Shado-Pan Monastery Healing 101

This next post of my Pandaria Healing 101 WoW dungeon guides will cover the mid-level dungeon, that you always seem to get when you queue for random dungeons. Shado-pan Monastery is a 5-man dungeon located in Kun-Lai Summit and has a Normal-difficulty and a Heroic-difficulty version of the dungeon. There are four bosses in this dungeon and some difficult trash packs. There are no differences in mechanics between Normal and Heroic modes for the Shado-pan Monastery. The only differences are increased health and damage done for all bosses and enemies. There are three achievements and 1 step to complete in this Heroic dungeon that count toward the meta-Achievement Glory of the Pandaria Hero: Hate Leads to Suffering!, Respect, and The Obvious Solution. The first boss in this instance is needed for the achievement Polyformic Acid Science.

Gu Cloudstrike
The fight against Gu Cloudstrike is a 3-phase fight. During the first phase, Gu casts an AoE Invoke Lightning so you need to be spread out to limit it’s damage. Additionally, the Azure Serpent will target a party member with StaticField which should be easy to avoid. This phase ends when Gu reaches 50% health. During the second phase, Gu becomes invulnerable and you have to kill his Azure Serpent. The serpent will cast a frontal cone Lightning Breath that should be easy to avoid. The second ability, Magnetic Shroud creates a healing absorption shield on all party members. Stack up and heal a party member (for 50,000/75,000) until the shields break. When this phase ends, Gu will activate again with an AoE ability called Overcharged Soul, which he casts more frequently as his health lowers.

Quick Tactics: Don’t stand in lightning. In phase 2, stack up for Magnetic Shroud and spam big heals onto one player.

Gear
Leggings of the Charging Soul – Mail legs +Haste/Crit (no spirit)
Heroic only Star Summoner Bracers – Leather wrists +Mastery

Master Snowdrift
The Master Snowdrift fight is also divided into 3 phases. During Phase One, he casts two abilities, which are mostly of concern to the tank and melee. However, if they don’t move out of the way you may need some quick heals. This phase lasts until Snowdrift reaches 50% health. During Phase Two, he creates images of himself in the two front corners of the room. These images keeps appearing and disappearing. When they are active, all they do is cast Ball of Fire, which creates a traveling ball of fire that damages players in its path. This phase lasts until the images are destroyed completely. The final phase introduces 2 new abilities. The first, Tornado Slam causes Snowdrift to fixate on a random party member and chase them. Run away! The other ability, is only of concern to Monks if they are fist weaving. In which case, hold of on your damaging spells.

Quick Tactics: Get behind him during Fists of Fury and away from him on Tornado Kick. Dodge the balls of fire. Watch your damage in Parry stance.

Gear
Quivering Heart Girdle – Plate waist +Mastery

Sha of Violence
The Sha of Violence has two main abilities that he uses throughout the fight: Smoke Blades and Sha Spike. Smoke Blades will ultimately buff melee player’s damage and healers/ranged will be too far away to be affected. The second ability, causes a spike to appear at the location of a random player. It also summons small add that attacks the group for 30 seconds (it can be killed). Move away from the ‘sha’ puddles when the ground beneath you starts vibrating. Discipline Priests and fistweaving Monks may find killing the add simpler than ignoring it, however, they explode upon death, so move away as they die. In addition, the healer and the tank need to be aware of Disorienting Smash, which regularly deals heavy Shadow Damage to the tank. This ability is dispellable and should be taken care of pretty easily.

Quick Tactics: Dispel disorient if you have time. Run from whirling smoke and move out of ‘sha’ puddles before spikes appear. Adds should die after only 30 seconds so ignore or smite them. He enrages at 30% health; use cooldowns if needed.

Gear
Gloves of Enraged Slaughter – Cloth gloves +Haste/Mastery (no spirit)
Heroic only Necklace of Disorientation – Neck +Mastery

Taran Zhu
Although not a difficult fight, the encounter with Taran Zhu has several different mechanics that will likely build up to a wipe if not handled well. The main mechanic is your Hatred bar, which fills as you take damage from the boss (and some is unavoidable), so you will have to empty it. To remove your hatred, you need to use your special action button, Meditate. This is a channeled ability, so you will kneel in a pool of light for a few seconds while it resets your Hatred.

There are three sources of hatred cast by Taran Zhu. The first, Rising Hate randomly targets players, but the cast can and should be interrupted. The second ability, Ring of Malice surrounds Taran Zhu with a Shadow ring for 15 seconds, which only damages players that touch it’s borders. Stand either inside or outside the ring, don’t cross it. Finally, Sha Blast is only cast when the Ring is active, and will deal a high amount of damage to the tank. So this is when you’ll need some extra heals ready.

