General Vezax Hard Mode

[Belloc]

If there are fewer than X targets outside of melee range (about 2 on 10-man, about 6 on 25) for shadow crash or mark of the faceless, one will be selected from within melee range. If you hop to about 5 minutes into this video, you can see what happens when you drop down to one too few people at range. So you would need more than one person outside of melee range.

Fair enough. Two might be do-able.

Even disregarding that, you're looking at adding a non-trivial amount of movement to the fight. Each crash would be a minimum of about 15-20 yards away, and each time he's moved all the ranged who are using the previous crash would need to relocate to the new one (otherwise you risk moving him to a crash where there were people already at, and having a crash incoming as the raid moves there). I'd be very suprised if this additional movement doesn't cost more than it gains, just from casters having drastically higher downtime. Finally, there's the risk of latency causing the melee to be just a hair out of range and become legal targets for shadow crash during each run.

Casters are going to be relocating to Shadow Crashes anyway, so I'm not sure I understand how casters would lose any time DPSing that they wouldn't normally lose anyway. Besides, my last guild used the kiting strategy for surges (in 25), which is essentially what this is except the kiting was without the DPS increase and without the healers necessarily being in position (made it tough). I'm not saying that an inferior strategy working means mine would, I'm just illustrating that moving the boss isn't quite as detrimental as you might think. Melee have no trouble keeping up with him while enraged and certainly wouldn't with a tank walking backwards over a Shadow Crash.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this idea well. I'll make some pictures or something.

You'll need 3 people at range to avoid melee shadow crashes. It's 30% of your raid, so 3 on 10, 8 on 25.

[Splug]

The problem is that you're increasing the minimum travel time. It needs to be extremely short, and by ensuring that each new crash is >20 yards from where the previous one was by stacking Vezax on top of it, you force the run to go from 5-10 yards up to 20-30.

-Splug

[moduspwnens]

The problem is that you're increasing the minimum travel time. It needs to be extremely short, and by ensuring that each new crash is >20 yards from where the previous one was by stacking Vezax on top of it, you force the run to go from 5-10 yards up to 20-30.

-Splug

I guess I wasn't aware that the Shadow Crashes only lasted 20 seconds. I'll think this through a little more.

[Cukorfalat]

We have just downed him last night, with 2 healers (disc priest and holy pala) and a feral offtank. The dps was enough to easily bring him below 20% before the add spawned, but we had problems with healer mana. The trick we used was: when the add died, the holy pala used up his mana pool, DI-d the priest and got a prompt CR from the feral. (Our priest had a nice OOC mana regen and he was immune to Vezax's aura in the bubble.) The druid casted innervate on him, but either she was late (and used it after the DI) or the aura makes it fall, it doesn't worked.

[amh]

It makes everything fail, but the oo5sr inside a divine intervention was a cool way to work around it :)

[moduspwnens]

We have just downed him last night, with 2 healers (disc priest and holy pala) and a feral offtank. The dps was enough to easily bring him below 20% before the add spawned, but we had problems with healer mana. The trick we used was: when the add died, the holy pala used up his mana pool, DI-d the priest and got a prompt CR from the feral. (Our priest had a nice OOC mana regen and he was immune to Vezax's aura in the bubble.) The druid casted innervate on him, but either she was late (and used it after the DI) or the aura makes it fall, it doesn't worked.

Interesting idea.

[Donahu]

If there are fewer than X targets outside of melee range (about 2 on 10-man, about 6 on 25) for shadow crash or mark of the faceless, one will be selected from within melee range. If you hop to about 5 minutes into this video, you can see what happens when you drop down to one too few people at range. So you would need more than one person outside of melee range.

Fair enough. Two might be do-able.

Even disregarding that, you're looking at adding a non-trivial amount of movement to the fight. Each crash would be a minimum of about 15-20 yards away, and each time he's moved all the ranged who are using the previous crash would need to relocate to the new one (otherwise you risk moving him to a crash where there were people already at, and having a crash incoming as the raid moves there). I'd be very suprised if this additional movement doesn't cost more than it gains, just from casters having drastically higher downtime. Finally, there's the risk of latency causing the melee to be just a hair out of range and become legal targets for shadow crash during each run.

Casters are going to be relocating to Shadow Crashes anyway, so I'm not sure I understand how casters would lose any time DPSing that they wouldn't normally lose anyway. Besides, my last guild used the kiting strategy for surges (in 25), which is essentially what this is except the kiting was without the DPS increase and without the healers necessarily being in position (made it tough). I'm not saying that an inferior strategy working means mine would, I'm just illustrating that moving the boss isn't quite as detrimental as you might think. Melee have no trouble keeping up with him while enraged and certainly wouldn't with a tank walking backwards over a Shadow Crash.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this idea well. I'll make some pictures or something.

