I think perhaps our group doesn't have a good raid makeup either. Anyone have any tips? This is what we ran with:
DK blood tank
Feral druid [had him dpsing some attempts, and tanking animus some attempts]
Resto druid [meleeing for clearcasting procs]
Disc priest [shielded in shadow crashes / penaced out of them]
Boomkin [swapped to resto some attempts]
Rogue
Hunter
Warlock
Mage
Enhancement Shaman
We also had a paladin buddy kings us outside.
We're all full 25 Uld geared, most of us with 4set 8.5, yet we wiped on him for two nights, for a total of 6 hours. We tried three healing 1 tanking, three healing two tanking, two healing one tanking, two healing two tanking. Our main problem seemed to be our disc priest going oom by the time the animus came out [our druids were usually at about 60-70% mana, while the priest was at about 20-40%], and consequently lack of heals.
We usually had vezax at about 30% with three heals, or 10-15% with two heals by the time the animus came out.
We also had a few issues with the aggro table of the animus. Our hunter was mding to the tank, and our rogue threw up tricks, but it seemed several attempts the animus just went straight for a ranged as soon as he was attackable.
Any tips/advice? Would bringing in a holy paladin to heal p1 be better than the resto druid/disc priest setup we have?
Can someone please explain to me the intricacies and the how-to of a disc priest seemingly solo healing all of P1. We are still on normal mode, so, in essence, normal mode is just all P1. There has to be more to it then stand in shadow crash zones and spam shield with penance thrown in. We've had more wipes then I care to admit.
We handle the surges just fine, it's just the normal damage where a tank will spike, and go from 100% to 0% in 2 consecutive hits. We as healers are at our wits end on how to deal with this.
As a resto druid, I've done both: Melee for cc procs and also cast lifeblooms from shadow crash. I am positive I can last the entire fight with zero saronite clouds, even though we are only attempting normal mode. But our disc priest seems to always be calling for saronite clouds, and I feel we are missing something that would make this fight trivial.
If this has been asked to death, I apologize, and if a PM answer is more appropriate, I do welcome them.
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.
It is basically impossible to kite in hard mode. We got our hard mode kill last night finally. The fight is tuned very well. One ranged camp. Ranged camp moves all at once for crashes. It's a very simple fight which requires some real mana management skills for P2.
If it helps you healers, our healing comp/strategy was:
DK MT
Warrior OT for the Animus
Priests (x2, one holy one disc): All they do during P1 is put shields on people and the holy Priest throws out the occasional POH for random downs damage from crash. They are both at ~ 70-80% mana going into P2. During P2, both of them are responsible for healing ranged. The disc Priest switches his attention to helping MT/OT heal.
Druids (x2): We stand behind Vezax and melee. Clearcasting procs and during P1 our order is basically: Rejuv, Regrowth, Lifebloom on the MT. During P2, both of us move in front of Vezax so we can reach ranged. We melee the animus and Wild Growth help heal the ranged with our holy Priest. Toward the end, melee need a little bit of help too, as JOL won't cover everything. I toss a Rejuv on each melee and go back to healing ranged. We make sure a Rejuv is up on both tanks as well, so we can Swiftmend if needed.
Paladins (x2): Their job as always is just to MT/OT heal, and that's it.
This fight is IMO a good chunk of RNG. We had several great attempts last night only to be beaten by no shadow crashes for 40 seconds when Animus is up.
Also our WWS and WMO is showing that Mark of the Faceless continues to heal Vesex after the debuff wears off the person who had it last. Is anyone else finding this? It is a pretty substantial bug.
This fight is IMO a good chunk of RNG. We had several great attempts last night only to be beaten by no shadow crashes for 40 seconds when Animus is up.
Also our WWS and WMO is showing that Mark of the Faceless continues to heal Vesex after the debuff wears off the person who had it last. Is anyone else finding this? It is a pretty substantial bug.
We've observed the same thing regarding shadow crash timing during critical points like the Animus burn, though we haven't been able to determine if it's just extremely poor luck or if there's something we're not doing right. We typically have 10 people in a ranged camp about 30 yards away or so, and wowhead claims that shadow crash has infinite range, so we don't think it has anything to do with positioning. One of our raiders suggested that it has to do with Vezax randomly selecting a target for shadow crash, checking to see if the target is in melee range (after the minimum ranged requirement is satisfied), and then canceling the cast if the target is in melee range, sort of like how Kalecgos portals would fail to spawn if a player stood too close to a hedge.
Has anyone else experienced this, or come up with a workaround?
