Lady Vashj (tactics)


 * This article is about the in-game raid boss. For her character biography, see Vashj.

Lady Vashj is the final boss of Serpentshrine Cavern in Coilfang Reservoir. Phase 2 is a Battle for survival which tests the raids capability to function as a team, while phase 3 is a rather straightforward DPS race.

Abilities
Lady Vashj can be damaged only in phases 1 and 3. During phase 2 lots of adds spawn, and her shield has to be switched off. Sporebat adds appear in phase 3.

Lady Vashj
Lady Vashj can be taunted.

Phase 1 and 3 abilities:
 * ability marksmanship.png Shoot - A ranged ability that hits for 4,000-5,500 damage, used on primary target if target is not in melee range
 * ability upgrademoonglaive.png Multi-Shot - A ranged ability that hits a target and 4 surrounding people for 6,500 - 7,500 damage
 * spell nature wispheal.png Shock Blast - Randomly deals about 9000 nature damage to her current target with a 5 sec stun, no aggro drop, can be absorbed by Grounding Totem, binary resist
 * spell nature stranglevines.png Entangle - Entangles every target within 15 yards, 10 sec immobilize plus 500 damage per tick. Resistible, not mitigated by armor, but reduced by resilience.  Removable by Blessing of Freedom, shapeshifting, and the PVP Trinkets
 * spell nature lightningoverload.png Static Charge - debuff doing about 2000 damage per tick to its target and anyone within 5 yards for 15 sec. No durability loss if killed by this effect.
 * spell nature lightningoverload.png Static Charge - debuff doing about 2000 damage per tick to its target and anyone within 5 yards for 15 sec. No durability loss if killed by this effect.

Phase 2 ability:
 * spell nature chainlightning.png Forked Lightning - Random bolts of lightning that hit for 2,300-2,600 nature damage in a frontal cone. Not resistible.

Enchanted Elemental
Many of these elementals spawn continuously from the water at the foot of the stairs during phase 2.
 * 7700 HP
 * Immune to frost damage and effects
 * Immune to snares and crowd control
 * Slowly moves towards Lady Vashj and increases her damage output by 5% if it reaches her

Tainted Elemental
Every 50 seconds, one Tainted Elemental spawns instead of an enchanted elemental.
 * 7700 HP
 * Immune to frost effects and damage
 * Does not move
 * Despawns after 15 seconds
 * Drops a Tainted Core when killed
 * Drops a Tainted Core when killed

Coilfang Elite
Every 45 seconds one Coilfang Elite spawns in the area on top of the stairs.
 * 175000 HP
 * normal melee ~5k on plate, frontal arc cleave for over 7.5k on plate
 * Immune to Fear
 * Tauntable

Coilfang Strider
Every 60 seconds one Coilfang Strider spawns on top of the stairs.
 * 175000 HP
 * Tauntable
 * Tauntable
 * Tauntable
 * Tauntable

Toxic Spore Bats
During phase 3, these bats spawn. At first they're few, but their number steadily increases.
 * 6,900 HP

Preparation
The fight consists of three phases: Phase 1 and 3 are the same, except for the spore bat adds in phase 3. Phase 2 is the real test of a raid's ability to work together—every single raid member is important, and has ample opportunity to cause a wipe.


 * Phase 1 a rather simple tank-and-spank, until she's at 70%.
 * Phase 2 lasts from 70% to 50%. She summons many adds and hides behind a shield, which has to be removed by turning off four shield generators (using tainted cores). Each generator switched off drops her health by 5%.
 * Phase 3 starts at 50%. It's similar to phase 1, with the addition of Spore Bats.

Raid composition

 * 2 Tanks
 * 1 Kiter
 * 7-8 Healers
 * 8-11 ranged DPS
 * 4-7 melee DPS

Positioning
Positioning is all-important during phase 2. In phase 1 it's only important that the raid spreads out (to minimize damage from her Static Charge). Thus it's advisable to have everybody set up close to their phase 2 positions. The phase 2 positions are:


 * Tanks and melee in the central area on top of the stairs
 * Ranged damage dealers in a wide circle atop the stairs, so that each ranged damage dealer has LOS to as much of the stairs as possible, and the top area too
 * About half of the healers in the inner circle (inside the shield generators), the other half well distributed on top of the stairs

During phase 1, all healers should be in healing range of the MT.

