Healing Kael' Plan B...

Wednesday night we made a handful of Kael' attempts. Our raid schedule has been seriously reduced for the week and we have lots of members unable to raid this week because of the Easter Holiday. (I'm glad family and friend obligations are of high importance to our officers and members, but thats a story for a different day.) We did have one attempt where we got all the weapons down though! Hardly, maybe, but we did it! And we were able to get a good handle on what DPS order and tanking rotation works for us. It felt like progression all night. What phase or transition will make us feel like we are banging our heads against the wall? I have gotten the serious impression that happens at some point...

Yakra made some changes to his original tanking plan shortly before the raid and sadly I did not have the time to adjust the healing plans appropriately. (You would think that having the healing and tanking officers married to each other would increase officer communication, but that is not always so. Sometimes our officer comunication involves screaming at each other at the top of lungs in our office and freaking our guildmates out if one of us pushes the push-to-talk key.)

So healing was sloppy. Very very sloppy. And I feel really guilty. I spent some time this afternoon re-meshing the healing to Yakra's tanking plan while including Lonetree's advice. (Thanks again!) I probably should have considered Swiftmend's Strat a little bit more, but I have been so busy with real life stuff... Without further adieu, here is my New and Improved Kael' Healing Plan:

All Healers
Phase 1.1: DPS and Raid Heal
Phase 1.2: Heal Sangruinar Tank (Tank 2)
Phase 1.4: Heal Engineer Tank (Tank 3)
Phase 4: DPS Shield When Up As Able
Phase 5: Raid Heal During Gravity Lapse

Healer 1 (Pally)
Phase 1.3: Lock Tank
Phase 2: Tank 1 (Sword & Shield)
Phase 3: Tank 1 (Finishing Shield) -> Tank 3 (Engineer)
Phase 4&5: Tank 1 (Kael’)

Healer 2 (Shaman or Druid)
Phase 1.3: Lock Tank
Phase 2: Tank 2 (Mace) -> Tank 4 (Axe)
Phase 3: Tank 2 (Sanguinar)
Phase 4&5: Tank 1 (Kael’)

Healer 3 (Druid or Shaman)
Phase 1.3 -> 1.4: Raid Heal -> Ready to Heal Tank 3 (Engineer)
Phase 2: Hunter (Bow) -> Tank 3 (Daggers and Staff)
Phase 3: Tank 3 (Engineer)
Phase 4&5: Tank 1 (Kael’)

Healer 4 (Priest or Pally)
Phase 1.3: Tank 4 (Conflagrations)
Phase 2: Tank 4 (Axe)
Phase 3: Tank 4 (Finishing Axe) -> Ready to Heal Tank 4 (Phoenixes)
Phase 4&5: Tank 4 (Phoenixes)

Healer 5 (Priest or Druid)
Phase 1.3: Lock Tank
Phase 2: Tank 1 (Sword & Shield)
Phase 3: Lock tank
Phase 4&5: Lock Tank (Finishing) -> Tank 1 (Kael’)

Healer 6 (Pally, Priest, or Druid)
Phase 1.3: Tank 4 (Conflagrations)
Phase 2: Tank 3 (Daggers and Staff)
Phase 3: Lock Tank
Phase 4&5: Lock Tank (Finishing) -> Tank 4 (Phoenixes)

Vashj Down!!! (And Vashj Healing Strat)

LOKI downed Vashj last night!!!We have been working our butts off on her, but it honestly came as a surprise to me! After downing Zul'Jin for the first time the night before, I figured many of us would be slightly burnt out and not on our A-Game. We also have only really been working on her for 2.5-3 weeks. There are a few other guild on our server who have been working on her for over a month, so I thought it was just too soon for us to get it. Just makes me even MORE proud to be part of LOKI.

We had some solid phase 2 attempts, and then one attempt that we got her into phase 3 and everyone just got really excited. Yakra has been saying for the last few days, "The night we get her into phase 3, she is going down." And two attempts later she did!

