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Comment by 4206

the snake boss

Comment by Detton

Easiest fight in ZG.

Phase 1: Humanoid form.

He has a special attack, a chain lightning-esque ability that does MORE damage the more people that are near him. Needless to say, keep your meleers away =) The damage CAN and WILL insta-gib your entire raid if you're all around him.

Have your main tank pull him to the side, and have the rest of your raid pick off the snakes one by one. Use ranged DPS on him until 50%...

You will need a shaman or priest on purge/dispel duty, because he'll occasionally cast Renew on himself that can pretty much negate most of your DPS (especially since your meleers can't get in there safely)

Phase 2: Big ugly snake at 50%

No more chain lightning, so everyone can rush back in, and they should. However, be careful - He constantly has a poisonous cloud-train that he spews out. The main tank generally slowly walks backwards so he is never in it. The melee DPS needs to take care that they don't get in it - it hurts lots. =)

Step 3: Pick up easy loot.

~Detton

Comment by Apotheosis

Boss Strategy:

Venoxis is one of the Troll Priests in ZG. His aspect is that of the Serpent. You fight him in a circular room. The room is split into two parts, the south part(you enter from the east side of the room) is ground level, while the north part has steps leading up to his throne. There are 4 level 60 elites with him. 2 On each side of him. He is in the middle.

You will need at least 2 tanks for this fight. 3 mages will also make it a lot easier.

At first, he'll be in his Troll Form. Mark 3 of the 4 snakes, and assign a mage to sheep one snake each. That way only one will be loose. Mark the 4th snake and assign the offtank to tank that snake down the steps and to the raid. The Main Tank will obviously tank Venoxis.

Once ready, have the tank and offtank charge up the steps. The MT will pull Venoxis down the stairs, and to the northeast corner of the room. Make sure everyone stays to the south of the room because Venoxis has a chain AoE spell that will bounce from person to person if anyone is close to him. Have a healer or two focus on healing the MT up in the northeast corner while the rest of the raid takes cares of the first snake in the west side of the room. After the first snake is dead, pick another one and repeat the process. Kill off the 4 Snakes one by one.

Once all the snakes are dead, focus on Venoxis. He casts renew on himself sometimes, so be sure to cast detect magic on him and get rid of it as soon as he uses it. Do ONLY ranged damage at this point. If anyone else gets close to him, he'll use to Chain AoE spell. Once he gets down to 50%, he'll turn into a large Snake. At this point, the tank should start dragging him back and forth through the room, because every now and then Venoxis will drop a cloud of poison around himself that hits very hard.

At this point melee DPS can run in and start attacking him as long as they watch out for the poison. Burn him down the rest of the way and he'll be dead in no time.

Comment by 5484

The move he uses occurs if over half the raid is connected within 5 yards of each other.

The way to avoid it, is to form up all the meelee into one group to the left of where you're tanking Venoxis. Then all the casters step back out of cast range, and all the meelee charge in. This works very effectively and helps to get him into Snake Form like nothing else.

Comment by 7735

I just wanted to add to the stress that venoxis' chain lighting attack is easily his most devastating ability, and for some reason it also seems to be the ability that raid leaders (especially in PuGs) always forget about. Again, the best way to avoid it is to just keep everyone but the tank away from him until he morphs into snake form.

Comment by 7328

It's possible to kill him with three to four player @70. Wie did this last night and killed him with 70 Hunter, 70 Shaman(Heal), 70 Warrior(MS) and 63 shadowpriest.

Comment by rayford

Great boss. Requires a bit of coordination in regards to sheeping/trapping/sleeping his snake adds. But other than that, its a very simple, easy encounter.

Probably one of my more favorite encounters, in one of my most favorite raid instances. : P

Comment by 114213

Killed by 2ppl (Resto Druid/Prot Paladin) on PTR 2.3.3 (2008.01.19)

Comment by Quttan

Don't get onto a plane with this guy.

Comment by 77935

Soloed as Feral Druid lvl 80 - Heroic geared

Very easy untill she turns into a snake, but just kite around and avoid the posion clouds.

Comment by 269119

Soloed by 80 enha shaman, easy money

Used shield only at phase2, but after enrage I summoned the wolves and went back to dw.

Comment by 64110

Managed to solo him with my 80 Unholy DK but it wasn't very easy though, burned all my cooldowns & still ended up in ghoul form to finish him off. The enrage is kind of brutal. Blood spec would probably easier because of the extra healing abilities.

Based on my observations amz/ams work against his poison stuff, basically it's best to save all your pet cooldowns until he enrages, ghoul, gargoyle, army of the dead and save your IBF & AMZ.

Comment by 286148

As a lvl 80 DK

First of all I would like to state: tanking gear is a must, tanking spec isn't.
Seriously, I tried it when I just turned 80, and maybe it had more to do with my skills at that moment then with my gear, but I found it much easier anyway with decent gear.
My gear isn't that awesome, consists of some selfcrafted epics (BS) and drops from naxx, but I have been doing this in my blue tanking gear that I got from BS aswell.

