Gruul Tanking

[Vinnicius]

I guess the fight starts to go downhill when I die. A few dps/healers may die to shatters here and there, but nothing too bad for most of the attempts. I generally wasn't getting crushed except maybe if HS happened to be down during a reverb or something to that effect. The healers confirmed that I really wasn't taking spike damage.

You shouldn't have healers or DPS dieing on the shatter, that wasn't your fault.

At the end of that fight (which it sounds like you were getting to) the DPS is normally going pretty insane trying to beat the growths, and the healers are normally on their toes keeping the tank up. To have unneccassry spaces here and there was the problem, not you.

[Strom]

We are working on Gruul. We are getting him to about 20% before it seems like I am taking 2 hits without heals suddenly and then its lights out. I think the healers may be just having bad luck with shatters and cave-ins and are not getting the heals on me in time??? I pop my pocketwatch if I see an issue like that, but if Gruul is hitting me for 8K that late (grouth 12) then I cannot react fast enough to counter the loss of healing. Any ideas? I have 17.1K life when tanking him usually.

[Arianne]

I tanked Gruul last night pretty easily. Make sure you have a second warrior doing intervene on you when the silence happens and that the healers have HoTs on you. I sometimes use the shatter to cast avenger's shield rather than moving. I chain drink ironshield potions starting at grow 8 or so. If you don't get him down by grow 12 or so then you're having too many people die from shatter or your dps is severely undergeared.

[Katrienne]

I had a very disheartening experience last night. I was given one chance to try tanking Gruul (our alliance does not believe in pally tanks). I died and was immediately replaced by two druids. The druids also died, but we continued attempts with them for the evening. Gruul did not go down. I've MT'd about 1/2 of Kara successfully. I know I still need better gear, but am having the worst luck on drops in Kara and heroics.

Kat

[Cames]

Stupid question.

I know that Cave In is physical damage and can be mitigated by armor. Can it trigger Holy Shield (or Shield Block) charges?

Thanks for any helpful replies.

P.S. Please ignore my current armory, I flopped to Holy Saturday as we were short healers for a run. I will flop back when it makes sense. My guild gears me as BOTH a tank and a healer so that I can fill what we are short of. Makes it expensive to be me with respecs, enchants, and gems - but keeps me on my toes.

[Fridmarr]

I had a very disheartening experience last night. I was given one chance to try tanking Gruul (our alliance does not believe in pally tanks). I died and was immediately replaced by two druids. The druids also died, but we continued attempts with them for the evening. Gruul did not go down. I've MT'd about 1/2 of Kara successfully. I know I still need better gear, but am having the worst luck on drops in Kara and heroics.

Kat

If the druids/warriors die, it's the healers fault. If a pally dies, it's because pallys can't tank. Unfortunately, that's the mindset of many people.

[Katrienne]

I had a very disheartening experience last night. I was given one chance to try tanking Gruul (our alliance does not believe in pally tanks). I died and was immediately replaced by two druids. The druids also died, but we continued attempts with them for the evening. Gruul did not go down. I've MT'd about 1/2 of Kara successfully. I know I still need better gear, but am having the worst luck on drops in Kara and heroics.

Kat

If the druids/warriors die, it's the healers fault. If a pally dies, it's because pallys can't tank. Unfortunately, that's the mindset of many people.

This is sooooo true. Thanks though, it made me feel better.

[Puss]

Katrienne,

If you're not Full epic 70 gear , karazhan maxed out and 3 sets of T4 gear with best enchants possible, then don't try tanking Gruul. And don't have the druids tank him , they will get crushed. It's best to wait until you have better gear from karazhan before you try and tank anything his size.

I have pretty good gear, but not full epic yet, and I refuse to tank him, because I know I will die ( our healers don't have epic gear either, it's just asking for trouble ). 2 druids tried, they died trying.

When you or your guild isn't ready for Gruul, then don't push your luck, just wait a few weeks, grind heroic epic 70 gear, karazhan epic 70 gear and some T4 instead. Your time will be better spent, and when everyone is ready, you can take him on. Remember to use Flasks from Ogri'la

-Puss

[jere]

Katrienne,

If you're not Full epic 70 gear , karazhan maxed out and 3 sets of T4 gear with best enchants possible, then don't try tanking Gruul. And don't have the druids tank him , they will get crushed. It's best to wait until you have better gear from karazhan before you try and tank anything his size.

I have pretty good gear, but not full epic yet, and I refuse to tank him, because I know I will die ( our healers don't have epic gear either, it's just asking for trouble ). 2 druids tried, they died trying.

When you or your guild isn't ready for Gruul, then don't push your luck, just wait a few weeks, grind heroic epic 70 gear, karazhan epic 70 gear and some T4 instead. Your time will be better spent, and when everyone is ready, you can take him on. Remember to use Flasks from Ogri'la

-Puss

Nah, you don't have to be that geared up. For my first takedown of Gruul, I wore the following gear:

Faceguard of Determination -- heroic helm
Barbed Choker of Discipline -- necklace from Maiden
T4 Shoulders -- high king
Cloak of Eternity -- Blue cloak that was crafted
Righteous Breastplate -- I think off the SV last boss..it's been a while
Bracers of the Green Fortress -- Crafted Epic
Continuum Blade -- blue Rep reward
Crest of the Shatar -- Epic rep reward
Gauntlets of the Iron Maiden -- gloves from Maiden
Girldle of the Immovable -- belt from Moroes
Boots of Elusion -- epic random BoP boots from kara trash
Timewarden's Leggings -- Blue rep reward
Sherman Great Ring -- ring from Aran
Kara exalted tanking ring
Vengeance Card -- darkmoon faire
Adamantine Figurine -- I think it dropped in shadow labs.

