[Mookey]

Some inside infos:

I tanked him 3rd time now in 25 man as warrior without kiting:
From tanking him with 5/15/51 spec with glyphed SW/LS, I glyphed same but 15/3/53 spec with imp disciplines instead of malice, with desire to test out "all arround" spec for Ulduar.

Increase in incoming damage without 5/5 imp demo was noticeable, but still far from undoable.

There are 3 things that are simple great in this encounter

Figurine Monarch crab - 1min CD, it's up for each surge

Last stand + heart of iron - Since you are shield walling each 2nd - give your helpers external cooldown helpers little breathing space if their CD fails to come in time... use LS on every 2nd surge opposite to your shield wall.

Expertise - With small panic about tanking him last night with new spec, I went in with full EH gear from Mimiron, and I got squished by General 2 times to arround 5-6% of my HP, then we wiped cuz we lost few people on mark, anyway I checked and I was @ 20ish expertise... Well - switched gear arround, went up to 35 and went in... 2 strikes in a rown didn't happen at all... It was noobish to go in with that low but anyway - wanted to share that with other fellow tanks...

[Surmaaja]

Source: Mookey Expertise - With small panic about tanking him last night with new spec, I went in with full EH gear from Mimiron, and I got squished by General 2 times to arround 5-6% of my HP, then we wiped cuz we lost few people on mark, anyway I checked and I was @ 20ish expertise... Well - switched gear arround, went up to 35 and went in... 2 strikes in a rown didn't happen at all... It was noobish to go in with that low but anyway - wanted to share that with other fellow tanks...

Agree, I allways tank it with over 50 expertise and the incoming dmg is much more predictable without parry-hastening him and it helps with threat aswell of course.

[kaotiko]

Hello,
Last night was our first night at General. We got him down to 1.5% on our best attempt. I was MT and wanted to ask if him being immune to "Rune Strike" is working as intended, or is it a bug? I had a bit of trouble at first with threat, but was fine after I stopped using it.

Thank you

EDIT: I'm confused now. Looking at the WWS report, I see my Rune Strikes hitting him. What gives!

[Nergal]

What the action bar addon that you use?

[Mookey]

Source: kaotiko Hello, I was MT and wanted to ask if him being immune to "Rune Strike" is working as intended, or is it a bug? I had a bit of trouble at first with threat, but was fine after I stopped using it. Thank you EDIT: I'm confused now. Looking at the WWS report, I see my Rune Strikes hitting him. What gives!

You are IMMUNE for any abilities that regen mana, and you get immune if you hit him and proc that... e.g. I'm getting immune msg all the time due Judgement of Wisdom procs

[Damonvile]

Source: Surmaaja Agree, I allways tank it with over 50 expertise and the incoming dmg is much more predictable without parry-hastening him and it helps with threat aswell of course.

It was my understanding that he has parry haste turned off. Does anyone know for sure ?

[Kozuki]

Source: Damonvile It was my understanding that he has parry haste turned off. Does anyone know for sure ?

I wish that were the case, but it's definitely not, I've been parry gibbed quite a few times by him due to the nature of how the fight has to be healed on hard mode and how quickly he spikes on you if he parries, it sucks.

[Yeti]

Sadly haven't read much about Paladins being able to tank this Big Guy, is it just that they dont have the CD's needed to do so?

Any suggestions on Tanking this guy as a Pally would be much apprieciated.

ty

[Dizzy]

Gonna try the tank without kiting strategy tonight. Been reading every post in this thread, so thanks all for the usefull information and tips.

Just wondering about best gear for this fight. Especially about which trinkets to use. I heard some say go for avoidance instead of EH and others say go for expertise. So I guess that i don't use the Essence of Gossamer - Item - World of Warcraft but either use the following combination:

* Repelling Charge - Item - World of Warcraft + Valor Medal of the First War - Item - World of Warcraft
* Repelling Charge - Item - World of Warcraft + Mark of Norgannon - Item - World of Warcraft

Which combination would you suggest?

[Dizzy]

We got him down on 6th try today. LS-SW rotation worked like a charm on the Surge of Darkness.

Thanks again for the great movie and advice

[Horacio]

After wiping on him for 3.5 hours last night, we're going back to the drawing board.

After a little practice, our warrior MT has the kite down pat. He's at about 42K buffed and was able to make it through the kite phase ok except for the whole healers getting out of position thing when the tank moved. When he does move, everyone gets out of position and the boss's effects are hitting a larger number of people and we lose people to attrition throughout. Things like all the healers deciding to go stand in a cloud at once or people killing others with the Mark for not moving......or a missed interrupt.

We had 2 teams of 3 assigned to interrupt and the tanks catching any they could. I led the meter last night on it despite pulling back to be the MT's intervene target.

Talk now is letting our pally tank have a shot at it and not kiting but rotating CD's so people don't have to move and reposition. I dunno, we'll see.

[Theganik]

would having a MS warrior in the raid reduce the amount of incidental healing general recieves from the life drain effect? with healers all running to puddles at the same time combined with the speed at which the spell starts healing him, it seems like a hard thing for our group to avoid at the moment.

[Northsoul]

To Horacio:

Well, I'm a Frost DK tank and i'll give you some ideas from my guilds strat that might help.

