ICC thoughts

My guild runs late night raids, and so we sometimes lack people. That was the case last night, resulting in double ICC10 runs instead of a 25man. As one group was a healer short, I was healing with a Holy Paladin. A Disc priest and Holy pally might seem like an unfortunate combination, because, well... it is. I can raid heal when occasion demands, but others are better at it. However, we one-shotted everything in the first wing, and the pally and I found a comfortable rhythm somehow where we ended up doing minimal cross healing, maximizing our overall usefulness. It was good, it felt pro.

Enter the new wing. We accidentally decided to pull all of the trash in one go. With a total of 3 people left standing at the end of the pull, it was at least a very quick way to clear trash! Many shouts of "I just died to.... something" and general confusion as to what mobs were doing what abilities with what results since we basically had all of them on top of us. Maybe next week I'll be able to give tips other than Heal your ass off. Oh wait! Dispel the stupid bubble crap immediately. Both healers got it at one time and it took a while for the tank (only other person who could cleanse magic) to catch on. Fair enough, he was busy tanking the gazillion mobs.

Then we get to the doggy stage.

If you don't know it, there are two bosses trash mobs called Precious and Stinky before the boss. Make sure your tanks pull the mad scientists and vengeful geisty dudes before them if possible, or be very careful pulling the dogs all the way down the stairs.

The dogs are, basically, Gluth from Naxx. Precious is the full zombie-fledged version, while Stinky doesn't do zombies but has a pulsating AoE aura of stink (with apparently unlimited odorous range). They both do a stacking debuff on the tank that reduces healing received by 10% (goes all the way to 100 if they don't switch, just like Gluth) so tanks need to switch and let the debuff run out. The dogs then do Decimate, which reduces the raid to 10% health. Nothing new here, with the exception of the nasty AoE after Decimate bringing a kind of Loatheb panicked aoe healing to the Stinky fight. With a holy pally and disc priest healing this was hard. One of our kitties switched to tree form and it all went smoothly again.

Then comes the boss. The tactics are widely available so no need to repeat them. Key points I found as Disc spothealing (assisting on both tank and raid) was: Tanks were taking major spikes, so anything to help mitigate that is welcome. Shield+PoH is rarely overhealing at the start of the fight, even when you chain cast it. At 2&3 inocs, healing becomes far easier on raid, but the tanks are taking big spikes that require your attention. Pain Suppression should be close at hand for those dipping tank health bars, and if you can, use your PI on your highest dps caster to help burn him down quickly. Since you can safely shield spam the raid for haste buffs, the faster take-down time should be worth it. This might not be the case if you're tank healing, as boy do they take some nasty spikes. Prayer of Mending should, of course, be jumping around constantly.

With our gear level: 2xinoculations is NOT ENOUGH. Most people were one-shotted if they didn't have 3xinocs, with the exception of the high-stamina classes. With 3x inocs the damage was just over 10k, with 2xinocs it was closer to 25k.
It's a dps race with frantic healing thrown in, but as soon as people master the inoculations, for disc healers it's just a case of bursty healing and careful timing.