MatsT

The 4 group rotation taking the first 4 portals in inheritently flawed and relies on people "failing" to enter the correct portal to work properly. Unless you save some people to enter the 5th portal the tank will be left alone for too long after group 4 gets ported back and group 1 can enter.

If you keep trying enough, you might get a kill from a try that has several delayed portals, or simply that people did not enter their assigned portals, but the rotation really doesn't end up working in the long run.

I would recommend groups of 1 tank, 3 healers, 1 decurser entering on portal number 1, 3 and 5 and then individually entering as soon as they lose the debuff. If you have more than 3 decursers, prioritize the extra ones in the groups entering portal 5 and 3 since that prevents getting owned by random ports on decursers.

As for the dpsers, it really doesn't matter all that much. On one hand you might want dps to enter early since demon generally goes down later than dragon otherwise, but on the other hand more dpsers outside means less early random ports on the late healers.

 

• Daboran

As it stands, the fight is much more about execution than dps. As long as you are appropriately geared for the instance, no-one misses portals and everyone positions correctly/does as much dps as possible, we found there was no real need to micromanage this fight beyond saving all your cooldowns for the 10% enrage. Brutallus however, is a different story as we all know.

 

Giske

Has anyone determined the cause of portals being skipped?

We experienced it quite a few times now and we have no one standing next to the bushes and its happening at for instance portal 3 where theres more than enough people without a debuff. One one attempt he did the first two portals and then didnt do any for a whole 60 seconds. We also had no pets up.

 

Bullshot

Thanks for this. I'm going to run it on our next SWP raid; should help the thick ones in the raid.

 

Anaram

Just because you don't need it doesn't mean it won't help. The fight has a soft enrage timer via curses - having a few of the decursers equip few pieces of shadow resistance won't have a dramatic impact on raidwide DPS. Assuming you run 15 dps and 3 mages with 3 slots of shadow resistance that ends up being 9 out of 240 item slots, equivalent to approximately 4% of raid dps item slots assigned to resist gear. Considering mages have less dps time than other DPS classes (and the loss of a mage can be quite critical here), I'd pose the question another way:

Do you need your mages not to wear shadow resistance? If not, it can probably shorten learning curve (even if arcane resist might be better, but that's another argument there). Just because your healers *should* be able to heal through it doesn't mean it won't help to

 

Velrakt

This is false. We just beat him last night with the 4 group rotation and it works flawlessly. The key is making sure that nobody in the first 4 groups misses a portal and that your 2nd tank is one of the first ones to enter the first portal. He then gets back before the 4th portal spawns and is able to taunt allowing the first tank to get into the 4th portal as well. After that you have to wait 60 seconds before anyone is able to port up again but the lapse doesn't cause any issues. Once the 1st group that ported up loses their debuff he instantly casts the portal on them and then it's a constant portal rotation. After that the 4 group rotation is set and there are always equal numbers in both rooms for the most part. Using the 4 group rotation it is very important for everyone to get into the 4 portals and for nobody to need a 5th portal or it will really mess you up.

The hard part for the 4 group rotation is at right before the 4th portal you are going to have only 1 healer on the dragon tank and 1 group healer until the first group ports back. The healers in the first group then have to target the dragon tank immediately and keep him up since they will then be the only 2 healers on him until more port back. This point of the fight is considered the hardest and once you get past the 4th portal the fight becomes easy mode as long as people don't miss decurses or portals.

 

Pyros

It does require a bit of coordination and/or luck so your first tank can get the 4th portal though. For example if kalecgos slacks a bit on his portals after first one, the 4th one will pop after the first people from first portal are coming back up, making it extremly easy for your tank to get that portal. You can "force" it by making sure the first tank in clicks the portal first and so on, but it's definitely prone to failure every and now and then due to shit luck, at least from what I've seen. We still killed him last night with a 4group strat.

 

Elerion

Wrong.

With 25 seconds portals (expected average), G1 enters first portal at 25-35s. They return at 85-95s. Fourth portal is expected at 100s so on average T1 makes it in time. If not, he enters portal 5 at 125s. G1 ports back down at 150s-160s. G4 returns topside at 160-170s. Only very unlucky combinations of portal delays can completely screw this up. For those cases, you have a non-group assigned healer take the 5th portal to bridge the void.

If your strategy is to get the entire raid (tanks included) into the first 4 portals every time, you will get screwed by portal timers at times. But since T1 and a healer can comfortably take portal 5 (they'll be the only eligible targets if they didn't make portal 4), it's not an issue.

