Vashj Phase 2 Tips (From a DPS Perspective)

Last night my raid went back to Serpentshrine Cavern to get Vashj's vial for a few more raiders. It took us one wipe to get back into the swing of things, which got me thinking about all the complexity involved in learning the Vashj fight. I thought I'd share a few tips and one handy map that helped convert SSC to farm status for my raid.

Vashj's second phase is really the worst, because you've got to have people handling enchanted elementals and tainted elemental spawns, tanks picking up elite naga, dpsers kiting coilfang striders, and healers healing everyone through all that chaos plus Vashj's forked lightning.

You can cut down on the initial chaos by making sure everyone in your raid doesn't just know strats (you have read the strategies on Bosskillers and MMO-Champion already, right?), but has also taken a look at a map or video of the fight and knows where they should be standing in phase 2.

Work out your positioning ahead of time, especially for the elemental dpsers. There are a lot of labeled maps for phase 2 out there, but most of them are pretty vague and just divide the elemental sides into four areas.

Our favorite map is the one below, by Starslayer of the guild Stack and Die. It not only labels the north, south, east and west sides of Vashj's platform, but it also shows every spawn point for the elementals. This lets you assign your elemental dps to specific spawn points (ie, South side, spawns B & C) instead of just a vague area. Be sure to assign less mana-dependent dpsers (hunters are great for this) to cover areas that have an additional elemental spawn.


Once you have your positioning worked out, it's also worthwhile to remind everyone that healing becomes even more complex than usual in the Vashj fight since the healers will also be the go-to people for tossing tainted cores to eliminate Vashj's four shield generators. This is one of those fights where it's critical that everyone make not dying their number one priority - it's a dps race, and it's unlikely you're going to have the druid mana for more than one or two rebirths.

Everyone needs to do their utmost not to die here: squishy folk should use pots, healthstones, and above all stay out of the way of striders and naga. Be aware that naga cleave and sometimes take a few seconds to get picked up, and avoid standing at the very edge of the outer ring where a newly-spawned naga could one-shot you into oblivion.

Once you've looted the fourth tainted core (and tossed it to the final receiver using your tainted core macro*), hold off on dropping the fourth generator for a second and assess your situation.

How are you looking on striders? One or more coilfang striders up at the start of phase three can really undermine your transition. If you can, finish off any remaining striders below half-health, switch your dps to any existing nagas, and use your timers to deactivate the final generator right before any more adds spawn. This way, you'll be spending most of your time in phase three killing Vashj, and not dealing leftover adds.

Of course, if you've got that kind of coordination going on at the very end of phase two, you're well on your way to beating Vashj anyway. Good luck!
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*You do have a macro for tossing tainted cores, don't you? The usual one is:
/use tainted core /y <-------TAINTED CORE TO %T /ra <------ TAINTED CORE TO %T /script SendChatMessage("YOU HAVE THE CORE!!!", "WHISPER", "common", UnitName("target"));

Lady Vashj Swims With the Fishes

Much celebration last night as my raid took down Vashj for the first time. If you've never fought her before, the final boss of Serpentshrine is not a nice lady. Just look at those fangs!

She takes 10+ hours of concerted learning wipes for your average raiding guild, which for us (splitting our time between TK and SSC, with some attendance issues to boot) meant we've been working on her for over a month.

Why so long, you ask? Lady Vashj is a major test of raid coordination. Her second phase requires you simultaneously to tank incoming elite nagas, manage AOE-fearing fen striders who will one-shot the casters in charge of kiting and killing them, kill elementals constantly spawning from over a dozen locations around the room, and play an ultimate frisbee-esque minigame of killing, looting, and tossing drops from "tainted elementals" in order to disable her protective shield and move the fight into the final phase.

If practically anyone dies before you take out her shield generators, you're toast, but either way, a lot of people are likely to die soon after. Once you move into phase three, Vashj calls forth a small army of toxic spore bats which drop poison clouds. If you don't take her down quickly, they'll soon blanket the platform on which you fight her.

Above all, taking down Vashj requires good coordination and lots and lots of practice. I'm proud to say we've finally beaten her. Now it's on to Kael!

I Was Wrong, Leotheras Dies

I have to apologize. Remember how I said on Tuesday that I didn't feel like my Serpentshrine raid was really getting the hang of Leotheras? Well, we went back into SSC last night and kicked the everlovin' demonic pants off him on our second try.

Semi-hardcore Raiding is Kicking My Ass (and Eating Up My Gold Supply)

Oh, the perils of semi-hardcore raiding. The WoW boards and Elitist Jerks threads are full of the woes of guilds such as mine, which is "not a raiding guild, but a guild that does raids." I love my guildies, and after two years with them, I wouldn't trade them for anyone, but it can still be frustrating as hell to spend a second full evening on Leotheras and still not feel like we've really got a handle on the fight. We've had 13% wipes, 8% wipes, and even a 3%, but cranking out the dps high enough while still keeping our damage under a tight leash during the aggro transitions is a hell of a task to accomplish when you're teaching several new people the fight every week. Hopefully it'll come together soon; we've still got miles to go before Illidan sleeps.

In other news, I started a blog today.