Grinding Ashen Verdict Reputation

One week has passed since 3.3 and ICC was released and as reported earlier, some folks have already grinded their reputation to exalted! While this isn’t something that isn’t difficult or quite frankly necessary, it is intriguing and worth considering. Lets take a closer look at the rewards, what it entails and the time commitment…

Reward

First off, lets take a look at the rewards itself, the reason why people are doing this is naturally for the exalted Ashen Verdict ring. Being able to obtain a ilv 277 ring today when we’re generally still wearing 258 gear at best is pretty awesome. At first look at the friendly version of the ring, it’s really not much to scream and shout about, but my person opinion is once you get into revered that’s where the real bonus is. At revered the ring receive a chance on hit proc:

Chance on hit to increase your attack power by 480 for 10 sec.

Pretty sexy stuff, to be that alone is enough to use this ring without looking into loot tables for ICC.

Time Commitment

Based on a guide created by Wolfie, he suggests that you can obtain ~850-900 reputation per run. That being said, lets try and calculate the amount of time/runs required to hit exalted. Lets consider a few different types of scenarios, note that this is all based on a druid pov (aka Night Elf) without any Human 10% reputation bonuses. Also lets assume that each run can yield 900 for calculation purposes.

• Non Raider: If you don’t belong to a guild that can run 10/25 man and you are only looking to obtain the ring, you’ll need a total of 42,000 reputation, or 47 reputation runs.
• Raider (ASAP): If you belong to a raiding guild but want to obtain the ring asap (say this week), you’re probably like me sitting at around 1005/6000 friendly. If that’s the case then you are still looking at 38,000 reputation to go. If you subtract the rep for running both 10/25 man this week (4k total), then you’re looking at 34,000 to grind or 38 reputation runs before you clear both instances.
• Raider (Staggered Approach): If you’re like me and you’re looking to potentially boost your rep a little so that by the time the next wing opens (Jan 5th) then you can spread out your reputation grinds over the next few weeks and still obtain the ring quickly but in a more reasonable timely fashion. From now till Jan 5th, that gives us 3 lockouts left and 3 weeks of gaining 4k rep each for a total of 12k. We start at 34,000 reputation and substract the 12,000 leaving us at 22,000 required. Divide by 900 means 25 reputation runs in 3 weeks or a reasonable 7-8 runs a week.

Effort Required

If you’ve already cleared ICC then you know it is pretty simple, the difficulty level of this is pretty minimal, afterall it’s just killing trash. Again, Wolfie’s guide is a good overview of each trash pack and what abilities they have in case you haven’t entered ICC yet. He suggests a 1 tank, 2 healer, 7 dps setup probably for maximum efficiency but any group composition will do.

I’m planning to give this a shot tomorrow and see how long it takes realistically to complete a rep run. I don’t think my goal is to push to exalted but more to push to revered to get the ring with the chance on hit proc. I’ll report back once I get some more information. Happy grinding everyone!

*UPDATE*

So I went in there before our ICC10 raid and grinded for a few hours. We went ahead with a 1 Tank, 2 Healer, 7 DPS strategy which worked fine. Really it comes down to how fast you can pull and how fast you can clear so that you can reset and start again. By the end of our grinding runs we were down to around 15 minutes per run but I am sure it can be done a lot faster with a better aoe dps setup or just quicker pulls in general. The exact amount of reputation gained per run if you kill every trash mob prior to Marrowgar is 885 reputation. Currently I’m now sitting at honored with 1.2k/12k  so at this rate I should hit revered prior to the next wing’s release.

Lessons learned from our first night of grinding were:

• Do a 1 Tank, 2 Healer, 7 DPS strategy, the more dps, the faster it is
• Don’t run into the rooms with the big Deathbound Ward, pull trash back into the previous room to avoid waking them up before you’re ready
• On the big packs in the middle with double spiders, pull them back and use the wall to LOS so that it’s easier to grab them all, give your tank time!
• Healers should DPS when possible, speed is key!

The Evolution of Raid Progression

The Blizzard Downloader has just started a few days ago and with that means that the patch and Icecrown Citadel is most likely less than a month away. A lot of new information has been released in the past week so expect another 3.3 Kitty Summary update shortly. For now, I wanted to reflect and do a trip down memory lane and see how raid attunements and progression have changed throughout the history of WOW and how they have affected the raiding culture of WOW.

