Serpentshrine Cavern - Lady Vashj

[Tiandelin]

We typically have one person on the bats, either a hunter or an affliction lock, though our hunters have been speccing out of the 41yd talent lately, I think, so an affliction lock has been picking them up. And I'd definitely kill the bats, their toxic spit is what's going to wipe you in p3, if you don't kill them you have nowhere to go...it makes things much easier if you kill them.

Extremely true. A BoF rotation on the MT combined with bat control makes phase 3 almost as easy as phase 1. If you don't have the BoF rotation, Vashj runs out of melee range every time she's rooted, costing you valuable dps. If you don't control the bats, everyone starts having to move around more often and there is far more damage on the raid to heal.

With static charges and multi-shots being tossed around, the healers have enough to worry about. Combine that with toxic spore pools, and people can die very easily.

[Croiky]

Something to know


BoF on the MT is a good idea as Ranged attacks can still crit 490D Tanks.

[Enkal]

Sporepat control in P3 really made the difference! It went soo smooth when we had a hunter dedicated to taking em down! Thanks for the tips ppl.

[Moraus]

Something to know


BoF on the MT is a good idea as Ranged attacks can still crit 490D Tanks.

indeed first time my guild got properly to phase 3 i picked her up, got rooted and before i could BoF (was busy with the naga hitting me) he hit me twice with shoot for 7.5k both crits

[Zhelari]

Thanks for all the help guys. We got her down tonight in 3 tries!

[Comandant]

Thanks for all the great posts in here, hopefully we'll be able to down Vashj this week.

[oscarwilde]

Just like to add something to this thread. I successfully solo tanked all 3 phases in vashj with very little pain and much ranged taunt flair.

P1 and P3 benefit of course from at leat 1 grounding totem and 2-3 paladins rotating blessing of freedom's (I had 1 pally with improved BOF and myself simply hit our BoF on every cooldown and it worked a charm).

P2 is even more trivial: having a system to call naga spawn positions and a taunt being 1 AS or RD away, they're tanked in the centre and eliminated by both a dedicated melee team and a joint ranged naga/strider team. it does happen that 2 naga spawn, my suggestion is to BoF yourself 5 seconds before the next naga spawns (as the current will hamstring you) and simply chase down the 2nd with the 1st trailing you (their hits arent anything to be concerned over, having your back to them wont kill you) and repeat till P3 begins.

on the transition from P2 to P3, ensure you're tanking the naga's in the centre and consecrating so that vashj begins to melee you immediately. focus threat on the naga's of course since your DPS should be focussing on them still. when P3 is formally underway its simply P1 with an improvised dance routine. kite around pools of poison and you have yourself a kill.

for the past few weeks we've been running a warrior and myself as tanks but realistically you only need 1 tank (and preferrably a paladin) for this fight, and it just so happened that our warrior wasnt able to come tonight

+self BoF
+ranged taunt and aggro abilities
+click and forget multi mob tanking
+strider *ohshit* stun

-lack of sunders for more effective melee DPS (every bit counts in vashj)
-and thats really it (bar the usual ohshit buttons)

stats wise I was running with (buffed):

18000+ armor
20k health
48~% avoidance (21% dodge 16.5% parry)
450 spelldamage

oh, and it was a first kill for us too

[Helenia]

I have a quick question concerning tanking Lady Vashj. If Blessing of Freedom is up on me *while* she casts entangling roots will she stay in melee range? I tend to have 2 other paladins in my raids, so would it be feasible to use a blessing of freedom rotation on me while I'm tanking Vashj so she always stays in melee range; thus making p1 and p3 quicker because melee dps are on her at all times.

Thanks

[Lore]

I have a quick question concerning tanking Lady Vashj. If Blessing of Freedom is up on me *while* she casts entangling roots will she stay in melee range? I tend to have 2 other paladins in my raids, so would it be feasible to use a blessing of freedom rotation on me while I'm tanking Vashj so she always stays in melee range; thus making p1 and p3 quicker because melee dps are on her at all times.

Thanks

She kinda wanders around doing nothing for a second or two

[spiky_porcupine]

Hello~ so yesterday was our guild's first real long night attempt at Vashj for 3 hours straight. Before it was all like 20-30 min for people to see phase two really. It went really good as we got to phase 3 a couple times. A couple problems we had though.