 

khel

The 4 group rotation I believe works in most cases, except when there are 4 ports in a row that happen exactly 20s apart. If there is some delay for the first ports (25s, 30s) then there should always be at least 2 healers on any side.

Anyway, here are the port rotations that our current strategy gives us, if the ports happen in sets of 20s, 25s, and 30s.

The transitions in bold are the nasty ones, with one group porting to the demon at the same time another ports out. This can mean that there are zero healers on the tank for a few seconds. Some guilds are bringing a 9th healer that tries to stick with the first tank on Kalecgos to avoid tank deaths in this situation, but what happens if that healer gets ported? All others have to be ready and switch groups/roles? It sounds like a lot of work to avoid this situation though maybe it is worth it. The MT healers in each of the 4 groups would just have to be ready to shift roles with the 9th healer if he took a port, and have another group port with him.

Nice and relaxed porting with good overlap between groups switching between dragon/demon phases. Note that at 25s intervals sometimes there is nobody eligible for a port, but say tank2 returns from the demon and taunts the dragon off of tank1, then tank1 would be ported...which is fine.

If we miss a port, or they come slower than 30s, then there is the possibility of skipping a group in the rotation because 2 groups are eligible for ports, but one has been back 60s and the other 90s for example, and the 60s group gets ported before the 90s group....and the 90s group ends up dying. To circumvent this, we just have to remember the order and no matter who gets ported, when it's your turn, you take it and call it on vent. Hopefully it wasn't a healer who got ported in the wrong order, but if so we just have to deal with it I guess (and hope all ports come in 30s or less).


A bit complicated, and I might have messed up here...just wanted to show a few situations to keep in mind and be ready for. This would be much easier if the ports were on a strict schedule. I do think that the 4 group strategy though is sound, but you just have to hope that at least one of the first four ports is delayed, instead of coming at exactly 20s apart.

 

◊ manly

This is the precise reason I asked my shaman to bloodlust on the first portal rather than hold off for 20%. It seems to be a lot better to me, but it is very debatable whether or not the idea is a good thing to persue.

<superblotto> Last I heard the Arcane Believers were going to burn the Infidel normal people at the stake but refused to use fire. Things went down hill from there
<arioch> arcane blast the firewood
<Blackpatch> they tried
<Blackpatch> but went OOM

Manly <Jet Silk Tires> / Lich King

 

Caligula

We also Heroism on the first portal (we being the caster group). At the end of the fight the mages are doing as much, if not more decursing than DPS and they hardly make use of it at that point. Unless you've got extra feral druids to decurse (or extra healers to cover for your decursing tree druids) then your mages have to help at some point. I think it's also worth noting that popping heroism early means a shorter time to get to the enrage point and that will result in less curses going around as well.

On the topic of Human Racials being overpowered in 2.4...

We'll give it to the Forsaken on Horde side so both factions have access to it.

- Will of the Forsaken - Spirit increased by 10%. -

 

Suggestive

I believe the demon gains that buff too.

 

Tyrian

This is false. Why are you saying this when many people are backing up how effective it is? The 4 group rotation can work very well if people understand the important basics. These depend on your guild but generally will be that your group members must stand in their pre-designated area at the start of the fight and move back to that exact area (or your "waiting for portal down" zone, if you use one) when they return from the demon world. People also need to get into their portal with their group, but missing one will not necessarily mean the worlds going to end.

Yes, there are periods where you can have 1groupup+3group down or 3 groupup+1groupdown, but these are not usually a problem. If you have assigned strong MT healers (pallys) in each group, and tanks/pallys are aware of when the cycle is in these phases - its only a brief period of time before a new group returns to help. Tanks have been made aware on fights like Archimonde, there might be brief periods where things can get tricky - but communication is key. Also people can use strategies like the healer paired with MT1, or a Paladin who waits until portal 5 (and resets his debuff stack before then to be safe) to enter.

3-1-1-3 has benefits and cons. The benefits with 4 portal (2-2-2-2 + 1 floating) is clean and easy groups. A whole self-sufficient group takes a portal at a time. Everyones in the same actual group number. Spells like Prayer of Healing and COH are preserved as excellent healing. But this only works if groups understand their position and they they must always be a pre-set position when spectral exhaustion debuff is about to wear off.


PS - Matst? I knew I have seen your name elsewhere. Its from one of my favourite Archimonde videos, the one with the awesome music made by Spoison. I should add that i've watched that Archimonde video many times and that the apparent strategy used was "ffa = just spread out around archimonde and stay alive" by the looks. This is similar to how your kalecgos strat seems, "Just get 3-1-1-4 healers in portals, a neary decurser, a tank.. and a few nearby dps". Many guilds opt for a much more strict/controlled 4-point strategy on archimonde and/or a 4-group strategy on Kalecgos as well.

