[10H] Gara'jal the Spiritbinder

[Kai]

one thing that helped our §$&§$ setup (no main spec shadow, warlock or owl and a DK tank) was to delay the first totem by 15 seconds. we kill it when it's 15s to the spawn of the next totem. then if those 2 guys stay in 28s or so and you keep delaying every further totem by those 15s, you'll end up to be synchronized with the voodoo dolls so that the dolls always happen when the first group is inside.
that helps a lot if you only have one of the good classes for inside as that way if he doesn't get the very first voodoo doll, he'll never get it for the rest of the fight.

[Ra3L]

We still haven't tried Gara'jal, but there are some
tipps we got from our buddy which will help A LOT!

Strategy:

2 Heals
2 Tanks
6 Mixed DPS

If you can get them, use shamans, spriests and balancedroods.
The shaman is perfect for the "real" world.
Putting down his Healing Rain looses the strain for our 2 healers.
Spriest and owl are perfect for spirit realm.
Dotting everything and then dpsing the severers if available.
Also all 3 of the classes can heal in the spirit realm. also having a warlock's
healthstone tops you of in no time.

another trick is to send a retpally down for the last totem which would have been skipped.
use LoH and enjoy +dmg.

as mentioned beforehand Hero/Lust should be used in the beginning to max out trinkets/weaponproccs/cds/stormlash.

I think we'll get to garajal in the next lockout, but first have to deal with feng. but shouldn't be a hard time.

[saif]

I was able to push 50k+ on this with Str flask, a DPS trinket and focusing all my Glyphs and Talents to single target damage. Next time I'll probably use a couple of higher-strength pieces or something just to make it go even faster.

Tank damage is big on this fight.

[Ra3L]

Yesterday we had our first take on garajal and killed him in about 10 tries.
Ofc we had pretty decent gear, but our main problem was communication.

Failing to get maximum of persons into the totemarea had us wipe to several 6% wipes due to enrage.

But after this was clarified we pretty much two-shot the boss and had around 20-30 seconds remaining on enrage timer.

[Chronos]

Tips for reducing incoming damage as a prot pali? Sacred shield doesnt mitigate shadowy attacks? Glyphed or unglyphed dp? Bops/sac from other pallies? Other ideas? Ty!

[Belloc]

Bubbles and BoPs are excellent ways to completely remove tank damage for their durations. I believe I've read that shadowy attacks can be blocked/avoided, so there's that. On-use trinkets allow for bursts of extra avoidance. Glyphed DP is probably better than unglyphed, since most of the damage a tank is taking is physical. You've got your other two tank cooldowns, plus externals. Oh, and Holy Avenger.

I can't speak for heroic mode, since my MoP raid group is about the worst raid group I've had since BC, but when we first started working on the normal fight, I made sure to rotate through my cooldowns whenever it was my turn to tank. I'd usually start off with either a trinket or holy avenger (since holy avenger = ShoR buff for the duration) and use one or two of my cooldowns whenever it was my turn to tank. So, holy avenger --> on-use trinket + glyphed DP for my first turn, GotAK --> Ardent Defender + glyphed DP for the second. If things became problematic, bubble or BoP yourself.

Also, I talent Clemency on this fight, so I can use hand of sacrifice on my co-tank every time he's tanking. Maybe even twice every time he's tanking, though I've never really tried that. Plus you've got two emergency BoPs.

Finally, you can make use of holy prism or the other AOE healing/damage talent we have. I like Holy Prism because it's a quick burst of healing that you can throw out if you see voodoo dolls getting low. Whatever you do, just make sure you're not using important cooldowns when your healers are up and able to handle the damage.

[Chronos]

Very helpful, thanks.

[frontallobe]

The tank not being banished bug.. still not fixed as of tonight.
Jay

[frontallobe]

Killed this tonight. We spent 12 wipes with a non dot comp. We had no dots and no off heals in a 2 heal scenario. We brought in a buddy from a lesser team in our guild.. on his alt priest he admits he barely can play (disc) and our druid goes boomkin. We kill it in 4 wipes.

I think Blizzard has done a nice job of bring the player not the class but this fight is the exception. You need dot classes to kill it at this point in the tier. Bring them and you win.

[frontallobe]

Ok so we go for our second kill tonight. (new years day) - they hotfixed the ability to BoP or DS the tank. They do now lose threat. Kind of lame tbh.

[Chronos]

You sure? Cant find a blue post about it. Killed it last night and neither BoP or DS looked hotfixed.

[baleogthefierce]

We had some strange behavior on this last night in 25-man as well, usually I hold my hand of protection for the final 5%. Last night I kept getting "invalid target" messages while trying to use it on the other tank. Initially I thought that it must have been my unit frames not showing forbearance on the target, but logs confirm that the tank didn't have it. No idea what's going on.

[Chronos]

We had the same tank get banished twice in a row last night... But I dont think that was due to DS / HoP.

[Gab]

When my group was first progressing on the fight we thought taunting (for OT vengeance) or BoP/DS might be causing the "random" voodoo changes.

I'm fairly convinced at this point that it only happens if one of your Voodoos die. Gara'jal picks new Voodoo targets, since one of them just died, and sometimes that happens to be the "wrong" tank.

Outside of Voodoo deaths I have never seen Gara'jal swap tank fixates.

[Paoanii]

When my group was first progressing on the fight we thought taunting (for OT vengeance) or BoP/DS might be causing the "random" voodoo changes.

I'm fairly convinced at this point that it only happens if one of your Voodoos die. Gara'jal picks new Voodoo targets, since one of them just died, and sometimes that happens to be the "wrong" tank.

Outside of Voodoo deaths I have never seen Gara'jal swap tank fixates.

Whenever he recasts voodoo dolls (Just before banish, and 1-2 times before that while tanking him for each tank rotation) he has a normal threat table for a split second as one set of voodoos is cancelled and he hasn't cast the next. If your OT has more threat than the current tank when he does that, he goes to the OT and causes the swap. You can actually use this to your favor (and we have in 25) if you want a particular tank tanking him during the enrage. You can also use it to force him to banish someone else if they are quick enough and lucky enough. If you want to force him onto a particular tank, just have the OT taunt repeatedly and salv/BoP your current tank as hes getting close to recasting voodoo dolls. Ideally you will still have the "Fixate" from the taunt still on him when he recasts voodoo and you will swap without issue, but it works just the same if the MT has BoP or Salv on them.