interrupts, deaths (and details leading to that death). Both addons allow you to click through to track what you want. It is a nice way to evaluate how you are doing compared to others or to track healing amounts of a certain spell if you are trying out a different play style. I prefer recount because it appears to be more accurate and user friendly to use. On the other hand Skada is more forgiving when it comes to performance while in a raid. Recount seems to bog down a system while skada is much lighter.

All of these are recommendations, not must haves. Many people are successful in playing while just using default setting in World of Warcraft. This is just an overview of highly used addons that make gaming life a little easier.

The first thing to mention, is that this content is currently being tested. Information might change over the next few days (possibly weeks). We’ll do our best to keep the guides updated with the most recent hotfixes, but for now they seem to be nearly completed, except for the numbers, which need to be tweaked a bit to make them fit the desired difficulty level.

1. High Priest Venoxis.

A fight with a lot of visual and shiny effects. However rather easy to execute properly, unlike other bosses here. As you pull him, poison will begin to draw lines across the room you will be fighting, drawing a random maze shape. Of course, if you stand on the poison you will receive a lot of damage and most likely die in no time.

One of his main abilities is called Whisper of Hesis. A channeled Poison Spit that  should be interrupted to minimize the damage your group takes.

Venoxis will also cast a link in between 2 players. And this link deals damage proportional to the distance between the two of them. The closer the players are, the more damage they will take, and the one way to get rid of this ability is to move far enough so that the link breaks.

Due to the nature of the fight, and because of the maze limiting your positions, your ranged DPS should spread out initially to deal with the poison link as soon as you can.

Once the boss hits 75% health, he will transform into a snake and gain new abilities. First of all, he will often put slime underneath him, so your tank should be ready to move him, so that the melee DPS can continue to attack. He will also cast Breath of Hesis, which is a 2 second cast breath that deals a lot of damage. Your tank should be able to avoid this ability by moving behind the boss as you see the cast begin.

Eventually, he will cast Bloodvenom and go to the top of the platform. He will then cast random poison beams that chase players around the maze. If you have a beam targeting you, do your best to run away without touching the walls of the maze, otherwise you might die. Simply avoid these beams until the boss gets exhausted.

Right after this ability is over, the boss will get stunned in the middle of the room and become exhausted, taking 100% more damage for a few seconds. Make sure you save your big DPS cooldowns for this moment. After that, the fight will repeat itself until you defeat him.

2. Bloodlord Mandokir.

This is a pretty straight forward fight. The main idea of this boss remains unchanged from the original fight. Every time a player dies during this encounter, Bloodlord Mandokir will level up, increasing the damage he deals by 20%. He will begin the fight mounted on his raptor, and every so often he will randomly charge at any group member and cast decapitate, which effectively 1 shots the player. Once you die, a chained ghost will resurrect you, and give you a stacking buff that increases damage and healing you do by 25%, also increasing damage you take by 10%. However, there is a limited number of ghosts on the arena, so you have to kill Mandokir before it is too late.

Bloodlord Mandokir will also command his raptor to charge and destroy one of the ghosts. If you don’t feel comfortable with your DPS to beat him in time, you will have to swap targets and kill the raptor before he does any harm. And be prepared to fight the raptor once again, as he will be resurrected many times throughout the fight.

Finally, Bloodlord Mandokir will also cast Devastating Slam, a 2 sec channeled ability that makes him leap into the air and deal a lot of damage in one particular direction. This spell has a really obvious animation in a frontal cone around the direction the boss faces, and you should move away from it as soon as you can. Also be aware of a life drain that will be casted randomly. This ability drains 50% of the targets current health every 2 seconds, and heals Bloodlord Mandokir for 50% of the damage dealt. However just like Anub’arak on Trial of the Coliseum, this ability has a limit, which is 2500 damage dealt per tick. So you should only heal the affected target slightly, making sure they remain above 2500 health, to minimize the healing requirements, as well as the amount of HP the boss heals.