Phase 1
A standard misdirection pull does the job. She hits rather hard, so the healers should pre-cast. This phase is rather easy, mainly a practice run for phase 3. The main goal is to keep everybody alive. The only problems are caused by her special attacks.


 * One Shaman should be in the MT group and permanently keep a Grounding Totem up in order to nullify the Shock Blast
 * Paladins should put a Blessing of Freedom on the MT if he gets rooted, or on rooted melee dps with Static Charge
 * No off-tank for this phase is required as Shock Blast and Entangle do not drop aggro

Static Charge victims must stay away from everybody else, and require some healing. If the MT gets it he moves to the middle and all other melee classes should stay away from him.

Phase 2
At 70%, Vashj runs to the middle of her platform and surrounds herself in a shield that makes her invulnerable. To take down the shield, the raid must deactivate the four Shield Generators around her by using a Tainted Core (from the Tainted Elementals) on each. Four different types of adds spawn during the entire second phase:
 * 1) Coilfang Elites – tanked and killed by the tanks and melee damage dealers
 * 2) Coilfang Striders – kited and killed by DoTs. Every class with the ability to cast a DoT should help on this, including healers
 * 3) Enchanted Elementals  – killed by ranged damage dealers
 * 4) Tainted Elementals  – must be killed for their Tainted Cores, which are looted and used to switch Vashj's shield generators off. This task requires teamwork; each raid must develop a tactic to handle it.

There is a brief 40-second lull at the start of phase 2, which allows everybody to get into position. There are 12 stairs; many raids divide them into four sections of 3 stairs each (N, W, S and E), and assign a team of two ranged damage dealers and one healer to each section. The enchanted elementals have rather low HP, and a single damage dealer can kill one easily before it reaches the Lady. Unfortunately they're frost immune, so frost mages must somewhat deviate from their standard practice.

The Coilfang Elites should be quickly grabbed by the tank, and moved to the inner circle. The melee group should kill each before the next one spawns.

Coilfang Striders need to be kited. The usual kite path is a wide circle outside the shield generators. Everyone with the ability to cast a DoT (including the healers) should all put DoTs on the strider whenever it comes in range. Kiting is facilitated by slowing the Strider as much as possible. All classes should use all means available (mages should spam slow, shamans use frost shock, CoEx from Warlocks, Paladins can Hammer it whenever it gets close, and Druids can use Root). Tailors should bring Netherweave Nets and use them liberally, however one must use care not to net a Strider next to a healer or tank (save applied to druids' roots). After patch 3.0.2 it's no longer required to kite them at all if you can get a druid to keep the strider rooted all the time.

Tainted Elementals
When a Tainted Elemental spawns, it is imperative that it be killed as quickly as possible because it despawns after 20 seconds. If more than two despawn, a wipe is highly probable because the extra Elites and Striders are too much.

After the kill, the Tainted Core (item) must be looted. The looting player must then use it to deactivate a Shield Generator. Voice communication helps a lot in coordinating the handling of the cores.

The moment to switch off the last generator should be well-controlled, because the Striders and Coilfang Elites should be as low as possible when phase 3 starts. As a rule of thumb, there should be at most a half-dead Strider, a full Elite, and a nearly dead Elite left over at the start of phase 3 in order to prevent a wipe. It's safe to delay until about 10–12 seconds before the next Strider/Elite spawn. Don't wait longer because the Bigwigs timers can be somewhat inaccurate and the adds are actually "up" some time before they become visible.

Phase 3
This phase starts with a reset of the aggro table. It's basically Phase 1 with a twist - Spore Bats start to spawn. They come slowly at first, but gradually their number increases to the point where it becomes very hard to avoid the AoE poison. After about four minutes of Phase 3, raid members usually start dying from poison.

At first, all remaining phase 2 adds must be killed. During the first few minutes of Phase 3, a few hunters and warlocks can kill enough Spore Bats so that they don't cause a real problem. When too many Bats spawn, the Spore Bat killers should switch to Vashj. The top of the west stairs is a good position from which to kill the Spore Bats.