As for a spec - I am not going to give you any examples. Anyone should know that a DK can tank in any spec he wants, but I have been unholy specced since -forever- and always prefered this. Frost or Blood DK's can just continue reading, doesnt matter that much.
I myself find Blade Barrier / Imp. Icy touch / Toughness important, but then again, this differs from player to player depending on playstyle.
I did never use rune tap.

What spells do you use the most? Well, these bosses don't have THAT much HP (except ony, she is still a b*tch imo) so you don't need to do any fancy stuff.

Icy touch, Plague strike, (pestilence if any adds,) death strike are the most important. These will give you enough healthregen to last through the fight. Death and decay/Unholy blight are nice for some extra DPS on multiple targets, and when I have enough runic power I use my Gargoyle.

Bone Shield, Icebound Fortitude, Anti-Magic shell and any other trinkets you might have will help you through some of the difficult moments of a bossfight

I also tend to keep my Ghoul up, since being a Unholy DK will help the dps output of your ghoul, and next to the raw dps its just another panic button combined with Death Pact.

Since the fight is not a dps race, I tend to use these spells primarely, and all just works out fine. This whole thing you can adapt and play around with, depending again on your spec and playstyle, but nevertheless, the IT/PS/DS are the magic combo for your healthregen.

Easy boss.
Just kill all the snakes and adds in the room so you have some space to run around. kill them with IT/PS/DS/Pestilence, + Death and Decay and Unholy Blight for extra DPS.

Then the boss itself:
1. Cast Bone Armor/Ghoul /Horn of Winter
2. Engage the boss, use IT/PS/DS/Pestilence and that way bring down the boss his HP till 51% and kill the adds.
3. At 50% the boss goes snakeform. Just kite him around to avoid his posion clouds (look at Kurinaxx tactics, much alike) and keep your pet on passive as panic button.

Comment by 94696

soloed as bm hunter with gorilla 12/27/08

Comment by 289489

Hardest thing about my solo as a 78 DK frost tank spec was the snakes and the fact that my Death Strike missed 3 times in a row on my first try. So I died. Second try, got him to 2k when he enraged, figured, what the ^&*!, lets go for the safe play, and it took a while, but he died.

Comment by 60255

Easy to solo as a FrostSpecced TankDK in Tanking Gear with 2H DPS Weapon.

Start the fight by using D&D where he stands, IT+PS on Boss, Pestilence and burn down the Snakes with Howling Blast and blood boil.

Just use your ordinary tank rotation on him and exchange Annihilation with Death Strike and you shoulb be fine. Start kiting around a little bit when he goes into Snake Form, to avoid his disease - clouds.

In never realized that he even has an enrage...his dmg is absolutely ridiculous on an lvl 80 Tank, and i do not have any raid gear, except for Patchwerk Shoulders.

Comment by Aydinn

Solo'd as an 80 warlock with 0/41/30

Sent in FG with Demonic Empowerment.
Tagged the 4 ads with Corr/CoA and pulled them down the stairs and AoE'd them down.
After the ads are down, just keep your FG at 95-100% HP and drain life to fill back up from the ad damage.
After you feel your in a good position, keep up CoA, Corr and Immo and Health Funnel\Drain Life for DPS.
Once he changes forms, KEEP UP HEALTH FUNNEL. If you don't watch it closely, your pet will be killed before you know it. I did not have Imp HF so it's doable without it but it would make this fight alot easier.

I believe this would be an easy fight as 30/41/0 but you may have problems with threat.

Comment by 1upgamer

Easily solo'd by a Survival Hunter. Barely damaged my cat. Just gotta keep mend pet up and frost trap kite the adds.

Comment by 279763

Soloing ZG as Retribution Paladin: Venoxis

It's one of the mid-difficulty fights of ZG. Kill the four adds first, then go on boss. Everything goes smoothly at 1st stage, but when he becomes a snake, he stacks poison debuffs on you, draining your health very rapidly. My trick was to bubble just before I was dead, Lay on Hands, and nuke as fast as I could to bring him down before he stacked all the poisons again.

My spell setup: Bl.of W, SoC, JoW (only at times needed I used JoL), no consecrations at all. Don't forget to use Divine Plea when it's available.
My gear: Naxx10 equivalent.
Agathoklis, human retribution paladin in Bloodhoof

Comment by SolidMoose

Almost solo'd as an 80 frost mage.

Start off by clearing the room
Have your Water Elemental pull Venoxis
Freeze the adds with frost nova and Blizzard them down
If they are still up, freeze them again with your water elemental and blizzard
Now, throw on Frost Barrier
As soon as Venoxis casts renew, spell steal it
Dps Venoxis down until OOM, stealing renew whenever it pops up
Tip: To regain mana easily, use Icy Veins and then channel Evocation. Icy Veins stops spell pushback allowing for the full amount of mana to come back
Keep slinging frostbolts are his face, keeping frost barrier up and stealing renew

After he turned into a snake (50% hp) was when he killed me
He stops casting renew and hits a lot harder
I am thinking you might be able to finish him by summoning water ele and mirror images, and then casting invisibility to let your elemental tank

Anyway, I hope this helped you fellow mages. Maybe someone will figure out a way to finish him!