I give mad props to everyone, but specifically: Vault and Mon, our Locks who kited the striders; Lum and Furnz, our hunters who did a fantastic job of keeping down the spore bats in phase three; Yakra, Neish, and Ruff, our tanking trio who picked up all the elites and kept Vashj out of the icky spore stuff; and Left (the F***ing Beast) who topped the DPS meters yet again.
Healing for Vashj:
We by no means had what I would have called our healing dream team for this fight. No ones fault, I just thought Paladins were really disadvantaged on this fight.

Positioning/Assignments:
4 Healers Inside, Assigned to Generators:
NW: Druid or Priest Healing/HoTing the Kiters
NE: Paladin Healing the Elite Naga Tanks
SW: Druid or Priest Healing/HoTing the Kiters
SE: Shaman chain healing the Melee
3 Healers Outside, Assigned to Elemental DPS:
W: Paladin, Priest, or Shaman Healing 2 DPSers (This is the largest side DPS must cover)
S: Druid Healing two DPSers (One is a Hunter)
N: Druid Healing two DPSers (One is a Hunter)
E: Both Druids from N and S HoTing 2 DPSers

Phase 1: Healers and DPSers should spread out to roughly their positions. We left areas to the north and the south, on the stairs, as an empty safe zone for people with the static charge debuff. This way healers to the North and West areas knew to look North for people to heal, and the healers to the South and East areas knew to South for people to heal. All other healers were on the Tank currently tanking Vashj. Shamans in the tank groups need to use grounding totems and Paladins need to have a Blessing of Freedom rotation up of the tank.

Phase 2: Now everyone REALLY goes to their assigned positions. Healers on the steps will be doing a lot of moving around to follow their DPS. Healers at the generators should move around to help out where ever help is needed at the moment. No one should be doing nothing. If you REALLY can't find anyone to heal, help DPS Elementals that are heading to the middle, Striders, and Elite Nagas.
~ When an Elite comes up, healers need to watch to see if they have aggro and run to the center to the tanks if they do.
~ When a strider comes up, healers at the generators need to watch and move into or out of the circle to prevent themselves from being run over by a strider.
~ When a Tainted Elemental comes up, healers assigned to generators need to get to their generators and be prepared to catch a core and deactivate the generator. Poisons will need to be removed from various people.

Phase 3: Very similar to Phase 1. Most heals should be on the Main Tank and any Tanks still tanking Naga. We had the three healers (all druids in our case) assigned to healing the raid, including people who had the static charge debuff, but still HoTing the Tank. Mostly, people need to be on their toes moving out of the green goo and not taking extra damage in the first place.

So that is how we did it!
I tend to forget bosses drop loot, but I did get the Coral Band of the Revived. Kurse should have made me spend WAY more DKP on it!
And Yakra caught the last 11% on video:

WoW_2008-02-24_22-18-04-01.avi

Zul'Jin Down! (And Zul'Jin Healing Strat)

Finally, LOKI has managed to drop Zul'Jin!!!
I am ridiculously excited and not in the least bit ashamed that it has taken us this long! We have been doing SSC (well, TK that one week) 3 - 4 nights a week, and the weeks that it was 3 nights raids were canceled for specific reasons (Superbowl Sunday, Valentines Day, etc.) Kara with real life friends is always Fridays. That leaves 2 nights a week that we are supposed to have off that a few of us really STUPID people have been throwing our bodies and consumibles against the brick walls known as Hex Lord and Zul'Jin. In that context, I think it is pretty cool that we downed him!

Yakra main tanked the kill. He is very excited.

Healing for our successful kill was as follows:
Phase 1: Troll Paladin on the MT the whole time. Priest and druid switching to people as they get the Grievous Throw debuff. I stay in Night Elf form and cast max rank Healing Touch (macroed to my Idol of the Avian Heart, of course) on them and lifebloomed the tank in between.

