[Nogara[]

So i read something, but would like to confirm it before we do attempts on Vezy tonight

A mages' amplify magic on the tank in this fight...yay or nay?

[Molohk]

There's no magical damage on the tank (unless he's kiting and runs into a shadow crash, so just tank still :P), so it can't hurt.

Edit: I'm talking about normal mode, the add in hard mode does magical AoE damage.

[nefaisrien]

I believe I saw people in the video stepping in and out of the puddles to regain mana. Was I correct in this? If this is so, is there some sort of debuff that is received that goes away after some time that allows you to start getting mana for health at the starting rate?

[ansa]

Source: nefaisrien I believe I saw people in the video stepping in and out of the puddles to regain mana. Was I correct in this? If this is so, is there some sort of debuff that is received that goes away after some time that allows you to start getting mana for health at the starting rate?

if u can, read all 9 pages of this forum and u will find all the answers you need.

the video's commentary is specific as well.

thanks for the time lore, cider et al

[junkilo]

Source: Fearonir I just wanted to mention that despite what Lore says in the video(s), melee can benefit from Shadow Crash puddles if they are within range of the boss. I was standing in them on our latest General Vezax attempts (a Ret Paladin: Alcarius on Garithos) and was getting 13 to 15k judgement crits. Our enhancement shaman was getting 14k Lightning Bolt crits when he used his Maelstrom stacks and our Blood DK was getting 7-8k Death Coil crits. I would not recommend going out of your way to get these buffs however.

^
this.

[vendertian]

well my guild is a strict 10 man guild and we have tried the kiting method with(our usual tank) a pally. THIS IS A HORRIBLE IDEA!!!!

I can not stress how much easier this fight is when everyone is standing still. We have every tank we use just take the surge and we have no trouble. our make-up is as follows for the most part give or take a few changes in range depending on the day.

1 tank - pally
3 healers - Shammy, Disc priest, holy pally
4 ranged dps - varies on the days, any will do
2 melee - rogue, dk

The healers just sit under the boss. I, the disc priest, is the primary healer. healing the MT before and after the surges so that the pally and shammy heal during. I just use renew, PoM, and shield to heal for the most part and wait for the tank to take some damage then penance when needed. when the surge comes i PS and the dk kills a mana puddle for me and i get my mana back by then the surge is over and im back under the boss. of course the shammy and pally help if needed but for the most part just save their mana for surges. They do just fine with whatever they are doing to keep the tank alive. The rogue does all the interupts. and if needed when the other healers need mana which is only like once in the fight the go right after a surge and the dk just kills one a little bit after he kills the one for me.

assuming the range dont ever get hit by the crashes, wich they shoud not be, all heals go to the tank and noone else. Otherwise use your bandages. This is the best way we have found to do this.

I only mention this because we have tried that kiting stuff for 3 weeks before we figured out it sucks and was way easier to just keep him still. If it works for you great but it just did not work for us. There was way to many variables going on when you moved the boss around. shadow crash a laggy melee that is too close to the tank, siphon life or whatever that is on the tank or melee, range issues for healers and dps was just too much for us, so keeping him still takes those all away.

[agranyoch]

Source: vendertian assuming the range dont ever get hit by the crashes, wich they shoud not be, all heals go to the tank and noone else. Otherwise use your bandages. This is the best way we have found to do this.

Quick pointer for people as thick-headed and stupid as me: don't bandage yourself in Shadow Crash! ;-)

[Collywobbles]

we just did this hard mode in 10 man today and I found that as a resto druid, you can gain mana while still healing awsomely. the thing is,

1. stay in shadow crash and cast 3 lifeblooms + reju
2. move out of the crash and wait for lifebloom to tic off

and what happens is when you cast the lifeblooms in the crash it only costs like 200 mana and the lefebloom ticoff mana return should be 100 mana. but as you are out of the crash when the blooms go off it gives you back mana as you had wasted 800 mana on the lifebloom and it returns you 400 mana per lifebloom.

so when we hit the second phase in the fight I had 100% mana left and had done the most healing.
also it seems when you are out of crash when the lifebloom goes off the healing for that bloom is not lowered.

[dumbidum]

Hi, first of all sorry for my engish, if u don't want to see mistakes, don't read this post.

I think we got this fight under control for 10 man (at least the tanking and healing part), but we are having problems to beat the enrage timer.

Our ranged dps only do damage when they can be in a cloud, we got em in two groups of two to avoid a lot of healing to the boss.

We got one enh shaman cuting casts, and one ret pally in charge of the green clouds when the healers need it.

The last trys we made to the boss we wiped at 50ks and 400ks of hp, all of em because of enrage. the 4 ranged dps are at 4ks each one, the 2 melees at 2ks, any sugestions where the problem can be?

Also I would like to thank all project marmot authors for this nice howto movies.

