chain shielding the range while standing in the shadow crash is also a powerful tool to prevent life gain on Vezax.
Absorbed damaged don't heal the Boss, our first down in 10-men HM, Vezzax was healed for something like 300k.
In 25 players, 2 disc priest keeping almost 100% uptime of shield on the ranged can avoid the situation I saw on some WWS or Worldoflogs, Vezzax being healed for something like 5 to 6 millions. Not preventing the heal on the boss is less than efficient to my oppinion.
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.
We have tried both without and with kiting depends on the tank we have each week (usually is a DK for this boss but some times its a warrior).We didn't have any problem with that.We wiped cause of some unlucky spike damage while our 2 healers were trying to keep mana for Animus.
We will go with 3 healers this week.I hope it will save us some time and go to sleep earlier .
Something interesting that we discovered during our hard mode attempts last night: DI'ing a healer allows them to regenerate mana as long as they leave the bubble up. I realize that healer mana is generally not the limiting factor on this fight, but this struck me as information worth sharing.
Something interesting that we discovered during our hard mode attempts last night: DI'ing a healer allows them to regenerate mana as long as they leave the bubble up. I realize that healer mana is generally not the limiting factor on this fight, but this struck me as information worth sharing.
Certainly seems a workable tactic after the Animus is dead, and it raises an even bigger possibility: what about [Item not found!]?
Something interesting that we discovered during our hard mode attempts last night: DI'ing a healer allows them to regenerate mana as long as they leave the bubble up. I realize that healer mana is generally not the limiting factor on this fight, but this struck me as information worth sharing.
I'm not 100% sure on exactly how DI works, but would it maybe be possible to innervate the target right before they got the DI to get the full effect of it? That seems like it would be pretty useful.
I'm not 100% sure on exactly how DI works, but would it maybe be possible to innervate the target right before they got the DI to get the full effect of it? That seems like it would be pretty useful.
I assume that would work. You don't lose buffs when DI'd.
Are you immune to the innervate effects or can you outright not cast Innervate?
Originally Posted by arison
Everyone should start from the same place and rise based on their abilities, desires, and schedule. No one plays MMOs to *be* powerful, they play MMOs to *become* powerful. It's the journey, stupid. The rarer loot is, the more cherished it is when you get it, but only so long as there is a reasonable expectation to get it. The rarer loot is, the better it feels when you kill a boss or when $AWESOME_TRINKET drops.
You are immune to the Innervate buff in the General Vezax fight, meaning it can not even be applied to you.
It's the Aura of Despair that makes you immune to mana regen buffs. I think Divine Plea still works though, you could cast it and then get DIed right after to strip the Aura and start getting mana from it.
If DI removes the aura, it might also be possible to DI a healer, then cast innervate on them once DI was applied (or does DI make you immune to further buffs?).
I was able to cast Innervate, meaning the cooldown started, but I was immune to the buff and it was never applied.
Was this the new innervate? I'm fairly sure I was getting immune messages from each innervate tick now that its restoring a set amount of mana each tick instead of just increasing your base mana regen rate.
For 10 man, your tank should be able to eat 3 attacks. The third will kill him.
This means that you only want to land heals if your tank gets hit twice. Once the first hit lands, make sure you're precasting to land a heal if that second attack hits. We've 2 healed it (Pal+Druid) for a while now and it's not too bad.
I assign our retadin to cast sacred shield (though I just got 4 pc, so I may end up doing it now). I only land my heals (I use HL) if the tank is hit twice. Our Druid pops heals as he gets procs, or he can drop some Rejuvs if I am healing too much.
We might be cheating in using a DK who can IBF every surge and help heal himself with his strike, but my tips are in the first paragraph. People might be healing too often, when they can wait till the tank has been hit twice to land a heal.
I am a druid tank and for our raid I tanked General Vezax for the first time this past Saturday. While we gave him 10 solid shots, we did not beat him unfortunately. So I am coming here to find any tanking tips as a druid for this guy which could help out my healers.
In my tank rotation, I am using the following for each Surge of Darkness buff that boss gets:
(and yes we decided to tank him during the surges in preparation for hard mode)
Darkness #1 - Pop Barkskin + Frenzied Regeneration
Darkness #2 - Pop Barkskin + Survival Instinct
Darkness #3 - Pop Barkskin + Hand of Sacrifice / Potion / Healthstone
That rotation allows me to rinse and repeat that rotation in sequence. Only the 3rd/6th/9th darkness proc are the biggest areas of concern as most of my tricks are on cooldown. I'm not sure if there are any trinkets or choices of gear or enchants that would help over what I may be using today.
My armory profile currently has my cat gear equiped with cat spec but I will change that this evening when I am home from work. But I'd love to hear any input from other druids that can offer some suggestions. Unfortunately, my raid focuses primarily on 10-man content, so the 25-man gear items are really not much of an option for me. But if there are suggestions I'm open to hearing them.
