Hunting General Vezax!
July 15, 2009Today I’ll be going over General Vezax. This fight is easy for most appropriately geared raid groups, and aside from one twisted mechanic, is basically a low risk tank and spank.
Your job as a hunter is simple. You stand in a large circle around the boss, avoid being close to people who get the mark of the faceless debuff, take absolutely no damage, and attack. The hard part is that the only way to regain mana is aspect of the viper, and even that is half as effective as normal: you only get mana back from shots, not the standard 4% per 3 seconds.
Lets go over taking no damage. The kind general places his aura of despair on everyone, which means that the healers are going to have their hands full with the tank. This guy hits hard, and periodically tries to squish the tank. Also, he has absolutely no unavoidable raid damage. He fires shadow crash missiles at you, but they take a while to land and you get a warning from deadly boss mods. If you get hit, you take damage and get blown around. Don’t cause a wipe by forcing your healers to top you off because you didn’t go far enough. Get used to the range of these missiles- the trash on the way in fires them too. Also, use your self heals if you have them.
The mana regen mechanic in this fight is not for us- let the healers and casters go stand in puddles. Most raid groups require hunters to take care of themselves and not add any healing overhead to an already healing intensive fight. [Edit 15 July, 1009: The aura left behind by the crash increases magical damage, which includes at least explosive shot and arcane shot. It also reduces your shot cost. If it's feasible, try to stand in one as much as possible, bearing in mind that if you or someone around you gets the mark of the faceless debuff, every tick heals the boss for either 50,000 or 100,000 health. If you get it, disengage. If someone else does, get out of range until they clear the crash AOE.]
Now, let’s go over your rotation. Standard rotation is certainly effective [Edit 15 July, 1009: when you're in a crash AOE], however it’s very important to not let your serpent sting expire. It’s one of your most expensive shots, mana wise. [Edit 15 July, 1009: When you do not have a crash available], I was playing around with leaving arcane shot out of my rotation. I left aimed shot in because it contributes toward the bleed damage from piercing shots but if you have a bit of armor pen, steady shots are going to be almost as much damage as arcane shot, and you can keep them up longer before going into viper. This fight is all about damage per mana.
When you’re in viper, each shot generates a little over 3% of your base total mana, but does half damage. Now, when do we use viper? How long? First thing, do not use it when you pop rapid fire. Save your rapid fire for your heroism/bloodlust so you can get the highest damage per mana from it.
Just before you are low enough that some of your shots are greyed out, switch to viper. Personally, while we’re in the middle of the fight, I stay in viper long enough to fuel another 30 seconds of full throttle DPS. I try to ensure that I’ll have enough mana for 45 seconds once we get to the execute range (20% for kill shot) and then I hope I predicted well so I end the fight with absolutely no mana. If I screw up and have to switch to viper while we’re in execute range, I take advantage of the fact that aspects are on a separate cooldown and switch out briefly to fire my kill shot and chimera shot before going back in and doing steady shots.
That’s the Vezax fight! Enjoy, and pick my logic to pieces here in the comments!
euripidesoutdps
jurgwena
Faeghleis
lemli
eidotrope
would you recommend going in the shadow crash haste/decrease mana cost black pool as often as possible or is the grouping up too dangerous due to mark of the faceless?
No matter what the maximum number of people your raid lead allows into those pools, the magic damage and casting haste will benefit all ranged caster dps more than us. Even if there aren’t any around to take advantage, the mana cost reduction for us does not outweigh the possibility of a single tick healing Vezax.
I’d only go in there if it’s completely unused, and can not be used by a caster.
When we first started learning this fight I mostly avoided the shadow crashes, but once I got used to it more I started using them as often as possible. Since there’s no limit to the amount of people the shadow crashes can benefit, the only negative to a hunter using them is they increase the chance of a mark of the faceless or shadow crash hitting on the people inside. Mark of the faceless can be dealt with easily by a disengage, and you want the shadow crashes to generally land close together anyhow. I usually try to hang on an edge of the crash, side step a few everytime a new crash is coming in, then pop back.
I generally try to time my vipering mostly during the time I’m not in a crash, and ideally right after I’ve fired my most damaging shot so I flutter in and out of viper a lot during the fight. When I’m in the crash I only viper if I’m really low. I never use the mana regen pools, but the crashes will increase magic damage by 100% as well as reducing mana consumption (which will allow you to spend less time in viper, contributing more to the fight).
