General Vezax Hard Mode

My raid leader is looking for answers from me on how me (prot paladin) can tank General Vezax and stand still during Surge of Darkness (Like DKs) not really for Hard Mode but in General. As he says it allows DPS to DPS better. My reply to him was that Divine Protection is all I have, Pain Suppression doesn't last 10 seconds and most things either keep me from dying once (Guardian Spirit) or just absorb X amount of damage.

Has anyone here tanked him without moving? Also in your opinion to attempt Hard Mode do you even need to bother with standing still because In my Opinion Kiting won't hurt DPS.

Standing still is *very* helpful with regards to killing him on the hard mode (no movement for shadow crashes).

Kiting is possible but you have to accept that at one point in the fight you will have to move both the saronite animus - the boss - all the raid and the healers which is gonna be a bit of a feat as the Animus ought to die ASAP.

I don't know how to live through the Surge more than once - perhaps you can pray to some foreign god / reroll DK?

Just come up with a rotation of cooldowns. For our first kill we used a warrior tank (25/10) with a 2 min shield wall (40% damage reduction). When he wasn't using his cooldowns then a paladin used Hand of Sacrifice.

Shield Wall
Hand of Sacrifice
Shield Wall
Hand of Sacrifice
...and so on and so forth.

If you have Pain Suppression as one of the cooldowns you'll need to work out the rotation differently because they are generally 3min cooldowns (a glyph or something makes it 2 min 40seconds or something).

When I tanked him for 25 we had 2 disc and did the rotation as

Divine Protection
Pain Suppression
Divine Protection
Pain Suppression
...and so on and so forth.

He casts it every 60 seconds which makes 2 min cooldowns perfect when tagged up with another cooldown that has 2 min cd (ie HoSacrifice).

You can also live through using Hand of Sacrifice on the MT during 10 man without bubbling so that you only need one paladin. However keep your finger over LoH cause it still hurts alot!!!

*Forgot to mention, standing still is probably the most controlled method of tanking this encounter. Reason being with good melee dps he will never get off Searing Flames! And you standing still ensures that they are in range to interrupt. Healers and Range are doin' alot of other stuff while this is all going on. You moving will complicate the movements of healers and where they are having Saronite Broken at.

/r
Dal

Shield wall the 1st.

Hand of Salv (Glyphed) the 2nd.
+ trinkets
+ possibly a small external cooldown if still having problems.

Rinse repeat.


If you are doing hard mode, you will want to stand still as it allows ranged to stay stationary in shadow crashes.

I don't get it.
standing still allows the ranged to stand in the shadowcrashes?
Can't you just move the boss from Left to Right with ranged between that spot, or North/South whatever, so they don't have to move at all? Do you run away from the ranged when you are kiting him? Do they have to run almost to melee range to cast?
Melee dps can keep up with the boss while it's moving all during the surge of darkness and you can look how far he is to jump back closer or not.

Granted, never done hardmode yet but i still think staying in to "tank" the surge of darkness is a bad idea when it can be avoided with minimal raid dps/movement needed.

We used

Bubble wall
Painsuppression
Bubble wall
HoSac + Salv Glyph
Bubble Wall

Repeat

Well you are probably more competent at not dieing than every one of the 24 other people at moving.

And with cds he does pretty much the same damage as when he does normal hits.

Dantriges wrote:We used

Bubble wall
Painsuppression
Bubble wall
HoSac + Salv Glyph
Bubble Wall

Repeat

Well you are probably more competent at not dieing than every one of the 24 other people at moving.

And with cds he does pretty much the same damage as when he does normal hits.

With bubble-wall he actually hits softer during surge than he does without either, although for some reason when we did this fight last night my raid kept dying while i was just tanking it, went back to the kiting strategy and 1 shot O.o

Seloei wrote:I don't get it.
standing still allows the ranged to stand in the shadowcrashes?
Can't you just move the boss from Left to Right with ranged between that spot, or North/South whatever, so they don't have to move at all? Do you run away from the ranged when you are kiting him? Do they have to run almost to melee range to cast?
Melee dps can keep up with the boss while it's moving all during the surge of darkness and you can look how far he is to jump back closer or not.

Granted, never done hardmode yet but i still think staying in to "tank" the surge of darkness is a bad idea when it can be avoided with minimal raid dps/movement needed.

Doing hard mode, generally the idea is to have -all- ranged stand in roughly the same place so all of them can get the benefits of shadow crash as much as possible. This place is ideally ~25-30 yards away from Vezax, so that you have sufficient time to move out of the shadow crash, yet close enough for most dps abilities to be used.