Vanilla WOW (Lv 60 Raiding)

The most important factor to raiding at 60 was time, you had to devote all of your time and effort within WOW into raiding. All aspects of the game inevitably led towards improving your preparation for raiding. Probably the prime example would be PVP, where ultimately a large popualtion of people did PVP to obtain gear which supported raiding since PVP rewards were some of the best gear available (pre or post raiding). Attunements, gear, resistance gear were all necessary requirements to participate in raids.  Here is a sample of what needed to be done to raid in Molten Core.

Molten Core: Anyone who wished to enter MC was required to complete the relatively simple Attunement to the Core questline which required you to obtain a Core Fragment from the raid entrance within Blackrock Depths. Simple enough right? Wrong! Once you enter MC, to progress through the instance there was a requirement to douse Quintessence flames (8 total) which could only be done through Aqual Quintessences. This could only be obtained through a quest chain that required killing trash, bosses and rep grinding Hydraxian Waterlords faction to honored. Once you’ve done all this and you finally do make it all the way through MC to Ragnaros, there was essentially another attunement in the sense that you had to obtain a fire resistance set which could only be obtained through farming the instance itself for materials to make the gear. Oh and if you want an Aqual Quintessence, you need to go to Ashzara every week to get a new one.

The Burning Crusade (Lv 70 Raiding)

With the release of The Burning Crusade, attunements played an even larger role than they did in vanilla WOW. The result was an extremely complex requirement that essentially required you to complete every dungeon on normal and heroic (which required a certain reputation to access). They were so difficult (bad) that Blizzard decided to remove them after only 6 months and they were made into a Feat of Strength (Hand of A’dal, Champion of the Naaru) for those who actually managed to complete it. I feel it can only be best described through a chart which actually does a pretty good job of comparing lv 60 vs lv 70 attunements (left vs right). All the quests associated with this massive questline can be found here.

By the end of The Burning Crusade, we began to see a shift away from attunements. It was very evident that only the most dedicated people were actually getting to see content which really didn’t make sense from a business perspective. Why spend money developing great elaborate content that only a small subset of your population would see. Their answer? Staggered releases. With Sunwell we began seeing locks on content so that more people had additional time to catch up and progress at the same speed as your top end guilds.

Warth of the Lich King (Lv 80 Raiding)

Wrath of the Lich King came with a huge overhaul in the way raids were constructed and designed. The game itself had been changed from a singular focus to a multi faceted game where a player could enjoy PVE, PVP, grinding, achievements and other different aspects.  With raiding being such a small subset of the game, greater focus was introduced to ensure that all players could participate in raiding through a tiered level of content (easy and hard modes).  As a result attunements had become a thing of the past as all instances are instantly accessible by anyone.

In 3.3, Blizzard is trying to change the face of raid access again with a concept in which I would call “Quality over Quantity”. The complete post is quite long so I won’t copy/paste it here but you can read the post in it’s entirety here. Here are the few important exerpts:

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana’thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty

This essentially means that as we reach the tail end of ICC, there will be limited number of attempts to progress to through the last section of ICC and Arthas. The quality of your attempts must be very high as the quantity of attempts is very low. This change is a good change as I feel that instead of seeing the guilds who have the most available time on their hands hitting world firsts, we’ll truly see which guild has the most skill with limited time. It should be a true testiment to skill and preparation.

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell’s effect if they so wish.

This I think is the best change of all which will help a lot of middle of the pack and casual players. Blizzard overall theme to raiding is they want all players to see content and they don’t want to make it something acessible by only the elite. By adding this feature which essentially makes content easier over time, it should make it so that much more people will see the content and also help those middle of the pack guilds clear content that they are stuck on. Who there out there remembers getting stuck in Naxx 60 and Sunwell? (I do!)

There are probably those people out there with an elitist attitude that feel it’s wattering down content but it is important to note that they do have an “off” switch to the assistance so that if a guild so chooses to complete content without that assistance it is still available. As well, it would be my assumption that the assistance will be triggered depending on how fast/slow content is being cleared globally.

