Garalon 10m advice

[Megalithe]

Greetings-
My raid is currently working on garalon and encountering some difficulties during the encounter.
We are running:
Tanks:
Druid
Pally(tried him as ret too)

Heals:
Shaman
Monk
Disc Priest

Melee:
Rogue

Range:
Magex2 (arcane/fire os)
Affliction lock
shadow priest

First and foremost I am concerned with the pheromones buff strategies. I the shaman healer generally start it off and hold it for 15-20 stacks after that point the disc priest picks it up, then we hand off to either the lock or mage.

The biggest problems seem to be the pulsing raid damage bringing us low and then rage greatly affecting the ability to heal people up, even more so while we are working with the debuff. That being said, even with the slight difficulty with healing range/recovery time, dps is the next hurdle.
We have tried using tanks but losing their dps was a foreseeable problem, additionally having all dps in the pheromones rotation hurt to greatly as well.

Obviously we are striving for that parity that allows us to do what we need to do too down this guy.

What comp did you use?
What was your dps output?
How did you handle the healing range issues?
How did you handle legs? Assigning groups to stick with a leg? Or a location? Did this apply to ranged as well? etc etc

Thank you much for your time and input
Megalithe

[Kashii]

Seems you are doing most things right but my two cents...

1. Use 1 tank + Rogue to soak
2. 4 kiters taking 20 stacks should be healable and help keep your dps up
3. For normal we used 2 healers, tank and 1 ranged DPS to kite (Healer 1 - Tank - Healer 2 - Ranged) until our DPS was well above what was needed for encounter
4. Melee should watch their health and adjust to be in range of heals when raid health starts to dip a bit (healers having issues keeping up etc).
5. Make sure ranged are standing in middle of room (mostly) with healers and train them to run into area of effect heals to keep their HP up and not stress healers.

---------- Post added 2013-02-22 at 04:59 PM ----------

Oh and one more thing....make sure your ranged are mostly targeting Garalon rather than the legs....thus allowing melee (including tank) to max their DPS. Of course this assumes your melee are putting up good numbers.

[Youvegotfail]

We've done a variety of different strategies (due to our ever changing raid team)...we've downed him using two tanks to soak, a tank and a rogue, and also a dps warrior and a rogue (i think once even with two rogues). Healing was never really a problem for us, though...even though the group as a whole isn't the best, we have solid healers. We use 1 healer (druid) in the kiting rotation (this is also the healer responsible for healing the other 3 kiters), we have a pally healer focus the soakers and a disc priest to keep the raid up (with some crossover between the soaker and raid healers, of course).

In regards to the legs: we lust at the start and have everyone take out all four legs as quickly as possible (I as a fire mage will run to one of the back legs, stand in his buff circle to build a huge ignite, combust and spread to the boss, usually jumping up to 200K+ at the start before i have to join the kiting and loose most of it, lol). From then on the soakers can pretty much take care of the front two legs by themselves and we have everyone else get the back legs when they're up. Basically if there's a leg up everyone should be on it because the legs have as much health as 3% of the boss and when the leg dies the boss looses 3% so dps on the legs = dps on the boss. For ranged we don't have them go stand in the circles unless they are pretty close anyway. Again, as a fire mage, i will go out of my way to stand in a circle if combustion is up, but other than that just stay near the healers.

[elfox]

We used a more melee heavy comp than yours, while using a DK tank + ret pala to soak. We had the same healing comp, and we're using all 3 to kite in the rotation of Disc priest -> Mage -> Resto Shaman -> MW Monk -> repeat. switching at 20 stacks everytime.
About the healing issues, we pretty much told all our melee to stick together, so it's easier to aoe heal them, and then the healers / ranged (who also stacked as much as possible) didn't have to move around a lot.
However, out dmg output aint that great, and we only downed the boss 3 weeks ago, so we're cutting it very close to the enrage.

[Megalithe]

Great feed back so far keep it coming!

I would like to note as it sounds a problem might be we are having our range try to hard to stay in circles dragging down the healing(aforementioned range issue). Generally Heals is absolutely never a problem. We usually 2 heal most encounters, but we are trying to investigate all avenues. We do not use the monk in the rotation because he is melee and has a near impossible time healing while not dpsing the boss. I will access him further though to see what possibilities he has. Elfox does your team find an issue with lack of Healing CD's? Shamans have a ton....but monks and disc priests are lacking in them/or niche abilities.

