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Upon entering the Eye of Eternity you face Malygos the Spellweaver, Lord of Magic and creepy old uncle of the Dragon Aspects.
Let’s take a moment to get to know our raid boss. Malygos wasn’t all bad at one time. He was a happy go lucky kind of dragon, you know the kind of dragon you could hang out with, have some drinks and get high with while he tells you dirty jokes all night. That was until Deathwing used a little thing called the Demon Soul to exterminate the entirety of the Blue Dragon flight during the War of the Ancients. From that moment Malygos went into seclusion and started his downward spiral into insanity.
After playing a small role in freeing Alexstrasza from the orcs, Alexstrasza resurrected most of the Blue Dragon Flight, but the emotional scars of the past still haunted Malygos and he fell into complete insanity.
Upon looking upon the world of Azeroth Malygos came to the conclusion that all magic users must be eliminated, yes even the peace loving tree hugging shaman. At this point we find ourselves in the middle of the war between the Kirin Tor and the Blue Dragon flight and it is our duty to destroy Malygos. Why on Azeroth the Kirin Tor isn’t taking down Malygos themselves is beyond me, but who am I to judge.
Entering the EoE you will find yourself on a platform in the middle of vast nothingness. When you are ready to engage Malygos, click on the orb in the middle of the room to start the encounter.
The Malygos encounter is made up of three phases…
1) OMG how am I supposed to heal that phase?
2) Why don’t I get to ride on a hover disk phase?
3) 1…1…2…Oh I was supposed to heal phase?
Phase One: OMG how am I supposed to heal that phase?
Phase one is a pseudo tank and spank. During the fight sparks will be coming from the four corners of the zone. If the sparks are mot killed before they get to Malygos he will get a 50% increase in damage for 10 seconds pretty much allowing him to one shot most tanks. Be aware of where the sparks are killed, because they need to die near Malygos and the raid since they offer a DPS boost that is necessary for beating the 10 min enrage time.
Along with the sparks, every 60 seconds Malygos will cast vortex tossing the entire raid into the air, swirling around him causing 2K damage a second to everyone. During this time only instant heals can be cast. Healing through this is tough as a shaman, but still doable.
When first tossed in the air, riptide yourself, the HoT will help cover some of the damage but not all. Then after the riptide cool down, cast it on the lowest health person, with special focus on the tank or the other healers. Just before you land cast Natures Swiftness and Tidal Force. This will allow you to cast an instant chain heal with an almost guaranteed crit just as the raid lands back on the platform. Due to the cool downs on these two abilities, you will only be able to do this once so if you want you can wait for the second or third vortex to do this. Either way, cast the first chain heal off the tank and the spam chain heal to top the raid off and everyone reassumes their positions.
Phase Two: Why don’t I get to ride on a hover disk phase?
Once Malygos gets to 50% he will take off and circle platform while mobs on hovering discs of doom come down and attack the raid. As a healer, you will never get to jump on the discs to attack the mobs above you. Your job is to make sure all the range DPS and the tank live through phase 2. You will need to enter the bubbles of magic protection to help reduce the damage of the mobs as well as Malygos’s AoE damage.
Once the all the adds have been destroyed Malygos will get really pissed and start phase three.
Phase Three: 1…1…2…Oh I was supposed to heal phase.
Phases three begins with the destruction of the platform, but have no fear, the red dragon flight has come to help out. Everyone mounts up to a drake and everyone has the same abilities. Because of this, your role as a healer in phase one and two may change to DPS during phase three. Normally, the raid can be healed by the abilities of one drake rider while the rest DPS. If coordination is not that great, having two healers will do. If you are DPS, you will hit 1, 1 then 2 the wait for 60 energy and repeat casting shield on yourself if Malygos targets you. If you are healing you will cast the HoT on 4 people and then cast the AoE heal. The whole time you are doing this you will be rotating around Malygos counter clockwise to avoid damage. If done perfectly, you will need 2 minutes to do down him before the enrage timer, but any extra time you can get yourself from phase one will be a bonus.
Assuming you have gotten through all phases, and Old Blue is dead, Alextrazsa will come in and bless you and your raid group with the gift of phat lewt.
Misc Tips:
1) Toggle “v” to show the health bars above the mobs. This makes it much easier to see the sparks and the lords on the hover discs.
2) Make use of Natures Swiftness and Tidal Force for helping the vortex healing.
3) Have druids use bark skin and death knights should use magic shell to reduce the amount of damage during vortex.
4) Have everyone buff up their stamina so their total HP is over 20K. This will provide good survivability when landing after vortex.
