http://www.icy-veins.com/elegon-detailed-strategy-wow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuiudb_ri_k&feature=plcp
Don't fall, we'll all laugh.
10-man comp: 2 tanks, 2 healers, 6 DPS
Encounter takes place on a room with a big glass plate (the Engine of Nalak'sha) in the middle.
Phase 1: Lasts to 85% and 50%. When standing on the glass plate you get turned into Algalon, increasing your damage and healing by 50% but steadily increasing your damage taken; run out of the plate to clear it. Elegon is stuck in the center of the plate, and if he can't melee anyone he death-grips the entire raid to him, dealing 200k damage to everyone. Spawns adds that deal damage to random raid members and apply a dispellable Mortal Strike debuff; adds pulse AOE at low health and explode for 200k on the entire raid on death. This will scale up if the add is on the plate when he explodes, so pull him out of there before he dies.
In the last Phase 1 (sub-50%), Elegon will stop spawning adds and instead just do an AOE pulse. Group up, bloodlust, and start rotating healer cooldowns.
Phase 2: Starts at 85% and 50%. Elegon continually casts Draw Power, creating six Energy Charges in the middle of the room which try to head to the beacons on the outside; each time he casts this, his damage taken increases. Successive waves of Energy Charges move faster. If any of the charges reaches the edge of the plate, Phase 3 starts. Charges will explode on death for around 30k. Ideally, you'll kill four waves of charges during each Phase 2, then DPS him during the fifth wave and run to the outside of the room after they hit. Assign one (10-man)/three (25-man) DPS to each Energy Charge, and have them keep those assignments for killing beacons in P3.
Phase 3: Glass plate disappears, run to the outside of the room or die. Boss goes immune, so we have to kill the beacons that the orbs were headed towards. Each beacon creates an energy wall that dissipates once both that beacon and the beacon on the direct opposite side of the room are killed (you'll see a big white line linking them, it'll be obvious what matches to what). While you're killing the beacons, Elegon will be dropping adds that melee rather hard; each beacon killed increases his add spawn rate, so you'll want to get the beacons killed as close to each other as possible. Once all six beacons are down, group up near the console and start AOEing down the adds while waiting for the plate to come back.
I like the idea suggested here of taking 6 DPS for this fight. It appeals to me in the simplicity of taking out the Sparks and Pylons. (Wait is this guy Protoss?) Each DPS is assigned a Spark/Pylon and kills it. Heh, it'd show who is weak at burst pretty fast. ;) Healing may be too intensive for that though. In that case, we'd put two strong ranged on one side to handle three sparks. Tanks could probably help out with that extra spark too.
I really like taking out all 6 pylons at the same time. Taking out each one increases the damage the boss does, but the only negative of having them active is that we can't move around. If we are probably split up with at least one tank and healer on each side, that shouldn't be an issue. Thus killing all the pylons together should be easiest on our healers.
For Science!
That was a good start last night. We manged to complete one "cycle" but couldn't quite transition into the next cycle. Here's the first change we need to make and the healers won't like it:
Two healers, six DPS. Icy Veins, Wowhead and everywhere else is pretty clear about this. Two heals, six DPS or you won't make the enrage timer.
Stage One is where most of the damage is going to come from, while Elegon is active and tanked. In this stage, Elegon himself does NO raid damage, it's all from the Protector adds. If one is not active, the raid is taking no damage. While they are active, they do a little bit of random damage, but their main hit is the explosion when the die. It'll be important for the raid to be outside of the circle at that time to keep damage as low as possible. Luv and Dark could stay in through one explosion if they use CoS and AMS. That's a good idea since it increases our raid damage and reduces healing needed! The strats suggest taking no more than 2 explosions, in other words getting to 85% before a third add spawns. We were pretty close to that yesterday, one more DPS in the mix should get us there fine. We could even probably have 3 DPS focus on the boss and 3 on the adds, with dots on both.
The tank swap may be tricky. Guides suggest swapping at 10 stacks which means swapping before the add dies. Possibly having Kul stand outside the ring, MD the add to Swipe and then have Kul run and pick up the boss. Or we can keep it the way we have been. If we only have two adds, that's only two explosions, so we can chain cooldowns to survive it.
For the Spark phase, the first change is that we need to have no adds going into that phase. With six DPS, that shouldn't be a problem. With no adds, for that first 15 seconds of "Draw," there will be no damage on the raid so healers can get caught up. It lets everyone get into position to deal with the sparks and even get some more damage on the boss. Six DPS means one DPS per spark, plus the two tanks can help out a bit. Slows, snares and stuns do nothing, it's all about DPS. We should be able to kill four sets of sparks. More is good, but four is the suggested minimum. If we are not able to do that, we need to bring our DPS up since that's all that is going on in this stage.
The third stage went fine, we mostly need to improve the transition. Each side of the platform should have a tank, healer and three DPS. Add collection should be fairly easy, they'll go after the healers! Once all the pillars are down on a side, kill the adds that have shown up. If all six pillars are down, group up by the control panel and continue killing the adds. Move into the center ring as soon as it's back up to increase DPS. A tank will need to grab the boss and a healer will need to watch him. The adds should die pretty fast at this point with the DPS buff and they'd better because we need to get back on the boss and start Stage One again. Rinse, Repeat then burn the boss to dead.
