Galaga raid progression thread; tackling the issues
badpenny — Mon, 12/02/2013 - 12:01
Until we get a Galaga Raid forum area, I'm going to start posting under this one for notes to our raid on problem solving for downing the current boss. If Manhugger's and the Pro's want to chime in that is always welcome. Keep in mind we have a full roster on Tue and usu 2-3 subs on Sunday making progression "challenging". On to today's topic.
Spoils.
Post mortem
1. Nice job on getting one grp's side down and the second grp's side last big box to 4%. We know how to make wipes painfully close apparently.
2. Healz seemed to be fine, with the exception of Mantid big box healing tight and people avoiding cleave as much as possible.
3. Tanking was awesome sauce.
4. Picking up matter swap was solid.
5. Rem, more than two urns up at once in 10 man was for us problematic, so let's slow it down if 2 are up.
6. Saving 1 big box for the end worked well for us so far.
7. Purplefox doing 90k dps with atonement healz was helpful. Strong work Purple (I thought I would never say that out loud . . . jk)!
Suggestions for progress
1. More dps on Tue will certainly help with regular raiders and that might be all we need honestly.
2. Due to the huge asymmetry in clearing rooms (1 min wait time in Mantid room for Mogu room), we might have Thoridal start in Mogu room on pull to have 6. Pull big box with 2 green boxes 1st with Heroism and after those 3 fall, he can go back to Mantid room. Even with 20 sec delay, that shouldn't be an issue and we can clear about the same time hopefully. The other room will then pop Heroism at end when they are in Mogu room.
3. Whillow will be back to heal/dps on Tue. So with 3 healers, even Purple with atonement, it's kind of a waste. I might hop on my lock to join Mantid room and have Whillow replace badpenny as healz in Mogu room 1st since I'm the lowest geared healer. Destro aoe is pretty awesome sauce even with my paltry ilvl.
4. Alternatively I could jump on my bear and have Eddrina go feral, but tanks have it down so well it seems like we might waste more time doing that switch.
Seigecrafter ended up being much easier than Thok for us
badpenny — Fri, 12/27/2013 - 12:56Took us 1.5 hrs of pulls with 2 subs. Maybe we were lucky, but nice change after the misery of Thok.
We get one night for Garrosh on Sunday prior to server merger and all raid locks being wiped out. Our main healer is away so we are attempting to 2 heal it with an extra dps. We were going to use the strat that Elapsed recommends on Sat FLEX nights. For the progression crew, what would you suggest as pain points on 10 man?
I imagine interrupting the wolf riders, the single target add phase and the MC's towards the end will be what hurts us the most. We have 2 pally's for Devo on the empowered Whirling corruption with some spirit shells thrown out on 5 from our Disc priest. We also have a bear tank that can do a weak tranquility.
Thanks for any help in advance.
Pain Points from both raids
Elapsed — Fri, 12/27/2013 - 13:25Pain Points from both raids who have Garrosh under their belts
PMS' first kill we had 5 or 6 desecrated weapons on the ground on our kill, the room fills up quick but the raid NEEDS to stay together as much as possible otherwise you'll run into MC problems
we got our 1st whole night on Garrosh . . .
badpenny — Mon, 01/27/2014 - 21:29Good times, good times. We were short a raider and initially had Sassy help in a pinch, but that put a main healz in a subpar dps OS. Then Shatner pitched in on his hunter which was also a big help.
Elapsed your list of pain points were rather prescient.
1. Yep, happened a lot, but improved by the end. Even had a tunneler on annihilate in the transition who died a bit, but when reminded of priority to live, not just heal, they lived!
2. Got this down, but took some time and Saedra switching to his pally dps.
3. check
4. check and amazingly we have the MC's down well. I really thought this was going to be the hardest part for us, but noooo, dying to avoidable stuff is so far, lol.
5. Doing this ok, but the adds are munching our face. This is a point of emphasis for next time. Everyone take your add away from everyone else.
6. Yes, add control quickly. We did this poorly, but it was the end of the night before we were consistently here.
7. We'll see. We seemed to be short on dps on boss, got him to 27% the second phase part, never to final phase.
Thanks for all the help. Any more suggestions, keep them coming. Shatner gave some and I think it's repetition at this point for the most part with some reminders.