For marks the magic damage component is lower so it’s less of a dent perhaps, but as survival, explosive shot is a large chunk of my damage output and the crashes amplify that so it’s generally worth using it when I can. I would probably say though that marks hunters who normally forego arcane shot from their rotation may want to include it when standing in a crash.
Are you sure that the crash amplifies magic damage? The way I read it is that it amplifies spell damage, not magical damage. Also, a single tick on a single person of the mark of the faceless will heal the general for 100k HP (or 50k is someone has a healing debuff on him). If there’s even a small chance of that happening, that probably outweighs the potential benefit of at least the reduced mana cost as well as probably any increased damage you might see.
Still, if you can always mitigate the damage to one tick, all you need to do to determine whether you should use it or not is figure out statistically how many ticks you will have to disengage away from over one encounter and figure out how much more damage you can do by standing in a crash. If you net a positive, then it’s worth it.
In most cases you will have the healing debuff on him (any raid with a combat rogue or a hunter using aimed shot should anyhow).
I’m fairly sure it amplifies all magic damage because that’s what the debuff description says. Additionally I checked my logs for Monday’s Vezax, and I have many crits like:
Zeherah Explosive Shot General Vezax *12053*
That’s about double what I normally see on explosive shot crits.
Looking at that particular fight, I did about 1.9 million damage to him. The total healing on the boss from 11 marks of the faceless between all our people on that fight was 1.58 million, so an average of 144k per debuff, although I can’t say how many of those people got out as quickly as they should (warlocks, hunters and mages have tools to get out fast, boomkins not so much). I was in shadow crash 32% of the fight, and I had viper up 11.2% of it. Magical damage accounted for 940k of the damage I did (close to half).
Not sure of exactly the formula to apply to it, but I think it’s fairly reasonable by those numbers to assume that the raid gained more damage from the small percentage of boss healing I added to the fight compared to the damage loss in viper and magical shot damage from staying out of the crashes just in case I got a mark. But when you’re learning the fight people are slower at getting out and then staying out of the crashes would make more sense, it’s an individual decision really.
Another consideration is that if you stay too far from the group and you get a crash, they have to move a lot to get into it (and most casters are told not to cast unless they’re standing in a crash). If you’re close to the group but not in the crash and someone else gets the mark, they may move in your direction to get away from the group and cause extra healing anyhow. So staying out isn’t completely safe either.
Thanks for the heads up Zeherah, I’ve edited the original post. The final word is that we should be using the crashes when they are available because they do affect our magic damage. I’m going to have to start running my drafts by you before posting them!
Nobody needs to read your drafts – you’re doing a great job. You get some good conversations started – keep it up!
It’s just different experiences on the fight, your articles are great, the comments are a good place to discuss alternative methods and tricks that you may not have covered. Everyone does these things a different way.
Strategy suggestion: the easiest thing to do when ‘Mark of the Faceless’ is cast on YOU is to use Disengage. Fly back, avoid damage to the raid, avoid healing the boss, wait for the debuff to tick off, and run back in the fight.
I’ve used disengage to escape Shadow Crash, but the cool down isn’t really practical for this (and you don’t want to risk it not being available for Mark of the Faceless.)
Second, to maximize DPS, it is best to bunch up the raid at all times. This ensures there is a Shadow Crash down almost anytime. It took us several attempts to get used to moving more often, but once we did, the take kill was way ahead of the enrage timer. (This is also the hard mode strat, BTW.) Breaking into two groups seems to have a similar effect.
By the way, the trash here is really fun. One of a few opportunities for some hunter crowd control depending on your raid configuration.
I have seen two strats for the fight but personally I like the one we used the other day with everyone spread out evenly around him. Marks never tick on people except I think once when a dk ran out to death grip a saronite crystal thinger. I stood in the back and it basically became a patchwerk fight. I only used viper twice and only had to sidestep one shadow crash. I dipped my toes in a shadow crash pool but just decided to back away as our boomkin came screaming towards it. /distance is amazing for this fight it gaurantees you wont be healing general imo.
To beat the enrage timer, your DPS needs the buffs from Shadow Crash. I’d imagine other high DPS in your raid were in those pools.
While I agree that it’s easier to avoid damage by spreading out, the disadvantage is that the ranged DPS lose just that – DPS. But, that’s the whole challenge conceptualized when Blizzard created this fight… how will a team work together vs. work apart. Oh yeah, and let’s make ‘em manage mana.
“To beat the enrage timer, your DPS needs the buffs from Shadow Crash.”
