From my experiences it seems to be pretty random whether or not you end up in melee range of the boss as you circle around in the vortex. I know for sure that several times I have been able to keep building threat during vortex and other times due to range I haven't.

I've not exactly kept track of how often it occurs as I doubt there's any way to work around it and force yourself into melee range during the vortex. Just seems like its a random factor you have to deal with. I doubt the impact of it will make or break the encounter regardless.

Anyone else notice anything similar?

I've attempted repeatedly to find a position that would put me in melee range of Malygos during the vortex. From my testing, I have to agree that it is random.

I would note that I am usually always in melee range or never in melee range for each attempt. That is, if I am in melee range once, I'll most likely be in range for subsequent vortexes during that attempt. This may just be me looking for patterns though, since I'd say it only holds true about 80% of the time. It may be that your position is fixed per-attempt, but can change if say, someone dies?

Just wanted to confirm that our melee in the kill tonight were able to sometimes continue attacking while in vortex, but indeed it seems random.

As for achievment, we pulled the 3rd spark and didnt go into bubbles till it wore off, used two paladins with improved bubble, and two dk anti magic zones. Also used a warlock to sacrifice+CoE on p3, but with all these efforts in mind, we ate a second vortex and still got the achievment with 20 odd seconds on the timer. I'd think it's possible to lay off the crazy stuff, go in bubbles and all and still make it.

ETA: (used 1 tank, 4 healers, 6 melee, rest ranged)

Usually, jumping up + hitting special right at the moment then he gonna lift you to vortecs will put you in melee range of him. It depends on your connection+reaction+random, but its possible to do it in ~50% cases. Jump + special right then he gonna cast vortex works for me.

Alright, we got that achievement yesterday with 3 seconds left. We used 5 healers 1.5 tanks 10.5 melee.
Patch 3.0.8 surprisingly really helped Feral Druids with versatility again. Losing armor on rings and trinkets was devastating before, now you can still be a formidable offtank in full dps gear. I'd dps in phase1, the Warrior MT ae-tanked the melee adds in phase2, while I picked one after another for focusing.

I was suspicious last night that the sparks and their subsequent fallout had a set lifespan, but as it was our first night on Malygos, I didn't have much time to examine it further. Has anyone been able to confirm yet that the apparent 90 second lifespan applies to the spark only or the fallout as well?

Also, we were having a bit of trouble last night with our tank not being able to survive with all four Lords on him, after shield wall went down so did he and rather quickly. I was wondering if a DPS DK popping Frost pres and picking up a Lord would be a valid strategy, or should I bite the bullet and take an OT?

Some Malygos issues being looked at by Blizzard, per Daelo:

They also specifically mentioned that FD is flagged as non-functional on Malygos because it had the potential to break the encounter. He didn't mention in what way, and I couldn't find anything while searching about it. Was it a known issue on beta? As survival I have to stop dps'ing quite often with shadowmeld being fixed and fd being worthless, and if they're looking into the other bugs I'd hope they'd finally fix FD on this fight.

Occasionally the vortex leaves you in melee range. It's random from what I can tell.

We used one tank only, but had the melee open up stunlock season on the first mob to die, pretty much taking it out of the fight till it died.
But really, if you're not trying for achievment or having enrage timer problems, an OT will do wonders.

Personally I beleive that if your going to learn a fight, you might as well learn it the best way possible. Instead of pushing the enrage timer I want to be pushing the achievment timer on our first kill, it may sound crazy but I figure it will make actually hitting the 6 min mark that much easier when we min/max and push for it.

Right now with the multiple bugs it may end up being more of a bother than a benefit...I was also discussing the use of CoE in phase three with my lead warlock and he said that since 3.0.8 the Suicide Lock - CoE stratagey no longer worked. I've been browsing this thread and noticed it discussed but didn't see anywhere a confirm/deny on 3.0.8 stopping this from happening. Has anyone used this since the patch?