Phase 2: Bear All three healers run around behind the main tank, while all DPS run behind the bear. This allows the shadow priest to use mass dispel on the DPS without it being 'wasted' on a healer or the MT. The pally dispelled the MT then himself. The priest dispelled himself and then me. I shifted back into ToL and kept all HoTs on the MT the whole time. The priest and pally on the MT when they weren't dispelling and me raid healing.

Phase 3: Eagle I will have nightmares about this phase for the rest of my life. I moved into a predetermined corner of the main platform - NOT into one of the wings. The predetermined part was important so that the pally and priest could move near me if I told them they were too far away or out of LoS. I then rolled Lifeblooms on myself and the two other healers. Constantly. I stacked as much heal as my very spirit directed gear allowed and the ticks were for about 670. Yes, this means I took 1,250 damage from the electrical storm about every 1.75 seconds. This is counter to what you are told to do on the Zul'Jin guide on Bosskillers. But now instead of three healers trying to cast as little as possible for this phase, the pally and the priest casted their largest heals almost constantly on the person who had the lowest health at the time. Of course they were very vocal about who they were healing to prevent overheal and DPS did try to bandage whenever possible.

This method has worked the best, by far, for all LOKI Zul'Jin attempts. It does lead to weird things like... me doing "40%" of the healing for the fight and the other two healers each doing "20%" each. I will be looking for Moia's Wow Web Stats report to get a better look at the true healing break down.

Phase 4: Lynx Pally and priest on main tank most of the time, switching to the person being Claw Charged and then casting their fastest heals. I HoTed the MT as much as I could, but most of my time was split between Rejuv'ing (and sometimes Lifeblooming) the people with the Lynx Rush DoT on them and healing the person being claw charged. What I finally ended up doing to heal said claw charged person was Rejuv, Swiftmend, Regrowth, Rejuv. Attempts where I Regrowth'ed first didn't seem to cut it.

Phase 5: DragonHawk Almost all heals on the tank, with the occasional healing and HoTing on the raid. This is really a test to see if you have enough people up to DPS him down before his "soft enrage" timer (too many stacks of the flame whirl debuff.) Just move out of the Columns of Fire ASAP!


This fight makes me want to cry, but my gosh, is it a test of all abilities for everyone involved. As a Resto Druid I have to (1) HT as an elf, (2) Single tank HoT and Raid Heal, (3) Roll multiple stacks of Lifeblooms while moving, (4) HoT and Swiftmend huge, fast bleed amounts, and (5) Have enough mana in the end to keep up the MT as he takes more and more damage. I can't think of a fight that pushes me to the very edges of my abilities more!!!

And after it is all over there is an awesomely cute party with booze and fireworks! My gosh, did I need the booze and fireworks! And loots I suppose too. (Did you know bosses drop loot?! I always forget...) There is nothing on Zul'Jin for Resto Druids, but my very happy, seriously matching, dwarf warrior of a husband got the Chestguard of the Warlord. He also made this video of our kill! (This is his first video so we are all required to be very proud.) If you look closely you can see me be bounced around and zapped over and over again in the corner. Here is a better, downloadable version of our kill.

3 Days Equals 3/4 TK

I have been a busy busy tree the last week. To spare my RL friends who want to read my blog, I start starting with my RL update.

I have been filing out an application for a general/physical science position that would be like my DREAM job right now, in the district I really want to be in. The biggest addition to my app was a GLOWING letter of recommendation from my curriculum design teacher who said I was among the top 3 student teachers he has had in his 27 years and the most outgoing student teacher he has had.

Then I had an interview on Monday for a subbing position in the same district. It was mostly a "do you have all your paperwork and no eye brow ring" type interview. So I got the sub job and I can start on the 25th. Its day to day, so we will see how it goes. Hopefully I will be very busy!

And a transition from teaching to wow - one of my guildmates is a high school student and they knew I was a chem teacher and told me they bombed a chem test recently. So out the window went paying attention for Kara trash and in came all the graphic organizers and short cuts I could e-mail him for naming different types of compounds In a way I was surprised that I could stop playing that fast, but in another way I wasn't, since I love teaching so so much. Now I just hope they can pull their grade up!

