| Author: Kyth |
General Vezax
|
|
|
Strategy
| Achievements: |
| Guides: |
|
General Vezax is the last boss before Yogg-Saron in Ulduar.
You can only reach him if you have killed the four Keepers first.
This fight is unique in Ulduar in that no normal mana regen functions for any non-physical classes. The only way to regain mana is to kill the Saronite Vapors and stand in them to exchange health for mana.
Looking for the hardmode strategy? Check out: I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning.
Contents |
Hard Mode
Looking for the hardmode strategy?
Check out: I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning.
Movies
|
|
|
Abilities
Aura of Despair: Prevents normal mana regeneration. Certain types of mana regen still work however, such as Judgments of the Wise, Spiritual Attunement, and Shamanistic Rage. Mana potions do not work.
Shadow Crash: Directed at a target, deals AoE splash shadow damage and knocks away. Leaves behind an area to stand in that increases magic damage and casting speed by 100%, reducing healing done and mana cost by 75%.
Searing Flames: Deals raid-wide fire damage and reduces armor by 75%. 2 second cast time. MUST BE INTERRUPTED.
Mark of the Faceless: Places a debuff on a player which causes them to drain life from any other players around them, also heals Vezax when damage is dealt to another player.
Saronite Vapors: These spawn throughout the fight and float around the room. When killed them leave a pool that players can stand in and trade health for mana. The debuff stacks so be careful with your HP!
Surge of Darkness: A buff that Vezax casts on himself that increases his damage by 100% but decreases his movement speed by 55% for 10 seconds.
The Fight
Looking for the hardmode strategy?
Check out: I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning.
In general the strategy here is pretty simple. Vezax is just a bit of a reimagining of your standard tank and spank fight.
This fight mostly breaks down to getting Searing Flames interrupts under control, managing Shadow Crash for maximum caster dps and minimal raid damage, reducing healing from Mark of the Faceless either through strategy or running out of the raid, and healers knowing how hard they can push healing without bottoming out their mana.
Tank
The tank needs to be watching carefully for the Surge of Darkness cast and be ready to kite as soon as he sees it. It is helpful to work out a kite path with your healers ahead of time, so that you do not find yourself out of their reach. We generally just go back and forth across the middle of the room.
If you have a warrior tank, he can intervene a healer partway down the kite path. This ensures that there is a healer in range of the tank as well as getting the tank away from him quickly.
Alternatively, if you have a DK, you can skip the kiting and just use cooldowns to get through Surge of Darkness.
Melee
Melee has only one job: interrupt Searing Flames.
Like RoS, this can be done with two rogues alternating.
If you're not on interrupt duty, just hug him the entire time and DPS.
Assign a physical DPS to kill the Saronite Vapors as well: DK's are excellent since they can deathgrip them into place to make it convenient for the healers. Saronite Vapors won't despawn so you can leave them up until you want a pool. Have healers ask for a pool when they need one.
Casters
Casters need to spread out and bit and react quickly to Shadow Crash casts. They need to get away from the person the cast is targeted at, and then quickly reassemble in the buff pool left after the crash hits.
Shadow Crash has a flight time, so standing at 30' from the boss is far better than standing at 12' -- you'll have time to react and get out before being hit by Shadow Crash.
They also must react quickly to Mark of the Faceless, which does heavy damage to your raid and heals him (it has a 15 yard radius.)
If your casters are poor at reacting to Mark of the Faceless, consider using two different ranged groups that never share Shadow Crash pools -- this ensures that at least he will only heal up from half the raid.
Your casters will likely run OOM and will need to use the pools from the Saronite Vapors. Like the healers, they shouldn't take more than 6-7 ticks or they will die.
Currently Saronite Vapors are bugged and will not produce a pool when killed by a dot or a pet -- for that reason it's best to have physical DPS kill them for now.
Healers
Healers have to manage mana as best they can and coordinate the usage of saronite vapors in order to last until the boss is dead.
