Gara'jal in a nutshell
#1
This is the third boss fight of Mogu'shan Vaults. On 10-man normal mode, this fight presents TWO challenges:

(1) It's a massive DPS race. The boss has a soft enrage at 20%, in which his attacks come faster and do more damage. Then he has a hard enrage at 6 minutes that will 1-shot the raid. DPS needs to be HIGH to beat these timers.

(2) Entering and exiting the spirit world properly.

Okay, here we go.

THE SPIRIT WORLD

Players enter the spirit world by KILLING the totem cast by the boss. When the totem dies, the CLOSEST 3 PLAYERS will get sucked into the spirit world, where they will be confronted with adds.

The spirit world adds are fairly weak, but they will damage the players in the spirit world AND the players outside in the normal world. They spawn continuously. When the boss goes into a frenzy at 20%, players cannot go into the spirit world any more, so the damage from the continuously-spawning adds will grow at the end of the fight, a soft-enrage mechanic that will eventually wipe the raid.

It's important that we CONTROL who goes in: it must be 1 healer and 2 DPS, preferably at least 1 DPS with AoE abilities or DoTs they can apply widely to kill the adds inside the spirit world. The 2nd DPS can get sucked in, get the DPS buff, and jump out again to do even greater damage against the boss. So this 2nd DPS can be a single-target DPSer. Healers get a nice mana-regen buff in the spirit world, so we should rotate them through.

A COMPLICATION: Players entering the spirit world will be reduced to 30% of their health. To get OUT of the spirit world, they'll need to click an extra action button called the "Return Soul" button, but this button ONLY APPEARS when that player has been healed to 100%.

After 30 seconds in the spirit world, every player who has not gotten out by clicking their "return soul" button will be INSTANTLY KILLED. Each player gets a 30 second debuff that ticks down -- it's easy to watch the timer.

So 3 people need to go in each time. BUT these groups of three cannot be set in stone, because there's...

A SECOND COMPLICATION: The boss will turn the current tank and 2 other players into "Voodoo dolls." These players cannot go into the spirit world. So we'll need to play the groups a bit by ear when the totem appears.

So, for groups, I'd say that:

* Oryx, Sbin and Ryosaki are our healers, and they should rotate who goes through to make sure each one gets the buff.

* Anca, Eruadan, and Yohdah are designated add-killers in the spirit world, and one of them should go in each time and stay as long as they can, interrupting and killing adds.

* Umu and Zlinka are single-target DPSers. One of them should go in each time, get healed to 100% to get their "return soul" button, get the DPS buff, and pop back out to apply their buffed DPS against the boss.

Strategy B: If we cannot beat the enrage timer with this strategy, we will switch Oryx to DPS and run with two healers: Sbin and Ryosaki. The two of them will rotate who goes in, and Oryx will be a designated add-killer DPS inside the spirit world.


FOR THE TANKS

There are special mechanics in this fight just for the tanks.

First, when the boss casts Voodoo Doll, it will affect his current tank (as well as two other players). 70% of the damage taken by each Voodoo Doll is dealt to the other dolls, so these three players, and especially the tank, will take increased damage during Voodoo Doll.

Next, when the Voodoo Doll debuff EXPIRES on the tank, that tank will be BANISHED into his OWN spirit world.

The second tank must pick up the boss immediately. The boss cannot be taunted off the Voodoo Doll tank, but the boss's threat table is still affected by taunts and so forth (he just won't switch yet). So, once the current Voodoo Doll tank is banished, the boss will switch to the next target. So the off-tank needs to be second, or even first, on the threat table during Voodoo Doll.

When the tank is banished into his own spirit world, he will be confronted with a single mob, called the Severer of Souls. The tank has 30 seconds to kill this mob. It has low health so this should not be a big problem. Once the mob is dead, the tank will be sent back out into the normal world. Failing to kill the mob will instantly kill the tank.

FOR THE HEALERS

Our healers, Oryx, Sbin, and Ryosaki, will rotate through the Spirit World, where they will gain a nice mana regen buff. In the Spirit World they should top everyone off, including themselves, to 100% to give them access to the "return soul" button. They should return to the normal world themselves before the 30 second timer is up.

In the normal world damage will be higher on the 3 players affected by Voodoo Doll, especially the tank.

Also, every 8 seconds, Gara'jal will hit the tank with a "shadowy attack," which bypasses absorption effects. Tanks and healers should be prepared for this.

THE LAST 20%

This phase will be very intense, as the boss will go into a frenzy, and the adds in the spirit world will be multiplying and dealing increasing damage the raid, and we can no longer go into the spirit world to stop them. Raid-wide damage will escalate due to this, and because of the Voodoo Doll effect, damage will escalate even more on the tank.

In this phase we will blow Bloodlust and use all our DPS and healer cooldowns to survive this phase and kill him.
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#2
Zloryx, I would suggest that one of you get this addon (GarajalAnnounce). It helps with on-the-fly calls for who should go into the spirit world and takes into account current Voodoo Dolls. It can also automatically announce who should go in in RA, as well as whisper the current players.
In my raid, we 2-heal it in order to have relatively-low issues with beating the enrage timer. If it helps, here are the two recent fight logs on WoL for my raid:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/il269...767&e=1091
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/pyb1n...399&e=3730
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#3
Thank you, Kretol! I'll get that addon installed today.

-Zee
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