Comment by 333467

Elemental Shaman POV:

Magma totem works very well for taking down the snakes.

First time around I focused on killing his pets singularly. Used Flame Shock and Lava Burst to kill them along with Magma totem and Chain Lightning. Used Thunderstorm whenever I could to replenish my mana. I died to the boss at 40% or so due to lack of mana and the fact that I forgot to move from the poison cloud. Also, I guess I could use some more hitrating as I missed quite a bit of my Lava Burts.

Second time I tried I ignored his pets and let my Chain Lightning and Magma totem handle them. I focused my attention on the boss and by the time I had him at 51% health the last snake died. When he changed I moved away from his area immediately so I wouldn't get caught in the cloud he would create. I died to his venomspit even though I had a poison cleansing totem down.

At this point my gear was red and I decided not to push my luck any further. Need Naxx gear for this I guess. Mine was PVP / Heroic stuff. 2.1k SP, 27% crit - 56/15/0.

Comment by 258919

3-manned it with a level 80 prot pally (self heals and tanks), level 80 arcane mage, level 80 fire mage.

We pulled the boss and had our pally solo tank it. We didn't bother polymorphing snakes, but burned mages burned them down fast. Stood away from the boss and casted at him.

Once he went snake it's a bit tougher but not too much. One of the mages died because he pulled too much threat on accident, but besides that it wasn't too hard at all.

Comment by wingman

Patch 3.1 - solo'd him fairly easy as a full t7.5 feral druid (bear)

Step one - Pull using Hibernate on one of the snakes
Step two - Kill the remaining snakes using berserk mangle and maul spam (glyphed).
Step three - standard tanking rotation til dead. Kill off the remaining snake when he wakes up.
Step four - use dodge trinket or barkskin once he changes into snake form.
Step five - drag him out of poison clouds!

Didn't even need to use SI or Frenzi, bearly (get it?) went below 90% health.

Comment by jazman84

Solo'd as a Fury/Prot Warrior 0/31/40.

Charge in, switch to Def stance and kill adds. Then proceed to just tank him to death.

Keep him up on his Podium thing, cause Holy Nova is unreflectable. When he starts casting, Simply LOS him behind the Statue/Piller things.

In stage 2, just burn him down and move out of the Poison.

If things go pear shaped and you have Last Stand, pop it and Commanding shout then pop Enraged Regen, and you will get pretty close to max health.

/lol and collect your 20g.

Comment by 359100

very easy solo for a warlock. just tank and spank, once the adds are dead and all his mana is drained all you have to do is burn him and heal your pet.

Comment by 426027

Solo'ed it (really easy) as an Ulduar geared Retribution Paladin. A few hints:

1) Make sure to kill the snakes in the beginning (before the boss) first, I know ret pallies just like to rush in, but in this situation, you'll need the space to kite him around a bit.

2) dispell yourself asap. Should be a priority imo. You're a paladin, so keep the filth off of you. ;)

3) use Concecration when you fight him + the add-snakes and turn in circles so you can just aoe (+ divine storm) them down easily

4) don't even think the frenzy exists, it hits like nothing on us. :)

Conclusion: terribly easy for anyone who knows his ret-class. :)

Comment by Ithryn

Note - This was for the original level 60 Zul'Gurub pre-Cataclysm, soloing at level 80.

Solo'd today as a Protection Paladin in 25-TOC Holy gear.

Use Blessing of Sanctuary and Retribution Aura. Phase 3 is the only time you'll have to heal yourself.

Phase 1 - Snakes - Target Venoxis and attack him only. The snakes will die on their own from Consecration, Ret Aura, Hammer of the Righteous, and Avenger's Shield. Keep Seal of Light up, this will keep your health at full, countering the extra damage you're taking from the snakes.

Phase 2 - Venoxis alone, troll form - He frequently casts a Renew that ticks for 2k/sec, which forces this to be the longest phase. Your damage will slowly overcome it, but you will see his health pinging up and down. In order to get through the healing done by his Renew, you'll need to switch to Seal of Corruption, and start using Avenger's Shield and Exorcism as soon as they're up to keep your damage output at max. Use Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement of Light, Shield of Righteousness, and Consecration while you're waiting for the other two to come off CD. Use Avenging Wrath each time it's up. Don't bother wasting the GCD to Cleanse off the Holy Fire dot he casts on you - it doesn't tick for much, or for long.

Phase 3 - Venoxis, snake form - He casts a poison venom on you; Cleanse it. He'll cast a poison cloud, but just heal through it. I only cast Holy Light to get through this phase. Never had to pop Divine Shield or Protection.

