• Intermission

After killing Kalecgos using our own strategy and execution style, it's refreshing to see so many other strategies that also work to complete this encounter. In fact for almost all of his abilities, different guilds/guides seem to handle them in completely different ways! I don't want my post to look like a kill-guide, but I would like to note a few examples:


Portal rotations:

The size of the portal group seems to be the biggest difference. 5 small groups could work, as would 4 'party' based groups. We use 3 very rough 'starting' groups taking port 1-3-4or5 (with tanks on their own obviously for all rotation methods). "Floating" healers can also be used. Some methods have set people joining every portal, some purposely miss particular portals. In my example, once all of the 3 'starting groups' have gone down and then back up again, they don't really think of themselves as groups anymore, only individuals trying to get the next possible portal -- which also happens to be the same portal the rest of their group is aiming for.


Positioning:

Not so much difference at the bottom I guess, the optimal position is obvious provided you raid with a shaman or two.

At the top however, some guilds keep their portal rotation groups in physical grouped locations around the platform. Personally I think it's pretty intuitive to use the ready-made "safe zone" that is already drawn on the platform. In the dead center of the Dragon's platform, have every person with Mental Exhaustion to group up, running to the outer ring only when their Exhaustion debuff is about to fade. Anyone in the outer ring then runs to the next portal that spawns, wherever it may be. More room for portal targets to spread, and a nice clumped up group for chain heal. Two completely different methods, advantages and disadvantages for both, and both work.


"Forced Portals":

The random factor to portals. They suck you down, you cant control it! Both positioning methods get around this in their own way.

Physically grouped 'portal groups' get around this by being able to easily see their group have a portal land near them, and all follow suit. The person that was forced into the portal remains in that persons group.

The 'center safe spot' method cannot get forced ports after the 3rd portal spawn (because Kalec's only valid portal targets are people that are going down next portal anyway). But they can sometimes get forced ports in port 1, and rare but possible for port 2 and 3. If a healer/decurser gets forced, a quick on-the-fly swap takes care of that for the rest of the fight.


The Curse:

This is what intrigues me the most of all the mechanics. For our kill, we just stuck to 'decurse when it's around 15 seconds'. We had 2 people die to curses on our kill, and in general it was quite sloppy (watching lifeblooms stack on you and frostbolts hit the boss while you die to curse isnt fun!), but it did the job. I'm very curious if anyone has tried either of these two methods successfully, and it's the main reason I want to make this post.

- Out range the jump effect of the curse. I think we tried this once while getting to grips with the fight, and it got lost in discussion and it didnt seem to work anyway. We certainly did not try a collaborated effort though. If the entire Demon area was to stand on one side, and the tank taunt while standing as far away from the center as possible, could most curses be removed within 5 seconds of it being applied? This relies on one thing, that the curse can actually be out of ranged.

- A method that I think is a great idea borrowed from an old fight: SR tank(or 2). When a curse is cast, keep dispelling it until it ends up on the person(or 2) wearing max Shadow Resist. Once it's on this person, heal them through the last few ticks, which should only hit for around 1k/second with 75% resists. This relies on one thing, that the curse does not jump after it fades naturally.

The current 'dispel at 15 seconds' just seems sloppy to me.



Apologies if anyone feels I went into too much detail on the abilities/tactics, but it's hard to comment on how different strategies are without comparing them.

 

ozhanbnc

As far as i know, the curse can not be outranged.

 

Tryst

We tried outranging it. It appeared to work once, then failed the next three times. Since we stopped trying, every so often a curse seems to disappear for no reason. As for the SR tank, when the curse runs its full duration it does jump to another target.

 

Alacrity

We just based our strategy off eliminating the randomness of the portal spawns. 4 groups, each group contains 2 healers 1 tank 1 decurser and some synergized dps. Whoever gets ported calls their group and that group goes, if a tank that is currently tanking has to go down because his group is ported then another tank taunts and he goes.

Curse wise we would let it tick till it because a threat then de-cursed it (once someone had the curse for around 15~s we would de-curse it.)

