Uldir – Zek’voz, Herald of N’Zoth Guide

As we’ve now had a decent number of tries on this boss over the last two weekends I think  it’s time we take stock of the situation and look to some of the issues we’re having and some suggestions of how we could improve.

As I see it, (and I could be wrong) the main issues are as follows:

1. Insufficent boss damage when adds are focused and adds not dying fast enough when we try to push more ST damage onto the boss.  Possibly a question of a lack of balance between cleave/ST specs and the lack of some ranged damage dealers plus too many cleav melee.  Both warlocks I think went demo for the fight which whilst this was nice for their logs, really didn’t help with boss HP.  Should avoid using warlocks for what should be a melee cleave duty (i.e. small adds).  Would also prefer two more ranged with strong ST in an ideal kill set-up.
2. Tank deaths (Bragfist).  He drops low at some points in the fight and if this happens when a combo is due and he isn’t topped up he dies.  Possibly a healing issue which I’ll admit I don’t recall effecting us as much last weekend as this.
3.  Dropping pools during circle phases.  Too often we have players getting out during rings to drop their debuffs and getting hit by a full room outer ring and dying.  There is not much to do here other than ensure you get out only when you have to, use the speed boosts/portals and avoid getting out to the far side of the room until you’re 100% sure that the last circle isn’t going to be there.  Similarly we need to avoid dropping pools too close to the melee in the first set of circles.
4. Small adds not dying before melee move off them and onto the second caster add.  We need to ensure that small adds are dead before moving, small adds in stack with boss just kills people.  This may mean that first and even second interrupts on Purple need to be by ranged and not Scabb/Fear.
5. Cast getting through.  No casts can get through, ever, especially if the add’s CC is broken early.  Everyone with an interrupt should be on back-up after the first intterupt (i.e. don’t all try and interrupt cast 1 and then put yourselves on CD).
6. Breaking CC.  Look at your azerite traits and abilities, are you responsible for cc’s breaking?  Happened far too often.
7.  Bad overlap.  Need to esnure we’re all saving out CDs for this phase as it’s the most likely to kill us if we don’t screw up earlier.  Options could include potting here or even Bloodlust though this should normally be saved for later.

Anyway, just a few of my own thoughts and observations to kick this off, please constribute with your own points and suggestions.

1. I checked back our logs and only Fruity changed over to demo for the fight. Damonah stayed affliction. I am personally saving my cooldowns for every single add spawn, but after doing a little digging (since what we are trying to do is push Zek to 40% before we get the third set of adds) it might be more beneficial if I use my burst right at the start and see how fast the first set of adds are dying.

2. Based on what I have seen the time when Braggha drops low are during Surging Darkness periods. With the way how fast the circles shift most healers only have enough time to fire off a single heal. Ming could help on the issue with a talent choice, but he cannot opt in for it due to our need for speed totem. Will poke Chi about it and see if a solution can be worked out, all it might need is a minor CD and a bit more attention to Braggha.

3. The problem I have seen to arise with Roiling Deceit is that the one who gets the first Deceit will have the biggest issue dropping it in the correct spot. The debuff lasts 12 seconds, and it will drop during the time the last Darkness circle is still up. The next two have a little leeway in movement, but the first individual will either have to pray for big circle to be the last one or they can choose to just die or drop it in an undesirable location. I am not sure if at the start positioning the boss between the three markers, right at the middle, can help on this issue, since then the bigger circles will be reaching the walls.

4. I think this was due to the fact we got called out to move on the next marked add. The video linked did not help either, since that one literally states that after 30% HP melee move on to the next big add while ranged cleave down the small adds.

5. I only recall interrupting being a problem when one of the adds not intended to be active broke out of CC.

6.Details can check CC breaks, so the next time something like this happens I will try and check back what contributed to the CC breaking. Laser Matrix is a very likely candidate, though the only information I found about it is someone testing it and stating that it does not break CCs like freeze trap.

About suggestions on how we can improve on these subjects:

1. In case of melee what I can think of can help in maintaining DPS during eye-beam phases (except on the one that happens during darkness) is to try and form a loose half circle around the boss to try and get as close to the six yard range as possible. Ranged should try and leave a gap between them and the melee, so in case one of them get eyebeam they can just take a step back and be safe from cleaving people, or others can just step aside if they see someone having eye-beam near them. The only problem I see with this method is that people really need to be aware where they stand, and react incredibly quickly when the beam targets are marked.

