So that we are now allowed to talk about the fight, I want to start this thread about Algalon. We have killed him in 10man some weeks ago and could repeat our kills since then but we're struggling on the 25man version. The biggest issue for us apart from his enrage timer is constellations + big bang.

Many of our wipes are due to closed black holes once big bang occurs. Healers have aggro on the constellations and run to the holes but they can't wait infinitely before they run into it and consequently the hole closes most of the time when the healer with aggro on them enters the black hole. Sometimes people have to run a long distance to get to the hole in time and of course if the hole is closed by a healer, they die.

We have tried several things to fix this problem but we haven't been really effective so far. First we wanted the healer with aggro to step into the hole as late as possible, but this often resulted in a dead healer because some people are always really late to enter the portal and then the healer couldn't make it into the hole in time.
Lately we have been trying to stun the constellations. If we have only one constellation, it works quite good, but most of the time we have still 2 or even 3 flying around and coordinating stuns fails for us and the hole closes.

Unfortunately we don't have a protection warrior for shockwave available in this fight since we run with double druid tank on Algalon. Is there anything that we can do to avoid these silly wipes or comes it just down to closing as many holes as possible except for 1 before the big bang and coordinate stuns right?

What healer setup do you normally use for Algalon? We use 7 healers at the moment (tank: disc, pala, druid - group: disc (keeping whole raid shielded), holy priest, druid x2) but due to the rough enrage timer is it possible to cut off a raid healer and use 6 healer?

I have heard some excellent recommendations of having one healer either go with righteous fury or have a druid spec out of subtlety (but only one) so that that healer always has aggro on all the constellations. They then must step in last. That can solve some of the issues you may be facing.

We switched from 7 to 6 this week (dropping the 2nd druid raid healer) and oneshotted him on the first try with plenty of time spare.

A cheap version is to have a warlock specc shadowfury - which is enough to do the job on the constellations.

If you run just inside the black holes and wait at the edge, the constellations will stay outside it, in your melee range but not entering the hole. There is no need to run into the center of the black holes.

Regarding Healers: Have always used 6 (1 HPriest, 1 Disc, 1 HPal, 1 RSham, 2 RDruid being the most balanced)

Regarding Black Holes & Constellations: There is no reason for anyone, including healers to be humping a black hole. Stay 15+ yards away from them until big bang goes off, as soon as you run into the black hole you drop off the constellations threat list. The only time a constellation is going to accidently close a black hole is if you are standing near the black hole to begin with.

My 10 man group is having some major issues with Algalon. Everything is fine and dandy until the living constellations start to spawn. At that point we start losing people until big bang which is when we wipe. We have been getting this far consistently for 2 maybe 3 weeks. Our healer set up is Pally/Rshaman/Rdruid. Are there any general tips that would help us here or are we just doing it wrong.

Pretty sure aggro doesn't affect who the Living Constellations barrage. This is a useful tactic for having your tree close Black Holes quickly but does nothing for controlling the Barrage.

You didn't mention that you have a priest healing, does that mean your raid has no PW: Fortitude? Are you using cloth wearers (low health) in the raid? Without further info, its hard to guess why your having problems on Algalon.

This is correct. People who don't understand how the fight works, please don't post. Let's start this thread on the right track.

72k x .6 x .8 = 34k - 6k shield = 28k.

Distance does not affect the damage of Big Bang.

I'm pretty sure the damage of big bang is not affected by range. If you got 72k without using any cooldowns, then using bark skin and pain suppression would have lowered this hit to 72,000*0.8*0.6 = 34,560. Calculation 6k absorb from pw:s into it, it perfectly matches with your numbers.

Note that Big bang has a damage range: Big Bang - Spell - World of Warcraft

Everyones hoping for some more interesting and useful discussion to come of this thread, rather than debates over whether Constellations Randomly Barrage and whether range affects Big Bang's damage. There really are some worthwhile things to discuss about this great fight. I'll throw some things out there that every guild faces when they initially get to Algalon:

- Collapsing Stars (Best ways to kill them, who should do it)
- MT Healing Assign (Which Classes/combinations prove most effective)
- Cosmic Smash Positioning (Specifically with regards to whether MT healers have to move)

To address these in no particular order...

We ultimately came to the conclusion that the only random thing about the Algalon (10) fight, is whether a Cosmic Smash will force a MT healer to move. Nothing else at all.

The Living Constellations Barrage should never really kill people on 10's, even if it's shortly after a Black Hole Explosion (assuming your raid is balanced with fort/kings/mark etc). On Algalon 25, the Constellation barrage is likely a different story however, and justifiably the cause of some 'rng gibs' scenarios. However i've only done 10's so i'll stick to discussing that.

With two excellent MT healers (one providing inspiration/fortitude) and positioning to ensure they never both have to move from the same Cosmic Smash - we rarely experienced MT death issues (After the initial first weeks rude shock at how much damage he is capable of putting out). There occasionally was the classic MT non-avoidance streak in conjunction with a Black Hole Explosion (whilst a Cosmic Smash simultaneously forced a MT healer to move scenario) resulting in tank deaths, but those are usually few and far between.