The final mechanic is that of the Gripping Hatred. Throughout the fight, Taran Zhu will periodically Summon Gripping Hatred, which need to be killed as quickly as possible by the ranged dps. Melee should stay on the boss, as they have a damaging Sha zone underneath that players will be pulled into if they are not killed. Move out of the Sha zone if/when you are pulled into it.

Quick Tactics: Use Meditate early and often when the fight’s going well to empty your Hate bar. Help the ranged DPS kill Gripping Hatred ASAP. When ring appears, be either in or out – do not cross.

Gear
Blastwalker Footguards – Mail boots +Crit/Mastery (no spirit)
Mindbinder Plate Gloves – Plate gloves +Mastery
Darkbinder Leggings – Leather legs +Haste
Heroic only Robes of Fevered Dreams – Cloth chest +Crit/Haste (no spirit)
Heroic only Ring of Malice – Good ring if you still need one (no spirit)

/Inspect Priest

This week I took a closer look at the Priest Class Feedback Forum, which is brought to you by the forum quote “Holy is like the Edward Cullen of Priest specs – sparkly but useless”. I will also admit it was interesting going through the priest responses compared to the druid responses because there were a lot more comments that fell on either end of the verbose spectrum, either monosyllabic or so wordy they needed two posts.

This sample of priest posts were drawn from a semi-random sample of 3 pages on the forum and since all three specs can do healing, holy or disc specific comments were targeted. The 32 posts I looked at contained 15 posters claiming at least some PvP experience and all but one claiming PvE experience. Four (4) of these posters did indicate that they had very little healing experience or that healing was a secondary spec or play style for them. The posts were also nearly evenly experienced with 15 having healed as Holy and 19 having healed as Disc priests.

An interesting comment that kept weaving through several of the posts was that Holy priests felt that they were forced to spec Disc in order to gain raid spots (at least 3 specific comments). However, based on the sub-sample collected it looks like the Holy priests are still out there holding their own. In fact, 1 post discussed how much they enjoyed Holy healing in raids compared to other healers. This sounded to me more like a guild problem than anything else.

Another freqently cited topic was the state of cooldowns for priests, Holy specifically. This seemed to be the biggest factor as to why many of the holy priests claimed they didn’t get raid spots. Seven (7) comments specifically requested raid wide cooldowns for Holy and one (1) comment added an improvement to Guardian Spirit. Of course, I also saw mention by two posters that both Power Word: Barrier and Guardian Spirit were too situational to be effective. So, there may be a situational factor with the Guardian Spirit Cooldown that is causing problems too.

Atonement and Archangel specs for Disc priests were a frequent topic of discussion, as 6 posts indicated problems with different aspecs of this spec. The major problem was the range issues priests were expriencing with certain fights that are slated to be fixed in the 4.3 patch (source). Interestingly, one of the posts also mentioned the investment involved in the Archangel/Atonement spec, as it requires 5 talent points and 2 major glyphs to be effective. On a more asthetic note, one post recommended increasing the size of Archangel wings on Tauren, something I’ve certainly heard mentioned being slightly odd looking.

It also seems that discipline priests (7 posts) are finding that the Mastery talent needs to be reworked. Having a limited number of spells affected by our mastery and the weak balance of Divine Aegis itself were mentioned as factors. In fact 2 comments mentioned wish list ideas for reworking Divine Aegis by perhaps moving it to a multi-target shield spell.

It would also seem (and from my own experience) that priests are experiencing some problems in PvP with regard to mana and melee. Five (5) posts mentioned that one of their quality of life issues is the inability to counter melee focus and melee cleave teams. While, only one (1) post mentioned that mana issues in pvp were a quality of life issue. Of course, Blizzard will also have to wade through posts by very confused priests, such as the one that mentioned that a problem with the class is that “the only cc we really have is fear ward”.

Additionally, it appears that priests have the same problem as Druids in that 28% of the posters reviewed indicated that one of their least used spells was either Heal or Flash Heal. So how about the priests take the time machine back to last week’s Druid Introspection and return. Back? Good. Then maybe you noticed that the Priest Heal is competitive within the pack, slightly below Paladins but slightly above Druids and Shaman in terms of effective HP. What’s the problem here? Perhaps it is the weak state of Heal and the mana consumption of Flash Heal as they were the topic for a couple of the comments for other questions.

The other spells that are less frequently used included Mind Sooth (12 posts), Holy Nova (11 posts), Renew (10 posts), and Mind Vision (5 posts). I imagine that Blizzard would agree that Mind Sooth and Mind Vision are situational spells and there is a reason that they don’t see a lot of use. As for Renew and Holy Nova, I suspect that we’ll see something Soon™; from Blizzard in response to the utilization of these two spells.

I hope these class feedback reviews are motivating other healers to think about how their class functions and that comparing your perceptions are not always the most effective way to evaluate a particular class. It has certainly been interesting to review these comments and realize that some of the healing population (regardless of class so far) lack understanding of the differences that Blizzard has built into the different classes.

Happy Healing!