Can you offer up some numbers for dps, world of logs is great but hearing #'s from people would help as process this better.

[Deleted]

I can give you couple of advices:

1) Make both tanks use their dps specs. While they will req more healing its still big dps boost to the raid making fight shorter (worked for us on first kill).
2) If you don't want to give up tank or two make them kiters since tanks dps in very low on that fight (we are using tanks as kiters all the time).
3) If you have very good healers both gearwise and skillwise you can try 2 healing it (it is possible).

Additional make your paly tank use Hand of Purity on CD it reduces greatly DoT dmg on a kiter and raid dmg since its connected to the stacks. You also didn't said when you use hero/bl. We are starting with it to get down all legs very fast then we are using tanks on front legs our melee on back ones while ranged stack in the middle (with this we are eliminating oor problems so only 1 healer can run and heal kiters and tanks) nuking his corpse. For your raid comp remember to say to your lock he must DoT EVERYTHING...

Other than that this fight req almost perfect coordination for a first kill cos its getting messy very fast if someone screw up.

[Megalithe]

I can give you couple of advices:
Additional make your paly tank use Hand of Purity on CD it reduces greatly DoT dmg on a kiter and raid dmg since its connected to the stacks.

- Our pally just added this talent TY

Additional details:
we have tried a mix of hand offs from heal-tank-heal-tank, tank-tank-heal-heal, heal-dps,-heal-dps, etc
We lust at start
Stormlash right after lust runs out

Tonight thus far we are going to focus on hitting the enrage and tuning the debuff dance first. Ranged will stand in the center only going after legs on inside otherwise focusing body. Melee will work on legs that are up or body / OTHER than interior. Debuff rotation Shaman-Lock-Discpriest-mage
This will give us a clearer image of the next step. Having range chase the feet while mastering the debuff dance/exchange was burdening all.

[Daedelus]

It might seem counter-intuitive, but have ranged focus on the body, even at the start - better to use cooldowns and heroism on that than a leg which is going to die fast anyway.

What we do is pre-pot, then use heroism when pots are off CD.

[Tinsoul]

Stormlash right after lust runs out

What's the benefit of waiting for bloodlust to expire b/f casting stormlash?

[Megalithe]

The idea was to have a higher sustained damage for a prolonged period of time/slower boss at this point-less movement(more DPS)....BUT I see your point... the haste bonus of lust coupled with stormlash would best be used there.

We have been flipping between that and-
I get pheromones, DPS engages/ everyone in position.
Lust - cd's blown, 10seconds later Stormlash

The hope was to have lash up for a fresh leg to nuke it down to keep the boss slower.

[Squirl]

You guys are doing a lot of needlessly complicated things that just reduce your performance.

Opener:

• Prepot
• Lust+Stormlash (they stack and it is a gain to stack them)
• Kill all the legs; assign one to only the rogue for the opener

Hero at the very start is always the highest DPS (barring fight-specific mechanics). Everyone has all their CDs, no procs on ICD, and prepot buffs rolling.

The rest of the fight:

• Rogue should cleave every leg regardless of where it spawns with very little help (one leg should always be up to cleave, but two should not be up for long)
• Ranged almost exclusively on the body
• Second pot at the raider's discretion (for rogue, it's AR+SB+Deep Insight+Full HP Leg)

Your goal is to let the rogue cleave the entire time. That's the biggest raid DPS boost; he should pull 150k pretty easily. Others will have to help, but not much. I would just have the MW Monk run around with the Rogue and DPS the legs with him while healing what he can.

Kiting:
If you 3 heal, all 3 healers should kite with the debuff. Our MW Monk didn't have a big problem healing from range and 3 healers aren't even necessary for this fight. Throw your most mobile ranged in there too (lock). At the very least, have 2 healers kite with the Lock and SP; Mages do not do very good DPS while kiting.

If you drop down to 2 healing, I would go to a tank kite rotation: tank > tank > mobile ranged > mobile ranged > mobile ranged > repeat.

[DakonBlackblade]

1) Use you Rogue to soak the swipes along with another tank (have the Rogue getting Elusiveness and always faiting before swipes - they ahve a 8 secs cd its pretty easy) - this grants you a tom of extra DPS already, Im a rogue and I had no problems doing this even on heroic.

