Yor'sahj the Unsleeping Healer Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)
Table of Contents
Introduction
This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Yor'sahj the Unsleeping in Dragon Soul. It is mostly targeted to healers who desire to have a short but detailed overview of what is expected of them during that fight.
This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.
The Yor'sahj the Unsleeping encounter presents its highest degree of difficulty to the raid leader, who must make certain decisions during the fight. The other roles, including healers, have a much easier time during this fight.
Depending on the boss' abilities (explained below), you will have to either stack on the boss (most often) or spread out (rarely) and heal different types of damage.
Overview of the Fight
The Yor'sahj encounter is essentially a single phase fight. The encounter is unique, in the sense that Yor'sahj has only one ability, which he casts with regularity.
Additionally, Yor'sahj will regularly summon 3 random oozes of a different type (out of 6 possible types). Upon reaching the boss, each ooze buffs the boss, granting him a specific ability that lasts 60 seconds. When there are about 15 seconds left on his buffs, the boss begins summoning the next set of 3 oozes.
Your raid can only kill one of the three oozes each time (as soon as one dies, the other two become immune), so you will have to deal with the combination of the abilities that the two surviving oozes grant the boss.
Positioning
- If Yor'sahj absorbs a Black ooze, stack close to the boss.
- If Yor'sahj absorbs a Red ooze, stack close to the boss.
- If Yor'sahj absorbs a Yellow ooze, stack close to the boss.
- If Yor'sahj absorbs a Green ooze, spread out at least 4 yards from other players.
- If Yor'sahj absorbs a Blue ooze, there are no positioning constraints.
- If Yor'sahj absorbs a Purple ooze, there are no positioning constraints.
Sources of Damage
For the entire duration of the encounter (except for when the boss summoning oozes, roughly 25 seconds every 75 seconds), Yor'sahj will spam Void Bolt on the current tank. This deals high damage and applies a stacking Shadow damage DoT, that ticks for 5,000 damage every 2 seconds in 10-man difficulty and 30,000 in 25-man difficulty.
Other than this, the oozes grant the boss the following damaging abilities.
- The Black ooze will cause Forgotten Ones to spawn. These adds will deal damage to many raid members, until they are killed ( Psychic Slice).
- The Red ooze will cause the raid members who are farthest away from Yor'sahj to take damage from Searing Blood. The damage is higher the farther away from the boss these players are. When in melee range, these players will take about 20,000 damage each time they are hit.
- The Yellow ooze will cause Yor'sahj to use his abilities (including Void Bolt) more often, resulting in more tank damage. Additionally, Void Bolt will now hit the entire raid, resulting in a high amount of raid damage (no DoT will be applied to the raid, however).
- The Green ooze will cause the boss to deal damage to random raid members ( Digestive Acid) as well as any players within 4 yards of them. If the raid is spread out, this damage should be minimal. In LFR difficulty, there is no splash damage associated with Digestive Acid.
Dealing with the Blue Ooze
If Yor'sahj absorbs a Blue ooze, he will summon a Mana Void. Over the course of 4 seconds, this add will drain the mana of everyone in the raid. When the Mana Void dies (your raid will kill it quickly), it will grant the mana back to all mana users within 30 yards of it (distributed evenly among them).
Dealing with the Purple Ooze
If Yor'sahj absorbs a Purple ooze, every 5th heal or absorb effect cast on any raid member will cause a raid-wide AoE attack ( Deep Corruption). When this ooze is active, you should keep all healing to an absolute minimum. Ideally, the raid will receive no heals at all during this time, and a specific healer will be assigned to keep the tank alive with big heals (such as a Holy Paladin).
Heroic Mode
The only significant difference between the Heroic Mode and the Normal mode is that Yor'sahj will spawn 4 oozes instead of 3. Since you can only kill one, it means that you will always have to deal with Yor'sahj being empowered with the abilities of 3 oozes, instead of 2.
Other than this, all abilities deal more damage and all units (Yor'sahj, oozes, adds, and Mana Void) have more health.
As a healer, you will find that the fight is the same as the Normal version, just that it is a lot harder to heal (since having the 3rd ooze invariably adds more raid damage).
That said, there are a few things that you need to be aware of and which we detail in the next sections.
Black, Red, and Yellow
This combination of oozes will be the hardest to heal. Fortunately, since the raid will be stacked up on the boss, AoE healing cooldowns should be kept and used for this combination: Power Word: Barrier, Spirit Link Totem, Devotion Aura, etc.
Note that this combination can come twice or thrice in a row, meaning that your raid should try to use AoE healing cooldowns sparingly, only when necessary. This will enable you to survive the bad odds that come with getting this combination several times in the fight.
Deep Corruption
Your raid will have to deal with purple in half of the 6 possible combinations. This means that, unlike in Normal mode, properly handling Deep Corruption is no longer optional.
To properly handle this debuff, you must have it show in your raid frame addons (the spell ID is 105171 and its name is Deep Corruption).
Also, purple is always up in combination with blue, which deals no damage, and either of black or green, which deals very moderate damage. As you can see, purple is never combined with a highly damaging ooze that could cause you or the other healers to panic, so you should be able to easily keep alive every player in the raid, without having to heal them more than 4 times.
Mana Void Trick
The idea is to survive with rather low mana for one phase or two, until you get a second Mana Void (something that should happen quickly enough as 4 of the 6 combinations have blue). Then, as soon as the second Mana Void has depleted all casters of their mana, the first Mana Void should be killed.
After that, the second Mana Void will be kept as a means of re-filling the raid's mana after the third Mana Void spawns and so on. All in all, this will save your raid the trouble of killing one Mana Void. Since they have a significant health pool, this will prevent a wipe to the enrage timer at 2% health.
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