At 20%, he will go into a frenzy, increasing his damage, and the frequency at which he decapitates people, giving the fight a soft enrage. Make sure you save DPS, tanking and healing cooldowns for this phase.

3. High Priestess Kilnara.

The Panther boss, and perhaps the toughest one on this dungeon. This fight revolves around your ability to keep things under control while pushing your group’s capabilities to the max.

The boss herself is rather simple and does not deal a lot of physical damage. She has a few abilities you can interrupt to minimize damage, and some kind of frontal cone attack that should be avoided. But the main focus of this fight lies within the adds.

All around the room you will see groups of panthers sleeping in packs of 4. Just like the trash before the boss, the panthers randomly leap on targets and leave a very nasty bleed debuff on them. Dealing with 4 panthers at a time can be a nuisance if your group is not geared enough.

The trick is to simply pull the panthers in small groups, be it 2 at a time, or 4 at a time, depending on your gear and skill, and deal with them before touching the boss. If you are having problems just pull the panthers a bit slower, give your healer time to catch up, as there is no rush here.

Once the boss reaches 50%, she will shift into her panther form. Any unkilled panther adds will wake up and attack your group at this point, which is why you must make sure all the panthers are dead. The boss will gain a haste debuff, and increase tank damage considerably, as well as leap on your group members leaving a bleed debuff.

Overall, the fight is not too difficult as long as you keep things under control and bring the pace of the fight to an adequate one for your group.

4. Zanzil.

One of the easier fights if you know what you’re doing. Zanzil has only 2 main abilities that remain active during the whole fight.
One of them is an interruptible cast that deals about 40k damage. Do your best to interrupt it as it will greatly minimize the amount of damage going on.
The other ability is a trail of blue fire that goes in one random direction. Simply move the boss away from this, if you’re a DPS or a healer, don’t stand on top of it.

Besides these 2 abilities, Zanzil will randomly cast one out of 3 abilities. Each ability will have 1 color associated, and you will be able to see the color on your raid warnings. Depending on what happens, you will have to drink the cauldrons located within the room, so that you can deal with the mechanics accordingly. Not taking the appropriate cauldron, or taking the wrong one can easily get you killed in no time.
Resurrection Elixir: This is the blue colored ability. It will resurrect a Zanzili Berserker to attack random enemies. Your group will have to drink the blue cauldron, and kill the berserker as soon as they can, before the next ability happens. 1 random group member will be focused by the berserker, and they will have to kite it, as they hit really hard and might even 1 shot non tanks.

Zanzil’s Graveyard Gas: This is the green colored ability. It will flood the room with toxic gas that deals 10% of the player’s health every second, and it can be really hectic to heal if you are not prepared. However if you drink the green cauldron, you will reduce nature damage taken by 90%, so you end up taking only 1% of your max health damage per second, which is really easy to heal. The trick is to react quick!

Zanzil’s Zombie Resurrection Elixir: This is the red colored ability. It will resurrect a group of zombies to attack your group. You will have to drink from the red cauldron to increase your AoE capabilities and be able to deal with the zombies as quickly as possible. However remember that this can also bring a lot of friendly fire in your group. Once the zombies are dead, dispel yourself to minimize the damage on both yourself and the group.

The fight is a repetition of these 3 abilities on any random order, combined with the first 2. Just be ready to drink the appropiate cauldron in time, and you’ll kill this boss in no time.

5. Jin’do the Godbreaker.

This is a 2 phased fight, and the first half is rather simple. His main ability during phase one is a dead zone, which is an anti magic shield type of effect, that reduces magical damage taken by targets in the zone by 90%. Phase one boils to dragging the boss and your group inside and outside of this zone at the appropriate time, as he will randomly cast a buff on himself called Shadows of Hakkar, that will cause him to deal around 130k additional lightning damage to the target and 10 nearby allies on every successful hit. If you are not standing inside the dead zone as this happens, you will most certainly get 1 shotted, so make sure to react quick enough!

