righthorn

Ideally you want to send in another group in with the paladin, but have the tank healer of that group stay out and become the "float" healer. Not sending anyone is not an option, as it leads to unnecessary stacking of the debuff.
You want to have contingency plans set up in case something like happens.

My guild's decided to forgo all the shuffling and instead of stacking all 3 tanks in one group, we spread 'em out in 3 groups. Each group takes their own portals, and ignores what the tanks do. For a 9 healer setup, it would look something like:
G1: Tank Healer Spriest DPSx2
G2&G3: Tank Healerx2 DPSx2
G4&G5: Healerx2 DPSx3

If anyone in your group gets ported, regardless of if they're healer/tank/dps, you take that portal. This way, even if a tank gets ported there's no confusion, and you always have healers taking every port. Sometimes the tank that's supposed to take the 3rd portal gets ported in the 2nd portal, but that only requires minimal adjustment to the tank rotation, and the rest of the raid doesn't even need to worry about it. We also make sure to not taunt the dragon until after a portal, to further minimize confusion from tanks getting ports.

After all 5 groups have been through, then it just becomes a matter of taking personal responsibility and making sure you enter the next available port as soon as your debuff hits 10s.

 

Harwin

We've killed him once, with a 10 healer setup, but 10 healers is hard to get sometimes. In your setup, what happens if G1 gets the first port? Do you count on the Spriest keeping the DPS up in the demon realm?

 

saiyajinmaster

That's the exact same setup we use, except for G1 G2 and G3 all having 2 healers 2 dps 1 tank. That makes G4 and G5 our ideal 'finisher' groups for taking the demon from 10 to 0 on their own, easily.

 

righthorn

Partly spriest, and partly the single healer keep both the tank up and the group. Obviously a priest is the best choice for this, and it's extremely difficult for a paladin unless both the paladin & your tanks are very well geared. Being the first group is in actually easy on the solo healer, since the tank just holds off taunting until a second group gets up there.

We regularly have problems finding even 9 healers to stay online, so often run 8 healers, with G1 and G2 having solo healers. The big tank damage comes during corrupting strike, which is on ~20s timer, giving your solo healer forewarning to top up his group. Also this requires your tanks to be aware of which healer is with them, and to wait for a second group if they're alone with a solo healer.

 

Polishedhead

Well, you stated you blow cooldowns on the demon.. Why do you do this if he's on lower HP than the Dragon?

You've managed to get through the hard part of the fight, that is, surviving. DPSing them down at the same time should not be a problem at all.

Make use of Bloodlusts and Cooldowns to keep the boss' HP balanced.

IF one of the bosses gets to ~15% while the other is over 20% you need to call a STOP DPS; this shouldn't happen though with proper use of Cooldowns/Bloodlust

 

Kaacee

I think stopping DPS causes more problems than it solves. When one of them hit 50%, check both of their HP. If they are different, cycle in a heroism to the melee group on the higher of the two targets. When the demon hits 13% or so, tell everyone to burn CDs and heroism, stop taking portals, and burn them both down. You can wait a little longer if the DPS group down there is weak (no heroism), or go a little earlier if the dps group is strong (melee with heroism).

It really worked for us.

 

Ujai

I wonder how you guys tank Kalecgos' Dragon Form. I've mostly seen him being tanked to the far end where the raid enters the fight, but that seems to create an aweful lot of free space on the opposite side and leads to clumping (more or less) near the dragon.
Tanking him in the middle seems to cause more problems than it solves though, as seemingly everybody gets hit by the tail/breath or whatever, and our healers complain alot as the can't chain heal as much once the groups start returning from the demon realm.

Also, what do you guys do with your melee dps? I haven't found a way to position 4 melees in such a way they would not blast everybody else up, so I told them to spread out once a portal was incoming, but as I mentioned, space is rather rare near the dragon.

But overall, after a night of tries, I feel we got that much closer to killing him

 

pope master

So we had our first full night of attempts and, among other issues, our melee DPS (all three of them) were complaining that they couldn't even get into two groups without causing portal damage. We were tanking the dragon along the side of the east wall. We tried allowing melee to go to the opposite side, but people had issues finding the portal back there.

All of the pictures seem to depict three or four melee standing along the side of the dragon without causing parries or portal problems. What's the secret?

 

Castafoo

We also park the dragon along the east side with all the melee on one side. We simply have our melee stack and DPS normally until a few seconds prior to a portal spawn. Prior to a portal, they spread out enough not to take any splash damage from the portal, even if it means they will be standing out of reach of the dragon waiting for a portal to spawn.

