Vazruden

Vazruden is an armored fel orc who can be found flying around the tower of the Hellfire Ramparts wing of the Hellfire Citadel instance in Hellfire Peninsula on his nether drake named Nazan.

He had a riding crop, but Nazan took it since he refused to let Vazruden hit him with it.

Adventure Guide
''Vazruden guards the vital line of supplies, messages, and forces flowing between Hellfire Citidel and the Black Temple. Astride his magnificent nether drake Nazan, Vazruden presents an unstoppable aerial force of fire, claws, and shrieking terror.''

Stage One: Your time is running out!

 * Nazan
 * Nazan
 * Nazan
 * Nazan

Stage Two: Nazan
When Vazruden reaches 40% remaining health, he calls for Nazan to land and aid him on the ground.
 * Nazan

Strategy
Vazruden, along with his mount Nazan, is one of the last two bosses of Hellfire Ramparts. (Omor the Unscarred is the other.) The fight has two phases, and is similar to the Magmadar fight in Molten Core in phase 1 and fighting Onyxia in phase 2.

Begin the fight by killing the two guards at the bottom of the ramp. After they die, Vazruden lands and fights; phase two begins when Vazruden is close to death. Nazan will then fly down, and is much easier to defeat if you bring fire resist gear (particularly your tank) or potions. Of the two, phase two is far more difficult.

If Vazruden is killed but the group wipes on Nazan, Vazruden can be looted, but he will only drop the letter. Although it is possible to loot this letter, after you wipe the boss is reset along with the two guards, so be careful. The rewards from this encounter drop from a chest that spawns in the middle of the platform.

Tank-and-spank fight
There are two ways of overcoming this encounter, it's either:

A) Tank-and-spank Vazruden, taking him down fast. (He isn't very tough but does hit fairly hard.)  Keep an eye out for Nazan firing AoE fireballs from above, as they become a DoT when they land.  If one hits you, move out of the fire fast.  If no one is attacking him, Nazan may go after your healer, so it may be wise to have a ranged DPS or caster class distracting him.

B) DPS Nazan while he's in the air, and offtank Vazruden. Nazan won't land until Vazruden is on 40-50% or if Nazan himself is on 20%. Nazan starts by moving around the area and spitting fireballs at random targets, pets and even snaketraps help with this, setting up more random targets for Nazan to choose from. Nazan moves around the area and has got 3 locations where he can be DPSed by melee as well, but remember that he also can hit in melee at these spots, so it is advised that the tank brings Vazruden and tanks Nazan (while airborne) if you have a lot of melee in the party to avoid getting killed (he hits for about 1000 on a rogue). While using this tactic, keep in mind that he seem to have an aggro-reset when he lands, obviously to allow the tank to get aggro, so stop putting up DOT's at 30-40% depending on your party's DPS.

Nazan will as said land when Vazruden is close to dying, or if Nazan himself is on 20% (a high DPS group can kill Vazruden fast enough so that he dies just as or slightly before Nazan lands), generally heading straight for your healer. Keep them at the back of the group, and taunt Nazan fast. Priests should be able to keep themselves safe by using fade as Nazan lands, to drop the threat they've built up whilst healing their tank. As a backup measure, they may want to cast Power Word: Shield on themselves at this point, just in case.

When choosing your tank for this phase, consider that a rogue with 300 FR will take less damage from Nazan than a paladin with 100 FR will. Tank that lack FR should have a Greater Fire Protection Potion (even a Fire Protection Potion) to take when Nazan lands. Fire resist buffs, shaman totem, fire ward etc. is a good idea for this part.

Having your tank turn Nazan away from the rest of the group is generally unfeasible when the opponent has an AoE fire attack, which then becomes a 500 per 2 seconds DoT, so the tank will be constantly moving away from them. If you're in front of Nazan and you're not the tank, move immediately. It is best to fight in the big ring, where an experienced tank may be able to move Nazan in a way that allows raid members to avoid the flames. Ask if your tank thinks they can do this beforehand.

The best method for tanks do to this is to try to place Nazan in the middle of the ring and slowly rotate him around as his DoTs are placed down. This is for several reasons: First, it allows the tank to move out of the fire DoTs. Second, it allows some control over where the DoT will be placed. This allows the group and the tank to have good positional awareness of where the DOTs are and can avoid them easily. Third, it allows the rest of the party to easily move behind Nazan since they will have a fairly good understanding of which way he will be facing. A way that I have tried is simply tanking Nazan facing the path that you come down to reach the boss, and keeping the rest of the group in the circle area. Just make sure to move off his fireballs occasionally, you shouldn't need to turn the boss too much.

Nazan has a huge hitbox, so it will be easy for melee classes to stay far away from the tank to avoid stacking up the fire.

