Helping Simone with Northrend Beasts

Matticus has a fun little post up about healing assignments for a hypothetical ToC25 raid.  Since his site is blocked at work, I thought I'd just post my answers here.  (At least you'll know I didn't "cheat," because I can't read his other comments either!)

The Set-up

Scenario: Heroic Northrend Beasts 25
Tanks: Warrior, Paladin, Death Knight.  (Check out Matt's post for detailed run-down on tanking assignments.)
Healers: 2 Resto Shamans, 1 Holy Paladin, 1 Discipline Priest, 2 Resto Druid (1 optimized for tank healing, 1 optimized for raid healing)

The Solution

... or, rather, my solution — because there is no one "right" way to do this.

Phase 1:  The holy paladin should beacon the warrior and heal the death knight.  The discipline priest should heal the paladin, and the tank-optimized resto druid should heal the warrior (but keep HoTs rolling as much as possible on all three tanks to help with bleed damage).  Remind the tankadin to keep his sacred shield active, as the healadin’s will be on the death knight.

Phase 2:  The discipline priest and one of the shamans should heal the Acidmaw tank.  The holy paladin and the tank-optimized druid should heal the Dreadscale tank.  The logic here is that the disc priest will mitigate incoming damage on his assignment, which will allow his partner — the resto shaman — to bounce Chain Heal off the Acidmaw tank for some additional splash healing on the melee.  Meanwhile, the resto druid can keep HoTs rolling on the Dreadscale tank, who will be kiting (which can occasionally lead to range issues).

Phase 3:  The healers need to spread out in a semi-circle around Icehowl so no more than two are frozen by Arctic Breath at once.  Raid healers and tank healers should be staggered as much as possible.

Earth Shields:  One shaman should Earth Shield the warrior, while the other shaman switches his shield between the paladin and death knight, depending upon who is tanking at the time.  If one of the shamans has Lesser Healing Wave glyphed, than that shaman should be the one to assist with the Acidmaw tank in P2 (with his ES on that tank).  For simplicity’s sake, I’d have the warrior tank Acidmaw the entire time and the paladin and death knight switch off on Dreadscale depending upon who has the fire debuff.  That way, the warrior will be free to pick up Icehowl as soon as he arrives, even if Dreadscale is still up and one of his two tanks has the fire debuff.