Gruul's Lair - High King Maulgar

[Shadowwolf]

High King Maulgar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcF_X8u08dQ

Before you get to the actual boss, there are some trash packs waiting. Trash packs vary in size from pulls with 1 mob to pulls with 3 mobs. All trash is on a 1 hour respawn timer. There are two different types of trash-mob in this instance. The first one is the Lair Brute (warrior) with the following abilities.

    * Cleave: A cleave dealing 3000-4000 damage on a tank (~7500 on cloth).
    * Charge: The mob charges at a random target further than 8 yards away in the raid.
    * Melee: Hits the target for 2000-4000 damage.

Gronn-Priest (priest)

    * Psychic Scream: Fears every player within 8 yards.
    * Renew: An instant HoT, heals him for 40000 periodically, should be dispelled.
    * Heal: A 2.0 second cast heal which can be cast on any target, heals for an extremely large amount, interruptable.

Raid Setup

25-man raid should include: 4 Warriors, 8-9 healers, 2 Hunters/Elemental Shamans, 2 Warlocks and one Shadowpriest. 1 Warlock in the group of the main tank, one Warlock to control Wild Fel Stalkers. 2 Hunters/Shamans tanking Kiggler The Crazed with nature resist equipment.

Tasks for the different classes

Warriors: 1-2 tanking Olm The Summoner, telling the healer who has aggro to make it easier for them. 1 tank tanking Maulgar. Warriors should use Shieldblock as often as possible, as it should virtually remove the chance of being crushed making it easier for the healers. Tell the healers when you are using Shieldwall so they can prepare for the buff wearing off.

Off-tanks:

The off-tank should just wear a shield while tanking Blindeye The Seer. As soon as he is dead, equip your normal weapons and do damage.

Rogues:

Same as the off-tank. As soon as Blindeye is down do damage on other targets. Do not stand next to High King Maulgar when he begins casting Whirlwind; and do not get anywhere near Krosh Firehand as he will use Blast Wave without warning.

Hunters/Shamans:

Tanking the Kiggler with nature resist equipment is helpful. If the respective tank loses the aggro, the add will run to the raid, this can happen if the tank is Polymorphed because of a temporary aggro loss. This should be announced to prepare the raid for it. Using Misdirection can be very helpful.

Warlocks:

The Warlock in the Main-Tank-Group should have his Imp out to give the MT more HP via Blood Pact. The other Warlock must enslave the Wild Fel Stalker summoned by Olm The Summoner. Once a second Fel Stalker has been summoned the first one will despawn. The Warlock controlling the Fel Stalker should tell the healers that the Fel Stalker is tanking Olm The Summoner, because it can be healed (although they should already know if you're using this strategy).

Mages:

The Mage tanking Krosh Firehand should have a minimum of 11000 HP (Via Flask of Titans or Fortification). How to tank Krosh Firehand is explained later on.

Non-Elemental Shamans:

Just do damage and help out with healing if you're not assigned to do so.

Healers:

The fight can be very Mana intensive, so be sure to have enough Super Mana Potions on you to last through one, or multiple attempts.

Abilities

High King Maulgar has four adds, two on each side.

From left to right:
Kiggler The Crazed

Kiggler The Crazed is a shaman with three different abilities:

    * Greater Polymorph: Transforms the targeted player into a sheep, the player affected loses all his or her aggro on Kiggler until the effect wears off and they take offensive action. This is a physical debuff and cannot be dispelled.
    * Area of Effect Knock-back: Every player in a 15 yard range will get knocked back, taking about 2000-4000 damage.
    * Lightning Bolt: Casts a Lightning Bolt at Kiggler's primary target and is affected by Nature resistance.

Kiggler should be tanked by two Hunters with Nature Resistance in ranged combat. If he is tanked by close range melee classes, they will be hit by his AoE Knock-back, dealing large amounts of damage. His physical attacks deal about 3000 damage.


Blindeye The Seer

Blindeye The Seer is a Priest with the following abilities:

    * Prayer of Healing: AoE heal, healing all allies for ~100.000 damage, must be interrupted.
    * Heal: Heals Blindeye's target, can be interrupted.
    * Greater Power Word: Shield: From time to time Blindeye The Seer uses this on himself, absorbing a large amount of damage and granting immunity to interruption effects while it holds(it cannot be dispelled). While the shield holds he starts casting Prayer of Healing, which heals all of his allies regardless of range. Players must deal as much damage as possible to break the shield; once the shield dissipates Prayer of Healing can be interrupted as per normal.

Blindeye should be tanked by an Off-tank, supported by two Rogues. One healer should be enough to support your tank. Make sure there is a Curse of Tongues active on Blindeye at all times to give the raid more time to break through his shield. Rogues and Warriors need to be ready to Shield Bash and Kick once the shield dissipates.


Olm The Summoner

Olm The Summoner is a warlock. He also has three abilities:

    * Dark Decay: A DoT dealing 500 shadow damage every 2 seconds on a random raid member in range.
    * Deathcoil: A single target horror effect dealing 2000 damage on the tank, healing Olm for 4000 damage. Cannot be dispelled.
    * Summon Wild Felhunter: Every one to two minutes Olm will summon a Wild Fel Stalker which can be Enslaved or Banished by a Warlock. Enslaving the Fel Stalker is an effective method of tanking Olm the Summoner.

Olm the Summoner should be tanked by his Wild Fel Stalkers via Enslave Demon. Wild Fel Stalkers can be healed once Enslaved and have no trouble keeping aggro.


Krosh Firehand

Krosh Firehand is a Mage who also, surprisingly has three abilities:

    * Greater Fireball: A four second cast Fireball dealing 7500-9000 fire damage to the primary target. This ability ignores Fire Resistance.
    * Blast Wave: A fire damage AoE dealing 6000-7000 damage to every player caught within 15 yards. Instant cast; stay away from him.
    * Spell Shield: A shield with a blue glow similar to Mana Shield, that reduces all magic damage taken by 75% for 30 seconds. Susceptible to Spellsteal.

Krosh must be tanked by a Mage with at least 11000 Health. The Mage should be using Spellsteal whenever Krosh's Spell Shield is recast, because upon doing so, the Mage will lose the stolen Spell Shield. Detect Magic is helpful for noticing Krosh's shield if you are unable to see it visually. One healer should be enough to heal the Mage, although a Priest is ideal, because of Power Word: Shield. Occasionally Krosh will cast a Greater Fireball and recast his Spell Shield an instant before the spell hits the Mage, causing the Mage to take full damage; your healer needs to be ready for this and able to compensate accordingly.


High King Maulgar

High King Maulgar is the main boss in this encounter. He is a warrior with the following abilities

    * Melee: His normal physical attacks deal 6000-7000 damage on plate armor.
    * Arcing Smash: A cleaving attack that deals 8000-12000 damage in a 180 degree cone in front of him.
    * Enrage: At 50% of his maximum health Maulgar will Enrage, increasing attack speed, but reducing melee damage.
    * Whirlwind: (used while enraged): Maulgar spins around for a few seconds. While he channels this ability all melee classes except for the main-tank should run for their lives. If caught in range(15 yards) a melee attacker will receive approximatively 7000 damage, varying on their armor class.
    * Intimidating Shout: (used while enraged) Fears all players in an 8 yard radius, cannot be dispelled. The main tank will be incapacitated, not feared, causing a temporary loss of aggro. The boss will run through the raid until the main-tank catches him again. Keep a second tank around to pick up Maulgar during this phase.
    * Charge: (used while enraged) Maulgar charges at a random player and stuns them for 3 seconds. The main-tank must get Maulgar back to his normal position as quickly as possible.

High King Maulgar must be tanked by a Warrior/Feral Druid with at least 15000 HP. At least three to four healers is ideal. After one of his allies has been killed, the healer of its tank will heal Maulgar's tank.