You'll need 3 people at range to avoid melee shadow crashes. It's 30% of your raid, so 3 on 10, 8 on 25.

I think what he is missing here is that the ranged should not have to move at all really. *Feral MT gone boomkin so have seen the fight both ways*. The ranged just sidestep when a crash is inbound and then hop right back in. In 10m ALL the ranged are in one spot so they move a very very tiny distance as every shadow crash is given to them. This negates them ever having to move at all, let alone the 20 yards your kiting suggestion has been aiming at.

No in terms of threat, either our tanks suck (maybe?) or the tank needs additional threat because consistant dmg and haste bonuses in the crashes = consistant holding back from our part or we pull aggro.

Wtb Animus mechanic explanations on here! Is it just an add like the guards of General Vezax? IE - General Vezax goes immune and the add comes out and needs to be killed ASAP? Or are there more mechanics involved in it. Any numbers would help too (Hp/Dmg output/Etc.). Going for him this week on Hard-Mode!

[Joanadark]

Wtb Animus mechanic explanations on here! Is it just an add like the guards of General Vezax? IE - General Vezax goes immune and the add comes out and needs to be killed ASAP? Or are there more mechanics involved in it. Any numbers would help too (Hp/Dmg output/Etc.). Going for him this week on Hard-Mode!

Animus is a big giant add that spawns. His hitbox is really small. You need to burn the hell out of him before Profound Darkness stacks too high. Profound Darkness is a stacking debuff on everyone in the raid increasing shadow damage taken. It stacks every couple seconds. Additionally, the Animus does a aoe aura of shadow damage that starts at 750 damage per second. Obviously it increases the higher Profound Darkness stacks. At this point all the raid healers come back from AFK and heal the shit out of the raid. Paladins all blow Divine Sacrifice one at a time starting at about 40 stacks of Profound Darkness on 25-man, and 20 stacks on 10-man. You are in a race to kill the animus before your healers run out of mana and cant keep up with the aura damage.
The tank is also taking the same damage he took before. Vezax will still do Surge of Darkness. On 25-man he still needs to be interrupted.

General benchmarks:
Try to have Vezax at sub-20% before the Animus spaws, so that youll be able to handle finishing him off afterwards with all the healers mostly dry. Normally we have him at sub-13% and if our raid is caster heavy we've even had to stop DPS to avoid killing him accidentally before the animus even spawns.
The animus should die before stack 50 on 25-man or stack 25 on 10-man.

[Donahu]

Thanks a bunch Joanadark! Don't have many resources available from work and it's where I have to spend most my research time . I had no clue about most of that information on Animus. Will definitely need to start figuring out our approach to this fight this week .

[Motaro]

Killed him yesterday in 10man... we had Vezax at about 20% when the Animus spawned, and I tanked through every other Surge with Divine Protection. After the Animus died I kited every surge because one healer died just after the Animus.

We burned heroism a few seconds after the add spawned, and managed to kill him at 20 stacks of profound darkness, so in about a minute. Wasn't that hard really, both our healers had approx 15k mana left when the animus spawned.

[Arianne]

Any tips on positioning when grabbing the animus? We tried this once yesterday but evidently I didn't position well because our melee ended up getting hit by a shadow crash while DPS'ing the animus.

[Splug]

Any tips on positioning when grabbing the animus? We tried this once yesterday but evidently I didn't position well because our melee ended up getting hit by a shadow crash while DPS'ing the animus.

Stack the animus on top of Vezax. This is particularly important in 25 where Vezax will still need to be interrupted, and your melee crew needs to be able to hit him with focus-interrupts while hitting the animus. If one tank is handling both of them it should be fine, otherwise just try to stack them as best the offtank can.

-Splug

[Arianne]

Yes, I'd thought I'd done that, but as evidenced by the melee getting hit by a shadow crash, it didn't seem to be close enough. Maybe this was melee running out too far when moving rather than any tricks with positioning?

[Belloc]

If it's positioned properly, you won't have to worry about melee getting hit by shadow crashes. Try again and make sure everyone is within melee range of Vezax. Melee tend to forget about how shadow crashes and marks work, so it was probably one of them messing up.

[Splug]

Yes, I'd thought I'd done that, but as evidenced by the melee getting hit by a shadow crash, it didn't seem to be close enough. Maybe this was melee running out too far when moving rather than any tricks with positioning?

Were any of the ranged dead, or too close to Vezax? If you don't have enough legal targets outside melee for shadow crash and mark, the melee will start getting targetted.

-Splug