Mogu'shan Vaults - Feng the Accursed

[Lore]

What's up guys, and welcome back to the Mogu'shan Vaults raid guide. My name is Lore, and this video will cover the 10-man normal version of the Feng the Accursed encounter. Feng is a 3-phase fight on normal mode. You'll need 2 tanks, and can use either 2 or 3 healers depending on your raid's preference. As far as DPS goes, a balanced mix of melee and ranged is ideal.

Immediately after pulling, you'll see two small crystals appear on either side of Feng's platform. Each tank will need to click one of these crystals to gain access to a special Extra Action Button ability for this encounter. The light-colored crystal to the right will give that tank the Nullification Barrier ability. This creates a small bubble around the tank that nullifies any of the boss's magical abilities. The dark-colored crystal to the left gives the Shroud of Reversal ability. Shroud of Reversal works a lot like the Death Knight's Dark Simulacrum ability -- when you channel it on a friendly player, you'll be able to copy the next ability the boss uses that hits that player. This will usually be the other tank, so I highly suggest setting up a macro to make it easier to use. I'll discuss exactly when and how to use these abilities as we continue through the guide, but for now, I recommend having your strongest tank take Nullification Barrier, leaving the other tank free to make optimal use of Shroud of Reversal.

Aside from his phase-specific abilities, which we'll get into in a moment, Feng has two main abilities he'll be using throughout the entire encounter. The first of these is Spirit Bolt, an instant cast that hits 3 random raid members. It doesn't deal a lot of damage, but he does cast it fairly regularly, so healers will need to be aware of it.

The second is a stacking damage over time effect on whoever is currently tanking. There's actually three of these - Lightning Lash, Flaming Spear, and Arcane Shock. Which one he uses depends on what phase he's in, but they're all the same thing mechanically.

Alright, lets start talking strategy. A few seconds after the pull, right after the two crystals appear, Feng will run over to the far right statue and pick up a fist weapon, beginning phase 1. This gives him two abilities: Epicenter and Lightning Fists.

Dealing with Epicenter is the focal point of phase 1. It's a huge earthquake that deals significantly more damage the closer you are to the boss, and reduces your chance to hit by 75% while it's active. This can be dealt with in one of two ways. The first is by using Nullification Barrier and just having everyone stand inside. Unfortunately, Nullification Barrier's cooldown is too long to just do that every time, so the other way to deal with it is by using Shroud of Reversal to copy Feng's other phase 1 ability, Lightning Fists.

Lightning Fists has a short cast time, after which he'll send out a relatively slow-moving shockwave along the ground in front of him. Anyone hit by it will be stunned and take a bit of Nature damage. Now, you can dodge it, but you can also use Shroud of Reversal to copy it and actually stun Feng as soon as he starts casting Epicenter. As long as you do it after the cast actually starts, Epicenter will be interrupted and put back on cooldown. Ideally, you'll want to alternate between using Nullification Barrier and Lightning Fists to handle Epicenter.

This, along with the stacking damage over time effect, ends up making a pretty straightforward tank rotation. Have your Barrier tank start out on the boss, while the Shroud tank keeps an eye out for Lightning Fists to cast. Once he's been able to steal Lightning Fists, the Shroud tank should taunt the boss and tank him long enough for the Barrier tank's debuff to fall off. Once the Barrier tank is clear, he can take over again, allowing the Shroud tank to prepare to copy Lightning Fists again.

One last note for phase 1 is that Feng can sometimes be kinda random in when he actually uses Lightning Fists. It's entirely possible to have situations in which neither Lightning Fists or Nullification Barrier are available when he casts Epicenter. In those cases, just have the raid run away from the boss until Epicenter is over with. Fortunately, this should be pretty rare, which is why we have everyone stack up on the boss. We can be pretty confident that, at least most of the time, we'll be able to deal with Epicenter, and this saves melee DPS some time running back and forth.

Alright, moving on to phase 2. At 66%, Feng will destroy the first statue, run over to the next one, and pick up a Spear. He'll stop using Epicenter and Lightning Fists and instead start using Wildfire Spark and Draw Flame.

Wildfire Spark is a pretty standard Geddon bomb-style mechanic. He'll cast it on a random raid member, and then that player has 5 seconds to get away from everyone else before they drop a patch of fire on the ground. As you may expect, fire hurts, so don't stand in it. These should ideally be dropped out to the sides of the room, leaving the center of the room clear.

After he's put out a few Wildfire Sparks, he'll use Draw Flame. When he does this, he actually sucks all the wildfires in the room into him, and gains a stacking buff based on how many Sparks went out. This buff causes his melee swings to do a pretty substantial amount of raid-wide damage. He loses one stack each swing, and it lasts until all of those stacks have run out, even if you push him to phase 3. Fortunately, Nullification Barrier actually blocks Draw Flame -- as long as Feng is inside the barrier, he won't be able to absorb the wildfires he draws in.

Much like with Epicenter, you won't be able to use Nullification Barrier for every Draw Flame, so you will have to heal through at least one set of Draw Flame debuffs. On top of that, you always want to be able to use Barrier on the last Draw Flame before the phase ends, to limit the number of stacks he has going into Phase 3. So basically that means, if you're able to push him over in only 2 Draw Flames, you'll want to save Barrier for the second one. If it's going to take you 3, go ahead and use it on the first and third. You should be aiming to push him to phase 3 well before he can cast a 4th Draw Flame.

As for Shroud of Reversal, after phase 1 it's not as important. Tanks will still need to swap aggro to clear debuffs, but otherwise, the Shroud tank should just focus on stealing Feng's damage over time effect as much as possible and using that for extra DPS.

