Gruul's Lair - Gruul the Dragonkiller

[Shadowwolf]

[youtube=500,425]DIdDB3oBOvs[/youtube]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DIdDB3oBOvs

Abilities

• Basic Melee: 3â€"3.5k at the start of the fight, on tanks.
• Growth: Self-buff, increases damage done by 15% every 30 seconds, size increased by 10%, can stack up to 30 times. Undispellable.
• Hurtful Strike: Occasionally hits the 2nd highest aggro in melee range. A second tank is needed to mitigate this, 12350â€"13650 physical damage. If no secondary target is within melee, this hits the first target available within melee range. This damage increases after each growth.
• Reverberation: Occasional zone-wide silence for 4 seconds. Not dispellable. Can be reduced by anti-silence abilities.
• Cave In: Random AoE which causes ~3000 damage every 3 seconds in the area. This occurs more frequently in later stages. This counts as melee damage and can be mitigated by armor. Growth also affects Cave In.
• Ground Slam: Zone-wide knockback into a random direction, then triggers the Gronn Lord's Grasp.
• Gronn Lord's Grasp: Stacking debuff after a Ground slam that reduced movement speed by 20%. stacks 5 times after 5 secs then causes Stoned. This is not dispellable.
• Stoned: Stunned. Occurs after 5 stacks of Gronn Lord's Grasp.
• Shatter: After being Stoned, Gruul will shatter everyone, the damage dealt increasing if players are closer to each other. This damage is physical, and goes through immunity shields such as Divine Shield and Ice Block. Ranges from 1100 if just within 15 yards to over 8.5k if very close. (Pets do not cause damage or get damage with this ability, they get stunned anyway)

Tactics

Players will have ~10 minutes to defeat Gruul (He has roughly 3.4 mil. HP), otherwise the buff stacks will annihilate the tank. At 16+ grows, Hurtful Strike can theoretically one shot your OT, making it vital to keep them topped off after every strike. The fight is basically a DPS race, with an emphasis on raid survival.

A high-stamina/high-DPS raid is favored for this encounter. Melee DPS is at a disadvantage, as Cave-ins often spawn on top of Gruul, and they may have to run out repeatedly in preparation for his Ground Stomp.

The focus is primarily on keeping several "tanks" alive, in the case of healers, or simply staying alive yourself, in the case of DPS. Cave-Ins, while becoming increasingly deadly, only tick after 3 seconds, allowing the quick-footed to exit without damage. Shatter positioning is very important, as too many deaths quickly lead to lethally low DPS.

This is one of the few fights where Main Tank death is not an automatic wipe. Tanking duties simply shift down the ladder of offtanks, with the previous Hurtful Strike soaker becoming the MT.

The main priority for the healers should be to keep track of the silence and have 4/5 healers hit HoTs on the tank to stay alive through the silence. This takes some timing and practice.

Preparation

Gruul can't do any magical attacks, so it's advised to use amplify magic.

If a Paladin in your raid has Improved Concentration Aura, it may help to place that person in a group comprised of healers; the Silence duration mechanic can save your raid on Reverberation at a high Growth stack, by reducing the amount of time they are silenced.

Avoiding Shatter

Rogues can use Cloak of Shadows to remove the "Gronn Lords Grasp" movement debuff. Likewise, Paladins can also use Divine Shield to remove the movement debuff, and mages ability Ice Block remove the debuff as well, but note this does NOT prevent any damage being done because of Gronn Lords Grasp. Druids can shapeshift, but the debuff will reappear 1-2 seconds after.

The Ground Stomp knockback does not properly function if the player is on the rocks around the outer ledges of the room. Players there will be pushed only a short distance, if at all.

Shatter will affect targets beyond line of sight however, players can wedge themselves into niches along the outside to avoid being launched inward toward Gruul.

Main Tank Death at 1/4 HP

It is common for many guilds attempting to defeat Gruul to lose their MT around 1/4 health on Gruul. This is usually because the designated healers for the group are running low on mana and/or are not properly getting HoT rotations in before the silence. This fight is important for Priests to have high Mp5 to last a full 8 minutes. Priests should not be asking for Innervate any sooner than 5-6 minutes into the fight.

If your tank dies a lot during the AoE silence...

If your group consists of 3 tanks (which it should because of High King), you designate a main tank (tanking Gruul of course), a Hurtful Strike tank, and a third tank that is also building up aggro (just in case one of the other tanks die. This third tank should Intervene the main tank to take a hit once during the AoE silence so the healers don't have to worry about the main tank dying due to lack of heals. All healers must have HoTs ticking at all times during silence. Priests should have high Mp5 stacked and not require Innervates until the very end, if at all.