The Pull

The raid should be positioned in the tunnel. The two Hunters/Shamans and their healer should stand next to the gate that leads to Gruul. The Tank of Maulgar should stand at the left wall, the other Tanks just in front of the raid. The Mage should stand at the right edge of the tunnel. The Maintank will begin the fight, he will just walk in rage of Maulgar. Hunters should grab their add as fast as possible, with for example the Distracting or Arcane Shot. The mage can use one of his instant spells, the other Warriors must go catch their adds. It is very important that the Maintank will not get any damage from other adds at all, except for the shaman. He will begin to cast one of his Lightning Bolts wenn the Maintank begins the fight. This Bolt will hit the Tank, the next ones must hit the Hunters/Shamans! The add to be killed should always be with the raid in the tunnel, so the Tanks must move with the adds.


Killing Order

The first add to be killed is Blindeye, the Priest, so that he cannot heal the other adds. Once Blindeye is killed, all melee DPS should focus on Olm and all ranged damage dealers attack Krush. Once Krush is killed the ranged damage dealers must join the others and attack Olm. Once Olm is killed Kiggler should be at about 70-80% due to the Hunter/Elemental Shaman method of damage tanking. Here you have to be careful, because the Hunters/Shamans may not have built up as tremendous amounts of aggro as a conventional tank. The last to be killed is Maulgar.

[Nixphire]

Gruul's Lari is tomorrow
bumpkins! 

[Shadowwolf]

[attachimg=1]

[Gutboy]

Hey gang,

If I can make this tonight, what role should I prepare for, as a prot-specced but raid-noob warrior?  Would it be worth a respec?

GB

[Shadowwolf]

stay prot, always need tanks

its easier for our druids to swap to dps if necessary than it would be for you =)

[Kothnok]

Having been told time and time again how critical the job of Mage-Tank was for this fight, I thought I'd share my experience with it in case anyone else finds themselves in this role, too.

Gear Check
I will list off the gear I wore since a gear check for this job is necessary.  I'm not showing off so much as pointing out some critical pieces I went out of my way to get as well as why I chose some pieces over others.

[wowitem]Destruction Holo-gogs[/wowitem] (socketed with int and mana regen)
[wowitem]Necklace of Bloodied Feathers[/wowitem]
[wowitem]Elementalist Mantle of the Eagle[/wowitem] (+27 int, +42 stam)
[wowitem]Mithril-Bark Cloak[/wowitem] (rep reward from Sporegar)
[wowitem]Vermillion Robes of the Dominant[/wowitem]
[wowitem]Trousers of Oblivion[/wowitem] (with the +40 stam armor kit)
[wowitem]Grasp of the Dead[/wowitem]
[wowitem]Shattrath Wraps[/wowitem] (enchanted with +int, socketed with +dmg, +stam)
[wowitem]Unyielding Girdle[/wowitem] (socketed with +stam and +spell hit)
[wowitem]Boots of Blasphemy[/wowitem]
[wowitem]Staff of Infinite Mysteries[/wowitem]
[wowitem]Wand of the Netherwing[/wowitem]
[wowitem]Violet Signet[/wowitem] (+22 stam & int)
[wowitem]Scintillating Coral Band[/wowitem]
[wowitem]Starkiller's Bauble[/wowitem]
[wowitem]Gnomish Poultryizer[/wowitem]

As you can see, I don't have uber amazing gear sticking out my ears.  Only one is from an heroic, 2 from Kara, the rest are rep rewards, quest rewards, normal blues and even a green drop.  I went out of my way to get the Sporegar cloak and the Unyielding Girdle for which only the cloak is one I don't normally wear.  I had other gloves with stamina on it, but decided to go with the Grasp of the Dead so I could max out my spell hit; risking a resist wasn't worth the extra hps.  All told, I had 8.1k hps unbuffed, 8+% spell hit (105 to hit).  Once buffed, I had 11.2k hps (spells, stat food, flask of titans).  The minimum recommended for this fight was 10.5k hps buffed and 8%+ spellhit so I met the minimum recommended.  I now realize I can get my boots enchanted with +stam, so I will be getting that upgraded before next time so I hopefully won't need to use another titan flask.