Which part of the fight were you dying on? For our first kill, my biggest problem was getting gibbed by the normal melee when healers moved into puddles etc. The surges went fine as I assume the healers went onto high alert. Sometimes the "hard part" of the fight can be a red herring hiding other things going wrong.
Since you are on 10 man your options for external CDs will be limited, but there is some things you can do to help out:
1) Armor potion before the pull.
2) If you have the luxury, try and arrange a shammy or priest to be watching their armor buff uptime on you, it makes a massive difference.
3) Reroll JC (sorry:/) for the stam / 1 min dodge CD trinket.
4) Take your points our Shredding Attacks and 2 out of Furore (yes, it can me a pain) and put them into Feral Agression. Make sure you keep your roar up at all times.
5) If possible, augment the Frenzied regen surge with another external CD or one of your own trinkets. 20% healing is great, but prevention is better than cure.
Hey, quick question. Anyone else notice that as soon as anyone leaves melee range, they get targeted for shadowcrash?
A little history:
I'm the cloud go-getter. Before this week, I could run out, death grip, and get back into melee usually without a problem. This week, as soon as I leave melee range, i get crashed. And, because I'm not at the ranged DPS, I can't juke it. I just have to eat it and hope i'm still close enough to the could to be able to grip it. I would have called it a fluke except that it happened every attempt. We tried it on Friday night and Sunday night. And both nights, I couldn't actually grip the cloud before i got the warning, ran my but off, and STILL got hit. That's every time I left melee range. Every attempt. Across two different nights. Was it just a bad weekend or did they decide to quietly make the cloud dragging strat non-viable?
Last edited by rooklv : 07/13/09 at 8:22 PM.
Reason: Reforma Gramatica
I am a druid tank and for our raid I tanked General Vezax for the first time this past Saturday. While we gave him 10 solid shots, we did not beat him unfortunately. So I am coming here to find any tanking tips as a druid for this guy which could help out my healers.
In my tank rotation, I am using the following for each Surge of Darkness buff that boss gets:
(and yes we decided to tank him during the surges in preparation for hard mode)
Darkness #1 - Pop Barkskin + Frenzied Regeneration
Darkness #2 - Pop Barkskin + Survival Instinct
Darkness #3 - Pop Barkskin + Hand of Sacrifice / Potion / Healthstone
That rotation allows me to rinse and repeat that rotation in sequence. Only the 3rd/6th/9th darkness proc are the biggest areas of concern as most of my tricks are on cooldown. I'm not sure if there are any trinkets or choices of gear or enchants that would help over what I may be using today.
My armory profile currently has my cat gear equiped with cat spec but I will change that this evening when I am home from work. But I'd love to hear any input from other druids that can offer some suggestions. Unfortunately, my raid focuses primarily on 10-man content, so the 25-man gear items are really not much of an option for me. But if there are suggestions I'm open to hearing them.
I successfully tanked Vezax last night using pretty much just Naxx25 gear. He does hit pretty hard but there are things you can do to definitely minimize damage.
Dibsclaw made some very good points but there are a few I'd like to add to his:
I'd drop points in King of the Jungle and Shredding Attacks to make way for Feral Aggression. Every little bit helps for this fight. And as Dibsclaw said, 2 points out of Furor into Imp. MotW for 2% extra stats.
I can't see your gear, but you should be aiming for mitigation and avoidance rather than stam stacking. Having high stam is pretty useless outside of a surge and you will become a mana sponge which is the exact thing you want to avoid. In other words, gem for agi and use dodge/armor trinkets instead of stam. Similarly, [Elixir of Mighty Agility] + [Elixir of Protection] will prove more useful than a flask.
If you don't have the luxury of being a JC. You can easily use 2 clicky trinkets with 2min CDs and alternate them along with a Barkskin on every surge. [Valor Medal of the First War] + [Defender's Code] are a good combination for example. [Furnace Stone] is another alternative but perhaps not quite as good (would need to do the math on that).
Hey, quick question. Anyone else notice that as soon as anyone leaves melee range, they get targeted for shadowcrash?
A little history:
I'm the cloud go-getter. Before this week, I could run out, death grip, and get back into melee usually without a problem. This week, as soon as I leave melee range, i get crashed. And, because I'm not at the ranged DPS, I can't juke it. I just have to eat it and hope i'm still close enough to the could to be able to grip it. I would have called it a fluke except that it happened every attempt. We tried it on Friday night and Sunday night. And both nights, I couldn't actually grip the cloud before i got the warning, ran my but off, and STILL got hit. That's every time I left melee range. Every attempt. Across two different nights. Was it just a bad weekend or did they decide to quietly make the cloud dragging strat non-viable?
We saw absolutely no change in the fight to make death knights gripping clouds any more challenging. So I don't know what to tell you.
