[10] Dragon Soul 2/3-healing?

[timoseewho]

Hello, I wanted to open this thread just to get an idea of if people are 2 or 3-healing their Dragon Soul runs thus far, both on regular and heroic. I know that boss fights are usually under-tuned on the PTR (though some may be pretty obvious if they must be 3-healed), but I hope this thread can carry on through to live. I'm just curious to see when it gets to heroic, and people 2-heal, as to what healer classes they're running. I personally made a few mistakes in Firelands on heroic 3-healing when we could have 2-healed to make it 'easier', so I hope to avoid that:).

[Kishandra]

We only did normal testing on the PTR but from what I've seen, my opinion is that you'll want at least 3 healers for spine and madness. Perhaps even 4 for spine (5 might be pushing it though.) Everything else was irrelevant enough to do whatever you wanted and still pull through.

[Paoanii]

While I haven't actively discussed this with the raid, this was my impression of the damage output from the perspective of both heals and tank.

NOTE: This is from the perspective of a 7/7H tank and 6/7H healer for his 7/7H raid group, make of this what you will.

Regular
Morchok-2 (we were able to 1 heal on PTR without an issue)
Warlord Zon'ozz- 2 (3 if you want to bounce more to get the extra damage)
Yor'sahj the Unsleeping- 2
Hagara the Stormbinder- 2
Ultraxion- 3 (2 is definitely possible, especially with the buff, and depending on dps may be easier)
Warmaster Blackhorn- 2
Spine of Deathwing- 2 (becomes a bit hairy at the end, so probably 3 for most groups)
Madness of Deathwing- 2 (see above)

Heroic
Morchok- 3
Warlord Zon'ozz- 3 (2 if you choose to do less bounces or have ample raid CDs for the aoe phase)
Yor'sahj the Unsleeping- 3
Hagara the Stormbinder- 2
Ultraxion- 3 (Expect a Baleroc situation where 2-healing is forced to meet the dps check, we weren't able to beat enrage with 3)
Warmaster Blackhorn- 2 or 3 (purely speculation, I'm leaning towards 2 but haven't done the fight personally)
Spine of Deathwing- 3 (again, purely speculation)
Madness of Deathwing- May be forced to 2 like Rag but for comfort, 3

[Bellanka]

The entire normal mode tier is completely 2-healable.

We run with a Resto Druid and a Holy/Disc Priest. We had a few rough patches (mostly with Deathwing's Mutates Tentacles and sub-10%) but it was still doable.

I've been trying to convince our healing team to rotate a third full time healer, but they're confident they can handle two-healing the first four or five heroic modes.

[Lieris]

It's best to take 3 healers and 1 tank for Spine IMO.

(normal that is, no idea about heroic)

[baleogthefierce]

It's best to take 3 healers and 1 tank for Spine IMO.

(normal that is, no idea about heroic)

Agreed, the initial flurry of debuffs is a bit much to handle with 2 healers (especially when learning the fight). We 2-tanked our kill last night, but the bloods die so quickly that our Druid tank spent most of his time in cat until the second plate came off and the adds started piling up. We'll be one tanking it in the future (at least on normal).

[fafhrd]

We were trying Madness of DW last night with 2 tanks 3 heals and it seemed pretty doable aside from unforced errors. People have killed it with 1 tank 3 heals though (in a not very geared, 6/7H group) as well as 2 tank 2 heals. In both cases getting an extra DPS helps avoid part of the damage the extra healer/tank is there for, so might be worth looking into. I don't think we'll change our strat this week, but maybe later. I expect some of the higher guilds will also pull off a 1 tank 2 heal kill next week.

[baleogthefierce]

We were trying Madness of DW last night with 2 tanks 3 heals and it seemed pretty doable aside from unforced errors. People have killed it with 1 tank 3 heals though (in a not very geared, 6/7H group) as well as 2 tank 2 heals. In both cases getting an extra DPS helps avoid part of the damage the extra healer/tank is there for, so might be worth looking into. I don't think we'll change our strat this week, but maybe later. I expect some of the higher guilds will also pull off a 1 tank 2 heal kill next week.

We only had time for about 4 pulls on Madness last night before our raid time expired, but we were using 1 tank/2 heals and got 15% best attempt. Dropping both a tank and healer lets you kill the large tentacles quickly enough that the lone tank doesn't run out of cooldowns for Impale, and having 2 extra DPS really helps once you drop the damage buff aspects.

[fafhrd]

How hard was tank survival in p2? Did the adds die quickly enough with 7 dps that it didn't get scary?

[Paoanii]

Between the extra dps and bubble for the debuffs, I could see p2 being easily solo tankable with a paladin. It might also just be that paladin mentality you were talking about though with wanting to solo heal-solo tank everything under the sun.

[baleogthefierce]

We haven't yet gotten deep enough into P2 for the tank debuffs to be an issue, I'll let you know if we can make it work tonight

[fafhrd]

Between the extra dps and bubble for the debuffs, I could see p2 being easily solo tankable with a paladin. It might also just be that paladin mentality you were talking about though with wanting to solo heal-solo tank everything under the sun.

I just realized that if we did sinestra again now that we have you, we could do all that dirty underhand sleazy cheating bubble stuff with the whelps people kept talking about here -.-...

[Lieris]

I really wouldn't recommend solo tanking Madness. Tetanus builds up too quickly and you shouldn't need the extra DPS anyway.

[baleogthefierce]

I really wouldn't recommend solo tanking Madness. Tetanus builds up too quickly and you shouldn't need the extra DPS anyway.

We just killed it with 2 heals, 1 tank and I do not recommend doing it that way Tank went down on the first set of adds, I tanked one as ret while he was rebirthed. DW fell over right as the 2nd set of adds was coming out. I feel like this setup would have been impossible without the 7/7H FL gear that we have.

[fafhrd]

We just managed it as 2 heals 1 tank too. No tank death I think, although I think someone else may have died (edit: checking video, no one died all fight ).

Took a bunch of attempts though, not sure it wouldn't have been quicker doing it some other way. Was fun though