Practice will make execution
Elapsed — Tue, 01/28/2014 - 14:32Practice will make execution possible. You need to iron out everyones personal hiccups. i.e. Less time spent running from the boss and Ironstar, less time in the transition phases, and lastly less time spent dealing with adds pre-phase 3.
The only time adds will munch
Insta — Tue, 01/28/2014 - 12:46The only time adds will munch on your face is if they became empowered by killing an add near an another add. Classes that have taunt should taunt an add, nuke it, and repeat. You make sure no adds become bigger or else it'll pose a threat to the raid. There'll be a time where after the empowered whirlwind, MC will be up next. If adds are killed before, that's good, but if not, you stack to one point so that MC's will be taken care of easily then go back to killing adds.
"Everyone take your add away from everyone else." <- Make sure they are still in range with healers or else it could be devastating esp if MC goes out and that person is far away from raid.
helpful points
badpenny — Tue, 01/28/2014 - 14:39I thought we had to have all adds down prior to the next MC, nice to know we can group for the MC and go back to add control if necessary. What you mentioned happened to us a couple of times. We were spread out for the adds, MC hits, we're toast.
Thanks!
DPS switch to adds needs to
Elapsed — Tue, 01/28/2014 - 15:45DPS switch to adds needs to be swift, and as was mentioned many times any ANY person with a taunt needs to use it on an Add.
Ideally yes you want to have
Mehguy — Tue, 01/28/2014 - 15:44Ideally yes you want to have all the adds down before MC but its not the end of the world if you don't. Some of our early kills we still had a few adds up but we didn't really group too strongly for the MC. We just made ourselves aware that MC was coming up and broke them out fast.
this really helps
badpenny — Tue, 01/28/2014 - 15:50Ty both!
as always ty for the insight!
badpenny — Fri, 12/27/2013 - 14:54So last phase do u have tanks start at one end of room and go to other as desecrates drop or do u still stay central, and have all go around in circle around them? 6 weapons seems pretty tight at the center.
As long as you guys are
Elapsed — Fri, 12/27/2013 - 17:34As long as you guys are moving to the edges of the desecrates and not full weapon's legnth away. In other words making them more like a Venn Diagram, then it wont be so bad. But of course as you all start to move to deal with Empowered whirls one may be dropped way outside as long as people are careful no to get too far away for MCs which generally happens directly after
EDIT I pasted in a BoosBlueprint of what I meant with the image. Don't take the raid markers litterally just their positioning. For the boss blueprint one the Star location tends to end up being the first one once you hit P3 but in all honesty it can start in any of the corners as long as you have someone calling out the next marks.
The Green circle tends to happen if people spread too far out during Empowered Whirls, and can give you quite a bit of extra space, but the raid better be VERY ready to handle any MCs going off then
helpful diagrams, ty
badpenny — Fri, 01/17/2014 - 10:43Due to server merger, holidays, blah, blah, we've reset a couple of times and acquiring some gear. We're down 2 tanks and a healz this Sunday too, so will try to cobble together a grp to continue on 5th boss.
we moved to the edge of each
Grasen — Fri, 12/27/2013 - 15:24we moved to the edge of each one, so when the next spawned it overlapped the last one.
we made a u around boss
Grasen — Fri, 12/27/2013 - 15:24we made a u around boss basicaly
Thanks!
badpenny — Fri, 12/27/2013 - 16:05We appreciate the insight Grasen.
that took too long . . .
badpenny — Mon, 12/16/2013 - 08:23but Thok finally bit the dust for us. We were down to 9 raiders Sunday and Sassy stepped in for a much needed assist. This forced our main healz to go dps, which he is not geared for. Then Sassy kindly bowed out so Shatner could give us a hand and allow Whillow to heal again. I think it took 2 pulls with Shatner in the fold. We really needed the rdps. It was a huge help.