Do some damage: DPS is not a dirty word, even for those who have had some issues with the pewpew lust. Many raid encounters are DPS races and when a 10-man raid is rolling with three healers you are sacrificing a DPS for the safety of healing. Some times it will be need, if not required, for you as a healer to push out some damage when you can to beat that enrage timer. As a resto shaman here are the following recommendations for adding what DPS you can to your raid.
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Lighting Bolt Spam – Just like your elemental brothers, start going all emperor and toss out some bolts Shatner style.
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Flame shock/Lava Burts – The DoT of Flame Shock and the slow cool down of lava burst allow you to do some damage while still having times to keep an eye on health bars.
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Fire Totems – Searing totem for single target DPS and Fire Nova and Magma totems for AoE DPS.
Now, you are not going to be going all out and topping the DPS charts, but if healing is hand and your mana is manageable make sure to help out when you can.
It was a busy weekend and I am starting to feel it…just…about…zzzzzz…….
The weekend started with some heroic runs of Utgarde Pinnacle in the attempt to get our tanks their tanking weapon. The first run we did started rather well, but things got a little shaky at the trophy room. Depending on the DPS of your group you need to conserve your mana as much as possible while taking down the trophies so you have a chance of keeping the group up during the boss fight. Once we finally got past that we faced the dreaded gauntlet. Yeesh, what a pain. I rather not talk about this run any more.
The second run went better and we actually got it done but still no love for our tanks. Sorry Elnino & Pud.
Sunday night was raid night and before flying to Naxxramas we decided to give Obsidian Sanctum a shot. First, we decided to down all the drakes just to make sure we would have a shot at Sartharion.
The dynamic of the drake fights are really cool but I have no idea how you can down Sartharion with all three drakes up with just 10 people.
After we downed all three drakes we took on Sartharion. The fight is pretty much a tank and spank with some adds. He doesn’t hit that hard and healing through the encounter isn’t too bad at all. What you need to do though is watch for the lava walls. Yup, walls of lava come crashing over the island you are on and you need to make sure the whole raid is awake and moves to the openings in the wall or the fire DoT will make quick work of them. It took some time but we did get him down, even though we forgot about the last lava wall and all but the tank wiped at the end right next to Sartharion corpse. Look for this raid guide in the near future.
After OS, we made our way to Naxxramas. We decided to pass on the last boss of the Spider wing and hit the first bosses of the military and the plague wing. Instructor Razuvious is a very cool fight. The dynamic of having to control NPCs to tank adds a nice wrinkle to the normal boss encounter. After a few shots he fell and allowed me to pick up Iron Rings of Endurance. We then made our way to plague wing and Noth the Plaguebringer. The raid really stepped up and focused and allowed us to single shot him on our first attempt.
So far into raiding our guild is now 4/15 in Naxx and 1/1 in Obsidian Sanctum. We have been doing very well and our efforts have exceeded everyone’s expectations. Here is to you PiM!
On a side note, I was able to pick up a new Chest, Bracer and Feet from our guild’s residence leather worker. The mats were very cheap and the upgrades were well worth it. I highly recommend if you are starting heroics or raiding and you are a little under-geared, find yourself a leather worker and get your self some very easy upgrades.
Since it will take me awhile to compile information for a full resto shaman Naxxramas raid guide, I thought it might be beneficial to post tips for each encounter while the raid guides are under construction.
Naxxramas: Spider Wing
Anub’Rekhan: This is the first boss you will encounter in the Spider wing. He is alone in a large round room. The basic fight is a tank and spank with a spawned add until phase two. This is where AR cast locust swarm and the raid group collapses into the center of the room while the tank kites AR around the perimeter of the room (12 to 6 then 6 to 12). During the locust swarm the tank is usually out of range for heals without the healer getting locust swarm. To help get the tank through this phase cast a fresh earth shield on the tank and well as a riptide. Between the shield and the HoT from riptide it should be enough to get the tank to his next tanking position. Another thing is have two healers in the middle handling off tank and raid heals and another healer at the end of the kite path. This will allow a healer to pick the tank up ASAP during the last couple of pounding hits from AR without getting hit with locust swarm.
Another thing to try is not as much related to healing, but more about damage output. When you are just starting to run Naxx, the gear of your DPS might not be up to snuff and you may end up hitting AR’s enrage timer. To handle this, after the tank gets agro, use bloodlust for an initial boost of DPS when everyone is able to focus on QR before the adds and scarabs. If you are running with multiple shamans, you will be able to get a second bloodlust to burn down AR towards the end of the fight.
