General Vezax is a fight where DPS meters are dominated by casters and where healers hate having to deal with their mana. But that doesn’t mean we have to trail behind in the meters either! So before we get into how we can maximize our effectiveness during this fight it is important to know what the fight entails.
The most important abilities for use to be aware of are as follows:
Aura of Despair: This is the major gimmick of this fight. Mana regeneration is reduced to nothing. Due to the DPS nature of certain classes, like us, Aspect of the Viper and a couple other select skills still work.
Shadow Crash: You’ve seen these in the Old Kingdom right before the last boss. Big swirling purple things that deal damage when they land. Well, they still do that. But as an added bonus it increases haste, reduces mana costs, and decreases healing. This is the reason casters own this fight. But we have our share of magic damage as well so all is not lost on us.
Mark of the Faceless: This is put on a single target and then siphons 5000 health a second from all nearby allies. If you get it, it actually doesn’t do any damage to you, just people around you. It is important to be aware of the raid members near you to get away from them or get yourself away from the raid.
Now in theory you could stand away from the raid, ignore everything going on other than helping kill a Saronite Vapor when called for and live on with your merry life. But you would probably get trounced on meters. And that’s not how we roll.
We want to take advantage of those shadow crashes as much as possible. After all, the huge mana reduction provided through it is reason enough. But when I see Explosive Shot ticking for upwards of 11k, it’s definitely worth my time.
This is one of those fights where you are going to want to have your camera zoomed out a lot. After all, you are not the only raid member wanting that sweet damage buff. And when General Vezax chooses a target for a new Shadow Crash, chances are it will be near you. Given your healers limited resources, the last thing they need is you taking extra damage from Shadow Crash.
When you first move into a Shadow Crash find the outer most edge possible. You don’t need to stand in the middle of it as its effect is ever so slightly larger than the graphic. You are going to have to fit almost 10 people (depending on your raid comp) into that itty bitty living space. And all of them are going to have to move when a new Shadow Crash comes too. Be near the edge so you can quickly and easily side-step out of it.
This also puts you in a great spot to avoid Mark of the Faceless. If you get this debuff you can Disengage out and reduce the amount of Life Siphoned to almost nil. And if it happens to be someone near you, you can sidestep again and hope they do things right and move out of the raid as well.
General Vezax also does a Surge of Darkness which requires your tank to run away putting General Vezax out of range of any previously placed shadow Crashes in most situations. As the fight progresses depending on how good your raid is at positioning they might be in fromt of his kite path. But it is usually during the kiting phase I use Aspect of the Viper to regain some mana if I feel I am going to need it.
After all, General Vezax has 30 million HP in 25-man Ulduar so it’s not exactly a quick fight. Anytime you can’t get into a Shadow Crash is your best time to use Aspect of the Viper in my opinion. In fact, you will find your Mages may not DPS at all if they are not in a Shadow Crash as it is a waste of mana.
In the long run of things, this fight is very easy for Hunters. Healers have to really worry about their mana in order to keep the tank alive, melee has to interrupt Searing Flames. We just have to make sure we pull as much weight as possible and try to reduce how often the healers have to look at us. And on non-hard mode if we do that properly, we should never need a heal.
I’ve tried Marksmship a few times on this fight, including tonight and for some reason I always feel like my mana depletes so much faster than it does as Survival. I know I run the mana intensive build which also includes Silencing Shot in my rotation but I always end up going back to Survival for this fight. Your mileage may vary.
Any thoughts, comments, questions, or would like to correct or add anything, leave a comment. Or stop by the forums.
Related Posts
No related photos.
was mm yesterday on general and i had no mana problems, dps wasnt good thou always make sure u regain mana via viper when he is on the move. wmo is not loading for me right now but i think i was around 4k~~ish dmg as mm which is rather bad but only with a very few crashes on my side (we split the range dds left and right) and we needed like 8 minutes to kill him so dps was bad all in all i guess.
Couple things we have found:
A) DK or Druid tank blowing CDs = no kiting. No kiting = awesome. We generally have a DK respec to tank and all other tanks respec to dps/heals for this.
B) Shadow Crash is unmitigated awesome for MM. Big CS crits. Big Arcane crits. Mana regen in Viper is super slow though… I’ve been tending to try to use the reduced cost time IN a Crash to get back to full faster.
In hindsight, I’m doing it wrong, and losing top dps time. But, mana draining that fast makes you do stupid things.
IF you can stay in a Crash the majority of the time, mana is not a huge issue.
If your dps is stupid and standing near them is gonna get you killed, this fight sucks muchly.
I need to modify my Viper pattern to maximize my dps on this fight, it’s a tricky one in that regard since it’s really not consistent in what buffs/debuffs you get. 1 attempt, I was tanking Life Leech and in my own world. Another, I was nearly immobile as the Crashes were always near me.
But it is a great hunter fight, once I learned and shared with our hunters that the black goo helps us. (I was MM for the night, I figured 1 CS would tell me what I needed to know, I was right.)
I try to avoid the shadowcrash all together. Fact is the amount of people using them will almost certainly result in tons of people getting nailed with Life Leach. I take the stance that the less people that get hit by it, the faster General dies. My DPS still averages around 5k for General and i occasionally get my very own shadowcrash to stand in and when that happens i enjoy seeing the large ES crits. Not every fight is designed to have hunters do ridiculous DPS. There ARE times to step back and let others have the light to make the fight go more smooth.
100k per tick per person – if there are that many people there, and the person with it is that bad, you’re in a bad way if it’s 3 people or 8.
I don’t disagree, as with any raid strat it’s a matter of how your guild does it and your raid composition. Downing the boss is more important than personal numbers, this I completely agree with.
But, if the goal of the discussion is how to maximize hunter dps for this fight, Shadow Crash is the key and discussion needs to be made on how to best use them.
I’ve been generally unhappy with the time spent in viper for this fight. I raid as BM, and it is supposedly more mana efficient than the other 2 specs. What I ended up doing now is using only arcane shot every six seconds when I’m not standing in a shadow crash. This with 2/2 GfoT pretty much keeps my pet dps going at max, which works out to be 80% of my maximum dps while conserving mana.
SV is great for “General Zoiberg” because of http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=34499 (ToftH).
What I find most interesting is how everything people think they know about this encounter goes out the window when you start on the hard mode. So many ways to skin a cat in Ulduar these days, its fun to see how everyone accomplishes these bosses.
I’m MM specced, and I find that switching into Viper for steady shot, and back to Hawk for instants keeps me going really well for mana – I rarely drop below 70% mana (unless I forget to swtich into Viper :P). If I’m in a shadow crash, I don’t have to bother with Viper at all. Its a lot of aspect switching, but it certainly makes things easier in the long run. The damage reduction from being in Viper for like, 5 to 10 seconds is a lot less than it would be if I waited until being at low mana and having to spend a lot longer in Viper to get it back.
For General, do you find that the aspect of Dragonhawk actually works for you? Last night on this fight, my dps seemed to skyrocket when I was in viper and bottom out in dragonhawk.
What aspect do you all use?
I still use Dragonhawk but I treat myself as a caster and try to stay in the shadow crash since it greatly reduces our mana consumption. During movement phases and adjusting I use Viper just to get a bit more mana back as we move around.