Last night a friend and I decided to do H-CoS  just for the hell of it. His name is Zikthar and he’s a great paladin tank. I’ve grouped with him many times before, including when he’s invited me into his guild Naxx runs.

It’s unbelievable the difference a great tank can make over a sub-par one. We breezed through the instance and got to Infinite Corruptor (the timed boss) with almost five minutes left to spare.

Something worth mentioning: this was the first 5-man I did as holy spec in about four months. I was a little tired of Disc, and wanted to see what holy was like with some upgraded gear. It’s definitely a different feeling, since you don’t have that cushion that strong bubbles gives you. But with replentishment and Blessing of Wisdom going, I didn’t have to worry about mana and could toss out big heals whenever I wanted. Guardian Spirit is damn awesome, especially with the glyph, even though I only used it once (and it wasn’t consumed).

For those interested in attempting the timed run, here are a few very general tips:

• Buff yourself with mana regen scrolls/food/elixers. Take Blessing of Wisdom to help with regen. None of the bosses hit particularly hard, and you won’t have much chance to drink so you’ll need mana to regen as you run.
• You have to move very quickly between the waves of mobs at the beginning. One mishap can make the difference so make sure you know where you’re going and stay together.
• A single death isn’t the end of the world. Get the player rezzed and buffed quickly.
• When Arthas tags along, there are periods where he allows you to rest and you have to talk to him to resume. Talk to him immediately.

I lost the roll on the drake but I wasn’t too worried about it.

OK, I’m about 5 Guinesses deep, so forgive my brazenness, but this H-UK run makes me wish I had gone to bed when I had the opportunity. Since I’m in no shape to attempt to construct sentences, I’ll put it in list order:

• I PUGed the group, because I need badges for the heirloom healing mace. 9 more badges to go.
• I was invited and summoned, which is a great start.
• The tank is a DK with 21k health, which negates said great start
• The stupid shaman is in a rush. Before every pull she makes sure to chatter “Go go!” I asked her if she happened to be in labor. She didn’t respond.
• The tank died once because the shaman loves to pull aggro to show how awesome she is with her 1.7k dps.
• The tank died again because I was in the middle of commenting on how it’s weird that a Super Healing Potion would drop from an 80 heroic instead of a Runic Healing Potion. This was a dumb move on my part. Thankfully, we didn’t wipe.
• The shaman is now commenting on how badass she’s doing by posting the damage meter and mentioning how she’d do even better if she didn’t have her healing glyphs equipped. I think I won’t heal her again.
• This Guiness is going down smooth.
• The tank left the group to “pick up his wife” right before the second boss. So I’m writing this post as we wait for him to get back.
• The shaman and someone else are “LOL” emoting every 4 seconds. I want to kill myself.

PUG life.

Update: The group wound up being nice. Although it was a long run, most of them seemed like good people that I’d group with again.

Last night I was fishing in Ironforge while browsing the LookingforGroup channel in case  something caught my attention.  There was a warrior who had asked a few times, politely and in the right channel, if a healer would join his group for heroic Violet Hold.

I’ve healed HVH before, and although it’s stressful and I loathe one boss in particular (the Void Walker boss), I decided to take a shot and run it again.

Most people get a nasty taste in their mouths from the thought of PUGing heroics.  Some flat-out refuse. But not many players in my guild have made it to level 80 yet, so I don’t have a choice.   About 80% of my runs have been very good.  The bad ones were mostly because of under-geared tanks, and one run in particular was because of an under-geared healer who had been accidentally using DOWNRANKED versions of all of his healing spells since the mod Clique doesn’t upgrade the spells automatically : /

Anyway, the VH group consisted of a protection warrior, two rogues, a fire mage, and myself.  The first wave of pulls were easy, and I barely had to drink.

Zuramat the Obliterator

We made it to the first boss, and before we know who the boss was going to be, I knew who the boss was going to be, my buddy…Zuramat the Obliterator.

Zuramat the Obliterator

Zuramat is a void walker and often regarded as the most difficult boss in the instance, but I think he’s just misunderstood.  He’ll come out of his portal, and down the broken wall where the tank can engage him. This is a stationary fight. His key abilities are:

1) He summons “void spawns” every few seconds that shoot shadow bolts at people. The spawns will continue to accumulate and bolts at the entire party. By the end of the fight, if the adds aren’t dealt with (I’ll explain how in a second), there is MASSIVE AOE damage and can stress a healer enough to turn his hair gray.

2) He puts a spell on himself called Shroud of Darkness.  When a player attacks him while Shroud of Darkness is up, the player will receive a debuff that decreases healing received by 20%.  This means that if a tank/dps hits him 5 times in a row, they can’t be healed anymore.  This ability is deadly because then player CAN’T be healed through the shadow bolts until the debuff is off.  When the boss puts this ability on himself it’s important for the DPS to STOP ATTACKING.  It has a two second cast time so the DPS will know plenty in advance when it’s time to stop attacking.  Note to fellow priests: We can dispel the debuff on our party members so if you see it stacking it’s probably worthwhile to do that. In a perfect WoW world the DPS would follow simple, easy instructions and would never get the debuff but if you’re PUGing you’ll probably be dispelling.