Since Shadow Crash results in -healing done as well (discourging all but disc priests from standing in them), you can move some of your healers to melee range. This will allow them to ignore Mark of the Faceless and Shadow Crash unless they're out getting mana back from Vapors.
If you *do* have healers in melee range, make sure that you have healers available at the end of the kite path if you're kiting Surge of Darkness.
Assign a DPS to break off and kill Vapors when they healers need them. Saronite Vapors won't despawn so you can leave them up until you want a pool. Have healers ask for a pool when they need one.
Comments
If you are asking a detailed question, please use the StratFu Forums instead.
May 11 2009 12:07 pm
I have a question to your healer strategy above even though my guild has already killed General Vezax. "Since Shadow Crash results in -healing done as well (discouraging all but disc priests from standing in them)" I assume you say disc priests can stand in the Shadow Crash pool because disc priests can just throw shields around thus are unaffected by the minus healing done debuff. I'd like to confirm this is the case. With correct raid coordination, there should be minimal raid damage and I "heard" throwing shields to protect people who are in the vapor will prevent them from getting mana. So I am not sure if disc priests are encouraged to stay in the Shadow Crash pool.
May 11 2009 12:18 pm
Correct, shields are unaffected by the healing-done debuff. I've not heard about shields preventing mana return on vapor, so I can't confirm or deny that.
May 11 2009 12:40 pm
What's the second song in the US First video you posted?
May 11 2009 1:22 pm
Walk Idiot, Walk (TimG Remix) - The Hives
May 11 2009 9:30 pm
I hope you don't really mean that you have finished all your non-hardmode strategies. The Thorim one is useless, and some of the others seem half done. I'm looking forward to some of the hard mode strats, but please make the effort to do a sweep over all your existing strats first! Also, fix your side menu, it seems all over the place.
May 12 2009 12:36 am
What mod puts a huge skull on your screen when you have mark of the faceless. Sometimes I get tunnel vision while healing, I need that badly!
May 12 2009 8:31 am
Hi,
May i ask how you send to the chat bubbles when someone is targetted by a shadowcrash ? i cant find a way to do it either with DBM or Bigwigs
Thanks for your timeMay 12 2009 8:41 am
Bigwigs. Everyone installs it. It's called "Shadow Crash say" and is on by default I believe.
May 12 2009 8:42 am
Possibly just an oversight, but Thorim's strat page is still listed as being based on the PTR information. The strat isn't really different on live, but it's not nearly as detailed as the rest of the non-hard mode fights.
May 12 2009 8:44 am
PowerAuras configured to react to the debuff "Mark of the Faceless."
May 12 2009 8:46 am
It means the first pass is done, not that they're completed.
I wanted to get *something* out there for each of them so at least the abilities were available.
I'll go rattle the cages of the guy who was supposed to fix Thorim's.May 12 2009 11:26 am
Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.
May 12 2009 3:10 pm
I've heard random talk that a Druid with decent enough gear doesn't have to kite him either, but I don't see how it's possible with the lack of CD's we have available to us. Is there any truth to this rumor?
May 18 2009 6:58 am
I doubt Druids in their current state are better then Paladins / Warriors at "not kiting", but a Death Knight with 1 min Cooldown on Icebound Fortitude works great. And when you take the moving part of the encounter, you can place all healers and every ranged DPS(who doesnt need Shadow Crash Cloud) in Melee range. This way they avoid getting Shadow Crashed and Mark of the Faceless.
May 18 2009 7:23 pm
Does he have a limit for the saronite vapors when you're not doing hard mode? Like, does he only summon 8 on not hard mode??
May 18 2009 8:00 pm
Correct, but as long as you kill one they'll last forever and you can kill them at your leisure.