Can someone please explain to me the intricacies and the how-to of a disc priest seemingly solo healing all of P1. We are still on normal mode, so, in essence, normal mode is just all P1. There has to be more to it then stand in shadow crash zones and spam shield with penance thrown in. We've had more wipes then I care to admit.
We handle the surges just fine, it's just the normal damage where a tank will spike, and go from 100% to 0% in 2 consecutive hits. We as healers are at our wits end on how to deal with this.
Regarding tank healing needed, Vezax is pretty much a question of tank gearing and fight length. Vezax hits hard and fast as you noticed. For 10 man, let your tank maximize his gear for mitigation instead of HP for this fight. A few percent additional avoidance is very noticeable. We run Vezax with a Warrior wearing 10 man gear exclusively and no regular tank deaths whatsoever, so going away from HP towards mitigation should work for you, too.
Also note that Vezax seems to have parry haste. I'm not sure this has been verified to be true, but have a look your tank gibs for hits. Have a look at your melee positioning and expertise rating on the part of your tank.
Armor potions (one immediately before pull, second within the fight) also help.
Originally Posted by Pewsey
Many of our snakes are 3m+ in size. They'll just take the lawnmower off you and beat the shit out of you with it to make you tender, then bite you and eat you.
We've observed the same thing regarding shadow crash timing during critical points like the Animus burn, though we haven't been able to determine if it's just extremely poor luck or if there's something we're not doing right. We typically have 10 people in a ranged camp about 30 yards away or so, and wowhead claims that shadow crash has infinite range, so we don't think it has anything to do with positioning. One of our raiders suggested that it has to do with Vezax randomly selecting a target for shadow crash, checking to see if the target is in melee range (after the minimum ranged requirement is satisfied), and then canceling the cast if the target is in melee range, sort of like how Kalecgos portals would fail to spawn if a player stood too close to a hedge.
Has anyone else experienced this, or come up with a workaround?
We've had the exact same situation arise a couple times. There are times where there is a steady stream of shadow crashes on ranged and then there you have a dryspell for 30+ seconds. It can really fuck you if you're doing hard mode and it happens during Shadow Animus because I'd imagine for most guilds you can't really beat that part of the fight without near 100% crash uptime. I remember our first really close kill pass on hard mode we had great dps everyone alive and mana was good going into phase 2 and then we just randomly had no crashes for about a minute. From what we've seen there really isn't any way around it except to have enough dps to overcome not having shadow crash the whole time or just wipe it and go again.
"Oh he's a sad little man? He's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?"
Is this first enrage on a strict one minute timer? I usually save a bit of runic power the first minute or so because I'm not sure when the first enrage will come. But if I pop IBF on the way in will it be up by the time the first enrage comes around? I tend to take a lot of damage the first few seconds before debuffs get up and this would be a good way of mitigating some of it if I know my IBF will be back up by the first enrage.
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
A bit late reply, but this is where your problem lies.
Make your disc priest do nearly nothing in p1 but throw shields on the Mt (from shadow crash) and the occasional penance when a ranged dps messes up alot and is at -15k hp.
Make sure your pala keeps SS up on the tank and just heals with flash (the holy/deep prot build with SA and the spellpower and crit talents is sick on vezax) once your tank drops under 75% or so.
The pala I did it with yesterday had ~32k mana buffed (double int trinkets, no plea) and 7% overheal in the end. All he casted was sacred shield (from shadow crash) and flash of light. No way a disc priest can come close to that mana efficiency.
When p2 is about to start (priest should be on 90% mana here, if done correctly noone takes dmg in p2 that JoL can't heal), make sure the entire raid is shielded, and the priest keeps doing this. In between, inner focus divine hymn and some group healing. Pop Disac at 40% or so.
I must say that with your setup, adding a ret pala will help alot. Strong jol = no healing needed on dps when they do mess up once on shadow crash/mark, extra SS and best of all, extra DiSac.
Is this first enrage on a strict one minute timer? I usually save a bit of runic power the first minute or so because I'm not sure when the first enrage will come. But if I pop IBF on the way in will it be up by the time the first enrage comes around? I tend to take a lot of damage the first few seconds before debuffs get up and this would be a good way of mitigating some of it if I know my IBF will be back up by the first enrage.
If you pop IBF the first 3-5 seconds into the fight, you will have it back up in time for the first surge. Any later than that and you risk not having it up.
Has anyone explored the interaction between Dampen Magic and the animus' Profound Darkness ability? It has low base damage but a stacking shadow damage multiplier, so if Dampen is applied on the base damage but before the multiplier it could drastically reduce raid damage during the animus phase. Even if not, the small healing throughput hit might be worth it to reduce the fast ticking incremental aura damage.