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....19820SmNJq.png

 

ozhanbnc

Some tactics say the curse jumps to a nearby target. Is it any nearby target (range check) or nearest target? Also can the curse stack? And if there is a tactic relying on having curse soaks with high SR - considering it stacks - don't you need a soak in every portal group?

 

Narishma

Curse always jumps, and can't stack.

 

• Intermission

Well that just about squanders my hopes of those two alternate methods. I knew it couldn't stack, but it's a shame if still jumps when it times out.

 

Teez

We have been doing this exact same thing as well, except our tanks are in group 1, which ends up with something like this:

G1: Tank Tank Tank Healer DPS
G2-3-4-5: Healer Druid DPS DPS DPS or Healer Healer Mage DPS DPS

We have the healer in group 1, as well as the DPS go as floaters, and have been using that healer (a paladin) to go with the first group to get ported to trivialize healing on our first Demon tank until a second group zones in. However, an issue that we've been having is that at 9-11 stacks on me (which is just prior to my heading into a portal after being relieved by tank 1) with only one other group on the "live" side, healing becomes a serious issue. We've only gotten maybe a dozen pulls in on him so far and have been having to replace people on the fly (= relearning) quite frequently due to extenuating circumstances unfortunately, but have been getting him into the mid-30's, with DPS on both targets being fairly similar.

At this point, I'm just wondering if it'd be more wise to either let the group 1 paladin stay behind until I get ported too, to help in healing through the rather serious arcane buffet stacks (in addition to being able to rid himself of stacks at a moment's notice) or whether we should bring a 10th healer altogether. I consider myself gear capped, and our first demon tank (a paladin) is missing maybe two pieces (T6 shoulders / Bulwark) - so I like to believe our gear is sufficient to tank those positions even with 9 healers, but I may be mistaken. I guess this is where I ask what we could do to alleviate this issue? Run with 10 healers? Use the floater on my portal? (by the way, we try to port tanks on portals 1-3-5-7-...) Or even change up which portals we take? I believe transitioning tanks at 1-3-4-6-8-9 etc. might be doable but cutting it extremely close.

On a different note, one thing we noticed other than the commonly known "don't stand on the hedges or you'll mess portals up," "don't stack up or you'll get blown up by portals" etc. was that the demon's shadowbolt volley seems to be a RSTS conal attack. Initially people were spread out in the demon phase which made AoE healing a nightmare, we then stacked them up which made healing considerably easier but in turn, incoming damage was through the roof - finally we had them fan out around the rear arc of Sathrovarr, at melee range, which seemed to require the least amount of healing while still allowing for high CoH/Brainheal efficiency.

 

taybul

The curse jump seems pretty random and not determined by range. One other thing I noticed was if someone dies with a curse on them, the damage continues where it left off on the next person it jumps to (as opposed to resetting damage as if it were decursed). This may also be the case if someone uses an effect that makes them invulnerable (bubble, iceblock). During one of our attempts people started dying and I received a curse that started ticking at 800.

 

ozhanbnc

Arcane Buffet or Frost Breath can be spell reflected? Would be stupid if Frost Breath can be reflected but have hopes for buffet.

 

Ragnorr

Having curse for the whole 30 seconds also makes it jump

 

Skulli

Since the dps requirement isnt that high, it helps when people wear 1-2 pieces of shadowr-es (like cloak and neck). It gives additional stamina and helps mitigating the curse.
Also the curse counts as damage from the previous person, so you dont need max shadow boss level resistance for good results.
2 pieces with buff is usually enough to mitigate over 25%.

 

• Tauftamir

No. Neither can be Spell Reflected, I have tried both.

 

◊ Kalman

You missed a big one: number of tanks used.

http://mmorchive.net

The WoW forums, explained:

 

Xreln

Any clue on how Revitalize works? He seems to only cast it on people who don't have a mana bar. I have tried standing directly in front of him and meleeing the demon as well to see if that had anything to do with it and I could not get it to land on me no matter what I did. The combat log showed only rogues and warriors getting it.

