ZG - Sept 15. We came, We Saw, We....

[Warcaster]

...got pwnd!

Well, barely. Took us a bit but I think we finally have the formula to take down Venoxis. On our second to last attempt we got him down to 8%. I think our main problem was lack of ranged DPS. That and we need to execute a little better.

<brief explanation>
For those of you from HE, AAF, and CC, it's my custom to post a long-winded write-up of the previous day's major encounters. I normally do this on the HLS listserv but, hey, what the heck? Why shield our sister guilds from the verbosity that is Warcaster! ;)
</brief explanation>

This boss is tricky. He's got 26,200HP so just that alone would take some time to burn down. He's also go 4 60-elite snakes for bodyguards that have to be dealt with.

What worked best for us was to give Darkkwing a dedicated healer and have him pull Venoxis down to the main floor and tank him by the bonfire. Everyone else is on the 4 guards. With two druids sleeping and my sheep we were able to keep from fighting more than two at once. They burn down pretty quick with that much focused fire.

When the bodyguards are gone we switched over to Venoxis. The first part of the fight is your standard tank/dps variety. When he gets down to about 45% health (some of the guides said 55% but he was lower each time I saw the transformation) he goes into this snake form that is just insanely nasty. He emits this green cloud of AE damage that drops players like bugs to a can of Raid. Fortunately it's static and you can move him out of it. At some point in the fight Venoxis goes beserk and starts whacking on the ranged DPS. I don't know if he's scripted to drop tank aggro like some of the MC bosses or if it's just because the ranged DPS is finally moving up on his hate list. Either way, it hurts. I'm leaning towards thinking the ranged DPS is blasting him off the tanks since in almost every case he came after me first. Although, on the very last fight I completely stopped nuking him after he switched forms and he still came straight to me. The first time he killed me I got hit for 5,600 in one shot. Since I only have 4,100HP with MoW, Fort, AND the imp buff no amount of healing, potions, or health stones was going to save me. He then goes around to all the DPSers and does the same thing. An he's fast! He went all the way across the courtyard before I could pop a mana shield. Sol also said he was out of range before he could get a taunt off. Once the DPS was down it was only a matter of time. Just for illustration, check out the following pictures:

http://www.maassfamily.net/wow/screenshots/zg_warcaster_01.jpg
http://www.maassfamily.net/wow/screenshots/zg_warcaster_02.jpg

Note the red and green numbers up by my portrait. The red is the incoming DPS I took at the time of death.

We never did finish him off but I think we now know the basic tactics that will work.

After we ported back to org we were discussing it a bit more over Vent. Sol had a great idea we should try next time. Because Venoxis moves so fast and got out of range before Sol could taunt, he suggested keeping a warrior in with ranged DPS to pick him up when he goes for the casters.

In addition to his frightful damage to cloth and leather wearers, the green AE cloud was a major source of problems for the melee classes. It's very similar to the disease cloud from the plauged ghouls in Scholo but MUCH more intense. There is a short cast animation just before he spews it but most people weren't picking it up. Heck, even when I was dead and had nothing to do but watch the fight it was still hard to see coming. As a result we had people standing in the cloud too long and dying very quickly. For this portion of the fight the tanks are standing toe-to-toe with him and keeping him stationary, then moving when someone calls out that the cloud has been cast. Here I'm wondering how feasible it is for the tanks to keep him moving throughout the fight. Maybe work him in a big counter-clockwise circle around the bonfire? I'm woefully ignorant of the mechanics of a tank's stance dance so I'm not sure if that's possible. If we can, it would ensure that no one was in the cloud for more than a second or two.

Anyway, I thought the instance went pretty well up to Venoxis. And, heck, I even had fun fighting him despite the wipes. We had 2 druids, 1 priest, and 3 shaman. Being the sole mage and sole priest was a little rough on the ol' reagent supplies and mana since we each had four groups to buff after each wipe. The cost is trivial but at 3400mana/buff and the fact I went through 30 arcane powder means I spent 102,000 mana just on buffs. That's a lot of butt-time. We could have used one more priest and either more rogues or mages. The warlocks CoE and CoS helped a lot, too. As did the new 16-slot debuff change in 1.7. Oh, and Rawz' repair bot was sorely needed so thanks for bringing one!

