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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsSpiritual Guidance: Controlling heroic Razuvious
by Matt Low 
Apr 5th 2009 at 6:00PM
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Need help with heroic Razuvious? Matt's here to help!
I've received a lot of emails and requests for help regarding the heroic Razuvious encounter. It's a unique encounter in that Priests have to mind control mobs in order to to tank successfully.Unless your guild has a team of extremely experienced and talented Mages, then having two Priests on hand is a requirement to be able to do Razuvious.
The first thing I want to emphasize here is this: You don't need hit gear to do the encounter if you're a Priest on Mind Control duty.
Not every guild has the luxury of having two raiding Shadow Priests. Chances are as a healer you're going to have to get into the hot seat and do it yourself. One of my Shadow Priests took an extended break from vacation. This left us with three Priests: 1 Shadow, 1 Discipline, 1 Holy. The other Holy Priest did not want to do it. It was up to me. Here's a few tips I want to share with new Priests who have no idea what expect.
Disable your UI. I had trouble with this initially. I wasn't able to properly release my pet with the current UI configuration I had setup. I simply canned whatever unit frames and resorted to the stock UI in order to manage the MC process. It's not like I would have to heal or anything.
Break your MC intentionally. I've observed Priests who simply let their Mind Controls expire. They try to stretch that Mind Control as long as possible before the students eventually break free. Who do they gun for? That's right, they head straight for the Priest. The reason why Priests get caught off guard is because they're not expecting the Mind Controls to break after 40 or so seconds.
The MC'ing Priest has the ability to break it early. Don't stretch out the MC and let it break on its own. Break your own MC after your student has served its purpose.
After your taunt and bone shield cycle is over, right click on the portrait of the mob and release pet.
Communicate. This is where I notice the difference between good Priests and bad Priests. Bad Priests hardly say anything and expect their partner to intrinsically know. This may be okay in some guilds. But when starting out or when in a pickup group, it's helpful to start talking to the other Priest.
Key phrases:
- "I got <shape>"
- "Taunting Raz"
- "Bone shield is off"
- "Releasing <shape>"
I'm assuming that your raid leaders are marking the students with different shapes. By doing this, your tanks know when you plan to MC and when you are releasing the students.
Watch your cooldowns. The one you should pay attention to is Bone Shield. Assuming you're not using any timer or cooldown addons of some sort, you can observe the progress of the cooldown. When you hit Bone Shield and the indicator is at 50%, cue your partner to taunt.
Bring the students to the tank. We set up our tanks in such a way so that there is one on the left side of the room and one on the right side of the room. The students are divided the same way (two on the left, two on the right). When a student is done tanking, it is run over the nearest tank and dropped before snatching up a new one.
Above all, don't panic! Most Priests have never been in a situation where they have had to tank or use their MC in an encounter situation. It's going to take a few wipes and attempts to properly get it right.
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! And don't forget to check out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries!Filed under: Priest, Raiding, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Jorad Apr 5th 2009 9:09PM
Just to be clear: Hit Gear was needed in the Naxx40 version because back then MC checked every few seconds your hit chance.
This has been removed - you don't need hit anymore - he can only resist the initial cast or mind soothe - once you are in MC only damage can break you out of it (the shout doesn't do that either anymore).
What is dangerous is shadow resistance. Never ever use SR Aura or buff the Understudies with SR or MotW.
A big mistake I see in randoms groups is Priests running out of range with their adds - if you move out of range of your character, MC will break!
If you pull with MC, let Razuvious come to you - don't move out of range to engage him.
bod Apr 5th 2009 9:56PM
"Disable your UI. I had trouble with this initially.... It's not like I would have to heal or anything."
I'm not sure i agree, many UIs do mess up the release but you can just right click on the pet name plate to release, or simply unclick your MC....
this is a confusing fight the first time you do it, and disabling your UI mods might actually make it more confusing.
I'd also recommend that you clear out the raid except 1-2 tanks and 1-2 healers so that the priest can learn. Preferably actually they should be learning this on 10 man before they even try it on 25 man. I've seen 1 priest get this right the first time, and that's coz they tank controlled on 1o man, for most it needs a wipe or 2.
Finally, I've also heard tanks "complaining" that it's so easy and why don't priests get it. Their comparison is almost always based on 10 man, and the mechanism there is significantly easier, both to control (no mob selection), to release, to recontrol (no finding target) and no ability to out range the mind control...tell em to stuff it and let you concentrate while you learn.
Ludeitz Apr 6th 2009 12:30AM
As a shadow priest that has been MCing an understudy for many weeks of farming 25 Naxx, my only suggestion is --
-- Get some practise in 10 man! if ur a healer, got to 10 man naxx with a 3 healer group and get the offtank to dps instead of MCing one the understudies. This works well for two reasons
1) re-MCing the understudy is just a click, no focus involved, and
2) the offtank can grab the understudy incase u mess up and then it doesnt beeline and come kill you!!. if ur shadow, same deal but u dont necessarily want to do it in a 3healer naxx group.
you can jump right into 25 if you wish, but it doesnt hurt to get some practice.
Racci Apr 6th 2009 12:47AM
Yep it's not hit, it's shadow protection. You need to have 0 shadow prot when you are MCing. No motw, no shadow prot, no aura etc.
Blakkeyez Apr 6th 2009 1:42AM
There's also circulated some theories about tremor totem breaking MC (Mind Control is considered a charm-effect so there is a possibility of it being true) but I'm not that convinced... and btw why on earth would you use tremor there in the first place.
Over all my experience is that hit-gear, shadow auras etc do very little difference even if it's theoretically possible that it could have an effect. Unless you are going for Immortal and taking every possible action that can prevent death then I'd say that doing it with that tiny little bit of risk is not much to worry about.
Malevica Apr 6th 2009 2:49AM
Personally as a Disc priest I find it handy to break my MC by casting PW:S on myself. That way if the tank doesn't grab the add in time or something else goes wrong, it won't hurt me while I re-MC it. Plus the spell haste from Borrowed Time helps.
The same principle might be useful for any priest though, even Shadow.
Lemons Apr 6th 2009 2:58AM
I wish more priests would learn how to control Raz better. When they exchange threat between understudies there's sometimes there's a period where raz isn't being tanked by any1...and guess who he goes for? The dps highest on the threat meter...which 99% of the time is ME!
Bravo to any priests that manage this fight without decimating half the raid due to some sort of taunt timing issue every1 priest and their mother seems to have.
node159 Apr 6th 2009 8:04AM
This 'guide' is pretty dam terrible… and way late.
Hit is not required but will impact release chance, having a set of pure hit gear for this encounter makes things go a lot more smoothly and should be a requirement for any serious raiding priest.
One key in making this go smoothly is to assign who goes first in regards to tanking the boss.
PS: A retard meter also helps significantly in determining which priests should be doing the MC.
Jorad Apr 6th 2009 8:19AM
Again: Hit will not impact release chance! Not anymore! Shadow resistance on the understudies will.
Hamma Apr 6th 2009 8:32AM
I've found doing it on my priest (Which is Holy) I lost control allot sooner until I picked up some hit gear. I suppose this may all be in my head though..
Once I had my UI figured out it only took 2 attempts to run through one smoothly. It can get hard to know your timers and stuff in the thick of the fight because it's not something you are used to managing, stay calm and it will go easy as pie.
Hamma Apr 6th 2009 8:33AM
I should note since I've gotten a bit of hit gear (130 or so) this encounter has gone a ton smoother.
iluvlamp Apr 6th 2009 9:18AM
You can do this fight with one priest and some serious hunter misdirects also.....
Our other raiding priest bailed one night and we didn't want to stop early. Took around 3 tries but can definatly be done.
Riprap Apr 6th 2009 9:19AM
A couple extra tips I wanted to share:
Mind Soothe on the Understudy you're going to MC first allows you to get a lot closer before pulling the encounter, and gives you the chance to get your MC off and have your Understudy waiting for Razuvious when he's finished watching, and finally runs in to attack.