For Science!
I was considering how to improve tank survivability during this fight and here's what I came up with. Instead of doing tank swaps when an add dies, we do it when the add spawns. The goal is to minimize Overcharged stacks on the boss tank so he doesn't take so much damage when the adds explode.
The "other" tank, the one who is not currently on the boss, would actually stand outside the inner ring and just wait for an add to spawn. When the add spawns, the "waiting" tank runs in and picks up the boss. The first tank then grabs the add and pulls it to the outside of the ring. The swap could happen a few seconds early so the tank-who-was-on-the-boss is already free to pick up the add, but we can also use Misdirection to get the add to the tank.
Example: Fight starts, Swipe runs in and tanks the boss. The rest of the raid follows into the inner ring and does DPS/healing. Kulgarr stands outside the ring where he has no buff or debuff stacks. Kulgarr waits for an add to spawn. If he wants, he can cast a heal or he can just stare at the add timer. Right before the add spawns, Kulgarr runs in and taunts the boss. Swipe picks up the add and moves it to the edge of the ring. Add is killed, then blows up and Kulgarr takes less damage than Swipe would have because his Overcharged stacks are lower. Swipe then stands outside the ring and waits for the next add to spawn. When it does (or right before), Swipe enters the ring and taunts the boss. Kulgarr picks up the add and so on.
It's easily repeatable, but we should only have a couple adds spawn anyway if DPS is doing it's job right. It'll be a little boring for the other tank to hang out outside the ring, but it's worth it if it keeps the tanks alive! The tank DPS lost by doing this shouldn't matter much. Actually, the "waiting" tank can move into the ring and DPS the boss if desired, so long as he exits the ring and resets his stacks before the add spawns and he needs to taunt the boss.
Tank and Healer CDs should be used anyway for the explosions, but this should help make the damage more manageable. Again note that if we do this right, there shouldn't be more than 2 explosions in the first Phase One. Tanks and Healers can plan how to use their cooldowns with that info. DPS can do the same. Luv and Auto can stay in the ring for one explosion and use CoS/AMS to reduce the damage.
Just an idea to help out here!
For Science!
Some responses to someone asking if they needed more gear in their raid to kill Elegon:
I'm noticing a TON of raid damage which is making it difficult to keep mana during this phase. Here is a way to help, we may be doing this but I'm not sure. Please make it a priority or the healers will go OOM. :)
Since the raid takes considerable damage in this stage, each time Energy Charges die and explode (even though these explosions do little damage on their own, they usually happen almost at the same time, and their combined damage is quite high), resetting the stacks of Overcharged remains a priority. For ranged DPS and healers, this is easy, since they can spend their time at the outer edge of the Inner Ring and simply side-step or jump to reset their debuff.
Melee DPS players have a harder task. For the most part, they are best off quickly stepping outside the Inner Ring whenever they finish killing an Energy Charge (since these generally die close to the Outer Ring anyway). In some cases, however, they can choose to skip resetting their stacks for a wave of Energy Charges, and be prepared to use defensive or self-healing cooldowns to survive the next wave of explosions.
Thanks Ardwen!
It's good to highlight the individual aspect of surviving this fight. 95% of the damage from Elegon is unavoidable, but there are definitely things each DPS player can do to lessen it's impact and make life better for the healers. We love them and want them happy! ;)
1. Biggest thing is just dropping stacks regularly. This is pretty easy for the ranged DPS to do, so it should be happening often, especially if you know a damage hit is about to come, like when an add dies. I am guilty of doing badly on this during the Draw phase this week. :(
2. Use personal Cooldowns. The most obvious moment is when a Protector add is dying in phase 1. A large, but very predictable, damage hit is coming so you can use a CD to mitigate it. I use Deterrence on one in the first round and I should be able to use it on two in the second. Not having to heal that damage at all will make for happy healers! Use Cloak of Shadows, Dispersion, Ice Block and whatever else you have!
If you have a good CD, you can even ignore the stacks, depending on the phase. There's no need for Luvalot to run outside the ring and reset his stacks for an explosion if he's just going to absorb it with CoS.
Just make sure to use all the tools you have to make this fight easier. Healthstones are great too!
For Science!
Ard posting about raid strats..I'm going to have to up my game.
you would have to have a game to up it rad...doh!
That's funny. Just after our second kill, Blizzard decided to nerf Elegon a bit.
"In the normal mode version of this encounter, Cosmic Sparks will deal less melee damage, Elegon will now use Materialize Protector less often, and the Overloaded effect that Elegon gains when an Empyreal Focus is destroyed now grants significantly less haste."
Not that big a deal, actually. We might see one less Protector in a phase now though. Still funny that after our clean kill, he gets nerfed a bit!
For Science!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x4bShJC2r4
Heroic guide by Fatboss.
According to Icy Veins, sparks have the same health so we should be able to execute those properly. Learning the Total Annihilation handling will be one obstacle.