In the past 5 years, raiding within WOW has evolved significantly and I think generally for the best. Everyone has to remember that WOW itself is a 5 year old game and while the good ol days were fun, it really was a thing of the past and doesn’t really work in today’s WOW world. I’ve heard a lot of complaints from friends, trade, blogs and so forth about content being too easy and boring but the way I like to see it is, that is the design of the content. Blizzard has purposely designed a multi tier system to ensure more people can experience this content. If they didn’t do that and they had maintained the same strategy as lv 60 raiding, most likely those complainers wouldn’t have been raiding anyways. The new changes should greater enhance the raiding experience while at the same time, creating greater definition between good guilds and the best guilds. I for one am looking forward to see who truly does have the most skilled group of raiders.

Raiding Effort:Reward Ratio – Is Blizzard in Sync?

Recently, Blizzard has begun the announcement of Patch 3.3 which will signify the end of WOTLK. With 3.3, will come Icecrown Citadel and Arthas which will be the culmination of this expansion. If you’re interested in seeing the patch notes or what’s coming soon, you can check out MMO-Champion or WorldofRaids for the latest news. This stirred up some of my thoughts on how WOW raiding is currently.

What defines a guild as hardcore/progressive these days anyways?

Based on achievements, I would say anyone that has completed Call of the Grand Crusade (25 Player) (hard mode if you weren’t sure) would fit that criteria. However if we look at GuildOx we can see that this is a very small elite group of guilds. Worldwide there are ~100 guilds that have accomplished this with #100 being on Oct 5th. In the US only 49 guilds have accomplished this feat to date. According to GuildOx this is 0.68% of the world’s 25 man guilds.

Lets consider some projections for the future.

Timeline

Lets think about the current time line. Patch 3.3 details have already started coming out and is already available for testing on the PTR. Lets guesstimate that Blizzard will release 3.3 within the next 3 months (sounds reasonable right?). If that is the case, this gives all remainig guilds (hardcore or casual) 3 months to clear the remaining content.

Feasibility

Now lets look at how reasonable this is, first lets look at your guild as a whole. Lets assume you have 25 raiders (what a dedicated guild right?) and lets say that 75% of these people are interested in 4pt9 and the remainder are only interested in 2pt9. Specifically I am referring to the ilv 258 T9 (T9.5) which is the highest ilv T9 available (232, 245 and finally 258). This specific T9.5 is a token that drops from the tribute chest that is obtained from the successful completion of Heroic TOGC with the following criteria:

• Tribute to Skill -  25 Attempts Left = 2 Regalia
• Tribute to Mad Skill – 45 Attempts Left = 4 Regalia

Now based on the assumptions above, you would technically need 88 trophies to gear your whole raid with ilv 258 T9.5. Another factor to consider is that the Regalia work on the old Vanquisher, Conqueror and Protector system so there is always a chance that you may get shutout of the tokens you need but for simplicity sake lets assume that whatever token you need will drop.

Projections

Ok, so lets assume your guild is above average and you’re already pretty close to killing Anub on heroic mode. So lets assume next week you already managed to complete TOGC with 45 attempts left, or in other words, giving you access to 4 Regalia tokens a week going forward. Based on the fact that your guild needs 88 trophies, this would take you a total of 22 weeks to completely gear your raid or… are you ready for it?

FIVE TO SIX MONTHS

Ok, now I bet the first thing you are thinking of right now is “well not everyone needs to have 4pt9 or 2pt9 and not everyone needs to have ilv 258 since you’ll have ilv 245 T9 already so your argument sucks!”. This is true, but you need to take into account human nature. Nobody wants to do anything unless there is something in it for them, or simply people will only go to TOGC if they are going to get the loot they want. If it is going to take that long to get what you want, a lot of people will naturally decide that the gear they have currently (from TOC 25 etc) is sufficient.

Summary

The point of my rant is the EFFORT:REWARD ratio doesn’t quite seem to make sense right now. If it will take my guild 5-6 months to reward everyone, what is the point if 3.3 will be arriving in 3 months? Now I know that 3 months is an assumption and I could be completely off base, but I don’t think PTR testing has ever gone on for that long and definitely not 5-6 months. Couple this to the fact that the EFFORT:REWARD ratio for TOC 25 normal is ridiculously good, you can have extremely good gear without every stepping into heroic mode. Finally add to this the fact that all the gear is exactly the same except for a little green “heroic” tag and better stats, meaning there isn’t even an aesthetic reason to do heroic mode.

