[10/25] General Vezax

Was on Curse, search under Vezax

just an update. Discipline Rapture does indeed work, it just returns less then normal mana, 30% i belive.

Ugh. I really hate this boss. We managed to down him for the first time last raid week after almost a full night of attempts (Right before second set of trash respawns). Only had 23 in the raid by the time we killed him. Only 5 healers (True to my bad raid leading style, I did not even know we only had 5 healers, though we still had 6 after 1 left, probably woulda saved us a few wipes fixing that).

This week we speed cleared to him (Nothing up but General for second raid night) and WAM. He smacked us around enough that trash respawned. Almost the same exact group (actually 2 MORE people than before including an extra interrupt and an extra healer).

First wipe, heartbreaking 12% wipe as the tank gets gibbed. Apparently Pain Supression does not cover the whole duration of his surge, but still no excuse. Tank went 2.6 seconds with only renew, lifebloom, and one swiftmend before he was killed (with 6 healers). Now that I know Pain Supression does not last the full time (Thanks Majorwoo/Jasari, did not even know that), I will let the healers know this as well.

The rest of the wipes, someone just fell asleep or decided to fail. Interrupts fail due to a Shadow Crash on melee because a caster or two runs in to get mana back, a healer falls asleep in the Saronite pool, some idiot boomkin pops starfall and kills two saronite clouds early (totally not me, I swear....), hit enrage timer (we all wow'd at this one, hai hard enrage), etc.

On our kill (finally), we started overlapping cooldowns just to make sure the tank did not die (Tank is a warrior w/ 2min shield wall, can use every other, and can last stand on the ones he does not shield wall) and had 3, yes 3, assigned interrupters per team for a total of 6. Our ranged DPS still have to stand in two groups just to avoid mark of the faceless dmg/healing so the kill went very very very slow but smooth I guess. The dps output is nowhere near what it could be.

Do you have a link to the addon that actually worked James31? I couldn't get it enabled from curse for our 10m at least. Hopefully, it works properly on 10m and we can start stacking all the ranged in one spot.

Also, the 6 and 6 strategy you mentioned, will be trying that one first go next week. I assume the video is posted at Fusion's site? (At work, can not check).

Thanks again for all the tips .

Yeah, I couldn't get that one to work in 10m's. Maybe I didn't have it loaded properly or something, will try again.

Strom wrote:Think I can get by with just rotating Divine Protection and Glyphed Hand of Salv+Glyphed Guardian Spirit for the surges?

This is what I do, it works fine as long as you communicate with the healers that they need to really be ready to heal you you on the HoSalv Dark Surges (you probably won't be able to survive two hits in a row without a heal). I ask our rets to cast SS on me, make sure I have it myself, pop a health trinket and make sure I hit holy shield as soon as it comes off cooldown.

(I actually use Imp LoH for the second weak cooldown as I don't like losing 49% of my threat.)

My guild is currently working on this boss, and as most of our other tanks are either on holiday or otherwise occupied, they (reluctantly for this boss, sadly) look to me to tank this.

Everytime I die, they throw comments around that we need a DK or Druid bear to tank this boss, but I know that I should be able to do it.
We've been using the kiting strategy, but as I've read today, this leaves a rather large margin for error for both myself (starting to run a split second too late) or the interruptors (not being able to keep up).

I'd like to use the "stand there and take the hits" strategy, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to take the hits with the cooldowns at hand. I've got Divine Protection obviously, but I am not glyphed for the HoS reduction. The other cooldowns would then have to be the combination of Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit right? Or I suppose I could ask another paladin to pop Hand of Sacrifice on me.

It could also be that I'd just need a little more gear to be able to take the hits like that, anyone got any tips?

We use the following cooldown rotation on both 10 and 25-man encounters:

Divine Protection on the odd Surges

External Hand of Sacrifice + Heart of Iron and Seal of the Pantheon on-use effects on even Surges.

If we had the Yogg 10-man trinket, we'd use that instead of the Halls of Lightning trinket.

The tank will take considerably more damage during even Surges, but adequate healing will keep them alive. Quite often, the tank simply won't get hit at all during this period. We do not use pain suppression or glyphed hand of salvation because I'm always afraid of our caster threat on that fight. Realistically, we probably could use them without issue.

MotiVater wrote:I find the interrupt requirements really harsh on this in 10 man. You really have to select the classes you are bringing wisely, painful when I have to rotate so many dps spots around the guild

For example last night I had a Druid tanking, Retadin and Kitty melee and 2 mages + 2 hunters. So only 2 interrupts off the GCD (Mages and CS is too long a CD to have just those 2) and trying to catch another one with the druids or myself.

Was a wipe night in the end. It was possible but still too many failures to stop his cast, including from mages. I am cry.

It takes merely 1 DK/rogue/warrior/Enhancement Shaman to cover all the casts in 10-man. It doesnt seem unreasonable to have one of any of the above options in a balanced group. Remember that the tank himself can even do it.

Not to mention, he doesnt cast at all during the Animus, because I guess the designers assumed that people running 10-man don't know how to focus-kick, but people running 25-man do.

