[10] Algalon

I'm totally disappointed by it, i suspect we might get it this week or the next one if the nerf to melee damage is so heavy.

Soo....

My rocket boots have backfired twice in all the time I've had them.

Once while outside ulduar in a silly dress dancing with horde.

Once when running from a smash with Algalon at 10% on our last attempt of the timer.

The Celestial Planetarium or whatever apparently has a high ceiling, leading to my death from 14k of fall damage due to the backfire. So we wiped to the enrage with him at 4%.

FML.

fafhrd wrote:Soo....

My rocket boots have backfired twice in all the time I've had them.

Once while outside ulduar in a silly dress dancing with horde.

Once when running from a smash with Algalon at 10% on our last attempt of the timer.

The Celestial Planetarium or whatever apparently has a high ceiling, leading to my death from 14k of fall damage due to the backfire. So we wiped to the enrage with him at 4%.

FML.

/hug

fafhrd wrote:Soo....

My rocket boots have backfired twice in all the time I've had them.

Once while outside ulduar in a silly dress dancing with horde.

Once when running from a smash with Algalon at 10% on our last attempt of the timer.

The Celestial Planetarium or whatever apparently has a high ceiling, leading to my death from 14k of fall damage due to the backfire. So we wiped to the enrage with him at 4%.

FML.

But, your an engineer!
Parachute!
Ive only been katapulted up to the ceiling twice, it is harder to see if youve got 3 living constillations on you aswell xD
I wonder tho, if you ask a mage to put slow fall on you, then you whos tanking intentionally gets katapulted up, and then take the 4min slow fall down do algalon again? Does he evade then since he cant hit you? Could be a way to reduce dmg taken on the tanks
My second paladin is engineer aswell, and its really devastating if boots fail :S

Well for one, i wasn't tanking, I was dps, so slowfall would have been fine I guess - [engineer] priest after raid was saying "why didn't you tell me to levitate you??"

I'm still wondering whether it really was a backfire or not. As I understand it, Cosmic Smash can knock you into the air if you take a direct hit too? I know i've seen people flying in some Alg 25 videos. But given that smash has never knocked me before, I'd guess it's either only from smashes during the last phase, or from some particular range of smash? Given that I actually got several seconds of nitro boosted running away from the smash and there's only 1 smash at a time on 10, and that I didn't take any 50k fire damage, I can't imagine I actually got hit by the smash.

Wowhead isn't helping with answering whether cosmic smash knocks you up, does anyone know? Wowhead claims that the rocket boots won't send you flying in zones you can't use a flying mount though.

I'd be more worried about getting knocked up by the "big bang" ..!

On a more serious note: cosmic smash can send you into the air. You need to be within a certain radius of ground zero, and it is wider than the one-shot range. Usually you'll have been hit for about 10k. The resulting fall damage can be survived if you're coming down at full health. BoP, slow fall, and levitate also work. I've seen a ret paladin and elemental shaman get flung into the air before, and the ret had enough air time to throw hand of protection on the shaman, divine shield himself, and have them both land alive. I've personally summoned my ghoul on the way up, then deathpacted on the way down to survive at least two of those, one in damage gear.

-Splug

Quick question, I don't get to hand pick my group and we will be making our first attempts this week. All my dps sits around 5k-6k except for one boomkin who is usually doing about 3k. We've done all the hard modes so far with this group comp and he is a good player but his dps just lacks at times. If i throw him on collapsing stars will his dps be enough to down them before each big bang?

Also I'll probably be running priestx2, druidx1, or druidx2 and priestx1 for healers. Is disc/druid enough to keep up a tank on 10-man? I don't have the luxury of having a good holy paladin sitting around for MT healing for this one fight.

The tank healing would have probably come up short prior to the hotfix this week. We haven't done 10-man yet this week, but if it's comparable to the 25-version's nerf, you should be able to manage.

Stars are more about timing than throughput. More often than not, killing them is gated by the raid's health. They'll die on their own right after the big bang, so the problem on his end won't be killing them all in time, it'll be killing the first one in time to spread the rest of them out for healing. I'm not sure if 3k dps is enough, but I know our hunter spends a lot of time shooting algalon while waiting to kill stars.

