Another good week of raiding and another new boss kill under our belts as SR took down the big bug Garalon last night. And we did it in epic fashion, beating him on the infamous last pull that Lyss had called out. Great job guys! On Tuesday, we blasted through MSV and HoF up to Garalon, one-shotting all eight bosses in a little over two hours, which gave us all Wednesday night to work on the big bug.
This is only a one phase fight, but it involves a lot of positioning and coordination and Garalon has a tight 7 minute enrage timer.
At the start of the fight, Garalon will cast Pheromones on the first raid member to pull him and he will slowly move towards that person. Pheromones does constant AoE damage to the raid throughout the encounter and lasts 2 minutes on the affected player. The raid member that pulled Garalon will then begin to drop damaging pools called Pheromone Trails, which do not despawn, so they must kite Garalon around the room to keep from standing in the pools. This raid member will also receive a stacking debuff called Pungency, which increases the AoE damage that Pheromones does to the raid.
To keep the Pungency stacks from getting too high, you’ll need to pass it off to another raid member and have them kite Garalon around. Once the pass is made, Garalon will perform an ability called Crush, which does a high damage, raid-wide attack and will stun you for a couple of seconds. You can also trigger Crush by standing under Garalon, which is the area indicated by the purple circle you’ll see in the fight, so avoid this area at all times.
Garalon’s legs can also be attacked and killed by the raid. Each time one of his legs dies, Garalon’s movement speed is decreased and his health is also decreased by 3%. He will mend his legs throughout the fight, so you’ll want to keep killing them to beat the enrage timer.
You need two tanks to handle Garalon, as he will use a frontal cone attack called Furious Swipe. It does a high amount damage, which the tanks need to soak up. The reason for this is that if two people do not get hit with this attack, Garalon will receive a buff called Fury, which stacks and increases his damage and speed.
We utilized a different strategy than what most kill guides I’ve read used. Instead of using the dps to kite the Pheromone Trails and Garalon, we used our tanks (Wok and I) and two of our healers (Slice and Zarm) to handle it, that way our dps could focus on burning down Garalon. We kited Garalon in a rectangular pattern around the room, starting on the right side going clockwise. We passed the Pheromones at around 18 to 21 stacks and with four people in the rotation, the debuff would fall off just in time for us to start the cycle over.
This kill puts Shadow Rising at 3/6 in Heart of Fear, which makes us the only guild on Drak with a Garalon kill. Yeah, our server is pretty weak and all of the top guilds have left, so whatever =P. I think we are planning on extending the lockout and hopefully we can get some good attempts next week on Wind Lord Mel’jarak and maybe a new boss kill(s). =)
The Crimson Hammer 