How to Solo Garr: A Guide for Warrior and Paladin Tanks

[moduspwnens]

How to Solo Garr:
A Guide for Warrior and Paladin Tanks

The video is now available here: http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=80881

Intro
So you've heard from a friend, a guildie, or the internet that it was possible to solo Garr, but didn't think you could do it? You've seen that crappy YouTube video of a warrior doing it (EDIT: He's actually done a new video which is now much clearer), but you don't think it's clear enough to make you feel comfortable? Well, worry no more! This guide will give you all the necessary information to handle it so you can be soloing that old world raid boss in no time!

Why Solo Garr?
There are several reasons to solo Garr, but I think we both know what you're going there for. Anyway, they include:

[item=18564]Bindings of the Windseeker[/item] (Right) - 3%
Tier 1 Helm ([item=16866]Helm of Might[/item], [item=16854]Lawbringer Helm[/item]) - 12%
[item=18290]Schematic: Biznicks 247x128 Accurascope[/item] - 0.6%
[item=21371]Pattern: Core Felcloth Bag[/item] (Sellable) for [item=21342]Core Felcloth Bag[/item] (Much more stylish than [item=21872]Ebon Shadowbag[/item]) - 1.7%
Defeating Garr stops all Lava Surgers from spawning, making a future group clear easier. With a soft reset, all existing Lava Surgers will despawn.
Bragging rights!
The tanking mechanics look to be set to change once WotLK, and it is not clear whether or not old-world bosses and this gearing strategy will still apply. Better to do it now than risk not being able to do it in a few months.

How Garr Soloing Works

I've been in your shoes before, and I know what you're thinking. How are you supposed to tank Garr, a ?? (your level + 3) raid boss ALONG WITH eight Firesworn, who inflict an Immolate on each hit all by yourself? Well, as Blizzard originally explained the tameable "Ghost Wolf" pet, it's through a fun use of in-game mechanics.



Passive Uncrushability Through Gear
Uncrushability means, basically, that any normal melee attack made to the tank will always be either a miss, dodge, parry, or block. Since a crushing blow can't be any of those things, a crushing blow effectively can't land, and therefore, the tank is said to be uncrushable. Even though Garr is an old-world raid boss, because he is level ??, his attack table is treated as if he were three levels above you. Uncrushability is achieved by assuring total avoidance and block chance of the tank is greater than or equal to 102.4% (100% + 0.2% penalty to each stat / level the mob is above you, or 2.4%).

Garr's crushing blows are easy to heal through (800-1000 damage), but since you won't be having a healer, it's very important that you are passively uncrushable, or within 1-2% of it. Any more than that, and you're just asking for a difficult try. Garr dispells buffs every 20 seconds or so, but he is unable to dispell elixirs and food, so feel free to include those in your calculations, but don't count Kings or other buffs because you won't be able to keep them on yourself.

High Block Value
After accumulating gear to become passively uncrushable, the next step is to maximize block value. After all, a miss, dodge, or parry does no damage to the tank, but a block only reduces damage by your block value. To ensure that you don't need (or need only little) healing, you want to be sure you're blocking 100% of the Firesworn's attacks specifically, but also as much of Garr's melee damage as possible.

You'll need about 780-800 block value to remove all damage from the table, but considering you do have a few healing options available, it is normal to have around 650 for your first time. Any less than that, and you may have trouble.

Limited Self-Healing Options
Without a 100% optimum gear set, you'll still take very minor damage from Garr's normal hits. Although Paladins have more tools for healing while tanking:

Judgement of Light (Very effective)
Bubble + [item=21991]Bandage[/item]
Lay on Hands
Both Warriors and Paladins have these options available:

[item=27529]Figurine of the Colossus[/item]
[item=22829]Super Healing Potion[/item]
[item=22797]Nightmare Seed[/item] / [item=22103]Master Healthstone[/item] (If you can bum one off of a Warlock)

Choosing Your Gear

Gear choice is the most important part of Garr soloing. Block rating, block value, and defense rating are all very important. For this type of situation, Warriors and Paladins wear the same gear. The only differences that relate to soloing Garr is that warriors have an additional 5% chance to block through talents and stats from their ranged weapon, making it much easier to reach passive uncrushability.



As for gear selection choices, I will refer to Maintankadin's Tanking Gear Uncrushability Values thread. You're looking for the highest % item for each slot, but don't forget to stack some block value, as well. Your gem choices should (optimally) be [item=32208]Thick Lionseye[/item]s or [item=24052]Thick Dawnstone[/item]s, unless you are meeting a valuable socket bonus (like with [item=28518]Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden[/item]). The best meta gem for an optimal set would be (naturally) the [item=35501]Eternal Earthstorm Diamond[/item], if you can find places to use the required gems.

To give you a good start, here's a link to a good Garr-soloing set with no 25 man loot:
http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/76454

Here's the gear used in my video:
http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/71688

How to Get There

Garr is located in Molten Core, which is in Blackrock Mountain, a sub-zone between Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes. There's a one-step attunement quest called Attunement to the Core, which is soloable by level 70 characters. A video is available here (PoV of a rogue. Just kill any mobs you accidentally pull). You must be in a raid to enter, so invite a friend, make it a raid, and zone in by talking to Lothos Riftwaker, the blood elf in the small room at the bottom of Blackrock Mountain.

Once Inside, Get to the Safe Spot
Once inside, you are going to work your way to the Safe Spot. It is a small island in the river of lava that is a good area to eat and drink before taking the next step.

