Genaral vezax 10 dMr 0

[FatBob]

I do believe it's well worth a shot because the dps we're doing now is simply too low. Looking at meters I see 3k-3.7k for our casters, and the melee is sitting @ around 2k average. That's not gonna cut a 10 minute enrage 8.4 million hp fight.
 
denied
we rule all limpsy back on dps 2 frostfire mages and dill dps.
duk on inturrpts ame in the pack on dps for vapours and general = disco (not forgetting our amazing healers!!) 10 alive at end of fight ...general......its been emotional !....but you're fired !!:boxing:
 
(rubbish loot tho :doh:)

[Tirkad]

General down. Next stop: Yogg-Saron. About that big ugly slimy...boss, i found very interesting this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFyaloBG7SI

Note that the video has been recorded by a melee dps (retri paladin) so you'll be able to see clearly what every phase is about. In addition, i want you to notice the high numbers flashing from the pally's hit, they're possible becouse of the buff that each keeper gives to the raid (about 10% extra damage each keeper + an extra goodie).

[Azunai]

I do believe it's well worth a shot because the dps we're doing now is simply too low. Looking at meters I see 3k-3.7k for our casters, and the melee is sitting @ around 2k average. That's not gonna cut a 10 minute enrage 8.4 million hp fight.
 
denied
we rule all limpsy back on dps 2 frostfire mages and dill dps.
duk on inturrpts ame in the pack on dps for vapours and general = disco (not forgetting our amazing healers!!) 10 alive at end of fight ...general......its been emotional !....but you're fired !!:boxing:
 
(rubbish loot tho :doh:)

I don't care how you look at it, that setup we had all night was never going to make the enrage timer, simple as. We cannot assume a perfect setup on every kill, worse we'll actually barely ever have a setup like this cause there will always be at least 2 tanks of which one has to Offspec (as opposed to 1 tank and 1 more melee), so I reckon we should look at a strategy that offers more dps.

[FatBob]

Personally i dont see a major prob with the dps, on the kill it was nearly the same as the figures mentioned. Its more keeping 9+ minutes of no mistakes going strong and praying for some luck with the shadowcrash/lifleech combos
 
We identified an issue with running out of mana at the end of the fight and changed how the caster grps regenned their mana at 50% ish through their mana bar (which is roughly 55-60% through the boss) making sure that we all had enuff to burn for the rest of the fight.
we used 1 pool for each side of the dps pairs which left 6 for the healers @ 1.5 minutes a pop to go between each one to make sure they had enuff.
Pilus went and respecced FFB which i believe helped with mana burnout
 
What was different this time was the way the pairs worked we kept a much bigger gap between each other so when lifeleech hit the max it ever got was 1 tick and on occasions no hits, also when crash was down we stood as far apart as we could but made sure we were both in it
 
we also had a try with all 4 of us bunched up but 1st life leech was a mare then somebody got crashed twice and bounced and we died.
 
for a fact we need to be able to support multiple groups with more than 2 in (esp for 25's) but in reality the lifeleech is such a killer that until everyone is perfect on it it will continue to wipe raids.
 
With regards to our first group in there looking back you are right that
with the make up we had we were one caster heavy and on another night we would have had to swap a caster out for a inturrupter, but thats just how the fight is, it sucks but its true because you have to have the following without fail 1 tank and 1 dedicated melee inturrupter, if the other tank swaps to dps no worries as the numbers show its the ranged dps standing in shadow crash on this fight that make the kill, just like flame leviathan its the demolishers with the pyrite stacks that kill the boss, i dont think imo that it is even conceivable to do this fight whilst continuing to cast when not in shadowcrash just due to the massive boost it is and less mana used (i would say that tho im a caster !).
 
The fight can be completed a bazillion different ways im sure its been done with 9 gnome rogues and a penguin, i guess the more time we get to play around in there the better, as well as different people coming in to try some different combos
 
sorry if the post looked a little arsey m8 it definitly wasnt meant that way i was just happy cos it was done thats all.

