Vazruden Heroic Strategy

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.