Once the Jin’do reaches 50%, phase 2 will begin, and you will be teleported into the spirit realm. In here Jin’do will be behind Hakkar, casting Shadow Spike very often, these are blue fireballs that must be avoided, very much like the ones on the Halfus encounter, done by the proto behemoth. He will also summon a lot of spirits, and these must be picked up by your tanks immediately, and AoE’d down by your group before they get out of control, until the fight ends.

Inside the spirit realm you will see Hakkar trapped by 4 chains, and your goal is to release him in order to kill Jin’do. However the only way to release him is to get assistance from the spirits of the trolls you killed on your way there.

Pull the giant troll spirits and start DPSing them down once again. Your group will have to stack on top of the chains, along with the troll. As the troll’s smash is the only thing that can break the chains. Just remember that once the smash happens, there will be a ground effect that deals additional damage, and increases damage taken by 50%. Take advantage of this to DPS and kill down the chain, but don’t stand on top of it, or you might die!

Continue to pull the troll spirits and kill all 4 chains, as you avoid the shadow spikes, and kill the spirits that keep spawning. Once you manage to release Hakkar, he will kill Jin’do and the encounter will end.

Overall the second phase can get very chaotic. Just keep things under control, and take your time. Make sure the spirits are killed in time, and deal with the big trolls breaking the chains when you are ready for it, not before.

The whole instance has a really unique design, and some really interesting mechanics. Overall it will be an adequate challenge to the majority of the population, and it contains some really attractive gear to help you focus with raid progression.

Just to finish with this guide, we did not cover the Cache of Madness, which is the 4 optional & random bosses that can be spawned if you have a minimum of 450 archaeology skill. However these did not seem to pose a difficult challenge compared to the others. We will post a new guide about these soon!

One of the things that is a big controversy right now is the fact that a lot of priests say that a point in Spirit of Redemption is a waste because you shouldn’t be dead. Now I do agree with the “you shouldn’t be dead” part but at the same time when you are working on progression there are going to be deaths. There’s no way around that, it’s not an aggro problem or even a standing in fire problem, it’s a “HOLY CRAP this is a long fight and I am running on fumes for mana and there is huge incoming damage” problem.

From personal experience you can save the day with Spirit of Redemption. We were working on HMagmaw, there were 4 dps left alive, a tank and me. The head was about to come down but there was one of those darn flaming skeletons up running around causing destruction in his path. I just couldn’t find the regen to keep going so I found the fire, stepped into it and died BUT bang I was still healing with unlimited mana,  Asgeroth (one of our guild warlocks) was still up and going, the tank was almost dead from the skeleton, the head was down. I made my decision, the tank was as good as gone but there was less than 2% left on the boss, I popped Guardian Spirit on Asgeroth and spammed the ever living sh*t out of him. Spirit of Redemption ran out and I almost cried except for the fact that the next second ACHIEVEMENT SPAM, we killed him!  Now while I hate to say this because it will inflate his ever growing ego but the reason I went down this path was because I KNEW if we were going to pull this attempt off it was with Asgeroth alive.

Now I am not promoting character suicide by any means but it comes down to what you think you can do to save the raid, your not going to be the hero every fight by dying but it alleviates the pressure on the other healers if you do happen to die. Once we have all heroics on farm I will probably go ahead and skip that talent point but until then my OPINION is that you can’t raid without Spirit of Redemption I don’t care how good of a healer you are, wipes happen and people go OOM, this is just a “darn it guys, I am still trying even though I am dead”. The effort is there, as long as you don’t die and slam the keyboard away (which I have done, not gonna lie) you are still in the fight for another couple of seconds.

Who out there has stories of saving the day? Who out there wants to tell me how wrong I am? I am all ears, show me some facts to support your theory and let’s have a debate! In all reality there is no right or wrong, its all in the play style and what you/your guild wants from you.