Are you kiting the surges?

Regardless, a lot of guilds use Death Knights and have them pop Icebound Fortitude on every surge and Unbreakable Armor on every other surge. Depending on what trinkets the tank has available, the mitigation and avoidance can both be quite excellent in this manner.

Druids have Barkskin on the same cooldown, but not quite the same level of effectiveness -- due to IBF scaling. That said, druids have strong armor and Survival Instincts on every 3rd surge (and possibly Frenzied Regen on every 3rd surge).

Some guiilds use warriors glyphing shield wall and last stand to ensure one is up for every surge and usually couple the last stand with some kind of avoidance trinket (parry or dodge).

All these refer to non-kite strategies. If you are kiting, it should really not make any difference who tanks.

Thanks for the tips Jagiya. Solo healed this on my priest as disc for phase 1, just did shield every cooldown and then penance once the tank dropped below 50% (Death knight). We also had our holy priest using PoM from within shadow crash to help me out a bit since it does not receive the healing penalty.

In addition its also nice to know that if your holy priest casts Guardian Spirit from within Shadow Crash, it also does not receive any healing penalty and costs like 40 mana, which gave me a few seconds of time where I didn't need to worry about healing at all. We intentionally let Guardian Spirit to trigger for a free 22k heal (If there was less than 2 seconds left on the GS and it hadn't triggered I would Penance the tank back up to at least benefit from the healing increase). We didn't kite at all, but I ended up with between 4000 and 6000 mana when the animus spawned by doing this (I have 23,900 mana raid buffed) . At this point our Paladin took over the majority of the healing whilst I kept up Penance when he dropped low and did Power Word Shield on cooldown.

If you're struggling for mana at this point, priests can use Hymn of Hope which will grant you an extra 20% mana for 8 seconds, which is effectively spam time. This is a last resort though, you'll have no mana when it ends. Also Inner Focus and Divine Hymn is godly when the animus has been up for a while. 100k effective healing for free.

Whether you use a DK or not, kiting will significantly reduce the damage taken and the amount of mana your healers need spend on keeping your tank up. Not kiting effectively trades healer mana for less complications from shadow crash positioning and complications from moving him in general (such as lower tank threat due to the tank not being able to build threat for 25% of their time). Whether you want to use it depends on what aspect of the fight you are having more problems with. I calculated the relative amounts of damage taken with IBF during kiting or not kiting below to get an idea of the damage difference.

Assuming a kite phase every 60 seconds
Kiting:
3s Casting - No damage
12s Kiting - No damage
12s Icebound Fortitude - 58% damage
33s Normal damage - 100% damage
(12/60 * 0.56 + 33/60 * 1) = 0.662

66.2% overall damage taken

Not kiting:
3s Casting - No damage
10s Surge with IBF - 116% damage
2s of IBF - 58% damage
45s of normal damage
( 10/60 * 1.16 + 2/60 * 0.58 + 45/60 * 1 ) = 0.963

96.3% overall damage taken.

96.3/66.2 = 1.455

So overall you're looking at a roughly 45% increase in damage taken while kiting compared to not kiting as a Death Knight.

Delete, please, didn't see refresh.

Not kiting is suboptimal from a healing standpoint, but despite the reduction in tank damage, I think the benefits of standing still far outweigh the mana drain on the healers. By keeping him still you are essentially taking one RNG factor of that fight out of the picture by ensuring that the tank can never be marked/crashed and any players who stand in his hitbox cannot be marked/crashed. If the tank gets marked it is almost assuredly a wipe unless you have some people who are very quick on their feet with movement/interrupts.

Sure you can argue that the melee/healers can move with Vezax as he surges towards the tank, but it only takes a minor slip-up to have a mark/crash in the melee pile which is going to take the entire efficiency argument out the window, not to mention its a dps loss for the ranged since there's a good chance that they are missing out on a crash.

I'm not a fan of ignoring certain mechanics of a fight - I'm pretty sure blizzard intended to have the boss kited otherwise they wouldn't have added the 50% snare - but in this case the benefits are pretty clear cut and can be performed with any tank if your healers are smart on cooldown rotations.

Well they did reduce the damage Vezax does during surges, you don't need to feel guilty with the kite. They made asssault bots tankable too and that was possibly the best change in that fight. I can add Razorgore to the list as well, although it was three years ago.

If anything, I'd say Blizz doesn't like forcing players to kite, but provides it as an alternative. Kiting is hard, they should know better.