Agree totally with the comment to let him come to you. This was the most common mistake I made early on. If you run your MC out to Raz, it'll break and you'll be in trouble.
You can also release your MC by just right clicking on your Mind Control buff. That way your unit frames don't get in the way of pet control.
And communication with the other priest (if you're doing it that way) and the raid really is the biggest key. Make sure they know what you're doing, and you know what they're doing. Picking up mobs, dropping MC's, switching aggro, all of that needs to be communicated.
Trexa Apr 18th 2009 8:29AM
"You can also release your MC by just right clicking on your Mind Control buff. That way your unit frames don't get in the way of pet control."
I just read through 50+ pages in search of this answer. Just what I needed to know :D
I am prepararing for Raz in Naxx 25, and so few people actually bother to explain the actual mechanics. I was preparing to set up a script for dismissing pet but why bother when you can just cancel MC.
Thanks!
Esk Apr 6th 2009 10:33AM
I disagree with the fact that you don't need hit rating for this. Perhaps you didn't a while ago (can't remember patch number).
I play a holy priest myself, and I used to do the MC when there weren't enough SP available. Never used hit rating. However, after the last patch, things changed. When we were w/o shadow priests again, a new holy priest took up the job. He was complaining his MC broke after 2-3 secs.. I said wtf let me give it a try (I remember not having any problems with MCing and hit).
So... I went on it. A few secs, MC broke. I take again, taunt, MC breaks. Again, I take a different add, run to the boss, before the taunt, MC breaks. The best was holding the add for about 5-10 secs, taunt, hold it a bit... and again broke. Needless to say after several wipes we went to a different wing.
Next week I got myself hit gear (not that hard to get really, put up some blues from reputation, socket all with hit, get the crafted gloves, perhaps 1-2 items with heroic badges and you're all set). I went MCing the Razuvious adds, and I didn't had the MC being broke problem ever again.
The hit rating is not about your chance to miss when casting the spell, but on duration of the Mind Control spell. The more hit you have, the smaller the chance of your MC to break.
The rotation itself is simple: bone shield, taunt, attack, when the other priest has taunted, force-break the MC, retake, wait for your partner's bone shield to expire, and repeat.
AyaJulia Apr 6th 2009 10:56AM
Patches happen. These things do change from time to time.
oredith Apr 6th 2009 10:54AM
tip:
you can "break" MC by just running the understudy away. This is good for obvious reasons, but first and foremost, it gives your actual tanks plenty of time to see this angry mob making a b-line for the MC'ing priest.
Chri Apr 6th 2009 11:07AM
This is still relevant because I raid with several priests (and people with priest alts now) who get asked to do this for the first time when it's unexpected. All priests should understand the basics.
As a shadow priest, the key things I think which make your life a lot easier is:
1) have a MC macro that includes a right click option to release your MC
2) release your MC each time your bone armor wears off and your partner has taunted. Reapply your MC immediately.
3) make sure someone has Deadly Boss Mods on announce. You'll see your MC partner's Shield Wall expires in 5 seconds warning and know that's when you need to take over.
4) your bone armor (shield wall effect) is on hotkey number "6" when you are MCing
5) your taunt button is on hotkey number "5" when you are MCing. I also call out "heals on star/square/diamond" when I have taunted - whatever symbol your Understudy has been marked with that is.
6) your special attack is hotkey number "4". Use this to keep on top of the threat meters.
If you'd like to see what this fight looks like from a Shadow Priest perspective this is a capture of mine: http://www.dailymotion.com/user/Cassandri/video/x8tmo0_defiance-vs-instructor-razuvious_videogames
A Apr 6th 2009 11:19AM
THANK YOU!! I am posting a link to this on our guild forums.
Our priests still suck bigtime at this even though they've been doing it weekly since December.
Jeremy Apr 13th 2009 5:36PM
Can anyone provide a link that would show the patch note, blue post, or anything regarding the +hit need or not needed for this fight?
I've heard arguments both ways and would love a difinitive answer once and for all... well untill Blizz changes it again that is.