Optimal Stacks on Garalon

[Reckles]

Hey guys,
Did this post for my guild but thought I'd pass it along here too.

Here's a damage breakdown for Garalon's unavoidable attacks:

So, as y'all can see, no matter how many stacks we take, it's roughly the same damage per minute. At 10 stacks you take one 150k hit every 20 seconds, with pheromones only stacking from 20k-22k-24k-...-40k, whereas with a 4 person rotation stacks go up to 50k per 2 second ticks, but with the 150k crush every 30 seconds. I was honestly surprised though to see that the total damage taken per minute only varies by +- 3%.

Also, I did the differential. While I didn't get a screenshot of it, minimum damage taken is at 13 stacks, with a 4.6 person rotation...so you'll need a gnome for that last 6/10ths of a person. :P

[Ciah]

Very interesting calculation! Surprising how even it is...


lmfao the gnome comment

[DirewolfX]

Your math is off for the damage taken per second from the ticks. You need to sum up all the ticks from 20k => current tick. The findings are generally the same, though. Also, I'd need to check some logs to see if the pungency debuff is applied before or after damage. That would make the first tick either 20k or 22k (although this doesn't really affect things in the long run).

[Reckles]

Direwolfx.
Good call, but no, that's actually just a mislabelled column. It should be max damage taken per second. It's just converting the highest tick into how healers think, which is dtps/hps, rather than damage taken per two seconds. Healers are comfortable handling a 20k/s tick, but reading it as a 40k/2s is kindof a shock, even though it means the same thing.

The next column, "tick damage taken per minute" is what you're talking about: 20k+22k+24k+26+28+30+...+40k= 330k damage, which is taken every 20 seconds. So 330k*(60s/20s)=330k*3=990k

[Keoren]

It is worth taking into account that it's easy to use both personal and raid cooldowns on the crushes. They will also help on the ticks during their uptime.

[sleepness]

With higher stacks, our healers felt as though it was much more difficult to manage due to the more spikier damage of higher ticks.

[Trubo]

With higher stacks, our healers felt as though it was much more difficult to manage due to the more spikier damage of higher ticks.

This. Higher stacks + Crush = raid dead. If I'm remembering correctly what my guild did for our kill, we felt most comfortable with people switching at 15 stacks.

[Squirl]

This. Higher stacks + Crush = raid dead. If I'm remembering correctly what my guild did for our kill, we felt most comfortable with people switching at 15 stacks.

15 stacks here as well. That seems to be a happy medium between AMG PHEROMONE DAMAGE and AMG CRUSH DAMAGE.

[sewid]

15 stacks here as well. That seems to be a happy medium between AMG PHEROMONE DAMAGE and AMG CRUSH DAMAGE.

I was telling our raid to switch at 20 stacks but have been reading 15 more and more now. Switching @ 15 stacks requires 4 people in your kite team right?

[Squirl]

I was telling our raid to switch at 20 stacks but have been reading 15 more and more now. Switching @ 15 stacks requires 4 people in your kite team right?

Yep. We use 2 tanks and 2 ranged DPS. When swapping between a tank and a ranged, it might get up a little higher (16-17) if they have to wait for a cleave.

[Dastey]

Is the 2 minute debuff/lockout applied at application of the debuff to you or when you pass it on to the next person?
Cause if its applied at when you pass it off it would require 1 more person in rotation than you write... Just curious

[Squirl]

Is the 2 minute debuff/lockout applied at application of the debuff to you or when you pass it on to the next person?
Cause if its applied at when you pass it off it would require 1 more person in rotation than you write... Just curious

I'm not sure on the details because I just cleave legs the entire time, but 4 works as far as I know.

[Deleted]

Is the 2 minute debuff/lockout applied at application of the debuff to you or when you pass it on to the next person?
Cause if its applied at when you pass it off it would require 1 more person in rotation than you write... Just curious

The debuff is refreshed each time a new stack applies, so you will have a 2 minute debuff when you pass your pheromones to someone else. Meaning if you go to 20 stacks on each kiter, you'll need 4 kiters.

[Shaley]

How does 15 stacks equate to only 4 people in rotation?

If Player A swaps to B at 15 stacks, A has 120 seconds remaining on debuff.
Player B swaps to C at 15 stacks, A has 90 seconds remaining on debuff.
Player C swaps to D at 15 stacks, A has 60 seconds remaining on debuff.
Player D swaps to A at 15 stacks.. and A would still have 30 seconds remaining on the debuff?

Same for 20 stacks and 3 people?
A to B at 20, A 120 seconds
B to C at 20, A 80 seconds
C to A at 20, A still had 40 seconds.

