[10] Algalon

So we got our first attempts in last night and got as low as 45%, definitely the most fun I've had playing the game in awhile.

Our group comp is:

1 Blood DK (me)
1 Prot Pally

1 Combat Rogue
1 Enhancement Shaman
1 Fury Warrior

1 Destro Lock
1 Elemental Shaman (killing stars)

1 Resto Druid
1 Disc Priest
1 Holy Priest

I think we'll get it tonight when we go back in. I think I'm going to tweak my DK spec a bit since threat doesn't seem to be an issue since our Paladin is tanking first.

I'm thinking Mark of Blood could be a decent cooldown since he hits so fast. I have a few questions that may help us push it over the top tonight.

We're running a 3 / 3 taunt rotation and so far it seems to have worked. We're trying to time it so the Pally grabs the adds at the end and I tank the full 20% - 0%.

Do the adds spawn immediately when phase 2 starts?
Is Army of the Dead effective for add pickup?

Since our warrior has to keep up commanding shout and the lock CoW is it worthwhile for me to respec unholy for ebon plague? DPS didn't seem to be an issue, we we're knocking off about 25% per Big Bang.

Have any Dks had luck with a VoTW/Ebon Plague type build similar to a Sarth 3d build? Because of the 15 second internal of WoTN I'm not seeing it as a very strong talent here.

and the last question. Has anyone had any luck just ignoring constellations? Our druid is closing a few of them, but they didn't seem to be that much of an issue. The only problem we had was on one attempt our druid stepped into a black hole first during big bang and despawned it for everyone else running to it.

So we got in there last night for our first real night of attempts, he still hits really hard and tanks are getting smashed, we also have some issues with stars/people getting in black holes

Our group comp was :

Me (prot Pally)
Prot Warrior

Feral Druid
Rogue

Lock
Ele Shaman
Mage

Disc Priest
Holy Priest
Resto Druid

A few things I was curious about, how would you do healing with that group, I wanted to make the holy go disc and put both disc priests on the tank with the resto on the raid, however we had resto/disc on tank and holy on raid. The resto was also throwing some raid heals. In 10 man do both your healers straight sit the tank?

When do you guys move to black holes, we had some people moving kind of late, do you move once big bang starts, or do you go at a specific point in the cast?

How many people do you have killing stars and what classes are they? We had a hunter but he was occasionally getting behind and complaining about running oom.

Who is in charge of the constellations, we had our other tank doing them, but he was having trouble getting them all in in time.

Another thing I noticed is that after a big bang there are basically no black holes up to put the constellations in, what are we doing wrong.

Thanks

Set up:
Blood DK (Tank)
Feral Druid (Tank)

Resto Druid (All raid heals)
Disc Priest
Holy Paladin

Retribution Paladin
Mutilate Rogue
Enhancement Shaman
Fury Warrior
Marksmanship Hunter

Notes on changes:
I was Ret this week, but Algalon does noticably less damage and so do the cosmic smashes it seems. We never used the warlock's curse of weakness.

Some Key Points
1. Hunter's sole purpose is to kill stars at good times.
2. All raid healing is done by LotP, Judgment of Light, and a Resto Druid
3. The Disc priest and Holy Paladin are exclusively on the tanks
4. Everyone should be careful not to be near a star when they die.
5. Everyone is responsible for not getting hit by Cosmic Smash.

Tank Specific Points
1. The DK took every Big Bang
2. The DK took 2 Phase Punches at the beginning and after Big Bang
3. When not tanking, kite the constellations in a Black Hole
4. The Non-DK tank calls out a "safe black hole" that will not be collapsed.

After 20% the fight is just a burn fest. Feel free to lust around 20-25%.

A few things I was curious about, how would you do healing with that group, I wanted to make the holy go disc and put both disc priests on the tank with the resto on the raid, however we had resto/disc on tank and holy on raid. The resto was also throwing some raid heals. In 10 man do both your healers straight sit the tank?

When do you guys move to black holes, we had some people moving kind of late, do you move once big bang starts, or do you go at a specific point in the cast?

How many people do you have killing stars and what classes are they? We had a hunter but he was occasionally getting behind and complaining about running oom.

Who is in charge of the constellations, we had our other tank doing them, but he was having trouble getting them all in in time.

