General Vezax Hard Mode

[Elsie]

Set Up:
Protection Paladin (0/54/17 for 2/2 Spiritual Attunement)

Holy Paladin
Resto Druid
Disc Priest

Arms Warrior (Imp Shouts for +AP)
Enh Shaman
Rogue
Destro Warlock
Marks Hunter

Strategy Used:
1st Enrage: Divine Protection
2nd Enrage: Kite to a position that forms a triangle with original position and ranged dps (ranged never move)
3rd Enrage: Kite to original position (i.e. where he starts, a little back)
4th Enrage: Animus Spawns
-Divine Protection, Divine Sacrifice (Holy Paladin), Pain Suppression
-The entire reason the boss was kited for the 2nd and 3rd enrages was to have everything up for the animus.

Key Parts of the Fight:
1. Resto Druids always cast Lifebloom in the black patch.
2. Disc Priests always cast Power Word Shield in the black patch.

Our DPS sucked. The warlock died at about 60-70% on General Vezax so he was pretty much oom the entire fight. I did more DPS than him. The animus spawned with 45-50% HP left on General Vezax, but he went down quickly. Normally, we used a similar set up with a DK tank and have General Vezax down to 15-25% HP when the animus spawns. After the Animus, healer mana was low so I intentionally kited all of the enrages and used CDs during the normal phases.

The group was pretty suboptimal, but we still managed to get him down. The DPS did not suffer from kiting - it just wasn't our best group.

[Belloc]

I see you saying that the DPS didn't suffer from kiting, but I'm not necessarily believing it.

[fafhrd]

Unless you're kiting him between 2 fixed spots so that the ranged never has to move to get range, DPS will suffer from kiting.

That being said, if you do kite him between 2 fixed spots, DPS should be fine.

[Seloei]

As long as the ranged don't have to move they will not lose any dps even if you are kiteing. However if you are standing still you can guarantee a set path for the leeches and new crashes.

Altho, post nerf i am having *serious* mana troubles even with 2/2 SA since now he is hitting me for just 6-8k per hit on 10man that i have no mana to get burst threat on the animus when it spawns.

[Belloc]

Have your ranged standing where the animus spawns and reposition the boss there when the time is right. Even if you're low on mana, you'll be in a shadow crash pool, so you won't have any threat issues.

Not worth it if you're good on mana, but definitely worth it if you're having issues.

[fafhrd]

Have your ranged standing where the animus spawns and reposition the boss there when the time is right. Even if you're low on mana, you'll be in a shadow crash pool, so you won't have any threat issues.

Not worth it if you're good on mana, but definitely worth it if you're having issues.

Don't do this if your ranged includes multiple hunters >.>

[Seloei]

having the ranged stand next to you is a BAD idea since then he can cast a 1s from him->target crashes and everyone will die in p2. Rather you have to hope they use their agro drops and you just regen mana for the last 1 minute before the animus spawns so you can have burst threat on him on 10man.
Also if too many are near you will get mark of the faceless on the melee occasionaly since there are not enough valid ranged targets.

[Elsie]

I see you saying that the DPS didn't suffer from kiting, but I'm not necessarily believing it.

If you use a triangle with 60 degree angles, the distance of ranged dps from General is always the same (except in the middle of kiting). The highest DPS on our kill was a hunter (we only had a hunter and a warlock for ranged, and the lock died == oom most the fight).

[Threatco]

We did General Hard today with our Algalon group (he despawned form the soft reset bug). Meaning All physical dps.

Last time we had stacked caster buffs. We had got him to about 30% befor animus.

This time we got him to 16% consistantly. Melee dps on this fight ftw.

2x ret
1 arms
1 fury
1 enhance
1 hunter

Disc priest
Holy priest
Resto Druid

DK tank

Had 2 healers and the hunter about 30 yards from general and 10 yards form each other. Rest of us stacked under the boss.

Hunter pretty much only needed shadow crashes for mana efficiency and 12k explosive shot crits.
The druid used them for mana replenishing lifeblooms. (he says the loss of clearcasting procs from melee negated the benefit)
The disc used them for cheap cost full effect shields.

They were spread out a bit to make lifeleach easier to avoid. But not so spread out that getting to a shadowcrash would be difficult.

In phase 2 we had a few wipes to shadow crash instakills on ranged. So we told them to spread out fully and look up and after that they were fine. Hunter may have lost dps form not having access to shadow crash pool, but kept them all alive idiot proof.

We wiped once to a melee dpsing the animus too far from generals hit box and drawing a shadowcrash on us.

But thankfuly, no one pulled aggro on the animus even once.

It was our second kill, and went from a lot (like 25-30) tries to 4.

[Seloei]

We did General Hard today with you Algalon group (he despawned form the soft reset bug). Meaning All physical dps.

Wait, did i hear you right, you did vezax in the same reset you tried to do algalon before you killed yogg-saron?

[Threatco]

Ya we wanted to do alg right after firefighter. General and yogg still up.

Alg despawned. We did the other 2 though.

[Seloei]

Is it even possible to fight him before you kill yogg-saron? I thought if you try to he will just fly away instantly?

[fafhrd]

Is it even possible to fight him before you kill yogg-saron? I thought if you try to he will just fly away instantly?

Afaik, If someone in your group has completed the quests to spawn him, he can spawn him and your raid can engage him without clearing anything other than FL->XT (and presumably those just so you can zone into the antechamber). Pretty sure we've done exactly that in the past.

[Belloc]

having the ranged stand next to you is a BAD idea since then he can cast a 1s from him->target crashes and everyone will die in p2. Rather you have to hope they use their agro drops and you just regen mana for the last 1 minute before the animus spawns so you can have burst threat on him on 10man.
Also if too many are near you will get mark of the faceless on the melee occasionaly since there are not enough valid ranged targets.

I thought this went without saying in my earlier post, but apparently not: The ranged is supposed to move away from the animus spawn position/shadow crash when the tank moves to pick up the animus. We're talking about hard modes here, I kind of expected everyone to understand shadow crash and mark mechanics

[fafhrd]

Doing that means ranged doesn't have a crash to DPS from for however long General decides to not cast another one though, which is prolonging pretty much the only hard part of the fight. Although since the whole reason to do this apparently because the tank doesn't have enough threat on the animus, I suppose crippling ranged DPS at the start of the phase is as good a way as any to get a threat lead.

Mana->Threat issue goes away with a non-mana dependent tank btw :p