Lady Vashj Strategy Guide

Raid Setup
Tanks: 2
Healers: 8
DPS : 15 ( About 4 melee , 10 ranged, and 1 kiter: Affliction Warlock / Frost Mage / Hunter)

Buffs, Pots and Gear
All standard buffs, potions or flasks.

No special gear requirements.


Boss Abilities

Health - 4,500,000

Melee Hit - About 3k on plate.

Shock Burst
Randomly used in Phases 1 and 3 on Vashj's target, it's a Shock spell doing 8325-9675 nature damage and stunning the target for 5 seconds, during which she will not attack her target but switch to the next person on the aggro list.

Static Charge
Used on random people (only 1 person at any given time) in Phases 1 and 3, it's a debuff doing 2775 to 3225 Nature damage to the target and everybody in about 5 yards around it, every 1 seconds for 30 seconds. It can be removed by Cloak of Shadows, Iceblock, Divine Shield, etc, but not by Cleanse or Dispel Magic.

Entangle
Used in Phases 1 and 3, it casts Entangling Roots on everybody in a 15 yard radius of Vashj, immobilzing them for 10 seconds and dealing 500 damage every 2 seconds. It's not a magic effect so it cannot be dispelled, but is removed by various buffs such as Cloak of Shadows or Blessing of Freedom.

Multishot
Used in Phases 1 and 3 after Entangle or while having nobody in melee range. A shot that hits 1 person and 4 people around him for 6475-7525 physical damage.

Shoot
Used in Phases 1 and 3 after Entangle or while having nobody in melee range. A shot that hits her target for 4097-5543 Physical damage.

Forked Lightning
Used constantly in Phase 2, it shoots out completely randomly targeted bolts of lightning which hit everybody in a roughtly 60 degree cone in front of Vashj for 2313-2687 nature damage.

Toxic Spores
Used in Phase 3 by the Spore Bats, it creates a contaminated green patch of ground, dealing about 2775-3225 nature damage every second to anyone who stands in it.


Strategy

Phase 1


Everybody gathers at the buff spot, usually the entrance.

Lady Vashj positions in Phase 1


The MT runs in and grabs aggro. Healers must pre-cast on the MT as he's pulling, because he's going to take a lot of damage from the moment he aggroes.

As the tank is moving in, everyone spreads around their Phase 1 Group Positions, around Vashj on top of the stairs, and DPS on Vashj can begin.

Soon after the start, she will cast Static Charge on a random person. If that person is in the outer ring, he needs to walk back a few yards. BigWigs or any such addon will automatically put a skull over him for easier spotting. He needs to be healed by nearby healers.

If the Static Charge is cast on Melee DPS, that person either moves to an empty part of the inner ring, with everyone else staying away from him, or he moves all the way to the outer ring and waits there till the effect is over. Use whichever is best in the given situation or to your preference.

If the Main Tank gets the Static Charge, he moves to the middle and Melee DPS stays away from him till the debuff is over, or the Offtank Taunts Vashj off him, and he moves either to an empty part of the inner ring, or through to the outer ring.

Whenever Vashj casts Shock Blast on the MT, she will deaggro him and move to the Offtank which needs to take over for the stun's duration.

After some time in the fight she'll use Entangle. Whenever she does that, she moves to the edge of the inner ring and begins to use her bow and alternatively Multishot and Shoot. The moment she does this, a paladin must use Blessing of Freedom on the Main Tank so he can run in and grab her quickly. For best effect you might try to set up a Blessing of Freedom rotation and have it constantly on him, but having just 1 paladin do it on demand has virtually the same effect.

The fight goes on like that until Vashj is at 70%.

The main goal of Phase 1 is keeping everybody alive through it. If one person dies and he cannot be resurrected, it's a wipe for many reasons and you'll have to start all over.

Phase 2


Phase 2 begins when Vashj hits 70%. She will run to the middle of her platform and surround herself in a shield making her invulerable. To take down the shield you must deactivate the 4 Shield Generators around her, by using a Tainted Core on each of them. The Tainted Cores are dropped by Tainted Elementals.


