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My guild has been in Gruul’s Lair since July 26th when we first downed Maulgar, but we’ve run into a serious roadblock with Gruul himself. I think we’ve finally mastered the Shatter avoidance (by assigning each group a quadrant of the room to avoid clumping and having everyone run Deadly Boss Mods), but we just can’t seem to keep our main tank alive. I try to keep HoTs stacked on him at all times, especially when Silence is impending, and I make sure to pop Barkskin on every Shatter. But it hasn’t been enough. Help a Tree out — does anyone have any tips that I could share for our next attempt on Wednesday?
Edit: As of Wednesday, August 30th, Aegis Hestia got Gruul down to 15% at 12 Growths, a 16% improvement over our prior attempts. Thank you to everyone for the advice!
Edit #2: On Monday, September 3rd, Aegis Hestia took down Gruul for the first time, with just 8 guild members still standing! The thrill of victory was only surpassed by the thrill of picking up a set of Gruul’s Teeth! Thanks again, everyone!
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You are FAR more advanced in content than I am, Phaelia.
All I can ask is a noobish question like, is everyone in the raid including the tank making full use of flasks/scrolls/foods for buffing, and things like wizard oils and such for the casters that can get use out of temporary weapon enchants.
By the way, your Barkskin post was the awesomeness. Where the heck do you find the energy to do that in depth a level of research?
I swipe in awe of you.
Let us know how it goes!
I have been doing him for a while also (we are working on LV in SSC) and have problems with him from time to time. The thing with Gruul is you need a good balance between healing and DPS. You cannot out heal the fight because eventually he will just 1-shot your MT/OT due to growths. Most of the time healing isnt the cause for a wipe but the lack of DPS and length of the fight. Six to seven healers is more then plenty, the quicker he dies the less the healing stress on the raid as a whole. GOGO DPS!
B3: You make an excellent point about fully flasking all the raid members. Our guild is pretty casual so convincing everyone to fork over the cash to consumable up can be difficult. But maybe just posting something about how to obtain the Blade’s Edge specific flasks would help (too bad the Healer flasks are far less accessible than the others). And thank you for the compliments on the Barkskin post. I’m not sure what you mean about having a lot of time to research, however, as the depth of information you supply in your recent Daily Quests posts far exceeds that of my Barkskin post (thank you, by the way — I will definitely be using your guides). =)
Mokrono: You make a good point about Gruul being a balance between DPS and Healing. Unfortunately, our tank keeps getting killed around Growth number 8-10 (we did get him down to 35% last night, however) so we haven’t yet run into the DPS issue. I assume that the amount of healing supplied somehow has to increase as the fight progresses? I am not sure how much more I can output, honestly. Thank you very much for taking the time to give me some input!
Every guild does things differently but my favorite setup for him would be a Prot warrior MT and druid OT. From there you should put a Tree into that group, a lock and depending on who else you have I would take a pally over a shaman but both help out in their own way. All the damage that is done by Gruul is physical so always make your mages buff the whole raid up with Amp Magic. With that and a tree in the MT group that should help some. I dont want to tell you guys how to do the fight because everybody finds a strat that works for them, but if you have the shatters down well the rest of the fight is rather simple.
Hey Phaelia, been reading your blog for about a month now. I recently got my resto druid to 70, and the Hafu video you posted a little while ago changed my (WoW) life.
I’ve only done Gruul from the viewpoint of a warlock, but i have some insight. Big heals are the key for Gruul. While it’s important to keep hots on him at all times, the Paladins and Priests in your guild have to use their big heals on the MT in order to keep him up. Also, there should be very little healing done on the raid. The dps should bandage to keep themselves up, allowing the healers to focus on the MT and the OT.
Thanks for the comments, Demonice. And for the pointers. I will definitely include your input in what I share with my guild. =)
Mokrono, wouldn’t limiting your movement by shifting to Treeform on Gruul be a bad thing? You generally need to move away from other people as quickly as possible. Is it possible that the two snares do not stack?