We tried healing this with disc priest, holy priest, resto druid. The HPS just wasn't enough without our holy paladin. I would have the two priests on the tanks full time and let the resto druid handle raid healing as much as possible. The Big Bang tank handles constellations, and after Big Bang the "normal phase" tank has time to put 1-2 constellations into black holes. In general, people haul ass to black holes immediately. There is no reason to wait. You will be in the shadow realm for a set amount of time. This is why we call out a "safe" black hole so people don't have to fear it will be removed.

We have only 1 person, a hunter, doing adds and he does not go oom. Collapsing stars is about timing not burning. However, if one comes near the melee it is generally hurt very badly by whirlwind, consecration, divine storm, etc. When this happens, we call out on vent that a star ran to melee and was damaged so the hunter knows about this star and usually prioritizes it.

Is phase punch rotation very important? I assume if the big bang tank starts the fight, and we switch after 3 stacks, it will work out to have same tank every time, right?

3-3 rotation works perfect even if you have different tanks taking the big bangs.

On our kill we had me take the 1. and 3. big bang and the warrior SW + LS the second one. The moment the second one went off i was already next to him and taunted him so the warrior had 3 stacks and i was starting at 0 again.

But, if you are going to have the Death knight take all the big bangs he will have to start tanking first so his debuffs fall off when the big bang hits. That way using 3-3 he will always have 0 debuffs when the big bang hits.

The nerfs, as i thought, were huge to what it was before tho
(tank damage intake lowered by 40-60% by using a Demo shout compared to what it was before)

Seloei wrote:3-3 rotation works perfect even if you have different tanks taking the big bangs.

On our kill we had me take the 1. and 3. big bang and the warrior SW + LS the second one. The moment the second one went off i was already next to him and taunted him so the warrior had 3 stacks and i was starting at 0 again.

But, if you are going to have the Death knight take all the big bangs he will have to start tanking first so his debuffs fall off when the big bang hits. That way using 3-3 he will always have 0 debuffs when the big bang hits.

The nerfs, as i thought, were huge to what it was before tho
(tank damage intake lowered by 40-60% by using a Demo shout compared to what it was before)

Or have the dk tank 2nd? The second is followed by the bang, just have the first tank taunt back when all is stabilized after the bang. Really simple quick and allows for less tank swaps which is always a good thing.

if the DK starts off tanking he can use IBF at the pull and it will be back before the big bang. Also when the big bang hits you will have to do a tank swap anyway. This way you won't have to worry about the other tank who is downstairs being major fast in taunting upstairs so you don't break the 3-3 rotation and healers already know that once they exit they will have to heal the DK who stayed outside not the other tank who went inside.

I think your over-estimating how tight the rotation is, with 3-3 if one gets a 4th its not the end of the world. In 10 the tank damage got so nerfed that the cooldown on taunts is completely unnecessary.

I still think your better off just letting dk go 2nd and the other tank go first, b/c since its a 6 min fight you have to use your shieldwall in the first 3 min to be safe anyway so if your worried about the pull just use it then.

if you don't use a DK tank and use a warrior + pala combo, then you can't allow for a 4. stack on the tank because then your stacks won't have fallen off before the third big bang and you might get hit by a 4. phase punch then 5. and when you get kicked out he probably kills a few dps or the other tank has to taunt but his stacks haven't fallen off also resulting him being phased out shortly after also.

Even tho it's been nerfed to hell there is still no reason to not to do this fight properly and take extra damage that is not needed. Having the DK start out and use IBF gives a fair good deal extra time to apply all debuffs and ramp up the healing.

Seloei wrote:On our kill we had me take the 1. and 3. big bang and the warrior SW + LS the second one. The moment the second one went off i was already next to him and taunted him so the warrior had 3 stacks and i was starting at 0 again.

But, if you are going to have the Death knight take all the big bangs he will have to start tanking first so his debuffs fall off when the big bang hits. That way using 3-3 he will always have 0 debuffs when the big bang hits.

