How do you handle heroic boss mobs?

[Phanes]

I am having a blast running 5 toons. Here is my issue.

On some boss mob fights I can beat the boss mob with positioning.

On some boss mob fights I can beat the boss mob with my spec/flask so my guys all have 250+ to all resistances.

I use a different casting bar for boss mobs. This one allows me to heal each toon. The problem I run into is getting killed by Poisons or Diseases or DOTs or Curses.

I realize without seeing my setup this is confusing. Basically my boss mob caster bars look like this.

DK 1-5 buttons is the same single target castsequence. 6-0 does various other things like DC + Frost Shock

Priest 1-5 1 is a castsequence of heals for my DK, 2-5 targets a member of the party and throws renew + dispel magic, currently it seems he just gets the message nothing to dispel. 6-0 does various things based on what the DK is doing.

Mages 1-5 assist off the DK and do single target nukes. 6-0 does various things based on what the DK is doing.

Hunter 1-5 assist off the DK and do single target nukes. 6-0 does various things based on what the DK is doing.

Here is my solution tell me what you think about it. I am going to drop my hunter and have a druid in his spot. His 1-5 will look like this. 1 assists off DK and nuke. 2-5 target various members and throw his HoT first then attempt a cure poison. This way between my priest/druid I have two HoTs hitting a damaged toon and I am attempting to cleanse both poison and disease. This just leaves melee DOTs and Curses. I am hoping my double HoTs + Resists will counteract most DOT/Curses.

The other choice is I keep the DK and run 4 shamans. With the right totem combo I can cure dis, poison, boost resists, heal, and regen mana. The problem with that is I really don't want to do 1-80 again even with a DK boosting the 4 shamans.

This being said I know decursive is an option here. I could always have a big ole button in the middle of each screen that will remove curses, poisons, and diseases. Does anyone here use decursive and how well does it work when 5 boxing?

[Void]

OR drop the DK and use prot pally then use his cure spells to cure grp members . But seriously thats why i play pally+4 shamans. you just cant replace the totems.

[Phanes]

I have to admit when I look at the Totems + Nukes with a DK boosting. I could just have a dedicated healer on the DK and the other three tossing nukes. Seems like it would burn down most instances and deal with most of the boss mobs special abilities.

[horiziel]

Any reason why you dont just bind a few more keys to another action bar? cures etc to f1-f12 for each group member for example?

[Rin]

I have to admit when I look at the Totems + Nukes with a DK boosting. I could just have a dedicated healer on the DK and the other three tossing nukes. Seems like it would burn down most instances and deal with most of the boss mobs special abilities.

Couple of guys here are running DK + 4 Elemental Shaman (no dedicated healer) - and just nuking everything.

I personally like the utility of a Prot. Paladin and Resto Shaman in my group (I can decurse anything!).

^^ This

Another alternative is swapping 1 shaman out for a druid... There are others here who have ran most Heroics with 1x Pally, 1x Resto, 2x Ele, 1x Balance druid.

My new team is simply a DK, 1x Resto, 2x Ele, 1x Balance... seems to be working out fine so far, but they're still small... so no Heroics for them.
The druid will boost the damage of your shaman, add in Gift of the Wild, and add +5% Crit chance to your shammis. Couple that with the Totem of Wrath and you'll have a +8% crit chance w/ additional spellpower to boot. If you glyph the DK with Glyph of Rune Tap, and you go down the Blood/Unholy (to get the pet) lines, you should be able to get an effective 10% healing (of max health) to all party members (20% max health to the DK) every 30 seconds simply by pressing one button. Plus, you'll still be receiving the benefits of 3x Healing Stream totems at all times. For fights, one thing you can do is setup mouse mapping (if you're a software boxer) so that when your DK casts Death and Decay (for example), your druid would also drop a Hurricane, and your shaman can have their Magma totems flowing. If youre on a boss, swap the Hurricane out with the Trees. The moonfire/lightning bolt spam (downrank for best results) is amazing.


For healing, you can keep up Earth Shield on your DK to go along with all of the aforementioned items. Then just drop a Riptide/Chain Heal sequence if things really get grey. If you're healing a lot you keep up earthliving weapon on your resto shaman (with the glyph), you'll be proccing that fairly often too (25% chance). Or you can opt to just go straight Elemental (like many of the other great minds here), which will give you the best blasting power .


Since you're already playing multiple classes, I don't think that you'd have an issue with this setup.

Cheers.

[puppychow]

what boss is killing you via curses/poisons/diseases? As said above if you run with shamans healing stream totems are a must, and you should drop poison/disease totems on any bosses that do that (honestly they are very far and few between -- Anub'Arak and last boss of Drak'Tharon is the only one I can think of).

Positioning tends to be more important and having buttons to heal each person independently (or group heal) -- for example, in CoT Malganis will wipe your group if you stack your DPS up, instead you want to spread them out in a semi circle with the tank in the middle, and keep grounding totems always down. Or 3d boss in Halls of Lightning, same thing spread out the team in the room before so only one person takes static charges at a time.

[emesis]

what boss is killing you via curses/poisons/diseases? As said above if you run with shamans healing stream totems are a must, and you should drop poison/disease totems on any bosses that do that (honestly they are very far and few between -- Anub'Arak and last boss of Drak'Tharon is the only one I can think of).

Positioning tends to be more important and having buttons to heal each person independently (or group heal) -- for example, in CoT Malganis will wipe your group if you stack your DPS up, instead you want to spread them out in a semi circle with the tank in the middle, and keep grounding totems always down. Or 3d boss in Halls of Lightning, same thing spread out the team in the room before so only one person takes static charges at a time.

Some minor corrections here. A poison cleansing totem is very useful for Anub'Arak, correct. For the last boss of Drak'Tharon (Prophet Tharon'ja), there's nothing to cure though. He drops puddles of toxic stuff that cause nature damage to anyone standing in them though - nature resistance totem is very useful here.

For Mal'Ganis, DPS is fine to be stacked up and grounding totems to my knowledge don't do anything useful. The boss does have a frontal cone attack (Carrion Swarm) so he does need to be pointed away from the rest of the group, however. He frequently lays a nasty 8-9K attack (Mind Blast) on a random non-tank party member that will 2-shot them if they get hit again; with healing stream totems * 4 you can pretty safely ignore this, but with a mixed team you'll want to spot heal the person who gets hit with this.


To the OP, I agree with what others have said in that there's not really many/any heroic fights where dispelling/curing is strictly required. I don't personally have anyone who can cure curses or dispell magic, for instance. So I don't use decursive. I have seen some posts here that people are using it to good effect. A pally tank would be ideal for this really.

[Phanes]

So far the issue I have run into is this.



HoL the electrical spiders. I have counteracted this by boosting resistances but I still only beat this maybe 50% of the time.

The second boss mob fight in UK. When I get the rhino guy he charges my people and puts some kind of DOT on them that will kill my mages. Also that snake guy even when I have him turned away from my group will seem to poison everyone in the group and kill them.

TBH I am mainly farming cash with dailies right now and working on trade skills and gearing out my guys with AH epics/tradeskill stuff. I have only attempted Gundrak, UP, UK, and HoL on heroic and have run into some problems mainlyh with the boss mob special abilities. I was however only in quest/drop gear so I am sure that had something to do with it.

@horiziel to honest I never thought of that. I could just bind some more keys to like F1 -F5 and put on like cure dis for my priest and decurse for my mages or something of that nature. Ideally what I would like is to hit a button and have a cure dis, pos, and curse all go off at the same time from different characters. I figure adding a druid to the group allows me to do that. So when I see some debuff pop up on character number two I just hit F2 and it will most likely cure whatever is on them.

[Phanes]

So I guess my next question is which heroics are most five box friendly for farming badges? I can rip through UK pretty easily. The heroic drops are ok but I am really trying to farm the Badge stuff.