May 20 2009 4:21 am
Using the Polar leather set and buffed with Dragonfin Filet, Kings, Fortitude, Flask of Stoneblood and Commanding Shout, I can reach up to 53.5K HP during this fight. I also have ~39% passive dodge, 180 hit rating and 31 expertise skill in this gear setup so my avoidance and threat generation are decent. At every Surge of Darkness I use Barkskin + Figurine - Monarch Crab for some extra 5% dodge. Usually I take 1-2 hits in this phase, but anyway they are reduced to ~23K per hit. Using Indestructible Potions and Nightmare Seeds is recommended as well for a little extra edge.
May 20 2009 7:09 pm
"Bigwigs. Everyone installs it. It's called "Shadow Crash say" and is on by default I believe."
I use DBM. So do alot of people I know =).
But other then that thank you very much for the guides. Much appreciated by the guild and IMay 20 2009 8:29 pm
Sorry that was unclear. I never meant "everyone in the entire world uses it."
I meant, everyone who wants to do this installs it and then it works. it's not like one person can install it and it works for everyone
We made it mandatory for ranged due to vezax.May 26 2009 7:22 am
@SeaEagle yes its true a druid or DK can tank the whole fight with Surge of Darkness up and does not require to move, this is because Barkskin & Icebound Fortidude has a 1minute CD and so does Surge of Darkness, so when your CD is ready Surge of Darkness begins to cast. Did this for 10man and 25man.
May 26 2009 9:00 am
Our Druid tank, Marny (wildhammer eu) does not kite him.
We tried this and with rotating healer cooldowns, divine sac, and his own cooldowns we have never kited him.
We found it more work to try and kite him than to stand and take it like a "bear" ;-)May 26 2009 12:35 pm
We use a prot warrior and do not kite him either. Usually it requires a c/d rotation..ie. Shield Wall/Pain Suppression/etc, and it works out quite well. Our melee then can go all out non-stop, meaning we down him faster and worry less about our healers mana issues.
May 29 2009 10:58 am
What spec do your holy paladins use for this fight?
I was thinking that you might be able to solve mana problems would be for them to go 38/0/33 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAzgo0sVu0hZZVfrxbhzG0h and stand next to the boss and judge for mana. Or go 28/43/0 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAzg00scZxMtAduMMcfh and recieve the mana benefits from spiritual attunement
been dying to try these specs out, and this seems to be the right fight to do so onMay 29 2009 11:22 am
what is the best healer comp for this?
May 30 2009 1:44 pm
We originally kited with our DK, but have settled on standing him still once settled. Melee in normal position for the duration, two ranged groups in front of him at max range and separated from each other by about 20-30 yards. Marks run out of the group, crashes are handled typically. Healers floating (standing with assignments). We have a single Hunter that deals with the vapors, and have a specific DK assigned to grab them down for said Hunter.
Due to having some lag issues, we ended up having two melee assigned to each of two interrupt "groups" - even and odd (four total assigned). All other melee on an open interrupts, just whenever they happen to be up.
The only keys for ranged would be a) vapors are healer priority, and only use them when needed (be smart about mana usage, going full tilt the whole time is stupid), and b) be on top of those marks. If I remember correctly, each tick ends up being about 100,000k healing to the big guy. On an early attempt, we honestly had him to 30k health (yes, 30,000) with 7-9 DPS still up, and wiped due to an inopportune Mark (he was running after the DPS, so there wasn't much to be done at that point). Any amount of wanding will be negated by even a single tick of Mark healing.
One note: for Aura of Despair, a Hunter's Viper will also work to regain mana.Jun 01 2009 9:51 pm
It can be done with a druid who uses Barkskin, and have your priests toss up Guardian Spirit or Pain Suppression, no kiting is necessary.
Jun 05 2009 8:16 pm
I haven't got to general myslef, but i was wondering whether a warlocks life tap would still get back mana, as it is the same principal as the clouds
Jun 06 2009 10:14 am
Lifetap doesn't work.
