Valithria Dreamwalker (10 Player)

[Luskan]

Whoever said healers were merely raid support! This fight is all about us healers and for once, the tanks and dps build the support team. As soon as you enter her room, you can see Valithria lying in the middle of it, clearly hurt and bound by the archmages surrounding her. As healer, your task is to bring her health back to full while the tanks and DPS deal with the waves of adds that spawn during the encounter.

Their goal is to absolutely minimize raid damage to give the healers the most amount of time to actually heal the boss and hence, end the encounter quickly. The more raid damage is taken, the slower the encounter will be. Makes sense, right?

Valithria starts out at 50% health, which puts her at 18 million and leaves you with another 18 million to heal. A setup of two tanks, however little DPS you can get away with to get the job done and as many healers as possible is recommended. In our case, we just had 6 healers so the fight took a while.

There are five different types of adds that spawn that I'll list in order of importance. Blazing Skeletons, Suppressors, Risen Archmages, Blistering Zombies and Gluttonous Abomination.

Blazing Skeletons cast a raidwide AoE called Lay Waste and that's pretty much exactly what it does, not to mention it also damagtes Valithria, so these need to be killed ASAP.

Suppressors basically just run up to Valithria and channel a spell that makes her take 10% less healing per suppressor channeling. They have low health so they should be taken out quickly as long as no Blazing Skeleton is up.

Risen Archmages annoy the raid with mana-draining void zones, a 10k Frostbolt Volley AoE and Frost Pillars, but don't have any deadly AoE like the skeletons do. Still, they're high on the kill list to avoid additional raid damage.

Blistering Zombies cast Acid Burst which is a 10k AoE in a 15 yard area which also makes everyone that got hit by it take a small 20 second dot. They also greatly increase the damage your tanks take.

The Abominations have a lot of health but don't really do anything menacing at all but spawn a couple worms upon death so have your tank pick them up.

Position a DPS team on the east and west side that takes care of whatever spawns in an order similar to the one proposed above while your healers are free to spread out around the inner circle of the room. If executed correctly, raid damage should be low, giving healers a lot of time to spam heal Valithria.

Frequently, Valithria will summon about 10 Nightmare Portals in random locations around her inner circle - they will show up as little green seeds before becoming clickable - and upon clicking on one, you will be teleported to the Emerald Dream where you can freely float about the room to pick up Nightmare Clouds. When touching a Nightmare Cloud, it erupts, giving you a stack of Emerald Vigor, a buff that increases your healing and damage done by 10% as well as regenerates 200 mana every 3 seconds per stack.

The more clouds you pick up, the higher your stacks and the bigger your buff. Unless you're going for an achievement, only healers should be taking portals. You don't want all of your healers phased out at the same time though, so make sure to assign an order if this is a problem for you.

Portal assignments can be done different ways - you can assign your highest single target HPS classes to take every single one and stack up the buff while other people only take one if mana is low, or you can simply alternate so half your healers take the first set, the other half the second and go from there, or you can just have people take portals if mana is an issue. The most effective way is probably the first one, but this would take some math.

Either way, taking a portal will fill up the mana pool and give a nice healing buff. Abilities such as guardian spirit and lay on hands do work on Valithria and will provide a nice minor buff, so go ahead and use them whenever available.

As far as healing strategy behind this - you want to utilize your biggest, most efficient single target heals, which means paladins are going to love this fight. Druids cycle full hots then nourish and for priests I'd recommend - I didn't think I'd ever say this - a greater heal spec featuring divine fury, improved healing, serendipity and empowered healing. Whatever you're comfortable with is going to get the job done though, so until her heroic version is out, respeccing is not needed. Have fun and good luck!

- Follow my guide!