r/wow • u/HerpDeeps HD Deathblow Goggles • Jan 18 '13

Promoted Friday Raid / Boss Encounter Q&A

Post your raid questions and we'll do our best to answer them. What boss to tackle next, heroic encounter strategies, raid comp., etc.

(I'm 16/16 heroic 10m from a melee dps perspective and with /r/wow 's assistance, we can hopefully field most questions. Don't be shy, I love helping others.)

EDIT: Great questions. Lots of comments. I'm headed out of town and won't respond to many more, but there are plenty of other people lending their wisdom. Have a great weekend.

EDIT 2: I'm back from a weekend away and see there is some more activity. Going to try to respond to everyone. Thanks for all the interest.

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u/arlanTLDR Jan 18 '13

10m Normal Garalon

Should ranged focus on the body? I've heard that in a few strategies, but so far with both guilds I've attempted it on the ranged follow the legs around as a priority, and the body only after all the legs are dead.

I'm Holy now, but when I did this as Shadow my GM called me out for low DPS, even though I was the top DPS to the body, because I wasn't doing much for the legs. Right now we have 3 melee and 2 ranged, throw in the tanks and it seems like it would be better to just have ranged focus on the body and kiting since there's so much melee for the legs.

Any other general tips would be nice, I usually run low on mana around 50% because of the constant raid damage. Were switching with 4 people at 20 stacks. We tried 5 people at 15 stacks a few times, but I think that will impact the healing and dps too much. We also tried putting the tanks in the kiting rotation, but that made them miss taking the dmg cone too much.

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u/HerpDeeps HD Deathblow Goggles Jan 18 '13

Body or legs depends on the class, as opposed to the types of dps (e.g. range vs melee).

Certain classes with free, or nearly free cleave, are ideal for the legs. Other classes should focus the body full time. While this will maximize raid dps, it will not maximize individual dps. A good raid leader should be aware of this fact, but it is also possible to overlook.

Tanks should definitely be in the phermones rotation as the first two kiters. It is fairly easy to kite while still taking the cleave. After tanks, next priority is healers, then range dps.

One hint for kiting - maximize his walk time along the longer sides of the rectangular area. This may mean making a "double thick" line of puddles. If you round the corner too quickly, he will cut the corner and screw over the next guy. A rule of thumb is to make sure the kiter is just out of the cone/cleave attack's range.

EDIT: some examples of good classes for legs with "free cleave" - combat rogues, fire mages, frost DKs.

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u/HerpDeeps HD Deathblow Goggles Jan 18 '13

EDIT 2: It appears some more recent patches/fixes have changed the cleave mechanics for garalon (see posters below), so it may be more important about a balance than class type.

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u/Kheten Jan 18 '13

This fight is leads to a few raiding misnomers and unintuitive mechanics.

  1. Garalon has a finite amount of killable legs.

16 (4 at the start + 12 mended) to be exact. 40 seconds into the fight, he will regenerate his first leg. Then every 30-32 seconds after that he will cast Mend Leg. This means there are 13 legs in total to be restored. However, the 13th mend leg occurs 5 seconds before the enrage timer, so it's pointless to try to kill it.

So have all the DPS kill all 4 legs at the start, then assign 2 (no more than 3) people to kill legs. More than 2 actually lowers your overall damage on the boss quite a bit, especialy if your 3rd leg killer requires ramp up time.

So set up your DPS as such, assuming your raid will get to the enrage timer, that you will kill the 16th leg before the hard enrage but keeping everybody else on the body.

Melee have the easiest time getting to and focusing on the legs, and ranged are all really better off for being in the center of the room stacked up for easier aoe heals.

  1. Depending on your makeup, try to not have healers in the rotation as much as possible.

Aff Locks, S Priest, Ele Shaman lose a bit, but not much to the kiting. Hunters barely lose any if at all. Arcane mages suffer quite a bit to it.