Comment by 299735

As a geared (25 ICC) 80 arcane mage, I solo'd by doing the following:

1: Cast mana shield.
2: Target the far right snake, then ABx2 and aBarr, dead.
3: Frost nova the other 3 snakes and Blizzard, kill with Arcane Explosion
4: Refresh mana shield if needed/as needed.
5: ABx2 then aBarr/mBarr until boss is around 60% health, keep moving to minimize melee from boss.
6: At some point here, refresh the mana shield and evocate.
6: Keep boss above 50% until you can spellsteal a Renew.
7: Once I stole a renew, I just popped all CD's (mirror, IV, AP) and chain-cast AB until victory.

Comment by 358208

Soloable as a shad priest easy. t9 gear will suffice for the fight (higher just makes it easier), just make sure you Mind sear the adds down first, and then begin rotation on the boss. VE will self heal you easily through his damage.

Comment by Iroared

If you're plate don't hesitate just run in and nuke him. Took about 30 seconds on my dk, only lost like 1/3 hp.

Comment by yuriken

This NPC will be the first boss in the new 5-man Zul'Gurub dungeon. His page is here: High Priest Venoxis

Comment by 703778

For heroic 5-man ZG, this fight is actually fairly easy so long as everyone pays attention.

For his first attack, he will lay down a poison maze on the ground. The tank should engage him right in front of his altar to avoid the maze. DPS and heals should be as far away as they can.

He will spray venom with a breath spell. Everyone, including the tank, needs to move out of his frontal cone to avoid it.

He will attempt to cast an interrupt-able channel which should, obviously, always be interrupted.

He will eventually return to his altar and cast Bloodvenom. This spell will cause poisonous beams to chase you around his maze. They are slow and avoidable. I recommend running to the back of the room when he begins to channel it and making your way toward his altar when the spell casts. The beams should die out before they reach you. After Bloodvenom, he will be stunned and you can smash away at him.

The final ability he has, and the one that I have noticed causes the most wipes, is his poisonous link. He will link two players who need to run as far away from one another as possible. I recommend the two ends of the room left and right of his altar.

Synopsis: Avoid everything green on the ground. Avoid his frontal cone breath attack. Avoid his bloodvenom beams. When you get the link, run away from the other person you are linked to.

Not a hard fight, but everything has to go well as most of his spells will kill you very quickly if not instantly.

Comment by xenoblad

I would HIGHLY advise enableing particle effects and putting the particle resolution on high. A high particle density may help as well but it's not necesary and it may drop you bellow an acceptable 10-15 fps with any comp from 2000 or under.

I played this at minumum video setting and the poison trail was extremely faint. The gas was as visiable as a stealthed rogue from 10 yrds away.

Comment by 858333

You must kill the 4 serpents protecting him first.Tank tanks Venoxis healers heal him while you kill serpents(if you are dps).After you kill them until 50% really easy fight.You must stop DPS at 51% and let the tank take aggro.He turns into a big ugly snake and deals much more damage.

Comment by Thottbot

Don't underestimate the power of this boss.

At the site are 4 snakes and the priest. The best way imo. to do this is to let one tank take on the priest venoxis (The tank will have a 'private' healer). The rest of the 18 will take on the adds. Try to sheep 3, kill one....then kill the next one etc. After that, all kill the priest. He will change in a snake at +/- 50% health and starts to drop poisonclouds....very painfull

note: Venoxis uses high damage aoe (4000 damage orso). Let the tank take the priest away from the rest of the group or say 'bye bye' against the cloth-wearers :-)

Comment by Thottbot

TIP use the above stratagy to kill him tho i have one thing to add.

he has a chain attack and we had a very hard time killing him due to this till i thought back to WC3 the thing to do here is keep this guy away fromt ehg roup i mean way back away and dont have people standing between the group of people and the boss the chain attack dose the following it strikes the player that is closest to the boss then it will jump to the player closest to the first person it hit BUT if u are far enough away from the last guy that got hit it will stop jumping we did this and killed him first time after i noted this ( we died about 5 times before i thought this up) but this stratagy works if u are far enough away he dose this at around 98% health the first time and he dose it randomly thru the fight so if u keep eveyr one either up close of far back it wont jump to the healers And thery said playing games never teaches u any thing :) happy hunting

Comment by Thottbot

Took 3 tried

We had the MT take him off to the side far away, most heals on him

Snakes Sleeped/Sheeped
Took them 1 at a time, Then took the boss ranged until he transforms, When he does he goes wild, stop the attack and let the tanks pick him up. Then go all out on him if he casts a green cloud (he usaly charges off wihle doing this) move out of it, it makes the healers job 100x as hard.

Hunters are a must at least one with the MT group, Aspect of the Wild helps. Key is to keep the hunter in range of the tank so the AotW works (I was that hunter it was hard to find a spot where I can range and keep the tank on AotW but it is doable, no wineing)

Comment by Thottbot

when use mana burn mana drain and hunter stinger on his mana,hes easy like mob

Comment by Thottbot

The Guide:
Basically Keep the Snake adds Sheeped when fighting him if one dies his attack increases. Have hunters use Vipersting to kill his mana so he cant use Holy Fire or Holy Nova. MT must be healed at all times
Warning: Hes does a Fart that is like the Ghouls from Scolomance and the green toxic cloud. Get him away from it ASAP. In Snake Form keep all aggro on the MT because he can do a %^&*load of dmg in that form. Then he will die.