As one of the healers on that fight – and therefore one of the people actually paying attention to the positions of the other characters on the field – that simply isn’t true. We had three or four people at most in a Shadow Crash puddle, and generally they only stayed there for four or five ticks. In addition, although nobody’s posted a WOL/WMO for that fight yet, I don’t remember Recount being substantially different from other fights.
I think you are confusing the large black pools, which have no tick (they just give a buff) with the green mana pools that do give a tick.
This fight is designed to *require* the use of the black pools that boost haste and magical damage to down the boss.
You’re right that I misremembered the tick mechanic – but I still don’t remember anyone spending any significant time in the crash puddles. I suppose I could be wrong.
The crash benefits all magical damage – Serpent Sting, Chimera Shot, Chimera-Serpent, Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, Arcane Shot and Wild Quiver. :)
Great job Euripidesoutdps!
This has probably been said before, but I would have to reconsider your comment on staying out of the puddles.
What if you’re BM? SV and MM have recoup but BM Hunters are more reliant on their party. I’ll have to reconsider this maybe, but it’s just a thought.
Great job again! OH! And gratz on the WoW.com linkage.
Thanks Brig :) I edited the post to reflect standing in the puddles- I mistakenly thought that they only affected spells cast, not magical damage.
A reccomendation for AotV, is to set up a macro and pick up a pair of Librarian’s Paper Cutters, ench them with 30 int. this increases your mana pool and thus increases the mana you get back from each hit. the other reason? stabby. 2x 1.3 speed daggers with a good amount of haste on them, it’s poke poke poke for a very fast mana refill (you get the same amount of mana from a dagger stab as you do an auto or steady shot, and they occur much faster, plus you don’t spend the manas on steady shot). hit the viper macro, run into melee range (which also keeps you safe from Mark of the Faceless), and stab him in his fat ass until your mana hits 90%, then hit your DHawk macro to reequip your normal weapon and return to range. losing the 60 int from the weapons lowers your mana pool, so when you’re at 90% with the cutters, that’s about your normal full mana pool, no need to ride it all the way to 100%.
Assuming your raid maintains a max range requirement for ranged (to help avoid unnecessary ticks of mark of the faceless), this would mean either a fair bit of running in and out, or a blown disengage cooldown and a bit of running. Also, the mark of the faceless only avoids melee if there’s sufficient people at range. If running in brings the number of people outside 15 yards down below that threshold, the mark will begin to hit melee (and the tank).
In our raids (we do hard mode) we usually have all of our ranged getting all of the shadow crashes, we have 2 groups which stand at the outer edge of each side of the crash pool, when a new crash or a mark targets one of the groups the other group is far enough away that they don’t have to move. Mages, Warlocks, and Hunters are quick enough to get out without Mark causing any damage, our priests and boomkins usually before 2 ticks.
One thing to make note of as well, the daze component of Aspect of the Pack does not trigger from any of the relevant damage on this fight, and the 30% run speed is great for avoiding crashes, letting your boomkin and spriests get out just a bit quicker. This is not an ideal fight for hunters by any stretch of the imagination, they gain less from the haste and magical damage buff than any other class, droping dragonhawk for pack does provide a nice bit of raid utility at a bit of a sacrifice.
I’d like to point out that each shot in viper restores a percentage of TOTAL mana, not base mana, while shots cost a percentage of BASE mana. So it’s wrong to say that a Chimera in viper costs 9% of base mana, because it doesn’t. Chimera shot costs 606 mana at level 80. A typical raiding hunter has about 11k mana, making viper return (using a 3.0 speed weapon) 3% of 11k, which is about 330 mana. This is roughly half of chimera cost, not 3/4 as u said. Please correct this.
I was assuming that the wowwiki article on this was correct- I have never measured the mana from a single shot. Until I see some numbers, I’m going to hold off on the edit.
A hunter’s base mana is 5046. Using that formula, the amount returned by viper is nowhere near the 300+ mana returned per shot that you should see in-game.
Verified- I’ll go and edit this.
Matt, we’re doing hard mode as well. Haven’t used the AoPack method, but I will tonight. I’m interested to see how it helps the party avoid ShadCrash vs impacting my DPS. Although, if the casters can spend more time with 100% damage, that might be better for the raid overall.
I’d imagine a combination of AoPack and Disengage would make this fight more interesting and challenging for hunters.
I think an arms warrior stole your bow/gun at some point…right?
P.S Saw the WWS at the top :p
Naw, I choose to mock arms warriors because every single arms warrior I know is passionate about the equality (or superiority) of their niche class/spec, and gibes at their expense are just fun.
It’s kind of like making fun of Belgians or Newfies- nobody actually means what they say about them, but the jokes are funny.
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