These are some of my observations from experience and research on vezax hard mode as a disc priest:

Prayer of mending is not triggered by the Profound Darkness aura. Bounces are triggered by the mark of the faceless drain life ability. You're very unlikely to get multiple bounces unless it hops between the main tank and the animus tank.

Spamming shields on the raid from inside a shadow crash to deal with the Profound Darkness aura is very effective and mana efficient. On throughput: glyphed PW:S is ~9-9.5k per cast (absorb+glyph heal). On 25man, assuming you take ~105 seconds to down the animus, the aura deals ~45000 dps to your raid right as the animus dies. Divided by 5 healers, that's a requirement of 9k healing/sec per healer at the peak damage output of the fight, tank and mark damage not included (your avg hp/sec requirement would be lower for the rest of the fight), so PW:S spamming is obviously very competitive throughput with 1 second borrowed time GCDs.

In 10man, beginning at ~60% health left on the animus (30 seconds after it comes out), the darkness aura will be doing enough damage to consume a full PW:S before weakened soul expires, assuming no other mitigation abilities like barkskin. This means once it hits 60%, you can spam PW:S on the whole raid and not worry about wasted or overwriting shields. You should stop shield spamming on non-tanks when the animus is at about 15%, as the aura will stop ticking when the animus dies and not have time to fully consume any non-tank shields cast after that point.

In 25man, based on worldoflogs parses I looked at (we're starting 25man hard for the first time this week, so I don't have my own parses), the aura does more damage and will fully consume PW:S before weakened soul fades as early as 10 seconds after the animus spawns. Additionally, the aura ticks so hard at the end of the phase that you don't have to stop shield spamming until 3 seconds before the animus dies to get fully consumed shields.

For divine hymn, make sure you're sufficiently far from other players that you won't have to cancel it for a mark of the faceless and move, and start it right after a shadow crash hits somewhere else. Make sure you don't get TOO far away though, or you risk creating a shadow crash pool that your dps can't use.

For hymn of hope, make sure you announce to the raid when you're using it, and only use it when several mana users are completely dry. They have to spend the mana before the buff expires or it is lost, and using it earlier is worthless.

This is some good napkin math about the damage taken by the tank. If you are not doing hard mode then this is worth considering. In hard mode, though, I imagine that it is nearly impossible to kite during the animus phase. There is a huge chance of an RNG crash or mark of the faceless. If the animus is moved with general and the DPS all follows, I suspect you are still going to lose a lot of DPS during the movement. And if there's anything I've learned from the past week's attempts--dps on the animus phase is critical and not easy.

Most wipes were was due to lack of DPS on the animus phase letting the DOT stack up too high (60+) with the mob still above 10%. We've identified some areas to improve there, but the answer from the healers was never "I ran out of mana" and always "there's too much damage to heal through". With that in mind, along with the overall intense DPS requirement in the fight, you really shouldn't kite General on hard mode until after the animus is dead (if ever).

Has anyone thought about using Vezax to protect casters from mark of the faceless?

Our strategy (at least in 10man) is to put all healers and hunters at medium range from the boss while everyone else hugs Vezax. If one of the healers/hunters is targeted by shadow crash we move Vezax there. This prevents almost all healing and allows all DPS caster to access the crash. Damage is almost the same as using a caster camp away from the boss because in both scenarios the casters need to run into the crash after it occurs.

The only downside is that some players may become a valid target for shadow crash/mark when the boss is moved which in my opinion is avoidable by paying attention.

I'm sure your strategy works for you. Whether it's necessary or a good idea, however, is another matter.

First of all, casters don't need "protection" from Mark of the Faceless anymore than your healers do. Someone at ranged can be targeted, they have to move. The notion of limiting the people at ranged has been discussed in this thread, but obviously, the more casters you have the less it's done.

Your strategy does change that, but not in a way I'd recommend to my raids. You are moving Vezax frequently; we do it never. This causes a greater chance of a missed interrupt -- especially on 25 mans. It also is movement for movement's sake, which generally buys little good.

If you use the "normal strategy" in your group, your entire ranged dps group is out there, lightly spread, awaiting a shadow crash. Once one comes in, everyone camps the border of it and, well, they need to move less than in your scenario. Yes, once the next one comes, they all have to move, but that's no different than your raid where absolutely everyone has to move. In both cases, all ranged can use the shadow crash. In the "normal strategy", they honestly are likely to be closer to it.

So what of Mark? Well, in both cases people have to make sure they move. Yes, your strategy means it's healers and hunters as opposed to ranged so the dps can continue apace. But then again, the healing rhythm can't.

