Tanking: Two or three on 25-man,one or two on 10-man (with one kiter for Zombies if you choose to go with one conventional tank). Tanks should split to the sides to pick up the adds spawning from the side doorways.

Positioning: The raid should remain near the middle of the room, to allow them to direct DPS where it’s most needed, and to quickly switch to Blazing Skeletons when they spawn. Bear in mind that you can stand under Valithria.

Buffs: Standard resistances are useful. Guardian Spirit, Bloodlust and Divine Hymn are all handy, but not essential even on heroic.

Key Debuffs: Gut Spray (Dispellable, disease); Corrosion (Not dispellable).

HP: 36,000,000 (12,000,000 on 10-man), half of which must be healed.

Enrage: Soft – Waves increase in frequency with time. You tend to get overwhelmed between 6 and 7 minutes.

Valithria Dreamwalker is a captive green dragon who needs to be saved and protected. When the encounter begins Valithria is at 50% health, and needs to be healed to full using standard player healing spells to beat the encounter. In many ways this is a “healing race” akin to the more familiar DPS races.

The DPs players’ job is to handle a range of adds which interfere with the healers’ ability to do their job. Because of this, a significant change in the proportion of healers in the raid is not recommended, although you can add an extra healer for learning, especially on heroic.
A rough priority for killing adds would be as follows, although will clearly be subject to change depending on where the problems are occuring for your raid (high to low):

Blazing Skeleton => Suppressors => Gluttonous Abomination => Risen Archmage => Blistering Zombie.

1. Blazing Skeletons – These are entirely immune to CC and interrupts. They will run in, cast a couple of fireballs, then channel a fire damage AoE (Lay Waste) which hits everyone for 5,655 to 6,345 (3,770 to 4,230 on 10-man) Fire damage every 2 sec for 12 seconds. Lay Waste will damage Valithria and the raid significantly and healing is already at a premium, so these should be nuked immediately. It’s posible to take zero or one pulse from them, which is ideal.
2. Packs of Suppressors – These will enter as two possibly uneven groups, one per side, run to Valithria and channel Suppression, which reduces the healing taken by their target (Valithria) by 10% per application. If healers are trying to heal, these should not be alive.
3. Gluttonous Abominations – Cast Gut Spray in a frontal cone, dealing 15,000 Nature damage instantly and 3,000 every 1 second for 12 seconds (10,000 and 2,000 on 10-man), and also increasing Physical damage taken by 25%. This is a dispellable disease. Anyone who can dispel disease should be doing so to help out the healers.
   Shortly after death they will spawn around 8 worms one at a time which should be picked up and killed quickly. These stack a DoT on the tank, so once they’re up they should take priority unless there’s a skeleton up. They’ll die quickly.
4. Skeletal Archmages – Cast Frostbolt Volley which will slow, and will summon Mana Voids at the location of random players (large purple void zones), draining 1,000 mana per second to players within 6 yards (800 mana on 10-man). These should be avoided, and last 30 seconds. They also place small blue burning circles on the ground which, after a few seconds, will spawn a geyser launching anyone standing on it into the air. Just don’t stand in coldfire :).
   Melee are best to kill these since they can interrupt, and because they are less useful on the Blistering Zombies.
5. Blistering Zombies – Cast Corrosion on their tank, decreasing armour by 10% per stack and dealing 2,500 Nature damage every 3 seconds for 6 seconds (2,000 on 10-man). Both effects stack up to 5 times. They are kiteable and this is the preferred approach because Corrosion is a leading cause of healer heart attacks when it stacks up. Ranged should be killing these while melee focus on the Archmages.
   Near death they cast Acid Burst (0.75s cast) which deals 15,000 Nature damage instantly and DoTs anyone hit with 1,000 Nature damage per second for 20s (10,000 and 750 damage on 10-man). The range on the Acid Burst is 15 yards, so melee should run out when these get low, or better yet, not DPS them at all.

For the healers there is one more mechanic to utilise. Every 25 seconds or so during the encounter Valithria will open 6 (3 on 10-man) green portals to the Emerald Dream in semi-random locations around her (always in front of her head on 10-man, all around her on 25-man).
Players who enter them will be able to fly, and there will be Nightmare Clouds drifting around. Flying through a cloud makes it explode, but grants Emerald Vigor to players nearby (meaning 5 yards), giving them 200 mana per 3 seconds and increasing damage and healing by 10% for 35 seconds. This stacks to 99.

You get portals every 45s, spend 25s inside, and the debuff lasts 45s. This gives 20s of slack to maintain stacks.

The trick to maintaining a healthy stack is to make sure that on entering you get a buff as quickly as possible, and that you get one near the end of the portal phase. You can see the time remaining in the phased realm by looking at your debuffs. You will need to work out a strategy which works for your raid and allows you to get as many stacks as possible inside the Dream. We tend to assign 4 healers on 25-man, and split them into two pairs who go around together, starting at opposite sides but moving in the same sense (clockwise or anti-clockwise).

If you are assigned to enter the Dream, remember that you have massively-boosted MP5 so swap regen gear/trinkets for throughput where possible.
In addition, when stacks are up to around 25-30, or Valithria is at around 80-85% HP, pop Bloodlust (and optionally a Guardian Spirit and/or Divine Hymn) and just stay outside until your debuff fades. Again, judging this “close enough” point will depend on your raid to some extent.

A final note for Paladins, Beacon works on Valithria, so you can beacon Valithria and heal the raid.

Heroic

• There is no change in her HP, but Valithria will lose health constantly throughout the encounter, so you will need to heal more.
• The Archmages’ Frostbolt Volley drains approximately 2k mana per cast, so it should be interrupted as much as possible.
• Gut Spray now also increases physical damage taken by 50%, so it must come off tanks PDQ.
• Portals are red, not green.
• Nightmare clouds inside the portals do not respawn, and triggering one deals a small tick of damage. Healers inside the portals need to heal themselves a little, and will need to groupup rather than using a free-for-all approach.

Basically the HPS requirement increases significantly, due to Valithria’s health loss. This means that the portal healers simply cannot afford to have their stacks fall off at any point. What’s more, they must make the most of the buff and get as much healing on Valithria as possible, rather than healing the raid.

The raid should avoid damage as much as humanly possible, and interrupts on Archmages are even more important than on normal.