The first of the Legion Healing 101 dungeon guides covers one of the early dungeons available right at the start of the leveling experience and can be accessed at level 98. Eye of Azshara is located in eastern Azsuna as the culmination dungeon for that zone. As with my Draenor dungeon guides, the gear called out after each boss are limited to pieces of particular note from all of the drops in this dungeon. Also, any mechanical differences between difficulties will be called out separately for each fight in the guide.
The following achievements will need to be completed on Mythic difficulty toward your Glory of the Legion Hero meta achievement: But You Say He’s Just a Friend, Ready for Raiding V, and Stay Salty.
The following professions and class quests send you to this dungeon:
Alchemy: Put a Cork in It
Leatherworking: Scales of the Sea
Skinning: The Scales of Serpentrix
Tailoring: The Depraved Nightfallen
Death Knight: The Frozen Soul
Druid: Cleansing the Dreamway & Essence of Balance
Mage: A Magical Affliction
Priest: Looking Through the Lens
Shaman: The Scepter of Storms
Due to a mechanic that shows up after defeating two bosses called Violent Winds, I’ve included the fights in the typical/recommended boss order below.
Warlord Parjesh
The Warlord Parjesh fight is primarly an add fight and most of the damage in the fight is single-target and spiky. Throughout the fight Parjesh will Call Reinforcements in the form of either a Hatecoil Crestrider or a Hatecoil Shellbreaker. The Crestriders should be interrupted to prevent Restoration which heals Parjesh. After the second and third Call Reinforcements, Parjesh will target a player with Impaling Spear. If an add is still alive when this is cast, you should move so that the spear strikes the add first as it will do significant damage to the add. Parjesh will periodically target a random player with Throw Spear. The targeted player will need some additional healing as it deals a moderate DoT. Finally, tanks should keep Parjesh facing away from any ranged players so that Crashing Wave will not be aimed toward them and at 30% health, he will Enrage causing more frequent melee auto-attacks that may need additional healing.
Heroic: On Heroic and Mythic difficulties, Parjesh’s Call Reinforcements summons both a Crestrider and a Shellbreaker, instead of just one. The party will need to focus down the Crestrider, to remove the healer, and use the Impaling Spear to finish off the Shellbreaker. Parjesh’s Crashing Wave will leave behind pools of Quicksand in his wake.
Quick Tactics: Aim Impaling Spear through an add if possible. Extra heals for Throw Spear target and tank at end.
Gear
Hatecoil Commander’s Amulet – +Haste/Mastery Neck
Notable Trash: Lady Hatecoil is protected by Arcane Shielding, making her invulnerable to damage until the four Hatecoil Arcanists that are along the path leading to the beach. To be able to engage Lady Hatecoil, two of the four Arcanists must be taken out.
Lady Hatecoil
The main Lady Hatecoil encounter is a movement specific fight with mostly single-target mechanics. The movement specifics center around alternating Static Nova and Focused Lightning abilities of Lady Hatecoil. Lady Hatecoil will start with Static Nova which will stun players unless they stand on the sand islands in the pool. She will follow this ability with Focused Lightning which will do damage in a small AoE zone including to any sand islands nearby so players will want to be moved off the sand islands for this ability. Throughout the fight she will cast Beckon Storm, spawning a Saltsea Globule near each player. Kite the Globule to the tank if you generate threat on them. Finally, Lady Hatecoil will occasionally debuff players with Curse of the Witch. Turn away from other players when Curse of the Witch is about to expire to avoid knocking them back.
Heroic: On Heroic and Mythic difficulty, Lady Hatecoil will gain the ability Monsoon. The Monsoon is a small tornado that will follow the nearest party member. If you’re targeted by Monsoon kite it away from the Sand Dunes, or over a distant Sand Dune to despawn the monsoon, but beware it also destroys the sand dune.
Quick Tactics: Stand on the dunes for Static Nova and move into the water for Focused Lightning.
Gear
Gift of the Ocean Empress – Holy Artifact Relic
Seal of the Nazjatar Empire – +Crit/Haste Ring
Stormsinger Fulmination Charge – +Int & +Mastery Trinket
Notable Trash: There are five types of trash mobs around Serpentrix: packs of Seaspray Crabs, Mak’rana Hardshell, Mak’rana Siltwalker, Stormwake Hydra, and Cove Seagulls. You’ll want to clear out as much of this trash as you can in preparation for the Serpentrix fight.
Serpentrix
Serpentrix is a two-phase fight that cycles between the boss and a multi-target spread phase. During the first phase, the party fights only Serpentrix’s main head (the green one). Serpentrix will use two abilities during this phase, Poison Spit and Toxic Wound. Poison Spit is a targeted green swirl that will be somewhat complex to avoid due to Violent Winds. Toxic Wound lasts for 6 seconds, and causes the target to drop a Toxic Puddle at their feet every second. Quickly kite the puddles in a tight arc.
