Venril Sathir

UPDATE: I have stricken out all parts of the strategy which are no longer applicable as of July 14th hotfix.

Venril Sathir, leader of the Sathirians, will challenge us in ways we have not had to deal with before. Venril Sathir is not a DPS fight. Venril Sathir does not hit very hard or require a lot of healing. Venril is just a totally different kind of fight than most of us have ever had to deal with before. What Venril Sathir does is require intense concentration by each and every player on what is going on with your player and other players.

Venril Sathir starts monitoring the power (mana) of every person in the raid. If one person’s power goes too high or too low, he kills the raid. If someone fails to cure the noxious effect, the raid will usually die. Someone who possesses a Mystmyrian Soul Cube (from Tairiza the Spider) will be on statue duty, clicking the statue repeatedly to prevent epic adds from coming.

If you think you can go into the Venril Sathir fight and do your usual healing or DPS or tanking then you are in for a rude awakening.

To say that the VS fight is frustrating is an understatement. The group coordination and individual attention required for this fight is intense. A useful quote I’ve seen:

Venril Sathir, more than any other mob, will shape your raid force into what you will need for the fights to come.

Every time one person makes a mistake, your name will flash up in red letters at the top of the screen indicating that YOU caused the raid to fail. After 10-15 times of the same person’s name coming up, frustration will build. This fight will test us as a raid force, and will test our friendship. I believe we will pass this test.

No “How to Kill Venril Sathir” strategy guide will be perfect for us as a guild. As we learned with the Tairiza fight, none of the existing strategy guides worked 100% for us, so we had to adjust it until we found something that did work. I do not believe that it was dumb luck or a fluke chance that we defeated her.

Here I present the credible information about Venril Sathir I have found so far:

During the Entire Fight

• During the fight, VS will try to summon statues to help him. 1 or 2 people will be assigned to click 2 statues to prevent these adds from coming. These people need to have a Mystmyrian Soulcube from Tairiza the Widow Mistress. Graphics may need to be turned up to be able to see when the statues light up.
• At various times during the fight, the statue clicker will be able to click the statue. It is very important that this not happen at the same time that VS reaches 90% health. This means that we may need to hold off DPS at 91-92% until the statue can be clicked, then burn him down to 88%. It will be helpful to have the statue clicker announce when he is clicking the statue so this timing can be determined.
• Every 38 seconds or so, VS will cast Toxic Infusion, a Noxious AoE. Each member of the raid is expected to cure this effect themselves using potions within 6 seconds. Otherwise, a subsequent curse — Fatalisis — will either kill that person (bad) or leave that person with very low power and health (much worse!).
• There is an 8% chance that anyone doing damage to VS will get Feared for 2-3 seconds. It may be helpful for folks to stop DPS for the 5 seconds prior to him casting Toxic Infusion.
• VS will randomly AoE Stun the 14 players closest to him. Fighter/scout DPS should be in front, mage DPS forming a second row, and healers at Max Range.One of the healers outside of the MT group needs to target the MT healer and be ready to Trauma Cure them so that the MT healer can then group Trauma Cure.
• VS will randomly reflect your spells back onto the group. Due to the importance of curing the Noxious effects, it is strongly advised that no noxious/poison damage be done to VS. If he reflects these on the raid, then Nox cure potions may not be reusable quick enough.
• At 65% health, Venril will emote about “Finishing the Fight”. One of the raid members who has the Mistmyrian Soulcubefrom Tairiza must use it on VS within 5 seconds.

From 60% Until He’s Dead

• Once Venril Sathir reaches 60% Health, the difficulty of the fight increases exponentially. Venril will begin to watch the power consumption of everyone in the raid. It is up to every member of the raid to watch their power consumption — do not depend upon illusionists or coercers, they will NOT be generating power as usual.
• The following conditions apply when Venril Sathir is under 60% health:
• If any member of the raid allows their power to drop below 20%, VS will spawn adds that wipe the raid.
• If any member of the raid lets their power go over 65% they they will get zapped for a health and power drain, leaving them near death and without power. If the raid force cannot get them healed and power up to 30% quickly, the raid will wipe.
• Every 45 seconds, VS will cast Mana Sacrifice on 2 members of the raid. All spells then require 300% power to cast. If you are in the middle of casting a spell, STOP. You can add a macro to your hotbar with the command /cancel_spellcast for this purpose. If necessary, use a mana potion, hearts, shards, etc. to regen power.
• Every 45 seconds, VS will cast a Power Boost on 2 members of the raid. VS will feed approximately 1% power every 2 seconds for 10-12 seconds. Toggle Sprint on and off to use up this additional power.
• Every member of the raid should try to keep their power at around 50%. Stop casting if you are below 50%, cast if you are above 50%.
• VS will occasionally strike the tank with Hateful Concussion. This is a hit for approx 20% health and 20% power.
• If someone dies in the raid, STAY DEAD. Unless someone in the raid force is able to resurrect you with 40% power (priest AA or Tinkered item), when you resurrect, your low power will wipe the raid.