UI preparation
I highly recommend putting the following spells/abilities close together on your UI or mapped to keys so that you waste no time moving the mouse all over your screen to click them.  I made that mistake the first couple of tries and it cost me precious moments I didn't have.  This fight is extremely unforgiving on timing and even one mistake at the wrong time can spell raid disaster.
2nd experience: Remembered to move Blink way out of reach, did well not to have it near anything.

Here's the list of spells/abilities I used: 
Spellsteal: mapped to a key so I could spam it as fast as I could
Fire Ward: also mapped to a key
Ice Barrier
Ignite
Flame Burst
Ice Lance (only a couple times)
Healthstone
Healthpot
Manapot
Managem (all of the different kinds)

Only after I put these various icons very close to one another did I do OK as a tank.  The job isn't to do much damage as I believe stealing the spellshield causes abnormally high threat.  Keeping that spellshield off him and on you while staying alive is all you need worry about, really.  It's simple in theory, yet difficult to do.

Actual Combat
You don't have to move far into the room once the pull starts, just in far enough to get in Spellsteal range.  The first thing Krosh does is put that shield up, so the first thing I had to do was steal it.  You may not have aggro yet, so follow up the spellsteal with a Flame Burst and Ice Lances while backing up out of his AE range if he got close enough.  After this initial start, you now have to carefully watch the spellshield buff as it counts down on it's 30sec timer.  I found it best if I put my Ice Barrier back up between 8 and 6 sec left.  I would Fire Ward at 3 or 2 seconds left.  While I had the shield up and waiting for it to fall below 10 sec, I would casually cast Ignite.  Don't spam it too much or you run 00m too quick (even with mana pots and whatnot).  Your job is to keep Krosh's attention, nothing more.
2nd experience: Lag hurt timings quite a bit.  Turning off my in game voice chat helped smooth out the lag at crucial times.  No idea if they are related, just fyi, it helped me.  Aggro was a problem on initial pull this time.  He never ran towards me, always to the left.  I think his direction was based on which hunter MD-pulled first.  The one pulling the King should shoot first. Alternatively, mage can pull Krosh with Ice Lance followed by Spell Steal (since Krosh will run at the mage before starting to cast a fireball, this gives able time for the global cooldown to expire).  Note that the alternative method is what worked well for 2nd experience.  TIMINGS!  I cannot stress enough how important the timings are between Fire Ward and the stolen spell shield.  The spellshield is 30sec, minus however long it took to steal.  There is a half-second between stealing the shield and actually gaining the buff, so keep that in mind.  Fire Ward has a 30sec cooldown, so it must be cast after Krosh lands a fireball on you, inbetween when the shield buff goes away and before the next fireball strikes.  That's a narrow window of about 8 seconds max, but usually around 4.  The closer you cast Fire Ward to the recast of the spellshield, the greater the chance you will have to eat a fireball without either the shield or the ward due to it's CD.
3rd&4th experience: Mage making the initial pull makes everything go smoothly as Krosh is far easier to control and pull him to where he needs to stand.  Word of warning, do not get closer to the King than the steam vent on the ground next to the right wall.  Any closer and you will range-aggro and that spells bad news for the raid (all 5 will whomp on you before they can get pulled away). I couldn't trust my UI to tell me I was in range to cast anything, but when I stopped just before that steam vent, I was able to cast my extended range Frostbolt.  Do not wait for your UI to tell you that you are in range, you just have to know/trust that you are.

Bad Situations
On one attempt, there was a time when I had a fireball traveling towards me and the shield faded.  Krosh recast his shield and I immediately stole it.  As the shield sprang up around me, the fireball hit me.  I still took full damage.  I shouldn't have taken full damage as I had the shield on me (Nix couldn't then take over tanking as I stole the shield).  I should have avoided full damage since I did successfully steal the shield.  Lag is the only explanation I can come up with, but it's a mighty poor one.  I have no advice on how to avoid this situation other than to try not to cut the timing so close.

