Dear Raid Leader, Please excuse Johnny from the General Vezax encounter…

The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It’s a good non-specific symptom; I’m a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you that a good phony fever is a dead lock, but, uh… you get a nervous mother, you could wind up in a doctor’s office. That’s worse than school. You fake a stomach cramp, and when you’re bent over, moaning and wailing, you lick your palms. It’s a little childish and stupid, but then, so is high school.  — Ferris Bueller

General Vezax and his Aura of Despair seem to induce just that:  an aura of despair among some of the healers.  They panic.  They mysteriously DC.  They announce, “Oh damn!  Mother-in-law just showed up, gotta go.  Bye!”  “Oh snap, look at my latency.  Friggin’ Comcast.  You should replace me.”  While these are all good excuses, they’re only useable once, maybe twice.  To avoid the Vezax fight permanently one needs to display more than just mediocrity, one needs to display sheer incompetence.

Top Ten Tips:

1.  Insist that Hymn of Hope works.  Repeat this incessantly.

2.  Use your Shadowfiend.

3.  If you have Mark of the Faceless,

run towards the tank

OR

run towards the person responsible for killing Saronite Clouds.

4.  Stand in a Shadow Crash zone to wand.  (Bonus points if you do this with Mark of the Faceless.)

5.  Use Divine Hymn.  Yes, it’s 63% of your base mana.  But the sooner you’re out of mana, the better.

6.  Suggest the healers downrank to save mana.

7.  Stand in the Saronite Vapors for 8 ticks.  When you die, complain you “got no healz.”

8.  Use Guardian Spirit on the Ret Paladin on the pull.

9.  Ask if anyone has mana pots or a MP5 flask to spare.  Admonish the paladins for not buffing Wisdom.

10.  Be a Holy Priest.

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More Thoughts on the General

There’s nothing quite like running back from a wipe on a raid mob to find that things have been hotfixed.  Respawns on the trash to back to General Vezax’s room stopped spawning multiple Void Beasts, and there were only four, rather than three encounters in his room.

There’s also nothing quite like defeating a mob with the the main tank down and calls for the warlock to “kite it!” and the rogue to “evasion tank!”

And there’s nothing quite like a painful reminder that Blizzard wants healers to be conscientious of our mana with the mechanics of the General Vezax encounter.

Aura of Despair, as the tooltip reads, blocks nearly all mana regeneration for the duration of the fight.  And as such, every spell that a healer casts should be weighed pretty carefully.

Mana Regen in a Mana Regen-less Fight

Periodically during the encounter, saronite clouds will form.  When killed, these leave a green pool on the ground.  Standing in a pool regenerates mana, but at the expense of health. One can only stand in the pool for about 7 ticks — returning about 6500 mana but taking about 13000 damage.  Only eight of these clouds can be spawned over the course of the fight and so it is important that they’re killed and that healers get in (but don’t stand too long in!) the pools.

I had bad luck with my positioning last night for pools, and I wasn’t near many that dropped.  Looking through the combat logs of our successful attempt, I only gained ~6000 mana, while another healer gained upwards of 50,000.  Left side of the room FTL. 

While mana potions, replendishment, Shadowfiends, Innervate, Hymn of Hope and the like do not restore mana, other mechanisms seemed to.  (I am not sure if this is a bug or not.)  Our resto shaman gained mana from Water Shield.  I gained mana from Rapture (not via the 2.5% regained when PW:S is absorbed, but via the chance for a shield to restore 2% mana on the target.)  One of the resto druids gained substantial mana from Lifebloom blooms.

Healing Efficiently 101

The only person who really needs healing in the fight is the main tank.  While there is some periodic damage to others, this can be avoided and/or healed with bandages and/or healthstones.  In other words, this isn’t really a fight for AOE healing.

Yesterday I posted a link to a great blog post about the efficiency of priest spells, and as such I entered battle last night reassured in the knowledge that Penance is absolutely-the-most-kick-ass-heal-ever-rah-rah-rah-Disc-Priest-4-Life.  But where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, I found that its awesomeness actually resulted in a lot of overhealing.  

I would definitely like to see us healers coordinate this fight a little better as “oh hey, let’s all spam heal the tank” just meant “oh hey, let’s all run out of mana and push and shove everyone out of the way to get to the green pool of goodness.”  Followed closely by “oh shit, the tank just died because we were all hovering around the green pool of goodness like the addicts waiting for the methadone clinic to open.”

After a couple of attempts on Vezax, I opted to return Penance once again to its status as the premiere “oh shit” heal, and instead relied primarily on PW:S, using it every time the Weakened Soul debuff dissipated.  I did cast PoM in the hopes it’d proc Divine Aegis.  But that was it.  And as such, I was able to sustain my mana pool for a good long while in the fight.

Now on to Yogg-Saron… oh wait, it’s Tuesday.  Now back to Flame Leviathan! 

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News at 11

Vezax dead.

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The 6Ps vs Mp5

I’m facing a brand new encounter tonight, and although I’d contend that the success of most fights rests on the healers (no pressure, guyz!), this time it seems especially true.  And this particular fight is “hell for healers,” or so I hear. (srsly, no pressure!)

In a nutshell:  General Vezax negates mana regen. (OMG, the pressure!)

Having never done this fight before — not on 25man, not on 10man, not on the PTR — I’m dutifully researching the mechanics of the encounter.

“Read the strats.”  “Watch the video.”  Raiders are instructed to do this prep-work all the time, with varying responsiveness and results.  Although I’m apt to read a description of a fight and read about a boss’s abilities beforehand, I’ll admit, I rarely watch videos.  I find them hard to follow:

OK, so the boss has some animations.  And people move around.  And the tank… wait, is that a tank?  or is that a ret paladin…  Um… and the camera spins.  And wtf scrolling combat add-on is that guy using?  And 5 minutes later, the boss is dead.  Add a shitty trance soundtrack.  And that’s how you kill this boss.

For me, doing the fight is the best way to learn.

But more than just knowing how to “do” the fight, the Vezax encounter requires some additional knowledge.  Namely, healers,  what are your efficient spells?  

Priests, read this post for some insight.

And tune in for News at 11 when I update you on how things went.

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