BTW He Also Drops Zulane Tiger Hide Cloak
46armorr
13 agi
10stam
%1 chance to hit
I won it ;)

Comment by Thottbot

Very easy.

Have MT walk up, have another warrior aoe taunt the snakes off. MT just stands at the edge of the ramp. Wouldn't even try and move him off of ramp, he has a nasty AoE that can take half the raid down if the tank gets him too close to the rest of the raid. Mages sheep or druids sleep 3 of the snakes. Burn the snakes down one by one.

Range attack until down to 50%, the MT then walks down the ramp and can usually avoid the first green gas shot. Then eveyrone jump in. When you see him raise his arms, just run back to avoid the green cloud that is coming. Keep the healers on the MT and let other melee bandage as necessary.

As long as the MT doesn't drop and can keep aggro, you would have to try and lose it after you get him to drop the first time.

As one of our warriors said, "He raises his arms and you move back. How is that hard?"

Comment by Thottbot

Beat this guy with 13 people ( I am in a very small guild), three of which were under 60.

Basically, MT and healer take on the Priest while all others focus and kill the snake adds.

Then what we did was have only the MT melee him and the rest of us ranged DPS until viper stings and holy novas drained his mana. Only thing hard was getting the damn MT to stay out of the poison cloud :)

I think the only reason we had to stay away and ranged dps till he ran out of mana was that we only had 4 healers (one was a 56 druid), and we needed to conserve mana as much as possible.

Comment by Thottbot

I have my health bars on above enemies at all times, so i was the only one to see this everytime. When in snake form he spawns (very tiny) Parasitic Snakes. The first one came at me and i killed it in one Fire Blast (theyre lvl 1). The second one went for the priest in the back. I dont know what they do yet but the Priest DROPPED.

Comment by Thottbot

Done this a few times, it doesn't require much effort. The most annoying thing is the battle will occasionaly reset as soon as the priest runs down the stairs in snake form.

Comment by Thottbot

that $%^&ing hurt

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d152/worjd/wtfbbq.jpg

Comment by Thottbot

has anyone noticed a change in this boss after 1.9?
he seems to unleash the chain lightning even though the party is very far away. i had him tanked near the far wall, and all others were dar away, in healing range. at one point he turned around (away from me, facing party) and nuked everyone. we've never had this happen before...

not to mention everyone's WoW crashed when fighting the berserker near bat boss. is thsi place all bugged now?

Comment by Thottbot

A magic resistance pot (lasts 3 min) for the tank at start of fight keeps the holy lightning damage trivial to heal (we fight stage 1 with tank-only in melee, everyone else ranged to prevent the chain lightning). A greater stoneshield taken at the last 10-20% of his life in Phase 2 seems to help mitigate the insane damage he starts putting out (which a Major Healing Pot will barely make a dent in).

Comment by Thottbot

This boss is easy if you think about it ! all you need to do is drain all his mana then th group cant wipe when hes in troll mode ! at 50% he turns into a snake and his attacks are fairly increased but if you manage to keep the MT healed and all the MT has to do is move out the poison clouds and keep aggro its simple while other player give full dps ;) his loot is quite crap but its good experiance for raids ! ive tanked him before and i done it easily ! thanks to the healers and no one sole aggro from me ! i tanked him right to 1% lol and he critted me for 200 which killed me ! So basically venoixs is quite easy

Comment by Thottbot

Our guild runs usually consists of 3 tanks, 2 melee DPS, 5 healers, 10 ranged DPS. It is rare to have someone die on Venoxis. Here we go:

* Have your OT run up and gain aggro on the 4 snakes and Venoxis. The MT then peels Venoxis off and brings him over to a side away from the camp.

* Crowd control (hibernate or sheep) the minions and kill them one at a time. Keep the minions far away from the MT and Venoxis, preferably by the bonfire where the Speaker troll was.

* Once the minions are dead have the party attack Venoxis. Melee should be practicaly on top of him, ranged / healing should be at max range. This is to prevent getting zapped by the chain lightning.

* When Venoxis is near 50% call off the melee and switch to a purely ranged fight. He will change into a snake and begin putting down gas clouds. Have the MT walk out of the gas when he puts it down.

* Venoxis hits relatively hard when near death, around 1000-1300 per hit melee. Make sure to keep the healing hot towards the end of the fight.

Comment by Thottbot

I've heard this guy can seriously get bugged. I watched a friend's guild wipe on teh guy and instead of resetting, the guy just stood there. The guy I was watching said that he was bugged the last time they tried too.

When my guild tried this last night, at least one of our tries was scrapped because he reset around 8%. Members of our group claimed it looked like he fell off the cliff. He might have had aggro on someone outside the arch, but it seems unlikely.