Bridge fight (tank and spank)
The way I did this was by fighting the whole battle on the bridge with everyone else behind the tank, take down Vazruden in the same way as said before and when a fireball lands just move from side to side to get away from the fire, this part is fairly simple. When Nazan lands as before he will go for the priest but run straight past the tank, making it much easier for the tank to get aggro. Then turn him away from the rest of the group and try and move from side to side to keep out of his AoE fire breath. I found that a very easy way to tank this fight and we didn't lose a single person although we did have a very good group. (64 Lock, 64 Shammy, 61 Warrior(Me), 61 Druid and 61 Priest)(Champion of Norrath tactic (Azjol-Nerub))

Decoy healer
If Nazan is killing your priest when he lands, and your group includes a Druid or Paladin, you can try a "Decoy Healer" strategy to give your priest a fighting chance. The idea is that, until Vazruden dies, your Druid / Paladin main-heals while the priest does DPS. This keeps the priest off Nazan's aggro list, so when Nazan lands he'll head for the decoy. If done with a Druid, they'll want to shift to Bear form as soon as Nazan hits the ground. This spares your Priest from Nazan's initial charge and gives your tank opportunity to build aggro on Nazan. And even if the tanks taunt fails, at least Nazan isn't wailing on the priest. Once Nazan is on the ground, the priest picks up main-heal duties again.

Anti-aircraft fight
This is similar to the tank-and-spank, but can be better for parties that cannot handle both Nazan's claw and fire attacks at the same time for that long or for less experienced tanks.

When Vazruden lands, have a tank on him and no one else touch him. When Nazan is in the sky, ranged DPS him until he is at roughly 50% health while dodging fireballs and healing the tank.

After Nazan reaches 50% health, have all DPS go to Vazruden. When Nazan lands your tank should be exposed to the breath weapon for a much shorter time. You can DPS Nazan to 40%, but any lower and he will land early.

It may even work best if you DPS Nazan to 30% (when he lands) and then have your tank taunt him use all cooldowns to finish him as soon as possible. With Nazan dead killing Vazruden should be easy.

Warlock felguard tank
If you are having problems avoiding the fire damage done by Nazan, using a Warlock's Felguard to tank him can be useful. The Felguard has 50% AoE avoidance and will take very little damage from the Fire Breaths and Fire Pools.

Strategy (Heroic)
NOTE: "Guard respawn bug", after the first wipe, the mobs continue respawning for up to about 6 times each before Nazan finally drops Vazruden off. If both mobs are killed quickly and near the same time (within 5 or so seconds of each other) the mobs stop respawning. After a wipe it's best to get both down on the first spawn, or it's just wasted mana on an already mana intensive fight. (Note that you do go out of combat after these 2 so a quick drinking session is possible.)

The fight is similar to normal only, as expected with heroic battles, the damage dealt is greatly increased and the attacks come much faster with respect to the frequency of fireballs and breaths. High Fire resist, by all, and this fight boils down to a tank and spank. Lower fire resists and this fight becomes a "dodge the pools of flame" as they build up.

Fire damage is up to 4,000-5,000 per fireball and breath attacks. Pools of flame do 1,000-2,000 damage per tick. As such, the best fire protection potions in existence will be used up with 1 hit by a fireball and, in phase 1, he casts fireballs at random party members, about once every 4 seconds.

If you fully resist a fireball or breath hit, no pool of flame will be created so you don't need to dodge around pools of flame with high resists. At 260 fire resist (buffed), you can resist 3+ fireball shots in a row, at 160+ FR you can resist 2+ in a row.

Unlike normal mode, the anti-aircraft method does not work at all. He will pretty much ignore attacks on him and keep fireballing your party members. Note that there are reports of successful anti-aircraft method done in heroic mode.

In phase 1, Vazruden also uses a fear to "CC" the melee around him. He will then charge a ranged/non-feared person and cloth folks are 1-2 shot dropped if you aren't prepared for this (trinket, fear ward, tremor totem, stance, etc..) -- he is a heroic boss so hits very hard.

At transition—which occurs at 0%-40% health on Vazruden, when Nazan lands, have your tank backup to where he lands and tank both if needed (turning your back on a heroic boss costs the tank all shield benefits and defense—as you may imagine, this can be very painful/lethal). Similar to normal mode, it is quite possible to drop Vazruden as Nazan is landing or shortly after he lands. Just finish off Vazruden and go to work on Nazan.

Best bet for this fight—stay out of the pools of flame, keep a steady stream of damage on the boss, keep Nazan facing away from your party while tanking him. If your party and tank can move/strafe out of fire pools, you should have little problems with this battle.

Loot note
Upon killing Nazan, a Reinforced Fel Iron Chest spawns to the side and two pieces of loot from this encounter are in there.

Make sure you wait a bit after killing Nazan for the chest to spawn, and look around for it. The usual strategy putting Nazan in the center of the ring and rotating him as he breathes often has him dying over the chest, hiding it from view. (This is no longer a problem as the chest is now positioned at the far end of the ring, but can not be interacted with until Nazan is dead.)

Related achievements

 * Heroic: Hellfire Ramparts
 * Heroic: Hellfire Ramparts Guild Run

Objective of

 * WANTED: Nazan's Riding Crop

Vazruden dropped an Ominous Letter quest-starter which led to killing bosses in the Blood Furnace.
 * Dark Tidings

Quotes

 * Intro
 * yell


 * Aggro
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Killing a player
 * yell
 * yell


 * Wipe
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell

Trivia

 * His personal weapon was Hellreaver, which can be looted on his body.
 * In Bulgarian, възроден (pronounced vazruden) means reborn.
 * Vazruden is voiced by Jamieson Price.