Healing General Vezax

Finally got the General down this weekend, once we took our heads out of our collective backsides and got smart about it. I'm not going to cover the mechanics of the fight per-se, but I will cover what we tried a few times before we finally got the hang of it. I won't lie, I made the most pathetic sound when I realized Illumination didn't return mana on this fight. Imagine a puppy being kicked. It was like that, but more sad and pathetic (especially since I'm not a small man).

Raid composition

Tank - DK
Healers - Disc Priest, Paladin, Tree
DPS - 2xRogue (interrupts were huge), Retadin, 2xSpriest, Kitty Druid

Pull One

DK tank runs in and it's off we go. We'd already decided that we weren't going to kite/run during his Surge of Darkness buff - instead doubling up on DK/healer cool downs. Between Icebound Fortitude and Pain Suppression/Hand of Sacrifice, the damage was definately manageable.

Why this pull failed

1) Range checker either lied, or the Mark of the Faceless debuff has a range greater than 10yds. Since both the person with the debuff and the person who died swore they were out of range, we dialed up the range checker a notch. Problem solved.

2) Stacking in the Saronite Vapors led to increased Shadow Crashes on the casters/healers. We put the feral druid on killing the crystals, and rotated one healer and one dpser a time through the cloud. Problem pending.

Pull Two

Same thing but with less suckage.

Why this pull failed

1) Rogue missed a kick and the tank got insta-gibbed. Kick harder. Problem solved.

Pull Three

This time we decided to get creative, as if somehow Blizzard hadn't thought of these things. We figured that since the melee don't get the Shadow Crash or the Mark of the Faceless, we would just have everyone stand on the melee.

Why this pull failed

1) Blizzard > us. The whole melee group was Shadow Crashed within 5 seconds. Put the ranged back at range and try again. Problem solved.

Pull Four

On this pull I decided to whip out my Sheathadin spec (I'll post on this spec later). Basically this spec is deep ret and gives me access to Judgements of the Wise and Sheath of Light. The theory was I could stand in melee, get my mana back, and still heal.

Why this pull failed

1) The ret pally, while confirming that JoTW was giving him the full mana return, failed to actually read the tooltip of his debuff. Short version, you get your mana back, but your heals are cut to 20%. Imagine my horror when I saw my HL crit for 3k. I spent the next 15 minutes running around trying to see if the debuff was a range or event debuff (it's event based, or the range is over 9000). Spec back to Holy or get creative. Problem pending.

2) This probably would have worked anyway, except I failed to put my healing buttons back in the right spot. This was my ret spec setup, so HoS and HoF were flipped (really, how often do you HoS as ret?). So while the tank was free to move around the cabin, he got squished instead. Move buttons. Problem solved.

Final pull

I stayed sheathadin, the other casters went ranged, and our rogues kicked thier tails off.

/profit

Conclusion

I still think I will need to either go back to either 51/0/20 or 51/20/0 (or some variation) for this fight. 3k HL crits aren't going to get it done in 25 man. The other option would be to go full Ret. More DPS = faster kill = less mana needed by the healers.

On to Sara now. I hate her screams.