I’m not trying to say that you should stop raiding and that there’s no point to hard modes, quite the contrary and I do enjoy doing content and am continuing to work on hard modes as we speak. The problem here lies in that not everyone will put in that extra effort and the writing is on the wall in that there’s really no reason to bust your balls hard because by the time you do get to the fruits of your labour (and most likely before you get there) 3.3 will be here, there will already be higher lv of gear available with a much lower EFFORT:REWARD ratio.

Gotta Go Anub’arak

I woke up this morning to realize that we’re already into October, the year has flown by faster than I could have imagined. A couple of weeks ago I was still enjoying the summer playing a round of golf on Sunday and now it’s so cold outside that I’m ready to bust out a winter jacket. Cold weather means more time indoors and more time indoors means more blogging so I guess it’s a win win situation. Today’s topic will be Anub’arak 10 hard mode. I really don’t feel that there is a need to discuss any of the other hard modes (or normal modes) in TOC because quite frankly they’re not that hard and there really is no difference to how it’s done on normal mode.

Anub’arak Hard Mode

The following are the added changes to the fight in heroic mode:

• There are a maximum of 6 Frost Spheres to create Permafrost
• Two Nerubian Burrowers will spawn instead of one.
• Nerubian Burrowers adds now also use Shadow Strike: Step through the shadows to appear behind an enemy target and strike for 40000 Shadow damage. This naturally needs to be interrupted at all times.
• Nerubian Burrowers will continue to spawn during phase 3.

For a complete summary of all of Anub’s abilities check out this link here.

General Tips

• The biggest difference between Normal Mode and Heroic Mode is the management of Permafrost to stop his Pursuing Spikes. When he is about to burrow, you want to move him off the Permafrost and move towards the North and let him burow as far North as possible. Your raid should all move to the middle and wait for him to identify a target. Once the target has been picked, the target should beeline South as far as possible to again maximize the distance and the amount of travel time Anub has. By the time he reaches the targeted player he would have already travelled all the way from North to South essentially eating burrow phase time. The player should then allow him to hit Permafrost and identify a new target. Once a new target is picked the target should now move all the way North (since Anub is all the way South) and repeat the process. By doing this Anub should only target 2-3 people (depending on how efficiently you do this).
• When kiting, be cognicent of where your Permafrost is, DO NOT blindly run in the opposite direction as if there is a Permafrost inbetween you and Anub, he will hit it and reset targets.
• During the Burrow phase (P2), everyone should always be in the middle for several reasons. First it makes sure that if you are kiting him north or south, it will ensure there is sufficient distance for the person to run away. Secondly, it enables better management of Swarm Scarabs, ensuring they do not kill a healer and are aggroed onto a tank and can be taken care of as fast as possible. Lastly, as mentioned above, if there is Permafrost directly between you and Anub it will eat it and cause a reset, staying in the middle ensures a clear path for Anub to chase you.
• If you have a paladin in raid you can use Blessing of Protection to sustain the kiting once Anub has reached the target. Personally once I get a BOP, I like to run circles around Permafrost until my BOP runs off
• In Phase 3, minimize the amount of healing you give to the raid. If you have a Paladin or Druid for Leader of the Pack of Judgement of Light, you should need very little raid healing. The more you heal the raid, the longer Phase 3 will persist due to Leeching Life which steals 10% of the raids health every second.
• In Phase 3, you’ll want to kill off the set of Nerubian Burrowers that are up when you enter P3. However when the next set of Nerubian Burrowers spawn, you’ll want to start off tanking them on Permafrost and then midway you’ll want to move off and allow them to submerge. This essentially lets them go off and do their thing while it gives you time to finish off Anub.

Extremely ghetto diagram

Kitty Tips

• As always, pop Berserk early so that it can be used again. Specifically you want to use it again in phase 3 once he begins to use Leeching Swarm and this is where your dps matters most.
• In phase 2, many classes will get stuck on Permafrost, use Feral Charge generously to jump from add to add and kill them as fast as possible.
• In phase 2, if you find yourself in a bad spot and you are too close to Anub and he is about to hit you with Pursuing Spikes, look around for Swarm Scarabs and try and Feral Charge them so that you can get a bit more room between you and Anub. Generally speaking you should be nowhere near Anub but in case it does happen, you have this available to you.
• Stay on Anub and let other classes cleave the Nerubian Burrowers. Kitties have terrible startup time and the amount of time you need to swap between targets will really hurt you in the end. There are a lot of other classes (rogues/dk’s etc) that would be much better suited to handling the adds.
• From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think dots carry forward into his burrow phase, which is the opposite of how Anub was in Azjol’Nerub. You’re better off hitting him with a Ferocious Bite at the end and not leaving up any dots.