If the melee group is the first group to get ported, they're very unlikely to die since the damage going around is easily manageable. Once more groups start getting ported, this opens up a lot of room for melee to spread out in before portals.

 

Tyrian

The secret is knowing when / how / where to spread out.

If your not using the mod "Kalecgos icons" already, you should be - as it greatly helps people achieve this correctly while learning the fight.

Remember, theres no rule saying your melee need to spread out in in melee range, when a portal is about to spawn. When our melee group is due for a portal - we get them all to move back away from the dragon (stopping DPS) and literally wait a few seconds until the next portal spawns. You don't need to find elaborate positions to have ~4 melee in melee range when a portal is incoming - you could simply keep 2 in melee range and tell the other two to stand behind them 8 yards, even if they are not doing any dps.

 

Harwin

For our first kill (hopefully we get the second this Sunday) we ran melee light(2 rogues), and simply told the melee to hold DPS at the start (just stay spread out) and do their best to jump in the first/second portals. Once the portal rotation is established, melee have no problem DPSing - they run out when their debuff is about to wear off and spend 10 seconds out of every 2 minutes not DPSing - not a huge deal.

But as I said, that required a very melee light strategy(not hard when you have 3 tanks and 10 healers eating up a bunch of slots already)

 

Upp

We just designate the center circle of the room as the melee group's area (including their healers). They use that space for their spreading out and nobody else is allowed in there. Right before their portal hits, a couple of the melee will stop DPSing and move to this area to spread out.

 

Zeto

thank you for the answer.

Ok, i will tell my raidleader to have an eye on HP of both of them. And we have to get away form "use everything to hurt the demon" and use our cooldowns on the boss whit more HP.
I was confused a little because some of the raiders and the Raidleader told me that you can "easily" zerg the boss down form 25% to 0%, but that was/is not doable in my oppinion... (not with 10 healer and BT-gear at least)

Another little question:
Is it important to save our Heroism (we raid with 2 Resto and 1 Melee Shaman most of the time) for the last ~13% HP? Most of the time, we used it the first time they got into the demonrealm..

 

KamPa

I never saw much point into saving Heroism for "enrage". The final phase is either won already if you enter it with most of your raid up, or things are so bad that it won't save you anyway. You definately won't use it's entire duration anyway, especially with portals still going up, people spreading out and so on - 10% is ~200k hp, takes way less than 40 seconds to drop him.

Also, I far prefer to burn them earlier on Sathrovarr - you get free 30 seconds on Dragon before first portal, meaning that he will pretty much always be at lower % - and after you deal with Demon, you can just ignore all portals and finish him off with all 2-3 tanks and 8+ healers, which makes "enrage" trivial(since it only affects his melee damage). It also makes sure there will be no NPC death on some low %, due to some unlucky taunt resists or something. Rare, but can happen.

Pretty much the only time Dragon will be higher is 50%hit debuff on tank, which means you have to watch your threat. Or your best DPSers getting double crit damage just before portal.

 

◊ Cathela

We find that the demon's health "catches up" to the dragon's health on its own without having to burn early heroisms, so we save them for the end and use them wherever they seem needed.

Really, the correct answer regarding when to use lust/heroism is "whenever it works best for your guild".

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Gofa

We use heroism early too: When our group gets its first portal, we blow heroism and dps like mad in the demon realm. The reason we do this is because everyone has their cooldowns up and you know exactly when heroism is about to come. In additional, especially if you are still learning this boss, everyone is alive and you get the full use of it.

It's also really nice for mages. There aren't many curses and you can dps quite good in the beginning of the fight.

 

Xequecal

Are there any other Paladin tanks running into issues with holding aggro on this fight? It's been a nightmare all night for me, on one attempt Sathrovarr resisted three consecutive RDs and I wasn't able to pull him off Kalegcos at all. In another attempt the dragon form resisted my taunt when it was my turn to step in, so I BoPed the tank to get him on me, intending to taunt him when it ran out. Of course it resisted again and we wiped. I'm also having serious problems in demon realm even when taunt works, it's often followed by: Exorcism (resisted), Judgment of Righteousness (resisted) and he goes right back to murdering Kalecgos.

 

Zophos

I can certainly say that we regularly have had issues with resists when using a paladin tank. It so happens that our paladin tank was unable to attend last night, so we had to have a druid respec feral at the last minute, and summarily got our first kill after weeks upon weeks of getting close (i.e. either demon or dragon banished and the other at a few percent) but often having the human Kalecgos dying due to the situation you describe.