Jun 08 2009 10:08 pm
A Disc Priest going into Shadow Crash has more benefits than just a cheap shield. It also allows Rapture to proc it's mana return as long as the shield was cast with the Shadow Crash debuff. Prayer of Mending is also not affected by the -healing from Shadow Crash (build 3.1.3 9947).
Jun 16 2009 3:44 am
I was wondering if your holy pallies tried the hybrid spec 38/0/33 that open "judgements of the wise" for mana regen?
Jun 16 2009 9:41 am
They decided not to, because they prefer having Beacon available and having had mana problems that they care about.
It's a valid option, though, and as soon as someone gives me a talent tree for it I plan on posting it.
There's also an alternative shaman spec that ours don't choose to use but can get more mana back if that's the concern.Jun 26 2009 12:41 am
Druids are indeed able to tank him. My druid has ~52,000 health raid buffed and he does his 2x damage ability once a minute. gogo barkskin + maybe a priest with glyphed Divine Spirit (which we had). I also used my JC trinket at the same time to dodge more attacks.
Jun 26 2009 10:11 am
have you, or anyone really, had any issues with Vezax not taking the movement speed debuff? we keep running into a situation where surge of darkness starts, the bear tank starts to kite, but Vezax just runs up on him at full speed and 1 shots him.
Jun 27 2009 11:48 am
@ xenoverse - not sure about shields bu bubble does prevent casters from gaining mana as it removes the debuff. @ SeaEagle - Decently geared Druid with Bark Skin should be able to eat it Surge of Darkness. Healers need to be ready though.
Jun 27 2009 11:49 am
Bubbles prevent mana return as it removes the debuff while standing in vapor pools.
Jun 29 2009 12:13 am
@SeaEagle: I heard it has to do with the power of barkskin.
Jul 01 2009 12:06 am
I have a question with Holy Paladins. Is Divine Plea something you can use to regain mana back?
Jul 01 2009 8:40 am
It doesn't work.
Jul 08 2009 7:48 pm
We've successfully tanked this while NOT kiting with a very well geared Prot Pally. We assign a rotation for damage reduction cooldowns. First, the Pally uses his Divine Protection, then Priest #1 uses Pain Supression, by the time the next Surge is up, the Pally's DP is off CD and he can use that. The next CD is used by Priest #2 and then we rinse and repeat.
Jul 11 2009 8:14 am
It is true about a druid not having to kite him the reason for it is they can barkskin through surges every minute
Jul 13 2009 12:46 pm
how did you configure shadow crashes with powerauras?
Jul 19 2009 2:12 pm
We wiped many more times than I'd like to remember before we started rotating our healers. After that, we got him in 2-3 tries. So, I'd like to share our mana conservation strategy for those who find themselves going OOM too quickly to get him down, but otherwise have mastered the fight. This addition to the strategy listed above made the difference for us:
Firstly, you have to remember that only 8 saronite vapors will spawn. Once you've burned down the eighth one, that's it, you're out of mana for good.
Mindful of that, we had our healer-one work on the tank until he hit %50 mana. At that point, he called out for the second healer to come in and take over on the tank.
Also at that point, we would get a designated melee dps to serve on vapor duty (we used a dk), taking out the first vapor while healer-one would follow said vapor-duty person right to the spot of the vapor when it gets destroyed.
If you do it this way, healer-one can stand in the pool for 6 stacks of the mana regen debuff AND get a chance to heal up their own health and take a 2nd dip in the mana regen pool before it despawns.
Once healer-two hits %50 percent mana, you repeat the process. Healers not up in the rotation can help out with the tank on surges of darkness and raid damage (which is hopefully kept to a minimum if people can stay out of the life leach and shadow crashes), but should conserve the vast majority of their mana for when it's their turn in the rotation.
Caster DPSers would join healers in the pools if they were in the area of the pool, but they're generally being conservative with their mana (as above strat states) unless they're standing in a shadow crash pool. We never had more than 2 people in a pool at once.