The Collapsing Stars will prove to be a very interesting topic to dicuss, specifically with regards on how exactly to kill them. Initially we (and many guilds I suspect) go in with the idea that Collapsing Stars must be nuked fast, hard and as often as possible. However one week I noticed that we did more damage to Collapsing Stars on 10's than some guilds do on 25's. All that extra damage and effort we put in, was perhaps just unnecessary. After more practise and research, it indeed proves correct that you simply don't want to zerg stars mindlessly as fast as possible - you want to put a little more finesse into whats being done, and take advantage of their self-detonate/respawn mechanics.

The pattern we settled into for Collapsing Stars, from engage until the first Big Bang, was this:

0 sec - Engage
10sec - Algalon spawns first four stars
~20sec - Kill first star (happens around the time of the first Smash)
~35sec - Kill second star
~55sec - Kill Third star
**sec - Watch the fourth star but DONT kill it (DPS Algalon in the meantime if you wish)
~80sec - Kill the fourth star only after the first three dead stars have respawned
90sec - First Big Bang

Algalon does his first respawn or 'refill' of the stars about 15-20 seconds before the first Big Bang. He will make sure theres always 4 stars up. If you kill three, he only respawns three. If you kill all 4, he respawns 4 - which isn't necessarily a better scenario. Because you have 4 stars all self detonating with the same health. You will want to make sure your fourth star is low enough hp to quickly finish off immediately after this refill, because the first big bang is incoming shortly thereafter and you want your raid healers to have time to top everyone up after the explosion, before the raid enters the Phased Realm.

Depending on your Star Killers technique, they should be able to help DPS full time on the boss (ignoring all Stars) around or shortly after the third Big Bang. Quickly finish off any stars that are low-ish health (aka would blow up before Algalon hits 20% and they despawn). If they are killing stars right up until Algalon hits 20%, you're doing something terribly wrong. It sounds obvious for guilds that have done the fight, but is not readily apparently and took me a couple attempts to realise. The extra DPS you can throw onto the boss might be crucial to help beat the enrage timer.

We initially made a mistake of just putting 'a hunter' on Stars simply because thats how a video we first watched did it. Instead, the far superior option was giving the job to players with excellent raid awareness (can watch grid, boss timers), a solid understanding of encounter mechanics, and importantly - someone who is confident and familiar with communicating on vent. If that person happens to be a mage, so be it. With that said, i'm curious whether experienced Alg-25 guilds would favour warlocks as 'the ideal class' to do the job, given that they can stagger dots so effortlessly. This might not be needed on 10's, but their superior ability to do this - whilst dps'ing the boss - on 25 could be invaluable to meet the 6minute enrage.

Theres much more interesting discussion to be had, that really only pertains to 25-man Algalon. Similar to comparing The Iron Council (Steelbreaker last) on 10 vs 25.... they don't compare. However theres still not very many guilds who are actually attempting Algalon 25, probably not enough to spark off pages of heated debate in this thread just yet. Furthermore, guilds doing 25-man Algalon have beaten Freya+3/Firefighter, and therefore are strong guilds easily capable of handling the fight without neeeding to come here and clarify encounter mechanics or strat nuances. Discussion between said guilds is typically more a brotherly "So thats how you do it? Neat." discussion. However, thats still a good discussion to be had, and it would be nice to guilds like this to jump in and contribute. Everyone knows what the strat is for Algalon: But its more about finding what works best for your raid, your healers - and executing it with finesse. Videos and text won't give you that alone.

More people will come here looking for info to assist their 10's. On 25's, some of the more interesting things to discuss are which ~3 healer combo is superior for your MT healing and creative/esoteric ways to help meet the higher RDPS thresholds to beat the enrage.

One mechanic that has been discussed alot in the BB is Algalons Enrage and reset/despawn/win requirements. We've all seen videos where he casts the fourth (enraged) big bang whilst the raid gets him to 1%. Everyone will die when the cast finishes, except for a Guardian Angel'd player (or a lucky rogue who vanished) and Algalon will immediately give up afterwards. Have a look at this video for an example of this scenario, at 6min20 sec into the video: YouTube - Guild Cuties Only Algalon Realm First Kill Celestial Defender

However, theres still some confusion as to what Algalon will actually do if everyone dies to the enraged big bang while hes at 1%. If theres literally 0 people alive and hes at 1 hp after he casts the enraged big bang, does he ascend first (because nobody on threat) or give up first and you win? What happens if everyone outside dies, but 1 player went into a Black Hole? Every video i've seen: has had at least one player live through the Enraged Big Bang outside. I'd like to hear if anyone has experienced a scenario where every single person dies to the enraged big bang whilst he was at 1%, yet he gave up afterwards instead of Ascending/despawning first.