I dont see the differance from what you were doing with the warrior when he was soaking the big bang, and the "troubles" of having a DK soak all of them, isnt it the same thing? One tank soaks the other tank starts taking algalon right after big bang?
Ppl have shadowpriests soaking the big bangs, i doubt its a problem taunting him off from there.
When we do it I soak all big bangs, i get 3 stacks, the feral takes 3 (sometimes only 2) then big bang hits, i stay out and use a CD and he goes for me anyway. And its all like a restart of the fight with the differance of that the other tank has 2-3stacks.
We have found that its usually easier to just get 4 stacks than having the other tank taunt in panic should they be closing constillations, also at 20% one tank tanks the boss untill he/she gets 4 stacks so the other tank has time to pick upp adds, and at 4 stacks change tanks (its the last tank swich but still), just make sure your stacks run off before taunting again and ofc that the other tank might have to taunt after a big bang. Who soaks the Big Bang isnt very important, as long as the tanks and healers know who is gonna start off tanking.

note to self: don't post at 3 am when you've only had 4h of sleep before work.

The reason was, that it 'messed up' our tanking rotation by my stacks not falling off on the 3. big bang if he takes another hit after the second big bang. both of us would not have our stacks dropped off before the bang hits and it would result in one or both of us getting 5 stacks.

Or, i am just "overthinking" and messing something basic up. The one time when i was slow at taunting off him (after i came out) i got phased out the moment i started tanking after the 3. big bang and i had no idea why that happened, this is the only solution i came up with. And i wasn't "THAT" slow on taunting off him, more like 3-4s after the 2. big bang hit.

If you taunt at the proper time it doesn't matter who takes the big bang in terms of phase punches. The taunt should come immediately after Algalon regains his target. It is easier, however, if you can arrange it so that noone has to taunt after the big bang at all (i.e. whoever is leading off tank phases eats the bangs).

If you got phased out and don't know why, you probably either stepped in a black hole or at some point taunted Algalon back before your debuff had expired.

Szarach wrote:I'm thinking Mark of Blood could be a decent cooldown since he hits so fast. I have a few questions that may help us push it over the top tonight.

I've actually had him spend all the charges on the tank before the duration expires. Keep in mind that if you Mark him right before a tank swap, the other tank will continue to benefit from your cooldown. Just don't fire it right before a big bang and you should be set.

Do the adds spawn immediately when phase 2 starts?
Is Army of the Dead effective for add pickup?

No. He'll yell something along the lines of "Behold the tools of creation," and then a bunch of black holes will spawn near where the stars normally float. About 5 seconds later, the dark matter start falling out. Army might pick them up, but they might all get stuck on the same one too. It's unreliable, and when they die off the dark matter will be strewn around randomly.

Since our warrior has to keep up commanding shout and the lock CoW is it worthwhile for me to respec unholy for ebon plague? DPS didn't seem to be an issue, we we're knocking off about 25% per Big Bang.

Have any Dks had luck with a VoTW/Ebon Plague type build similar to a Sarth 3d build? Because of the 15 second internal of WoTN I'm not seeing it as a very strong talent here.

Threat is a concern until the first big bang, and then it's totally meaningless. I've tanked him with simple 10/10/50 (+1) specs because the raid needed ebon plague. Getting the stamina talent instead of the higher threat at the bottom of unholy would probably work as well.

and the last question. Has anyone had any luck just ignoring constellations? Our druid is closing a few of them, but they didn't seem to be that much of an issue. The only problem we had was on one attempt our druid stepped into a black hole first during big bang and despawned it for everyone else running to it.

Leaving more holes open actually makes escaping big bang easier. We found the fight was much simpler when we just healed through the barrages than it was to bother closing them, though when we did it last week without a disc priest to shield the raid it was a bit uglier.

-Splug

Szarach wrote:Since our warrior has to keep up commanding shout and the lock CoW is it worthwhile for me to respec unholy for ebon plague?

Just checking since you mention it this way, why have your lock CoW instead of the warrior Demo Shout? Afaik Demo Shouting doesn't interfere with commanding shout. Battle and Commanding are mutually exclusive, but I'm 90% sure I've never lost my battleshout when throwing up demo shout while soloing - demo is it's own thing that doesn't care about the warrior's buff shouts.

CoW also has a minor armor debuff on it which is nice, but nothing to do with Commanding Shout there either.

Fafhrd - it's not about the debuff, it's the specs. Affliction warlocks can easily pick up frailty (2-point talent, basically improved CoW/CoR), but arms/fury warriors are a bit tight on points. Commanding Presence (improved commanding/battle shout) and Improved Demoralizing Shout are both 5-pointers in the early fury tree, and there just aren't 10 points spare to spend on the utility stuff. Most warriors get one or the other, so I assume he meant he's running improved commanding and therefore the warlock's CoW is more effective.

-Splug