On our first kill, we used this method and I don't think all three of us even executed properly, and the difference in our longevity was like night and day.Jul 20 2009 7:03 pm
I don't think a druid can tank it even if he has very high HP because General Vezax' normal attacks are very powerful and if those attacks are doubled in numbers I can imagine it being impossible to heal through on a 50k hp tank. Kiting should not be a worry to anyone- it's easiest for a warrior who can intervene, but a paladin can do it, and I imagine that a feral druid is possible of doing it too.
Jul 27 2009 1:50 pm
Now I'm wondering, I've just read through this fight, is enhancement shaman just a no go on this fight?
Jul 28 2009 9:32 am
Their mana regen works.
Aug 03 2009 6:16 am
For the 10 man version of ulduar we typically use 5 melee, 2 caster dps, and 3 healers. For General we spread out so we have healer - dps - healer - dps - healer and we never get within 15 yards of each other. For the casters, take a look at each of your spells (all of them; not just the ones you typically use) and determine which one will provide the most damage per mana used. Example: For me, a frostfire spec'd mage, pyroblast provided more damage per mana than frostfirebolt. The keys for us to this fight really come down to patience and paying attention. Nobody should ever get hit by shadowcrash. Casters should not waste mana casting any spells without the shadowcrash "black pool". In 10 man we have one caster on either side and only cast when the shadowcrash pool hits our area. At the beginning of the fight, one of the casters will benefit from early shadowcrash pools while the other will be standing around just watching the fight. This is fine... the second caster has absolutely no threat at this point so by all means pop every every cooldown and use bloodlust when the second caster gets a shadowcrash pool.
Aug 04 2009 8:58 am
2 months late but oh well.
Yes, a druid can survive through kite phase without kiting. That's how our bear does it. Barkskin, rotate SI with trinket and healer CDs. Works fine. There's a close call or two when someone slips up, but generally fine.
Therette on kilrogg if you're interested in the bear's gear level.Aug 04 2009 10:44 am
I've made a resto druid guide to healing through general Vezax.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJoWIl4efmI
Enjoy and hope it helps.Aug 09 2009 3:15 am
Dispersion and Shadowfiend are useless in this fight then, correct? And on the topic of Dispersion, can you take more than 6-7 stacks if Dispersion is used therefore decreasing damage done by 90%?
Aug 09 2009 8:05 am
The mana regen is useless, yes. Not sure about the other question.
Aug 09 2009 6:50 pm
Well, I wasn't allowed to try and stay past 7 stacks, but I did notice I took a little less damage while using Dispersion.
Aug 23 2009 10:22 pm
Questions about shadow priest talent build on this link:
1) you have spirit tap, 2 points. Does spirit tap work at all on General or General hardmode? I was told it did not.
2) Dispersion. Does it give any mana regen for these fights? I was told it did not. Also I was told Dispersion does not even mitigate damage on this fight. Does it now?
3) Replenish does not work on these fights. Is spending the mana for vamp touch worthwhile on Hard Mode general? I was considering using mindflay/swp only just to conserve mana, since you can roll swp for no mana.
4) 0/5 mind blast. According to shadowpriest.com 5/5 mind blast not only increases casting time for the mindblast spell but is actually a global haste buff for all shadow casts. You have it at 0/5. Is that because you do not use mind blast in your damage rotation for the general hardmode fight? Please explain.
5) On the same note: at questions 1 and 4, you took 3 points of shadow affinity. You can fade to reduce threat, so did you take it because it actually gives you mana back during this fight? I've never seen General dispel dots. Wouldn't these 5 points be better spent on mindblast 5/5?
6)I am only guessing at this, but the only reason i can see the mindblast being at 0/5 would be because of the rumors of a haste soft cap at 100%. If that is the reasoning, should all haste gear be sideswapped for crit gear? I can see this if you only dps while in the black puddle...considering it gives you 100% haste and double damage.