On the attempt where we succeeded, I accidentally cast Blink on the initial pull instead of Fire Blast (after Spellsteal, of course), causing me not to gain aggro right away.  Nakoto died in the few seconds it took before I gained aggro via Fire Blast and a couple of Ice Lances. Everything was progressing fairly well that attempt.  I made sure not to overspam Ignite so I didn't run 00m, timed each shield transition so that I had Fire Ward and Ice Barrier up for the one fireball I had to eat while waiting for my chance to steal the shield again.  There came a time just before the raid focused its attention onto Krosh where the shield would fade in 4 sec.  Krosh started casting his 4 sec fireball.  I wouldn't have a shield up by the time the fireball traveled the distance between us and hit me.  I cast Fire Ward (Ice Barrier was already up).  The fireball started traveling towards me, but Krosh started casting another fireball since the shield wasn't completely gone.  At this point, I realized I was a goner.  Krosh won't be recasting his shield until after the 2nd fireball hit me.  In the meantime, the first one hit me after the shield faded, thus eating up my Fire Ward and Ice Barrier.  I knew there were 3 seconds and another fireball before I would get another spellshield.  Everything else, including health pots/stones were still on cooldown.  Healing the massive damage I took from the 1st fireball wouldn't be enough to withstand a 2nd.   My immediate thoughts were how I failed on the timing yet again, probably causing another wipe... but thankfully we were far enough along so that Krosh was our next target.  The 2nd fireball took me out sure enough, but Nixphire did a great job stepping in, stealing the shield and tanking for a short time while Krosh was taken out.

2nd experience
Aggro gain was difficult this time.  My spell hit % did not change, but the number of resists I encountered was 5 vs. 0 last time.  One of those resists was an initial pull resist, causing a wipe due to a couple key members to fall before the fight even started and one was a spell steal resist, causing me to fall too soon.  I would recommend that Mualgar be MD-pulled rather than have the mage pull (never heard of MD getting resisted), else have the mage-tank pull and park Krosh out of the way because once he stops, he rarely ever moves making the initial pull/parking very important.
I started each pull by casting Ice Barrier, followed by Fire Ward in case I couldn't steal the shield before his initial cast with the help of the RL counting down from 5 so I could time it right.  I would highly recommend doing the opposite of what I did this time for the simple fact that Fire Ward's CD needs to be up several seconds before the spell shield fade and casting it 2 seconds before initial pull meant the timing was tight right from the start.  Cast Fire Ward about 4 or 5 seconds before the initial pull followed by Ice Barrier if you have it. 

3rd experience
Shaman Grounding Totem - failed.  The Shaman Grounding Totem has no effect on Krosh's fireballs.

[Shadowwolf]

I want to add to this, the Mage of the group of Ogres has some limitations on his spell casts. Spell resistances dont have any effect, so having 300 FR wont make his fireballs hurt any less, however PW:Shield and Pally bubble will absorb it as would Blessing of Sacrifice. Also, Grounding Totems dont work on redirecting his spells nor do any reflect spells or abilities and Curse of Tongues doesnt work on him. If hes got you targeted with a fireball, its coming your way no matter what =(

[un4]

Will CloS resist them?

[genny]

TBH a melee should never get aggro from the mage-tanked mob, so it shouldn't be a concern to use clos with him.  This is due to the blast wave that he does, it's too high of damage to risk your melee being in his aoe range.

[un4]

I was wondering because I have a nasty habit of picking up aggro when tanks get squished.

...for 15 seconds, at least 

[genny]

Well if everything's going well, then the mage won't die, if everything isn't going well, then his healers will die after the mage dies, melee should be on the bottom of his list  

But by then, the rest of the raid is probably going haywire.