Just to satisfy my curiosity, did it show as immune, invalid target, or CoE applyed yet had no effect on drake dps?

He didn't say precisely what the error was. Just that he tried and it didn't work. It's likely the spell didn't land at all given how the conversation went (see below).

I'll try to remember to ask him today and see if he knows and remembers.

Here's the sum total of the info I have at the moment from our after action report.

=============================================================================

Tank: I noticed that the flame stacks on Malygos were ticking in increments of 1545, rather than the 1500 that they had been. Did someone manage to slip a 3% damage increase debuff on him?

Raid Leader: Maybe <warlock name> put up CoE before the transition between P2 and P3? Although I was lead to believe that no longer was possible.

Warlock: I tried, it does in fact not work anymore (this was why i was in the middle of the platform)

I believe the problem is that you can't target Malygos during the phase 2 to 3 transition.

We did 6 minute Maly 25 last night, and the Warlock sac during P3 for CoE still worked:

This is correct, but you can target him after he becomes active. All you have to do is just have a warlock fly above him, dismount, and cast Curse of Elements on his way to his death. The 13% more damage dealt by all of the surviving dps drakes will be more than what the dead warlock could have outputted.

Is there any parse or particular way to measure how great the output of the other 24 drakes will be with CoE in comparison to having that additional engulf flame stack without CoE? Obviously it would depend on the varying times of phase 3, but assuming a 2 minute-long Phase 3, how much faster would you be able to kill him?

On a completely unrelated note, we ran with a particularly melee-heavy setup last night (about 8-9 melee dps, varying classes of rogues, fury warriors, deathknights, etc; 1 tank, 5 healers) and still managed to pull the achievement at about 5:57. The trick is to adjust your strategy to cater to your setup - for us, we had problems in phase 2 with scions not dying fast enough, so we had melee grab disks as they dropped (as opposed to range) and we had them focus-fire the scions that were out of range of our ranged dps. The result was the nexus lords and scions dying almost simultaneously, giving us the precious 15-20 seconds we needed to cement a kill.

It's pretty simple to measure. You lose one dpser to give all your other dpsers a 13% boost. Assuming that everyone maintains stacks perfectly (and at an equal rate), this is a net gain if you're using 9 or more dpsers, which you certainly are in the 25 man version (though probably not in 10).

Now, if you've got a raid full of people who can't grasp how to maintain the debuff for some reason, but the warlock you're sacrificing is one of the few people who can manage to do it properly, then it's probably not worth having him sacrifice himself. That isn't aimed at you, Sair -- since you got the achievement, I assume your group knows what it's doing. Of course, in that situation, your best improvement is going to come from teaching the rest of your raid how to manage their debuffs, and that should be your first priority before exploring the warlock-sac or other creative game mechanics.

Agreed. I think that's new from pre-3.08. Our warlock was trying to do it in transition, rather than trying to dismount and die after he became targetable. We're still sloppy enough at stacking/living in ph3 that doing that probably would not be a net win. When we get closer to the 6 min achievement, it's something to think about.

The breath-on-pets change just makes ph1 trivial, as you no longer have to move when you drop out of vortex, assuming the tank picks up and spins Malygos like he should.

Does Malygos clear debuffs at any point after flying up when he hits 50%? From our own experiences with going for the achievement, it seems you spend only about 2 minutes in Phase 2 burning Scions, and I could see how elements would still be up after you all got on drakes for Phase 3.

Yes. Any Curse of Elements casted at the end of phase 1 (when hes still in the air doing his emotes, etc) will be dropped when he enters phase 3 regardless of time left on it.

During malygos 10 tonite we had a very odd bug, at the start of the fight we opened the iris and he engaged, the tank aggro'd and he descended.... but he never landed. He just kinda fell through the platform, and kept on falling down through space until he went out of view distance.

After about 2mins in combat we went OOC. The exit portal was gone as if we were in battle. The only way out was to hearth. After spending 3hours in a GM ticket queue there was no response.