And on to the meat of the post: How LOKI roflpwned TK this past week.

On Tuesday we went into Alar. The huge majority of us had never done Alar before. It was a long three hours, we had to clear trash twice. Each attempt we progressed a little more and a little more. Phase One was learned fairly quickly by all our tanks 3 cycling tanks. Healing was fine so long long as they stayed in LOS. Phase Two was, of course, where things became complicated. Bird adds being tanked all over with trees frantically following their tanks. DPS that didn't understand the concept "Don't stand by the door". (Can you tell I assigned myself to healing the off tanks by the door?!) It was fun times all around, but awesome that we got him in only three hours of practice and attempts.

Wednesday was High Astromancer Solarian. Longer trash equaled blah, and we had to clear it twice. However, I think she would have been cake if people understood how to turn on their DBM announcement (I mean it yells "Run away little girl!" at you for Pete's sake!) or downloading SolarianAlarm. Once that was all set and people were canceling their casts to run the heck away, she went down supper easy. Kind of a boring fight I think for me. All I did was raid heal and HoTs the AOEers before all the mobs rushed the raid.

Thursday was Void Reaver. LOKI downed VR more times than I can remember this past summer. I actually have always liked the fight. It is fairly tree friendly as we can cast on the move, while running away from arcane orbs. I get in this happy little back and forth pattern with my (hopefully) competent group, calling out "Group 1&5, left", "Group 1&5, right." All the while I am HoTs, HoTs, HoTs the melee and tanks. The second attempt, we got probably 6 minutes into the fight before resetting it and I checked the healing meters. I had done a little under 40% of the healing, and we had 7 healers in the raid! Yes, shamans and druids have a big advantage on VR, and I am among the best geared healers in the guild - but 40% is uncalled for. People were just dieing too early from orbs. You know that expression, "I'm starting to sound like my parents!" I found myself starting to sound like the resto druid who has been in LOKI the longest: "How hard is it to run away from the orb? The come SO slow. I can run away and I'm a freaking TREE!!!" But VR went down, about two hours total. And to be fair, we have A LOT of people in there who had never seen VR before.

PS: This post is dedicated to Tolsmir, enhancement shaman and LOKI's Physical DPS officer, who has been bugging me to update my blog for the last few days!

More on Vashj and On to TK

Vashj went as well as one can hope the first night on Vashj can go, I think. There were some disagreements about the best uses for various DPS, and looking back, I don't think we made all the best choices. But we definitively came away with a much better understanding of the fight. We had no problems with the first phase, and by the end of the three hours we had 2 generators down. It was slow progress, but it was progress. Our biggest sticking point seemed to be DPSing down the strider. So there will be big DPS changes for next time.

We had 8 healers, 4 on the inside and 4 on the outside. I believe next time I would like to try 3 on the outside and 5 on the inside, since our inside healers were feeling overwhelmed, and our outside healers were finding time to DPS. Two cores came up my side (different attempts), where I was healing a hunter (different hunter different attempts). We alone had no problem taking down the tainted elemental, the hunter tossed the core to me, and I tossed it to another healer standing by the generator. I actually thought it was really fun!

Here was a macro, that I pulled from a strat. video on the Bosskillers that makes tossing the core easier and helps your raid follow where the core is:

/use Tainted Core
/y <--- TAINTED CORE TO %t !!! /s <--- TAINTED CORE TO %t !!! /Script SendChatMessage ("!!!YOU HAVE THE TAINTED CORE!!!", "WHISPER", "Common", UnitName("target")) This macro will 1. Use the core (ie, throw it to the person who you have selected, 2. Yell and Say who you are throwing it too, so everyone in the raid knows, and 3. Send a tell to the person you threw it to if they somehow missed the previous announcements! Although Vashj went fairly well, and we are hopeful about some of our ideas for changes, we are going to move on to TK. LOKI has previously downed VR, and put him on hold so we could do SSC. We figure Al'ar and Solarian will be easier than Vashj, and we don't want to loose momentum while momentum has been awesome. In other newses, like... last Tuesday I guess, I got the Gnarled Chestpiece of the Ancients from Morogrim for some reasonable emount of DKP. It has more Stam than the Robes if Heavenly Purpose. The robes will stay my main piece of course, but it is nice to have some alternatives that don't totally gimp healing ability. Sadly, they still aren't sexy enough to justify pairing them with my Nordrassil Life-Kilt. We did Kara again this past Friday. This time it was a lot of my real life friends alts. I don't have a high level alt so I went on Aertimus. I was very surprised at the DPS synergy and general output for the lower levels of gear. Of course it helps that we all know what we are doing and work well together! But the neatest part was that, even though I was still on Aertimus, and I have done Kara a ton of times with this group, it felt different since people were playing different classes. I got the Stainless Cloak of the Pure Hearted off of prince, which was, I believe, the absolute last piece of gear I had interest in from Kara. Again, it has more +heal and Stam than the Shadowvine Cloak of Infusion and options are always nice. Some of my friends passed it to me. That is something I always feel awkward about - who has more of I right or need to a piece of gear? An alt if it is for their main set, or a main if it is for an alt set? We "roll need" on pieces - but is it really "need" for either of us, in that case or is it greed? The final piece of WoW news is that I got added to Resto4Life's bloggroll. No pressure here to keep this thing up, going, and exciting! Anyone reading this better already be reading that site. In the real world, last week I submitted all my paperwork to sub in the district I would really like to sub in. So, hopefully some sub work will be right around the corner!

Vashj!?!

It was Wednesday night, and we pulled Vashj. Not only does that mean we cleared the first 5 bossed in SSC in two days, a first for LOKI, but we PULLED VASHJ. TWICE! Apparently between the downing of the last boss and the pulling of Vashj there is this epic bridge rising out of the water moment. Well, I missed that part. So did 23 other raid members. Why? Because my over excited TANK of a HUSBAND decided to go ahead and open the door without us there. His excuse? He thought it would just slide apart. How he thought we would get across? He didn't think about it. He has been thoroughly shunned and picked on by guild members and even non-guild members and sentenced to the sofa for his foolishness. If he had watched the video strats he would have known, right?!?

So back to the part about how we PULLED VASHJ. Phase one obviously went fine. The first time into phase two our DPS was assigned all wrong *cough* Ruffs fault *cough* and I confused some of our best healers with my hasty healing assignments. The second time, one of our very organized and very high DPSers did DPS assignments and I believe it went much better. I would like to think I helped explain things to the better healers too. Striders were successfully kited. Elites were not successfully tanked, however they were successfully DPSed. Elementals were more or less dieing as the should. My north side had some trouble because my group forgot which way was North *cough* Ruff *cough*. Tainted Elementals were not even close to dieing.

Tomorrow we will spend a solid 3 hours on her. I cannot WAIT!

Fathom-Lord Karathress Down!

I don't know if he dropped like a drunken cheerleader, but he finally did drop. We had a few wipes in the beginning, the first of which I attribute to trying new tanking locations, which just were not working out. It was just a 180 degree rotation around the room, the the MT healer couldn't keep him up during positioning. She seemed to feel bad about it, but I don't think there was anything she could have done. If SHE couldn't keep him up, like, no one could.

Before we adjusted the tanking location I tried to change around healing to fix the problem, and we ended up running with that second plan. I will adjust my below guild to reflect what was finally the most successful. Sadly, even after going back to original tanking locations and going to the new healing plan, our priest healing the hunter and hunter pet tank d/c'ed twice. There was a storm at their house, but we didn't figure out what was going on right away. Once we switched him out, Karathress went down on the next try.