GG, though. We'll get him next time.

[Muddus]

Here is my take.

DW gets really really really high on his hate list to the point where he is not dropping off until he is dead. Once DW is dead, the boss hits the next on his list, which is going to probably be the mage(s), because we were doing all ranged DPS. He pretty much one shots every DPS class, he was hitting me for over 5k each time he hit me.

I'm trying to figure out what happened exactly, he either really starts to lay down the hate in snake form or our main healer on DW was /oom (I'm thinking oom, but I'm not sure until Duer tells me). Two things happen really quickly. The MT doesn't slowly die. The healers get behind on him (again I think this was a mana issue, but I didn't hear anything on vent, so didn't really change the way I was healing DW), and then once he's under half health it's pretty much over for the MT. Once our MT goes down (which always seemed abrupt), he moves really fast, to the point where I don't think the second tank has teh ability to taunt, and he starts to go through his hate list. Mage, rogues, healers, etc. The healers were basically just trying to keep the tanks up at that point, and without dps no amount of tank healing is going to save us.

So as I was logging off, we were discussing planting a tank by the casters to taunt. I think that would pretty much solve the problem. IMO when this happens 1 of 2 things need to happen. The tank either needs to move him back to the fire or the ranged heals and dps need to move there so we don't scatter and the tanks end up chasing him around. I got all fired up to share what I had to say that I see this duplicates what War said. :)

Last thought that was brought up, is we may need to do a healer rotation the MT and second tank. That probably solves the healing issue if Duer was going oom.

I think the next time we beat him np.

[Potpie]

How about 2 MT Taunt-Pong?

2 tanks, keeping him by the bonfire, constantly trading Taunts on him.

[Myrcaus]

I could be completely wrong here, too, but I think we might have just had a bad class mix. We had LOTS of tanks and a good number of healers, which is awesome, but that fight seems to come down to damage.

We're really close to it, and I look forward to a couple months from now when we go in a squish him like the worthless insect he is on our way to bigger and better things.

HPV is now my Official Bitch! Let's show him what that means. King Gordok knows!

[Unka]

I think that 26,200 number is WAY incorrect. When the 4 snakes go down, I'm at about 3/4 mana and I start unloading on him. My nukes hit for anything from about 550 to 1500. I do this til I'm oom, and then start burning down my imp which, by the time I do it twice, almost gives me another full mana bar. I counted up hits after that time we got him to 8% and I'd done around 14,000 damage all by myself, and I know Warcaster, Myrc, and probably a few others certainly did more damage than I did. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that 26,200 was supposed to be 262,000 or so.

Unk

[Myrcaus]

I have to agree, 26K sounds WAY too low. Then again, he heals himself constantly during the fight... so... IDK.

I still have my DMeter up from last night, I'll check total damage from all players. That will give us some idea of how much damage we did in ZG overall. 26K is only 5x more than a Strat trash mob, though, and ... just sounds low.

[Duerdon]

Well regardless of the outcome, I had a freaking blast (as usual with this crew)! I know my reagent/repair bill isn't as bad as some, but I'd rather pay some gold after dying than loose an incredible amount of xp...such as the case in EQ. A tad off topic, but before I left I held the body count in Fear for my guild...sure it was fun learning to pull the zone as a dr00d, but I ended up loosing over half a lvl that night alone, even after the good xp saving rez's. There's no group of people I'd rather be laying next to, watching Death steal my wallet, than you guys! I'd rather make up the money than xp.

Anyway, back on topic :) I think a problem with last night was the lack of ranged DPS as well. Our tactics were great, and with what we had for make up I think we rocked out. Another mage and I think we could have taken him down.

I like the idea of having a tank in the caster group for quick taunt once (and if) the MT goes down and he starts wailing on the casters. I'm all for trying the ping pong method using two tanks as well. I like experimentation though so 8 mages, some healing, and 2/3 tanks sound like fun to me to heh heh. :D

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with Unka that maybe there is a typo with his hp's or something 'cause there was some good damage going at him the whole time and it was still a somewhat long fight. I doubt he's that resistive to all the stuff we were throwing at him either. Then again, I'm not possitive since my attention was solely on keeping people alive. :)

[Warcaster]

I agree it seemed really low. I'm going off the numbers CTMod reports on the portrait (see my screenshots for reference.) I was getting loads of non-crit hits for over 1,000 dmg. At that rate with only 26k HP I should have been able to nuke him down by myself with 1 tank and a 1 healer. So there's obviously more to the story than that.

