Jen’s Guide to Healing Nef

My brain is pretty fried when it comes to spitting out words, so I continue to abuse my awesome guildies for guest posts.  Here’s the latest from Jen, who also writes over at Pots ‘n Kettles.

Because we had dedicated this week primarily to Nef, I went and head and respecced to this: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbh0bZfGbMsbcosd:dbMcmr

Nef isn’t that complex for heals (especially compared to Cho’gall or the RNG clusterfuck that is Al’Akir), but there is a ton of damage going around. Also, thanks to massive dragon noms at the tanks and raid wide damage from electrocute, this is one of the two fights (Chim being the other) where shaman resto mastery really shines.

This is a bit of a longer fight (our kill took just over 7 minutes), so you can use longer cooldowns (like spirit link and mana tide totems) in phase one and have them up again for phase three.

Phase One – Ony and Nef and Adds!

We had an Ony tank, a Nef tank, and a BM turtle-noms-adds tank. Your dragon tanks need to be on opposite sides of the pit (if they’re too close to each other, they get a buff that essentially rips your tanks into bits). Ony and Nef need to be parallel to each other sideways to the raid. While they are chewing on your tanks, they’ll also do standard dragon breath and tail swipes.

This means that your healers do want to coordinate who’s going to focus on which tank, because you can’t reach them both without running back and forth. Ranged can help out heals a bunch by staying near each other in the middle.

Ony, while lying dead in a puddle of lava, has grown lightning globes on her sides. When they start glowing, the tank needs to turn her tail into the raid, or she’ll shoot lightning at the raid instead (and your healers will curse you emphatically). More likely than not, the raid will get hit with a tail lash, which knocks us all over for very minor damage and stuns us for two seconds. Once the lightning is done, kindly turn her tail back out of the raid.

Ony is apparently very squishy for a dragon, and when they had her down to about 40ish%, our melee went and chewed on Nef. Every time you get 10% of Nef’s health down, he will do a raid wide electrocute for 100k. It really helps to know when these are coming, because I had a few seconds to drop a rain puddle and start casting chain heals. The first electrocute is also a good opportunity to drop Spirit Link Totem, and it’ll be off cooldown for phase three. After the first electrocute, I tried to drop a glyphed stoneclaw totem each time for a little extra resistance – any damage reducing abilities are good for these.

While the dragons are chewing on their respective tanks, you also get to deal with adds!  \o/

Our BM hunter MD’ed all the adds to Donatello, and rolling riptides, gift of the naaru, and GHWs kept the little turtle up. You can build up heals as more adds spawn, and there were a few scary moments when they were all up, but then once they start dying off, you can help out with the tanks more. Our hunter helped me out a ton by keeping him near the middle, so that the turtle would get the benefit of aoe heals as well. (Once the adds were all dead, the hunter switched to a dps pet for the remainder of the fight.)

We pushed for two electrocutes in phase one (three made us go smush, mainly because each one ups Ony’s enrage mechanic – you have to kill her before her meter reaches 100) and then finished off Ony (and made her go smush instead).

Once Ony dies, the room fills will lava and you transition into:

Phase two – Nef and Adds!

There are three pillars around the room, and our raid was split up to have a healer on each (you can’t reach the other pillars), along with at least one ranged dps and one melee interrupter. You’ll need to run to your pillar as soon as Ony dies, and swim up as the lava fills the room. The pillars have an obnoxious-as-hell overhanging lip, so you need to jump straight up and then over, or you’ll get stuck on the lip.

Each pillar will have one add. They don’t have an aggro table – they just stand there and continuously try to cast a shadow AoE that will pretty much nuke everyone on the pillar. Their casts HAVE to be interrupted. Our ranged dps nuked away at Nef while melee killed and interrupted the adds. We controlled the health of one of the adds so that we could get Nef down through two more electrocutes. Healers need to make sure that their pillar is topped off before the electrocute hits, and be ready to heal people back up after it.

During all of this, Nef hovers in the middle of the room and casts shadow blasts at random raid members, so you’ll have plenty of healing to top off. It really helps for people to use their self heals or damage reduction abilities (if they aren’t major ones that they need for electrocutes).

This phase ends once all three adds die – the lava will drain back out of the room, Nef will descend back onto the ground, and you can jump back off the pillars.

Phase Three – Nef and (you guessed it) MOAR Adds!

One tank will pick up Nef, and the other will get to run around and collect, then kite, adds (someone should probably follow your add tank around to heal, too). The rest of the raid should group up next to Nef’s side. Purple fire will spawn at the most inconvenient places possible, which everyone needs to avoid until it disappears.

We popped heroism as soon as everyone was in place, and nuked the hell out of Nef. You’ll get electrocutes fairly close together, so raiders want to make sure to use damage reduction abilities, and healers need to get people topped off quickly. Both tanks will take lots of big hits, especially if the adds get too close or play in the fire.

Burn everything you have, and profit! ^^