Notes

• Be sure when you begin the encounter everybody follows the MT from the initial hallway. The doors close when Gruul is engaged and anybody who does not enter the room will be locked out of the encounter.
• Any Dreamless Sleep type potion will freeze a Stomp victim in mid air, preventing him from flying towards the rest of the raid. This should be used in the event of someone getting caught out of position, or a "all flung into the center" scenario. One thing to remember with this however, is that the range of Shatter includes vertical range, so a person using the sleep potion has to time it at the highest point possible to avoid people below them.
• Gruul bugs and the gate stays closed after a wipe where someone has hearthed while the encounter was occurring.
• Pets are not affected by hurtful strike or shatter, but do receive stoned and remain stunned for the same duration as everyone else.
• Druids can barkskin every shatter and is a good tactic to minimize dmg taken.
• It is important to note that even if you are within melee range, and able to use your special abilities, you may lie outside hurtful strike range. This is good for melee, and could be deathly bad for tanks.
• KTM may report threat inaccurately in this fight, as Shatter damage dealt will increase reported threat on this system. This can cause a problem for melee characters. Set Gruul as the master target to avoid this problem, or switch to Omen.
• Druids make excellent off-tanks. The Hurtful Strike cannot crit, and cannot be a crushing blow, so all the OT needs is armor, health, and threat generation. Druids don't have to rely on getting hit to generate rage like warriors do, and their typical gear will give them very high dodge as well.

[Air]

After watching some Gruul videos, I think our dps was right where it should be.  At 5 growths we were at 70%, which is pretty good.  Could push it and get 5% more or so.  I think a good goal for us is to get Gruul to 40% at 8 growths.

I think our biggest hurdle is dealing with the ground slam and eventual shatter.  I think we really need to have everyone either be using bigwigs or deadly boss mods at our next Gruul attempt.  This will give everyone a good idea of when the next ground slam is about to happen, so people can start moving away from each other.  Also should help healers know when the next silence is gonna kick in so they can start putting hots on the tanks.

Something that this strategy mentioned is to have a 3rd tank building threat.  I think this is a good idea, and I think it should be another warrior.  Friend of mine mentioned that they have a warrior building up threat and using an ability called "Intervene"* on the main tank when his health gets somewhat low, not sure at what percentage health he does this though.  I think around 35-45% might be good.

*Run at high speed towards a party member, intercepting the next melee or ranged attack made against them.

[Zario]

"Druids make excellent off-tanks. The Hurtful Strike cannot crit, and cannot be a crushing blow, so all the OT needs is armor, health, and threat generation. Druids don't have to rely on getting hit to generate rage like warriors do, and their typical gear will give them very high dodge as well."

"Druids can barkskin every shatter and is a good tactic to minimize dmg taken."

Sounds like another druid tank could have helped.  DPS was close to where it needed to be if we can keep enough tanks alive.  A little extra gear and practice and I think we'll be golden.

[Shadowwolf]

We need to do about 10% damage to him between growths before he starts to 1shot the tanks down. That means every 30sec he should be losing 10% of his health, or 300k hp. If we can pull that or as close to that as possible, he will go down easy.

[Grendeel]

I know we have never really had use for the various curses warlocks have because in 10 man raids the benefits, if any, are minimal. However last night in the 25 man raid we had 5 locks and 3 mages.  It seems it is a consenus of opinion, from places i read, with these class numbers, that curse of shadows and curse of elements is wise to use.

Curse of Elements

Curse of Elements : Reduces Fire and Frost resistances by 88. Increases Fire and Frost damage taken by 10%.
note : with malediction (needs 35 talents) u make 1% per talent extra damage (3 talents max)

Situational usage : The first thing you cast on the main target, mostly for all Elemental damage. So all frost and fire mages, elemental shamans and fire based (destro) warlocks have big benefit from it.

party : trash fights don't take that long, skip it CoA is more powerfull
10 people raid : depending on attending classes, always cast this
25 people raid : depending on attending classes, always cast this

guideline : cast the curse if more then 1 raidmember benefits from it and always consult the other warlocks to determine what curses need to be cast by who. Two classes benefiting from it outdamage your CoA

Curse of Shadows

Curse of Shadows : Curses the target for 5 min, reducing Shadow and Arcane resistances by 88 and increasing Shadow and Arcane damage taken by 10%. Only one Curse per Warlock can be active on any one target.
note : with malediction (needs 35 talents) u make 1% per talent extra damage (3 talents max)
Reason for this to be lower priority than CoE is because most warlocks will be casting support curses before dealing the first damage when other classes (mostly mages) will be casting their first damage spells that will hit sooner then our first damage.