I'd drop points in King of the Jungle and Shredding Attacks to make way for Feral Aggression. Every little bit helps for this fight. And as Dibsclaw said, 2 points out of Furor into Imp. MotW for 2% extra stats.
I can't see your gear, but you should be aiming for mitigation and avoidance rather than stam stacking. Having high stam is pretty useless outside of a surge and you will become a mana sponge which is the exact thing you want to avoid. In other words, gem for agi and use dodge/armor trinkets instead of stam. Similarly, [Elixir of Mighty Agility] + [Elixir of Protection] will prove more useful than a flask.
If you don't have the luxury of being a JC. You can easily use 2 clicky trinkets with 2min CDs and alternate them along with a Barkskin on every surge. [Valor Medal of the First War] + [Defender's Code] are a good combination for example. [Furnace Stone] is another alternative but perhaps not quite as good (would need to do the math on that).
I did take both of your advice and adjusted my bear spec accordingly. I dropped KotJ and Shredding Attacks in favor of Feral Aggression. Both of those talents were mostly for when I swapped to cat during my raid but now that I am MT, there is rarely no time I ever go cat with the exception of on the heart on XT-002. So as pointed out, they're worthless talents for a bear main tank spec. I also dropped 2 points from Furor in the Resto tree in favor for the additional 2% attribute bonus. I rarely shapeshift except on XT and the downtime I have on Mimiron for phase 2 is sufficient that the talent doesn't benefit me much for Ulduar content.
For gem choices, I have always gemed specifically for agility unless I thought a socket bonus was a nice to maintain or for meta gem requirements. Aside from my belt which has 2 +24 stamina gems, all my gear is gemed for +16 agility except one socket on my chest and legs which holds a +8 agi / +8 hit gem. With the Improved MotW buff only, I have 1098 agility and 1718 stamina. Standing in elf form that puts me at 25k HP with no raid buffs.
As for buff foods and elixir/potions, I typically do run with Flask of Stoneblood on new content, mostly because its less expensive when you're learning a new fight, but I don't doubt that using an agility elixir and armor potion would probably out-weigh the extra 1200 health gained from the flask. I will be sure to farm up those for the weekend so I have ample supply on the wipes as I do not normally carry that many of those around.
As for trinkets, that is probably the one area where I have wanted to improve upon since doing Naxx10 content. I use both the [Item not found!] and [Essence of Gossamer]. I do have two of the trinkets you recommended [Valor Medal of the First War] and [Furnace Stone]. I do not disagree that [Defender's Code] would be useful here but sadly I don't do very much 25-man content and when I do, there are so many other tanks who want that drop as well.
But I think with the 2% increase in stats from Imp MotW that I gained, I may be able to easily off-load 1, if not both of my trinkets for most encounters in favor of more raw mitigation based trinkets, idk.
Feel free to review my armory now and make any other comments on changes that you'd see fit. I've done a fair amount of reading over the past several months to make sure I'm as solid as I can be with my gear level. I realize that a lot of the druid 25-man raid gear is really nice, unfortunately not really an option for me these days.
I actually went for heavy survival on the (25 man) fight to survive periods of very low healing as the healers moved. With refinment of our tactics a healing rotation/mitigation set would have been better, but it didn't take too many tries with me as tank to take him down (Kite tries with a warrior went nowhere), and I thought it more important to tailor my gear to my guild specifics rather than then theoretical optimum.
Furnace stone is pretty powerful on an all melee boss. It should be around 8% less physical damage taken on use, as well as the small amount of static dodge. I personally prefer long term mitigation with clickey survival on a trinket in any case.
I was just messaging a raid member of mine when it hit me about the rotation with the Valor and Stone trinkets combined with barkskin. Talk about OP <evil grin>
00:30 Barkskin (20% damage reduction for 12 seconds)
01:00 Furnace Stone (8% reduction due to 5k+ armor for 20 seconds)
01:30 Barkskin (20% damage reduction for 12 seconds)
02:00 Valor Medel (+335 dodge rating for 20 seconds)
02:30 Barkskin (20% damage reduction for 12 seconds)
03:00 Furnace Stone (8% reduction due to 5k+ armor for 20 seconds)
03:30 Barkskin (20% damage reduction for 12 seconds)
04:00 Valor Medal (+335 dodge rating for 20 seconds)
continue to rinse and repeat
For fights where you don't necessarily need to depend on cooldowns for paritcular attacks like Surges and Frozen Blows, trash incoming damage could be mitigated with a good rotation of above right?
Aside from the 17-20 second window depending on gear for barkskin rotations where BS isn't up and the 10 second windows where the trinkets have expired, I wonder if the overall mitigation would be better than using [Item not found!] and [Essence of Gossamer]. I read somewhere that the Essence trinket has a hidden 45 second internal cooldown on the proc.
From other players experiences, which Ulduar encounters would you prefer the HP over the mitigation stats versus having more mitigation over HP.
07/03/09, 12:26 AM
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