Had my first tries on tanking him tonight.

Went fairly well overall (tanking wise anyway, still have people who are not moving correctly and interrupts being resisted), we could've used an extra priest though for another cooldown.
I started out using Divine Protection, and one of the two pally healers with me would also cast Hand of Sacrifice on me, that went fine.
On the second surge I'd get the priest cooldown (Guardian Spirit at first, later on the priest respecced and used Pain Suppression, either went fine) and another Hand of Sacrifice.
On the third surge I'd use Divine Protection again, and also get another Hand of Sacrifice.
On the fourth one we basically wouldn't really have a cooldown up (aside Hand of Sacrifice), but most of the time we wiped before that point. Later on I did grab the Hand of Salvation glyph, and combining that with Hand of Sacrifice should give me enough reduction to make it through the surge, and then put us back surge one again, basically. I wasn't able to try that out yet though as the raid was called because of a trash respawn and we wouldn't have had enough time left.

We had the DK tank, tank General Vezax for a while. We tried with another paladin tanking with 45k hp (Dual stam trinket from Ignis and Yogg 10 man) before the DK’s. But the healers failed to keep paladin up.

This week our DK tank failed to show up. So I had to come up with a plan on how to deal this.
In this and previous weeks I got 3 items that had + armor on. Which was:

Seal of Ulduar: +448 armor
The Leviathan’s Coil: +448 armor
Saronite Plated Legguards: + 826 armor

From Naxx25
I had the cloak: Cloak of the Shadowed Sun with +336 armor with +16 defense enchant.
I re-enchanted the cloak with +225 armor.
I re-enchanted my T7.5 gloves from +18 stam to +240 armor.

So total extra armor from these are: 2523 armor just from items. 2613 armor if you count in the talent.

You maybe now got a clue where I’m going now. Yes, Im stacking armor just for this fight.
UB+ improved devotion aura I had 28692 armor. When raid buffed I landed on 30026 armor, without the indestructible potion, with the potion I had 3500 armor more.

In comparison our DK tank had 29k armor raid buffed.
I had 1k more armor. I mitigated more damage then the DK tank, in addition I also reduced the hits with block that additionally removed 1.7k from the hits.

The only edge the DK tank had over me was his IBF with 1 min CD.

I have Divine Protection which gives me 84.17% mitigation.
The DK tank had IBF which gave him 78% mitigation.

But DP is a 2 min CD. So what do I do for the second surge?

The trick here is Furnace Stone

Furnace Stone
Equip: Increase your dodge rating by 105 (2.71% @ LVL 80 - Before DR)
Use: Increases armor by 5152 for 20 sec. (2 Min Cooldown)

It increases my armor mitigation by 3.64% UB+devo up, which rounds up to 10.5% damage reduction. In combo with Hand of Salvation with glyph it rounded up to 28.4% damage reduction.

With everything pop up I had with Hand of salvation + trinket, I got 77.38% mitigation.
That is dam close compare with what the DK have. And don’t forget to bring Shaman and priest healers who gives inspiration buff!






The only draw back for this setup is that I needed MD and trick of trade, in order to mitigate the loss of threat. The DPS needed to watch their omen. But in the end you just cheesed out this fight by not kiting.

By reference to the other paladin, Vezax hitted him in the range of 21k-24k.
Vezax hits me for 17.7k average

In my normal gear I run around with 44k hp raidbuffed.
I sacrificed 2k hp, and around 1% avoidance, in order to get 2,6k armor extra.

Running with 42k Hp, 57% avoidance, and 30K armor. I’m able to take two hits and still have 7 k hp left.

Running with 44k Hp, 58% avoidance, and 27k armor. I might be able to take two hits and still have 2k hp or getting two shotted.

Stacking stamina for this fight is overrated.


TLDR version: Get Ignis 10 man trinket Furnace Stone, its a very strong trinket with overpowered use.

Armor pot pre-pull and during the fight is a winning strat.

Greddy, did the boss also have an attack power debuff on him, and was it improved?
How much does he hit for on a normal avoidance tank on that fight, with the same debuffs applied.
Would love to find out if the extra armor gained for hard hitters is worth it or not. Because if it doesn't change the fact that in 3 hits you die then theres little point because quite a lot of heals are overheals in 25man.

Almost no, demo shout was applied once, and then forgotten for the rest of the fight. Our dps warrior tends to forget minor debuffs like this...

As I said avoidance tanks will get hitted in the 21-24k ranged normal melee attacks, as they also will have the roughly the same for those who stack stamina only, without demo shout.

Obviously all tree setup can survive 2 hits, but not the third in normal sitiuation. The clue here is surge of darkness, and surviving it.

Instead of getting hit for 42k-44k during surges without cooldown.
Getting hit for 35k without CD is much more prefered.

Reducing it addtionaly down 30%, the hits will be at 24k, during surges, which is more healable.

I don't like the avoidance on use from other trinkets, because in fact it's RNG, and it doesent stop the 40k hit you can actualy recieve. The Furnace stone is the only trinket that gives you mitigation on demand, and it stacks with other buffs and abilities.

Seal of the Pantheon too, by the way.