Following up on my consumables question (great responses, btw!), here follows my next Vael topic. Our tanks are trying to figure out the "secret sauce" that goes into tanking Vael. I'll give you what I think we're doing right, so no one wastes time on this post:

1. Every tank has quality FR - 255+ unbuffed. Mostly Dark Iron pieces.

2. Shield Wall + Last Stand as a way of prolonging life after BA - they know to do this.

3. We'll be using Gurg's suggestion of Greater Stoneshield Potions for tanks.

Now for the issues and some solutions!

1. Where should the #2-#5 tanks stand while they are "waiting in line"? With the rogues?

2. How the heck do you handle the actual transition itself (say from #1 to #2) without #2 getting bombed by tank #1 BA blowup, or cleaved, or some other nastiness?

3. Tanks establishing their order - how do you do it? We have them attacking Vael about 3 seconds apart - this means it takes 15-18 seconds for all tanks to be in on Vael. Is there a better way to do it?

4. How do you decide the order of the tanks?? If you remove skill from the conversation, what attributes most contribute to your decision-making? Aggro generation? High stam?

5. We seem to have aggro issues during the first 10% (from 30-20%) of Vael's life. Priests can even pull with PoH. How do we mitigate this?

The way we used to handle the actual transition itself, IIRC was all the offtanks would do the same thing until the first warrior BA, and whoever was supposed to be the next tank would take over snders, revenges, etc while all warriors (including the BA'd tank, who would be SW+LS during this part) would back off. If the next tank pulled a bit before the previous one died, so be it, our positioning allowed for a little rotation of vael without killing everyone.

I'll MSPaint up the positioning we used to do.... here we go.






we put the mages in with the rogues because AE used to do more damage with the essence of the red on back when the fight was being learned (+ that was the only threat reduction available back then), but i wonder if it is still optimal post mage-patch and with the continuation of scaling +dmg. My mage knowledge is probably the worst out of any class so this is likely a dumb question.



Anyway, I'm sure many people have wildly different strategies/positionings for this fight, but this is what we did.

Can't wait to see it.

We have all healers and dps stand on the side of the room nearest Razorgore's room, and the off-tanks stand on the opposite side.

It's not so much a transition as it's your MT exploding and Vael turning to the next highest tank. At that point whoever grabs aggro needs to run into position, and the healers need to switch targets. This is the trickiest part of the encounter. If the next tank doesn't move fast enough, due to lag or suck, your other tanks can eat cleaves, and your healers/dps can get tailwhipped. Neither of those is a guaranteed wipe, but will definitely make a hard fight harder. BTW, a tank (or rogue) will never get BA unless they are number one on Vael's aggro list, ie- tanking him.

I'm actually a little fuzzy on the voodoo my tanks use to do Vael, but I'm pretty sure it goes something like this-
1. MT establishes aggro
2. Other tanks wait a couple seconds
3. Other tanks all go hard and try to build as much aggro as possible
IMO, trying to make an actual tank order on Vael is too hard. Rely on your healers and the magic of target's target.

Make your best tank go first because he's likely to steal aggro from the other guys.

I know this is a WoW general forums answer but get better tanks. Having a DKP guy pull aggro on Vael is at least understandable, but a healer...? Maybe in the first 2 seconds. If they crit a greater heal. After popping the ZHC.

If your priests are pulling aggro, either put the ones without the -threat talent in a group where 10-12 yard holy nova will cover everyone it needs to, make them get the -treat talent, or tell them to l2p. preferably the former two.

I did a poor job of describing what I meant (so I edited my original post). What I meant was: the #2 tank taking damage from being too close to tank #1 when tank #1 dies from BA (if they live long enough to explode).

Don't put your tanks too far forward though... Vael has a chain cleave, so put them on the opposite side of Vael from where the rogues are (typically by the hind leg). I've died too many times from the chain cleave before ever getting a chance to attack because one of the OTs stood too close to the front.

Make sure your tanks really know how to maximize their threat, and you should be fine. I don't think I've ever seen a Priest pull aggro. I've pulled aggro once, when a tank who had literally never done it before was leading off, and I got the first BA and trinketed. In the past few months, our only aggro issue was when a Rogue vanish-bugged and pulled at the first transition.

In the inifinite-Rage situation of Vael, a solid understanding of tanking abilities is important to prevent seriously shortchanging yourself. Brief summary:

1) White DPS: insignificant next to the amount of specials you'll be using, and the Rage generation doesn't even matter.
2) Instants: The largest per-cast instants, in terms of threat, are Revenge and Shield Slam. These must be going off every cooldown. The trickiest part of really maximizing your threat (I would guess) is squeezing in as many other instants as possible on all the free global cooldowns, without reducing the number of Revenges/Slams. The threat generated by instants will be nearly identical for most tanks doing this.
3) Heroic Strike: Have to make sure to hit that HS button between swings every time. The faster you weapon, the better--this is the primary factor in choosing a weapon for Vael, and the biggest difference in the threat generation of difference tanks (except for Defiance).

Are you Alliance? If so, you can use BoS to lock down the tanking order a bit while you're practicing.

We used to use a two sunder rule (two sunders, use macro to tell next tank to start), although lately we just spam abilities for a couple seconds, then have the next tank start... but the two sunder rule worked well for use when we were learning the encounter.

