General Vezax

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Wed, 15/04/2009 - 13:46 — akolen

General Vezax Abilities
Health Points: 25,100,000 (heroic), 6,275,250 (normal)
Shadow Crash - deals 11,310-12,690 shadow damage and knocking back all enemies near the impact point. Leaves a magical area at the impact point for 15 seconds that increases magic damage by 50%, reduces healing by 50%, and reduces mana cost by 30%.
Searing Flames - deals 13,875-16,125 fire damage to all players within a 20 yard radius. Reduces armor by 75% for 10 seconds. 2 second casting time, can be interrupted.
Surge of Darkness - increases physical damage by 100% and reduces movement speed by 55% for a 10 second duration. When the General buffs himself with this you must kite him.
Aura of Despair - prevents normal mana regeneration through out the fight. You can still gain mana via evocation, mana pots, etc. You can destroy the crystals flying around the room to get mana. These crystals drop a cloud on the ground, which will convert your health into mana.
Profund of Darkness - deals 500 damage to all enemies and increases shadow damage by 10% per stack. Stacks on the raid (related to achievements)
General Vezax Boss Strategy
For the most part this is a pretty standard tank and spank fight…with a few slight variations. When you engage General Vezax simply start DPS like normal, have your DPS interrupt searing flames as often as possible. When General Vezax casts surge of darkness all DPS should stop, allowing your tank to kite General Vezax around the room. This is a great time for your casters to take advantage of the clouds for mana regeneration. Make sure you are rotating your casters appropriately, it’s important everyone maintains thier mana (particuarlly healers).

Continue to DPS General Vezax until he is about 35% health. Before reaching 35% you’ll want to make sure all your casters have enough mana, if not slow DPS and allow them to get some mana regeneration going. After you take Vezax to 35% he will summon Saronite Animus. Generally you want to simply off tank Saronite Animus and finish off the general. If you want to complete the achievement you need to kill Saronite Animus before Vezax. Continue burning down the General until he’s dead.

General Vezax Hard Mode Strategy
The hard mode is the same type of fight as I’ve detailed above, except you cannot use any of the mana-regeneration clouds for the duration of the fight.

Comments

ThoughtMemberTeam Vanilla

Onigiri + [+]80 Paladin

Thought + [+]Trialist85 Mage

Amerissis + [+]Alt85 Paladin

@ Fri, 01/05/2009 - 13:39

General Vezax

* Shadow Crash now reduces mana costs to spellcasters by 70%. (Old - reduced mana costs for everyone, possibly a wording change to clarify that it only affects mana and not rage/energy/etc..)
* Profound Darkness now inflicts 750 damage to all enemies, and increases Shadow damage taken by 10% per application. (Up from 500 damage)

ataugMember

Ataug + [+]Trialist85 Warrior

Ataniel + [+]Casual85 Shaman

Atlock + [+]Casual85 Warlock

Guata + [+]Casual85 Mage

@ Wed, 06/05/2009 - 13:26

Shadow Crash sounds like illidian just needs repositioned every time he does it.
Searing Flames interruptions look to be if missed its a wipe.
With the movement speed reduction on Surge of Darkness he should be easy to kite, as long as DPS remember to stop as there will be no threat built on him at that time, also nice time for casters to get some mana back

Anyone seen any notes on the add that spawns at 35%, hps? abilities?

BeraMember

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Beril + [+]80 Shaman

Bera + [+]Trialist85 Druid

Beree + [+]Alt85 Death Knight

@ Mon, 18/05/2009 - 22:36

Some ideas/tips that I picked up. Most need to be confirmed:

If played right, only MT and people using the vapors are damaged. For the people outside the 15yard range to boss, this means avoiding the shadow crystal and spreading as much as possible to avoid damage from leech/mark. Do use bandages/stones/pots as much as possible.

While you get a warning if you are the target of the shadow crash, you need to be aware of the slow flying, dark purple crystal so that you don't run into other people's crashes. This is a bit like the void boss in TK, but the aoe splash range is not as large.

When DBM announces you have the leech and places a skull, you need to run away from other people (ideally diametrically outward from the boss), _and_ all the people around you need to run away from you. If you have a green beam between you and the boss, that means you are too close to the guy with the skull, and healing the boss and getting hit 5k/tick. Run _away_ from the skull asap.

For caster dps/healers this is a mana management fight. In general, a dps will cast _only_ when in a shadow crash pool because of the mana cost reduction, but some classes can apparently manage to dps full time when in crash pools and a little bit outside.

Wanding classes would want to use them when outside crashpools or oom.

I think the best position for healers is to be melee range as this will allow them to avoid shadow crash and (possibly) leech (?). We need to ensure that enough ppl stay outside the 15yrd range so that boss doesn't cast shadow crash inside the 15yard range, like Kolo beams.

Druids can melee autoattack him to get free clearcasts and use them to cast LB to gain mana.

Druids may be able to use LB in crash pools with mana reduction and get full base mana back (which would result in a net mana gain). (???)

Worst place for anyone to stand is just outside the 15yrd range. Too far to avoid being targeted by shadow crash, and too close to be able to run away. Stay in melee range or further out. This also helps to position the crash pools at a reasonable distance from boss so that the bunched dps using them have a chance to run away from the next shadow crash. (?)

Healers need to rotate on MT so that they can get mana from vapors.

Healers need to avoid double healing and overhealing. Turn on displays that show incoming heals and existing HOTs on raid members. Do not rush to heal people asap. Unless they make a mistake (or use vapors) even people with 1HP left will survive the entire fight. Use your most mana efficient heals.

Use the first few tries to figure out exactly which one of the mana regen talents/skills for your class work. Pots, invocation, life tap etc do said not to work on live servers (unlike PTRs). Some, like the AoV, do work.

The add only spawns in hard mode when you avoid killing the 8 vapors and they coalesce into the add. The 500 stacking damage aoe also happens only in hard mode.

We may want to experiment with using dampen magic. We could start the fight with all mana users having dampen magic as they don't need to be healed normally. Then after using their first vapor, but before being healed, they could click it off. Not sure that it is worth the trouble. If boss is doing only melee damage on the MT, we could use amplify magic on him.

Also worth thinking about is the self healing abilities/enchants for tanks (and other classes to a lesser extent). I think DKs in particular, but also warriors and druids can self-heal, but do not do so normally while tanking because it is not worth it while being healed. This fight is different.

::42::

ThoughtMemberTeam Vanilla

Onigiri + [+]80 Paladin

Thought + [+]Trialist85 Mage

Amerissis + [+]Alt85 Paladin