There are certainly ways that the resists can be mitigated, but as someone who has advocated a Protection paladin in a wide variety of encounters, I can honestly say that I preferred having the feral druid as a third tank. I say this not simply because of the resist rate, but also the cooldown increase associated with each taunt compared to the alternatives. From my experience, the human Kalecgos is already sub-90% before the first group can be portaled into the demon realm, and we found that any time our paladin would get resisted more than twice it'd eventually result in some variation of a wipe.

My sympathies to you.

Guild Master - Epignosis

 

emoon3

I read a tip on the maintankadin forums that helped me a lot. Make sure the demon is not casting Shadow Bolt Volley when you taunt. If you taunt while he's casting it, you'll get the threat of his SB target and not human Kalecgos. This will look like a resist. We still haven't killed him but my taunt success rate has gone up.

 

◊ Cathela

The best way to combat this, I've found, is to be the second tank to port downstairs (and therefore the third tank to actually pick up the dragon) and gear pretty much entirely for mitigation/avoidance and +hit--in other words, a lot of warrior gear. I'm not hit-capped in the gear I wear for Kalec, but I'm somewhere in the +6% to +7% hit range. That doesn't eliminate taunt resists, but it cuts down on them dramatically. By the time the third tank picks up the dragon, every dps'er has gone downstairs once, so threat on the dragon is no longer an issue.

The easiest way to do this is to just make sure you see Kalecgos in target-of-target before you taunt. Or alternately, make a macro to cast RD directly on Kalecgos and then you can do it whenever you want.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Kallikrates47

Group 1 (Enters portal together, minus the Tank):
DPS
DPS
Main Tank (Starts Tanking Dragon, enters 5th Portal)
Healer
Healer

Group 2 (Enters portal together):
Healer
Shadow Priest
DPS
DPS
DPS

Group 3 (Enters portal together, minus the Tank unless the Tank is targeted):
Healer
Healer
Tank 2 (Enters 1st Portal, Taunts Dragon on return from Demon Realm)
DPS
DPS

Group 4 (Enters portal together):
Healer
Healer
DPS
DPS
DPS

Group 5 (Enters portal together, minus the Tank unless the Tank is targeted):
Healer
Healer
Tank 3 (Enters 3rd Portal)
DPS
DPS

This is a 5 portal rotation that I would like to try. Obviously there wil be a Decurser in every group and preferably one strong single target healer and one strong group healer in each group as well. If Group 2 gets targeted first then I would tell Tank 2 not to Taunt the Demon till the next group arrives.

This looks fine to me, feedback would be nice though if you can spot any flaws...

 

Denogran

I've always been the third tank downstairs (you can bubble off your stacks immediately after the second portal occurs, and right before you pick up the dragon. I wear all warrior gear - spell damage in the 300 range - and tell the first two tanks they better kick ass. Also, impress upon your dps that there's no reason to pull aggro in the first phase, after one portal rotation they can go balls out, and there's no need to do it to start the fight. I wear hit gear, and will use hit food - generally between 60 and 90 hit rating. That and Precision means taunt resists are unusual.

( Also, Cathela, confused on your numbering. Wouldn't the first tank that ports downstairs be the third tank to pick up the dragon?)

 

◊ Cathela

Different rotations, I think.

We have our first dragon-tank stay on him through the first four portals. The first tank to go downstairs comes back up around portal 4, taunts (becomes the second tank on the dragon) and the initial tank then takes portal 5. The third tank (me) follows two ports after that guy, so I end up tanking the dragon for the first time around portal 5-6.

It sounds like you're using the bubble to pop off your debuff stack and pick up the dragon early so you get to start with a "fresh" tank after the first few portals. I guess the idea there is that you don't have to deal with your tank having a large debuff stack towards the end of the first round of portals? Makes sense.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Denogran

Ahh gotcha, interesting. We try to keep the tanking rotation consistent throughout the fight, basically tank 2 portals worth, then take the next portal. My guild needs as little confusion as possible. The bubbling the stacks off is for precisely the reason you mentioned. You can even leave the bubble on as you taunt (as long as you cancel it in time), to allow your healers a free second or so to get settled.

 

fauxpas

Search function somehow doesn't help me.. i always thought that the Heal part of WWS-Logs from Kalecgos is reliable, but someone else said it isn't. I know it doesn't work for damage and it's pretty obvious there but heal seems to be rather consistent with my impressions (me being first ;P).

Can anyone answer that for me?