[10/25] General Vezax

[randomjibberish]

Quick question here...

My Ulduar 10 group tends to run melee heavy. I know shadow crash only targets ranged, but does mark of the faceless work that way as well?

[Avengeance]

I think they hotfixed it so that if thers not enough people in range, shadow crash and mark will land in melee....

[PsiVen]

Mark of the Faceless will only target ranged, yes, just like Shadow Crash.

If you try to stack all the ranged on the boss though, he will use it on the melee. There's a minimum number of valid targets for his abilities.

[semp]

What is the minimum number of melee in 10 and 25?

[Joanadark]

Mark of the Faceless will only target ranged, yes, just like Shadow Crash.

If you try to stack all the ranged on the boss though, he will use it on the melee. There's a minimum number of valid targets for his abilities.

Minimum number of players who must be out of melee range for Mark of the Faceless and Shadow Crash to never be cast against the people who are in melee range:

10-man: 4
25-man: 7

[Joanadark]

http://files.filefront.com/THvsGeneralV ... einfo.html

Video of our progression kill, tanked by our prot paladin Bruser.
Balanced ranged/melee setup.
5 healers (3 paladins, disc priest, resto druid).

We use the melee-range stacking strat. The perspective is of one of the outlier "floater" ranged, so you get a very good view of the fight.
Our double interrupt failure in the middle is Ugh.

[Candiru]

we killed him in 25m using the 1 DK tank and no kiting method.

Our ranged seemed to have issues with moving, and our melee didn't interrupt while moving very well, so we just stayed still the whole fight, Tank popped icebound fortitude when he used +100% damage buff to mostly cancel it out, with the odd HoSac and Pain suppression thrown in to help.

Probably not the easist way to kill him for the healers, but it seemed to work as we got him down on the first night (after ~3hours of tries).

I dual-specced to holy for the fight to help as we were short on healers, but I'm not sure a prot/holy hybrid spec wouldn't be better as you spam flash of light the whole fight, and Tbtl would help that a LOT since your crit is ~90% with sacred shield up most of the time. Does Spiritual Attunement work on this fight for healers? I know that JotW nerfs your healing by 75%.

Also, you can dual-spec prot, cast Blessing of Sanc on the whole raid, then dual-spec holy and everyone APART FROM YOU keeps the buff.

Odd.

[Worldie]

Spiritual attunement does work for a healer... but you have to be healed for it to work still.

[Chunes]

I tanked our progression kill of general on Monday, here are my thoughts:

When the general casts his surge of darkness, assuming you are using a kite strategy, the tank pretty much needs to have A+ reflexes and immediately run directly away from Vezax in order to completely avoid taking a surged hit. There were a couple times on our early attempts where I either turned and ran .5-.75 seconds too late, or I ran slightly tangentially to the general's hitbox and he was able to land a strike before I outpaced him.

As a paladin tank, PoJ is your friend on this fight. I took points out of AD since it is pretty easily leapfrogged in this fight.

Regarding surge of darkness and the general's run speed: It still seems a little buggy. There were some times when I was halfway across the room before his buff wore off, other times where he was on my heels the entire way. However, he will generally stop to cast his aoe flame attack at some point while chasing you, at which point any tank (poj or not) should be able to outpace him. Other times, he would cast surge and then run at what I suppose is his intended runspeed (55%?). If he would consistently do this, any tank class could successfully use the kite strat.

Shadow crashes are a pallytank's BEST FRIEND, IF you can manage to position him near one. Several times while I was kiting him he would cast a shadow crash on me. If he does this, you can easily plant him next to the crash puddle with minimal maneuvering. While in the puddle you will take a small amount of damage (spiritual attunement huzzah!), but more importantly, your spells will nuke harder and cost significantly less. While in a shadow crash puddle I was easily breaking 11k TPS and I was 100% mana when it faded.

Our general approach to saronite vapors was to try and pick one on the opposite side of the room as where the general was being tanked. One of our non-fail DKs would run over and DG the vapor to a more central location, then the DPS would take it down. Meanwhile I would be slowly rotating general so that he could face the location where the green puddle would spawn. When surge happened, I'd run as close past the saronite puddle as I could so that our healer group that was rotating in to said puddle would be easily within reach of healing me. Obviously there were times where the only vapors in the room were near where the general was already being tanked, in which case I would simply kite him in a semi circular fashion (as opposed to a straight bee-line away from the current tank spot), then when he was tankable again I'd just walk him close to the existing saronite puddle.

Hope it helps.

[Racerover]

This fight is sooooooo anticlimacticly easy... lol.

I just tanked Vezax straight away from where he stands. Raid spreads out around him and we have 2 groups of 2 people interrupting the Searing Light ability. When he casts surge of darkness, I use shield wall. He casts this every 60 seconds, so we have a disc priest that casts Pain Suppression on me. By the next surge, my shield wall is back up. Just alternate that. If the priests PS isnt up, we'll rotate paladin sacs. No kiting, nothing... if your tank is geared enough, you can manage.

[PsiVen]

You usually shouldn't waste crashes on the melee or tank, if the ranged can use them. I wouldn't drag him out of position to let the ranged take it, though. Standing there and taking Surges in the face is likewise a dreadful thing to practice and won't cut it in hard mode.

On hard mode, this fight is very strange. A long, fairly easy phase of the normal fight, followed by a panicky zerg to kill the add and dodge crashes with DBM warnings broken (it stops working during the Animus phase for whatever reason), followed by finishing the last ~30% of the calm, easy phase with healers near OOM.

[Dantriges]

Well, in 10 man,the alternate, bubblewall, pain suppression worked for us. Had three healers.

Not sure if it works in 25, we´ve got enough holy pallies, retribution paladins with DG, so I´ll give it a try.

[Ovine]

We had our first kill on Sunday night, tanked by myself. I took care of the 1st, 3rd, 5th etc etc Surges and the 2 preists rotated the 2nd, 4th 6th etc, with 2 dk's and 2 rogue's we only had 1 armour debuff get through, but with a trinket and a LOH wasnt an issue.

Tanked him facing the raid about 25 yards infront of where he stands, pop wings throw sheild and you wont ever risk anyone getting remotely close to you on threat. Didnt kite, infact this is only slightly more interesting than tanking XT

I went 2/2 SA for the encounter and dropped consecration when on 50% mana, an avoidance streak would see me get to say 1100 mana at the lowest point, but 1 hit and i was good to go again, it wasnt an issue. He wasnt hitting as hard as some guides suggest, all in all probably got him on the 10th try,

No libram sadly though

[Splug]

On hard mode, this fight is very strange. A long, fairly easy phase of the normal fight, followed by a panicky zerg to kill the add and dodge crashes with DBM warnings broken (it stops working during the Animus phase for whatever reason), followed by finishing the last ~30% of the calm, easy phase with healers near OOM.

Psi, have you worked on the Animus at all in 25, or just 10? I'm trying to get a ballpark for his damage range; seemed to be about 10k on a dps-geared feral tank in 10. Also, what were you guys using for a tank? I was pulling almost as much healing as my healers by respec'ing blood in 10, but I suspect it won't be nearly as effective with the larger autoattack damage from Vezax in 25.

-Splug

[cordelia]

Questions:

(1) Is threat an issue? Can you tank with Seal of Light to reduce healing?

(2) Does BoSac restore mana?

(3) Is he tauntable? How about bringing 2-3 tanks and taunting back and forth while using CD's to reduce damage taken?

(4) How much raid damage is there? Is it viable to have the primary raid healer be a disc priest that stands in shadow crash to spam bubbles?

(5) Does Stormstrike restore mana?

(6) Does Rapture restore mana?