The above strategy seems to work fine; it's possible that killing the adds means he gets stronger, but keeping the adds sheeped means a whole lot less dps and the possibility of complete chaos if a mage goes down. We had problems with me (as MT) dying right after he hit 20%, so we figured that we should send all our melee in before that point. On that attempt he went straight past teh 20% mark very fast, and I didn't notice much of a change to his attack rate; maybe the healers just timed it right finally.

Comment by Thottbot

I think it is better to mana drain him when you kill the snakes. This is because when the mana is drained, you can safely melee attack him without he AoE's. It's quite a bit quicker. Just make sure all melee classes run back when when the boss is at about 52%, so you won't get hit by the poison.
When he changes into snake, stop DPS for a couple of seconds for the tank to get good agro. When he has good agro again, just nuke him down. Be sure to run back when he drops the green cloud again.

If your warrior has about 390+ defense, it should be easy to keep him healed. Else a paladin might want to give him a BoSacrifice when his health gets critical.

Comment by Thottbot

i think this is the most simple boss in ZG, my guild farms him easy and often we don't have any dead at all in the end.
the tac is, sheep 3 (if u don't have 3 mages, let a druid sleep one, The warrior (paladin) tanks him to the corner by the fire as far to the wall as he can, have 2 healers on him all the time. Kill the unsheeped add first and then continue until all are dead.
When all adds are dead u start making mall dps on the boss and the hunters and warlocks drain his mana, when he has about 10%mana start huge dps, but not so the tank loses agggro. when he is out of mana hunters always need to have a viper sting on him so he stays out of mana.
When he comes into snake form at about 40-50% health the rogues start to melee (no melee dps from any1 without the tank before) Move fast out of the poison cloud when it comes. soon you will have him dead. Good luck

Comment by Thottbot

Ive been in crappy guilds that cant get 20 for ZG, we pug the rest and this guy still is cake. Only thing ever wiped us was chain lightning. Watch out for it.

Comment by Thottbot

Our guild has recently started ZG and we find Venoxis the easiest boss of all to kill.
We, more often than not, get him down on our first try with no deaths in the group. (I'm aware this is no big deal for a lot of you end game instancers, but it is for a relatively small guild) This is tactic we use:

OT pulls one add, CC (generally we take 3 mages, but occasionally we go with 2 and have a dr00d sleep the third add) take the others. MT pulls Venoxis off the altar and down to the Bonfire and tanks him there. Party takes out the adds one at a time.

Venoxis must be mana drained otherwise when melee go in he will give off a chain lightning AOE which will kill whoever it gets.

When all adds are down, go white damage, slow dps, wands, bows, etc. No melee.
Hunters, Locks and Priests go on Mana drain, dr00ds and palas watch MT and keep him alive.

Only when mana is gone (Venoxis should prolly be around 85% by this point) Can melee go in. Nuke Venoxis with everything you have.
At 55% (he poison clouds at 50 and ofc, not everyone gets out the second you tell them to, if you say 55% chances are everyone will be out of range by 50) At 55% all melee pull out. MT needs total spam heals, and ranged need to Nuke, DOTS, etc. No one, other than MT should be taking damage at this point, which makes the job a whole lot easier for healers.

MT will pull Venoxis around in a tanking path, round the bonfire, in order to try and keep himself out of the cloud as much as possible.

This tactic works for us every time without fail. Like I say, getting it done first time and with no deaths prolly isn't such a big deal to a lot of you, but the first time we managed it it was feking fantastic ;)

Comment by Thottbot

For alliance this fight is very very easy

we have done it with 15man without breaking a swet. sure the MT and some ppl died but the main thing the boss died and enough survived =)

Tactics on this boss as we use is as follows.

*) NEVER EVER be more then 5 ppl close to boss (that s why he cast his AoE lightning and easy wipes the raid. MT + OT + 2 rouges is ok no pet etc... MAX 5 near.

*) The boss comes with 4 snake addons. with each addon you kill the boss get some more streagth (not mutch)

*) the fight is in two stages he start in priest form and then switch to snake at 50%

*) Priest form he can fear, do a AoE dammage of up to 9000 is reported (chain lightning) and heal.

its important to mana drain him down to 0 mana before starting to delvier heavy dps on him. no mana means no heal. Warlocks mana drain at all times. Hunters keep at vypers sting on him at all times

*) at 50% he switch to snake form starts to deal more dammage and have a AoE poison attack.

*) at 10% he enrage and starts to deal HEAVY dammage when boss switch to snakeform healers should concentrate on healing MT ONLY ! (That means 2 priest chainhealing MT)

ok how do we do this event?

a) 2-3 mages marks one snake each with detect magic. who they are going to sheep.

b) a paladin bubble and run up picking up boss and adds.

c) the MT pulls boss from paladin before bubble break.

d) team deals heavy dps on the snakes one by one to take em down quickly.

e) once there is only 1 snake left the warlock and hunter starts to drain the boss of mana.

f) once all mana is gone on boss the hunter apply a new vyperstings and the dps by all can start.

g) once the dps have started atleast 2 healers should try and preserve mana for healing in the later stages when the boss enrage.

h)when boss go snake form remember if your not a MT back away from cloulds and heal your self with bandages/pots

i) and continue dps over and over again....

he is a cake .....