So far we’ve been missing A Tribute to Mad Skill by only a few attempts (43 tries left last 2 weeks), looking to make a push this week. stay tuned!

Algalon has been… Observed.

Alright sportsfans, I’m finally (and I do mean finally) happy to report back that we have finally managed to defeat Algalon. It’s been a long time coming and I really wish we had put more effort into this but it’s been extremely challenging to get people to put in the time to learn this fight and execute. We’ve had approximately 3 months worth of timers available to us however we’ve only put in 5 timers worth of time. With the arrival of TOC it seems ppl only care about getting new loot. For me, Algalon was a milestone that I had been craving for a long time. Loot will come and go and will be replaced soon enough, a title (Starcaller!) is something that will last forever.

While I normally don’t write up full out strategies on a fight and try and focus more on kitty aspects, I feel that Algalon does deserve a full writeup. Partially because the job of a kitty is pretty simplistic and there’s not too much to mention but also because the Algalon is all about execution and there are a lot of little things that help contribute to a successful kill.

Algalon the Observer

Algalon has the following abilities that affect your MT/OT.

• Quantum Strike – Inflicts 15,675 to 17,325 Physical damage.
• Phase Punch – Inflicts 8,788 to 10,212 an applies a stacking debuff on the target. When the debuff reaches 5 stacks the target is affected by Phase Punch which will shift the target to another plane for 10 seconds.

Algalon has the following abilities that affect your whole raid.

• Cosmic Smash – Inflicts 41,438 to 43,562 Fire damage to anyone under the area of impact, and less Fire damage to everyone, based on proximity.
• Big Bang – Inflicts 76,313 to 88,687  Physical damage to anyone not standing inside a Black Hole. Removes players from Black Holes.
• Ascend to Heavens – Inflicts 655,500 to 724,500 damage to all enemies. Cast 6 minutes after engaging him. Equivalent to Berserk.

Algalon has the following adds that join the fight:

• Collapsing Star – Summoned periodically during Phase 1. They lose 1% health each second and cast Black Hole Explosion as they die, which inflicts 16,088 to 16,912.  Shadow damage to the entire raid. They leave Black Holes on the ground as they die.
• Black Holes – Spawned by dying Collapsing Star. Players standing in a Black Hole are shifted to Worm Hole dimension, taking 1,532 to 1,968 Arcane damage every 1 second spent shifted. Dark Matters populate the Worm Hole. If a Living Constellation enters a Black Hole, both despawn.
• Living Constellation – Spawned in threes periodically during Phase 1. Attack with Arcane Barrage, which inflicts 4,163 to 4,837 Arcane damage. If a Living Constellation enters a Black Hole, both despawn.
• Dark Matter – Spawned inside Worm Hole dimension during Phase 1. Attack any raid member who enters a Black Hole. Spawned periodically from Black Holes during Phase 2.

Whoa! That’s a lot of information, lets try and translate this and simplify:

• Tanks will need to rotate tanking Algalon so that Phase Punch will not stack to 5, we rotated every 3 debuffs. If you miss and a tank is phased out -> you wipe!
• Cosmic Smash drops a big red void zone (a la Sarth) and everyone needs to move away. If you get hit by it at close proximity you’ll get launched into the air -> you die!
• Big Bang means everyone (minus 1 tank, explained later) gets into the phased plane to avoid massive damage. Don’t get into the void zone -> you die!
• Collapsing Star dies -> Black Hole Spawns -> Closed by Living Constellations

General Strategy

Ok, now we’ve gotten all the fight mechanics out of the way and tried to simplify them down as much as possible. Lets discuss how the fight works. Essentially the fight is broken down into 2 phases:

Phase 1

During this phase, 2 tanks are required to rotate on and off to keep the Phase Punch debuff from reaching 5 (we rotated every 3). The real dangers lies in the Cosmic Smash and Adds that spawn during the phase. Cosmic Smash will spawn in a random location (quite frequently in melee/tank range!) and it is imperative that all melee including the tank move out of range. Dealing with Collapsing Star and Living Constellations are also tricky. You need to kill Collapsing Star at an opportune time (explained below) and you also need to use Living Constellations to close the Black Holes that are created. However at the same time, you need to close them at the right pace so that you still have two portals open so that your raid can avoid Big Bang by entering the phased state.