As a resto druid, I've done both: Melee for cc procs and also cast lifeblooms from shadow crash. I am positive I can last the entire fight with zero saronite clouds, even though we are only attempting normal mode. But our disc priest seems to always be calling for saronite clouds, and I feel we are missing something that would make this fight trivial.
Runing in and out the crashes and back to melee range doesnt seem worth the hassle to me.
With meleeing all the time there will be lots of procs and casting lifebloom of a proc will result in a mana gain.
We had a healersetup with 2 Resto druids and a disc Priest and it seemed like we could hold up the tank for most of Phase 1 with cc procs and occasional disc shielding/penance. We healers did not bother with going into the saronite clouds. The risk of spreading marks , having to run and having bad crashes seemed just not worth it.
What did help our Priest a lot was calling out when we were going to Regrowth so he could save Mana instead of worrying of the Tank being at 50%.
Overall the fight seems to be very well tuned fight at least in 10 man.
What I am interessted in is how big the difference in the 25 man version of a Blood DK compared to other Tank classes like for example a feral Druid is?
Invastigating combat logs for incoming damage on different Tanks should be quite significant?
No idea about a DK but I can safely state that a warrior tank is much more fragile than a druid. And yes, the difference is significant; one tank lives through surge+animus, other tank dies randomly in the fight; with the same 3 healers.
Another point is, the fight becomes much, much harder if you try to get the mana buff. I'd go as much to say that hard mode Vezax is in fact easier than the normal mode. Just pop a random cloud if you don't want the hard mode, or well, kill him before Animus or something, but running across the map in order to fill mana is actually more costly than simply sitting at the same concentrated ranged spot, unless your entire dps is in melee.
About 10man hard mode, we tried both 2 and 3 healers and 3 healers felt way more stable while damage was still sufficient (25man gear). Our setup:
Feral druid (MT, not kiting)
Prot warrior (Animus, debuffs on boss, interrupting)
Disc priest (shielding from shadow crash)
Resto shaman (saving mana for p2)
Holy paladin (healing in p1)
Rogue
Warrior
Hunter
Mage
Ele shaman
We had Vezax at 30% when p2 came, our hunter died when animus was at 10%, but we still managed to finish Vezax (but it was very very close). In my opinion optimal setup for non-kiting tactics is 3 healers, 1 tank, however it may be gear dependent.
Another point is, the fight becomes much, much harder if you try to get the mana buff. I'd go as much to say that hard mode Vezax is in fact easier than the normal mode. Just pop a random cloud if you don't want the hard mode, or well, kill him before Animus or something, but running across the map in order to fill mana is actually more costly than simply sitting at the same concentrated ranged spot, unless your entire dps is in melee.
Huh? Even discounting the Animus, having the regen available is a tremendous boon for healers, and ranged DPS almost never need to use it because of the mechanics of shadow crash. For healers, two can easily keep the tank alive, leaving the third time to regen (meaning that healers can use their ordinary healing style instead of cancel casting and so on). Certainly there are advantages to not having to regen, but it seems absurd to me to suggest that the fight is easier if you don't.
Why is it a tremendous boon? They don't need the mana. Animus is what makes hard mode hard, not mana pools themselves.
Running after clouds causes a chaos. You might say that this experience is merely a result of bad players/strat and I have nothing to say against that. All I know is a hard mode try is a very stable one; and clouds add one more thing to worry about into the fight, totally screw up positioning, reduce dps by scattering shadow crushes, intentionally damage people only to get oneshotted by a shadow crush, etc.
Now, hard mode maybe isn't easier, but managing those clouds is one hell of a burden that it makes hard mode look not so hard.
I have no clue what you are doing to kill clouds. We have someone dps one dead near the melee -- where the healers are normally. Healers step a few steps out and get mana. Done. Not hard, not a lot of management.
Having a deathgrip for clouds removes even the random factor of there being none near melee when the healers want it.
In other news, I'm curious as to whether anyone has solo-healed hard Vezax (until Animus), in 25 or 10, with anything other than a disc priest. (I don't even see how 25-Vezax is solo healable without a lot of luck, no matter the spec.) I can certainly do a bit with clearcasted HoTs as a druid, but that's not always going to keep him up all by itself, and if I get really bad luck with CC procs, I won't last with my current tactic (at least one HoT up at all times; ready to swiftmend/nourish any spikes; autoattack otherwise).
(I neglected to add: we have a paladin solo 10, with me supplementing with CCed HoTs only, so I know that's doable.)
