Against Netherspite.

From the heal-priest point of view, there is NOTHING as easy as Netherspite.  Run up.  Stay out of the beams.  Heal the raid as needed – the player in the red is going to get a full health restore every second, so for a while you’ll be doing more for everone else.  If a void – a black hole – opens under you, move – but don’t accidentally run into a beam.   That’s 2/3 of the fight.  For the other third (the “banish”) phase, it depends on your raid’s strategy.

If your raid chooses to beat heavily on Netherspite during banish, you want to make sure you have a fast-heal (healthstone, pot) ready to hand just in case you get tagged with his netherbreath.  You probably won’t – you’re going to be smart enough to stay to the flank.  On the other hand, the breath has a knockback – tank goes flying and, well, you know what that can mean.  (Plus, the tank and up to two others can be knocked completely out of healing range.  That falls into “no fun” categories.)

Your other option as a raid is to flee out of netherbreath range.  If the dragon’s been tanked in roughly the middle of the room, you are “safe” if you get to the far back wall (behind the telescope).  No breath damage.  Downside here, of course, is that nobody’s doing damage to the dragon during this opportunity.  As a healpriest, this is your dance with mana regen – slap a renew on those who have to have it, yell for folk to bandage, and accept 30 seconds of OFSR time.

Either way, you have one more risk time.  Netherspite’s aggro table resets when banish ends, but the beams don’t start till 10 seconds later.  (Including the red “automatic aggro” beam.)  During that time “normal” aggro rules apply – let the tank get it and hold it and balance your work against his ability.

I’ve participated in both strategies, both being successful.

After practice, you are probably the best player for battle management in this fight.  You may or may not need to be the one who determines which beam is intercepted by whom (and when).  You, however, don’t need to move unless voids open under you.  Which means you can watch the time and the beams and call critical issues for everyone.

Once everyone understands the dance of the lights (and assuming you’re doing decent — 1500+ party — DPS), Netherspite is easy.

Some tidbits…

1) The red beam restores its player target to full health every tick (1 second ticks).  The bad news is that every tick also reduces the health pool of its target.  The good news is that the first tick changes that health pool to 31000 health.  Ponder this a tiny bit…  One option – tricky and risky though it may be – is to have all players take a fast run (taking a single tick) through the red beam.  When they do this they will need massive healing attention (the dragon hits HARD), but after that they’ll all be at 31,000 health — quite a buffer, really — unless or until they have to take the aggro/max health reduction.

2) If you (and any other spellcasters) are low on mana, dash through the green beam for one tick.  It will reduce your maximum mana pool by 200.  In exchange, your mana pool will be maxed.  You’ll also get +5% healbonus AND all spells/abilities will cost 1% less.

3) Because of the beams, some players are often out of range.  Healteam planning is better served by placement and then healing whoever needs it instead of worrying about “your targets”.  With three healers, just place one between each pair of beams.  (Since the beams come from the front right corner, front left corner and center of the back, placement should be fairly obvious.)  With two, place on either side of the red, but closer to the other color beam.

Once everyone understands what’s going on, and the raid leader understands the best pattern of deciding who gets what beam at what point in the battle, Netherspite is actually fairly easy.  Have fun.

Remember for both beams that when you “dash through” you should step between the beam and its current target, and then step through the designated target (toward netherspite).  This prevents the beam from shifting laterally to follow you, which moves Netherspite, which can move the other two beams (which is a bad thing to have happen).

(As a healer, leave the blue beam alone.  It does nothing you need.)

sigh.  A bit of overall tactical discussion would not be amiss, I think.  The ideal class to put in front of the green beam is a warrior or rogue.  Due to peculiarities of the system they cannot ‘reach zero mana’ which means they can stay in the beam ‘forever’ without losing it.

~ by Kirk on November 5, 2007.