3) He channels a spell called Void Shift to a random party member that is a small DOT but also allows the player to target and thus destroy the adds that are hurling shadow bolts.  This is VERY important. Some groups choose to ignore this and prefer “burning down the boss” but it makes for an unnecessary headache.

Our party went the “burn the boss” route, hence the 6,000 void spawns that were launching shadow bolts into our faces. Healing through this is not easy at all and I highly recommend reminding your party members to take your time, leave the boss alone, and burn down a few spawns when they get Void Shifted. It’ll save everybody time, mana, and repair money in the long run.

Healer Tips:

• Dispel the debuff that reduces healing received.
• Encourage your party to take the extra time to burn down the adds when they have the opportunity; unless your group out-gears the instance.
• I haven’t tried this yet, but consider standing close to the tank and melee dps (since the spawns will hit you regardless of where you stand), so that when it’s your turn to target the adds, you can unleash a few holy novas hopefully taking a few void spawns down while keeping the party up.  I think I’d consider this only if the party was set on taking the adds down and not simply “burning down the boss”.  If they were insistent upon the burning method, there will be too much AOE damage happening and Holy Nova simply won’t be able to keep up.

The waves to the second boss were a bit challenging, but managable. I noticed that, in this wave of mobs, there was a group or two that did a drain life/mind flay’ish spell that would tick for quite a bit of damage.  It seemed like the target was chosen at random but I could be wrong. Just be ready for a bit of Binding Heal action.

Moragg the Eyeball Thing

The second boss we encountered was Moragg.

Moragg

This fight is pretty much tank and spank if the party follows a simple rule: Stand close to the boss. It’s a rule that I wasn’t aware of until after the fact. He channels some goofy spell that drains life depending on how far away you are. At max distance (where I stand), it ticks for a whopping 3,000 damage every x amount of seconds. The big problem with this is, as far as I can tell, as soon as he’s done with you he immediately switches to some one else. If the party is close enough then a simple renew can make the DOT negligible, just be ready to switch off to another target and not forget about the tank.

Healer Tips:

- Keep the party close to the Moragg.

- Keep yourself alive when you get the DoT.

- There is almost always somebody with the debuff so be on your toes.

The third round of trash seemed to be the most challenging. There was a point when some of the dps pulled aggro on a group of four mobs and the tank was scrambling all over the place to regain control while I spammed heals.  The dps player wound up dying, which forced me to use the few seconds break between waves to rez, and buff, and it was back to battle immediately. There were a few times that I was literally spamming greater heals on the tank while binding healing myself and another party member.

Cyanigosa, the leader

The final boss was, and always is Cyanigosa.

Cyanigosa isn’t an overly difficult fight as long as the group pays attention to a few key abilities:

1) Blizzard. She’ll summon a blizzard which has a slowing affect and can hit for about 3,000 damage per second. Needless to say, it’s important to get the hell out of the blizzard ASAP when it’s on top of you. This can be tricky for a healer because moving around and canceling a needed greater heal on the tank can result in possible death so try to keep all party members topped off.

2) She sucks everybody to her.  I’m not sure exactly what the ability is called, but get out from under her as soon as possible.  Again, when she does this it’ll interrupt any spell that you’re in the middle of casting. I was forced to use my Guardian Spirit on the tank at this phase.

3) She has a mana drain which I made the mistake of ignoring.  I believe it only takes away a max of 1500-2000 mana but on a fight where you’re constantly casting, two of those mana drains can lead to serious trouble…especially for the holy priests out there.  Make sure to dispel this when you have a free second.

4) Like almost every dragon boss fight, she has a dragon breath spell that hits targets in front of her, and a tail swipe attack for players standing behind her. The safest spot is always on either side of her.

Healer Tips:

- This fight tends to force you to be mobile. Keep Prayer of Mending dinging around, Renew on the tank, and PW: Shield isn’t a bad option for DPSers caught in a blizzard if your mana pool allows for it. Unfortunately you won’t have a ton of time to chain cast Greater Heal because you’re either forced to move from a blizzard, or you’re sucked into the dragon interrupted your cast. Circle of Healing helped me out a lot on this fight, considering the fact that we had 3 members in melee range, and when the dragon pulled us in, we were all well within CoH range and taking damage.

- I managed to bang out one or two Prayer of Healing spells but it was stressful since it’s such a long cast and feels even longer when you’re watching health bars drop for 3 long seconds until you get it off.

Unfortunately our first attempt at her resulted in a wipe which is a huge mistake.  Violet Hold is very unforgiving to wipes, and we had to start the entire run from the first wave.  Also, it’s worth noting that the bosses are still there, but they don’t drop loot the second time around. So you get twice the aggravation, but no loot to compensate.

No one received any upgrades to their gear which is too bad. I won a few random greens, and the Frozen Orb.  The most important things were the rep, experience of being there, and the badges.