If nobody is hit by and survives the fourth Big Bang, he ascends rather than surrendering.

The latter scenario obtained during my guild's second Algalon-10 kill. He cast an enraged BB at <3%, and three of us jumped into portals while the rest remained outside and died. Upon emergence, Algalon immediately gave up, but about three Unleashed Dark Matter failed to be despawned. The three of us wound up killing them. When the Gift of the Observer showed up, it turned out nobody had loot rights, and we had to resort to the GM department to find out what was in the chest.

I believe the only real way to keep him from Ascending / screwing up the loot table is to use Guardian Spirit. The 4th Big Bang is a 7 digit Big Bang, so the only way to survive it is a Shadow Priest with stacked CD's (he would still need like 40k effective health), a GS, or a Rogue Vanish. The issue with Rogue Vanish is that it still screws up the loot table, as was the case for our first kill. Our Rogue Killing Spreed the moment of the Vanish so that he was able to tag Algalon and keep him from Ascending. It's tricky, and probably not reliably repeatable at any rate.

Your best option is just to beat that enrage!

We found our Elemental Shaman to be the best Star Killer. We originally started with a Hunter like the videos/10 man suggested, but we found they lost far too much potential DPS on Algalon to justify it. Elemental Shamans already have relatively low Algalon DPS on this fight and are one of the few classes who don't lose quite as much nuking non-raid buffed targets since they provide a lot of their own buffs. Their burst DPS is also relatively significant enough to take down stars as needed. Our first week our Ele Sham was somewhere in the 5k DPS range, and the next week on Star Duty he was still in the 4.2/4.3 range. In contrast, our Hunter on star duty the first week was around 5.2k DPS, while on Algalon the next he was 6.7 - 7k. The potential DPS lost is must higher with Hunters/Locks vs an already low DPS hybrid, we felt.

Seeing that 25 man Barrages actually hurt, how do people deal with this? I don't think we have enough Pally cooldowns to have Mastery/Sacrifice for every Star explosion and that 7k is pretty painful on some classes. Is this something like Freya "RNGib", where you should simply aim for high hitpoints/spec bit more survival talents? Constant PW:S spam on low hp classes does work to an extent, but it still seems fairly random. And unless they're kept together, can't count on Shadowfury during Star death.

Hello
1) What is better way to manage stars?
Before:
1st BB kill 3 stars wait for another 3 and kill last low hp
2nd BB kill 2 stars, left 1 for another star spawn, kill low hp star
3nd BB kill 2 stars, left 1 for another star spawn, kill low hp star
4th BB kill 3 stars and nuke boss.

OR
by before each BB kill all stars?

2) Are stars exploding(damage) or disapearing at 20% algalon hp?

3) Offtank should close 1 consetalon 1 void zone or rather try to kill 2 consetalions in 1 void?

Thx for help

Br
Xo

The active stars disappear at 20%, with zero raid damage occurring. I'm not exactly sure as to the exact formation they disappear at but it's seemingly a square around him.

There are a few ways you can go about closing void zones. Some guilds just leave their tank on the boss for the added damage and others have the inactive tank actively helping in closing the void zones. What we do is have the inactive tank build aggro/taunt the constellations into the void zones along with the restoration druids. Again it's up to you and your guild to decide how many void zones you want to close, and that all depends on how many void zones you have active before each big bang. Some guilds like their raid to have two options of entry for the void zones, while others will opt for just one.

I don't know if you will really get an answer on the best way to manage stars, as there are lots of ways you can do it. I know that we definitely kill 3 of them and wait for him to 'refill' his stars before killing the 4th on the first big bang.

If a Collapsing Star is high enough health, such that it will despawn for Phase 2 (ie Alagalon hits 20%) well before it would've self detonated - theres no need to kill it. Help DPS the boss instead. You can usually make this judgement call at the third Big Bang.

For example: If Algalon is at ~26% at the third Big Bang (our usual figure) and you come out to see one Star at 15%, and three at 85%. You would only need to kill kill the 15% Star and ignore the other three. They will despawn by themself when Algalon hits 20% anyway, so you may as well attack the boss instead. There might be some Living Constellations up which is fine, they never kill people alone (only in conjunction with Black Hole Explosions - which is a nonissue if you aren't killing any more stars anyway)

This is just one of those things that becomes pretty obvious, when you've done the fight a little. Preplanning on paper, without much experience, can mean it gets easily overlooked.

I'll just save the thread the time, by the way, and state that killing him after the last Big Bang with someone alive (no matter how you manage to do it -- there's been several different ways, and it's not always a rogue or someone with GS) can lead to the chest being unlootable. We don't really need everyone's personal anecdote on how it happened.

Basically yes. People should have their survival lined up. Some classes are squishier than others- watch out for moonkin and mages particularly. The other thing is to be fairly prompt about closing Black Holes by putting Constellations on top of them; the less time you spend with 3 Constellations alive, the less chance you have of unfortunate gibs.