We wipe a lot on things whenever we change the raid around.

If it is the same 25 people typically we will 1 shot everything outside of shahraz.

Vashj is a key mob - so you typically change players around a LOT on her.

Giske,

How do Naga's work in your system. We are just barely killing the Naga's before the next one spawns each time w/ around 4 melee DPS on them. With only 2, do you constantly have 2 up? Don't you get overrun at some point?

We have the MT, OT and 2-3 melee on them (rogues, enh shaman, dps warrior). We let our strider team (8 ranged) fully nuke the nagas, they stop when its 40 seconds left before the next strider spawns they then go full out on the strider and cant pull aggro cause the kiter had 20 seconds to spam it. Usually nagas die with 20 seconds til next spawn, the melee guys just stand in the center and keep an eye out for loose elementals until the next one pops. The strider dies 10-15 seconds before the next one and then the cycle repeats itself. Its NP having 2 naga up, but you really only want one left standing when you transition to phase 3.

If you're melee light, you're likely caster/ranged heavy. This means your Striders should die with time to spare for the next one. Basically, have ranged help the melee if there's no Strider up (which should definitely be the case if your DPS isn't subpar). Notice that the first Naga is before the first Strider, so they can definitely help with the first one to get the ball rolling.

Or just assign one of your ranged to the naga full time. Perferbly a warlock cuase they can dot and forget the strider.

One thing I've noticed about this fight: While you've typically got clearly defined roles, (Melee on naga, ranged on striders, so many on elementals) there's so much crossover that you need to be careful about identifying your problem areas. For instance, if your naga are going down slowly despite having enough melee on it, you have to make sure that elemental DPS is strong enough to not be forcing the melee off the naga to pick up leaked elementals.

Likewise, the faster the strider goes down, the more ranged dps can move to the nagas. You should also ensure that they're moving fast to finish the naga when they're done with striders. So far I've found that the biggest loss in overall raid DPS has come up when our elemental dps has a problem (dies, disconnects, lags) and our melee get pulled off the naga.

Our DPS is good, but not unbelievably so. But we were able to get fairly consistently into p3 with only 1 naga up with 3 rogues and a MS warrior on them.

Ugh we wipe on phase 3 constnatly =[ Any tips? we usually stay alive with 23-25

You want to maybe tell us why you are wiping? Are your bat killers not doing their job? Is your tank dying? Are your melee getting rooted inside bombs? Are your healers not keeping static charge people alive? With that many people alive going into p3 you should have no problem finishing her off.

Are your groups setup with good synergy? When we killed Vashj we had our groups originally organized by quadrants (sort of) so the healers had an idea of who to keep an eye on then once we got into phase 3 we had one of the raid assistants move them around to allow for more DPS (melee with feral druid and enhancement shaman, casters with shadow priests, etc...)

You're going to have to be a little more descriptive in why you're failing at phase 3 if you want any advice.

What's killing you in phase 3? The bats? Vashj? Phase 3 is phase one with one more element added. Cleansers have to get rid of roots, grounding totem has to be placed, people with static charge need to get out of the raid. All the same, except the poison is added. Make sure everyone has spell graphics up so they can see it.

Our guild runs her around a large area and avoids the poison. (We don't kill bats.)

Can you be a bit more specific? How many adds do you have up by the time you make the transition? How are your healers doing on mana?

One thing that we noticed was that success during phase 3 depended heavily on the number of adds that were up following phase 2. If we had 2-3 nagas and 2 striders up, even if we had all 25 people up, we were going to wipe because we will not be able to do enough DPS to Vashj before the enrage timer. Once she hits the enrage, DPS drops precipitously and our healers eventually run out of mana due to the poison and static charges. If only 1 strider is up and 1-2 nagas remain with one of them at 1/2 life, Vashj is basically guaranteed to die.

Wait a sec, what does grounding totem stop? The static charge or the bat spits?

The stun she does on her top-aggro target. It's there in phase one as well.

For phase three, we clean up, then slowly move over the edge while killing bats. This lets us kite if needed for a post-enrage and kill bats at the same time. The main thing in phase three is to have DPS clean up first THEN worry about Vashj. With the elemental DPS coming in shortly, cleanup is usually very quick and easy.

