[10/25] General Vezax

[Corpsicle]

The best advice I found with kiting is to be sure to get away fast. Move too slow, or get bad lag and you are dead.

So: he does the Surge of Power every minute. When you know it is coming, reference the enrage timer in DBM, position yourself with your back to your get away point. Make sure to have yourself at max melee range so take a step or two backwards until your character is just outside of the red circle of his hitbox. Move much farther and he'll readjust and stand on you again. When you are positioned so, you should use your mouse to flip your camera (but not your character) so you are looking behind you - you want to be staring at your face basically. When you have the camera flipped like this, pressing both mouse buttons at the same time will auto matically flip you around 180 degrees and start you running. The second you see him start to cast it, or DBM does its emote to run away, do this and run fast. Be sure to run straight off, not angled.

Things that you want to do:
1) Aim to be near the green vapors at the end of the kite path. Your healers will need them around the same time you are done with the kite, if you are in healing range of the green vapors then it makes it easier on them.
2) Keep running if you get shadow crash aimed at you - you'll run out of its range because you are kiting unless you stop for any reason.
3) Make sure your melee are keeping up to interrupt during the kite while Vezax has the Surge of Power buff. As soon as the buff is gone, he's going to sprint to you and leave melee in the dust. You need to be ready to hammer of justice the Searing Flames if it happens at this point, so save your cooldown for this exact situation. Even untalented you will be able to have it up each kite.
4) Communicate with healers where you are going. Ping the mini map, tell them in vent. Remember they have a ton to coordinate too. You need to make sure they know where you are going so that they can run with you if you have to run out of range.

As far as going oom, I tank in my normal spec of 53/18. I don't have 2/2 spiritual attunement, I don't have Benediction. I don't use any mana saving glyphs. I dont take pursuit of justice (though if I am lagging I use a boot with a speed enchant). I have bloodlust popped at the pull as soon as I have agro on Vezax. I pop Avenging Wrath. Then I use a full threat rotation during the 30 seconds to build a ton of threat. I also have our rogue use tricks of the trade on pull and everytime it comes up again on cooldown. Generally I start to get really low on mana by the end of bloodlust, but I have a huge threat lead as well. The rest of the fight, I only use consecrate if I have a 2/3rds or better mana bar. I don't have any threat problems, apart from our mage - and I just salve him on cooldown. I don't think I've actually managed to run myself out of mana doing this, though it does get close. Typically though, you'll only be oom until you are hit once then Spiritual Attunement will top you off again. As long as you have a large enough threat lead, no problem.

[Strom]

Think I can get by with just rotating Divine Protection and Glyphed Hand of Salv+Glyphed Guardian Spirit for the surges?

[moduspwnens]

Think I can get by with just rotating Divine Protection and Glyphed Hand of Salv+Glyphed Guardian Spirit for the surges?

If you have another Paladin, be sure he's using his cooldowns on you. It all depends on the quality of your healers as to whether or not you can "get by," but I wouldn't risk it.

[Kezia]

Think I can get by with just rotating Divine Protection and Glyphed Hand of Salv+Glyphed Guardian Spirit for the surges?

I don't believe I ever had a Guardian Spirit buff used up on our kill, but I wouldn't risk it.

[Corpsicle]

Think I can get by with just rotating Divine Protection and Glyphed Hand of Salv+Glyphed Guardian Spirit for the surges?

Possibly on 10 man. I checked a log I have from a kill on 10 man where I tanked him, using a kite strategy. The largest hit I took was 27k, the average hit was 12k. I'm guessing the 27k hit was from a slow start to the kite and that typical hits would have been around 14k. Now, if you had a ton of avoidance, and could use hand of salvation (you can't taunt Vezax if you lose too much threat - he is immune), and had a guardian spirit up you would perhaps get through it. Assuming a 8 minute long fight, that is about 8 surges to get through so 4 or 5 suges that you would need to be able to use Hand of Salvation on. That's about 1 full minute over the course of the fight give or take in which you need to not have the RNG screw you. Assume he'll be hitting you for 25k per hit on Surges. Not sure how fast he swings, but with a 2 second swing timer, that is potentially 7 hits over the course of the surge. If you have a streak like Hit, Dodge, Hit, Hit at any point, you will 'die' and be brought up with Guardian spirit. If you then took another Hit, instead of Dodge/parry you'd be dead again if your healers didn't immediately land a heal following Guardian Spirit getting used. Using just the Hand of Salv + Guardian Spirit combo will likely lead to your healers having to spam heal you on the chance that you will get just such a bad case of RNG - that in turn will lead to a waste of mana.

So, I'd say you could do it, but it likely isn't a good idea. Now, do you have a disc priest? Pain Suppression is good. Do you have another paladin in raid? Hand of Sacrifice + Guardian Spirit + Glyphed Hand of Salve would also be good.

[Strom]

Or I could just have my holy priest swap to disc and PS me on every-other surge. I think I have conviced him to go disc instead of shadow for his off-spec.

[Joanadark]

Or I could just have my holy priest swap to disc and PS me on every-other surge. I think I have conviced him to go disc instead of shadow for his off-spec.