[Potpie]

I a mod that tries to determine actual hit point numbers and overlays them (current/total) on the hit point bar. It's not 100% accurate, but its accuracy improves the more you fight the same mob or mob type.

He's got more like two hundred sixty thousand hit points.

[Muddus]

I have 1 concern for a ping pong method and that is, it would now require the healers to heal 2 tanks and the issues that coule pop up with trying to have 2 tanks ping poing AND move out of the cloud as needed.

Maybe it's not a big deal, but I thought I'd throw that out there.

[Kul]

Ping ponging worked ok, but it needs to be delayed till about 60% of his health. Thats due to his holy damage. When we first him, that SoB cast a spell that radiated to all ppl near him which increases damage with each chain jump...I had ~5300 health and I dropped like a rock (and 1/2 the group) from his holy spell chain lightening effect. So we did the right thing keeping one man on him during the first phase. To limit the effect of him and to build aggro for tank #2, tank 2 should move into melee range near 60% to start building aggro. It's still a difficult process when the ranged built more hate while the next tank waits to do damage and sheild slams for hate generation. Tank 3 should remain in front of the dps group and hit bloodrage soon as that beast races for them to fire his/her taunt....allowing tank 2 or 1 to regain control of him soon as they enter range again.

The rogues should move in soon as he changes shape with hit and run tactics. In regards to the poison, we really have to keep an eye and become familar with the cast animation...as a tank its gonna be hard to run away from it when you retain aggro due to proximity. One step in the goo and you are afflicted for despite how long you stand in the cloud for 7-12 secs with high damage posion. At the animation we need to hamstring him and run if it'll take effect. Prior to our next run, stock up on nature resist potions and I think we'll be fine.

Disarm works on him but he will resist stun, and Im sure he'll resist frost nova or root too boot.

[Myrkris]

That "26,200" is over his mana bar, so why do you think it has anything to do with hit points? I'm not familiar with the mod, but it would be rather stupid to code it to display HP over the mana bar like that.

On the more important issue, killing this mo-fo...

We were chatting about it on IRC this morning, and I think the tank-pong idea is the way to go. The issue Mud raises - spreading the damage out - really isn't a big issue (I'll cover that second). The advantage of tank-ponging him is that the #2 PC on his hate list will then be the other MT that's sitting right next to him, not a DPS or healer-type. That should keep him from running through the ranks of the squishies and killing several of them before a tank can regain aggro. If we can keep him away from the casters, we have enough dps to take him down and should have enough healing to keep the tanks up.

I don't think spreading the damage out is quite as big a deal as it is in other fights. For one thing, it's already happening due to the poison cloud. As long as we've got a bunch of warriors and rogues sitting on top of him meleeing him while he's in snake form, we're having to heal more than one melee anyway.

From a healing point of view, it may actually work out better since it'll be harder for HPV to beat down one of the tanks if he's switching targets constantly. That may give us that 1 second we need for a heal to land after a big damage spike.

On the down side, it'll require us to coordinate healing more tightly, but we need to do that anyway. I think it's safe to say we weren't doing a very efficient job of healing DW. We kept him up for quite a while, but only by stepping all over each other's heals. This ran our healers unnecessarily OOM. If we can coordinate better so that we've got 2 healers on each primary tank (assuming a ping-pong) and one more keeping every other melee up, we should be able to keep 2 or so out of the rotation and regenning mana. That'll both reduce the waste of mana and allow us to fight a longer fight.

Having the second tank among the casters is helpful, but will still be likely to lead to several deaths. He moves so fast and hits so hard that he can drop a cloth wearer basically instantly. If the tank isn't able to taunt right away due to facing or lag, we can easily lose 2-3 clothies. Even if the tank taunts, my (admittedly limited) understanding is that taunt isn't guaranteed, and if it fails we're fucked. Even if the tank reacts right away and taunt succeeds, HPV will still kill at least one clothie, and if he AEs while in the pack several may die before they get out of the cloud. I think relying on this is basically relying on us keeping the MT up, since the downside of letting HPV loose among the casters is so huge.