When Serpentrix reaches 66% health and again at 33% health he will submerge and reappear at another sinkhole in the encounter area. When Serpentrix re-emerges, two red Blazing Hydra Spawn heads will also emerge from random sinkholes. These Blazing Hydra Spawns deal party-wide AoE with Blazing Nova. The DPS should focus down the Blazing Hydra heads quickly and interrupt the Blazing Nova. If your team is short on interrupts the AoE in the fight will require healing cooldowns. Serpentrix will continue with the poison and toxins so keep moving. Furthermore, if there are no targets within melee range of him, Serpentrix will cast Rampage, increasing the rate of Poison Spit. I’ve had a lot of success with keeping the tank on Serpentrix while the dps deal with the Blazing Hydra adds, but your group may find alternative strategies. Once both Blazing Hydra heads are dead, the fight returns to the simpler main phase.
Heroic: On Heroic and Mythic difficulties, when Serpentrix Submerges, an Arcane Hydra Spawn appears in place of one of the Blazing Hydra Spawn mobs. Arcane Hydra Spawn repeatedly casts Arcane Blast, dealing light Arcane damage to a randomly-selected player.
Quick Tactics: Avoid all the stuff on the ground. Use healing cooldowns during the add phase as needed.
Gear
Serpentrix’s Guile – Shadow Artifact Relic
Notable Trash: The pack of trash right before Deepbeard’s cove, contains one of each of a Skrog Wavecrasher and Skrog Tidestomper. The Skrog Wavecrasher will cast Rising Fury every 18 seconds and the Skrog Tidestomper will cast Massive Quake every 20 seconds. Rising Fury can do a stun and Massive Quake will require frequent movement.
King Deepbeard
The King Deepbeard fight is a single-target fight with lots of movement. Deepbeard begins the fight at 30 Energy, and gains 5 Energy per second. When he reaches full Energy, he will cast Quake under each player. Aftershock will follow at each Quake location approximately 4 seconds later. The party should spread out more than 5 yards apart to avoid taking extra Quake damage from their allies. Shortly after the first Quake, and again every 30 seconds, Deepbeard will Call the Seas. Call the Seas summons a large number of rapidly moving pools of water throughout the encounter area. Due to the number of pools, and the speed with which they move, it is impractical to avoid all of them so just try to avoid standing in them for any length of time. Finally, Deepbeard will cast Gaseous Bubbles around two randomly-chosen non-tank players shortly after the first Quake, and again every 33 seconds. If you are affected by Gaseous Bubbles, you must purposefully take damage in order to break through the shield and prevent Gaseous Explosion which does a significant amount of AoE damage. When King Deepbeard reaches 30% health, he will Frenzy, increasing his attack speed by 100%. This results in extremely heavy tank damage, and both the tank and healer should use cooldowns to ensure the tank survives.
Heroic: On Heroic and Mythic difficulties, the damage dealt by Gaseous Explosion is proportional to the amount of damage absorption left on the Gaseous Bubbles when it expires. If your party handles this mechanic properly, using the Quake/ Aftershock or the Lightning Strike to take damage, the Gaseous Explosion should never occur.
On Mythic and Mythic+ difficulties, the Aftershock patches that form after Quake is cast do not disappear after Aftershock is triggered. Each time King Deepbeard casts Quake, all existing Aftershock patches will deal their Aftershock damage. Players should strategically place the Quake to ensure they will not be standing in any of the Aftershock patches in the 4 seconds following a Quake.
Quick Tactics: Avoid Quake and the aftershocks unless you have a Gaseous Bubble. Use your cooldowns at the end when Frenzy occurs.
Gear
Heart of the Sea – Frost Artifact Relic
Mainsail Cloak – +Versa/Mastery Cloak
Braided Silver Ring – +Versa/Mastery Ring
Notable Trash: Players must defeat the four Naga summoners surrounding the Wrath of Azshara before they can engage the boss directly. Each of the Naga will cast Lightning Blast and Arcane Bomb along with a third ability that will be familiar from the Naga trash at the start of the dungeon.
Wrath of Azshara
The Wrath of Azshara encounter is entirely single-target fight with significant environmental effects requiring high movement. Due to the heavy-movement nature of the fight, it is important for players all to stay within range of the healer. Note that melee can attack from the boss’s side to improve line of sight and range issues. A lot of the movement is in avoiding the environmental effects which include Tidal Wave and Mystic Tornado. Tidal Wave sweeps around the island surrounding Azshara doing moderate frost damage to players who pass through it. Mystic Tornado spawns near a random player and will swirl in the general area of the spawn point causing moderate damage and launching players struck into the air. These effects are summoned periodically throughout the fight and never despawn, so it becomes increasing difficult to avoid all of these effects.
Additionally, the Wrath of Azshara will occasionally target a random non-tank player with Arcane Bomb. The targeted player should move to the edge of the island to be dispelled and then move out of the AoE effect. The tank will also be targeted by Massive Deluge which is a heavy Frost AoE that can knock you away from the boss. If you move out of melee range you can trigger Raging Storms, a massive stacking AoE. Finally, there is a single source of unavoidable AoE damage called Heaving Sands that you’ll need to keep the party topped up with all of the other effects in the fight. This also will include the tank resulting in heavy to moderate tank damage throughout the fight.
At 10% health remaining, Wrath of Azshara casts Cry of Wrath increasing the spawn of the environmental effects including Lightning strikes.