Both are very viable ways to handle the encounters and will have varying success depending on the guild using them. My summary based on our experience is:

"3-1-1-3" type rotations are superior on paper
but
"2-2-2-2" in-group rotations are superior in practise.

 

Northerner

To complicate matters further with haste now reducing the GCD, Icy Veins is rather nice for decursing at speed. I've experimented a little bit with wearing haste-heavy gear for such situations and it does seem to smooth things out as well. Quantification is a bit odd though as obviously there are multiple decursers and even with many bouncing around it is possible to keep on top of the dangerous ones without completely breaking down to spamming.

Bloodlust is overkill of course though and probably is best prioritized to melee groups for the enrage portion or used on the first rotation down. How you choose to prioritize it is more a question of taste than anything I think. We've been trying to 'lust dps caster groups early and save the rogues for later but I can see the benefit of holding warlocks off for the enrage at least and likely would be best served by holding everyone but the mages back.

 

Clandestine

I don't see a benefit to giving your Mages a bloodlust early on, as the fight is pretty sustainable in every way except for the curses, and we've never wiped because we had too many curses in play. This makes the early bloodlust effectively useless. We don't rotate our extra shamans into DPS groups and give out the heroisms because it seems a lot more useful to have pretty much the entire raid heroismed at 10% than it would be to have him die slightly faster.

 

◊ manly

I think you missed the part where mages are not dpsing for a major part of the execute range because were stuck spamming remove curse for a good portion of it. Sure, I might get +20% dmg from molten fury, but if I spend 40% of my time decursing, I'm not gaining a whole lot. On the reverse, if you bloodlust early, then I am not doing any decursing, so I get the full extent of bloodlust.

<superblotto> Last I heard the Arcane Believers were going to burn the Infidel normal people at the stake but refused to use fire. Things went down hill from there
<arioch> arcane blast the firewood
<Blackpatch> they tried
<Blackpatch> but went OOM

Manly <Jet Silk Tires> / Lich King

 

Clandestine

Decursing, however, is now affected by the global cooldown, so even if you do nothing but decurse at sub 10%, the bloodlust is still helping you. My point was not that you'd do more damage if you get bloodlusted at the end - I'm sure you'll do more damage if you pop the bloodlust 15 seconds into the fight - my point was that the extra damage at the start of the fight effectively does nothing, because Kalecgos is not a DPS fight and there is no rush to kill him until he enrages.

edit: that part about decursing now being affected by the global cooldown obviously makes no sense, I meant to say that decursing is now affected by haste mechanics because the global cooldown is now affected by haste mechanics.

 

Anaram

Doing quick math here: bloodlust lasts 40 seconds and gives 30% more spells cast during that period of time. In effect you get to cast 52 seconds of spells during 40 seconds, so you gain 12 seconds worth of normal casts (4 fireballs). Whether those 40 seconds worth of normal casts are decurses or fireballs, you still gain 12 seconds worth more casts - in theory you don't gain any DPS by popping the lust early in the fight because whenever you cast it, spent on fireballs it gives you 4 extra.

 

Archonyx

I've heard several folks mention they use a 3-1-1-4 or 3-1-1-3 rotation, and I, too, was wondering if those using this strategy have any execution tips. Is there a way to structure this out ahead of time that won't be insanely confusing, or does it, as Tyrian mentions, simply require that folks individually react on the fly and "Just get 3-1-1-4 healers in portals, a few nearby decursers,tanks.. and a few dps."

 

Tyrian

THe main problem I had when we originally attempted Kalecgos using the "a few nearby X+Y+Z get in portal" was that either too many or two few people moved. As a result healing suffered. Three healers might stop healing because a nearby portal (that only one needs to take) has spawned and they think they should take it. Even when we tried to enforce a "use vent - communicate when your taking a portal more" approach to healers, it took their mind off the job a little. Healers were now more worried about making the decision of whether they should take portals or not, in addition to the already stressful healing requirements of the fight.

They had to listen to things on vent like "1 healer taks this portal" then decide when it spawns if they were close enough and should take it, then listen for another healer on vent possibly say "Im getting this portal". People just have to think and listen more. Yes its definetely doable , but is it a good thing? If you want to "keep it simple, stupid" - theres easier ways to do the fight in practise, even if theres superior ways on paper.

In the end, the fight became much easier (for us) to switch to 4-group=4 portal rotation and give everyone one simple easy-to-follow rule: "If someone in your group gets ported, go into the portal with them immediately. If not, ignore it."

 

Copernicus