World first Algalon solo

[Caribald]

Had Asrialol move this from the Hunter forum to Raids & Dungeons. Thanks
The text here was supposed to be the Youtube description, but it was too long, so I post it in this thread instead. Keep this is mind if you decide to read the wall of text



I spent nearly two days of doing nothing but Algalon attempts and restocking on consumables, other than sleep, food and hygiene obviously. The Living Constellations behave in a pretty weird manner; sometimes they fly away and despawn randomly, and other times they don't. Sometimes you can despawn them with feign (usually if you feign immediately), other times they just go to the pet and keep nuking you with arcane barrages. The fight is incredibly hard because pet takes insane damage and cooldowns need to be used sparingly, while still enough to keep the pet alive, and intentional overaggroing is actually a must to keep a pet with fresh cooldowns ready for phase 2. On my 7% wipe about a day ago I only had three turtles on me, and pet died about 20 seconds before enrage (I died 13 seconds to enrage), but it didn't have Last Stand because I had used it earlier. I also tweaked my pet spec a little to not have Guard Dog, Taunt and Thunderstump, but instead have Silverback, Boar's Speed and one point in Culling the Herd. I tried macroing Growl into every shot because it doesn't automatically cast every time it gets off cooldown, but that made the pet attack Algalon, which was NOT desirable when trying to place the pet somewhere to kite Algalon or to place him properly for next Dismiss.

I think Hunters are the only class that can solo Algalon because of his Phase Punch mechanic. At five stacks a player will be put in the Black Hole phase, and with no player in the normal realm, Algalon casts Ascend to the Heavens, which kills you (unless you're a DK I guess) and resets the fight. Pets, however, doesn't go in that phase without their master, they just get the Black Hole dot that you get for being in there once Phase Punch reaches five stacks. For this reason I sometimes had to wait between wipes to summon each pet and make sure it had no stacks of Phase Punch (45 second duration), and also to check on Last Stand cooldowns for each pet, so I knew which pet to start with. (I actually fail this in the kill video... I first summon the wrong turtle and have to dismiss, costing time on my Call of the Wild buff.)

On this kill my average item level was 400.1 (according to Altoholic). One of my rings was pvp though, and since resilience can't be reforged, an entire green stat was wasted. So let's just say I was below 400 ilvl, ok?

I start the actual fight by putting up Hunter's Mark, buffing with cat (I buffed with wolf and cat back when I used 3 turtles), switching to a turtle, putting up MD while placing the turtle, then prepot Potion of the Tol'vir and do Aimed Shot + Chimera Shot. The threat from the MD isn't lost until after the standard 30 seconds, even though Algalon becomes untargetable for a while. I then cancel the MD buff to recast it, put up Mend Pet and try to get it on 6 ticks with my global finishing just as Algalon becomes targetable again, and then I pop Rapid Fire and Synapse Springs (engineer glove tinker). I save Readiness for later. Since the enrage is 6 minutes there is no way you can get 3 sets of cooldowns, so it's better to save Readiness for later (although it should be used before 2 minutes into the fight to allow Rapid Fire to be ready again for phase 2, and before second Readiness).

The first pet begins tanking and I pop Cower to reduce damage, followed by a Shell Shield. I try to leave a gap with no cooldown up and use them around 100k hp on the pet, but it's something that comes with practice. Usually when Shell Shield is up is when the first overaggro happens; when it does, I place the pet with a Move To, so it stays at max range from me while I run from Algalon and Feign Death. Before running, a fresh Mend Pet is applied. Casting an instant and immediately feigning makes feign "bug" so it gets on cooldown without actually working, so I wait like 0.5 seconds before feigning to be sure that doesn't happen. I run behind Algalon to get in pet range ASAP to refresh Mend Pet before it expires.

At this point, a few things can happen. It should be about 10 seconds until the first pack of three Living Constellations spawn. If I do nothing, pet dies, so I either switch pet or use Last Stand, as that is the only available survivability cooldown on the pet. It's a very good idea to switch pet here if possible, but the problem is Feign Death cooldown (it's on cooldown from the intentional overaggro). Ideally you want to somehow keep the pet alive until Feign is ready again, but otherwise I'm forced to use Readiness to be able to FD again. If I'm able to dismiss, summon and have FD ready in time, I do that, and then immediately get back up, Readiness, make sure Constellations have spawned and Feign again. Hopefully they will go away; otherwise, it's unlucky, but not necessarily over. Since there are no black holes yet when the first constellations spawn, I can't despawn them the real way (they despawn along with a black hole when they're dragged into each other); this is why despawning the first set of constellations is very important.