[Baylien]

I think the important point to come out of this is we have a tactic which works with very little room for error, and a little luck.
So maybe we can still work on making the fight shorter, but more importantly looking at how we will execute it in 25. As much as I love the progression in 10Uld it is also a good arena for testing possible tactics and issues we might experience in 25Uld. I still need to work more on Vezax myself, but congrats on some nice progress :yahoo:

[Azunai]

Had a more detailed look at the video. This time I decided to take a look purely at one person and try to follow that person the entire video. First off I followed the arcane mage (disguised as female human pirate, on the far left during the fight. She is constantly casting an arcane rotation of what I think is AB AB ABar and AM when proc. Over the course of the fight she benefits from 4 vapors. She has to move occasionally to avoid crashes and Life Leech, but overall we can say that she is casting permanently.

Next is a healer. The female troll disc priest that you can see at about 11 'o clock from the viewpoint of the video maker, 2 spots to the right from where the mage was. She is benefitting from 4 vapors as well (from what you can see in the vid), and seems to constantly be covering the left half of the room together with the mage I mentioned above and the boomkin, only running around once to avoid LL.

There's a male orc ele shaman, undead mage (both casting constantly as well) and a female belf disc priest who seem to be covering the 'right' half although that seems to be more the 11 to 2 o'clock quadrant of the room near the end of the fight, because all you see on the right is totems by then. This movement seems to be cause there's no vapors on the bottom right part of the room, hence their shift.

The tank and melee do not move at all throughout the entire fight. Vezax stays in the same position from start til finish.

Their setup is daring:

2 Healers: Disc priests
1 Tank: Deathknight
3 Melee dps: A Deathknight, an Enh shammy and a paladin (the videomaker)
4 Ranged dps: 2 mages, an ele shammy and a boomkin

So not only do they constantly cast, they also have 1 less healer. This explains why their kill is alot quicker, but even with 3 healers I'm convinced we can benefit alot from this tactic, as long as people avoid the shadow crash and LL.

Truth is while it's great that you've killed him, you have to admit it's not a conventional setup to only have 1 tank and 6 mainspec, fully geared dps, rather than 2 tanks and 5 dps with one of the tanks offspeccing dps. My concern then is if we will be able to repeat it with our usual setup, and wether we're making it harder on ourselves than it needs to be or not.

[Azunai]

Had a more detailed look at the video. This time I decided to take a look purely at one person and try to follow that person the entire video. First off I followed the arcane mage (disguised as female human pirate, on the far left during the fight. She is constantly casting an arcane rotation of what I think is AB AB ABar and AM when proc. Over the course of the fight she benefits from 4 vapors. She has to move occasionally to avoid crashes and Life Leech, but overall we can say that she is casting permanently.

Next is a healer. The female troll disc priest that you can see at about 11 'o clock from the viewpoint of the video maker, 2 spots to the right from where the mage was. She is benefitting from 4 vapors as well (from what you can see in the vid), and seems to constantly be covering the left half of the room together with the mage I mentioned above and the boomkin, only running around once to avoid LL.

There's a male orc ele shaman, undead mage (both casting constantly as well) and a female belf disc priest who seem to be covering the 'right' half although that seems to be more the 11 to 2 o'clock quadrant of the room near the end of the fight, because all you see on the right is totems by then. This movement seems to be cause there's no vapors on the bottom right part of the room, hence their shift.

Their setup is daring:

2 Healers: Disc priests
1 Tank: Deathknight
3 Melee dps: A Deathknight, an Enh shammy and a paladin (the videomaker)
4 Ranged dps: 2 mages, an ele shammy and a boomkin

So not only do they constantly cast, they also have 1 less healer. This explains why their kill is alot quicker, but even with 3 healers I'm convinced we can benefit alot from this tactic, as long as people avoid the shadow crash and LL.

Truth is while it's great that we've finally floored the *******, you have to admit it's not a conventional setup to only have 1 tank and 6 mainspec, fully geared dps, rather than 2 tanks and 5 dps with one of the tanks offspeccing dps. My concern then is if we will be able to repeat it with our usual setup, and wether we're making it harder on ourselves than it needs to be or not. I think if performed properly this tactic will make the kill alot smoother and more importantly, easily repeatable. So before we habituate ourselves too much to our current tactic I think it would be wise to give others such as this one a shot.

[TeaLeaf]

Had a more detailed look at the video. This time I decided to take a look purely at one person and try to follow that person the entire video. First off I followed the arcane mage (disguised as female human pirate, on the far left during the fight. She is constantly casting an arcane rotation of what I think is AB AB ABar and AM when proc. Over the course of the fight she benefits from 4 vapors. She has to move occasionally to avoid crashes and Life Leech, but overall we can say that she is casting permanently.