Since the fight is not really a dps race when performed correctly, I'm not sure what problem you are solving for most groups. Now, hard mode is more of a dps race, but then again, hard mode is a case where moving the boss is even less interesting. By contrast, healing becomes a serious challenge during the Animus phase.

This seems to make sense for 10man depending on the composition of the raid, but if it were 25man, the sheer amount of movement would be much too risky for this to be the best method. If there just so happens to be a moment where one of the range gets too close to the boss or there are not enough people at range, just to name a few things that can go wrong, the tank or people within his hitbox may get crashed and or marked, which would most likely cause a wipe. If anything the most beneficial people to protect from crashes and marks would probably be the tank healers and possibly the range healers if there are sufficient (7 or 8 I believe) people at long range. This way range, who only need to worry about their own hp can concentrate on staying out of damage such as crash and mark, while healers can stay stationary and toss out heals as needed.

This has also been discussed. Yes, you save healer mana. However, it almost certainly takes longer to kill Vezax because the kiting moves him and not everyone who was in range will be in range during or after the kite. Furthermore, threat will -- as you noted -- almost certainly be worse in this method. With ranged dps losing the ability to go to 130% before pulling aggro, this situation gets even worse (because you place them in melee, where they can't get that much above the tank without being 1-shot.)

While it probably works just fine in 10 man, it is almost certainly a bad strategy for 25 man to do what you are proposing. It also feels very unnecessary in 10 man, but again, it works for you so no one is saying stop doing it.

It has been noted that counter to some early intuition, kiting surges in hard mode while the Animus is up is even more treacherous and arguably ill advised.

This is a strategy thread and certainly good ideas should be bandied back and forth. That said, if someone is reading this for continuity I'd hate for them to get the idea that putting the casters in melee range is really a good idea.

Personally I would say that the argument is reversed depending on whether you're doing the hard mode in normal or heroic. In 10-man, I would still recommend kiting every surge including the one that might happen during the Animus. There should be very little DPS loss if the crashes are positioned correctly to handle it; melee in particular have no excuse for falling out of range of Vezax, as he's snared for most of it and you can run in front of him to maintain your range when he does the final sprint to the tank. Shadow crash on the tank is a risk that will cause DPS loss, but Mark on the tank is ideal because the melee can easily outrange it and noone will be hit.

In 25-man, there are a lot more people in each shadow crash which makes it worthwhile to simplify the fight for them. There are more melee to chase, and more interrupts to worry about. Positioning is likely to get off badly enough to cause problems from movement, and your healers are mostly just bored until the Animus comes out. Plus the DPS requirement is much higher, so a possible wasted crash on the tank is a likely wipe.

Not really clear to me why a guild that does 10 and 25 would change tactics depending on raid size. Since not kiting works just fine in both (every argument in favor of for 25s applies to 10s, perhaps to a different degree). Similarly, if you can kite in 25s, I'm sure you can in 10s. To each his / her own.

Sometimes you have to change tactics because going 10 => 25 doesn't simply mean that everything is scaled by a factor of 2.5. We did most fights first in a 10 man first, and hence did most of the tactic tweaking there for 25 man later (we're a 25 man guild.) Pre-nref Mimiron you couldn't tank the assault bots in 25 man, as they one shot everything, you could however tank them in 10 man. As we did Mimiron in 10 man first we were surprised to see the massive damage they did in 25 man later.

Group composition will be quite different in 10 man and 25 man. You might not have the classes needed to kite/note kite. I don't see why you should always do the same tactic in both versions, pick the one most suited for your group instead.

We have been getting some weirdness with Vezax on 25 man recently and would liek to see if it's just us / our rogues failing, or a common problem.

Is anyeon else seeing un-interuptable Searing flames being cast, followed immediately (0-1s) by a second one ? Suprisingly, this usually wipes thrml fustating, especialy as one fo the rotating interupters. It feels as if the Generalgets Desynced from his cast bar, realises, then throws a tantrum.

The other oddity i see soemtimes is his cast bar light up with a "searing flames" cast, but no graphics show, and it aborts itself after 1/2 a second or so.

I'm thinking these two are related, but i've not seen any bug reports or suchlike around them.

We are going to swap from Kiting to Pain Suprssion / Bubble rotation tonight (No DK Tank) to see if that helps solve these issues, but have You seen this happen too?