Comment by Thottbot

i dont think you realize how hard ZG used to be when it came out in patch 1.8 or whatever that was, well the only Raid most guilds were capable of was MC which is much less complex than ZG the boss fights are quite easy and require much less than that of ZG bosses so it was a necessary thing to explain tactics when ZG first came out to help nub guilds

Comment by Thottbot

this boss is all about mana drain. get the tank to tank it and the other kill the snakes. then all ranged dps fights while its still draining mana, then just be the heck out of it

Comment by Thottbot

Me and some mates downed him 5man

Hunter me
Warrior
Warrior
Priest
Paladin

Comment by Thottbot

Was there with my guild.
Not sure what happend, but i died fast.
checked my log, and i got hit with 25.950 in one hit.
and no, it wasnt 2595 :)
was at full health (level 70 holy paly) when he hit me

I think it was a chain lightning ? ( not sure)
not good when all are together when he cast chain hehe
then it really hurt :)

Comment by Allakhazam

We dropped him first time with 13 people - 10 of whom were in no more than 4 pieces of tier 0 or worse ... and one of whom was a level 57. Only 5 people present in the run had any experience with ZG previously. Classes were: 2x Prot. Warriors, 1x Priest, 1x Feral Druid (healing), 2x rogues, 2x pallies (both healing), 2x hunters, 2x mages, 1x Warlock. We only had 2 deaths is the run and both occurred during phase 2. The OT died cuz he was a dumb and didn't use either Shield Wall, or Last Stand. The other casualty was a rogue. We had three more deaths after we dropped Venoxis from these stupid little Parasitic Snakes, or whatever the crap they're called cuz we weren't expecting them. Apparently, they spawn after he dies.

I just wanted to give any smaller guilds a ray of hope that, although you may not be in epics, nor be able to get the full 20-ppl you need for a full clear of ZG, you can at least go in and drop one boss. It was a rush for us and the level 57 mage won the Fang of Venoxis (we are a small guild of all friends, so we don't care that she was not a 60) and the warlock won the Belt of Untapped Power. We got one of the Primal Hakkari thingys, which was won by our priest. Not one wipe - not on the trash before the boss and not during the boss battle itself. Best of luck!

Comment by Allakhazam

With my guild we wiped through this guy like a steam roller over ground. He dropped Seal of the Gurubashi Berserker and the Blooddrenched Footpads. Make sure to purge his renew spell our your toast

Edited, Fri Jun 23 01:48:09 2006

Comment by Allakhazam

Wouldn't it make more sense for Tiger boss to drop the Zulian Tigerhide Cloak? >.>

Maybe the two are friends :P

Meh whatever, I want it. I've only been in the raid when he dropped 5-6 times, so I can have some more patience. As was said a million times before, he's easy, he's a joke, we never wipe on him, blah blah blah. If you repeatedly wipe on this guy you get an F. No A for effort. Just F.

Also, since 2.0.1 we haven't been able to see the poison clouds he drops in snake form. Anyone else have this problem? I imagine it's a bug that will hopefully be fixed soon...it's usually not a huge problem, just a couple of dead rogues/melee shamans here and there. I haven't died yet (rogue), but then again I'm a bit more cautious...it does effect my dps though, I'm too timid about invisible poison clouds to just run in >.<

Comment by Allakhazam

What do you do about her holy wrath hitting me for 5 time my total health? Is there any way to stop that?

Comment by Allakhazam

Holy Wrath is not an AE. He will use it on whoever has the most agro repeatedly during the fight. Its a chain like Chain lightning but with many more jumps and each jump increases in damage.

Comment by Allakhazam

http://eliteorder.info/forum/index.php?topic=272.msg1096#msg1096

thats how we do it. Free kill. ;-)

Comment by Allakhazam

well last night we were bored on malygos (alliance), put together the *!@#tiest 20 man i've ever seen, and bombed venoxis in about 35 seconds. had 7 hunters, 4 rogues, 4 warriors, a paladin, 2 locks, and 2 mages. dropped band of servitude, zulian stone axe, and a primal hakkari armsplint. there wasnt a strategy. we had all our warriors tanking and the paladin throwing around some heals while everyone nuked venox.

Comment by Allakhazam

Any anyone see the drops yet? Or advice to kill her.

Comment by Allakhazam

4 manned on the ptr's for fun
Holy pally, holy priest, arms warrior, and me, a sub rogue
I d/c'd at 23% and the arms warrior finished him off

Comment by Allakhazam

We got Hakkari Armsplints

and Zanzil's Band

Sleep 2 snakes and offtank rest. Keep MT moving out of poison and as much ranged dmg as possible. By 50% he changes form. Try to drain his mana, then its cool to melee.

Comment by Allakhazam

I guess the easiest boss so far. Dropped Blooddrenched Footpads for one of our rouges (I guess ^^).