Vashj down! Thanks all for your advice.

WWS of our kill (Try # 13) Wow Web Stats

Once we are more familiar with the fight, I hope the frenzied nature of it dies down and people calm down more. We lost 1-2 people right as Phase 3 started, but we still downed her with most of the raid up.

Took about 2.5 hours today. We've been on her for 2 days now (not consecutively).

Sorry for my short answer, but I was attempting Vashj as I posted it, It's quite terrible =( we got her to 4%, 5% 11% or something and 6%.

Evrey single time we got the 4th core though, a naga just spawned, so that's very bad luck, the strider is usualyl at low health we quickly finish it off, our shaman in the MT group quickly uses grounding totem, our MT picks it up, in the beginning evreything goes alright, but i guess our DPS isnt'good enough, when people get static charge + poison on ground people just panic and die =[, especially when alot of bats are there in enrage phase, our hunters kill the bats btw, but at enrage fase theres way too many =[, we try to constnatly move here, so that we don't stay in the poison, but static charge on mt and things chaos again =[. Our healers don't run outta mana, but eventually our MT dies cause of all the poison =[

You have control of when to start phase 3, your boss mods are providing you with timers when next spawns are going to happen, so time use of last core according to these timers, this will ensure you have no adds or at least adds on low hp when you will enter phase 3.

On our kill we transitioned to P3 with 1.5 Naga up and a strider at 30% hp. We quickly killed the strider, then the Naga, and then about 15 seconds after ANOTHER strider spawned. It weas very annoying, everyone assume we were going to wipe, but some very very impressive DPS later, she was dead and it was onl 20 or so seconds into her "enrage". Very very tense fight.

I would suggest that if you get to P3, its worth trying to down her even with a fair few adds up from P3. On our previous best attempt we lived through over a minute of enrage (it really seems to me that spam jumping helps avoid the poison spit on the ground).

Any class can kite the naga, assuming they can do decent high-threat, and can avoid being stupid (i.e. can actually kite). You could use a hunter, a mage, a warlock, a shadow priest ... whatever you want, just someone with brains and the ability to dps while kiting (not so trivial).

As far as healing goes, we run with either 6 or 7 healers on Vashj, and we assign it something like:

- paladin (healing 2 elemental killers, stunning striders, assisting on heals on the kiter)
- paladin (healing 2 elemental killers, etc)
- priest (healing 2 elemental killers, etc)
- paladin (RF, no salv, cross healing the raid in the middle to ensure that naga get sucked in)
- priest (healing the naga tanks)
- resto shaman (healing the warlock strider kiter, keeping frost shock up)
(optional)
- resto druid (covers tanks, moves the naga priest to cross healing)

So figure 3 healers for the edges, each responsible for 2 people, and for the odd cross heal. These people will be busy enough, despite the "easy" sounding nature of their assignment, merely because there's so much movement and chaos.

1 healer on the naga tanks, 1-2 cross healers in the middle, and one rotating healer who follows the strider kiter around. Asking your healers to all cover the strider kiter is a good way to ensure that he dies every time; we found having a dedicated healer meant he could just kite, and stop worrying about slows and his health bar, which made for much smoother kiting, and easier dps.

do you run with that many healers on all encounters in SSC or is it that vashj requires less healing?

we tend to run with 8healers in SSC so we have a safety net as our dps tends to be very strong.


think ill kyte the striders myself and get a MD rotation on me for when they spawn then i can yell at people on TS to dps the damn things

We run now with 6 healers for vashj. We used to run with 7 healers, but ironically cutting out the last healer to bring 6 was really our guilds turning point which made phase 2 much, much easier for us. In phase 2 it breaks down to:

- 3 healers on elemental dps. This works out to 1 healer for each elemental dps pair. Each pair (one range/melee elemental dps) gets a paladin/druid healer who can cleanse their poison. The healer must always be in LOS of both the generators and players who loot the tainted core, as he is the the middle man where the core gets thrown to.

The 7th elemental dps'er gets healed from a paladin we station at the generator (aka one of the tainted core-generator-shutdowners). This dps'er has to make sure if they get a poison/need a heal they run up to LOS/range of that healer - usually its an affliction lock in our setup, as he can dot everything from the top of the stairs.