When Phase 2 begins, everybody takes their Phase 2 Positions. There should be roughly 3 people on each side of the stairs - North, West, East and South: 2 DPS and 1 Healer.

The Main Tank and Offtank stay in the centre, waiting to grab the Coilfang Elites that will spawn later.

The remaining Ranged DPS stays in the centre together with the Main Tank and Offtank.

At the beginning of the phase, Enchanted Elementals will start spawning from all sides of the stairs. They have 7,600 Life each. The 2 DPS/1 Healer group on that side (N/S/W/E) need to kill the elementals there. If one of them reaches Vashj he will increase her damage done by 5%. Needless to say, if 1 or 2 reach Vashj it's a wipe as her damage will be too high in Phase 3. Also, if 1 or 2 people die, and they cannot be resurrected, it's a wipe because you'll get overrun.

Vashj will constantly use her Forked Lightning spells, hitting people in a 60 degree arc in random directions. Nothing can be done about this damage except simply healing it up. It is not affected by range or line of sight.

About every 45 seconds into the fight a Coilfang Elite will spawn. It's an elite Naga mob with 170,000 HP. It does about 5000 damage on plate, and has a nasty cleave hitting for about 7500 damage. The mob needs to be announced on Ventrillo/Teamspeak, grabbed by the tank, and moved to the inner circle. The ranged DPS in the inner circle start DPSing the Elite as soon as the tank has aggro: the sooner, the better. A new Elite will spawn somewhere in the room after another 45 seconds.

Lady Vashj channellingAbout every 60-70 seconds into the fight, a Coilfang Strider will spawn. It's an elite mob also with 170,000 HP. It hits plate for about 8000 damage, has a Mind Blast spell doing about 3000 shadow damage, and a Psychic Scream Aura, which fears everybody in a 8 yard range of it every 2-3 seconds , for 5 seconds and increasing their movement speed by 150% during the fear.

Naturally, this mob cannot be tanked. It needs to be kited by either the Affliction Warlock, the Frost Mage, or the Hunter, whichever works best for you. The mob needs to be kited along the centre of the outer ring. 2-3 seconds after the Kiter has landed a spell or hit on him, all warlocks and priests must put a DoT on him and then return to their other assignemnts. If you're assigned to healing the Elemental groups, wait till the Strider comes near you and then DoT him. Shamans should use Flame Shock, hunters Serepnt Sting. After the DoT are placed, the mob keeps getting kited around the circle. Ideally, it will lose over 70 or 80 percent of it's health to the DoTs.

The Strider is affected by snares and stuns like Slow, Frostbolt, Curse of Exhaustion, Hammer of Justice and such. It is useful for a mage to keep a Frostbolt slowing effect on it at all times.

Also on roughly every 50 seconds a Tainted Elemental will spawn instead of an Enchanted Elemental. This mob has 7,900 life, doesn't move, and shoots Poison Bolts at one person anywhere in the area, doing 3,000 nature damage and placing a posion doing 2,000 damage every 2 seconds. He will switch targets often, or sometimes just hang on a single player, but there is nothing you can do about it except heal the damage and kill the Tainted Elemental, which is a high priority. The people in that section of the stairs need to abandon all other elementals and kill the Tainted Elemental as fast as possible. If not killed within 10-15 seconds it will despawn. If a Tainted Elemental despawns, it will respawn roughly another 10-15 seconds after on another side of the stairs, or maybe even the same one. If a Tainted Elemental despawns more than twice, abort the fight: it's a wipe because you will get overrun by the extra Striders and Elites that will spawn while you wait for the next elemental respawn.

After the Tainted Elemental is dead, one person on that side needs to loot the Tainted Core. This item is picked up in your inventory and is a green ball, which also makes you immobile when you have it. You can throw it to someone in about 40-60 yards from you and is in your line of sight. Typically that person would be someone in your group who is standing on the top edge of the stairs. After you've thrown it to him, you need to throw it to someone near the Shield Generators, after which that person will use it on the Shield Generator and deactivate it. If the Generators on your side are already off, you will need to throw it to a person, who will then throw it to another person to the other side.