Situational usage : The first thing you cast on the main target, mostly for all Shadow damage. So all shadowpriests, arcane mages and shadow based (affiction, demonlogist combinations and destruction builds up to ruin) warlocks have big benefit from it.

party : trash fights don't take that long, skip it CoA is more powerfull
10 people raid : depending on attending classes, always cast this
25 people raid : depending on attending classes, always cast this

guideline : cast the curse if more then 1 raidmember benefits from it and always consult the other warlocks to determine what curses need to be cast by who. Two classes benefiting from it outdamage your CoA

Curse of Weakness

This particular curse is useless if u have a warrior using demoralizing shout (5/5 in talents).  It will simply replace the curse because they do not stack.  Absent a demo shout debuff, this is absolutely useless.

Curse of Recklessness

Curse of Recklessness : Curses the target with recklessness, increasing attack power by 135 but reducing armor by 800 for 2 min. Cursed enemies will not flee and will ignore fear effects. Only one Curse per Warlock can be active on any one target.
note : can be applied on all mobs and bosses

Situational usage : The first thing you cast on main targets if they are to be killed fast by melee and there are enough warlocks too cast the spell in priority.

party : not usefull since there are not enough ppl to benefit
10 people raid : not usefull since there are not enough ppl to benefit
25 people raid : only usefull if you have a lot of melee damage

guideline : only usefull if you have a lot of melee damage

All info came from "the warlock den" website at

http://www.wowmb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=13425

A bit more info on the curse of recklessness

      Curse of Recklessness, used in the right situations, will add more raid dps than CoS and CoE combined. By reducing the mob's armor (while increasing it's attack power and damage by a neglible amount), the main tank does more damage, and with Defiance can keep hate on himself longer. This results in a 3% increase in raid dps across the board, and an additional 11% increase in physical damage from all rogues, warriors, and hunters in the raid. These numbers are not entirely accurate and may vary for different mobs and bosses, but for our purposes they are fine. Source: http://www.saichotictech.net/Others/Warlock/Recklessness.html

      The general rule of when you should use CoR is any mob/boss that doesn't have a hard hitting instant attack (such as Broodlord's Mortal Strike or Razuvious' Unbalancing Strike) or Enrage/Frenzy. This is because attack power is multiplied in some special way for boss mobs that we don't know. Mobs you should NOT use it on include Broodlord Lashlayer, any of the drakes, the last 20% of Chrommagus, Sartura, Instructor Razuvious, etc. You should, on the other hand, use CoR on any dps fights such as Vaelastrasz.

This was pre bc and was taken from

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11381260&sid=1

Given the numbers i think recklessness would improve our damage significantly.  3 percent across the board and 11 percent to all hunters, rogues, warriors or whatever melee dps we have is significant.   There is some controversy over what bosses to use this on.   Most said to use it on the lower levels of gruul, but when his growth gets higher than 8ish, this should be discontinued.

Im just thinking out loud here.  These are supposedly powerful curses which should improve our raid dps.  I think we are at the point were they can have a significant effect for us.

[Air]

I think it's good idea.  Our raids usually have 3-5 hunters, and 3-4 warlocks.  So I think using Curse of Shadows, and Curse of Recklessness would be good idea.  Is it possible to do both, if we have two warlocks doing it?

Posting some extra info from http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17008-warlock_pve_raiding_compendium/ and http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16629-raid_boss_armor_values/p2/ .

Curse of Shadows - Scales nicely with increasing number of Shadow Priests, Arcane Mages, and Warlocks. Usually the default curse to put on an enemy. To a lesser extent, it'll boost hunter's Arcane Shot. If you use the level 60 version it will not get knocked off by hitting the debuff cap.

Curse of Elements - Boosts fire/frost mages, Warlock fire spells. An obvious choice if you have several of these present. As with CoS, if you use the level 60 version it will not get knocked off by hitting the debuff cap.