Not to discourage, but PS isn't that good for Vezax. Surge is 10 seconds, and PS is 8 seconds. Your tank will almost certainly take that one big hit. Guardian Spirit is similar, too. A warrior tank with 45k hp is easily oneshot (literally) during surges, and it might happen more than once during the same surge. You should couple these with something else, maybe each other. They do help and you will get a kill if you try hard enough, but the tactic is not foolproof. I like last stand more than these two, the tank will be taking those 50k hits, but at least it's healable.

As for your interrupt issues, I think the problem lies with your enhancement shaman. If your shaman interrupts a spell as soon as Vezax starts casting it, your next rogue is likely to have 5 seconds remaining in his kick cooldown; and if the boss starts casting again in 1.5-4 seconds he won't be able to kick. Your first rogue probably has used his kick too, and you will have no interrupt for the next 2-3 casts. Tell your shaman not to cast earth shocks.

Apologies if this was obvious, but it fits what you had described.

I have never seen uninterruptable ones, but we did miss a fair few surges while kiting on our early attempts. The melee was reporting his hitbox grows at the start of the surge and shrinks near the end. This caused them to be out of range at the end of the kite phase and miss interrupts.

We fixed it by having a ranged DPS specifically safe counterspell for the end of the surge phase.

Alternatively, you could stop kiting as we found it to be a lot easier. The mana difference is there, but considering it speeds up a regular kill by a large margin the mana issue seems to be non-existant.

Our interrupters just make sure to try and stay inside the center of his hit box during surge. There's really no reason for melee to be at max melee range or the outside edge of his hit box at any point during the fight, anyway.

Requesting advice for General 10 man (Hard Mode)

For three weeks now our 10man group has been wiping on this boss. We are highly geared (full Tier 8.5) and competent (plenty of hard modes down on 10 and 25). For some reason however, we simply suck at General 10 hard mode.

Our set up:
DK tank
Disc Priest
Holy Paladin
Fury warrior
Rogue
Mage
Lock
Shadow priest
Hunter
Hunter

The DK is doing what all DKs do- popping cooldowns on Surges and not kiting.
The Disc priest heals p1 by standing in Shadow Crashes and popping shields. He enters p2 with about 40% mana
The Holy Paladin heals in P1 only during surges or when the tank is below 30% health. He enters p2 at 80% mana
The range DPS run in and out of Shadow Crashes and dps as hard as they can.
We use Shadow pots at 50% of Animus health during p2 to save healer mana.

Main issues we encounter:
Healer oom: We have tried this with three healers but still get the same result- we run out of mana before the animus is dead. WTF are we doing wrong to oom ourselves like this?
Slow DPS: Very often, our dps dont get shadow crashes for long periods and dps is nerfed. As melee, we maintain a consistent 4.4k dps, but caster dps can vary between 4k and 9k. How can we ensure more consistent crashes so as to maintain consistent ranged dps?

A variety of set ups I have seen depend heavily on resto druids- I have seen little mention of holy paladins. Is our group composition incorrect- do we need to change players or perhaps start kiting? Do people have tips they can offer on how to maximise HPM/DPS with this setup?

Healer OOM is pretty simple: either overhealing, or your DPS isn't fast enough. How long is the Animus phase going before the problem comes? How low is Vezax at the transition?

Kiting would help with healer mana if damage taken were the problem, but I don't think it is. It would also cause your casters some havoc with positioning in the crashes, which it sounds like they're not great at if losing crashes happens "very often". The simplest way to be consistent there is to make sure that everyone standing at shadow crash range is clumped together.

I'd seriously consider dropping one or two of your ranged DPS and putting in a couple more melee if that option is available to you. We found it's a lot easier with just 3 ranged, as they can all use every crash, even when one has mark (stand on opposite edges). They can also see when mark is due to reapply, and know that they all have to move for EVERY crash, and that EVERY crash will land in the same spot.

It may take a few goes for them to get the hang of the movement, but it'll make your kill a lot smoother. From the sounds of it, your ranged it the major issue. Ours put out about 6-7k dps each, with the melee all sitting at 4.5-5k. We got our Shadowdodger achievement on our second hardmode kill using this strat, it's really repeatable once your ranged have the mark/crash dodging sorted.

We did our first kill with two tanks, and had Vezax at 35%ish before animus. The second kill we switched to just using a single tank, kiting surges, and shieldwall/last standing the Surge when animus is up. We had to stop DPS on Vezax that go to avoid killing him before Animus. That extra one DPSer makes a hell of a difference (both kills were with 3 healers).

What % are you getting Vezax to pre-animus?