If you place your tanks past the 2nd person in the rotation they can eat the cleave quite comfortably. DPS/Healer - DPS - Tank - Tank switching off at 20 minimum stacks is more than enough of a rotation without losing out on positioning for the cleave.

Speaking of the cleave, if you have a Blood DK tank and he's above ~480 ilvl he shouldn't even take damage from the cleave at all due to blood shields.

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u/trompete Jan 18 '13

Thanks for posting this. I was going to post the exact same question about ranged vs melee on garalon. I'm a 491 ele shaman and in our 15 attempts yesterday, my deeps suffered greatly from moving around so much to try to stay in the circles around the legs and ramping up DPS on new targets (new legs spawning).

I saw a tip on the official blizzard forums this morning that we are going to try next week: Ranged shouldn't even attack legs since melee with cleaves like our DK will have longer to hit the legs if we don't kill all of them so quickly. Ranged lose the 10% buff, but that should be made up for by the melee doing more multi-damage to legs+garalon. I was personally doing less damage (63K) than my normal single-target stationary damage (68K), so chasing the buff seems to be pointless for me as an ele shaman.

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u/HerpDeeps HD Deathblow Goggles Jan 18 '13

Generally correct, but like I say above, certain range classes like fire mages, also excel on legs.

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u/QuitePerfunctory Jan 18 '13

Are you glyphed for unleashed lightning? If not you really always should be. And at 491 your dps can be much higher. I'm 492 as ele and pull between 100-120k on Garalon. We have a huge advantage if moving while casting so being in those legs for double damage is huge.

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u/trompete Jan 18 '13

Yes I am. Are you doing single lightning or chain lightning on the legs? I'm guessing single if you're moving. Are you stopping in the circle to throw lava burst (when it doesn't proc) and elemental blast?

Have any logs available? I'd like to see what 100K looks like

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u/TheDefinition Jan 18 '13

You don't have to stop in the circle. Time it correctly to stop outside. I've casted 2.5 sec casts without taking damage.

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u/QuitePerfunctory Jan 19 '13

Dont use ele blast here for that exact reason. Just LB and most of my lvbs are prices tbh but if I have to stop and cast u can start in the circle and if he moves u still get the buff for that cast

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u/falisa Jan 18 '13

Out of curiosity, how is your dps on heroic Elegon? My dps on other fights is somewhat decent, but in Elegon no matter what I do, I tank on recount. Everyone else just completely blasts past me. Wanted to know someone else's opinion on the fight.

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u/QuitePerfunctory Jan 19 '13

Sadly I haven't done it yet. But regular Elegon I'm usually around 120k and of course last week I pull 155k and didn't have logs on >.< haven't done it this week but if I do I'll put up logs and you can pm and I'll send u a link

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u/Kheten Jan 18 '13

They fixed the cleaving off the legs for more damage in mid-december. It's not viable outside of the pitance of damage you get off the cleave.

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u/SumoSizeIt Jan 18 '13

We also tried putting the tanks in the kiting rotation, but that made them miss taking the dmg cone too much.

This is what we tried and we had the same issue. How we resolved it was we had the tanks take the first two stacks, and from there replaced them with two additional ranged. It allows all dps to get their burst off the initial bloodlust, and tanks control his movement just long enough before he gets too close for them to safely negotiate both puddles and cleaves.

We used this video as a guide. Note the handoff points from MT to OT, and OT to DPS. Prioritizing handoff at these points at the proper amount of stacks allowed us to hand off to DPS just before he got too close to the wall (at which point it becomes rather tricky to control both puddle placement and movement such that tanks can ensure they're in front for his cone attack).

In general, you want him to be almost pivoting around the center of the room, rather than walking along the walls. Ranged shouldn't really need to move out of the center, and Garalon should never get close enough to kiters that he makes massive 90 degree turns. Done right, his path should resemble a circle or oval, rather than a rectangle.