Grand Widow Faerlina: GWF is Boss number two in a room for of spiders and acolytes. Have the tank clear the room group by group by line of sight pulling them. The fight requires some coordination. The main tank will engage GWF on the platform and the off tank will grab the adds and move them to one side of the stairs. Each time she goes into frenzy, the main tank will pull her to adds where the DPS will burn one down quick to remove the effect. Once the effect is removed the tank will move her away until the next frenzy. I haven’t seen any special tips on healing this, other than as a shaman, you will have your hands full with AoE damage. Make sure to let the raid know to move out of the AoE right away if they are not already doing so.
Maexxna: Ok, now we have yet to down Maexxna but the few times we ran it there are some things you want to do during this encounter. During the fight there is some nasty poison, especially Necrotic Poison that reduces heals on the tank that needs to be cleansed right away. Also every 40 seconds web spray is cast that is a 4 sec incapacitate. During this time you can’t heal or cleanse. Before web spray make sure to cast a fresh earth shield and a riptide and drop your poison cleansing totem to help the tank survive during the 4 seconds.
Maexxna’s other fun ability is web wrap. This will launch someone to the webbed wall behind you. The wrap is similar to Illhoof’s chains and needs to be destroyed quickly before the target is dead. If your DPS is lacking, you will have to position a healer close to the wall to heal the affected target until the DPS can get them freed.
Wednesday morning at 1:38 am Jagerbombz hit level 80. Nineteen hours later The Pen is Mightier made it’s first run into the 10 Man Naxxramas.
The main core of the raid was two prot warriors and three resto shamans. I would have liked a more diverse healing group, but we did much better than I had expected. The one thing I did find is that the LHW build does work, but if you are not careful you can run into mana issues pretty quickly. I believe that the initial issues is with the mix of blue/green gear you may roll into Naxx with, as the gear gets better I think the build will get better also.
On the topic of raid builds, I went in with a different build that I had posted. I dropped healing grace for improved earth shield and one point into reincarnation. I will keep rolling with this build for a few more runs before I make any changes as I find needed and will post any findings that I have.
The raid itself was a bit challenge, but a ton of fun. We started with the Spider Wing after the slaying of Mr.. Bigglesworth. For that kill, we garnered the wrath of the raid gods. The trip to Anub’Rekhan was easy, building our confidence. Once we started on Anub’Rekhan things got shaky. The first pull the tank did not kite AR around far enough and we all got swarmed. Next pull, the off tank was killed after getting two many stacks of the debuff. Pull after pull we ran into a problem here or there. We swapped tanks and then changed healing assignments. Couple more pulls and he was down. In total…2 hours to get him. One healing tip I have for this fight is to have a healer at the end of the kite path waiting for the tank so he can get healed as soon as swarm is done.
Grand Widow Faerlina was the next and much easier boss. It took one wipe for us to learn out how to better take here down. We had the main tank engage Faerlina with the off tank holding all the adds just on the steps. Instead of pulling a single add for the widow’s embrace we had the main tank pull Faerlina to the adds for the killing of the adds. Healing the tanks isn’t very hard on this fight, it is more of a AoE raid healing fight.
Getting to Maexxna took a while. Lots of long hallways with only a few trash pulls leads to one of the creepier bosses I have seen. We took a couple of attempts but it was getting late so we called it a night.
All in all it was a good night. Some nice drops for the tanks and casters with a pair of mp5 legs for one of our resto shamans. Hopefully we can pick up where we left off on our next run.
Hanging with my buddy Gruul
First time seeing Mags
Finally taking down Nightbane
The whole guild in BT
Jager topping the healing charts in BT
Ok, so I ran ZA a few times with the 10/51 Earth shield, Crit, Lesser Healing Wave build and I have some interesting things to report. First, as usual I have only personal observations based on HPs, Mana usage and raid deaths to go on and don’t have the “hard” numbers to show how good/bad this build is. Second, in our guild I am one of the main healers, and consistently have been a tank healer so I have some experience in this roll already.
First, here is a break down of how I healed each fight in ZA.
Bear Boss – Chain heal focused on the two tanks with a LHW cast to catch up if the tanks have taken a large amount of damage, especially after the silence. Riptide then cast on the raid member who was charged to proc tidal waves.
Eagle Boss – Chain heal melee that are taking electrical damage. Riptide and LHW then cast on the raid members who are being dropped or attacked by birds. Chain heal then cast while the electrical storm is taking place to top off the raid.
Lynx Boss – Chain heal the tanks and Riptide and LHW the raid if hit with electrical damage. If the raid members are close enough, I would normally use chain heal on the raid but I like to get a couple of cast of quickly to get my focus back on the tanks.
