High Priest Venoxis ( original ) High Priest Venoxis was the High Priest of the Primal God Hethiss , the Snake . In order to quell Hakkar the Soulflayer , the trolls of the land banded together and sent a contingent of High Priests into the ancient city of Zul ' Gurub . Each priest was a powerful champion of the Primal Gods , but despite their best efforts they fell under the sway of Hakkar . Now the champions and their Primal God aspects feed the awesome power of the Soulflayer . Any adventurers brave enough to venture into the foreboding ruins must overcome the High Priests if they are to have any hope of confronting the mighty blood god . Venoxis comes with 4 snake adds . He stays in priest form initially , where he casts Holy Nova , Holy Fire , and Renew . He can also cast Holy Wrath , a spell which jumps from person to person with damage increasing exponentially as it hits people ( 9000dmg per hit isn ' t uncommon ) . He later shifts to snake form , where his melee damage goes up dramatically and he releases a poison cloud AoE ( 500dmg / tick ) . Strategy . The High Priest isn ' t too hard , despite his recent buff in 1 . 9 . Strategy Notes . While following either of these strategies , keep these notes in mind : Another Alternate Strategy . Set up with everyone but the MT and OT at entrance . Have OT body pull unless he can gain line of sight ( doubtful with the stairs ) and have the MT immediately taunt and pull Venoxis over to behind the camp fire . Have at least two priests keeping the MT alive at this point . CC 3 of the 4 adds and DPS them down one at a time as described in the other strategies . As soon as the adds are down the strategy changes a bit . Have all backup healing ( anything but the priests ) heal the MT and let the priests mana back up ( they will be low on mana by the time the adds are dead ) . For phase one , because of the AoE , have nothing but ranged DPS on Venoxis . Once Venoxis hits 50 % he changes to snake form and begins his cloud . All melee DPS goes in , the MT must keep him moving every time he sees the cloud start ( raises hands ) . When he hits phase two the priests come back to healing . Keep him moving and stay out of the cloud , and he will be down in no time . This might be slightly more complicated , but it works very well for newer groups . Another Alternate Strategy - after patch 2 . 0 . This boss is extremely easy and any mana draining strategies are superfluous . A group of 8 and no warriors took him down with ease , resetting him only once due to some group miscommunications . A well equipped druid can even tank this boss , provided he has 2 - 3 healers . Simply offtank Venoxis on your tank with one healer , while the rest DPS the adds . Switch to Venoxis , staying well back of him until he shifts . Then increase DPS and healing on the MT , while making sure to dispel his HoT ( renew ) . With raidtracker you can have it announce when he heals to make it super easy . I could see Venoxis being down by 1 warrior , 1 priest , 1 shaman / paladin , 1 warlock and perhaps a hunter or mage . A 5 man group with tier 2 - 3 would make short work of him . Further Observations . As of Patch 1 . 10 Venoxis doesn ' t need mana to cast his AoE spell . Our group fully drained his mana and kept it down to zero as the melee DPS went in . Shorty after that , he cast his AoE which jumped from the warriors and rogues to the caster and one - shot half of our raid . Since then , we only deal ranged DPS during the Phase 1 of the fight . Alternate point of view . It seems doubtful any of the bosses in ZG can cast spells with zero mana - although this is up for debate . It is certainly true though that they can cast with 100 - 200 mana , and it is very hard to keep them completely at zero . Regardless , it is perfectly possible to do Venoxis with no mana draining - and almost certainly easier , in fact . Keep only 2 - 3 characters in melee range in phase 1 , and the rest at 20 yards + and he will not use Holy Wrath at all . Quotes . Serpent form : Death :