By now if you’re a World of Warcraft player and don’t know about the looming patch 3.3, you’ve been living in Thousand Needles a bit too long.
This week we’re focussing on a new raid and a new boss – namely Valithria Dreamwalker – that’s currently available on the Public Test Realms. Raids are pretty standard with most major patches, but this is one of those rare, if not unique opportunities where healers take the spotlight.
How, you might ask? Well it’s quite simple. Instead of killing Val, players heal her. The encounter begins players slaughtering 4 Lich that are guarding her. You shouldn’t have too much trouble with them at all if your healers are on their game (as they are expected to be in this raid of all raids).
Val starts off with 5 million health (50%) and you are required to heal her to 10 million health (100%). Of course, nothing in Warcraft is ever that easy, as you’ll be dealing with a never-ending flow of adds rushing in to stop you. Thankfully these are easily nuke-able, but by now you should know that in large numbers rubbish can quite easily crush you. As you get closer to your goal over time, expect the influx of these mobs to speed up.
You’re also going to have to be very aware of your surroundings, as the AOE effects we all know and love (har har) make their appearance in this encounter too. Columns of Frost will send you hurtling through the air and Mana Voids will suck the mana from you at a rate of 1000 per second.
Thankfully, Blizzard has implemented a nifty little way for you to regenerate some of that lost mana and get you back on your A-game. Throughout the encounter you’ll notice green portals appearing. Should you walk into one, you’ll be temporarily teleported into a phased version of the fight.
Here you’ll find little green spheres that, when easily killed, will buff you – namely with 10% extra damage and healing, as well as 200 extra mana regenerated every 3 seconds. Most importantly, however, is that these buffs stack! After a few seconds of being in the phase you’ll be teleported out and back to the main fight with your peers. The trick is to send the right people into the portals at the right time, so as to keep up a constant stream of healing on Valithria, but still be able to deal with the flow of mobs that must be killed.
Overall it sounds like the chaotic mayhem we’ve grown used to over the years, with a nice twist – helping out of brethren of the Green Dragonflight instead of simply killing something Über.
Discuss Valithria Dreamwalker in the forums
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