Comment by Allakhazam

This guy seems to regen during the fight? Any way to get rid of it? His HP just restore all the time. We kill him no prob would just like to speed it up

Comment by Allakhazam

His chain lightning has nothing to do with aggro we had the main tank pull him and had the mages to close together he comes out no one has fired a shot yet and bam 5 dead mages.

Comment by Allakhazam

This bos is definatly a pure crap.

He s very easy to kill.We killed him with 16,and he drop always the same crap.Well he s only nice to get easy rep.

tactic it s sheep 3 adds and kill one.kill adds one by one.

During adds fight warlocks and hunter need to drian his mana and healers need to keep MT alive.At 50% he will trnsform in snake form.

Same tactic keep MT alive and casters nuke him,just be careful with the cloud.

Comment by Allakhazam

Ok firstly for us she dropped a 2h axe, I think its called zulian stone axe and she also dropped some epic part for a quest in there.

Now on to how to win. Basically he is up some stairs that aren't very high, he also has 4 snakes that come with him. Set up your people at the bottom of the stairs. When you decide to start get your main tank to carge up the stars to the boss and drag him away from the others because he has really painfull AoE. Make sure the tank pulls him to the left however not near the water because if you go too near the edge the boss loses aggro and goes back to where he started.

Make sure you have one or two healers healing the main tank while he tanks the boss and get the mages/ druids to sleep and sheep 3 of the 4 snakes and kill them one by one while your main tank is holding the boss.

Now after the 4 snakes are dead everyone should open fire with range only. This is again because of the AoE. As soon as the boss gets to 50% hp he changes into a snake who hits for around 2k and crits for around 4k,so at about 55% stop all DD range and do DoT's only because otherwise his new form goes on a killing rampage destroying all your casters -.-. The snake also has a nasty poison cloud so you may want someone cleansing poison. At this stage I found it worked best if you still try and just range him with everyone that can heal healing the MT.

If the MT dies make sure you have a backup tank rady to charge in. Some classes can also mele after he hits 50% but keep in mind the poison cloud and the fact that the healers attention will be on the MT.

After a while of beating on him he eventually dies and you get some nice loot and can continue on.

It took us three tries to get him. Also if your priests are low on mana get your druid's to innervate them and having an out of combat rezzer isn't a bad idea as well.

-Otori- 60 Shaman (Stonemaul)

Comment by Allakhazam

our group apparently skipped the bat priest and couldn't beat venoxis... what a waste of a trip. time to try again in 2.5 days.

Comment by Allakhazam

Hmmm, we had 2 warr and 3 pallys so we had the adds tanked in one spot and AOE'd the sht outta them then kill the boss. One time he hit me one shot for 6979 holy dmg.. and died. Seems like if theres X people too close to him he does his holy wrath AOE, so after we only had the MT and rogues on him and he dropped withouth doing his holy wrath AOE. MT needs to be constantly moving out of the green gas and rogues need to move out when down then go back in.

Comment by Allakhazam

We are a new professional raid group on Earthen Ring server, run by myself on the side to the Lunar Tiger Knights, this is how the Topless Raiders have managed it:)

venoxis dead

Again hope this helps those struggling, once you get it you wont get any wipes at all.

Comment by Allakhazam

Me and my guild mates regularly do ZG. We have still to take thekal, Jin doo and hakkar but the first couple of bosses we have on farm status.

Most of you probably allready have your own way of killing Venoxis, but for you who have yet to kill him with ease here is our way of doing it..

1. Mage leader give targets to CC group (in this case druids and mages).

2. MT charges Venoxis and pulls him down the stairs to the right.

3. OT desheeps one add at a time and the rest of the group helps her/him to kill the adds. (I have not noticed any increase in Venoxis power when one of his ads die)

4. When all adds are dead we usually have 3 rogues if available melee Venoxis to 50% and the rest of the raid do ranged dps. It is verry important that not more than 4 people are close to Venoxis at any time. with five in range Venoxis will release his asskicking killer beam of pure 100% sure death :P 4 is the magic number here ^^

5. At 50% Venoxis turn snake from here we only do ranged dps and healers need to spam heal MT. Druids and shamans should help with poison cleansing to keep MT alive. MT must move out of the poison clouds as soon as he sees them.. Slow MT = instawipe. In case MT dies, all stop dps and OT needs to be ready to take over.

We did Veno earlier today with only 14 people and on top of that our MT got disconnected when Venoxis was down on 40%. Still kicked his ass good ^^ Im so proud of my guildmates.

Runed Bloodstained Hauberk droped plus one of the epic hakkari pieces.

hopes this will help and motivate some to try ZG some more ^^ Its really the best instance imo.

Bloodhoof EU

Comment by Allakhazam

what a sissy guy 8 manned him with 1 protection warrior, 2 frost mages, 1 fire mage, 1 holy pally, 1 rogue, 1 holy priest, and one druid.. No deaths and our druid was duel boxing one mage. It was a blast = )