If your raid is executing properly you should experience Big Bang twice throughout Phase 1, once every 90s. During each Big Bang, one of your tanks will have to stay in the normal plan and eat the Big Bang otherwise, Algalon will Ascend to Heavens due to the fact no melee are in range. Your tank will need some sort of damage reduction ability to survive through the Big Bang such as Shield Wall, Guardian Spirit etc

Phase 2

Once Algalon reaches 20% phase 2 will begin. At this point, Collapsing Star and Living Constellations will no longer spawn, but four Black Holes will spawn. Dark Matter will begin to come out of these Black Holes which will need to be offtanked.  This essentially becomes a DPS race to burn down the remainig 20% while not getting overrun by Dark Matter that will continually spawn. In addition, Big Bang will still occur so it’s imperative that you bring him down fast to avoid having to transition through another Big Bang.

General Tips

• Timing is everything in this fight, the execution of each individual element needs to be spot on to spread damage evenly and to avoid spikes of damage.
• Announce when tanks are taunting off each other, the amount of damage that Algalon does does not afford you the time to change targets late
• Do not kill a Collapsing Star if Cosmic Smash is incoming, spread the damage out or someone will get instagibbed
• Avoid killing a Collapsing Star if you are rotating tanks, switching tanks and suddenly getting hit with additional dmg can cause a tank death
• Healers should try and stand behind void zones so that if they pull healer aggro, they can kite it (especially resto druids who can move and heal)
• The OT that is not currently tanking Algalon should be on taunting duty to close Black Hole
• When Algalon begins his Big Bang cast, ALL healers should check to see if they have aggro on a Living Constellations, I don’t even know how many times a healer walked into a void zone first because they were close and closed it on half the group. If you have aggro, wait for others to enter first then use a aggro dump ability (Fade, Shadowmeld) so that you don’t close the portal on yourself.
• When you enter the phased plane, I would recommend that you run to the edge of the map and not into the middle of the map to avoid Dark Matter. The reason for this is because there is never a void zone right on the edge of the map whereas if you run into the middle there is a possibility that when you rejoin the normal plane you could have walked right into another void zone and get dumped straight back in.

Kitty Tips

• As always, blow your Berserk early, if you have aggro issues (and you have a pally) call for Hand of Salvation this should allow you to reuse Berserk again in Phase 2.
• Before Big Bang is being cast, take a look around you to see where is the closest Black Hole so that you have your route planned out
• Before Cosmic Smash is being cast, take alook around to find an exit route, don’t walk straight into a Black Hole by accident!
• Try the best of your ability to put up a fresh set of dots as Big Bang is being cast, so that while you’re phased out, they will continue to roll. If you can time this correctly by the time you leave the phased state and find Algalon your dots should just be falling off (in other words minimal dps loss).
• Innervate is a healers best friend, now that it’s been pushed down to a 3min CD, use it twice during the fight
• If you have multiple kitties, try and setup a brez order ahead of time so that you don’t need to communicate who should rez first.

Ever since 3.1 came out, this has been one of my goals to kill Algalon. It was extremely exciting and humourous at times. The attempt before our kill we had Algalon at 1% when he cast a 3rd Big Bang and for some reason everyone entered the phased state and we got instagibbed by Ascend to Heavens (/facepalm). My goal now is to try and get as many ppl experienced at the Algalon fight so that we can push towards Algalon25. From a 25 man perspective we are very close to getting Freya HM and after that we are only missing Firefighter to unlock Alg25. Celestial Defender is still available on our realm and I would really love that title

I really do hope this helps those who are out there working on this and if you do have any specific questions please feel free to drop me a question in the comments.

Pics to be uploaded shortly! Here’s one for now.

He disappeared before I could get him in the shot

The show in Dalaran!

Meters from the fight, Ill try and get WOL next time