Complete and Concise Guide to Priest Healing in Karazhan.

After looking at what many people wanted when they found my generic Karazhan priest guide on this site I decided to write up a quick guide on exactly what a priest needs to do all the way through Kara, including Bosses and trash. I am hoping this all in one guide will be useful to some priest healers who have just begun to run Karazhan.

I will not go into the basics here, you have got to Karazhan so it is odds on you have learned how to heal!

Firstly, make sure you are geared, 1600+ healing is a minimum if you have 2 healers, if you are fortunate enough to have three healers then you can usually get away with around 1300+ healing without gimping the group., also keep yourself stocked, at least 40 buffing regents (60 for IDS priests). Remember to bring lots of mana pots.

And without further ado, onto the instance!

As soon as you enter you will be greeted by a door, it is safe to open this straight off, although it is suggested you wait until all the raid is ready, otherwise someone may get the wrong idea and move on ahead. If your group know what they are doing there is a lot of room on the other side of the door for easier preparation.

The first trash you will come to are the lead up for Attumen the Huntsman and Midnight. These are fairly easy kills but respawn after a mere 30 minutes if the boss is not killed, therefore you need to make sure these are chain pulled, leaving little room for mana regeneration until you reach Attumen. It may help if the healers rotate here, 2 heal while one drink, or even just one heal, as the mobs are not particularly hard.

For the trash the priests need to be on the ball for two other duties than healing.

Shackle - usually on the horses, they fear
Fear ward - Keep Fear Ward on the tank.

Due to the fears it is a good idea to make sure the group pulls mobs pretty far back, you don't want any wipes at this stage of the instance.

Attumen the Huntsman & Midnight.

For the boss himself you only really have one point where you need to do anything other than throw in heals. With three healers this boss is simply a piece of cake for you.

Firstly your off tank will attack midnight, keep him topped up with low healing spells, let the offtank gain as much agro as possible.

Once Attumen comes the raid should reposition, Midnight and Attumen have to be in line of sight, but the main tank should take Attumen and face him away from the raid. This means you should, so far only be healing the two tanks.

At this point DPS Should focus on Midnight, and as soon as he hits 25% Attumen will jump onto him and return to full health.

Main tank at this point will need to pick up the agro and face him away from the raid. Everyone else, including hunters and casters, should get behind Attumen, VERY CLOSE behind Attumen.

If this does not occur Attumen will randomly start charging about, dealing massive damage to your raid. If this does occur and someone does not come into the group, stay in position, let the tank gain agro. If the offending person does not move into the group then stop healing him, it will be better for the raid group if they die at this point.

If all goes smoothly the tank should be the only person taking damage.

Attumen will occasionally put up a curse, this only lasts ten seconds and should be ignored.

The healer assignment for this boss for the first phase should be on healer on off tank, one on main tank and one as backup/raid healer. All three should keep up HoTs on both Tanks. Rotation is generally not required on this boss.

Trash to Moroes

This is quite simple pulls and shackle should be used as much as possible. Keep on your toes with Crowd Control. Most of the trash is easy, there are some elites scattered about though.

Some trash can be skipped, it may be best to clear till you know which mobs can be bypassed though. Moroes room has similar mobs, however all of these need to be taken out.

Moroes

Moroes himself has four adds, these can be shackled, so priests get prepared.

Those mobs that cant be CC'd should be taken first, then Moroes then the CC'd adds.

Moroes does a lot of damage, and initiates a bleed effect that is removed once he dies. This effect causes a lot of damage and cannot be removed, so stay focussed and if possible stack HoTs over the players suffering from this. Paladins are the only class who can remove this debuff from others, mages can remove it off themselves with iceblock.

The fight is healing intensive, but not particularly hard. Watch out for the shadowpriests mana burn though (It hits for 6k) If it all goes to hell they can be reset by running back to where you came from. Garrottes do not always fall off though, real pain in the arse!

Don't place any DoTs on Moroes near the end of the fight, he has been known to bug out and die while 'vanished'

Trash to Maiden

This is fairly simple, more shackles and some Banishes if you have a Warlock handy. Pull back, take it easy and DPS fast, there should be very few healing problems here.

Stay on the right of the hallway on the last stretch towards maiden, there is a room with adds that you don't need to pull. (Those that have a quest there wait for 30 minutes after everyone has left the instance and go back inside, the adds will have disappeared).

Maiden of Virtue

This is a fairly easy fight, but positioning and group set up is important, especially if you have a Circle of Healing Priest.