-Splug

Any link to blue post about hotfix?

Our star killer often struggles to get them down fast enough. A boomkin pulling 3k absolutely will not cut it at all.

The hotfix was on the 21st, posted on MMO-C's front page as I recall.

I know we use an elemental shaman on the stars. I also know they have a VERY specific way they deal with stars with killing off 3, 2, 2 before big bangs ( I THINK thats how many). The reason is there is a maximum number of stars up at all times so the idea is to minimize time on stars, also he tries to time it so that the stars explode while a majority of the raid is down below.

I'm sorry I can't be more descriptive or definitive about stars I'm usually more concerned with my own problems on that fight. I'll talk to him but we are done with raids for the week so it will probably not be until next Tuesday that I have an answer.

Algalon 10 down by our alts. Herald of the Titans LOL.

Thanks for the hotfix blizz.

Tonight we will be doing our first attempt on Algalon 10.

I feel unprepared, I did not expect to get the key so soon, I have not read this thread until today, and have seen only some of the world first videos, which were not very clean.

You guys have helped me so much in getting all of the harder 10 mans. Heck even the easier ones I got the most important tips from here.

But this boss I have to prepare more then ever. Our expectations is that since it has been nerfed, we SHOULD get it this week. But if I were to start the pull now, I would be woefully unprepared.

Would anyone be able to take the time to write a concise guide on how best to approach the fight.

Any more info or more perspectives would be great help to me in my preparation.

Here is what i know so far:

2 tanks. 3 healers. 5 dps. The enrage timer is fairly soft if no one dies.

There is something that is called phase punch. It is cast every (?? 10-20 ??) seconds and does (0-5000??) extra damage when it lands. It stacks. At 5 stacks the tank is phased out and this should never happen.

To avoid this, tanks need to swap before reaching 5 stacks. Exactly when to swap is determined by who you want left up during "big bang", which is detemrined by available cooldowns.

So with a Paladin tank and an Unholy DK tank We should swap at (1,2,3,4???) fusion punches.

We should have the same person always eat the big bangs if we have enough CD's. Or can swap if needed.

There are living contelations that are a nuisance (???). They are dealt with by having the current OT taunt / aggro kite / drag them through a black hole.

A black hole can also be used by standing on it, which will phase you out, and let you (9 of the raid) survive bigbang.

Black holes are created by killing (Stars???). Stars are different form living constellations in that they (?? i have no idea). I assume the the float around slowly. Have X amount of HP. And cast AoE damage around them. The constelations have aggro and (will/will not???) melee swing people.

Most DPS unless assigned to stars will spend their fight on algalon full time, with no needed raid movement until big bang, where then go to a black whole to phase out, then after the cast they phase back in and right away go back on the boss. Rinse repeat.

Some DPS has to kill stars. They should kill them with the goal in mind of (??? no idea? kill them as soon as they spawn?). They should still have plenty of time to dps alg in between.

Where the stars die matters/does not matter?

People are forced to move around during the fight between bigbangs to avoid (??? what?)

Raid damage is caused by (????)

There is no debuffs in this fight except phase punch / being phased out. (true???)

At 20% some (5??) kind of (new add / same type as before) start to spawn and they are dealt with by (kiting / killing / ignoring ) and they do (damage / silence / other???)

Hope this gives an idea of where I currently stand in my understanding. If anyone can clarify so I can better lead my raid and make sure everyone knows exactly what their role is.

Ughh I know so little. It seems like a tank and spank with a fairly straightforward blackhole/big bang gimmick. But the whole living constalation thing and how they work I am totaly lost. So many comments people say how they dont understand why they can't just ignore them. Good guilds don't ignore them, but I dont have the answer as to why. Do they cause enough damage that the loss of DPS is worth the control? (They respawn too don't they, so its just temporarily less costalations up) Or is it a must for some other mechanic I don't understand? Is too many black holes being a raid hazard a real reason?

Thanks 1000000000x in advance.




So we got there and got ready... And he is gone.

Q u o t e:

Guessing a soft reset messes with that, not a bug.