The other way is to just use the Last Stand on the first pet and wait with the dismiss. Then I feign once the Constellations spawn and switch pet afterwards by using Readiness for the Feign. Only ONCE did I manage to somehow keep my first pet up all the way until the first Big Bang, and in other trys afterwards where I did a better job kiting Algalon, I couldn't do it again, so it's not a tactic that I used a lot.

Once Readiness has been popped, Rapid Fire should be used rather soon thereafter. It needs to be ready again for phase 2. If possible it's best to stack it with a proc, or just any time I could have 15 seconds of pure nuking.

On Big Bang I just Intervene. No Cosmic Smash can happen during Big Bang so the only thing to worry about is if there are Constellations up, as they can and will remove the Intervene buff with an Arcane Barrage. If they are up, Intervene needs to be cast at the last possible moment to minimize the chance of losing the buff to a 4k damage spell, rather than an 80k. After the Big Bang, pet switching happens as normal when it runs out of cooldowns or just before Last Stand expires (since the bonus health is lost). Of course, if the pet had 150k it can be delayed a few more seconds.

After a while the Collapsing Stars will go to 0 health and explode, and for this I Deterrence for the 30% less damage taken. If for some reason Algalon is close, Raptor Strike can be used, but ONLY if below 110% threat. 110% threat is melee overaggro, 130% is ranged overaggro. This information is very important. I Survive the explosions and keep an eye on pet health / cds, and the next constellations should appear. If I decide my pet can survive another 25 seconds, I feign the constellations. Otherwise I use the black holes to despawn them.

At just over 20%, I switch to my last turtle, which has Last Stand ready. On the kill I actually didn't switch because the one I had out when the third Big Bang was cast only had Cower on cooldown, at it would be ready again in time. I Pop Rapid Fire, Potion of the Tol'vir, Readiness and go absolutely crazy. The 4 black holes spawn in a square shape in the middle, so I make sure I'm not standing where they can spawn (going in a black hole is instawipe). In phase 2, adds come out of those 4 black holes. I just tank the damage from these adds if I get to phase 2 with high health, which was the cast on the kill. The bad part is that they push back steady and aimed shot casts, but apparently Feign despawns them if they haven't been touched by the pet. I didn't actually know this and was surprised when the first phase-two-adds despawned.

The reason for saving dps cooldowns for this moment is because of those adds, the last think I'd want is for them to overwhelm me. The last pet is kept alive as long as possible and followed by mad kiting with Nitro Boosts if he isn't dead yet. I don't know if pet switching is possible here, but the adds would make things difficult, as well as the enrage timer. Since I only managed to get to phase 2 a total of 5-7 times, I never really had a chance to try it, but had to go with what I thought would be the best thing to do.

I hope I remembered everything, I accidentally lost all the text I had written about the strategy so I had to write it all again. Thanks for watching the video and reading the description, and good luck if you should ever attempt to solo this boss.

[gakpad]

That's really impressive, especially considering the amount of damage that goes out to me and my friend when we duo/trio it every week. Congrats on the kill!

[aarjun]

Very impressive. Hope this gets posted on the front page as it is indeed more challenging than some of the other solo world firsts posted there.

[Gheld]

Minty! This guy for president of hunters!

[Resentful]

Woah, That's quite flawless OP. A very impressive kill

I give you my congrats.

[Caribald]

Thank you all for the kind words <3

aarjun: This is definitely the hardest I've ever done. XT-002 Deconstructor hardmode as hunter was pretty tough with the gear I had at the time of that kill, but it was nothing compared to this. The error margin is stupidly low and even then you have to be lucky.

[Deleted]

amazing.. grats to you

[Raxingar]

Wow, great job, that most have taken some planning, really cool.

Also, I second that this is first page material, one of the hardest boss solos I've seen!

[Sidorenko]

Grats, very well laid and thought out

[Sj]

Congrats, that's a hell of an accomplishment!

[Mercadi]

Congrats. Lots of dedication and nice kill.

[Deleted]

Gz mate, awesome work there...

[Pendragon]

Very, very impressive. Well done!

[Deleted]

Thats so amazing!!

[Ihnasir]

awesome job man!

[Deadlycaster]

Well done! I hope you get a front-page post for this! (:

[irongar]

well done, worth to get it on the front page!

grats on the kill!!

[Kafaerus]

Nicely done.

[Zalkercin]

Good job man. That was quite impressive.

[George]

Congratulations!