There are very few fights where Tree form actually limits you. Granted you move slower but I have never had a problem with getting killed due to speed of movement, rather getting agro or hit from a cleave attack etc.
There are times on the Gruul fight that I will come out of tree but that is usually when I get thrown into the middle of the room onto the tanks/melee dps. Then I shift, hit barkskin and jump into bear form for the extra life if I have more then 2 people that will be hitting me with shatter. I am one of the few trees that seems to do it that way, but it works very well for me.
Play with it and see if it helps you at all.
How many grows is Gruul getting to?
There will eventually come a time when the tank will take too much damage, or just get one shot.
If you’re getting above 14 grows or so, that is one hell of an act to heal, and the problem is dps, not healing.
Asking one of our Rogues, it sounds like we got him to about 12-14 on assorted tries. At that point he was around 33%. But our MT had probably died at around Grow 11 or 12.
If you run Wow Web Stats, post the attempt on the elitistjerks.com forums in the big WWS thread asking for advice. That way we can see how everyone’s speccing and gearing, and who’s slacking and give customized advice
- Werebeef
Werebeef: That’s a great idea about WWS. However, my guild is a pretty casual bunch and I’m a bit reluctant to ask outsiders to point out the chinks in our armor so to speak. Observations like “not enough healing on so-and-so” are welcome, but I would rather not know if a fellow healer isn’t up to snuff in terms of talent spec. I will check out WWS in any case, though. I’ve never heard of it before. =)
Our guild instituted a minimum amount of unbuffed HP, at least 8K for non-tanks. this means that after taking flasks (we also all use BEM flasks) and buffs we’re at 10K or higher.
Also, we split healers and ranged DPS, healers get the north and ranged DPS get the south. We use the terrain to avoid getting bounced by hiding behind the pillars and such. It’s important to get your group used to hiding behind pillars right before the bounce, this reduces the number of people that get clumped up by being bounced. and of course it’s very important to get people to learn to move out of cave ins immediately.
Also, I personally use Fel Blossom for those rare occasions where I do get bounced and there are more than 2 others close by, I pop it right before being stoned (I cast barkskin after being stoned).
Hi Phaelia:
I read on the Scarlet Crusade forums that Aegis Hestia has recently killed Gruul. Congratulations!
If you struggle to kill Gruul within one or two attempts as Western Exodus did, you might want to consider using a “dot map” strategy. In the dot map strategy, players run to set locations that are free of knockback effects prior to each ground slam. Once the ground slam is over and shatter begins, players spread out. Using the dot map strategy, Tempest (my new guild) is able to one or two shot Gruul each week.
A complete writeup of the dot map strategy can be found here:
http://dw-guild.net/GruulStrat
Best regards.
Sprig
That strategy looks awesome. I will definitely share it with Devilcs. Thank you very much, Sprig! =)
What most Druids tend to forget is that Barkskin is a god sent spell that works on ALL damage. This includes shatters as well!
What I usually do is that as soon as Ground Slam hits I start to throw Lifeblooms and Rejuvs around like a mad woman. The targets near you might not me damaged NOW but they will be later and a few HP extra after the shatter can save the raid.
I HoT people up as much as possible and just before Stoned I throw a Lifebloom on myself and then a Barkskin.
The Barkskin will remove a stunning 20% of the shatter damage and the Lifebloom will bloom out short thereafter bringing me back to full HP.
Don’t bother about the raid until you have your 3 Lifeblooms and Rejuv back on the tank. Then start to include them in the cycle.
We usually have 3 Trees along with us and this tactic has made us kill Gruul quick, painless and without casualties on several occasions.
@Senefera: I’ve gotten much better at using a Barkskin on every Ground Slam, but the pre-Lifebloom is a really nice touch! I can’t wait to try it!
And thank you for the tips on getting those HoTs back up on the tank as soon as possible. That’s something I need to work on. Unfortunately, I sit next to a Mage that more often than not has opted to blink into a trio of raid members and “needs” healing before he explodes from a stiff wind. O.o
Thanks for the comments!