You do need some good kara drops, but you don't have to be decked out in kara epics or T4 (I had one T4 piece and a dungeon 3.5 piece). The main minimums you want are:

12.5+ unbuffed health (13k+ would be nice) -- raid buffed, I had a bit above 17k
14500+ armor unbuffed (without devo aura)
18-19 dodge (or parry)
16-17 parry (or dodge if parry is the higher one)
250 spell dmg

I am not saying these are the bare minimums mind you, but that is what I used for our first take down. Mind you I didn't have to use iron shield potions or any special flasks from the AH. The only extra buffs I used were the BEM flask of the sorceror and a 20 stamina food buff. The rest were raid buffs and we took him down fine.

However, don't let my lack of preparation set a standard. I was tanking him as a last minute thing, so I didn't have time to buy extra pots, etc. It is always a good idea to have wizard oils, iron shield pots, etc. so you do the best job possible.

[Izreii]

So my guild is currently working throught the gruul fight...

Now i have no issues taking his hits... but my healers are saying i'm not keeping up threat wise (an odd statment for me)

What spell rotation do other horde pallies use when engaging this fight?

[Cragus]

So my guild is currently working throught the gruul fight...

Now i have no issues taking his hits... but my healers are saying i'm not keeping up threat wise (an odd statment for me)

What spell rotation do other horde pallies use when engaging this fight?

Are u MT or OT? And also healers are saying u are not keeping up threat wise..um what about dps hehe, surely they are the more important ones to keep up with.

I dont know how SoB works [enter Horde player please ]

[adese]

So my guild is currently working throught the gruul fight...

Now i have no issues taking his hits... but my healers are saying i'm not keeping up threat wise (an odd statment for me)

What spell rotation do other horde pallies use when engaging this fight?

While I am an Alliance Pally (i.e. I can't comment on the use of SoB for this fight), I can tell you what I do when I am tanking Gruul.

Over this past weekend, I was the OT on our Gruul attempts (yes, I know, a Pally is a horrible OT - but I was our best option, for better or for worse). I think we mostly have the fight down (got him down to 1% when we wiped ), we haven't killed him yet. That said, all I did for the entire fight was spam SoR/Jor, did my best to keep a Rank 1 HS up (to conserve mana and hopefully mitigate some of the hateful strikes) and also spammed a low rank Consecrate (Rank 4 I think...can't recall why I chose Rank 4, but a few months ago I made a macro that had max rank and a down rank of Consecrate on it, and I picked 4 at the time). I might try Rank 1 next time, since I ended up being low/OOM for most of the fights (definitely going to bring more mana pots, too).

I also used AS after a shatter, in case the melee DPS ended up closer to Gruul and started hitting him before I got back.

The only threat issues I had were at the beginning of the fight. If I went too fast, I'd pull aggro from the MT. If I went too slow, the melee DPS would over take me. By the end of the night, in general I went at a decent speed so that I would be between the MT and the melee dps.

Speaking of which, at least when most/all of the raid is up, you really only have to worry about being ahead of the melee DPS on aggro. His hateful strike will hit the person with second highest aggro in melee range. As long as you are above all of the melee dps (and below the MT), they should be coming right for you.

While this doesn't help you, I considered using SoV to see if that would increase my threat. I ended up not using it, because I didn't want to risk that causing a wipe due to the stack falling off, and I didn't have any threat problems using SoR/JoR so why risk it.

[Thels]

SoV can be awesome, but Gruul has a lot of stuff like Shatter going on, making you reply it from the start, so it's a bad option for Gruul.

It's awesome for fights like Void Reaver.

[Izreii]

mayhap it was my build at the time... i dunno... since then i have gotten the spell dmg flask... spell dmg food and wizard oils... i'm going to try again this week and see what my DPS says

(basically i don't want them to have to slow down because of me - this is a DPS race after all)

[Vesper]

Katrienne,

If you're not Full epic 70 gear , karazhan maxed out and 3 sets of T4 gear with best enchants possible, then don't try tanking Gruul. And don't have the druids tank him , they will get crushed. It's best to wait until you have better gear from karazhan before you try and tank anything his size.

As a druid tank, I have to protest. Do I think we're the best MT for this fight? No. Can we tank him? Sure.

As Satrina argues in his tanking theorycraft (in favor of mitigation vs. avoidance), a lot of bleeding-edge (per gear level) boss fights aren't necessarily about taking less damage, but about being able to take more damage. A lot about Gruul that I've noticed as a tank is being able to survive through any unfortunate damage spikes on later growths. Does being able to block all crushings help? Certainly. Does it preclude a class without shield block? Not necessarily.

(By the way, this doesn't mean I'm cheap on avoidance.)

Healers have been able to keep me up even when I'm the only person in Gruul's melee range (scenario: MT dies, I take over, new OT gets one-shotted, melee backs out/dies), and therefore am eating every crushing, a fair amount of hits, and any hurtfuls I don't dodge. My gear isn't anything spectacular, and I attribute that feat far more to the healers than to my tanking.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for paladin tanks (harking back to EQ), and I do love lurking in these forums, but I'm always a bit taken back by the pockets of hostility that I encounter vs. ferals. (Not saying that your comment was an instance of that; this was just a general observation, sorry.) Prior to 1.8, the accepted raid spec for druids was overwhelmingly resto. Like you, we've only come into our own as commonly accepted instance tanks as of the expansion, and like you, the endgame mechanics and itemization still don't always favor our tanking or dps.

Hang in there, guys! But remember that your fellow hybrid tanks aren't necessarily the enemy.