First of though, the healers need to spread out to ensure they can heal across the entire raid, movement will be limited once the fight has begun.

Put melee and tanks all in one group so CoH can be used to negate the Holy Ground Effect, this is the most mana efficient and effective way of keeping on top of this.

For the fight itself Healers and ranged DPS hug the wall and move into your approximate positions, once you are ready tanks and Melee should run into the middle, the tank keeping the Maiden of Virtue in her middle spot.

Ranged and healers move forward so you are just before the steps leading up to the central platform.

When the fight starts holy ground will start doing damage to all the melee on the platform, however every so often she will do a raid wide stun for 10 seconds. While this does put all your healers out of action there are several ways out of it as a priest.

First off you should have Deadly Boss Mods, this will tell you when the stun (Repentance) is incoming. At this point step into holy ground, the damage this causes will bring you out of the stun and allow you to run out of holy ground and continue to heal. Holy ground itself has a 0.5 sec silence debuff, effectively removing any possibility of you healing inside the ground.

The second tactic is to get maiden to move towards a healer, holy ground moves with here so will bring you out of the stun as well. Make sure the tank also takes her back to the central area as well though to avoid confusion.

Apart from this she does a few random damage spells, one of which (holy fire) leaves a dot. It does not long and can be healed over, some raid leaders insist it is dispelled though, in the long run it doesn't matter, but it is wise to never annoy a raid leader.

Trash To Opera

The trash here is simple tank and spank, make sure the mobs are pulled out of spotlights and try and step in them yourself, they contain random buffs.

With the skeletal ushers shackle one and make sure the other is duel tanked, he can iceblock one of the tanks, so if DPS is too high he will chase after a squishy.

The tanks also need to get agro straight away off the shackled mob, a hunters misdirect can greatly help with this.

Opera Event

This event has several different possible bosses,

For Romulo and Julianne have a healer on two tanks.

For the Wizard of Oz Raid heal, watch out for the tin man, he hits hard so keep a healer spam healing with help from one of the raid healers.

On the Big Bad Wolf, it's a simple tank and spank exercise until Little Red Riding Hood. When this occurs a random member of your raid will turn into Little red riding hood (Positioning tactics and Little red riding hood tactics at http://wowraidguide.blogspot.com/2008/01/karazhan-opera-event-big-bad-wolf.html)

All healers need to spam heal the unfortunate raid member here while they run away, they can take a hit without dieing, but two will take him down if they are not healed pronto.

Trash to Curator

You have two options here, you can skip trash and go to the back door, or your raid can take down some trash that drop 10-15g per raid member (Pretty nice for those ol' repair bills!) These mobs are fairly easy to take down and tend to be simple tank and spank.

To reach the backdoor, instead of clearing the remaining opera trash, exit Karazhan through the front door by simply going back the way you came (be careful to avoid any of the trash mobs you haven't previously killed). Once outside, head North across the little stream to the old tower structure. Here you will find the back stairwell. Make your way up several flights of stairs, go across the narrow stone bridge and open the back gate. the locked door will only open up if the Opera event has been completed.

Either way, if you clear the Opera trash or make your way through the back entrance you will find yourself at the Broken Staircase With an outdoor path to floor 4.

This is covered in undead spectres so be careful. Eventually you will reach the hallway guarded by some sentinels, these need to be cleared, and they hit hard, stay on your toes healers.

In the next circular room you will find several more mobs, they are all fairly easy to take down but should be pulled back to avoid pulling extra agro.

Curator

The Curator is the first real gear test of Karazhan. If your group can get past this guy you will be ready to take everything up to Nightbane and Prince Malchezaar.

This is healing intensive and unfortunately there a few helpful tactics for healers.

It will be mana intensive so down pots as soon as possible.

Shadowfiend should be used on the Curators evocation only. At this point he takes between 200% and 300% and it is normal for your Shadowfiend to full replenish your mana if released at this point, even allowing you to throw a smite or two in!

Keep an eye out for flares, the people they get close to will need healing, pally healer is best for the tank here with one of the priest raid healers providing back up. It can be done easily enough however with priest or pally main healing the tank.


Trash to Aran

You should be heading for Aran next, to get to him you have to cut your way through a huge room full of trash mobs and the like, getting through here can take 15 to 45 minutes and can be, to put it bluntly, a pain in the arse. To speed things up make sure you hug one side, that way you can avoid the majority of the trash mobs. Expect burst damage here.