For tank order, we always mix it up... as long as the tank can produce aggro, and has the gear necessary, order isn't such a big deal, although we usually put our least geared tank as 4th... not sure why really :P

We used to be sticklers about tank order, but now the next tank in line is whichever tank is highest on KTM... assuming KTM works for you. Its always innaccurate for me (just on Vael for whatever reason, works everywhere else) by about 5-10k.

We never really bothered with formal transitions beyond the first. I'd have one tank go in. Wait a few seconds, all other warriors go in. One in defensive focusing on threat gen, the others DPSing. When the first warrior blows up (~20% back then), Vael switches to the def stance tank. Then everyone starts executing. We never knew who tank #3 was going to be until it happened, and just went from there. All warriors stopped executing as the previous tank blew up, to make sure there was no aggro ping-ponging, and resumed once Vael was turned and the new tank was solid.

We do this by stopping all healing on the BA tank as soon as he gets it. He'll die quickly, and you get a transition with no explosion. Causes slightly higher repair bills / slight loss of dps from that player, but makes the transition a lot easier.

We've found that we pretty much have to have the guy with Eskhandar's Right Claw go first. He spams Revenge + HS and rules that #1 spot until he flames out.

Best threat generation being Revenge + HS + Shield Slam??

You don't really decide who tanks next unless you're using something like Kinkos threat meter mod. In that case you just have the warriors watch their position in the threat meter and adjust their use of HS and sunder if they get too high over whoever you want next. My guild just has all the warriors fight for aggro and whoever gets it gets it. We all know to run to the tank spot when when the big ct-raid warning sound goes off.

Sounds like someone is healing too early before the tanks have really done any damage/sunders to Vael. But PoH was the old way of healing groups - Holy Nova is much nicer now. Have your priests stand a little closer to vael so that they help DPS too. No threat from the spell so no worries of pulling aggro if they do it too early.

No, the off tank won't be using revenge because he won't be parrying/dodging/blocking anything from Vael to trigger that. HS, Sunder and SS if they're full protection. The only way an offtank would be getting off a Revenge would be if you have him eating the cleaves which is not a good idea.

An OT having revenge lite up is a good sign that the positioning is borked. The attack you just parry/dodge/blocked was likely a cleave.

have the tanks on the opposite side so he only can only hit some tanks and maybe 1 or 2 healers.

I am curious how hunters and mages are getting hit if the OTs are on the opposite side. As long as your OTs are at the top of the aggro list from will rotate towards that side not the side with your range DPS.

Vael will turn. Tanks need to move fast once they get aggro. This fight has tanks learning/perfecting 2 things.

1) How to manage their threat generation such that one tank has more then anyone else.

2) To move quickly once aggro switches.

If your tanks learn those 2 things and can perform them regularly, and your healers can keep anyone without BA alive, the fight is golden

The OT needs to react quickly (should be moving the instant that vael starts to turn to him, there's a slight delay as vael will swivel on his center axis), and should begin running somewhat toward the front/center of Vael's targeting circle. This will cause Vael to immediately swivel back to the front. From there the tank can take a little more time getting back into the appropriate position. Remember that large creatures like Vael/Nef have all their rotations based off of the targeting circle - its like their center of gravity.

It would take a miraculous set of circumstances for a tank with BA to live long enough to explode. The hardest part is the next tank in line avoiding chaining the cleaves. With the right combination of stances, ability use, and attempts you'll likely know in advance what the tank order is going to be. You'll also get a feel for approximately how long the tank is going to live after he gets BA. With that information you could have the next tank cheat over towards the tank spot, but all of that is hardly necessary if you have fast reacting tanks and healers.

Going first requires the least playing skill, so that's going to be a factor. If you have the first tank in defensive, and the rest in battle stance at the start, you shouldn't have an issue of the first tank having aggro pulled off him. Have your rogues vanish during the tank 1->2 transition. By experience you'll likely know which tank is going to be #2, but if not you could have the second tank switch to defensive stance 10-20 seconds into the fight.

Once you get Vael under 20%, it's a simple matter of telling your tanks at what % health to begin spam executing. Tank 2 begins executing as soon as he possibly can. Have the third tank start executing at 19%. Have the fourth begin executing at maybe 17%. Pick different numbers as you see fit.

(The big downside here is that the non-tank warriors in the raid will need to wait until maybe 15% before starting their own executes. That may make this strategy less desireable for the obvious reason.)

Skilled players can obviate the need for this level of detail.

Never have seen this problem. Holy Nova is obviously the best healing option. Absent that, maybe the rest of the raid needs more FR to reduce the need for healing? Maybe the healing load (and threat) needs to be better distributed across the healers?

If you're fine on DPS for the encounter, just stagger the tanks using a tanking macro. I think we had our 2nd tank start about 5 seconds into the encounter, the 3rd about 10, and the 4th about 15. Since they all had the same weapon (Quel) and the more defensive specced ones were earlier, the tank transitioning was pretty easy.

Positioning we have the rogues in the back, but not getting tail whipped. Tanks suck the cleaves around the middle constantly pretty much, since our healing can heal through that. In the front we have the MT and the OT off to the side out of the flame breath's cone. On the transition Vael just spins slightly and is then moved.

Great analysis, and I really like this strategy. Seems to me to be the most straight-forward and direct of all the advice I've received so far.