Curse of Recklessness - Stacks with every other armor reducing debuff, and will typically increase melee and hunter damage by around 6% if FF and 5xSunder Armor are present, according to [RAID] Boss armor values. You typically want as many armor reducing debuffs on a boss as possible, since each one adds more (Increasing Returns, as opposed to Diminishing). It will make the enemy hit slightly harder, though. To be avoided when the boss has an ability that is based on his melee attack power, such as Mortal Strike or Cleave. Useful on enemies that don't hit hard enough for a tank to keep aggro, it will help with their threat generation on those by a small amount.

We could try setting up a list of temporary buffs / debuffs that are needed to put on a boss / person.

[Arcdelad]

My observations:

Zario: You are right about barkskin during the shatter, but honestly for a well geared druid tank it isnt worth it, becuase it means you need to shift into elf form thus LOSING all of your rage. That would be fine if it meant mitigating a huge hit, but I was only getting hit at the maximum 1,000 damage on the shatters, which is nothing. For a moonkin or tree druid id say this would be a great idea, ESPECIALLY for a moonkin since they wouldnt even have to shift forms to use it.

Shadow: Shadow is 100% correct...we need to treat this like the curator, and set a target damage goal per growth. If we do 10% per growth like shadow said thats 10 growths, meaning he is hitting hard, but hes not hitting past our OT's ability to absorb that occasional blow.

Gren: Gren makes a truly great point, and this should be said about really any boss we face in a raid scenario going forward. Those curses mean the warlock isnt doing as much damage, BUT they also mean the rest of the raid is benefitting HUGELY, so we need our locks to be team players and get those non-damage curses on bosses. Just look at curse of recklessness. Generally guys like lynette, myself, and other physical melee dpsers are near the top of the damage charts, so imagine adding another 11% to that. Yeah...it means no COD, but it means an overall better DPS flow.

Air: great plan...we need to pay much more attention to our debuffs. I know when I am tanking or even OTing I am using demo roar and faerie fire at all times to help the raid. A bunch of classes have similar items...

This boss is a druid tanks ideal boss to tank with him being 100% physical damage. With the 30k armor, 50% dodge, and 21k health with the warrior shout up, i was able to last a long, long time tanking gruul. I started having problems around growth 12...he was then hitting me for 9k per hit. If we had two druids like panzer and myself MT and OT this fight could be a lot easier. It seemed like Khader was having issues around growth 5-6, and every single OT we through at him was getting one shotted.

One huge note for melee classes - watch out for that falling ceiling. It shows up as a debuff (shows a rock), but you can also see it on the ground. I think a lot of people were so caught up in looking at the huge gronn that they werent watching the falling ceiling, which was doing some pretty high damage per tic.

EDIT: I just realized how I hearthed yesterday. There was a lot of chatter, and I think I right clicked on my hearthstone instead of my underspore frond in my inventory (right next to each other)...i then didnt even pay attention as the hearthstone was casting LOL...sorry guys...stupid druids....

[LastDyingBreath]

panzer

make it on a weekend and I'll be there 

[Shadowwolf]

It will be, week after next its replacing a Sat Kara.

[Shadowwolf]

I came across this for helping a little more with Shatter

[attachimg=1]

[JohnnieRat]

Do Free Action Potions remove the movement speed debuff? If so, it'd be easier to spread out and avoid shatter... probably.

[Shadowwolf]

No, but as Gren said last night for anyone who missed it, a well timed [wowitem]Major Dreamless Sleep Potion[/wowitem] can freeze you mid air when he knocks back and youll be away from other people when shatter does hit.

[capnpop]

CoA = base 1044 dmg + your +dmg * 1.20 (120% +dmg coeff).  I'm sitting at, say, 1200 +dmg...

1044 + 1200(1.20) = 1044 + 1440 = 2484 over 24 secs.  2484 * 5 (to make it a nice, round, 2 mins) = 12420 dmg. 

To make up for the loss of this curse slot the rest of the shadow/arcane casters need to collectively do 124200 dmg over those 2 mins.  Any less than that and you are better off using CoA.

My doom on Gruul was hitting for an average of 7500+ so over 2 mins i did over 15000 dmg with my curse being up twice (somehow more than CoA??? i don't get it...)

So, you need several shadow/arcane or fire/ice casters to make up for the loss of the curse slot (or 1 caster do to 60k dpm or 1k dps...)

[Buzan]

Stock up on Major Dreamless Potions folks .

[genny]

If positioning is a problem at all for y'all - here's a positioning mod that has helped out tons of guilds, after you start getting him consistently down you won't really need it anymore but it's great for starting out.

http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/7914/

(/gruul to open esc to close)