- 2 healers stationed in centre responsible for healing the naga tanks+raid in centre. These healers are also the ones who shut-down each genertor and each healer has two generators they alternate between depending on which generator needs to be shut down. One of these healers for us is a paladin, who is responsible for righteous-fury pulling all nagas up to the centre where the tanks and dps zerg is waiting and cleansing all poisons in the central area where ~12+ range/tanks are. These healers listen on vent to whos got the core and automatically move to the appropriate generator which will need to be shut down.

Ultimately the path of the tained core is: elemental dps ---> elemental dps healer at top of stairs -->>> healer stationed at generator awaiting the core --->> shutdown.

- 1 Healer specifically assigned to keeping the strider kiter alive. This healer also does the bulk of raid healing in phase 2, but his primary responsibility is keeping up the strider kiters alive.

BTW our strat calls for 11-12 range classes and we all zerg the naga->strider->naga->strider etc until we start phase 3.

We tried the '5 melee naga, 5 ranged strider, 7 dps elementals' strat a few times but ultimately found that '7 elemental dps and 10 dps alternating naga->strider->naga etc' worked better for us. Of course, either strat can work fine - its just a matter of guild preference depending on what players/classes you are working with.

I would suggest a hunter if you do not have a lock or elemental shaman. Any other hunters can help with MD. The hunter kiting can use distracting shot and most of his shots are instant or will be near instant if he stops moving for a moment.

Are you using paladin stuns, netherweave nets etc on the strider? Also I am usually the tank bringing Naga to our Naga tank in the middle, so after I have done that job I usually feral charge a strider for an extra 5 seconds of no movement allowing our kiter to stand still and spam big nukes for aggro.

Just about anyone can kite the strider if you are sensible with your stuns and roots to allow the kiter to build up solid aggro.

Healers for SSC:
- Hydross: 6, 7 feels "heavy"
- Lurker: 6
- Morogrim: 7 (required)
- FLK: 7 (6 is really nasty)
- Leotheras: 6 (have done it with 5 from 85%->dead)
- Vashj: 6, 7 feels "heavy"

Also, it's not that Vashj requires less healing ... it's actually one of the most healing intensive fights for us, with all the random damage floating around. Tanks getting hit by nagas, strider kiter getting hit by strider, elemental dps getting hit by poison, *everyone* getting poisoned, *everyone* getting hit by chain lightning ...

If you want to run with only 6 healers, you absolutely MUST force your dps to spread out. We were having massive issues with raid healing in the middle until we realized that our ranged dps kept clumping up near the naga tanks, resulting in 6-8 people getting hit by every chain lightning. You can't afford that kind of damage input.

Force your ranged to stand with a buddy somewhere around the circle, keep the naga tanks + melee dps in one clump, and try to stay separated by rotation around Vashj. It'll cut down on chain lightning damage, which makes the entire fight easier to heal, and then you can afford to drop it to 6 healers.

Even if your dps are insane-o, remember that they are having to dps down a strider that is being kited by someone. It's not the same as a boss where you get to stand and build threat on a hard-hitting near-infinite-rage-generating mob. It's a ranged dps whose only real way of keeping it from eating your face is to put out more damage than you ... while running around like a ninny. You need to keep it controlled, which typically means more steady dps, and more people doing that dps, rather than high high dps from a few select people.

But maybe your kiter puts out more threat than ours. /shrug

thanks for the reply's.

i personally do not like the idea of some movement snares as if some muppet decides its a good idea to stand too near the strider when hes frost noved ot netted then hes just going to turn and have a whack at the person. stuns are a nice idea tho i think i will add some of that.

@constantius
yer sounds like you go with less healers than us in general so ill stick with our standard 8.

going to try tonight with a dedicated team on the strider of ranged and another on the nagas with leftovers on 2 zones of stairs each. with MDs i think i can hold agro on the strider to kyte it if i remove boss altho as frost it might be harder. ill aim to kyte it solo for x seconds to build up some before telling the team to take it down which should alow them to assist killing naga and elementals in the mean time.

aim will be to clear enough room on elementals using the elemental people and strider people to be able to pull some off the elementals for a short time to deal with the strider faster.....

hope this works