Yes and no.

From what I've been able to find, opening the door and soft resetting will prevent Algalon from spawning. This is currently being looked into by our Quality Assurance Team and something we hope to have resolved in an upcoming patch.

Unfortunately once despawned the Game Master Department is unable to reset the event.

Opening the door will despawn him after trash respawn. (soft reset) WOW wish I had known that....

Wowwiki covers most of your questions, at least about basic abilities. You omitted Cosmic Smash, which is the main cause of raid movement, as whoever it spawns on and anyone near them needs to get out the way.

Tankspot also have a guide up for 10 man, and there's another guide or two on youtube as well.

To cover a few of your questions, how we do it:
We blow hero right at the start to gain most dps out of the hero, the enrage isnt hard to beat if everyone survives, but shit happends and this will give you a lead.
Pallytanking threat on this fight is amazing so you should start off tanking, pop wings and see how dps cant reach you on omen .
At 3 phase punches (cast every now and then bossmods have an pretty exact timer) we swap tanks, the 2nd tank does a 3 sec countdown in order to get the healers ready. We found this to be the perfect stack rotation with the big bangs.
This will make tank1 get 3 stacks, then tank2 taunts and he will have 2 stacks, sometimes a 3rd right before big bang is casted, and also make Tank1's stacks run out right in time for big bang, so when its over, Tank1 starts tanking again and this rotation goes all the way to the end. Make sure your healers know that Tank1 will always star tanking after a big bang to get buffs and shields up on that one.
Big bang are also on a accurate timer on bossmods and as you know someone has to soak it. We found tanks to be the best since then theres no aggroissues whatso ever, some do it with a shadowpriest (think this is most for 25man tho?).
We have me soaking with Salvation and Divine protection on first and 3rd big bang (Divine Protection will make you survive it alone, but theres no threat issues since those down in the phase realm looses all aggro and less dmg taken isnt bad), and having eather Painsuppression or Guardian spirit, if none of those are available maybe the second tank has some CDs of their own and can take the 2nd Big bang.
Every now and then he will cast cosmic smashes, bossmods have an very accurate timer for this aswell. It will look like a very small fissure you really have to get out of, no need to run across the room, a few steps 5-10yards will get you pretty safe, however the further away the less dmg. Once your 10yards away the dmg isnt really noticable. If you get caught in it youll fly up in the air and will prolly die or cause a wipe.
Stars, they will spawn a bit into the fight, about 30sec or so i think.
Collapsing stars move around everywhere in the room, not sure if they got a preset path or not but they seem to avoid the middle of the room. Tricky thing with these are that they loose health all the time, one or 2 %/sec, a dedicated killer for these stars are required. They dont do anything to ppl close all they do is that when they explode they will do aoe on the whole raid, shadowdmg so auramastery on a holy/retri would help but not crutial. When they die they leave the black holes. Have your Starkiller announce a few sec before one is gonna blow, for healers to prepare. Also make sure healers and dpsers have emeny nameplate on, that way they can see for themselves if a collapsing star is running close to them with low health. Have your Starkiller mark the adds he is killing so that a black hole doesnt spawn ontop of them making them go to phaserealm and be useless for a time.
Constilations flying around isnt much of a deal, they dont have a meele attack from what ive managed to see, and all they do is cast arcane barrange on random ppl every now and then. I usually taunt them off from our raidhealer in order to just get control of them, they will still hit random ppl even if your "tanking" them, i do this for a simple failsafe, since what have happened to us is that the healer with the aggro on them goes into a black hole and closes it before everyone is safely in it, this way he doesnt have to think about it.
Somewhere around the middle of the fight there will prolly be a lot of black holes around, and after tank2 taunts algalon off from you, you can run around closing a few black holes, mainly those close to meele, so they dont accidentally goes down when they are running away from cosmic smash.
Oh ye, and at 20% adds spawn, nothing to worry about just try and pick them from the healers. The black holes also reposition at this point, or more exactly i think they despawn, and then 4 new holes spawn so that noone has to care about killing stars anymore.
Think this covers a lot, but atleast the most essential parts should be in there.