Phase 1: Boss

Your goal in phase 1 as a healer is to heal as little as possible.

Our target (in May 2009, before any nerfs) was to have him to ~20% health by the end of Phase 1, but for our kill he was actually at 5% when the Animus spawned and the fight moved to Phase 2.

Ranged

Ranged absolutely must minimize the damage they take: this means moving out very quickly with Mark of the Faceless: Mages should blink and warlocks should use their Demonic Teleport.

Warlock note: as of this writing, any circles cast before engage won't work. You need to spend the mana during engage to cast them. (but it's worth it to reduce the healing from Mark of the Faceless.)

There's also no excuse for ever getting hit by a new Shadow Crash

Require all your ranged to get BigWigs and turn on the Vezax "Shadow Crash say" option. Then people at range can turn on /say chat bubbles and easily see where to move rom.

Ranged can end up wasting a lot of time running in and out of Shadow Crash pools. To minimize this we told them to always stand at the edge of a pool, either the left or the right.

This allowed pools to separate slightly and meant that, sometimes, only part of the ranged had to move when a new Shadow Crash was landing or, at the very least, some had more time to let their cast finish.

Melee

The most critical melee job is to interrupt Searing Flames reliably. If even a single one goes off it will be a wipe: healers don't have the mana to heal it.

The mod Deadened can help by hiding Surge of Darkness casts so you don't accidentally kick the wrong one.

We have always found that having exactly two rogues and only two rogues on it is easiest: they get into a rhythm and never end up with nothing to kick because someone else already got it.

For Phase 2 you will still need to kick Searing Flames even though you will be on the Animus, so you need a focus kick macro:

/cast [target=focus] kick

Tanks

It's good to tank Surge of Darkness rather than kite it. You can't afford to go out of range of any patches of Shadow Crash since you need as much DPS as possible.

We used a Death Knight. He used Icebound Fortitude and the Monarch Crab JC trinket for each Surge of Darkness.

Once threat was established, he used Death Strike as much as possible to smooth out damage.

Healers

The two disc priests rotated Power Word: Shield and Penance duties every 15 seconds:

One priest channels Penance on the tank and hits him with a Power Word: Shield. Then 15 seconds later the other priest does it. Neither do anything in between these times.

This ensures that Inspiration is always up on the tank, and keeps Renewed Hope up on the raid (note: this does not stack with the paladin Blessing of Sanctuary)

Power Word: Shield should be cast from within a Shadow Crash pool because the healing debuff on it doesn't affect Shields. Penance needs to be cast outside of it however.

Resto druids can melee Vezax to get Omen of Clarity procs that they can use to heal the tanks and ranged. Make sure to use an addon like Power Auras or Tellmewhen to monitor OoC procs, it is especially useful for this encounter. Focus on timing Regrowth so that the upfront portion is effective healing and the long HoT helps on your tank in between procs. If you do spend mana in p1 you can recoup it at the rate of ~300 mana per OoC proc by casting Lifebloom.

Paladins can use FoL but should use it as sparingly as possible since Phase 2 is the big healing push. If you have two paladins they can alternate Aura Mastery with Devotion Aura during Surge of Darkness.

Our shaman simply melee'd and ignored healing for all of Phase 1.

Phase 2: Animus (Hard mode only)

When the 8th Saronite Vapor spawns, the Saronite Animus will spawn and Phase 2 begins. Shortly afterwards Vezax will banish himself and you cannot continue DPS'ing him.

He will, however, cheerily continue casting Surge of Darkness, Searing Flames, Mark of the Faceless, and Shadow Crash, so your raid still needs to handle all of this.

The Saronite Animus adds Profound Darkness which starts out at 500 damage and ticks every 2 seconds, increasing by 10% each time.

On our first kill we killed the Animus at 67 stacks (2 minutes 14 seconds), which meant the ticks were hitting the raid for 3850 every 2 seconds when he died.

The other effect is that Shadow Crash will one-shot anyone within a few ticks, because it is shadow damage, so the raid needs to be extra-careful. Mark of the Faceless is physical damage, however, so is unaffected.

Note that Profound Darkness completely ignores immunities like Iceblock and the Paladin bubble: not only will it continue to stack, but the damage will go right through the immunities.

After he dies it no longer stacks nor does it deal damage on its own, but the effect (670% more shadow damage) still remains: Shadow Crash will continue to one-shot anyone it hits.

Everyone

Use your healthstones in this phase if you're about to die. Note that Shadow Crash does affect heals from Healthstones, so move out before you use it!

Same with Mighty Shadow Protection Potions.

Ranged and Melee

DPS the Animus and don't die.

Interrupts still need to go out.

Tanks

The second tank needs to pick up the Animus when it spawns.

The Vezax tank will be taking the Profound Darkness damage while still being hit by everything from Vezax -- he may need to use an extra cooldown to survive near the end.

Healers

Priests rotate Power Word: Shield on as many people as they can, and use Prayer of Healing and Divine Hymn occasionally.

Our priests sat in the Shadow Crash pool almost the entire time other than when casting Prayer of Healing and even then sometimes they stayed in the pool, since it's 300 mana for 7k healing.

Our shaman spammed Chain Heal.

Our paladins kept the tanks alive. The raid was already buffed with Shadow Protection, but when Aura Mastery came off cooldown, the paladins used it with Shadow Resistance Aura to help keep the raid alive.

Our druid used lots of Rejuvenation and Wild Growth on the raid after about 25 stacks of Profound Darkness. Switched targets to melee the animus for Omen proc's during the first few seconds of p2.

The goal was that every healer had about 10% of their mana left at the end of Phase 2.

"Phase 3"

After the Animus dies, you could consider the end of the fight a phase 3.

This is exactly like Phase 1 with the added bonus of Shadow Crash still one-shotting anyone it hits because the Profound Darkness debuff persists.

He will have healed some from Mark of the Faceless but if your ranged are good he didn't heal too much (on our kill he had regenned about 5% of his health.)

All healers keep the tanks alive.

If mana gets tight you can soulstone healers and have them deliberately die to pop back up with more mana. Same with ankh and battle rezzes.

DPS kill him before healers run OOM and you win.