[Vorla]

Source: dumbidum Hi, first of all sorry for my engish, if u don't want to see mistakes, don't read this post. I think we got this fight under control for 10 man (at least the tanking and healing part), but we are having problems to beat the enrage timer. Our ranged dps only do damage when they can be in a cloud, we got em in two groups of two to avoid a lot of healing to the boss. We got one enh shaman cuting casts, and one ret pally in charge of the green clouds when the healers need it. The last trys we made to the boss we wiped at 50ks and 400ks of hp, all of em because of enrage. the 4 ranged dps are at 4ks each one, the 2 melees at 2ks, any sugestions where the problem can be? Also I would like to thank all project marmot authors for this nice howto movies.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
This is a WoL from our (only) kill, only 2 ranged (average ~4300 DPS between us, I had more luck with Shadow crashes which accounts for my higher damage done, the melee averaged at ~2300 tank included). The fight took just over eight minutes to finish, so we weren't even close to the enrage timer. I really have no idea how you manage to hit the enrage timer before your healers run out of mana - when Vezax died in the above log, me and the warlock were basically dry (I'd been in one vapor for about 7k mana, the warlock had been in a couple IIRC) and the three healers were also dry and we had used up all the vapors.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you in that you have 6 DPS, 1 tank and 3 healers, I really have no clue.

[dumbidum]

Source: Vorla Unless I'm misunderstanding you in that you have 6 DPS, 1 tank and 3 healers, I really have no clue.

Thanks for the answer and thanks for the effort trying to understand this :P, we're going with 3 healers, 1 tank and 6 dps, but the enh shaman is going with crap gear to get the spell hit cap to cut all the casts, and isn't doing a lot of dps.

The enrage time is 10 min, maybe using 2 healers insted of 3 and adding another dps would give us the kill, but our healers don't want to go with two on this fight.

We use one healer on the tank, another suporting him, when the first healer is nearly oom he go to a saronite vapor, while the second starts healing the tank and the third starts with the suport. We repeat that rotation till the end. How do you do it with two healers?

I tank as a prot paladin, I kite one surge and the next one I use cooldowns to give the fight less movement, more control of the saronites and a bit more dps.

[Vorla]

We had three healers, two trees and a disc priest. We'd alternate one of them standing "out" (to avoid having Mark in the melee) and two "in" (with the melee) healing the tank. When healer 1 was at 75%, we'd switch that person "out" and the "out" person in, and whoever was "out" was not healing and instead we had the DK DPS run off and grab a vapor that the DK tank later grabbed also, to keep it near or on the healers. When healer 2 was at 50%, we'd switch that person out, and in comes healer 1 again, hopefully at or near 100%. When healer 3 reached 50%, we switched healer 2 back in and when healer 1 was at 50%, switch again, and that's the full circle. The DPS coordinates the crashes so that they grab the ones who go on the "out" healer (you won't have this problem with 3+ ranged DPS) but might want to have an "out" healer so that the "out" healer is the one getting regen together with what DPS also needs it, and the occasional "in" vapor for the healers keeping the tank alive.

Having Vezzie stationary really makes the fight so much easier, but you obviously have the vapor thing down better than us if you can last the full enrage timer. But, as I said, with that total DPS which was higher than ours, you should be killing him at least at the eight minute mark or even earlier. One thing I might note is that we did non-trivial DPS outside of crashes too, 211s spent in a crash for me, and 365s total DPS time (this is slightly inflated by the FFB dot/Ignite, but decently reliable since it's a short one). Most of it was towards the end of the fight when he was going towards 100k or so and the casters just needed to do as much damage in a short timespan as possible so that the melee could finish him off with their steady damage.

It would greatly help if you could show a log from the kill. I suspect there was a lot of healing done to Vezax from Marks - did your DPS group up on crashes and eat ticks from Mark every now and then? He heals for sickly amounts, and when he went from 100k to 150k to 200k in like a second during our kill try cause one of the healers (IIRC) went to the wrong place I was sure it was gonna be a wipe but we kept it together. During our try he healed for 580k damage in total - that's over 25% of my total damage done or just below the total damage contribution of our worst melee DPS - not a trivial amount and we kept the "out" people spread to avoid getting any mark ticks at all and only stood one person in each crash. Perhaps something to focus on next time for you?

[dumbidum]

Hi again,

We had 2 people at shadow crash, and sometimes the boss healed for some ticks, this might be our problem. We don't have any log sistem, I'll take a look at yours and use it because seems a very helpful tool.

We won't be able to try it until september because we're on holydays now, so the kill is going to have to wait.

Thank you for your help!

[Tempestas]

If the ranged are stacking up there will be some heals, your ranged just need to move as soon as they get mark and not just stand there and dps.

[FizzleKrank]

I haven't seen any posts yet mentioning anything similar, so I'm going to share our guild's 10 man strat. We just downed him for the first time tonight, myself (Paladin) tanking.

