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Comment by ns88

What ilvl do we think will be needed here, to do it smoothly?

Comment by Kaorhy

Where do I start with this boss. The problem isn't the design but the implementation.

When we play healer, Valeera should not so easily lose aggro on the add and keep fighting the boss instead of killing the add asap.
She should not miss that instant death cast.
She should not stay in poison zones that makes her take 200k dmg per tick.
She should not tank the boss at the very center with no possibility to make her move, makes many mechanics bad to deal with.

When we play tank or dps, Valeera should not randomly let us die due to a lack of heal.

When Valeera is tank, she should not take more damage than when she's dps, the damage she takes as tank is absurd.

The "?-?" fight is challenging, but that is not because of the design, that is because the way Valeera behaves makes it complete BS.

This isn't the first time nemesis fights are like this, bugged and non reliable. To their credit, it is less bugged than some of the previous delves nemesis, still not acceptable.

Comment by lillies0705

So, my two cents on the fight as 6000-something person who killed it.

Void Toxin/Soul Extinction (aka Dispell and Interrupt) - nothing much to say. Just click your button in time. Learning his phrases for each ability helps.
Sermon/Echo of Ula'tek (aka memory game) - also nothing much to say. Do yourself a favor and get a helper addon. I personally used (creatively named) Azta'rec-Helper. Others are available. There are ways to do memory game without them (mostly by using marks one way or another), but addons make your life way easier.

Now, funnily enough, the important thing in the fight isn't memory game, but what you do between them. Or rather, because of how important the memory game is, it is even more important to make your life easier during it.
So, by default you should stand somewhere closer to the edge of the arena making sure boss faces outwards. (But don't stand too close because otherwise Venom Storm poison puddles can spawn right on top of you.) This ensures that there will be no poison pools (from his frontal cast) in the center of the arena. This makes memory game and Venom Storm dodges much easier.
When Venom Storm happens if you are above 60% you can more or less ignore it, because there is a lot of space between puddles. From 60% you will have to prioritize dodges over your rotation. Also, remember the frontal. If it is happening soon don't move too much to make sure it lands outwards. Once its happened you are free to run around as much as you want.
Now the most important thing is last few % before each memory game. You will have to do three things at the same time. (On top of your rotation of course.) (1) You want to reposition closer to the center because otherwise you can easily miss first safe zone with unlucky spawn. (2) But remember the frontal and do the repositioning after his cast and still make sure he faces outwards. (3) Also, track his Venom Storm CD. You don't want it to go off right before memory game. Game and dodges at the same time are very hard. So you will have to either stop dps or pop CDs to transition him when no puddles are moving through the center.
If you do everything correctly memory game becomes a piece of cake. Just do your rotation on the add while going where addon tells you to go. Nothing to dodge, no pools of poison to avoid

Comment by Wuod

Just finished this on max difficulty as 283 resto druid after 8 tries (13 if counting a couple prot/holy pala alt tries before). And yeah, there's a healer cheese that makes the fight a lot easier, more on that later.

Let's start with useful tips for everyone:

Almost everything here will oneshot you at low gear unless you're a tank. Only exception is ground puddle.
Try to tank him near the edge of the room, facing to the outside poison ring. This will give you maximum space for memory game and dodging waves.
If you're more than 10-12 yards away from him during frontal start - you'll have to use a speed cd to avoid it. You will not make it by just running.
Interrupts and dispels are obvious. You can have backup interrupt via Corrosive Codex if needed. Instant dispel results in 0 damage taken.
Tank Buster is about once every 20s, spread CDs for it. For some reason it sometimes dealt lethal damage even through 50% Kings on pala tank (like 1.2m+ after cds). Stopped trying on him after it happened 2 times.
Don't stand on the very edge of the room. Waves can spawn right on top of you, and they will deal damage.
Puddles from frontal will fade after a long time, seems to be 2-3 min.
You can jump/run through puddles if it's less then ~0.2s. They don't deal damage instantly when you touch them.
Echo can be CCd if you need to delay casts or reduce incoming damage.
There is no enrage, but he spawns more waves near the end.
Try to push 90/60/30% right after waves > frontal overlap. Reposition yourself close to middle right after frontal and transition. Save speed CD for this part.
You CAN and most likely should run right through the middle during memory game. Double checked, the poison fountain under Azta'rec is visual only and does 0 damage. And the fastest route is a straight line.
Use an addon for memory game if you want. Or just place markers and say colors/shapes/whatever is easier for you out loud. Most people have a much easier time remembering sequences after saying them.
DO NOT attempt if there is server or internet lag. You will just get tilted.

