High Priest Venoxis (Classic)



High Priest Venoxis is the High Priest of the snake loa Hethiss.

He is one of five High Priest encounters in Zul'Gurub, and is generally considered the second encounter of the instance.

Until defeated, Venoxis empowers Hakkar with, allowing him to cast a poison bolt volley that deals stacking damage over time.

Phase One: Priest Form
Venoxis engages the fight with four Razzashi Cobras, each with 15,260 health. These cannot be pulled prior to the encounter, but are susceptible to crowd control.

High Priest Venoxis

Razzashi Cobra

Phase Two: Serpent Form
At 50% remaining health, High Priest Venoxis transforms into a snake, increasing his physical damage done by 75%, losing his phase one abilities and gaining new abilities.

At 25% health, Venoxis gains the ability to summon parasitic serpents.

Strategy
The High Priest isn't too hard, despite his recent buff in 1.9.
 * The first thing about this boss is getting to him and clearing out the entire room but him and his snakes. You will need this room. After you have killed all the other enemies in the room, get your MT and offtanks in the room, along with any CCers. This works best with at least 2 tanks, and 2-3 Mages or Druids. Get the rest of the raid directly outside the room, like this: outside the room
 * The next step is to have your offtank pull, so all the adds will come down to him. The main tank must immediately pull the High Priest off the OT or he will likely die. The OT must pull the adds to the rest of his raid, killing them one at a time. Sheep 3, sleep 3, Blind, Freezing Trap, whatever you have; the point is to have only one fighting at a time. Take them down quickly and move onto the next one, allowing the OT to break CC.
 * Next, you all run in to where the MT is tanking the boss. (He should be tanked near the bonfire for best results.) When the snake adds are dead, get within shooting range of the boss and unload anything you want on him while conserving some mana (meaning wands, bows, dots, low mana cost spells). Do this so that the High Priest won't use his Holy Wrath spell (a cranked-up chain lightning form of Holy Nova) to hit people, even those far away. This can easily wipe a raid.
 * Now, you MUST get rid of his mana and keep it gone the entire remaining fight to prevent Venoxis using his defense spells. With one hunter putting on a Viper Sting (hunter ability), use Warlocks to Drain Mana, Priests to Mana Burn and any other way you can think of. Do not melee until he is without mana. Circle around him like this to get rid of his mana: Mana draining
 * When all of his mana is gone, DPS with all melee you have, until he hits 50% health. Keep him away from casters, against a wall like this: DPSing him when no mana Keep him there, and back away at 50-55% because he will turn into his snake form and create a poison cloud. You won't enjoy it.
 * Next thing is to stay away from him. Everyone but the MT must stay at least 25 yards from him. No melee. At this time, you will have to be de-poisoning the MT and healing him like crazy. If he falls without a Soulstone, you will probably wipe. See this: Ranged DPS snake form You will be doing all the ranged DPS you can. Use your arrows, use your speed cooldowns, use your mana. Kill him quickly or your tank can drop.
 * At roughly 20% your other Warriors may want to use Bloodrage, run in and Execute in between Poison Clouds; this will do extra damage and drop him faster.

Alternate Strategy

 * Set up crowd control for 3 of the 4 adds and have the main tank body pull Venoxis by standing on the right side of the steps and being careful not to go in too far. The Mages immediately pick up their 3 Sheeps and a Hunter pulls in the marked add to the group (where an offtank is waiting). (We usually have the group stand near the campfire, with the tank along the right wall as you walk into the area.)
 * Take each add down individually. Once all 4 adds have been dealt with (they go down very fast) then everyone sets up to do range DPS only, because Venoxis will do a nasty AoE attack to all in melee range. (We don't bother with mana draining, just keep all heals on the tank and all DPS outside of the range of his AoE.)
 * At 50% he will turn into a snake and immediately drop a poison cloud. This conversion is crucial; all heals should remain on the main tank. The MT's job at this point is to run out of the Poison Cloud when it drops.
 * After the first poison cloud expires, we send in our melee DPS to unload.
 * Keep an eye on Venoxis's hands; when he raises them above his head, that means he has just cast Poison Cloud and you need to move out of that area ASAP. If everyone pays attention and moves out of the cloud (especially the tank), this boss is easy.

Strategy Notes
While following either of these strategies, keep these notes in mind:
 * You don't really need to kill all the adds. You can Crowd control the 4 adds. If possible, the whole fight long. For that you will need any combination of mages/druids (sheep/sleep). If not, just OT each add and kill it.
 * Holy Wrath can be avoided. If you keep no more than three people meleeing him (or anywhere near him for that matter), he will not spazz out and cast Holy Wrath.
 * Holy Wrath can be minimized. It only jumps about 10 feet at a time, so if everyone is EITHER at melee range or at maximum range, only melee will be hit. If you have powerful melee DPS, this can be worth it. Just don't send pets in.
 * Poison cloud can be cured. However, there are some warnings. If you stand in the cloud while being cured, the cloud will repoison you. Furthermore, if you are depending on the Poison Cleansing Totem, you are bound to run out of the reach by the time it could have saved you. The best advice would be for one healer to be on curing duty and he/she should cure only when the tank has gotten out of the cloud. This should save at least 2.5K health (500dmg per second, 10 second buff), and can make a big difference (in theory).
 * Venoxis will occasionally cast Renew on himself. The renew is dispellable, and it will help take him down faster if a priest watches for the renew to remove it.

Quotes

 * Serpent form
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell

Trivia

 * Venoxis is voiced by Marc Graue.