Nightbane

[Bolty]

A quote from Gurgthock of the Elitist Jerks guild:

...doing this fight with 3 pure healers (me, holy priest, resto druid) and no shadow priest is still really, really painful, and people who say that some other fight in Kara is harder than Nightbane are insane. After a 25% wipe simply because all three of us were completely and utterly OOM with all timers burned, I popped a Resto flask, on top of Mageblood, Mana Oil, and Sporefish. I used 4 Super Manas, dropped Mana Tide twice, had Mana Spring down at all other times, and was on the verge of running OOM right as Nightbane died. I had like 23% overheal and the other two main healers had no more than 25%, so inefficiency wasn't the problem. (And if you look at my Armory profile, you'll see that it's not being undergeared, either.)

This is a fight where stacking healers = win.

This is stupid.

For a group with only 2 dedicated healers (Priests) and 2 feral druids, we found beating him to be impossible. There just wasn't enough healing, period.

For the first time in our Karazhan group, we may have to stack the raid and force someone to sit out. Our typical group runs with:

2 Priests (holy)
2 Druids (feral)
1 Warrior (prot)
2 Warlocks
1 Mage
1 Rogue
1 Fill-in (varies, but never a Paladin cause there just aren't any)

This has had no trouble clearing everything steadily up to Nightbane and Ilhoof. Each week has had progression with new bosses down. But Nightbane seems tailor-made for a Paladin. We could survive flying phases no problem, but our healers would be gasping for mana - and when one stopped to try to regen, someone would die.

I think it's a combination of the lack of a shadow priest and the lack of a paladin. The biggest advantage of a paladin is that besides their natural longevity and efficiency, they also will basically get their mana refilled from the healing they receive while eating blasts.

With just a druid, shaman, and priest, I was the one eating the blasts, and healing myself through them. That made the air phases extremely taxing, and would leave me hurting for mana going into the next ground phase.

Also, we're going to need heavy consumables on the main tank (flasks, ironshield potions, etc). Sorry, Tal.

I just think it's ridiculous to read of groups bringing 5 dedicated healers to Nightbane and then crowing about how "easy" he is. That's not easy; that's broken. Half your raid is healing?

Tips welcome.

-Bolty