our friend, lady vashj

[Conaan!]

so, weve gotten up to azgalor in hyjal, and were stepping back to get working on vashj, we have done one attempt before, just to see this fight, now we came back just last night to take some real attempts on her, we ran into the problem of striders not dying, i had done the math, where 6 dps'ers only needed to do about 450 dps to take down the strider in 60 seconds to dispell this guys constant whining thats it hard, but it seems were just not getting them down fast enough, we are netting them, slowing them and everything, but our kiter keeps dying or another strider comes up before the next one is dead, we are already getting the cores and nagas down to a science, its just these ranged on the striders, destro locks complaining of pulling aggro, and hunter that just cant seem to take off salv and keep aggro....

how long should that damned strider be up? how long after a naga appears should it die? pally or warrior tank for vashj?

oh and i saw a strange occurence, the naga are immune to taunt, but they react to it, i dont even have to use avengers shield on them, just taunting them makes them come to me..... whats with that

[Invisusira]

It's because the naga are NOT immune to taunt.

In a perfect world, you should kill a naga, then a strider, then a naga, then a strider, then a naga, etc etc. Ideally, you'll only have one of each up at a time and if you get a second strider/naga, it's just as the first is dying.

[Uriell]

As for the strider, we had a destro warlock kiting them(he had no problem keeping agro). But we also had a backup kiter in case the strider wasn't down before the next one appered. If that was the case we stacked the nagas on the tanks and only focused on the striders.

The biggest problem we had was getting the tainted core to the right people, don't know how many timed we wiped becaus someone throw the core to kiter...

Oh... i forgot to mention that we had a arcane mage that kept slow on the strider at all time.

[Holyfuri]

Couple of things.

First, the striders dying is of much more importance than the naga dying. The truth is with two tanks in the middle you can handle 4-5 naga if things get really rough. Two striders up will just about wipe your raid instantly. The goal is for each naga to be dead before the next one arrives, and for each strider to be dead before the next one arrives. If dps looks slow on a strider, then have a backup kiter ready to pick him up. If you are having trouble do this I recommend assigning specific dps to specific targets, and make sure the numbers are there to do the job. The biggest key to this is, no one die! Seriously if you lose more than one person in phase one or right off the bat in phase two, just wipe it.

Second, I do highly recommend a destro lock for kiting as well. Hunters can do the job but we had a lock do it most of the time and aggro was never a problem. If you are using a hunter and it is still an issue, tell him to L2Play. Hunters can put out some serious threat.

Thirdly, just as a reminder. Time your last core being used with the spawn timers of naga and striders. The last thing you want is a strider popping up right as you break Vashj free. If there are any nage left that you are fighting, just have whoever is OT taunt the naga off of the MT. OT tanks whatever is left and the raid finishes them off. After that its all cake and bat poo.

[samsara]

Try to use a tauren warrior to tank the striders, it's much easier.

if you are alliance , hmmm , dunno, would never play alliance

fth

[Victarion]

I'd recommend an Elemental Shaman for kiting the Striders. We found that they had the easiest time to keep aggro and kite. We tried with warlocks as well but ele shaman was the way to go for us at least.

We had as much DPS on the striders as possible to kill them at least 10 secs before the next one spawns that way you avoid alot of messiness. We only put 3 melee on nagas usually 2 rogues and a enhancement shaman. That would keep them under control at least. We usually had 1-2 nagas up when the 4th core was delivered. We had our locks and SPs dot up all the nagas whenever they had a chance in between striders...

[ShaiHulud]

How we handled it while killing her was we had an elemental shaman on the striders. He'd Frost shock, get to range blast it with whatever he had and then Frost shock when it got in shock range again. Make sure the shammy has S3+ gloves for the extra range. Elemental Shamans are the best kiters for this because of the immense aggro that Frost shock does as well as their lightning bolt/chain lightning. We have all ranged focusing on the strider will all the melee working on nagas. Strider dies and ranged helps nuke nagas. If you don't have an ele shammy you can use a CoE warlock or a hunter as long as someone has the strider slowed at all times. Basically the Vashj fight is all about where you put your dps and on what. Once you get that down its a cake walk. I think Our first vashj kill was the 2nd time we'd ever seen phase3.

[Katerina]

Because the striders were the biggest danger to our raid, we brought a rather large strider group and had only one melee dps on the naga. This meant we had four or five naga up at the beginning of P3, but they just get dragged out of the way down the stairs a bit by the naga tank and his healer while the rest of the raid goes to nuke Vashj and dodge the bat droppings.

[Snake-Aes]

how long should that damned strider be up? how long after a naga appears should it die? pally or warrior tank for vashj?

It should die before the next one comes. Kiters can vary as needed. Affliction locks, Moonkin, Elemental shaman, hunters, all should be able to keep aggro fairly well while kiting. My personal winner was an affliction warlock. UNSALVED! This is very important. TAKE SALV OFF TO KITE!
Any dpser worth a damn should know how to watch omen. If a ranged is capped, i'm fairly sure he can go help someone on the elementals/naga for a few hits, or shoot a core.

oh and i saw a strange occurence, the naga are immune to taunt, but they react to it, i dont even have to use avengers shield on them, just taunting them makes them come to me..... whats with that

The naga aren't immune to taunt. Something else resisted/is immune to it.

[Snake-Aes]

Whoever tanks Vashj doesn't matter much. Her only tank gimmick is rooting and the need for the tanks to stay in melee 24/7. Blessing of Freedom is a big bonus for that, but she's tauntable so you have many possibilities.
Whoever has the least important blessing(here it's usually the prot pally with Sanctuary) goes and BoF whoever got rooted, or the free tanks just taunt her(she's tauntable).