2) Have only melees doing legs ranged ppl focus on body and multi DOT/ cleave if they cna to the legs, ppl ignore ramp up time of dpsers when dealing with legs, having like 4 ppl switching to the same leg is actualy a net DPS loss so simply keep your rogue tank + your other tnak taking care on the legs on the fornt and 2 other guys (use your pally as ret as hell not be tanking and the warlock) on the legs on his back

3) Start the phero kitting with a healer and lust, this acomplish 2 things first you have a healer kitting so he canot heal but you ahve lust so the other healers will heal extra, also the onyl point on the fight you have 4 legs to dps is the start so the hero is much ebtter used.

4) use both your mages and your tank (not the rogue the actual tank) on the kitting rotation if this results in dps beeing too low and boss enraging switch one of the mages for a healer, never have a healer passing phero to another healer tough cause during the switch both healers ar epretty much not healling.

5) with 3 healers you should ahve a healling CD for every crush, pop a heal CD right before he hits the ground and theres basicaly no way to die from the crush if you need ot use some sort of chanelled healing cd have the pally use hand of protection on the healer that will use the CD prior to the crush, your pally can get that talent that allow him to use hand of prot twice on the fight. Disc priest Spirit shell stacking before crush is awesome, shaman healling tide totem is as well and BoPing your shamman having him using ascendance and healling right before/after crush is also pretty great.

6) tel your Rogue to feint every crush as well, if he does this and have cloak of shadow glyphed whenever he uses cloak of shadows and feint in the same crush hell egt hit for like 10k damage tops, it helps alot. Also have ppl use healthstones before crushes if the ehalers arent gona eb able to top everyone.

Closing coment: unless youre using your rogue exclusevely for leg damage cleaving to the body its not entirely true hell do more dps ascombat tham as assassination, I play Garalon as assa and pull over 140k everytime easy (I play soaking swipes), I cant realy do much more tham that as combat cause when youre soaking you cant position yourself too well, using killing spree becomes kinda hard and you also only have the legs in the fornt to dps and if the boss decides to respawn most of the legs in the back and youre combat your dps is gona plumet, as assa you cna keep rupture runing on body and as many legs as you can reach and it does boost your dps quite alot. to sumarise I usualy have more sucess going assa when soaking swipes tham combat but I also have a much better set of daggers tham I do combat 1 hander/dagger so take this with a grain of salt.

[Solial]

Just so you know I got some experience raid leading, I am raid leader os US 19th 10 man, US 51st overall guild. And I run social raids with 2-3 raider alts and normaly the rest are pugged or non-raiders. My social group being 16/16N with a few heroic bosses, going 2-6hrs a week.

We have never used any strat that involves less than 2 tank spec tanks and 2-3 healers (depending if our 3rd healer is unavailable), we have done the fight with full ranged dps and up to 4 melee dps.

Start the fight by having your tanks kite pheromones, the amount of stacks you can reach depends on raid cooldowns, if you have tranq up go ahead and use a spirit shell to keep people up LEADING to the stomp, because as soon as it's passed the damage stops and there is only the stomp damage. On heroic I go up to 24-34 stacks starting the fight as the first tank (Granted stomps are on a timer). A safe bet is always 20 stacks.

We have all the dps and healers start on one side (left facing the boss), we pop time warp on the pull with potions, if you don't use potions with time warp it's a dps loss. Have your ranged help kill the first 2 legs and then train boss the rest of the fight. There is a 30 second respawn timer for legs, so the only time you will lose dps on legs is if all four legs are alive for more than 30 seconds, if they are all alive for 25 seconds, the 4th will respawn 5 seconds later. (if you fall behind, have ranged help nuke one down). Have your rogue spec combat and train legs all fight with blade flurry.

If you are going to 3 heal it, have 3 dps + 1 healer do kiting after the start where at least 1 tank does it, so your dps can just nuke. Remember to try and have ranged dps and healers roughly in the middle the whole time so healing rains will heal everyone, just moving up to stay in range of kiter for heals.

tl;dr Pass stacks before damage is to high, train the boss and let rogue solo legs as combat with blade flurry cleaving on to the boss.

[Megalithe]

On heroic I go up to 24-34 stacks starting the fight as the first tank (Granted stomps are on a timer). A safe bet is always 20 stacks.

That is the strange thing, the first week we were on this boss (1 night a week for this group - fyi) we were building pheromones up to almost 30 consistently buy we kept losing people on the 3-4 exchange. From there we have been scaling back and trying to amend the strat to accommodate foreseeable issues.

