We recorded our first hardmode General Vezax 10 kill, also getting the Shadowdodger achievement. This kill was with 4 ranged dps and just 2 melee dps (+3 healers, 1 druid tank, no kiting). It's quite an effective video to demonstrate range POV and positioning/movement for a ranged-heavy raid:

YouTube - General Vezax 10 - Hard Mode HD

I realise that 'to kite or not to kite' is a pretty personal choice for each guild, as either can work just fine. However positioning that is range friendly, can be very effective and rewarding.

For range friendly positioning: Don't kite, all ranged dps stand at 35 yards as a group together from the boss. Always moving left/right together to avoid shadow crashes as a group. If you use a resto druid abusing Lifebloom mechanics, the druid stands slightly left/right of the group, but never behind (to ensure Shadow Crash will always be dropped in range of Vezax). I'm a little surprised to read people say melee can dominate, as my experience has been nothing but the complete opposite by a considerable margin.

DBM not announcing Shadow Crash when the Animus is up (unless someone targets Vezax) is very troublesome. We solved this effectively by having a caster use this macro:

/focus Saronite Animus
/cast [target=focus] Frostbolt

During Phase 2, they will target General Vezax and spam the macro. Although they have Vezax targetted, their nuke (a Mages Frostbolt in this case) will actually be hitting the Animus. DBM will thus continue to announce Shadow Crash correctly.

So like on 10-man your ranged should be in 1 "clump", spread out enough so that you don't spread mark for no really good reason. That said, there should be a shadow crash to cast in very nearly 100% of the time, and people should make it a point to stand on the edges of this to give them the shortest "escape route" for mark.

If they are dpsing badly they are either (a) not able to access shadow crashes because your layout is very suboptimal or (b) bad. I'd figure out which it is.

Are you all in sub-optimal Naxx 10 gear? If not, I'd suggest your failure to get a kill after 35 tries is not at all due to extreme lack of luck. You obviously have the skill for Ulduar, having beaten all the keepers. You are flat out doing something wrong on Vezax if you are 0 for 35.

First thing I'd suggest is you watch some of the better videos (in particular Fusion's) and make sure you are doing the fight right. Stop with all the crazy positioning and put your melee and healers in melee range. Make sure you have 3 ranged dps. Have them stand more or less in a lightly-spread group where each has a "mark plan" that is probably "turn and run backwards". When shadow crash comes in, have them strafe sideways, let it hit and then return to it. Over time, they might find that if the crash is targeting the extreme left-most or right-most person, they don't need to move because there are two residues on the ground they are all sharing and the range of safety is large enough to preclude the need to move.

The ranged should obviously not cast outside of crashes unless it's an emergency cast to break a cloud. Ideally, move your healers into the green residue with caution so that all of them aren't moving, get hit by a shadow crash and wipe you.

Otherwise, turn this into a tank-and-spank with interrupts and a strange pause and resume mechanic for ranged. Anyone that has killed Mimiron and Thorim and Hodir and Freya should be able to manage that.

Edited: two posts

Something which made a big difference to our 10 man hard mode kill was to have ranged 'close but not too close', so that all shadow crashes are accessible without moving too much. Originally ranged were on opposite sides of the boss which meant that half the shadow crashes were useless. In our case we all stayed on the entrance side of the room, and the tank kited left to right.

This was most important for getting the first shadow crash on the animus.

For the targetting issue we tried to get a paladin to focus heal the MT while targetting vezax. Although a frostbolt spamming mage would probably be a better option.

The corresponding achievement text clearly states that you have to kill the Animus. If it is not bugged, you can very probably not circumvent the Animus spawn + kill for the achievement and the hard mode loot.

Saronite Vapor clouds despawn when Vezax dies. The Animus cannot spawn after Vezax dies.

If all you're interested in is a quick Vezax normal-mode kill, I suppose this could be done.

My 10 man learned a similar lesson. Our first kill was with ranged DPS spread out to avoid marks, healers and melee under the boss. Only 2 people in a crash, and no ranged near healers when the healers were in a vapor (to help avoid healers worrying about crashes while people learned the fight). Healers would only run out when a vapor was needed, and we coordinated this. We barely beat the enrage timer at about 9' 50", even though the healing on the boss was very low (couple hundred thousand maybe). I learned as a Mage I could DPS a ton as FrostFire Bolt spec in the crashes (I was hitting 8K+ DPS in 10 man while in a crash without a lot of caster buffs). As an aside, we use a stantionary druid tank who cycles trinket cooldowns each surge in combination with barkskin, he does it in 25 man too. Not moving makes the fight much easier to coordinate.

The following week in 10 man on our next kill I wanted to see if the trade off for taking more marks--healing the boss more--was worth any increased damage ranged could do with more crashes. We had 4 ranged group up near each other, giving us most of the crashes to share. The only ones we didn't get were a couple launched at the healers when they ran out from under the boss to get a vapor. The boss took almost 2 million in healing more than the previous week because of how we grouped up, and our poor movement running out of the group with Mark. My Mage damage output more than doubled the previous weeks effort up to 2.25 million. I didn't run out of Mana with Frost-Fire Bolt spec either. All the ranged total damage went up so much with the same group, we shaved 2 full minutes off our first kill.

In 25 man we set up withe the same trade off in mind. We use two groups of 4 or 5 ranged in each, spread out to avoid marks until a crash is near us. Healers under the boss. Ranged casters get no mana. Again, we eat some marks this way, but we push our DPS much, much higher and the trade off is worth it. With practice at moving with marks we hopefully can bring both groups even closer together, to ensure even more crashes.

AFAIK, all passive mana regen buffs and trinkets don't work for mana return, only active mana returns for physical DPS classes that use mana and Rapture/Lifebloom mana returns.

From what I've read, the JC trinket doesn't work for Vezax so it should apply to Soul of the Dead.

I kept getting Immune on Soul of the Dead, so unless it was some recent fix - no. Or, parses don't recognize immunity properly.

[Soul Preserver], however, is a good choice.

Just thought I'd post as a follow-up to my previous questions and the helpful responses: We had another try on Saturday with a completely melee stacked raid, and 1-shotted the achievement with no issues whatsoever.

We used:
Protection Paladin (MT)
Restoration Shaman *
Discipline Priest *
Restoration Druid *
Combat Rogue
Combat Rogue
Death Knight (Not sure what spec)
Retribution Paladin
Feral Druid
Enhancement Shaman

* Standing at range to bait Shadow Crashes and Faceless.

We used the same positioning and method (kiting across the room during surges) as I posted last week - the only difference was I swapped out our Mage and Moonkin for two more melee.

I can't see this working on 25's however, and who has 20 melee DPS lying around anyway?

The Disc Priest pretty much solo healed me throughout P1 with ~45% mana remaining in P2, and the Resto Druid would throw out some Shadow Crash'ed Lifeblooms each time the boss surged, just as an unnecessary precaution.

I'd wager that this method was much, much easier than a "normal mode" kill.