Healer cheese setup:

Lvl 60+ (mine was 65) Valeera in DPS spec.
Poison: Bursing Toad Toxin (~13% of overall dps, others are 0). You will take 0 damage, and Valeera will require only 45-50k hps, so others are useless
Combat Curio: Corrosive Bilespreader (~40% of overall dps). You do want it at 4/4, as Valeera base damage is heavily nerfed against Nemesis bosses. Run bountiful delves on alts, there's max 24 curios total this season.
Utility Curio: Soul-Cracking Dreamcatcher. Dundun is too tricky to pick up. Doesn't matter overall
Codex power 1: Virulent Mucus. This is the main thing. It completely negates at least 5 instances of lethal damage on you, and you can get more stacks if you damage the boss. You can eat a frontal, eat a wave and miss a couple memory thingies and still continue. It is only useful to healers, and will require some playing around it, but it will save you. Most likely more than once.
Codex power 2: not required. If you have it open, either Accursed Poison as backup for when Valeera doesn't interrupt for some reason (happened once for me) or Ula'tek's Gift for pure dps. I used Accursed Poison and it was a very minor dps increase overall (<3k) and randomly triggered 11 times when Valeera interrupt was slow.

Healer strat is mostly same as Nullaeus from S1, i.e. let Valeera tank and kill everything in her dps spec, and minimize your threat. Frontals will be on you, so stay near closest edge of room ~10m away from boss and just dispel / slowly heal Valeera. Dodge stuff, and don't dps until 1 transition. On transition focus on memory game, if you pushed him at the right time there will be no overlaps when he finishes. Add will most likely be still alive with 20-30% hp from Valeera alone, use your healer cds on her when she takes damage from both and help with the add. After 90% you can slowly help dpsing main boss, but it depends on healer (some have weird threat modifiers). Repeat till boss dead.

Stats from kill: ~48k dps on Valeera, ~12k from me. Most healing was done by rolling 3x Lifebloom + 2x Rejuv, so no mana problems. Only had to press CDs when add + boss overlapped. Instant death protection triggered 1 time on frontal and 2x on memory game, so 3 total. Had 6 more stacks of Virulent Mucus in the end, almost a full memory game.

UPD: just did it on 281 resto sham to check. 1 try. 63.4k dps on same lvl 65 Valeera, 15.8k from sham (was more aggresive near the end), only 40k hps. 2 stacks of Virulent Mucus left. Had a lag spike near the end of 1 memory game that used 3 stacks and missed 1 color on 2 game due to wave overlap. Total fight time 9m9s.
UPD2: 282 holy pala to double check. 2 try. 48k Valeera dps, 13k from self, 38k hps. 4 stacks of Virulent Mucus left. Total fight time 11m46s.
UPD3: 281 pres evoker, 6 try. 51k Valeera dps, 20k from self, 43k hps. 9m 30s fight. Here Valeera sometimes ignored the Echo so had to juggle killing it and high healing, but was easily solved by planning CDs.
UPD4: avoid Holy Priest, not enough healing on the move. For some reason Valeera does only ~30k dps for priests, so you can't waste threat on damage. On other hand you can MC (dominate) the echo for an extra ~15k dps. But you may need to refresh it at bad times, so there's a downside. Stashed this one for last for now