7) It has 3 points of meditation. Does meditation bypass the 'no mp5' for this fight? I was told it did not. It seems like 3 wasted talent points to me.
8) i was suggested this link by a good raiding guild, but i'm honestly at a loss for words when I try to theorycraft the decisions made for this build. Could you please elaborate why you chose these talents for a General specific talent build? Or was this just a raid build that specific person used?Aug 23 2009 10:27 pm
Unfortunately I'm not a spriest, I just asked our shadow priests what they used. I'll try to get one of them to come here and answer you.
Aug 23 2009 10:31 pm
Thank you. I know things have changed since you made the original post in May. I've been trying to work up a specific dual spec build just for this fight to maximize my use of mana for hardmode. I'm really curious to talk to some pro's about my theorycraft on the subject.
Aug 24 2009 9:46 am
1)No, those two points were filler, I didn't know where else to dump them.
2)It does not return mana. I am pretty sure it does reduce damage, but I honestly can't remember using it on the fight. 3)I use VT for the dmg. I do however drop DP from time to time, as I try to refresh it as I run out for shadow crash. 4)With MF being a 1.1 sec cast I drop MB from my rotation all together because the cast time is less than the GCD. Also flay is 9% of bases mana vs mb being 17%, if you are looking to save mana I feel that dropping MB is better than dropping VT. 5)Depending on the tank I have run into threat issues with 0 in Affinity. Hasted dmg + VE makes threat higher than normal on this encounter. Fade is only a temporary threat dump, so that isn't what I would call effective threat mitigation. I do however use shadow fiend when there is no shadow crash because the pet damage is something, and it costs no mana. So two points in veiled shadows might not be a bad idea to get an extra fiend off. 6)Answered above I think. Haste isn't worth much on this encounter. I however don't really have the gear to swap out haste pieces for crit pieces, if you do, more power to you. 7)3 Points in meditation is out of habit. I don't really see a better place to put the points in the tree to get to the next tier though. Additional comments: When we were learning the fight mana was a pretty big issue, more so that it is now after the nerf. I wanted to pick up mental agility to help with it. I found SWP falling off a lot when we sat there waiting for a shadow crash, also DP isn't cheap. So I went a bit deeper into disc and had to put points somewhere, there isn't really a good place. In the shadow tree, yes you could put points in imp MB but I don't use it so why bother? Now that mana isn't really a big issue you can most likely get away with MB in your rotation again. I don't know if it is really worth it though. If you cast MB you get a haste buff with the t8 bonus, but it is useless. Since MF and MB now have roughly the same cast time the the only reason to MB is if 1 MB does more dmg than 3 ticks of flay. Here is a log http://worldoflogs.com/reports/ObH6lzOoAbbA9y6Q/sum/damageDone/?s=11245&e=11581
Click my name and you will see that flay does roughly 4k dmg each tick, and crits for 8. Now if you assume 1/3 crit, each flay does 4+4+8 or 16k dmg. Now a MB will hit for only 8k and crit for about 15k. Only 1/3 of those MB will crit(again estimating) but even if they all crit I think MB will still come out below.Aug 24 2009 3:24 pm
Thanks for the info.
Thanks Again.Aug 24 2009 3:57 pm
Well now i'm considering whether the healing debuff from mindblast is worth taking 5 points just to toss out when he siphons life. Anyone know whether that works vs it?
Aug 24 2009 4:37 pm
Your rogues probably use wound poison and keep it up on him 100% anyways, so there'd be no point.
Aug 25 2009 6:16 am
I'd honestly be very surprised if you are still having significant mana issues. The boss had huge HP nerfs, unless your raid is doing something horribly wrong it shouldn't be that much of an issue. I'm not saying you can afford to be reckless with your mana, but I honestly think you could get away with a standard spec. Roll SWP and VT, drop DP first from your rotation if you have mana issues on attempts. And just spam MF. You will be fine.