Our comp was:
2 Holy Paladin
1 Holy Priest
1 Balance Druid
1 Hunter
1 Rogue
1 Arms Warrior
1 Prot Paladin
1 Ret Paladin
1 Elemental Shaman

We started the encounter tanking General where he stands at idle in the room, with our three ranged DPS at a little under max range, our melee behind the boss, and our healers at the sides of him. With just the DPS at ranged and spread out, we had virtually no health given back through mark of the faceless and there were plenty of black puddles to stand in.
Instead of eating the enrages, I chose to kite him, specifically in the direction of the furthest saronite vapor, which I had marked while running.
Our hunter quickly dropped the vapor, and I positioned the boss such that his back was facing the nearest wall and the saronite pool was just to the left or right of Vezax.

*Our rogue was primarily on interrupts for the entire fight, however, our warrior and myself were ready at the hint of a missed kick or a range issue during kiting.

**Instead of chanting Tuskarr's Vitality, I decided to move 2 points into Pursuit of Justice to make the kiting that much easier.

***The only thing I had to watch out for when kiting was his casting of searing flames, because he stopped momentarily while casting it, even when enraged. This does give you extra time to get some distance, however, it can be very easy to get in range of either a mark of the faceless or a shadow crash.

[mistersix]

Even when Sarth 3D rolled around I didn't feel as discouraged about my class/spec as I did tonight in 10man hard mode Vezax. The zero/infinite rage situation really bit me and the raid in the ass tonight. Ugh.

[Lanore]

I am a casual guild raid leader and we finally got to and downed General last week on 10 man. Thanks to everyone who posted useful information. We used many of your contributed information to make our raid successful.

Here was what we ended up with:

-Warrior tank
-Two healers (tree and disc priest)
-Amplify Magic on tank
-We kept him stationary (first attempts we tried to kite, stationary>kite)
-We rotated Pain Suppression, Shield Wall, and LS w/ trinkets to get thru the boss enrages.
-We asked our caster dps to only attack the boss when in a shadow zone
-Our druid tree found that LB stacked on the tank while in a shadow zone was uber for mana return and he only had to regen from the green zones once
-The disc priest (me) had to regen mana 4 times, I PW:S and jump in, put a renew on myself and a PoM and wait for a 6 stack and jump out. Gave me enough mana to continue every time. I suggest designating one caster on each side to kill an add for you and just run to wherever it falls. First few times we used a melee to run out and kill one, but we found that he would almost always end up with life leech and have to stand outside the hit box for 15 seconds so he didnt heal the boss to full.
-We used a heal rotation where I would heal MT until I was at 40% mana, then I would call for an add to be killed and tree would take over heals until I was back into play.
-Took us nine wipes over two days to get it all worked out, but in the end, it was easy.

Thanks again to tankspot and all other contributors

[DrussUK]

Attempted this guy in 25 man for the first time the other day and the main problem was interrupts. We had two rogues (of which i'm one) doing the kicks but in 3 attempts we didn't quite get it down because (for example) we tried to kick another cast like shadowcrash that wasn't the correct one and ended up on CD for when we needed to kick OR someone other than us interrupted and we assumed the other had so got our rotation stuffed up. Anyway it was our first shot so i'm not feeling too bad about it.........

But - what I would like to know from those in the know is whether the spell we need to interrupt is cast on a regular timer or not. Seemed to be about every 10 seconds or so BUT I swear there were several occassions where he appeared to cast the ability we needed to interrupt back to back i.e. i'd kick and a split second later he was casting it again. This did kinda mean anticipating the interrupts was tricky. Anyone know?

We'll be trying with 2 teams of 2 interrupting I think but still good to know the timer on his interruptable cast and whether my seeing him cast back to back as mentioned was for real or just the 5 cans of Stella kicking in ;P

[Akeber]

Source: DrussUK We'll be trying with 2 teams of 2 interrupting I think but still good to know the timer on his interruptable cast and whether my seeing him cast back to back as mentioned was for real or just the 5 cans of Stella kicking in ;P

Your observation was correct. While he does have a CD on the abiltiy in 10 man (ten seconds I believe), he has no CD on 25.

Assign two interrupt teams, one main and one backup on each team. Tell everyone else with an interrupt, that was not assigned, to do so if it looks like the cast is hanging up there a little too long.

[Calintara]

As a suggestion, what we did with our interrupt team was to send them into a separate vent channel. We did exactly as you mentioned, 2 teams but having them in another channel allowed then to coordinate specifically.

Before you get concerned about not hearing what is going on in the main channel i will add this. I created a key bind, as well as my Raid Assistants, to talk into those other channels. It is a one-way ticket unless they create a key-bind as well but they really do not have anything to say back to the RL/RA.

This allows them to coordinate their interrupts but also hear if they need to move out for a LL/MotF. We wiped twice to melee getting MoTF on 25 and they were both interrupters. We came up with this b/c we have someone calling out LL in vent to spur movement quicker. This is helping us solve the problem and quickly notifies that person interuppting backup that it is time for them to step in.

We use 4 interupters in two teams (2 shamans as primary then other interrupters as back up, with my shield bash in reserve if they scare me!

Any case hope this helps. Keybindings in vent are pretty useful for these things.