A popular way of handling the Tainted Cores is to have people from Group 5, or the tank group, place 4 people near the Shield Generators and have the elemental group healers stand on top of the stairs, so that the Tainted Core can be passed like this:

DPS -> Healer -> Shield Generator Guy

However you choose to handle the Tainted Cores, you will need good use of voice comms to coordinate it.

For every Shield Generator you switch off, Vashj will lose 5% of her health.

The phase ends when the 4 generators are down at Vashj is at 50% health.

Lady Vashj close up

Phase 3


When the phase starts, you will normally have 1 Elite and 1 Strider alive, which need to be dealt with. As soon as Vashj is free of her shield (which happens instantly) the Main Tank needs to grab her.

Phase 3 is effectively Phase 1 but with 1 difference: Spore Bats.

The Spore Bats fly in high above the entrance and will circle around the platform. Every now and then, each bat spits Toxic Spores at a randomly targetted player which contaminate the ground he is standing on, dealing about 1500 damage per second to anyone on it. You have about 2 seconds to get out of the spot after it's created before it will start doing damage. The Spores will hit you anywhere in the instance: underwater, at the elevator, at the entrance, wherever.

In the first few minutes of Phase 3, the Spore Bats can be effectively dealt with, and their amassing slowed down, by having 1-2 hunters, or a hunter and warlock, (whichever you decide) dedicated to killing the Spore Bats that come. Eventually they'll become too many to handle and that's when the Spore Bat killers switch to Vashj to help burn her down. The top of the west stairs is a good position from which to kill the Spore Bats.

The Spore Bats are sort of an Enrage timer. At the start of the phase they come one by one, very slowly. However, with each second that passes, they'll start comming more often and in greater numbers. Eventually, after about 5 minutes, there will be so many of them that their Toxic Spores will cover over 50-60% of the entire area. However, if you know how to run and if your tank knows how to move around while tanking, you can kill her even during this "enrage".

For the rest, the phase goes on exactly as Phase 1, until she's dead.


Class Assignments
Tanks
In Phase 1, you tank Vashj. After the Entrangle, grab her as fast as you can to avoid people dying to Multishot.

In Phase 2, you will be tanking the Coilfang Elites. When you hear them announced, you need to grab them, or Intervene their target because they will often 1-shot any non-tank.

In Phase 3, if the tanking spot gets covered in Toxic Spores, you can try kiting Vashj around the outer circle.

Melee DPS
In Phase 1, you're on Vashj. Phase 1 is not a DPS fight and it can take as long as forever. Make sure at all costs that you do not overaggro or you will get 1-shotted and cause a wipe.

In Phase 2, you are assigned to the stairs groups, usually 1 melee on each side.

In Phase 3, you're on Vashj and maybe help with the Elite at first (but watch for the Cleave). Unlike Phase 1, you need to DPS as much as possible without pulling aggro. Time is critical.

Ranged DPS
In Phase 1, same as Melee DPS.

In Phase 2, 4 of your will be on the stairs groups. The rest of you DPS the Elite; it must go down as fast as possible before the next Elite spawns. Be careful not to overaggro it as it will one-shot you. Remember to DoT the Strider as soon as you can and keep him DoT-ed all the time. When the Elite is dead you finish off the Strider.

In Phase 3, finish off the Elite and Strider. The rest is the same as Melee DPS.

Healers
In Phase 1, all healers focus on the Main Tank. He takes incredible burst damage and be be literally killed in a split second without proper pre-casting. If someone in your group takes damage, you'll be the only one to heal it as if too many healers stop healing the tank to heal Static Charge and Multishot damage, the tank will die to burst damage within a second.

In Phase 2, you heal the 2 people who you're assinged to, and heal the kiter whenever he passes by you. Altternatively, have one person dedicated to kiter healing.

In Phase 3, you act just like in Phase 1, except healing will be a lot more intense. You'll be going out of mana and the people needing heals will be rapidly increasing.