How todo the Heigan Dance

So we where in Naxxramas the other day and while we downed Heigan, only 3 out of 10 managed to do the dance. Which is rather bad as the dance really is about as simple as it gets (once you get it). In order for us to get the Safety Dance Achievement next time we're in Heigan's dance class I thought I'd provide an illustrated guide to the Safety dance.



Now the dance itself is pretty simple:
1) Each phase you start dancing in 'Zone 1'
2) after every explosion you move 1 zone to the right
3) when you hit the zone next to the wall you simply reverse direction

So: Zone1->Zone2->Zone3->Zone4->Zone 3->Zone 2 ->Zone1->Repeat

To make this easy:
1) Realise that the platform makes it easy to spot the zones (as illustrated in the picture above)
2) Position yourself on the line between the 2 pillars while facing the platform
3) Strafe to move so you can keep the platform in sight at all times
4) Prefer staying alive over doing more dps (a dead body's dps is 0)

Do NOT wait for others to move then move to the same spot
If you do that any latency will kill you, if on the other hand you move directly after each explosion finishes you'll have plenty of time to make it

As you can see from the above, it's not exactly quantum physics, it's primary school math
So once you get it, it will be easy (and you know all get it, right? )

I haven't been in the last run but couple of problems that we usually suffer...
1st one is lag or lets say latency, ppl has to adjust their positions keep in mind that how much latency they've got. It's the same as we go across those slugs after we kill that fat guy coudn't remember his name. You think you don't touch those slugs but actually ur latency could force you to make mistake and BAM u're dead.
2nd thing is, while we're dancing, healers has to keep healing others. I know it's tough. But you always get damage whether you touch those green explosions or not.

You only hit the latency when you're waiting for others to move before moving. There's plenty of time to move IF you move directly when the previous explosion is finished (unless ofc you have like 3000 ms latency, but that's unplayable anyway).

-> added what not to do section to original post

As to the healing while moving that's what instant cast heals are for (as long as peeps stay out of the explosions the damage is no biggie), note that me, ver and wave danced for over 20 minutes with just the 3 of us after the first explosion. That clearly illustrates that once you get it, there really isn't much to it.

There are some instant heals that can be cast while running, but they probably can't save a player that runs into the greenstuff.
If I recall correctly, contact with the green stuff gives you the disease debuff, and that's a real killer, since theres not much time for both cleansing and healing whilst running, and the disease ticks your HP down very fast.

For our 20 mins dance the other night, I actually didn't need to heal you (two) survivors much, my job mostly came down to cleansing the diseases. I thank VuhDo for making the disease clearly visible and easy to cleanse with a click.
The hardest part was trying not to pay too much attention to the very funny conversation in /r and /g chat like Guildchat:

What - are you 6 manning Naxx? Nah, we have 3 randoms but atm bari, V and wave is actually 3 manning Heigan. They've been at it for some time now

Oh, that was a fun run. My hand still hurts a bit, though *lol

btw, I found this video Click! very helpfull (skip the first nonsense-minute)

Yay! for the music too

Verdante wrote:There are some instant heals that can be cast while running, but they probably can't save a player that runs into the greenstuff.
If I recall correctly, contact with the green stuff gives you the disease debuff, and that's a real killer, since theres not much time for both cleansing and healing whilst running, and the disease ticks your HP down very fast.

The eruption's do not actually stack disease, it's the decrepit fever that does that (that's the dot he applies to those within 10 yards every 20 sec or so)

Verdante wrote:For our 20 mins dance the other night, I actually didn't need to heal you (two) survivors much, my job mostly came down to cleansing the diseases. I thank VuhDo for making the disease clearly visible and easy to cleanse with a click.

yep, phase 2 when everyone is dancing, you should basically not have to heal at all assuming everyone dances correctly, and there's no lingering dots from phase 1 or the transition (it's possible for everyone to get hit with the disease in the transition between the phases)

Here's the bosskiller bit on the 2 attacks:

Decrepit Fever - Every 20 seconds, Heigan hits anyone within 10 yards of him with this ability, which applies a disease that deals 4500 nature damage every 3 seconds and reduces maximum HP by 50%. It lasts for 21 seconds. Once cleansed of the disease, the targets will regain any HP lost to the HP reduction. The easiest way to deal with this is to have an enhancement shaman drop Disease Cleansing Totem and have 1 person dedicated to removing Decrepit Fever from the main tank as quickly as possible. Decrepit Fever can be cast during the transition from phase 2 to phase 1, hitting more members of the raid than normal. Have people assigned to cleanse it if this happens.

Eruption - Cracks in the floor erupt with a torrent of green plague goo, dealing 6650 to 7350 nature damage to nearby enemies. Eruption will come out of the cracks in the floor on three quarters of the entire room. It comes out of a different three quarters of the room each time, so there will be a designated area that is safe from Eruption each time it is cast. This safe area moves in a pattern that is constant and predictable. The entire raid will need to know this pattern and where it is safe to stand for each Eruption. Being hit by the green goo is survivable but, if you get hit by it once because you are lagging behind, it's likely that you will be hit by the next one (and probably the rest of them). Do not look at when the rest of the raid moves and do not wait for calls on voice comms to move. Each person must take responsibility for themselves and move when the Eruption dissipates on their screen. It is possible to heal someone taking damage from Eruption, but only with instant casts.

Here's the log from that run, if you turn on 'show player deaths' (click the first icon right of the graph) then you'll notice that every single death in that fight was from multiple eruption hits.

In other words everybody that died, died because they where 'standing in the eruption'. (As an aside this also shows that the cleansing was being handle perfectly, nobody died from not being cleansed)

The key to not letting this happen is in moving pro-actively not re-actively.:
In other words you should not be waiting for others to move to the next safe zone, and then follow allong (if you do that latency will kill you).
You should instead ensure that you grok the pattern of the eruptions and then move accordingly. Note that it's perfectly fine if you're not dps-ing much when learning the encounter, staying alive is the absolute first priority in this fight.

To those who still have trouble with this, get some nature resist gear, all the damage in this fight is nature damage.
Getting about 50% nature resist only takes about 276 nature resist (hunter aura alone is 130), getting some nature resist allows you to easily double your margin of error on this fight.

Using pots or cooldowns when you get hit is also highly recommended