That is why we have been trying odd tweaks on our strat because... being able to do nearly 30 stacks should have meant 20 stacks easier for at least a good long while...

[NoxxusKT]

Like many others have said, have your rogue tank and free up a dps slot. We have all of our dps kite the pheromones except our smf warrior. The vid is heroic btw, but its pretty much the same:

[Confucius]

1. 2 heal it
2. 4 ranged people kiting. 20 stacks per kiter
3. one tank and rogue soaking.
4. Only kill the 2 inner legs. Soakers can deal with the front outer leg. If you have 3 legs or all of them dead, he basically moves so slow that when you're kiting, you will be turning him facing the raid in the middle. You can do it but raid awareness must be real high for people to avoid the Swipe.
5. It's an efficiency loss to use lust/hero at the start. It's more effective to use it at execute range and have all dps burning down the legs. Ranged focusing outer legs. The reason for it is that at the end when you have done like 3 laps, room to move is much smaller and him being basically stuck in one place and just turning is much better.
6. Have a raid wide damage mitigation cd rotation set up fro Crushes. It really really helps when you're 2 healing it.
7. Always change the kiter right after the Swipe. It's a good practice to have since kiters might get clipped by it at the later stages and swapping after it also reduces the chance for people running into the range, then get stunned and then get hit by it after swapping etc.
8. The obvious one. Stand in the blue circles.

[norix]

I would recommend having a tank start the pheromones and then go into a rotation of the 4 ranged dps that you guys have, assuming that you'll still be able to get the kill before the enrage since their dps will be lower. With 4 people rotating there shouldn't be any need to go over 21 stacks of the debuff, which will keep the damage very low considering you're using three healers. Also, have you considered swapping the monk or resto to dps for this fight? If 2 healers can handle the through put necessary to keep everyone alive, will only make the fight go faster. Good luck with future pulls

[Mission]

We tried pretty much every strat, they didnt work well for us, way we got the kill and now most times 1 shot the boss is like so:

1 Tank, 3 Healers, 6 DPS.

Pheromones Rotation: 1 Tank begins it on pull, next 3 in line are any of the 3 healers. So 1 Tank 3 Healers do pheromones never any ranged dps.
This way there is more pew pew on legs, and always 2 healers in group at any given time.

Also we call out in vent too heal people up BEFORE a pheromones switch is about too happen, because you get stunned on a pheromone switch + crush occurs, so pre hots, circles, whatever... and re-healed back up after crush, and rinse and repeat that cycle until boss dies. No specific order for us, for which healers are next in line, and they all go too 20 stacks, sometimes it might get too 22-24 but mostly around 20 stacks.

The DPS are all always nuking the bosses legs, even ranged. Everyone knows too nuke legs, no one needs to be told which leg, just keep nuking legs, stand INSIDE the blue circle that is around the leg, when all legs dead, pew pew body for a short time, when a leg is back, pew pew it again, and we lust usually around 30% it kinda just depends on how we feel for when we lust, but we dont see it needed on pull as legs die fast anyway.

1 Melee will help soak the swipe, so healers need to be aware there is 1 dps, melee going to have spiked damage, and just make sure they are onto it before swipes happen.

With this strat 3 healers 1 tank, is so all dps can do what they need too... DPS and alot of it on legs mostly.

Works for us every time, all other strats did not suit us.

[Megalithe]

We did it - we resolved to not quit till he died!!

Input was also received at:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...78085?page=1#9

Strat
/dbm pull 5
prepot
I pulled boss and started to run pheromones around the out side leaving gaps we could fill in later ( did this to help move the transition spot from me to the next handler). Blood lust - All DPS cds - Burned all four legs down.

Range DPS stacked in the center for AOE healing. Tanks worked on front legs. Rogues worked on the back legs/body (trying to stay in the sweet spot where they could cleave).

Pheromones was handled by:
Resto Shaman - Affliction Warlock - Holy Priest - Fire Mage
We held it for 20+ stacks and swapped using CD's as needed communicating on vent. Hots/Earthshield were applied to help carriers live through range issues.


Comp
2 Tank
Paladin (prot)
Druid (guardian)

3 Heal
shaman
priest
Monk

3 Range DPS
fire mage
arcane mage
affliction lock

2 Melee DPS
Rogue combat x2

Thank you all for your input
Megalithe
wwwStormScale86d.com