Plea what you're seeing with not killing any clouds making it "more stable" maybe has more to do with not kiting him anymore while trying hardmode?
You gain alot of dps from it and healers will never have to move very far.
A healer or two running 15-30 yards from the tank to a cloud can still reach but then if you start kiting in the opposite direction.. things will obviously go bad, though i would think healers would say when they want a cloud and you sort of plan for it anyway.
Honestly, I think I agree with Plea up until the point the Animus spawns. Ignoring clouds makes for a much, much more stable fight, at least in 10 mans (havn't gotten to Vezax in 25's yet). 100% of our wipes learning Vezax came from one of two things: Searing Flames not getting interrupted, or healers not healing. The healers weren't healing either because they were out of range because the clouds got killed in bad spots, or because they were running to a cloud. I'm generally our only DK in 10's, so there's no death grip for the clouds, which means healers have to move for the clouds.
We don't wipe on his normal mode any more, but ignoring the clouds is MUCH more controlled. I think if I were recommending how to learn Vezax, I'd recommend killing one cloud to start the fight (to prevent the Animus from spawning), then just ignoring them for the rest of the fight. Not only does that start training everyone for Hard Mode, it removes several points of failure.
Not sure if anyone previously mentioned this, but using Aspect of the Pack is extremely beneficial for any Vezax kill (particular for our hard-mode 25-man attempts). The Profound Darkness and Mark of the Faceless will not trigger the daze, and it makes moving in and out of crashes and moving out for Mark of the Faceless much easier, resulting in higher shadow crash percentage uptime for your ranged camp.
The only drawbacks of it are that you will get dazed if you get hit by a shadow crash (in hard-mode it's a one-shot after Animus anyways, but it does make getting hit even more punshing), you get dazed if your interrupts screw up (also shouldn't be happening), and your tanks are permanently dazed (moot since they stand in one place the entire time).
As I'm starting to work through this on hard mode, thought I'd share a nice WWS filter with folks:
(unit.flag=player and spell="mark of the faceless") or (unit.flag=player and event=spell_damage and target.flag=player and (spell="mark of the faceless" or spell="shadow crash"))
Now you can easily see:
Who got marked?
Who didn't move?
Who stood in crash?
I have a simple question.Our 1st kill in 10man was 1.5month ago (20 may something like that).
The problem is that even after 1.5 month we spend about 2 hours every week till we kill him.Our main problem is that we lose the tank.Our setup is usually the same and it is:
DK tank
Holy paladin
Disci Priest
Enha shaman
Rogue
Retri paladin
Mage
Hunter
Lock
XXX range dps (Boomking/another hunter etc it change most of the times).
The reason we lose the tank is that some times it take a lot of damage some others not.Random fight ftl .My question is how can we fix this.We haven't thought about paladin going protection with healing gear.Will this be so much better?
Another solution would be to go with 3 healers (either shaman/retri/boomkin respec).Will this be better or it will cause us more problems when Animus is out because of the one less dps?To have a picture about our dps general is about 1-1.5M HP when Animus spawns (some times less than 1M some times near 2M depends on luck ofcourse).So what do you think?Will 1 more healer be better?
I really don't want to spend so much time every week to kill a boss we have killed 40 days ago .We are doing something wrong and because we have killed the boss already this mistake 90% is on our raid setup i think.
Have the enhance shammy dualspec to healing. He can do the same kind of "wait for shadow crash, step in, cast Earth Shield, step out" type of thing the disc priest does in P1, to conserve his mana, and chain heal spam is great for P2.
We 2-heal (pally + druid) almost all of 10 man Ulduar, but Vezax hardmode we have our enhance shammy respec. Your DPS is actually a little better than ours if you're getting him down to 1-1.5M before the Animus, so you should still be perfectly fine with the 3rd healer. Honestly, the "hard mode" seemed easier than the normal mode to us. Took us all of 3 tries, and I fully expect we'll one-shot him next time.
Are you kiting him? We don't, at all. Kiting him before the Animus introduces all kinds of points-of-failure, and after the spawn it's even worse.
The problem is that even after 1.5 month we spend about 2 hours every week till we kill him.
Try doing it with 3 healers next time, we had the same problem last reset because we went with an alt DK tank which was pretty undergeared.
In 10 man I hardly noticed the difference of losing 1 DPS in the Animus phase, it still went down lightning fast. Mana with 3 healers shouldn't really be a problem, neither will the damage done to your raid.
06/16/09, 11:38 AM
.My question is how can we fix this.We haven't thought about paladin going protection with healing gear.Will this be so much better?
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