In effect, the Spore Bats are sort of an Enrage timer. Knowing how to avoid the poison patches, and having a skilled tank keeping her on the move can make quite a difference to the lethality of this "enrage".

Class assignments

 * Tanks - Stay on Vashj in phase 1 and 3. Take the Coilfang Elites in phase 2 (be quick - they can one-shot clothies).
 * Melee DPS - Maul Vashj in phases 1 and 3. In phase 2, kill the Coilfang Elites (and - depending on the chosen strategy - watch a stair section for Tainted Elementals).
 * Ranged DPS - In phase 1 and 3, nuke Vashj. In phase 2, nuke elementals and put DoTs on the Striders.
 * Healers - There's quite a lot of AoE damage in this fight, so generally all healers should pay attention to everybody in range. In Phases 1 and 3 the main tank needs some extra care (about 5-6 healers), during phase 2 the pressure on the tank is lower, but everybody else takes more damage (and keep an extra eye on the kiter).

Useful Macros
For netting striders and notifying the current target of the strider (also works for the Pally stun, just replace /use with /cast Hammer of Justice): /use Netherweave Net /script SendChatMessage(string.format("Netting %s's Strider!",UnitName("targettarget")),"YELL"); /script SendChatMessage("Netting your Strider!", "whisper",nil,UnitName("TargetTarget"));

To facilitate the targeting and killing of Tainted Elementals, the following macro sets the Tainted Elemental as focus target and casts "Some Spell" on it if it is alive. If it is not alive, it keeps the current target if it is an enemy (healers shouldn't use this if they count on targeting to heal, or they can replace the last line with /targetlasttarget). If the elemental is out of range or LoS, it produces an error messages, but at least the Tainted Elemental is now the focus target so it's easier to find: /cleartarget /focus /targetexact Tainted Elemental /focus [exists, nodead] /cast [target=focus, exists, nodead] Some Spell /targetlastenemy

To cast some spell (usually a DoT) on the Strider, this macro assumes that the kiter remains the same and the kiters name is known: /assist [target=KiterName, nodead] /cast  /targetlasttarget

Similarly, the following can be used to heal the kiter without changing target. The [] treats the spell as a normal spell if the kiter is dead: /cast [target=KiterName, nodead][] Some Heal spell

The following two macros do the same as those above, except for using focus instead of kiter name. In order to set the kiter as focus, use the macro while pressing.

DoT the kiter's target: /clearfocus [modifier:shift] /clearfocus [target=focus, dead] /focus [target=focus, dead][target=focus, noexists] /assist [target=focus, nodead] /cast Some DoT /stopmacro [target=focus, dead] /targetlasttarget

The /stopmacro allows the macro to cast the DoT normally if there's no (or a dead) focus target.

Heal the Kiter: /clearfocus [modifier:shift] /clearfocus [target=focus, dead] /focus [target=focus, dead][target=focus, noexists] /cast [target=focus, nodead][] Some Heal As before, the [] allows the heal to cast as normal if the focus is dead.

Soloing Lady Vashj
This encounter can be soloed by a high-level and decently-well-geared player. Phase 1 (100%-70%) is straightforward: just open up and nuke her. She will go immune at any point after 70%, so push hard until she actually does so.

In Phase 2, when she runs to the center and gains her immunity shield, stay near the center to pick off the water elementals (they only have 4,000 HP!). Keep looking around the room for the tell-tale green missile appearing from down below, run in that direction and tap the Tainted Elemental to kill it. Loot the core, run to the nearest shield generator, and interact with it to disable it. Focus down the elites and the striders, as the Hamstring from the elite and the fear from the strider will get annoying very quickly. Don't forget to keep killing the streaming water elementals!

Phase 3 starts once the last shield generator is disabled. She will likely be at 50 stacks or more by this point, which is a 500% increase in damage dealt. That kind of damage will make a dent on level 90 players! Finish off any remaining striders and elites, then pull out all the stops to blow her down.

Related Achievements

 * Serpentshrine Cavern (achievement)
 * Serpentshrine Cavern Guild Run

Quotes

 * Intro
 * yell


 * Aggro
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Phase 2
 * yell


 * Phase 3
 * yell


 * Archery
 * yell
 * yell


 * Killing a player
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell