Galakras

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Galakras encounter guide.

[Guest Velithayda]

How many people would you recommend sending up to the towers for 10 man?

[Vlad 411]

How many people would you recommend sending up to the towers for 10 man?

5. Tank, 1 healer and 3 DPS.

[Ceraius 34]

Oh, this fight looks so fun. Can't wait to get to tackle it!

[finnmaccool 5]

talking just about p2 here,

why are the range/healers spread out?

wouldn't it make good sense to have a straight line of

tank - boss - melee stacked tight - ~5 yrds empty space* - range+healers stacked tight.

this allows for good AoE heals - on floor heals should be able to hit both melee and range group stacks.

 

the target of the fireball takes 2-3 steps back - and then the fire ball will hit all melee and range+healers with only 1 person having to do minimal movement.

 

does the fireball leave a fire pool at impact location that needs to be avoided?

 

* = thinking that 5 yards is enough reaction time from when the cast target is announced for them to move 2-3 steps just to make sure that the rest of the range automatically intercept the ball.  

if there is enough time, cast time on ability that player is already chosen or slow flight speed of fire ball - couldn't the range even stack on the melee? (thinking like running away on Jin-rok, even if u are at him, u have enough time to 'kite' the ball through the entire raid b4 it hits you.)

[Guest XIdus]

talking just about p2 here,

why are the range/healers spread out?

wouldn't it make good sense to have a straight line of

tank - boss - melee stacked tight - ~5 yrds empty space* - range+healers stacked tight.

this allows for good AoE heals - on floor heals should be able to hit both melee and range group stacks.

 

the target of the fireball takes 2-3 steps back - and then the fire ball will hit all melee and range+healers with only 1 person having to do minimal movement.

 

does the fireball leave a fire pool at impact location that needs to be avoided?

 

* = thinking that 5 yards is enough reaction time from when the cast target is announced for them to move 2-3 steps just to make sure that the rest of the range automatically intercept the ball.  

if there is enough time, cast time on ability that player is already chosen or slow flight speed of fire ball - couldn't the range even stack on the melee? (thinking like running away on Jin-rok, even if u are at him, u have enough time to 'kite' the ball through the entire raid b4 it hits you.)

If I remember from my tests correctly, the reason for that is that intercepting a ball leaves a DoT on you (which is something that isn't mentioned in the guide for some reason - was it removed?). It doesn't last for too long, but intercepting several balls in a row will cause it to stack. This prevents all the raid from soaking the ball every time, because the DoT will eventually lead to unhealable damage. Soakers need to take a break once in a while, which basically means the raid can't stack up.

[Vlad 411]

talking just about p2 here,

why are the range/healers spread out?

wouldn't it make good sense to have a straight line of

tank - boss - melee stacked tight - ~5 yrds empty space* - range+healers stacked tight.

this allows for good AoE heals - on floor heals should be able to hit both melee and range group stacks.

 

the target of the fireball takes 2-3 steps back - and then the fire ball will hit all melee and range+healers with only 1 person having to do minimal movement.

 

does the fireball leave a fire pool at impact location that needs to be avoided?

 

* = thinking that 5 yards is enough reaction time from when the cast target is announced for them to move 2-3 steps just to make sure that the rest of the range automatically intercept the ball.  

if there is enough time, cast time on ability that player is already chosen or slow flight speed of fire ball - couldn't the range even stack on the melee? (thinking like running away on Jin-rok, even if u are at him, u have enough time to 'kite' the ball through the entire raid b4 it hits you.)

 

 

If I remember from my tests correctly, the reason for that is that intercepting a ball leaves a DoT on you (which is something that isn't mentioned in the guide for some reason - was it removed?). It doesn't last for too long, but intercepting several balls in a row will cause it to stack. This prevents all the raid from soaking the ball every time, because the DoT will eventually lead to unhealable damage. Soakers need to take a break once in a while, which basically means the raid can't stack up.

Indeed, there is a Fire damage DoT that lasts 15 seconds that is applied to anyone who soaks the fireball. We've edited the guide accordingly to show that the ideal thing to do is basically employ a rotation of ranged raid members to soak each Flames of Galakrond cast so that the DoT has time to drop off of individual raid members. And the melee probably shouldn't be stacked in a group either, since that'll just cause them all to take stack after stack.

 

We'll be updated the guide as a strategy for handling this issue develops.

[Zagam 1,982]

Killed last night in 10 man normal in 2 tries.  First try was a wipe because of a lack of attention paid to the Demolisher.  Because our DPS was so good, we also only sent up 1 tank, 2 DPS, and 1 healer for the Tower Team. 

 

AoE specs are awesome for this fight.  Have melee focus on killing banners ASAP and focus on interrupting Shaman's healing.  The Shaman healing wasn't even that powerful...looked like a 3-4% max HP heal, so it wasn't really bad if one was missed.  AoE adds, stun, taunt, or Death Grip Bonecrushers who attack NPCs.  Elemental Shamans are AMAZZZZZZZING for this fight.  They just boom boom stuff all day long. 

 

There is a timer at the top of the screen that shows when the Tower is opening up.  When it gets to 90%, your team should get near the door (left Tower first).  The Tower opens at the same time the 3rd wave ground special miniboss shows up.  The Demolisher ALSO shows up near this time, shortly after the Tower opens up.  Your tanks should hold the Snake above 50% HP while your DPS zerg the shit out of the Demolisher.  Once the Demo is down, focus the snake because at 50%, that Venom Bolt Volley can't be interrupted and REALLY hurts because you only have one healer down because of the Tower Team being up top.  If you clear this part with everyone alive, you're pretty much golden.

 

Second tower, Demolisher, and special boss is handled same way.  Continue AoEing, focus special boss, and all priority goes to Demolisher when it's up.  Make sure you kill all the waves of adds, have someone from Tower Team go BACK to Tower 1.  Shoot dragon down. 

 

For P2, everyone except tanks stacks on Galakras' ass.  When you are targetted by the big fire attack, move behind the stacked group.  As the fire ball is coming out, a new person is being chosen to be attacked.  You'll literally have one person running back into stacked group as someone is going out.  There is no CD on being chosen...I was chosen 3 times in a row.  We did this properly upon hitting P2 for the first time and the damage was very manageable.  I think the Fire attack hit me for 40k?  However, the fire AoE ramps up and the healers said there was some pressure towards the end.  No one died, though.  Also, the tanks said there was no stacking DoT for them to manage.  Either they're dumb or so good they just dodged all the applications...or it doesn't exist (maybe heroic only?)

[Karsteck 5]

For P2, everyone except tanks stacks on Galakras' ass.  When you are targetted by the big fire attack, move behind the stacked group.  As the fire ball is coming out, a new person is being chosen to be attacked.  You'll literally have one person running back into stacked group as someone is going out.  There is no CD on being chosen...I was chosen 3 times in a row.  We did this properly upon hitting P2 for the first time and the damage was very manageable.  I think the Fire attack hit me for 40k?  However, the fire AoE ramps up and the healers said there was some pressure towards the end.  No one died, though.  Also, the tanks said there was no stacking DoT for them to manage.  Either they're dumb or so good they just dodged all the applications...or it doesn't exist (maybe heroic only?)

 

 Soaking damage out of the Flames of Galakrond (which fires after every Flames of Galakrond expires) gives you a stack of Flames of Galakrond.

 

 It's like the fire orbs on ICC Blood Prince Council, but with the added twist that you don't want the same people soaking every time, or their stacks will get high.  (This is the problem with some people's suggestions above of stacking the raid, and having the targetted player move to the back.  Maybe in full-heroic T15, you had enough DPS to kill the boss before the DoT ramping up on everyone became unhealable, along with Pulsing Flames damage and the %fire dmg increase the boss builds with that.  So with your strat... grats on outgearing it )

 

 We got to phase2 I think twice on our normal10 attempts at the end of the night, after finding the earlier bosses easier than expected and getting through them with time to spare.

 

 Since the balls of fire seem to come from the head of the dragon, the current tank invariably got a stack.  If the other tank was in the path, he'd also get stacks, so not only do you need to tank-swap, you need to move away.  Not sure if there's any possible positioning that could avoid getting stacks on the current tank, or if AMS could block the application of a new stack.  (Even if so, I don't think AMS would be able to drop your stacks)

 

 edit: checked timing from logs

 

 I think ideally you want people to soak 2 in a row, then hit a defensive CD while their DoT is ticking, and let it fall off.  Then repeat.  If you don't need as many people pulling damage out of the ball, then maybe 1 then clear would be better when you don't have a strong defensive CD to deal with the 2-stack ticking hard for 15 sec.

 

 I pulled the timestamps of the 5-sec targetting debuff going out from the logs.  It goes out while the previous ball is still in flight, usually after a small gap.  IDK what causes the random variations of sometimes longer gaps, and sometimes no gap (making the min interval 5 secs between ball launching, haven't tried to time balls landing.  Flight time might vary).

00:25:08.664
00:25:14.685
00:25:21.494
00:25:26.707
00:25:33.933
00:25:39.966
00:25:47.209
00:36:44.563
00:36:49.412
00:36:56.681
00:37:02.704
00:37:09.933
00:50:12.681
00:50:18.707
00:50:25.953
00:50:31.989
00:50:39.227
00:50:45.256
00:50:52.505
00:50:58.573
00:51:05.780
00:51:11.818
00:51:19.069
00:51:25.077
00:51:32.317
00:51:38.356
00:51:45.595
00:51:51.646
00:51:58.822
00:52:04.874
00:52:12.091

 So it looks like 6 to 7 secs is typical, sometimes up to 8.  Since the DoT lasts 15, it will just barely clear even if there are 3 minimum interval balls following the last one that refreshed your stack.  (i.e. you can soak the 3rd).

 

IDK if anyone has numbers for how much raid damage a soaker pulls out of a ball.  It might be best to only have a couple people soak, and heal up to full between hits, rather than get more dots on more people.  Or maybe the total damage taken by a soaker is less than the damage they pull out of a ball, and obviously the dots are easier to heal without overheal than topping the raid up between big bursts.  (healer comp will dictate this, too.  We ran druid/pally/hpriest, with an Ele shaman off-healing some.  With a disc priest able to stack more absorbs, you might want to soak less and mitigate bigger bursts.)

 

 It takes so long to get to phase2 that it really sucks to wipe there.  xD.  The phase1 trash is not bad at all, we only had problems before we realized that using the anti-air turret to cut down the buildup of flying proto-drakes was essential to reduce raid damage.  We had thought you just saved the turrets for when you wanted to bring the boss down, but then we found Dragonmaw Proto-drakes were rocking us with Drakefire.  Splash damage around whoever they shoot at, and ramping up every time they do it.  Eventually was hitting people for like 250k, and we'd lose the non-tower team.

Edited September 12, 2013 by Karsteck

[Zagam 1,982]

Yeah, I'm not sure what we experienced.  I did notice the damage to everyone was very low but the healers mentioned the stacking ticks on everyone got pretty out of control.  Good to know, might adapt next week.  Our tanks also never needed to do a tank swap.  Unsure why.  As for the proto drakes wrecking your team, that's on your tanks.  Tanks should know to grab things and turn them away from your friends, especially when it has the word 'drake' in its name.

[Krazyito 521]

You can kill some drakes with the cannon at the top when your first tower team finishes

[Karsteck 5]

 As for the proto drakes wrecking your team, that's on your tanks.  Tanks should know to grab things and turn them away from your friends, especially when it has the word 'drake' in its name.

 

 Grounded drakes do Flame Breath, and yeah, I had to strike a balance between dragging drakes to Jaina's blizzard for dmg, and not making life too difficult for people avoiding the breath.  Generally wasn't too hard to get them to the blizzard, and very worth it even if people had to lose DPS moving.  They don't move while they're breathing, so not even the tank needs to eat the full breath, BTW.

 

  Drakefire is cast only by flying drakes.  Not mentioned in the dungeon journal at all, but hey, not the first time the dungeon journal has let us down.  Using the AA turrets to clear the skies after the first tower stopped us from wiping to that.  This is something the tower tank can easily do, while everyone else jumps down and helps with adds on the ground.  I didn't see this mentioned in the guide at all, but it's something that needs to happen, AFAICT.

 

 Wowdb's entry for Dragonmaw Proto-Drake lists both spells they can use.  Wowhead doesn't have an abilities tab for them, ATM.

 

 Also, I editted my earlier post with timing for the flame orbs.

[Pringols 0]

My raid was having issues with the add waves from the ground adds, we sent 1 tank 3 dps and 1 healer to the tower but we tryed with 3 healers and the dps on ground adds was tight..
What happens if we stay on ground adds until both towers are accessible so we can zerg all adds and focus only tower by tower after this ? Or is a endless wave of ground adds that will not stop until both towers are down?

[Zagam 1,982]

There are 8 waves of adds regardless.  Not dealing with the tower mini-bosses makes the fight much more difficult because of what they do from the sky.

 

This fight can and should be 2 healed.  If you're eating a lot of raid damage, things aren't being killed in the correct priority.  You should only need 1 tank, 2 DPS, and 1 healer on the tower team.  If you're sending 3 DPS up and 3 healing, that leaves 2 DPS on the ground and that is going to be a wipe to the Demolisher.

[Pringols 0]

My question is while we are 3 healing .. we are having a bad time trying to deal with adds at ground and the tower at the same time.. we are 530~ish at the moment and we feel the adds are not dieing at the right time.. the ground stuff is not harming us at all just the quantity of adds alive are delaying the ground group too much..
So if its 8 waves regardless of the time (i guess) , we can deal with all ground adds and after the waves cease we can do one tower at time ..

[Khalam 3]

While P1 with adds favors 2 healing (there is nothing much to do honestly), the P2 is crying for 3 healers. The damage coming from constant fireballs is enormous.

 

The balls hit for 600k dmg if not intercepted. If dps intercept it, the damage is lowered at the cost of dots on your raid members. Even then you should be ready to heal 300k damage to whole raid in 7-8 sec intervals. Dont forget the dot ticking for 30k/s for each stack and tank healing.

 

300k * 10 = 3mil damage

3mil/8sec = 375k hps

 

With 2 healers that means you need to have 190k hps just for the balls if we assume that 3-4 ppl intercepting it, can lower its damage by 50%.

 

The good point is you should have all your healing cooldowns for this. Boss has around 110mil hp?  You need to survive around 90sec while also having a bit of movement involved.

 

I know pro groups with 550+ can do this with 2 healers, but I advise highly against it. Phase 1 is piece of cake compared to Phase 2.

 

Also from my experience there is no limit to waves. We tried killing all adds before going to tower and there were still waves coming just without bosses and demolishers.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Khalam

[Karsteck 5]

This fight can and should be 2 healed.  If you're eating a lot of raid damage, things aren't being killed in the correct priority.  You should only need 1 tank, 2 DPS, and 1 healer on the tower team.  If you're sending 3 DPS up and 3 healing, that leaves 2 DPS on the ground and that is going to be a wipe to the Demolisher.