Heroic: On Heroic and Mythic difficulties, Wrath of Azshara gains an additional ability called Crushing Depths. Crushing Depths will target a random party member (not the tank) marking a large AoE zone around them dealing heavy damage that will need to be split amongst the dps and healer. This mechanic is easiest to manage if the healer is marked and the group stays within 12 yards of the marked player. Additionally, on these difficulties, players who are struck by a Tidal Wave or a Mystic Tornado receive stacking debuffs reducing movement speed and increasing nature damage taken.
Quick Tactics: Get out of the storm. Dispel Arcane Bomb and use your cooldowns for Cry of Wrath damage.
Gear
Bottled Hurricane – +Haste Trinket
Pact of Vengeful Service – Life Artifact Relic
Rage of the Tides – Frost Artifact Relic
Band of Fused Coral – +Haste/Crit Ring
With just weeks and counting till the Battle for Azeroth expansion I’ve been doing a lot of updating and info searching. It’s come to my attention that I have sorely neglected my blog while life took over. My schedule is still crazy with work, family, etc but I’m at a stable place where a weekly blog post shouldn’t interfere. My blog from this point might take a little more of a change in focus direction. First, there are still great resources out there for the advanced healer to focus in on their class but not much for the entry level healer. Secondly, a lot of what has motivated me lately to get back into the blog business has been the recent onslaught of UI updates and Addons that have been a real fail bomb. Just look at how well the updates to Communities have worked for Blizzard with patch 8.0. In fact, because of this growing interest/frustration on my part, you may notice some very minor updates to some of my UI/Addon posts and pages already trickling in. I love healing in games and I love User Experience and Human Factors/Ergonomics so more of my posts will be discussing the successes and failures of healing and UI design.
I begin today with a different take on video based information in WoW, like you know internet TV. What’s internet TV you ask? Isn’t that the thing that has shows like “Lost” and “Burn Notice”? Why would anyone want to watch stuff about a dungeon group running in circles in wailing caverns or a raid leader reaming his raid about standing in the fire? NO! That’s not what those shows are about… I mean, video guides and twitch streamers.
While my healing 101 guides prove to be almost if not more popular than my VuhDo Guide(s), the process of writing even basic guides even when there is a lot of material already available is a time consuming process. To pull together one of my dungeon 101 guides, I read the guides produced by various sources such as MMO Champion, Wowhead, healing bloggers, and my notes from my runs in the dungeon. With this information, I open up a draft blog post and outline the dungeon to make sure I capture all of the achievements, boss fights, notable trash and important facts. Then I fill in the prose with information about the abilities and the fights. Next, comes the tedious process of adding in all of the links for the abilities and gear. All told a single Healing 101 guide can take anywhere from 1-3 hours to put together. Not a long process as a writer, but a long time compared to a basic blog post such as this one or the ones I write personally or professionally. I write this post today to let my readers know that though there may be delays in my blog guides and updates, often it is because I’m pulling together multiple sources of information in between real-life events and it’s never a quick or easy process.
With the opening of the first wing of LFR and having experienced the fights on Normal, I thought I’d actually post my Quick Tactics that were so useful to my success with the fights.
Casual readers may have noticed that I took a very long sporadic hiatus from my blog. The Real Life boss caused a pretty serious wipe and getting back to a point in which I could post regularly was pretty rough. Well… I’m Back!
This final Warlords of Draenor Healing 101 WoW dungeon guide covers a level 100 dungeon. Shadowmoon Burial Grounds is located in the center of Shadowmoon Valley and has both a Normal-difficulty and a Heroic-difficulty version of the dungeon. There are four bosses in this dungeon but minimal trash packs. There are a few mechanical differences between Normal and Heroic modes that will be called out for each fight in the guide below. One difference in my Draenor guides from previous guides is that the gear called out after each boss are limited to pieces of particular note from among all of the drops in this dungeon.
This next Warlords of Draenor Healing 101 WoW dungeon guide covers the first level 100 dungeon for this expansion. This is probably my least-favorite dungeon of this expansion so my personal comments will probably be more pessimistic than usual. Grimrail Depot is located in the northern part of Gorgrond and has both a Normal-difficulty and a Heroic-difficulty version of the dungeon. There are only three bosses in this dungeon and minimal but hard-hitting trash packs. There are a few mechanical differences between Normal and Heroic modes that will be called out for each fight in the guide below. One difference in my Draenor guides from previous guides is that the gear called out after each boss are limited to pieces of particular note from among all of the drops in this dungeon.
This next Warlords of Draenor Healing 101 WoW dungeon guide covers the first level 100 dungeon. Upper Blackrock Spire is located in Blackrock Mountain in Burning Steppes (Eastern Kingdoms) and has both a Normal-difficulty and a Heroic-difficulty version of the dungeon. There are five bosses in this dungeon with some complex trash packs and routes. There are a few mechanical differences between Normal and Heroic modes that will be called out for each fight in the guide below. One difference in my Draenor guides from previous guides is that the gear called out after each boss are limited to pieces of particular note from among all of the drops in this dungeon.
Green Bar Spec 