 

◊ Malan

Our current guess is that Blizzard decided not to return mana (which the tooltip says) and so they "fixed" it by not allowing mana users to gain the buff. Or it could just be a bugged ability, I'd recommend reporting it on the bugs forum.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

Zurgat

There are two things I'm not quite getting yet, most guides say that the demon and dragon should be killed at about the same time.
Since you have to save the dragon, the demon has to be killed first.

Do portals stop spawning once the demon is dead / banished?
Is it possible to get the dragon to 0% before the demon?


This sheet has proven to be quite useful as well :
* Google Docs - Kalecgos - 4 groups
It shows a rotation with 3 tanks, 8 healers.


The curse "always" jumps, either when it's dispelled or runs out normally.
I do wonder if you can resist the application of it, and thus get rid of it since outranging it does not seem to be very reliable.
According to wowhead the range of the curse is 99 yards : Curse of Boundless Agony - Spells - World of Warcraft
How often does he cast new curses, and is the curse localized to the demon's area?

If this is confirmed, then Cloak of Shadows and [Restorative Potion] would also have this effect.

-= Random Ravings - RSS Feed =- Rogue and Hunter stuff here. As well as guides to get you trough your spare time.

 

Benafflock

Are we sure it's only cast on non-mana users? I wish I had some sort of proof, but I seem to recall that I've gotten the buff several times over a course of many wipes.

If it can hit everyone though, that would seem to support the strategy of grouping up around, specifically behind the demon, in order to receive the benefit of Kalecgos' Revitalize ability, which is a frontal cone based spell: Breath: Revitalize - Spells - World of Warcraft

 

◊ Malan

Well right now the evidence is somewhat spotty. Nobody has found a WWS yet that shows anyone other than a rogue or warrior getting the buff. However we all are painfully aware that WWS is not parsing the new logs correctly yet. Could be a bug on Lossendil's end too. (Note that resto Shaman will sometimes show mana gains from Revitalize - this is the buff from their FLK trinket that restores mana on casts)

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

Skulli

Wow Web Stats
2 shamans with it, didnt even know that spell until now.

 

◊ Caffeine

That's most likely [Fathom-Brooch of the Tidewalker].

 

Raiste

the curse jumps under all these conditions: running away to max decursing range before getting decursed, iceblocking/CoS/Devine shielding (it removed the curse from the current player but it jumps right after), or letting it tick all the way down on a SR "tank". So basically it is meant to build up in the raid as the fight goes on. From our attempts seems like we usually had 8-10 curses up after about 12-14 portals when things hit enrage.

As far as the enrage mechanic, our best attempt has been 1%/7% and we've seen the enrage a few times now. It seems like the dragon will enrage when either the demon or the dragon hits 10%. Damage seems to double from the dragon and it seems to ramp up as he gets lower in HP (i.e. hits harder at 5% than 10% etc). It is not possible to kill either one as they just banish themselves when they hit 1%. Once the dragon is banished he will not use any more portals, but they continue to force portal people even once the demon is banished.

 

dudevon

Thats a different Revitalize (from [Fathom-Brooch of the Tidewalker]). You can take the raw combat log and search it for the spellid of the Kalecgos Human Form version of the spell (Revitalize - Spells - World of Warcraft).

2/19 19:48:54.077 SPELL_PERIODIC_HEAL,0xF13000613B001A09,Kalecgos,0xa28,0x0000000000987F2D,Bosper,0x514,45027,Revitalize,0x40,450,nil

Above spell is the periodic heal over 9 seconds healing 450 every 3 seconds.

There is also the other Breath: Revitalize (Breath: Revitalize - Spells - World of Warcraft) which most likely comes from the upcoming encounter where players take control of Kalecgos Dragon Form. I personally can't wait.

edit: Caffeine beat me to it

 

CD

The most obvious things about this encounter is that movement is the most important part, there's a very finite area to fight in but some of the area is bugged and won't allow portal spawns. If you could use the whole area I'm sure spreading would be that much easier, random deaths would be that much less common and people would have an easier time.
I don't know what the point of the PTR is if not to eliminate things like the missed bush portals.