Disc is incredibly powerful in general for this fight anyway.

[Jasari]

Or I could just have my holy priest swap to disc and PS me on every-other surge. I think I have conviced him to go disc instead of shadow for his off-spec.

Disc is incredibly powerful in general for this fight anyway.

^^^
Our first night on Vezax 10man we had 2 holy priests and a resto druid and never got him below 75% after like 10 attempts.

The next night we had our 2 priests respec disc and we 2 shot him.

[majorwoo]

Or I could just have my holy priest swap to disc and PS me on every-other surge. I think I have conviced him to go disc instead of shadow for his off-spec.

This doesn't work, we tried it. Ignoring the fact that Surge is 10s and PS is 8s (leaving you with 2s of ouch) Our disc priest was telling me he had 10s or so on PS when I was calling for it the 2nd and 3rd time (4th and 6th surge). Assuming your disc is spec'd Aspiration http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47508 he still has a 144s cooldown - meaning it won't be there until right after the surge is over.

*edit*
Next time we try him we'll have to send our other priest disc as well for 2 PS. That or if our DK tank shows up I'll put him back up front and he can press one button every 60s and trivialize the fight *grumble*

[Jasari]

Yeah, we use 2 disc priests so that we have enough CDs for each surge.

You don't have to worry too much about PS dropping off early (at last on 10man). I save my crab trinket and pop that for the extra dodge toward the end of each PS'd surge and worst case I get hit once for 20-30k depending on shields. Just make sure your healers know ahead of time that they need to use it at the very end of his 3 second cast and be ready for a big spike at the end of each surge when it runs out.

Also, I don't know if it's been mentioned already, but popping an indestructible potion at the start of the fight and then again if things start to get messy can be a huge help. On our progression kill we actually had a screw up on the CD rotation and didn't have anything up for a surge toward the end of the fight. Luckily we were able to get the ret to DSDS and I popped another indestructible potion and the surge damage wasn't bad at all.

[MotiVater]

I find the interrupt requirements really harsh on this in 10 man. You really have to select the classes you are bringing wisely, painful when I have to rotate so many dps spots around the guild

For example last night I had a Druid tanking, Retadin and Kitty melee and 2 mages + 2 hunters. So only 2 interrupts off the GCD (Mages and CS is too long a CD to have just those 2) and trying to catch another one with the druids or myself.

Was a wipe night in the end. It was possible but still too many failures to stop his cast, including from mages. I am cry.

[moduspwnens]

I find the interrupt requirements really harsh on this in 10 man. You really have to select the classes you are bringing wisely, painful when I have to rotate so many dps spots around the guild

For example last night I had a Druid tanking, Retadin and Kitty melee and 2 mages + 2 hunters. So only 2 interrupts off the GCD (Mages and CS is too long a CD to have just those 2) and trying to catch another one with the druids or myself.

Was a wipe night in the end. It was possible but still too many failures to stop his cast, including from mages. I am cry.

A single rogue handled all our interrupts in General10 last night. I'm sure a DPS Shaman could do the same. I'm sure a DPS or Prot Warrior could also handle it. You may have just been unlucky with group composition.

[Threatco]

Downed him this week for second time.

What you need.

1) A dk tank who can use IBF on every CD.

2) A melee DPS with ~10 sec interupt who can get it every time.

3) Ranged dps who will kill saronite when asked.

What is nice.

1) A disc priest or two

2) Ranged dps who will use shadow crashes to stay threat capped and the rest of their time avoiding any chance of ticking mark of the faceless.

Tip: Caster dps, dont waste your mana casting outside of shadowcrash, you can stay threat capped just attacking part time. +100% damage and +100% haste is a big buff. And it means you use saronite puddles less making those areas safer for healer to use.

[james31]

Anyone got any pearls of wisdom for this one in Hard Mode? Doing it in 25s with limited success - people seem to just die to the Shadow Crashes, taking some in P1, dying to them in P2. We're a pretty good guild, but mebbe 3-4 players who take 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 of them.

Using Fusion's strat - boss doesn't move, 6 people on left, 6 on right edge of the crash.

Everyone using /say when there's a crash using either BigWigs or Deadly Boss Mods.

Having healed this one on my Disc Priest whilst dodging crashes, I'd have to say it's pretty frickin' hard to effectively heal and dodge them. Was spamming shields on the other 11 + MT, as well as stacking Inspiration using Penance casts (still heals for ~3k). But when it gets hectic, you spend 3s focused on Grid instead of flicking between it and BigWigs (which, incidentally, I can't get to disable all the other raid warnings I don't want) and you start moving 2s too late. Downloaded a mod that shows who "healed the most" but I'd not mind something dedicated to just Shadow Crash warnings, possibly with "run little girl" sound files.

[MrDuck]

Downloaded a mod that shows who "healed the most"

Ya mean mod that shows who healed the boss the most with mark? WTB that if so! Can't seem to find it out from combat log parses. There's who got hurt by mark for how much, but I'd like to know who had the mark on himself when they got damaged. It sadly doesn't show up as damage to friends :<