The circles follow a pattern, and they always start out where the boss is, and follow a small/big/small/big or big/small/big/small rotation from what I’ve seen. If you know where the center was you can stand close to the outer edge of the small circle, and at the inner edge of the large circle to minimize the downtime you get from having to move.

We can try positioning the boss a little closer to the yellow add when it spawns so melee can throw in some cleave damage on the boss more easily. In my opinion during the second add phase we can swap to melee cleaving down the small adds while ranged swaps over to the purple add (because we have darkness going right at that time.) That way melee can get more damage rolling on the boss, but it also means that ranged will need their very own interrupt rotation for that round. We can try saving up Zulmeera’s Solar Beam specifically for that occasion, starting out with that and after the 8 second passed other casters only need to interrupt for a few more seconds before we are done with the circles and melee can get back to interrupting them. I can also follow up Zulmeera’s Beam with a stun of my own after it expires, which grants us 5 more seconds of the mob not casting anything, and ranged can freely go ham on it.

Part of the reason why Brag might have not gotten enough healing from my side was once during the spreading+darkness phase I was at the wrong side of the circle and couldn’t reach him. I’ll do what I can to fix my positioning issue.

Edit: did a little testing at it seems that Engineering grenades are not on the potion cooldown so if you want to give it a try we can use a Plague spreader grenade and a FRIED grenade on the problematic add group. Keep in mind that potions however will send the Grenade on cooldown too, but it is worth to give it a try and see how it performs.

Hey all, thought I’d give my two cents on the subject.

I agree that the small adds (the Silithid Warriors) continued to be alive for too long, thus complicating things further (slowing players during the ring phases + the DoT doing unnecessary damage). I glanced at a couple of kill videos and it seems that some guilds, after having killed the first Weaver add, do not switch immediately to the next one, but instead finish off the Warrior adds. There is also a possibility of letting the strong cleave classes finish off the small adds, whilst the others, especially the ST classes, go onto the next Weaver mob. Yes, it’s important we keep the Weavers crowd-controlled/interrupted, but we shouldn’t underestimate the dangers of having those little buggers running around slowing and dotting people up.

My second point is also concerning the adds, more precisely the second add phase: that’s the phase we get the rings while fighting the adds, and in almost every try I saw myself fearing the second Weaver as his (or her 🙂 ) CC had been broken. My suggestion is, we wait for the rings to end before we move onto the next Weaver (in this case from the first to the second one), as that’s the only way to keep interrupts on the caster effectively. So, basically, dodge and finish off the small adds until the rings are done. Athiyk’s suggestion is something worth thinking about, however, during the darkness phase the ranged also have to move and it’s questionable how much more DPS we can squeeze out before the darkness ends. If we leave the purple caster CC’ed, we can just continue to do damage onto the boss, which is also of importance, as we saw last weekend.

My last thought has to do with boss positioning during the ring/darkness phase: is it possible to have the boss back at the center (starting point) of the room before every ring phase? It seemed that during the second set of rings we always had the boss somewhat misplaced (at the orange add), which made the safe zones from the darkness less predictable/convenient (on one try, I couldn’t get to the safe zone in time due to a sidewall blocking my path). I understand that the boss is there for the melee to cleave both it and the caster, but it might be worth it to thinking about this too.

More good points, thanks.  Keep them coming.

I agree that many of the suggestions are worth looking at in more detail, in particular trying a different taunt rotation if this makes life easier.

Also like the idea of centring the boss again IF we’re going to leave the third add up.  To be honest on our best tries we killed the third add as the first of the second set of rings came in so we can actually push it if we play and balance right, but if this helps reduce RNG and allows us to make ring patterns more predictable and ensure there is no cc breaking whilst increasing damage on boss, this could be a helpful trade off.

We can always move the boss back onto the add as rings end for cleave.

Not saying we will do this, but unless there are any valid reasons we shouldn’t try them they seem worth further consideration as do some other suggestions I’ve not repeated here.