Healing Heroic Hagara 10 man as a resto druid

Heroic Hagara is a good fight for a resto druid.  Healing on the run is what we are all about, and of course doing a big AOE heal helps.

But first, a quick recap on what heroic Hagara is all about.

In heroic, it's fairly similar to normal. The big differences is that during Ice Phase she puts a debuff, Frostflake, on you, and during Lightning Phase, there are Storm pillars up which explode and do AOE damage.  Ice Lances do more damage now and it's EXTREMELY hard to live through a whole one by yourself (coz if you also get hit by Shattered Ice you'll die) so you will need an Ice Lance Buddy.

So this is the positioning we use for the encounter.



The numbers represent the Ice Lance Buddies.  Blue is the stack point for Ice Tombs, Red is the starting point for Ice Phase (ie everyone stack there to start the run), and Yellow is where the Elemental spawns in Lightning phase.


Dealing with and Healing Ice Lances
I think it's best to have a healer as part of an Ice Lance Buddy pair.  Ice Lances seem to come from random points anyway, so the numbers indicate an area over which you cover the lances, so imagine it's a pie with 3 wedges.  Don't stand close to each other because people within 3 yards of you will also get the debuff. That's why melee shouldn't be taking Ice Lances. The debuff increases your damage taken - 25% more damage per stack.  That's 375% increased damage if you took all the hits, but it only lasts 3 seconds.  Throw a few hots on you and your Ice Lance Buddy and swiftmend whoever gets low so you can drop the debuff quickly.  Make sure you're standing behind Hagara because anyone who has got high stack of that debuff and then gets hit by Shattered Ice is going to go splat.  Having a grounding totem does help a lot with shattered ice, if you're lucky enough to have a shaman!

My Ice Lance buddy is a mage.  Usually he gets it first because he blinks to the spot to get into position then I run and then I stand in front of him and he steps to the side.  If it's the other way around, I just take a few hits then step to the side and my buddy should step in.  It works well if the buddy is further back and just walks into the beam so the other doesn't have to move, but as a druid, moving and healing isn't an issue so I don't mind doing some movement.  So as a buddy team you should work it out with you and your partner how you're going to do it.

One thing I always get in trouble for is running when an ice lance that isn't mine has targetted me (wavy blue line).  And the lances are shooting at me, and people are trying to block it but I'm trying to get to my section to block my section's lances so THEY'RE running everywhere trying to block my lance - so if you get the wavy line on you, stand still.  Let someone else deal with the ice lance for your section.

Ice Phase
We around the outside close to the bubble, so that we can step into the bubble for the dispel, and then step out again.  Dispelling outside leaves a big ice patch on the ground which makes it hard for ANYONE to run.  If you find you can't keep ahead of the ice spikes, stay in the bubble and step back in behind the spike.  If you see DPS falling behind, a healer has to fall back and heal them and dispel them.  I use all my isntant heals here.  And if we're getting caught behind, I go kitty and do a Stampeding Roar.  The Falling Ice circles are a bloody pain, so try not to be caught in them and bounced into an Ice Wave.  This is the one time that healers are blamed big time so get your dispels right.

Another popular method advocated by my pally friend is that all ranged stand in the middle and the melee run around the outside.  While this may mean more healing (but with 3 healers shouldn't be too much of an issue) it allows the ranged to stand still and concentrate on killing the pillars so the phase is downed a lot quicker.

Lightning Phase
We have 2 pairs of DPS running around the outside chaining the lightning between the 8 Crystal Conductors.  It's best if you choose people who don't have pets (ie warlocks, hunters) since the pets seem to make the rods bug and not chain.  I stand in the middle on Hagara and throw heals around and use Tranquility after the priest has used their Divine Hymn - we don't usually start using it until someone is getting down to 50% health.  Remember that the longer this phase lasts the more damage you take because the Lightning storm stacks and people take more and more damage.  We just heal through the Storm Pillar damage, so DPS don't have to worry too much about avoiding them.  You don't HAVE to use your healer CDs here, but if the conductors don't go down quick you WILL need them.

Any other healing tips?
Bloodlust is best saved for the DPS right after a phase ends, when she is stunned and standing still and everyone does extra DPS to her for those brief 15 seconds.

I hope this helps!  I think Ice Lances are the hardest part of Hagara (even though reading it sounds easy), and good luck!


Comments

  1. I love these posts. I want an ice buddy.

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  2. LOL! Reading it does not sound easy at all and yet I'm still fascinated.

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  3. @Matty @TotA - you guys are so sweet :)

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