Every time you move Vezax, you change the distance inbetween the shadow crash and Vezax, along with providing an opportunity for Really Bad Things to happen, such as him shadowcrashing the tank during the kite. Everyone has to reposition, possibly "wasting" a shadow crash or two, have range issues, and generally just messes things up.

Movement = significantly reduced dps, and you need all the dps you can get for the hard mode. Having him stand still is generally the way to go. The increased damage you take is really insignificant, healer mana used on the tank really isn't much of an issue.

1st Divine Protection.
2nd one healer cd (hand of sacrifice/guardian spirit/pain suppression)+ trinket cd.
Just keep rotating like that, don't forget to pop armor potion right before combat and another in mid fight.
Demo shout or curse of weakness help a bunch also.

Talking 10-man here, as we haven't looked at hard mode Vezax in 25 yet:

Your casters are going to be pretty much OOM by the end of the fight and shouldn't be casting outside of crashes. I don't see how them having to move out of crashes is going to change the amount of damage they're able to do in any way, let alone why a properly organized kiting path should cause ranged to have to move out of them. Everyone should be positioned in such a way that the ranged can stand in them while he's moving anyway.

Standing still wastes cooldowns and healer mana that could be used to trivialize the Animus. Since that's the hard part of the fight, it doesn't make much sense to burn them on avoidable damage. The only reason you should be wiping to the berserk timer is if someone dies or Marks heal him too much. A paladin and druid can 2-heal hardmode with good mana management.

I agree with most people here in that it makes sense to kite him. It's easy to do, and reduces damage taken.

However, the whole rest of my raid agrees that it's better to tank him in one spot. The tank may take more damage, but it seems easier for everyone else. The melee don't have issues with interrupts (although I don't see why moving should cause problems anyways). The ranged DPS don't have to worry about where he's going to be (not that there's much guesswork on a good kite path), and the same for healers.

I've actually killed him both ways. I much prefer kiting, as it makes the fight somewhat interesting. In 25 man I rotated Divine Protection with a Pain Suppression. Seeing as how the cooldown really is 3 minutes, I'm not quite sure how I pulled that off. We only had the two of us rotating, and I don't recall her telling me that she was unable to do one. Maybe a talent or something makes it a 2m cooldown.

I guess both are viable, and will depend more on the strengths of your group. If DPS is fine and healers are just lacking mana maybe kiting becomes superior. If healing is fine and repositioning causes issues then you might want to stand still.

Clever uses of game mechanics:

Discipline priests standing in shadow crash can cast shields that are normal power.
Druids can melee until they get a clearcasting proc.
Druids can cast a 3-stack of lifebloom while standing in a shadow crash, then step out of the shadow crash and it will bloom for full value. They actually gain a little bit of mana doing this.

Joanadark wrote:Clever uses of game mechanics:

Discipline priests standing in shadow crash can cast shields that are normal power.
Druids can melee until they get a clearcasting proc.
Druids can cast a 3-stack of lifebloom while standing in a shadow crash, then step out of the shadow crash and it will bloom for full value. They actually gain a little bit of mana doing this.

The trick is the Druid uses lifebloom from clearcasting and nets a gain in mana. Last week when we first killed the 10m hardmode, our resto druid was at 100% mana for p2 despite healing the entire time.

Disc priest is also probably one of the best. Maintaining a rotation that consists of shielding while inside a crash and then hoping out to throw a penance at the tank can easily keep them at 70-80% mana for p2.

Casters should also be swapping to mana friendly specs (Frost mages wreck this fight), if you are really serious about going for hard mode.

Also, Spark of Hope is quite a nice trinket for this fight =) netting most healers a nice amount of mp5.

When we do this hardmode in 10 man we kite north and south. There are 2 set locations that are exactly north or south of the opposite point, its very important to reach these point. We have 3 ranged dps stand %60 of the distance b/w the two points, not standing on each other or in the kite path. All healers and melee are on top of him so its just the 3 ranged which allows them to make their own cloud spots.

With them 60% of the way they can stand in their one spot and reach him on both the north and south spots. So this offers the same advantages that the standing still does (from a ranged perspective) while not having to have a cooldown rotation.

Holding him in place next to a crash doubles the damage unholy dks do and seems to double rogue poisons. Also doubled all my holy damage when we parked him between two crashes so there was one for me as well.