I'm glad I could help
Shatner — Mon, 12/16/2013 - 12:40but we need to extract Thok's DNA so we can start a theme park gone horribly wrong.
so it turned out to be 1.
badpenny — Wed, 12/04/2013 - 09:48Certainly having Thoridal join us on Mogu on pull helped a lot too. Now on to Thok.
Post mortem:
1. That is one hungry lizard.
2. P1 second door, we need to get the serial CD's down better for Deafening Screech 3 sec cast time (for our grp: Priest "inner focus" to prevent interrupt and keep casting, Pally "HoP" on self for same, Pally Devo Aura, rogue "smoke bomb" to help with damage and casting (Sayd you might want to glyph this to 7 sec for this one fight), Druid "tranquility" when HoP on, Shammie timing "healing tide totem".
3. P2 is a work in progress. Getting munched right as he transitions was a hiccup. Need to be tighter on inner circle foot for second P1 and then run like hell when moving to second door.
4. Dispel, dispel, dispel at second door!
5. Only one person was ice blocked, but need to free them up quick and keep healing them.
For 1 hr of work, 41% was not bad. Any other suggestions?
Remember you guys have 2
Elapsed — Wed, 12/04/2013 - 12:20Remember you guys have 2 Devotion Auras, don't use them both in P1, but instead if you alternate them you will have one for EVERY phase. I usually pop mine in P1 once the roars are withen 1-2 seconds of eachother, to cover the most roars possible. and then Dragon pops his in P2, and mine in P3, and his in the last fire phase mostly for the fire damage too. But popping those and using your bubble at the right times to keep healing strong is just as important as the DPS and the movements
ty for the advice
badpenny — Wed, 12/04/2013 - 13:09Really appreciate the intell from those who have downed the boss. Yes, we are trying to use Devo at 2 different times ideally, but our 1st hour was a bit chaotic with a lot of people kiting into a crowd or having him eat us as he's heading to npc's, lol. We tried to kite until 16, but he's pretty fast by then, so we're sticking to 10-12 now. I think we'll have a better handle on it now that position is more ironed out for Sunday.
also as we learn Thok
badpenny — Wed, 12/04/2013 - 10:29Heroism during 2nd P2 session seems like our pain point at this time. Maybe as we get CD's down, we'll be able to push this farther back.
Heroism is ideally used at
Mehguy — Wed, 12/04/2013 - 11:32Heroism is ideally used at the beginning, it is the longest phase you will have and will allow you the most uptime on Thok without having to worry about accidental transitions during poison/frost phases when there are debuffs affecting the raid that could prevent healing and cause the accidental transition... in which case you would have herosim running when thok is being kited and you guys have to waste it on the jailer, compared to on Thok.
Goals to shoot for
1st transition 67-70% - try to hold off until about ~14 of his roars before you transition.
2nd transition 53-55% -this one is usually short because of the poison cage and the debuffs force a quick transition
3rd transition ~30% -after frost cage the debuffs and outgoing dmg isnt too severe, just (as you said) have to break the iceblocks quickly hopefully you can have Thok around ~20% by the time he is done being kited and eats the fire cage guy and you can just burn.
those numbers will be really helpful, ty
badpenny — Wed, 12/04/2013 - 13:11We weren't sure how long we should be able to stretch each phase so now we have something to shoot for.
Yes, we used Heroism in beginning at 1st, but we seemed to have issues getting over the hump on the next phase so we were saving it til then just to help. We will switch back with more emphasis on smart healz with interrupts tackled more appropriately.
Depending on your mobility I
Mehguy — Wed, 12/04/2013 - 14:24Depending on your mobility I think 10 is the latest stacks off his speed buff that I would wait til before you open the cage. We open the cage at 7-8 because our mobility isn't the greatest based on our setup to help each other out over farther distances. But the deafening roars def make those hold out as long as you guys are comfortable. We go for 15-17 the after that it gets around 6 for the poison (if that). turn around 8-10 for frost etc. But that's all RNG etc.
ahh, good to know
badpenny — Wed, 12/04/2013 - 16:48The poison seems to eat our lunch fast, so good to know you stop that noise quick. I wanted to extend 1st P1 longer too. We'll aim for those stacks. Thanks!
also, not sure of your
Mehguy — Wed, 12/04/2013 - 18:05also, not sure of your overall make-up, but weve always one-tanked it just based on our comp, so that helps us.