 

 We didn't feel like we were having trouble with 2 healers for the ground team.  Ground DPS team was blood DK, Ele shaman, arm warr, so we had a lot of cleave.  Arms is doing crazy dmg with deep wounds and slam.  Maybe we should try 2-healing, but once we figured out that we needed to clear the skies with the turret on the first tower, we didn't have problems getting to phase2 cleanly.  We waited to kill the demo before sending the away team, for both demos.

 

 We're around 540 to 545 ilvl, some of us a bit higher with new gear from the first 4 bosses of SoO.

Edited September 14, 2013 by Karsteck

[Ceraius 34]

The guide mentions a tank debuff/dot, but I couldn't find any separate DoT than the application of Flames of Galakrond when the ball spawned.

 

I looked through our kill log and couldn't find any damage source or debuff that would imply an additional tank specific mechanic.

Am I missing something, or is the info on the guide referring to Flames of Galakrond? If so, it could be clarified a little :P

[Stoove 347]

 

This fight can and should be 2 healed.  If you're eating a lot of raid damage, things aren't being killed in the correct priority.  You should only need 1 tank, 2 DPS, and 1 healer on the tower team.  If you're sending 3 DPS up and 3 healing, that leaves 2 DPS on the ground and that is going to be a wipe to the Demolisher.

 

On the contrary, our raid team is Normal ToT geared and we're not wiping to the Demolisher at all. We're 3-healing it, and what's really getting us is DPS and interrupts on the trash. The Demolisher got shrugged off completely. 2-healing it is still an option for us, I think.

 

ALSO your melee shouldn't waste time trying to get the banner down. A healer can target it and 1-shot the thing (I use Frostshock with a targeting macro). The things only have 1hp, get your melee to do something more productive.

[Zvon 0]

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/3115-galakras-fight-questions/

 

 

 

So just for clarifying this, let's say there is a fire ball coming, and we all know tank who is tanking the boss will have to take one stack here, then there is the person who get the fire ball which have to take one stack, too. And between these 2 persons, how many soakers should stand there soaking dmg?

[calfel 4]

+1 to not seeing a separate tank debuff beyond the fireball and would appreciate the clarification.

Our kill was still two healed, however everyone but yours truly died (Last pull anyways, I felt stubborn), so some notes from 533 ish:

We got through first phase once we had no healers on tower team and instead had off heals. The tower tank commented it was pretty low damage taken. As ground team tank, I had to hit a cooldown for the first mini boss since he hit like a truck. Jaina herself ended up being our highest damager and keeping things in the blizzard was my top priority followed by interrupting shamans.

[Guest vego]

Legendary cloak on dps is great help here. With 540+ ilvl cloak proc is 1st or 2nd in overall dps dmg on this fight so it helps greatly with stacked adds. For us only phase 2nd was a problem, but we figured out that ball gives debuff only to 3 first players it hits, so if you got hit 2 times in a row wait for debuff to worn off and soak ball again, repeat and kill. Hope it helps.

[Farnion 8]

For me it seems that the order of waves is not correct in the written description. After the first demolisher (so wave 4, since the tower is open) you will always get 2 proto drakes and if I remeber correctly, as the next wave the next miniboss (so wave 5, if you don't count the drakes). Wave 6 and 7 are then again normal adds.

 

One question though: What happens if you don't get galakras down? Do the adds just continue to spawn?

[Pringols 0]

My group tested yesterday and yes, the adds still come until you go phase 2.

[Zalbar 0]

My question is while we are 3 healing .. we are having a bad time trying to deal with adds at ground and the tower at the same time.. we are 530~ish at the moment and we feel the adds are not dieing at the right time.. the ground stuff is not harming us at all just the quantity of adds alive are delaying the ground group too much..

So if its 8 waves regardless of the time (i guess) , we can deal with all ground adds and after the waves cease we can do one tower at time ..

We were in the same situation. Make sure that you group them all up in the flamestrike area, they all drop quickly. Pull, grip, interrupt the shaman so he gets in there as well. The only ones you really need to run up to kill are the demolishers and flame arrow tards.