Am I missing something disgustingly obvious here?

[Simulacrum]

How does 15 stacks equate to only 4 people in rotation?

If Player A swaps to B at 15 stacks, A has 120 seconds remaining on debuff.
Player B swaps to C at 15 stacks, A has 90 seconds remaining on debuff.
Player C swaps to D at 15 stacks, A has 60 seconds remaining on debuff.
Player D swaps to A at 15 stacks.. and A would still have 30 seconds remaining on the debuff?

Same for 20 stacks and 3 people?
A to B at 20, A 120 seconds
B to C at 20, A 80 seconds
C to A at 20, A still had 40 seconds.

Am I missing something disgustingly obvious here?

That's how my group experienced it a couple of days ago as well. We figured we'd need 3 people to swap at 20 stacks, but - surprise, surprise - the first guy still had ~40 sec left on it when #3 was on 20 stacks.

[Deau]

We just got our first kill with 4 kiters (3 range + 1 healer) switching at 20 stacks ish.

Surprisingly enough we managed to do it 2 healing - MW+Hpal (uplift is broken). I had a blast as the MW.
We had 1 prot paly soaking and 1 ret paly soaking.

From AWFUL experience of trying tank 40 stacks - tank 40 stacks - 1 range dps 20 stacks to "optimize dps uptime". The burst dmg around 40 stacks alongside with the following crush was just wiping us. Even while 3 healing.

I'm sure though, if dps is an issue, that it is 3-kiteable to 30 stacks with 2 healer kite and a tank kite assuming you run 3 healers.


The big thing which the above chart doesn't show...is all of the damage midigated by personnal cooldowns during Crushes making low feromone-more crush strats tend to workout better even on overall dmg.

[Reckles]

Wow, glad to see all the input. From what I've read, the biggest part of this fight is finding the right balance between crush and ticks for your specific group setup, number of healers, and mitigations. While people are right saying that the chart doesn't include mitigation of crushes, it also doesn't include mitigation of the DoT, and at 15-20 stacks, 6 seconds of the dot=1 crush, so it can be just as advisable to decrease the nature damage from the pheremones tick. But I'm getting specific and starting to get out of my area of expertise. Sorry.

All in all, just wanted to put up the interesting find that although the distribution of damage can vary drastically, and should be dealt with however your group is comfortable, there is no "You have to take XYZ stacks," because turns out, over the course of the fight you take (roughly) the same damage regardless of stacks. Micromanagement of the damage distribution is for another thread.

[Simulacrum]

I think you're overestimating the damage on crushes, though. The debuff's nature damage is basically unmitigated most of the time for most classes, while the crush is physical damage and thus reduced by armor by a significant amount. Killed him for the first time tonight, and as a holy pally, I wasn't taking anywhere near 150k; more like 100k at most, without any cooldowns active. The crush never felt like burst damage on the raid, it felt no different from a dot tick, and the 2 second stun welcomed a period of relaxation where I had time to heal almost everyone to full.

Even when we had big fuck-ups, with several crushes in a row, even taking 3 crushes back-to-back, it still wasn't a significant danger to the raid except through the sheer amount of stunning it was doing (and, naturally, the mishandling of pheromone stacks that it was signaling). 20 stacks of pheromone felt terrifying, though, even with "just" 60k ticks it was pretty difficult to keep the raid alive with 2 healers.

[Reckles]

Ok, so, Cattlehunter convinced me. Since no raid is made up entirely of clothies and everyone has at least some armor, the crush would never hit for 150k damage and that could have a significant impact, so it's worth redoing the spreadsheet. Ok, assumptions:

1. Good mix of clothies, leather, mail, and plate. (26% physical mitigation from armor ranging to 40%)
2. Two tanks with ~50% physical from armor.
3. No AMZs, barriers, banners, or that jazz.



Also, I forgot to add one person to the "# in rotations" column as Cattle also suggested, so if it says 3 people, it should be 4, and if it says 5.5, it should be 6.5.

So, the new min/max strategy is to use 6.5 (read:7) people trading at 11 stacks. The more you mitigate crush, the more often you want to take it, so the fewer stacks you should take before trading off.

I ran it again assuming that an ballpark average of 1/3 of each crush was mitigated before armor, by AMZ, totems, banners etc. The trend continued and the minimum damage was at 10 stacks, again with 7 people. So there ya go. 10 it is in as realistic terms as I can get it. Again though, these are averages over the course of the fight; mages taking a 110k hit every 17 seconds could get hairy, although Warriors like myself will simply be brushing the dirt off.If you need to take more stacks for your group for clothie's sake, go for it. This is just the general math.

Thanks for the input, everyone!