We run 1 tank, 3 melee, 3-4 ranged, 2-3 heals. Early on it was 1, 3, 3, 3 respectively. We had all melee on the jailer, and had only the tank unlock the cage since he cant be focused by Thok, while the ranged is full on Thok for that extra damage. If you are running with 2 tanks, 2 melee, 3 ranged, 3 heals you should still be oke with just the tanks and melee on the jailer with the dps on Thok full time. If your melee is lacking dmg, you can just have 1 ranged switch off real quick to help, or put up a bunch of DoTs for assistance.
Usually though on the very last jailer (going to the fire add) we have everyone on the jailer to get it down quick because it takes a while for him to run to the cage and melee can have issues with him just waking out of range as the tanks are pulling him to the cage. Its just the most likely cage to take the longest to kill the jailer which results in Thok getting higher speed stacks, etc.
For only an hour of work though, where you're at is pretty good. Just like I told MH raid officers when they got to Thok, its just going to be a matter of mastering the kiting, and once people have that down, its gets to figuring out where you can squeeze in the extra dps, and eventually it all clicks on that one-pull and hes dead. We came close a few times on PMS, then one magic pull and we had him at 12% (somehow) when he ate the fire prisoner and he dropped like a rock. MH was similar I believe, they were getting in the 27-33% when fire prisoner was eaten, then it just clicked for them the next night and he went down in a few pulls.
last nights attempts
badpenny — Mon, 12/09/2013 - 10:42Boy the run back adds insult to injury. We had about 18 pulls, consistently got Thok to the fire phase in the last hour and had him to 6% a couple of times, but no dice.
I'm going to look at others numbers, because it seems like we are missing something. We can only get him to 10 stacks on P1, about 73% hp with serial cd's. We still get him down to 15% by the fire phase. The dispels are really rough and lead to many deaths. Everyone seems to have kiting down, etc and we're running with one tank only np.
Thanks again for the help and everyone has been extremely supportive in Downfall. Tue we'll reset, do some bosses for gear (we're only doing about 90-100k hps; 130-170k dps (except Thoridal at 230k) on Thok) and save the last 1 hr to attempt again.having 3 melee does not seem beneficial on this fight.
Fingers crossed.
looking at the parses
badpenny — Mon, 12/09/2013 - 10:55dps ranged from 148-182k + one at 233k dps on average. Healz averaged 71 - 89k hps with our priest atonement healing for added dps lowering that number for him. The targeting/interrupts/movement really are gimping the numbers so I'm not sure what is reasonable to down the boss. It seems getting him to 6% consistently means we could do it, but everything has to go perfect.
exactly
Mehguy — Mon, 12/09/2013 - 12:01You are correct, just about everything has to be perfect, kiting, stacks, not pushing too early, etc, to get that first kill. Like you mentioned, you could only get him to 73% and 10 Deaf Roars for the first transition, that is too high of health and low of a roar stack, especially if you are trying to get out of poison faster because it sucks.
Are you utilizing the method that PMS/Elapsed Flex uses where you have a ranged group and a melee group (one at the front of his foot, the other at the rear of his foot)?
If not, you should be, having 8-9 people stacked GREATLY increases the chance for an earlier transition when you know you can handle more, spreading into 2 groups of 4 or 4/5 make it a little more stressful on the healers to keep people up when the deafening roars are crazy, but when you know you cant handle anymore, then just collapse between the 2 groups, transition then boogie on out of there to the first cage, etc.
As for cooldowns, just be sure youre not blowing any so early in the fight when its only like 4 or 5 roars, those are just a waste of CDs since the roars are fairly spaced and you should have some recovery time to keep you over 50% to be able to use CDs more effectively.
we were all stacked in one grp
badpenny — Mon, 12/09/2013 - 17:30So we'll change that for the next pull and we did start using CD's at 2. That is my fault, I'll push that back to 3-4 ish and hopefully it will be a win.
Thanks!