1. Do you think it is possible for the warrior tank to eat the frenzy effect w/o the kite? This simplifies the encounter a bunch in my opinion. The way we did this before my tank set built up, we did use a warrior with the glyphed Last stand and shield wall. For Frenzy #1 the priest burned Pain surpression followed by a Shield from the pally (The talented one, can't remember ability name, sorry!) Frenzy #2 he burned his last stand and Shield wall, followed by a different priest/pally burning Cd's on him for Frenzy #3, rinse and repeat.

2. Healers have enough to worry about with the amount Vezax hits for, we stack the healers in the meele so they don't need to worry about life leech/ Shadow crash until they move to a saronite pool.

3. For the interrupts, all I can say is have the kick people make a macro that will cast kick/ mind freeze/ etc. and yell something like: Group 1 kicked, group 2 next! to help keep people on track.

4. Set designated areas for your ranged DPS to stand and where to move if they get Mark of the faceless or the Shadow crash in their group.

Hope this helps, use what you want of it
Best of luck with Vezax, Yogg isn't too far away!

[thefiddle]

Is there an estimate or knowledge of how fast General Vessax hits? is it 1/ 1.5 seconds or a bit more or a bit less?

[hvidgaard]

Without having a combatlog to gaze at, from a healing POV I would say a standart 2sec swing timer with parry hastes every now and then. Being able to 2 shot a tank is just too harsh with a swingtimer lower than 2sec.

[cudmaster]

Source: Yeti Any suggestions on Tanking this guy as a Pally would be much appreciated

reasons to not even try it:

1) no mana regen for prot... you have to step into that green stuff that hurts you to give you mana in order to hold agro and that is just plain dumb (honestly did they even test this, I mean I pulled it off with my pally in 10 man but I feel dumber for having done so).

2) you need external cooldowns, granted you can use trinkets when you can't use your own cooldown... but if trinkets alone could save you, we wouldn't be talking about this. Preferably you'll have 2 priests, one holy one disc, alternating their cooldowns, when your cd isn't up.

Honestly I don't even like the idea of tanking this boss on my warrior let alone my pally, IMHO he is as much the 3.1 "showcase" fight for DK tanks as Sarth+3 was in 3.0 If you have the folks available I would ALWAYS have a DK or Druid tank Vezax, and I simply can't immagine a pally doing it at all on hardmode since there is no greenstuff to give you mana, you go oom in the first 20 seconds then gg.

[mymF.Mirex]

oh my...

1. Protection Paladins do have mana regen. "Spiritual Attunement" still works and as Vezax hits rather hard, you will have no problems at all with your mana pool. Oh and LOL @ you in case you really stepped into those green puddles.

2. Entirely true. You will need Cooldowns but this should not be a problem since you can just kite him when you dont have cooldowns - which is not hard to do at all.

3. Use a DK when you have the chance to do so. A DK is by far the best tank for this fight though it can be done with any class capable of tanking rather easily.

[cudmaster]

Source: mymF.Mirex oh my... 1. Protection Paladins do have mana regen. "Spiritual Attunement" still works and as Vezax hits rather hard, you will have no problems at all with your mana pool. Oh and LOL @ you in case you really stepped into those green puddles.

I've heard some people saying if you go 2/2 SA and miss some consecrates you should be able to keep your mana pool > 0.

I love respecing for one fight, at least I don't have to reglyph too like I do on my warrior. I'll give it a shot this week.

Still though, bliz clearly intended for you to use a dk or druid on this guy.

But yeah I totally had to use the green pools in 10 man with 1/2 SA. I mean pally tank mana pools are small so it was just an in for 2-3 stacks then out sort of thing from time to time, not much extra work for the healers... but being forced into that made hardmode look impossible for my pally.

[Droodboyz]

Ok, I kinda skimmed over the posts and didn't see anything but i play a resto druid and i was wondering if innervate or the mana return from lifebloom still work here i know Lore in the video did not mention either of those working but he also ddint say they dont work so im just curious (I have yet to fight vezax otherwise i would have experimented this myself).

[skunkfart]

Source: cudmaster I've heard some people saying if you go 2/2 SA and miss some consecrates you should be able to keep your mana pool > 0. I love respecing for one fight, at least I don't have to reglyph too like I do on my warrior. I'll give it a shot this week. Still though, bliz clearly intended for you to use a dk or druid on this guy. But yeah I totally had to use the green pools in 10 man with 1/2 SA. I mean pally tank mana pools are small so it was just an in for 2-3 stacks then out sort of thing from time to time, not much extra work for the healers... but being forced into that made hardmode look impossible for my pally.

I haven't fought this boss yet, but have you considered dropping every other consecration or anything like that? Normally I'm leagues ahead of my DPSers and you essentially have a situation where you get to tank the boss Patchwerk style and the DPS have to deal damage with all sorts of hinderances.

Also, I didn't read every post in this thread, but it seemed Salvation was deemed unreliable for Surge of Darkness and I'm wondering why. Can he melee immediately after casting? If that is indeed the case, you could just move a bit out of melee range while he casts then activate Salv when he starts running at you. All you need is to make sure Salvation isn't activated before the Darkness buff and the timing should be fine.