I started out the fight healing the Shaman tank (Yakra, my husband, was tanking him.) Us three healers got hit by every spitfire totem and there was nothing we could do about it. I kept all 5 HoTs on Yakra and threw lifeblooms and rejuv's on myself as much as I could in the rotation. We had a dedicated healer and I don't think there is any other way we could have done it. After the shaman went down, I headed over to heal the main tank (Ruffianx) and both times I made it that far I got killed by the spitfire totem. I still should have had a healer on myself. I'm not sure if the totem hits harder or if there is just too much going on for another healer to keep a squishy tree up. This problem will be reflected in changes to my game plan strategy. Frankly, I feel like crap for being dead for so much of the fight and being at the bottom of the healing meters.

After you down Karathress, and NPC spawns and you can get the first quest in the Black Temple attunement chain. This quest allows you to be a Broken in TK, so a bunch of us went after the raid to have a Broken party in TK. I can hardly believe I am on the BT attunement quest chain!

As if downing him wasn't enough. As if being on the BT attunement chain wasn't enough. I got loot!!! I got my Tier Five Pants! Okay, everyone saw it coming with my 316 DKP - which was the most in the guild, but it was still super exciting. I tossed in a little extra something to our poor rouge who was forced to take bids :P Our GM bid second with 240 DKP, forcing me to cough up 241 DKP. He could have hit me for more. Many congrats followed. I hope the guild thinks I will put them to good use! I gemmed them already, but still need to add spell thread. This puts me at 2/5 T5 (omg crazy!). But most importantly, they are super cute!

In other awesome news, I got mentioned in Leafshines blog! I like reading her blog especially because talks about her guilds triumphs over specific kara bosses and links videos. I will probably not do the video thing, but her blog was one of my inspirations about doing entries for specific boss!

So it was just an all around awesome night! I stayed up late to celebrate and then slept until 1pm this afternoon. Ops! Maybe I should try going outside... or cleaning... what is this real world thing again? And why aren't my pants as cute?

Healing for Fathom-Lord Karathress

Fathom-Lord Karathress in Serpentshrine Cavern is LOKI's current progression target. If all goes accordingly, he will drop, as my husband says, "like a drunk cheerleader" tonight. My game plan for healing is as follows:

8 - 9 Healers are recommended. We tried him with 8 and so much DPS died that we hit the enrage timer, so tonight we are going to bring 9. I believe we will be able to do him with 8 healers sooner then later.
Ideal Healer Breakdown:
Paladins: 3 (2-6)
Priests: 1 (0-3)
Druids: 3 (2-5)
Shamans: 2 (1-5)