Tbh Vezax is just a one tank fight, no second tank needed, but the difference here is the main one.  Most strats use mana for healers with only some for dps as the buffed dps when in crash is so high.  So if your dps is not high enough then this strat will hurt the healers and the tank will die.  You have to find the right balance for your raid group, low dps means healers will need more vapors and dps need to be more selective in their dpsing; and vice versa.  Elysium use 1-2 vapors for dps, the rest for healers.

The other reason for sticking to a selective dps route is that it is good practice for Hard Mode where you get no vapors for the entire fight.

[Azunai]

Err... yes. But that was not what my post was about

I found last night that in our normal setup, which is 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 dps (which doesn't mean we use 2 tanks for this fight, it just means that 1 slot is taken by someone whose mainspec is tank, rather than dps, which in many cases means this person will do less dps due to not having the best of the best gear available), we have too little dps to beat the enrage timer. Hence we need to look for means to increase our dps, and I think this is one such a way.

And let's be real: Hardmode Vezax? I think that's a veeeery far off thing for us ^^

[kregoron]

Doing 10 man gives some nice ideas how to do 25 man, but always slight changes, to be done.. example the Searing flames on Vezas is in 10 man interuptable by 1 DK, but in 25 you can interupt it but it can be cast again right after.. as there is no spell lockout in vez 25

edit: im not really sure why i wrote this, tiny bit tired

[TeaLeaf]

Az, my point was that dps'ing when you are not buffed is actually reducing your overall dps not increasing it.  You need to use your mana effectively as a ranged class (hunters being one of the exceptions) so you pewpew in crash only so that you get the buff:

After impact, Crash leaves an energy field that lingers for 20 seconds, increasing magical damage dealt by 100%, increasing casting speed by 100%, reducing healing done by 75%, and reducing mana costs by 75%. He will not cast this on players within 15 yards of him.

So I was trying to say don't pewpew all the time as it wastes mana and is an overall dps reduction.

Dropping healers is not the way forward either as they are pushed already.  It's down to ranged to effectively handle crash and mark to maximise dps.  Melee actually also do very good dps on this fight due to lack of movement of the boss, lack of movement needed for crash or mark, so they get pretty much 100% uptime.  The combination of the 100% melee dps time with crash dps from ranged is what makes the fight work.

TL.

[Azunai]

What I wonder about then is why it took us 10 minutes to get him to 20%, but the guys in the video (who are permacasting and using alot of vapors for both casters and healers) only take 6 minutes and 24 seconds? That one extra dps they have isn't going to make a 4 minute+ difference.

The point of the strategy is that dps casters use multiple vapors to get their mana up so they can cast constantly, both when there are crashes and when there aren't. Healers benefit from the same vapors as the casters as they are spread around the room rather than standing in the centre. It's all there in the vid, have a look! Yes, they will have to chuck a heal or 2 in the direction of the casters every time they use a vapor but overall, how can dps possibly decrease when in addition to shadow crash, casters are dpsing when there isnt an SC as well?

[TeaLeaf]

Problem with spreading the healers is that the damage is fairly spikey, so moving healers creates opportunities to lose the tank which is why we avoided it.  

You get 8 times the dps per unit mana from a crash buffed cast compared to a non-crash cast, so the difference is huge.  

If you use loads of vapors on dps then you are not casting buffed casts and you are also using healer mana to keep you up in the vapors.  All this leads to less dps and more strain on the healers.  

More people in a vapor also means more complicated Mark-handling as you have more people in proximity all taking 5k per second damage, so by putting healers in melee you greatly reduce the self-healing on Vezax due to better Mark control and less healing on ranged needed as fewer people can disperse more quickly.

Bottom line is people need to do more dps than they do.  TC it, learn spell/shot rotations, gear/gem correctly etc and then blow trinkets, heroism etc when you get all ranged in crash to maximise the crash-buffed dps uptime.

[Azunai]

Very well. I'm just hoping we can repeat the trick in a normal raid setup of 2 tanks, 5 full-on dps and 3 healers instead of 1 tank, 6 full-on dps and 3 healers, is all. I'm not saying this tactic is solid, but I would like to see an option in action before I discard it fully.