Eyeballing it - I tried to get to grips with the ilvl formula but kept getting stupid answers (like ilvl 259 without taking sockets in to account). It's +10 stam, -3 int, -8 spirit, -19 crit. I really, really think that's off, especially as stam is 2/3rd of the cost of the other stats. Would be nice to get a confirmation either from someone who can use the formula properly, or from a Blizzard poster.

Here's our first night of attempts at Vezax Hard: General Vezax

I mostly used IS/Solar with normal gear/spec. On the easymode kill, I used IS/Lunar, which worked surprisingly well. Lunar doesn't seem suited to serious hardmode work though; you're typically not going to be lucky enough with Eclipse to recoup the mana spent casting Wraths.

Why do people talk about not casting DoT's here? IS gives roughly twice the DPM of any other spell. You should be casting it anytime you're in a Crash and it's not up. Other than that, spam Starfire, and when Solar is up, cast Wrath.


To answer above poster--definitely never cast anything when not in a Crash. In fact, it's very important to have your debuffs somewhere visible, so you can immediately stop casting if the Crash fades to avoid a huge waste of mana.

Unglyphed insect swarm is very helpful for Vezax.

An Ulduar geared DK tank will have somewhere in the region of 55% avoidance.

Going from taking 45% of hits to 42% of hits is around 7% reduction in damage taken. On a fight where healer mana is stretched to the limit, that's pretty helpful, and as a moonkin you're not giving up a huge percentage of your dps.

Are any Glyphs useful at all on this fight then? Rebirth? Wrath pushback?

Actually starfall is very bad for Vezax cause it can kill the clouds by mistake.

No it can't, starfall wont target clouds because they are not hostile untill you attack them.

Just to clarify, during the iCD are you still casting wrath or spamming SF?

We worked our first night of attempts on him the other night. I attempted it with my normal spec but it was just not working for me mana wise, so I switched to 3/3 Moonglow and even took owlkin frenzy instead of Starfall/Typhoon/Gale Winds and replaced Celestial Focus with Brambles since the shadow crash negate so much haste for a solar rotation anyways.

The mana cost of Starfire appeared to be ~510 mana, while Wrath was ~349, so 2 SFs totaling 1,020 mana vs 3 wraths (rough estimations here) for 1047 mana. With wrath averaging 8,400 that is 25,209 damage for 1,047 mana. The alternative being an average Starfire of 13,000 or 26,000 damage for 1,020 mana.

Respective DPM:
Wrath - 24.0773
Starfire - 25.4901

While this appears to lean towards SF throughout, it is important to note that I simplified Starfire to a 1.5 second cast, when it is really a 1.2 or 1.3 meaning you cast more than 2 SFs in the time you cast 3 wrtaths. This slight difference will end up leading you to Wrath being more mana efficient I believe.

Anecdotally, after I respec'd and only kept iFF, IS and using a solar roation with Wrath filler, I seemed to have more mana left when the Animus would spawn compared to attempting to use a lunar rotation. On our kill (normal mode) I switched back to the Lunar rotation and did WAY more DPS, but was bone dry on mana practically (we broke a vapor but tried not to stand in it).

Mana efficiency has nothing to do with cast time. Efficiency is straight up DPM; if you can't keep yourself from casting until you are OOM and need to rely on GCD clipping, then it is you who are inefficient.

Yes, Profound Darkness procs OF - only the stacking applications though, not the DoT ticks for some odd reason. The aura at the start of the encounter procs it as well, but it's worthless since he'll almost never crash in that time.

Err, really? I took Frenzy for our first hard Vezax in 10-man and got 2 procs in 4 attempts, one from Aura of Despair being applied at the start and one from a lethal melee hit during a wipe. I had no procs that I noticed in 35ish applications of the Profound Darkness debuff and I was specifically looking for them. That's about an 0.5% probability if PD actually does trigger Frenzy so I could still simply have been very unlucky, but I'd rather like a log example here.

Unfortunately I don't have my logs for these attempts uploaded anywhere. I have the 2nd to last attempt where both the Frenzy procs for the evening happened and the kill where it was never triggered. (Sidenote: WoL's new buff uptime display is pretty nifty) There are only 16 applications of Profound Darkness in those two attempts; not getting any Frenzy procs is a 6% probability for that sample.

I have been going with just 3/3 Moonglow and OoC since they buffed Innervate and have not had any major mana issues. The fights I have mana issues on are like medium mode Iron Council where there is a lot of Hurricane going on, but I still manage.