What I suggest is that we plan on tank-ponging him, but keep the #3 and maybe even #4 tanks out of the fight and back with the clothies. If our MT goes down, #3 can then charge in to get aggro while HPV switches to #2 and the healers for MT switch to #3.

[Myrcaus]

He had to two-shot me once! 4560 < 4585! HP for the win.

But yah. I like all your ideas. If we lose all the DPS players we're fkd. So... I think keeping the MT up is pretty critical. Healing Rotation? And if we lose him we have to make sure HPV goes for another plate wearer, since if he pongs the casters it's game over.

We're close on this guy. He will be pwnt!

[Beagle]

AOE taunt from the #3 or #4 tank might help (if it works) to catch and distract him before he hits the cloth folk too.

[Warcaster]

OMG -- I WAS looking at the mana bar -- visual acuity FTL! :(

[Sol]

AOE taunt from the #3 or #4 tank might help (if it works) to catch and distract him before he hits the cloth folk too.

Good idea fer sure, just need to have 15 rage to cast it. Which can be overcome if you pop bloodrage when it looks like our MT may go down.

Taunt is instant, but can be resisted!

For the green cloud -- (that really kills tanks and rogues) i was thinking we may need to just always be moving him. whoever is MT and has aggro needs to just be constantly backing up and keeping aggro so that you are never in the poison cloud. Do a circle around that bonfire for instance. I'm definitely capable of keeping aggro on this guy, although DW will have an easier time of it since he probably has defiance (+ % aggro per swing) + DW probably has improved taunt (cooldown shortened).

all of this failing? we can use multiple Soulstones, multiple combat rezzes on DPS, and a healing rotation to win this fight!!

gg last night, i have never enjoyed wiping as much as i did last night. :)

[Myrkris]

Unka suggested an out-of-combat rezzer on spamlist. Good idea, we might have to try it if the stuff we're currently working on still doesn't allow us to kill him. He will die, oh yes, he WILL die...

[Kul]

Almost forgot, shamans have a totem for nature resistance or cleansing right? I saw a few shamans run in for totem drops, much appreciated, but didnt really get to observe which ones were being placed. And if we can have a druid conserve x% of their mana for battle rez would be another perk...if we can last that long without their wonderful healing touch.

And dont forget the nature resistant/absorbant drinks we can buy on the AH.

[Myrkris]

Almost forgot, shamans have a totem for nature resistance or cleansing right? I saw a few shamans run in for totem drops, much appreciated, but didnt really get to observe which ones were being placed. And if we can have a druid conserve x% of their mana for battle rez would be another perk...if we can last that long without their wonderful healing touch.

And dont forget the nature resistant/absorbant drinks we can buy on the AH.

I was dropping poison cleansing and stoneskin, since those seemed most useful. I could switch poison cleansing to nature resistance if that was what you wanted, but the same shaman can't do both of those.

A druid can do a battle rez while remaining in combat, but they can only do one per 30 min or so. A shaman or priest can rez as many as they want, as long as they are never considered in combat. I was understanding the suggestion as having a shaman do it, so we can bring several people back if necessary. That said, soulstones and druid rez are also things we should consider working more thoroughly into our plans.

[Jabber]

I did reset my damage meter when we fought him down to 8% and we were well over 26k, but I didnt do the math exactly. Im thinking that we need to concentrate more on a 1 MT tatic. I honestly thin that he moves way to fast to any other tank to obtain decent agro if DW dies beause us casters have already generated more threat from our constant casting (rogues too) I think we need to go more like DW tanks and 2-3 healers watch him -- 1 heals him when he needs it in "humnaoid" form and the other saves mana till he goes snake. Then the second healer spams heals like crazy and the first healer rotates out and a new healer gets realy.. need to work a 3 man rotation so that we always have a healer with alot of mana. If we cna keep DW up I doubt he would ever break agro -- dince DW had been beating on him the whole time. The whole battle resides in him never dropping tank agro, cause Like I said, once he does us DPS classes are already dead. What do you guys think?