Further Notes

• Priests and Mages should remove any gear with Displacement/Dispersion effects.
• Priests should not do ANY damage to Venril Sathir. Priests should focus on curing and healing.
  
• Cancel all Run Speed buffs. This includes Spirit of Wolf, Pathfinding, Selos, etc. Once everyone is in position, they should press “C” to Crouch.
• If the raid is going to wipe, let EVERYONE die. Don’t use Feign Death and don’t have priests/necros Resurrect. Revive all at the same time. This is supposed to resolve an issue with statues spawning at 90%.
• Avoid Heroic Opportunities. Mages have a Heroic Opportunity which has a substantial power boost.
• 1-2 people in the raid who are running ACT should install the Mana Sacrifice plugin and be watching for it, and announce it when it is on a member of the raid force.
• Every member of the raid will probably want to move their Detrimental Effects window from its location in the lower right corner to the upper left, so that they can easily glance at their health, power, and detrimental effects (Mana Sacrifice, Toxic Infusion).
• Every member of the raid may also want to set up a separate hotbar just for the VS fight with SPRINT, MANA POTIONS, NOX CURE, and emotes for “MANA SACRIFICE on FELDON”, “FELDON is under 40% power, PLEASE FEED!”.
• It may be necessary for someone to be watching everyone’s power and calling out members below 40%.
• It may be desirable for the statue clicker to be outside the raid. This way thee status of their power (mana) does not matter.

Fairness

• If there is one thing I can make clear about this fight. There are very few raid forces who desire to fight Venril Sathir — even ones that are considered “hardcore”. For being the 4th kill in the Kunark Progression of 19 bosses, most guilds consider VS to be one of the most annoying, frustrating, challenging of them all. We should have a great sense of accomplishment when we defeat Venril.
• The easiest way to stay at exactly 50% power is for raid members to stand in one place, enable Auto Attack, toggle Sprint if they get Mana Sacrifice, click Nox Cure, and otherwise just stand there, not casting any combat arts or spells. I realize this makes the VS fight about as much fun as Tradeskilling, but Venril Sathir is not a fun fight, it is a test of individual ability to follow a script and the requests of your fellow raid members. Venril Sathir is not a DPS fight or a Heal fight. Most of your time will be spent watching the Detrimental Effects window.
• Venril Sathir announces in red letters at the top of the screen who, in his eyes, “failed” the encounter. This can be extremely frustrating and cause people to point fingers. It would be easy to blame other players, but if everyone is trying their hardest then that is all we can ask for. This fight can come down to the luck of the draw. Sometimes he will fail to do his worst effects. It is these times when we must take fortune and run with it.
• I can imagine that after dying a few times, some people will be tempted to start calling people out or sending people “helpful” private tells asking them to “quit screwing up”. However this is NOT the job of individual raid members. This will just create resentment as that person probably already feels guilty or frustrated enough. I think as a raid force we will have to set a policy that only raid leaders can send individual messages to members pointing out what wrong, making suggestions, etc.
• Winning this fight is NOT WORTH IT if people quit the guild or game over it!!!
• One of the least fair aspects of this fight is that it harshly penalizes players on a slow Internet connection or who experience unexpected lag (response delay) spikes. These folks may need to sit out the fight unless they require it for a mythical update.
  
• As I mentioned above, some raid guilds resort to only bringing a smaller subset of the guild, perhaps as few as 12 players, to reduce the chances of failure. This may seem unfair to leave people behind after we have worked so hard to get their epics and have dedicated themselves to this raid force, but getting 12 people to click all the right buttons at all the right times is exponentially easier than getting 24 people to do the same.
• A point worth making… Only Monk, Fury, Mystic, Troubadour, Ranger, Coercer, and Conjuror must kill Venril Sathir for their Mythical update. And only 1 person in the raid must have killed Venril Sathir to lead us into the Chamber of Decay (to kill Leviathan and get flagged to enter Veeshan’s Peak).

Fail Conditions

Venril Sathir is known as a fight with a lot of “fail conditions”. If any of these occur, the entire raid will wipe and the fight must be started over.

• If the person on “statue duty” fails to click the statues in time.
• If VS reaches 90% health while the statues are clickable.
• If VS reaches 65% health and we forget to use the Mistmyrian Soulcube.
• If a member of the raid fails to cure Toxic Infusion, gets Fatalisis and does not die.
  
• If a member of the raid lets their power drop below 20% (while VS is <60%).
  
• If a member of the raid lets their power exceed 67& (while VS is <60%).
  
• If a member of the raid uses too much power while under Mana Sacrifice (while VS is <60%).
• If a member of the raid gains too much power while under Power Poost (while VS is <60%).
• If the tank gets hit by Hateful Concussion (and fails to resist) draining them for 12%-22% power instantly.

Sources

The EQ2 Forum post Venril Sathir – unfair roadblock for some classes was vitally important to the creation of this document. The basic details come from EQ2 Wiki.