Comment by sarahlogic

I just completed this on my 296 resto shaman during the first week of the season

DPS Valeera: level 65, soulthirst venom, corrosive bilespear, soul-cracking dreamcatcher
Corrosive Codex: Ula’tek’s Gift, accursed poison (in hindsight I could have used virulent mucous, as Ula'tek's Gift did a small amount of damage)

Talents:
I changed up my utility suggestions after doing the fight, swapping for some more useful ones like spirit walk instead of gust of wind (gust flew me too far to be helpful), added ancestral wolf ability to be able to dispel in ghost wolf form for intermission, and added a point in winds of al'akir for more movement. You can swap around as needed based on the issues you encounter most.
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DPS: Valeera 64k, me 13k (I did not directly attack the boss so that Valeera kept threat, I only attacked the add after dodging waves and used passive acid rain damage; I had the sporefall neck and ring, which helped with additional passive damage and healing)
HPS: 46.1k (highest abilities were healing stream totem, riptide, healing rain)
Fight length: 9m 34.59s

It took me about 20 attempts mainly figuring out positioning, dealing with bad overlaps or just moving poorly. Don’t be discouraged if you mess up, everything is adding to your muscle memory. Take a break if needed. I took a mechanics-first approach, not optimizing damage.

A few things that worked for me:

Set the game contrast to 100 to see the mechanics a bit better, it's still bad but it will help (I saw this suggested elsewhere)
Ping the boss so Valeera attacks first; don’t attack the boss directly, just let her keep aggro (this only works with you set as healer and Valeera set as DPS)
Stand closer to the center even to bait all the frontals (standing in the acid puddles for a second is not nearly as bad as missing running to center to dodge the intermission frontals)
Lust during an add phase (first and possibly last if the fight takes awhile, or save for whichever set you prefer)
Once the memory game is over, help valeera DPS the add to reduce damage she takes
Use HTT while the add is up, or spiritwalker’s grace to run and heal, dropping totems with free chain heals helps here, too. Sometimes I could ignore Valeera for awhile and just dodge the intermission waves without issue and heal her after.
Use ghost wolf to run between sections during the memory game (wind rush totem as backup, if needed)

Macros:

I set up a focus kick in case Valeera missed the boss kick due to interrupting the add, but I didn’t need to use it. I also used the accursed poison codex talent as backup (probably needed for healers without a kick). You will need to add him as your focus after every wipe if you do this.
#showtooltip Wind Shear
/cast Wind Shear

If you don’t use click casting, set up a macro to only dispel yourself so you never have to worry about selecting or mousing over the frame. It helps for the intermission dispels when you need to keep your focus elsewhere.
#showtooltip Purify Spirit
/cast Purify Spirit

Unconventional memory tool:
I didn’t use any of the helper addons for this, but I did use raid markers. I was worried about remembering the seven step sequence while also being overwhelmed by mechanics. I knew that trying to click an addon sequence while looking and running would just not work for me. I set up a notepad on my iPhone and propped it up next to my monitor, and I set the phone to not go to sleep. Right before a pull, I activated the speak to text button. I had to continuously dictate the other mechanics while fighting so that the speak to text did not time out in the process. It also really helped me to just call out the mechanics to focus. Saying “new line” will make the text go to the next line and keep it easier to read back if needed. I called out the colors of the raid markers I had set as I ran to them. It took me a bit of finagling to input some large default starting and ending text so it didn’t type smaller text on new lines, which was harder to see. I only needed to refer to it at the very end when I was mentally panicking, but it helped as a failsafe. For someone with hand or memory disabilities that just can't use the addons effectively, I hope this helps, even though it's not perfect.

If you just need help reinforcing the information, repeating the whole sequence out loud as it's developing helped me for the shorter sequences. For example: I would call out red, red/green, red/green/blue, red/green/blue/green, etc, then calling it back as a whole at the end.