On to phase 3. At 33%, Feng will destroy the second statue and move across the platform to the third, where he picks up a staff. In this phase, he'll once again use two major abilities: Arcane Resonance and Arcane Velocity.

Arcane Resonance is another Geddon bomb - one random raid member will get a debuff that causes them to explode once every second for a chunk of Arcane damage. Not only does this splash to anyone nearby, but it also deals extra damage if it does. For this reason, we pull him out to the middle of the room so that ranged DPS and heals have plenty of space to spread out around him.

Arcane Velocity is kind of the opposite of Epicenter -- it deals a substantial amount of damage, but it deals more damage to players farther away from him. So, ideally, you want everyone to stack up on the boss when he casts it, and use Nullification Barrier if it's available. However, Arcane Resonance can make this a bit tricky. Anyone with Arcane Resonance needs to stay out of the group -- they can get closer, just not close enough to splace to the rest of the raid. As a result, that player will need some extra healing.

On top of that, he can actually cast a new Arcane Resonance instantly as soon as Arcane Velocity finishes, which means you need to spread out again just before he's done channeling. Otherwise, there's a good chance you can get a new Resonance while everyone's still stacked, which is pretty much an instant wipe. Other than that, phase 3 is pretty straightforward, and rests mostly on your healers to keep everyone alive, and your DPS to kill him before the healers run out of mana.

[Lore]

THERE WE HAVE A FENG GUIDE NOW ARE YOU HAPPY INTERNET?

Rhetorical question, I know better

BTW here's the macro used for Shroud of Reversal (replace with the other tank's name):

/target OtherTank
/click ExtraActionButton1
/targetlasttarget

[screwzloos]

Do you know if Nullification Barrier clears Arcane Resonance?

We had a raid member not realize that he had it when we stacked up for Arcane Velocity this last week, and while I was expecting it to wipe us, nothing bad actually happened.

Has anyone else encountered this?

[brassband]

I appreciate you posting this macro. Since I have never been, and since I want to tank this encounter, eventually, well, let me make a guess as to how this might actually work in a fight, and you could correct me:

1. I am a bear tank, and this probably means I am the weaker tank. My guild leader believes that tanks are currently in this order: DK,, Pally,,,,, Warrior,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,, Druid,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Monk. (The amount of commas indicate gaps in the abilities of the tanks). Therefore he won't consider a Druid or Monk tank for raiding. But I might hook up with a PUG or something. In any case I grab the dark crystal.

2. While epicenter is only cast occasionally, lightning fists is cast all the time. Shroud of Reversal only will copy one of the two major abilities. So, once I cast the above macro I am pretty much gonna get lightning fists.

3. I cast lightning fists by pushing the button in the center, which changes to indicate that I have copied that ability? I cast it once after I see epicenter start to cast, interrupting and putting it back on CD. (But once I cast it, I lose it, so I have to set shroud of reversal to copy again as soon as it cools down/immediately, so that I have it ready next time.)

In phase 2 and 3 since I can't interrupt draw flame with wildfire spark, or one arcane with another, I just spam the macro and button on CD while swapping when dbm warns me?

[Tengenstein]

1. That's complete crap. Like single women with cats should be burnt at the stake and the world is flat type ignorance and stupidity. All Tanking classes are viable for every fight, people who espouse otherwise are full of shit, probably where there brain's meant to be.

2. He does not cast lightning fists all the time, he cast it fairly often, about once every 15 seconds or so, and you need to make sure you're casting reversal on someone whose either going to get hit by it in the next few seconds or has already been hit by it, as Feng won't turn whilst casting it the other tank can quite easly and should side step out of it, so you need to coordinate with the other tank when he needs to get hit so you can reverse it. if you get the timing wrong, you'll copy the stacking dot or epicentre, which whilst they do do damage pale in comparison to awesomeness of the interrupt.

3. yeah, you press the button, you channel an ability for a few seconds, the channel will be interrupted either by you moving or your targeted ally moving out of range of you (its only a 20 yardish range). if you copy an ability the channel will finish prematurely and the button will change to show the icon of ability you've copied. You'll have the ability for about 20 seconds (it shows as as a debuff on you too). once you cast it again you lose the debuff, shroud is put on CD, and you'll need to recopy another ability once it comes off CD again.

You could just spam it but that would be kinda meh, in P2 when the other tanks taunts off you, you move between him and where your raid is dumping the fire, you then cast reversal on the next guy to get wildfire spark as he runs out, this gives you the spell wildfire infusion, which when cast on you, will cause your next 5 attacks to deal an additional ~100K as fire damage. In P3 you want to do the same but with people who have been targeted with Arcane Resonance which when cast on Feng causes him to take 10kDPS for every person within 8 yards.

[Exiledknight]

I appreciate you posting this macro. Since I have never been, and since I want to tank this encounter, eventually, well, let me make a guess as to how this might actually work in a fight, and you could correct me:

1. I am a bear tank, and this probably means I am the weaker tank. My guild leader believes that tanks are currently in this order: DK,, Pally,,,,, Warrior,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,, Druid,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Monk.

How stupid is your guild leader? Seriously thats complete crap, each tanking class has a niche, however they all can tank any normal mode encounter with ease, what it comes down to is how well you can use your active mitigation and thats it. I would look for a new guild if your guild leader is that asinine.

[steveh]

I put together a video guide to show how the Shroud of Reversal button works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4P1vOyB7u0

[finalxcx]

I put together a video guide to show how the Shroud of Reversal button works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4P1vOyB7u0

Thanks for both of these videos. I'm new to raid tanking so it is nice to see how everything looks before I go into the fights. The mechanics seem easy enough.