When you manage to get up to the mana wraith packs you will find the smaller ones detonate on death. This can be prevented by a variety of silencing effects. The undead casters can be shackled, do this for effective CC

Up until this point all the trash mobs have been linked to Aran, therefore after you clear the next room of demons (Just heal the tank for that room) The mobs will respawn after two hours if Aran is not killed. Just the demon mobs in the last room are linked to Illhoof.

Aran

Aran is a technically difficult fight which requires everyone to be on the ball. You will need to move fast and beat him down before he reaches low mana. The best way to do this is make sure that only Fire and Frost spells are interrupted, not arcane.

He is untauntable and has little agro, so he will attack random people. Major healing is required here. Chug those pots.

As a Healer make sure you stay out of Arans rain of ice spell, it travels around the room 360 degrees, leaving a trail of ice you should also avoid.

If circles of flame appear Do Not Move, This ability has the power to detonate the entire raid.

If you get dragged into the middle of the room run to the side immediately, you will have a slow effect, but still enough time to move to the side. If someone is falling behind this can be dispelled as a normal magic effect, try and keep on top of this but be careful not to sacrifice yourself doing so.

After you kill Aran the door man can teleport you to his room, great time saving incase you need to go back later to finish some quests :)

Illhoof

At the start of this fight you may want to move relatively close to the boss. The imps have a high chance of throwing their spells at you so keeping these guys close to the tank is a real bonus.

You will need to do a fair amount of raid healing on this one, and you must keep an eye out for the sacrifice. At this point a player will get teleported to the sacrificial pit and surrounded by chains. While the DPS nuke the chains you will need to throw on some speedy flash heals. The guy who gets hit by sacrifice will lose health fast as hell!

Illhoof has a companion named Kil'Rek You don't need to worry to much about this guy, but when he dies Illhoof will take an extra 25% more damage, making it an excellent time to release your Shadowfiend.

When assigning healers you should have one on main tank, one on off tank and lock (Who should be spamming seed of corruption so will generate a large whack of agro.) The third healer will have to work through a large amount of damage, not an easy assignment!

When sacrifice take place all healers should immediately start casting a heal, after the initial rush one healer should be able to keep the sacrificed person alive.

Netherspite

The trash mobs leading up to Netherspite are fairly simple to deal with, however they do disarm, so a feral druid is a great help here. Healing wise its just keeping the raid up as per normal though!

Netherspite is an incredibly difficult boss to explain, fighting him can take a couple of wipes till you figure out the best way to position and maintain your group.

The main thing you need to think about however are the beams of light which appear from random portals. Once you have stepped into a beam you will not be able to do so again for another two minutes, therefore a good rotation system is essential.

Red: Always starts off as the portal to the right. The red beam gives an additional 30k health to whoever intercepts the beam and gives them permanent aggro. As long as this player is taking this beam, Netherspite will never aggro another player. On top of that, the tank never has to be healed. He will always be returned to full health after every swing. The negative effect is that the beam will gradually reduce the player’s maximum health. If intercepting the beam for the entire duration, the player will reach 1 health. Because of this, a trade-off is necessary. A tank can intercept the beam for about 30 seconds (each second, the buff stacks, which is noted in your buffs area). A backup is needed. This backup will stand in front of the tank. Once the tank has taken his share of debuffs, he runs through his backup and the backup is now the new red beam tank. Anyone who is wearing mail or higher is a candidate for intercepting the red beam. Cloth and leather wearers will get one-shot. Prot warriors and feral druids can take stacks up to 30ish times. Non-tanks will only want about 25 stacks.

Blue: The blue beam is the centre in the middle-back. Players who intercept this beam will have their damage increased as they go (I’ve had my mind blasts crit for 12k, dots tick for 3k). The only drawback is that the damage received is also increased. This is a drawback that will be explained later. Warlocks and shadowpriests can intercept these beams for a long duration. If the warlocks and shadowpriests can break 1200-1300 shadow damage (buffed), they can take a blue beam for the entire duration. It’s preferred if they don’t and that proper rotations are used.

Green: This is the easiest to manage. Put a non mana user in to intercept the beam. Warriors and rogues are the best candidates. This beam gives you infinite mana, however reduces your max mana similar to how the red beam reduces your max health. It’s possible to reach 0 mana.

As a healer you should not take any of the beams, but it is important that you know what they do.

When the beams are out you can pretty much ignore the tank if he gets into the red beam, focus on keeping the rest of the raid topped up as the boss does a raid wide AOE pulse effect that can severely damage the raid group.

