We were elated when Atramedes finally fell Wednesday, after beating our heads against him for a couple of weeks. Given the frustration of that enounter, however, it is understandable that some of the raid members grumbled when our raid leader directed us to Chimaeron.
Some raiders expressed the opinion that we should move on to Bastion of Twilight or Throne of the Four Winds, where we knew we could down some bosses, instead of moving on to another progression boss right away.
I did not share that opinion. I was excited to try out Chimaeron, because it looked like a fun fight--one in which the healers could work out a strategy which would make a real difference.
We walked into the room with 7 healers, but even so, the first attempt lasted just about long enough for everyone to fall on their faces. "Break time!" the guild master called, and encouraged all those who hadn't watched the fight to go take a look at it.
As I had already researched the fight, I spent my break time looking for a way to get Vuhdo to show me when a player had health lower than 10k . . . you wouldn't believe how difficult this can be to find in a Google search. Fortunately, one of the other healers knew, and I thankfully entered the debuff "Low Health" into my Vuhdo settings. (Seriously, that's all that needed to be done. So simple, but so useful!)
Our next attempt included 8 healers. One of the dps had to leave, and, as our raid leader favors stacking healers when we are learning fights, he shrugged his shoulders and figured we might as well bring in another healer.
It didn't take long to see that some organization among the healers needed to happen. Mana was becoming an issue, and healers were prioritizing the same people, stomping on each other's heals and leading to more overhealing than necessary. This also led to other players dying early if they didn't manage to be among those the healers happened to prioritize, because they just didn't get any heals.
So we made some healing assignments. One pally was on each tank, with a third pally supporting the tank healers. The other five healers--two Disc priests, two Resto shammies, and me--were assigned to take care of a group each, outside of Fued. I assigned myself the group with the tanks because a) I always end up with a HoT or two on the tanks, anyway, b) I was uncertain how quickly a Resto Druid could manage to pull up 5 people from Low Health, while I was pretty sure I could manage 3 quickly enough, and c) I wanted to have the time to observe everything and see how it was working, without worrying that my group was going to die.
It was immediately obvious this healing strategy was going to work. Taking the time to organize a little made all the difference between panicked healers with no mana, who sometimes completely missed someone here and there, and healers with mana who effectively maintained a part of the raid, trusting their fellow healers to do the same with their assignments. It was almost too simple.
Now that we know what we're doing, I'm sure we can drop it to 7 healers with little difficulty. I'll probably just assign the tank group healer to also support the tanks, as that position really did leave the healer with extra time. (Exhibit A why my healing was the lowest on the meters: I had fewer people to heal.)
One thing I do not know how to check is how well healers did at not healing people above 10k health when not necessary. For a good deal of the fight, anything above 10k is overhealing, but that is not how Recount will view it. Sometimes I really had to resist the urge to drop an extra heal here and there, reminding myself that it would be a waste of mana, even though it would raise my showing on the healing meters. (The one exception I made was when I had Low Health, I would toss a Rejuv on myself . . . one time I didn't do this, thinking, "Trust your healer, trust your healer," . . . and somehow I got missed. Splat. No, I did not get after the healer for letting me die. I just figured it was a lesson learned on my part.)
At any rate, the double-headed troublemaker finally fell. Grats to Tempest raiders for two new content kills in the same night!
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