[Potpie]

I was popping in to drop Str, Agi, and Poison Cleansing.

A couple of times on snake pulls I dropped a Nature Resistance instead of Agi (both are on Air totem) to see what it was like, but I think the Poison Cleansing took care of it OK.

On Venoxis, perhaps yes, lots of Magic Resistance in general for that rat bastard.

[Jabber]

He doesnt range AE once hes a snake, so maybe 2 druids to start (since the chance of getting hit with his "chain lightning" AE exists) because of the higher HP and AC they stand a better chance, then we move the priest within range once hes a snake?

[Myrkris]

I did reset my damage meter when we fought him down to 8% and we were well over 26k, but I didnt do the math exactly. Im thinking that we need to concentrate more on a 1 MT tatic. I honestly thin that he moves way to fast to any other tank to obtain decent agro if DW dies beause us casters have already generated more threat from our constant casting (rogues too) I think we need to go more like DW tanks and 2-3 healers watch him -- 1 heals him when he needs it in "humnaoid" form and the other saves mana till he goes snake. Then the second healer spams heals like crazy and the first healer rotates out and a new healer gets realy.. need to work a 3 man rotation so that we always have a healer with alot of mana. If we cna keep DW up I doubt he would ever break agro -- dince DW had been beating on him the whole time. The whole battle resides in him never dropping tank agro, cause Like I said, once he does us DPS classes are already dead. What do you guys think?

A successful taunt puts the warrior at the top of the hate list, regardless of how much other damage was done to the mob in the meantime. It's probably easier to take advantage of that than it is to guarantee that a bad damage spike won't take down our MT sooner or later.

[Myrkris]

He doesnt range AE once hes a snake, so maybe 2 druids to start (since the chance of getting hit with his "chain lightning" AE exists) because of the higher HP and AC they stand a better chance, then we move the priest within range once hes a snake?

No healer with proper distance will get hit with his AE, I certainly didn't unless I went in to drop a totem.

[Muddus]

I did reset my damage meter when we fought him down to 8% and we were well over 26k, but I didnt do the math exactly. Im thinking that we need to concentrate more on a 1 MT tatic. I honestly thin that he moves way to fast to any other tank to obtain decent agro if DW dies beause us casters have already generated more threat from our constant casting (rogues too) I think we need to go more like DW tanks and 2-3 healers watch him -- 1 heals him when he needs it in "humnaoid" form and the other saves mana till he goes snake. Then the second healer spams heals like crazy and the first healer rotates out and a new healer gets realy.. need to work a 3 man rotation so that we always have a healer with alot of mana. If we cna keep DW up I doubt he would ever break agro -- dince DW had been beating on him the whole time. The whole battle resides in him never dropping tank agro, cause Like I said, once he does us DPS classes are already dead. What do you guys think?

I think that makes a lot of sense. I think I agree having 2 tanks trying to grab agg doesn't put them both at the top of his agg list. If I were to guess I'd say the healer or the highest DPS guys is going to be second. I'm pretty sure you are just splitting up the amount instead of ensuring the tanks hold the top 2 spots.

[Muddus]

No healer with proper distance will get hit with his AE, I certainly didn't unless I went in to drop a totem.

Yep, the first time we fought him I had to go up the stairs to heal because I didn't have line of sight (both duer and I did) and as a druid with more HP and armor meant nothing because the AOE hit me for well over 5k.

[Kul]

Could create a camp fire for increased spirit. If the caster cancels his target he should go in passive mode in a few seconfs to use the +spirit camp fire perk and the mage juice.

About the shamans...if we can have 2-3 shamans dedicated to x totem I think we got it. Great tips all around.

[Darkkwing]

First of all the bonfire was great. Second of all I lacked two key items and an hunter using Aspect of the Wild (20+60 = Fair without druid buffs of course). Of course one was from M and the other one is from DM Tribute Run. Another idea is give each Tank's 2-4 Greater Nature Resistance potions. So this way we have 1.9k-3k damage shaved off. Of course drink one before pull and than drink after first Poison cloud lands. This will nullfy some damage and survive the first two Poison clouds.


Once we do get this downpat we got the bloodlord and an priest left than the other side before finishing off Hakkar.