One healer should keep a careful eye on who is in the blue beam, they will need a lot of healing, but will deal out an even greater amount of damage. (Shadow priests should get in the blue beam for insane mana regen and health regen)

Once you get past the basics this boss is not too hard, good communication is the key in ensuring the boss goes down without a hitch and your rotations go as planned.

Chess Event

Next to no Trash.

The event itself is more about grabbing a character and moving into the fray.

There are healing characters but all in all its an easy fight and you tend to fight with what you can get.

Prince Malchezaar

Trash, pretty standard, by now you should have got used to the things you will encounter.

The Prince Malchezaar is one of the last bosses of Karazhan, the other being Nightbane.

Both bosses are of similar difficulty, but Prince has some fairly annoying and difficult to navigate effects. Healers need to play this boss carefully, for the most part you should have a healer solely on the tank, paladins excel here for the spam heals. As a priest you should remember to keep a renew up on the tank to help mitigate spike damage, the rest of your time should be focused on keeping the raid up from some of Prince Malchezaar's more ingenious spells.

The main problem with this boss is the infernals, they will drop out of the sky to a random predetermined location. This means you can learn spots where you will not get hit. The Infernals start sending out an AoE as soon as they land causing massive damage. They continue to spam this for one minute. At all costs your raid needs to get out of these as quickly as possible, and healers must be ready to top the raid back up ASAP.

While Prince himself deals fairly simple, but very heavy melee damage, his infernals and blades do some nasty damage to the rest of your raid.

The Main thing you will need to look out for is enfeeble. When this occurs several members of your raid who are not top of the agro list (Hence why it is insanely important that your tank stays at the top of the agro charts) will go down to 1hp. When this occurs all the people with enfeeble must run away, preferably behind the casters. You need to do this because he will cast a Shadow Nova attack, so anyone enfeebled will die. Priests can continue healing from maximum range and be out of range of the shadow nova.

Prince will also cast amplify magic on a raid member, you cannot dispel this but should keep this raid member topped up to avoid them dieing.

But lets cover the basics, Phase 1 is just spank and tank, he does not do much damage at this stage, for this reason your DPS should keep their damage down, let the tank gain a lot of agro so he will not get enfeebled and die during the next stages. During the second stage Princes DPS will increase astronomically, so it is at this point your DPS need to go all in.

He will cast shadow word pain on the tank so keep your dispels up.

At phase 2 (60%hp) he will really start to do damage, he will spawn some axes and cast sunder armour, this guy can hit unto 20k hp in two seconds, though fortunately this doesn't happen too often. It is advisable to keep the tank topped up to the max, over heal to hell if you have to!

Phase 3 (30%hp) is when things get tricky. melee damage on the tank goes down, but his blades will start to fly around hitting random members of the raid. He will now cast shadow word pain on any raid member, it is best to assign someone on dispels for this.

Infernal spawn rate will increase, so get ready to move and get some AoE heals going if needs be.

Nightbane

The trash should all have been cleared, so straight onto the boss!

Nightbane is on a par with Prince Melchezaar difficulty wise. He can however be taken down fairly easily if everyone does their job.

As a healer you will face fears (Always keep that fear ward up) heavy damage, crushing AoEs and Rain of Bones. Rain of bones is a spell which spawns six adds on a member of your raid.

First off, layout

As a healer you should be in one of two groups hugging either the battlements or the dome. all ranged should be in one of these groups and MUST stay by the side, this minimises the area charred earth covers, since it focuses on the play, not an area. Standing by a wall effectively halves the area of the aoe, giving you some much needed space.

DPS should stay behind the back feet of Nightbane to avoid his frontal attacks and his tailswipe.

Nightbane casts several DoTs on your team, since he casts these very often it is more mana efficient to heal them than dispel them.

If Nightbane casts rain of bones all move into the tank, he then should use his AoE agro gain to get control of the 6 mobs that drop. If things go wrong here spam circle of healing can keep the group up since it heals faster than damage is dealt out, unless you agro more than 2 of the adds. Pallies are fantastic tanks here for their consecration. If you have trouble here the skelatons can be shackled.

Prayer of Mending, as ever is fantastic in this fight due to the random damage taken. Once it hops of the tank it generally will jump onto anyone taking damage from charred earth if it happens.

With this boss expect a huge amount of raid healing, everyone can and will take damage on this one. For this reason things like chain heal are a great addition to the healing group, but with care and attention renew, circle of healing, prayer of healing and prayer of mending, plus of course good old flash heals and greater heals can all be used effectively to keep the raid alive and kicking.

And you are done!

The whole of Karazhan healed, hopefully no wipes, some great loot received and your guild progressed onto Zul'Aman!