Dragon Hawk Boss – LHW heal the main tank, riptide/LHW or chain heal the raid during fire damage based on raid member’s location and then chain heal those taking on the hatchers/birds. I then normally use LHW to top the raid off during happy fun ball time since the raid members are scattered at this point.
Hex Lord – LHW the tanks the chain heal and LHW the raid during spirit bolts. I try to start casting chain heal just before spirit bolts so I get one heal off just as the damage starts and for the tidal waves to proc so if I have to LHW someone who is near death I can. Otherwise I chain heal as normal.
Zul’Jin – Chain heal the tanks and raid for most damage through out the fight. The one spot this build shines is during the eagle phase (did I mention how much I hate the eagle phase?) Since the eagle phase requires so much moving around, the riptide and LHW combo make this part of the fight bearable. Keep in mind that you will have to heal yourself as you are healing the raid. The one thing you will need to look at is mana usage. This seems to be the one fight where I consistently have mana issues.
The first thing I noticed is with improved water shield, mana stream totem and the Totem of the Thunder Head, the mana returned from a crit on LHW makes this heal very viable not only on the main tank, but on any member of the raid that needs a quick heal. Granted a lot of this is based on luck of the dice roll and if you get a string of LHW without a crit your mana pool will start to drain pretty quickly, which it is why it is recommend to have a large mana pool for this build (roughly 12k un-buffed, at the lowest).
Another bonus I found was that after 3.0.3 went live, Riptide now procs tidal waves. This allows for you to top anyone off in the raid and then move to the tank as needed. This really helps the speed healing when people are not in range of chain heal.
One thing I did find annoying with this build though is the constant need to recharge water shield, which most of the time is not that bad, but when you need to cast it in the middle of a fight, the use of the global cool down might cause you to miss a heal when you need it the most.
Overall I am happy with this build for now. It seems to do the job very well at 70 and will probably do well for the next few levels, but from what I have read from those in the beta, this build and tactics may not scale well to the new end game. For now though, I will enjoy the ability to be a mobile healer for once.
Coming off of an extremely successful Tuesday raid night, The Pen is Mightier of Hellscream decided that they could do more. So on Wednesday we gathered; seasoned veterans and fresh reinforcements. Eighteen of the PiM’s finest prepared for battle and entered the lair of the Gronn Overlord.
Thirty minutes later, Gruul lay at our feet.
Once the dead were raised, our wounds healed and the riches distributed, we prepared for battle again, this time we would face the former Lord of the Outlands, Magtheridon.
We entered Magtheridon’s Lair and quickly made our way to the main chamber. The battle plan was explained to the tanks and those tasked with manning a cubes. Everyone assumed their positions and the battle commenced. Our forces fought well but all fell at 36%.
Again, we gathered and assumed our positions for what would be a quick end.
A third time we gathered. We again reviewed the plans for battle, we buffed and we assumed our positions. With excellent coordination and a focused attack Magtheridon was vanquished in a flash of light and we stood victorious.
Congratulations to all who attended and made this run possible. With your help, the Pen is Mightier has now completed all of the Tier-4 content on their own. Yes, these titans may have been nerfed by 30%, but we took them down with a raid missing 30% and for that, you should be proud.
I am going to have to make this quick or I am going to pass out on my keyboard. The Pen is Mightier achieved another guild first; Karazhan and Zul’Aman cleared on the same night.
Karazhan Highlights:
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New boss taken down (No Axe for Jager)
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55 sec Maiden Kill
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Tank race to try to make the healers go OOM
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Pud (Our off tank) first successful tanking of Prince
Zul’Aman Highlights:
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Made timer for 3 chests
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Learned valuable lesson, don’t kill both hatchers
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New casting ring for Jager
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One shot on Hex Lord
It was a great night and everyone got some well deserved loot. Can’t wait to do it again, but for now….I need some sleep.
10/22/2008 marked a milestone in the records of the Pen is Mightier of Hellscream. That night, eighteen of the PiM’s finest along with some friends from Hellhounds of Chaos and other guilds stepped into the Black Temple for the first time. Yes, Black Temple is not the place that it once was, but it is still Black Temple.
I am also pleased to announce that there were boss kills to be had. The raid was able to take down Naj,entus, Supremus, Shade of Akama and Teron Gorefiend. There might have been more, but my mind gave out at 1:00am and I needed to log. I will post updates when information is available.
Congrats to all the winners of the phat lewtz and congratulations to all that helped out on such a fun night. Even though a new world awaits us in the coming month it is nice to get a peek at what has been, until now, unattainable.
Hoof n' Healz 