Good luck! It isn’t nearly as bad as I expected and with Valeera keeping aggro on the boss, it lets you focus mainly on mechanics and healing as needed, which for me, was a big enough challenge in itself.

Comment by Branalia

I just completed this as an ilvl 295 balance druid with no set bonuses, Valeera at level 58 and green quality curios. Use the big damage and interrupt ones.

As a moonkin you have one interrupt and it might as well be on a year cooldown. You basically have to use Accursed Poison and hope that you get it to stick on the boss or you need to burst down the add that comes up in the echo phase or Solar Beam will not be on cooldown and you will die. I specced into Mighty Bash just to give me four more seconds of not needing to use my interrupt if at all possible on the add just in case the poison didn't apply to the boss. On my kill attempt my last interrupt was manual and I smashed every key on my keyboard around it five times trying to hit it so it will likely be tense for you as well.

Treants can be used to give you a breather if you spec them into taunting and if used to pull the boss off of you, you can dip a toe into the poison to grab an orb if you really need to keep your stacks rolling.

My general advise is to not be so precious with dropping the poison along the edge. For my first 50 or so tries I tried to stack the puddles as close to the edge as possible. You should do that when you are able, but that also tends to give Valeera the opportunity to put the healing orbs in the poison or outside the arena entirely. You really want to keep up four stacks of healing as much as possible.

My largest frustration with this fight isn't the interrupts though, it's the fact that you can get crit by the boss. I barely had 610k health and I had so many deaths from 65%+ health because of a random crit. Nothing you can plan for or do about it. The game will just kill you sometimes.

Best of luck to you all.

Comment by Sandra6rog

Just killed it as DPS Monk 283 ilvl with 23 lvl healer Valeera, so it's possible if you're a bit low on both things

Comment by Kronatan

done it as frost mage. Farmed 305 gear to get some advantage. But actually it wasn't rly necessary. Previous season gear more than enough for this event. And +10% of gear doesn't help u at all.
I have used SnakeSays addon to "memorize". It took a lot of pulls for me to run/avoid + click on frames + keep eye on intrerrupt. Also I suddenly realized for myself so I cant move fast to first position in queue when boss starts to repeat spells if I dont know it. So I prefer to memorize first position. Much more ez for me at least.

Major problem of event (except game itself) - you cant move boss into game phase "just because he was lowered to proper HP". Other classes care about slimes. Ofc you have to avoid slimes. Boss workflow works by very strict rotation. And after game ends he using next ability in his rotation. And if this is CAST - you r fked up. Cos your counterspell will be on cooldown after using in mind game on boss copy. And mages interrupt still too long. So try to move boss to next phase by interrupting him and before he cast slimes. Or right after slimes. But in this case u have good chances to get cone AOE from center after game ends. Add during phase not a problem at all. Just keep orb and some flurry to lower his HP while u play game. And after that just finish him with Ray. In fact I never had a problem with add even if didnt dps him during game at all. Also I didnt used any potions or BL to finish add. Its just not rly need. If you played games 3 times and succesfully killed add most likely u'll kill boss in this try. Absolutly nothing special happens for last 30% except more slimes. But this is not a problem for blink users. Also now you can put aoe into center to minimize risks from slimes.

I didnt see any enrage timer on this boss. So if you see you cant move him properly into game cos low dps/no procs - just walk around and do nothing. Nothing horrible happens if you do nothing to get proper ability in boss rotation before game. But this moment will help u a lot.

Try to position boss after slimes to edge to minimize problems. And NEVER stay close to edge when slimes inc. Cos it can simply spawn exactly on u even if you in 8 yards from pool. Happens to me several times

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Let Me Solo Him: Azta'rec

Defeat Azta'rec in his lair on Tier ?? without any other players in your party during Midnight Season 2.

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	Apophic Soul Crusher

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All Mounts in Midnight: Patch 12.1 Azta'rec Nemesis Boss Guide

Let Me Solo Him: Azta'rec

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