Healers will be prioritized/assigned as follows for the start of the fight:
PHASE 1: SHARKKIS AND HIS PET ARE KILLED
You want all of your healers to position themselves between their respective tank and the center of the room. This will make switching to later assignments faster, and will make healing the healers easier on the, well, healer healers.
Healing the Tidalvess Tank: (The Shaman) He hits hardest and his spit fire totem is a bitch. You should already have your best geared tank on him. You want three of your best healers. I am going to assign (1) our best shammy, (2) our best resto druid, and (3) our second best Pally (Initially I thought a priest would be good here as well, but they just seemed to take too much damage from the spitfire totem.) You want a great single target healer to stay on the tank, hence (3). And you want chain heal and HoTs to help keep up all 3 healers during spitfire.
Healing the Main Tank/Karathress Tank: One awesome pally healer - Your best pally healer. Hands down. They will be alone healing the tank to begin with. He won't be taking too much damage off the bat, but you still don't want to screw around and put someone not awesome on him. As the fight progresses he will get assistance from other healers so he can go all out, as he will need, in the beginning.
Healing the Sharkkis and Pet Tanks: (The Hunter and His Pet) Best remaining pally or shaman. A shaman is nice (since the raid will start out clustered around these adds) or a pally is nice (since Sharkkis and his pet will be doing moderate damage to, most likely, your least geared tanks). As long as you put a good healer her, they should be able to keep them both up alone. Sharkkis and his pet will go down first, so whomever you assign here does not need to deal with two targets for long. It is important that they are a pally of shaman for their higher durability, which will come into play later.
Healing the Caribdis Tank: (The Priest) A good remaining healer, preferably a shaman. This healer will be healing this tank to quiet some time, but the priest does not hit hard. A shaman is preferred because they can assist with interrupting the priest's heals with earthshock if the melee interrupters are all frozen from tidal surge. Any chain healing will also heal said interupting melee without extra effort. Also assign your ninth healer (shaman if the other isn't one) here, if you are bringing nine. (I hate to call them your worst two healers. But possibly your healer who hasn't gotten lucky loot drops, or maybe someone brand new to the guild or fight. I will assume all really bad healers have already been /gkicked.) Since the priest will stay alive for so long, it doesn't hurt to have some extra mana and a pair of eyes here.
Healing the Raid: Everyone is taking damage. DPS can bandage, pot, and healthstone, but your healers won't have time to heal themselves, so someone else needs to heal them. The raid and healers will be spread out in the four corners of the room, so a shaman would not be the most efficient here. I am going to recommend a a druid, since they can run all around the room while healing. They should prioritize raid healing as follows: MT Healer> Tidalvess Healers> Self> All Other Healers> DPS. ***Do what you can to keep everyone in the raid above 50% in case they get shadow bolted, however, DPS really needs to do this themselves.*** And whatever you do, don't stand in the spitfire totem range.
Healing the Tidalvess Healers: Preferably a priest.The three Tidalvess healers are going to take a lot of damage from the spitfire totem in waves. If they all stop to heal themselves at the same time, the Tidalvess tank is going to die. Have one healer stand out of range of the spitfire totem and focus on just healing the three Tidalvess Healers until Tidalvess dies.

PHASE 2: TIDELVESS IS KILLED
After Sharkkis dies, his healers is reassigned:
Healing the Main Tank: The pally or shaman. Karathress will gain The Best Within ability once Sharkkis is dead, so a second healer needs to book it on over the the MT and help out that best pally you already have there. Karathress will be hitting harder. One healer could do this, but there is no reason to take the risk. It is important that this extra set of heals has high armor (pally or shaman) for the next phase.

PHASE 3: CARIBDIS IS KILLED
After Tielvess is down, his three tank healers and healer healers are reassigned:
Healing the Main Tank: The shaman and pally. Karathress is still Best Within-ing, and now the MT and his healers are all within spitfire totem range. Your tank will probably opt to kite Karathress every time he drops the totem to get out of range, so this will mean you will be doing some running back and forth. As long as you stay max range from the extreme ends of the kite zone (toward the middle of the room of course) you shouldn't have too many problems now that the MT has 4 dedicated healers. These healers will be taking lots of damage from spitfire totems, which is why they really need to all be paladins and/or shamans. It will just be too hard to keep up a druid or priest standing in range while Caribdis is being killed.
Healing the MT Healers: The priest and druid. There are four slightly squishy healers that will periodically get hit by a wave from spitfire totem. Have two healers ready to keep those four up while the kiting is going on. In between waves they can assist with general raid healing. Obviously, these two healers should stay out of range of the spitfire totem.

PHASE 4: KARATHRESS IS KILLED
After Carbids is killed, his tanks one or two healers are reassigned:
Healing the Main Tank: If only one healer, or the non-shaman healer. Although there are already four healers on the MT, put one more there for good measure, especially since mana will be getting tight at this point in the fight. At this point it matters less if this healer is squishy since the spitfire totem will be DPSed down as soon as it is dropped.
Healing the Raid: If their is a remaining healer, preferably a shaman. If you have 9 healers, you raid is more likely to stop DPSing down spitfire totems and just DPS Karathress so you can beat the hard enrage timer. If you only have 8, they will hopefully have time to DPS the totem down. If you arn't DPSing that totem, one more dedicated raid healer will help keep the raid, which is being spitfired and tidal waved, above 50% until you can drop Karathress.