1. On our last few attempts I noticed the Naga spwning beside a person or our kiters and 1 shots him/her before I could even react, that can't be helped based on what I read thus far? We ping and call out whether naga is north south east or west

2. Striders spawning too far from kiter to get it. So we basically in the end had 2 locks & a frost mage kiting, and they're spread out to pick it up. Works well on 1st strider, but when at 2nd and 3rd strider it starts getting hectic

3. How many striders should be up when we go to phase 3? I hear it should only be one, but our 2 attempts we had 3 nagas which I tank and 2 striders at about 90% and 40% HP. Nagas were about 50%, 100%, and 25% or something like that.


Tanks wise we have druid & me tanking Vashj. Phase two I pick up nagas and pull it to druid for her to taunt it off me so I can pick next one up. When we are passing last core, I taunt all the nagas off her so she picks up Vashj. Healers we have 7, and it was not a problem at all. DPS on naga were good until we either get a bad fear from strider or a person or two shots down so melee has to go help loose elementals. DPS wise, best attempt the 1st Strider & naga were downed right before 2nd one spawned with no leaks and #1 & #2 cores downed properly. Average attempts we down the first strider about 5-8 seconds after 2nd spawns.

Any suggestions to help us and how does that sound so far, or need more info~?

[Jensaarai]

This is my Vashj macro

["Vashj Tasks"] = "(S) 2: Caps. Healer: Striderr\n(W) 4-6: Dave, Yuri . Healer: Econ\n(N) 7: Faulty. Healer: Judd\n(E) 8-9: Taki . Healer: Vanel\n(E) 10-11: Fio. Healer: Vanel\nNaga: Amagda/Kaa/Elargee. Finish Eles too.\nStriders: all other ranged\nLoose eles: Shocke",]


Damn IHML for making it look bad. It's...

(S) 2: Lock. Healer: Paladin.
(W) 4-6: BF warrior/Ret Paladin. Healer: druid
(N) 7: Mage. Healer: Paladin.
(E) 8-9: Feral druid. Healer: Druid
(E) 10-11: Mage. Healer: Druid (same as above)

Naga DPS: Enh Shaman/Rogue/Rogue.
Striders; All other ranged, minus the loose ele guy
Loose Elementals: Mage (have also used hunter/destro lock)

Our typical raid setup was...

2 tanks (warrior/me), 7 healers (at least 4 that can cleanse poison), 6 melee, and that makes...10 ranged. 3 of those ranged are on the stairs. 1 is on loose elementals. That leaves 6 ranged dps on the striders.

With this setup, we rarely had two nagas up (if we did, the second one was spawning as the other was dying), and the striders die before the next comes out (this is very important).

You should not have more than one strider up at a time (though this can happen...then it's someone who's close's job to pick it up...a lot of the time this is me ^_-) and one naga up...

If you were getting into P3 on your first night, though, you'll get it. It takes a little time.

[spiky_porcupine]

I hate Vashj... We plowed through 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK... we one shotted bosses like VR, Lurker, and 2 shotted Leo. And now Vashj, stuck >.>

We got to p3 in the 1st attempt, but wiped 'cause 3 people, including a healer and top 2 dps. Good thing was we had 3 nagas & 1 strider up only, but I died tanking the 3 nagas as my healer somehow died... So we got pumped thinking we can down Vashj tonight.

Then then next two hours all our attempts did not go past the 3rd core............. So we called it... People kept dying to striders a couple times, then we had loose elementals when a dps died, then the striders weren't going down fast enough for odd reasons...

How many healers do people usually bring? We had 7. 3 palis, 2 priests, 1 shaman, and a druid. Is that enough?

[Sithy]

6 or 7. 6 sucks nuts for the 6 healers but the dps increase is good, 7 is a decent balance, 8 you start losing dps in certain areas.

[Dazhbog]

Got to 2/4 cores in several attempts on our second night; it's ALMOST clicking, but not quite there yet. We'll get it soon.

That said, due to the unpredictableness of striders, we actually moved the naga tanking spot to the NW corner, near the big broken pillar (just left of the entrance around the circle). I stay there, and our other tanks split the circle and haul them on back to me. Now, three tanks is more then you need for Vashj, but we haven't got the 5/6 1 night, Vashj the next thing down yet, so that's what we've got =P Luckily, our bear MT (just as good as BoF, with a good macro) can shift to cat and still help tear up naga. Moving the naga tanking point gives the strider kiters a whole lot more room, at least until they have things down.

[Arianne]

The other reason to tank towards the NW corner is that it reduces the number of people in one given area around the circle so that Vashj doesn't end up blasting the same people multiple times with forked lightning.