Walk up to the first two giants. Immediately to the right of them, along the wall, is a ledge that no mobs can reach you from. Run up to the giants (they will aggro), and then hug that right-side wall as you jump down below. If you aimed well, you should be on a ledge against the wall, and not in the lava river. Before you continue, look behind yourself at the giants until you leave combat and they reset. Now, eat and drink to full. Run straight ahead and check for Core Hounds at the bottom of the ledge in front of you (there's a tunnel running right through there). If there aren't any, jump down and go a little bit down the tunnel on your right. Turn left quickly, and then run across toward the lava river. Go left (should be a little uphill) to dodge a little of the trash, and then you should see the small island in the lava river. Jump into the lava, and out onto the island. The easiest place is on the left side of the island. Any mobs you have accidentally aggro'd will reset.

This is a little more difficult to explain, but you can see me do it in my video. A map is pictured below:




Soloing that Surger
After you're back at full health, begin jumping down the lava river. Follow it left into Ragnaros' Lair, and keep jumping until you reach an edge you can jump onto on the right side of the river. If you stay at the edge, the patrolling Surger here won't aggro. Eat back to full health, then wait for the Surger to patrol away. Then, jump up and run quickly alongside the small ledge (that drops into the river). Run as far as you can, and stay as close to the ledge as possible. If you get far enough, you should see that same Surger patrolling back past you. You should be far enough that he doesn't aggro, and if he does, simply jump into the lava until he resets and then try again.




Once that annoying Surger patrols away again, run quickly down the tunnel to see another patrolling Surger. Unfortunately, we have to kill this one, as he is unavoidable. Aggro him, then back against the wall next to the corner of the lava river. In this position, that Surger we just dodged won't aggro, the patrolling Core Hounds won't aggro, and the knockbacks from the Surger you're tanking won't throw you anywhere. Melee away! Generally, this takes about twenty minutes.

NOTE: You should swap in a different shield for this Surger. After 2.5 hours or more on Garr, you'll be testing the durability of your main shield enough.

NOTE: The respawn timer on Surgers is reported to be 28 minutes.



Using Invisibility to Reach the Waiting Spot

NOTE: Core Hounds see though Invisibility. Stay away from them.

Ensure no Core Hounds are patrolling nearby, then approach the Giants against the wall on the left. When you're about 10 yards away, chug a [item=3823]Lesser Invisibility Potion[/item] or [item=9172]Invisibility Potion[/item] and keep running. Hug the left wall, and run to the opening of the tunnel on the left. You are now in what I have deemed as "The Waiting Spot." The idea is to be directly between the opening of the tunnel and whatever trash mob is on the side that you came from. You should be able to see Garr clearly from here. There are two non-linked Core Hounds that patrol in a semicircle around Garr, but those are of no issue to you while you are waiting (for what? See the next section).

Fixed for Safe Waiting Spot below:
The positioning here can be a little tricky, but to completely avoid all Core Hounds, you need to be up on the wall, much like was shown in my video, except as far as possible away from the tunnel as possible without falling off. In this place, you are safe from even the most dangerous patrolling Core Hound. This allows for an easy AFK while you wait for your options to become available. If you are positioned correctly, you can completely ignore the red dot on the map below and place mentioned in the video to go to if the previously problematic Core Hound gets close.

Until I upload my video, here's a video showing the approximate place (white dot on map below):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkCc2FcRcRQ .




Getting to the Corner
Right now, you have three options:

A) You're an engineer, and brought your [item=4397]Gnomish Cloaking Device[/item]. Good idea! Equip it, wait for the two patrolling Core Hounds to both be on the far side of Garr, then use the trinket to run through the giants on the other side of the tunnel. Its cooldown is independent of the potion you just chugged, so you can get into the corner quite quickly.

B) You brought another [item=3823]Lesser Invisibility Potion[/item] or [item=9172]Invisibility Potion[/item]. Each has a ten minute cooldown, so you're basically waiting it out to be sure you get to the corner easily. This is probably a good choice if it's your first time.

C) You don't have either of those things. It takes some skill, but you are basically waiting until the Core Hounds' (the ones around Garr) patrols synchronize to the point where you can run into the middle of the room, and then over to the corner without aggroing any trash or Core Hounds. You may aggro Garr in the process, so be sure you can find the corner quickly. This takes some skill.



It is important that you're in the corner for two reasons. First, it is nested in an exact position between the surrounding Core Hounds, i.e., if you're in it, you're safe from pulling them. Also, though, when tanking multiple mobs, game mechanics make the mobs tend to spread around so as not to be on top of each other. This makes for a better game display, but in terms of tanking things, you definitely want things in front of you, since you can't dodge, block, or parry attackers who are behind you. While in the corner, you can be guaranteed that all mobs will be in front of you.

It's difficult to convey exactly where the corner is, and the dark walls of the dungeon certainly don't help. The best way I have heard it described is as "almost directly south of the rune". The rune is the fiery emblem on the floor by Garr. If you're having trouble, Consecration might light up the walls enough to help you see. This picture below should help:




And that's it! Simply getting to that corner is the toughest part of Garr soloing, so if you can master that, you're 80% finished... well, at least in terms of effort.

The Fight Itself

So pull him! A ranged or body pull will work. Just be sure you get back into the corner. If you've done everything right, you should be seeing a whole bunch of Miss/Dodge/Parry/Block, and your health falling very very slowly, if at all. If you're a warrior, feel free to use offensive abilities. As a Paladin, though, it will be very annoying trying to keep seals up to do any damage. It's probably better just to stick with normal melee.

The fight is fairly simple, and nothing really changes. He'll be casting Magma Shackles on you, which will do nothing, and any buffs you had on will be dispelled soon. Just keep up normal melee, and it will be fairly boring until he hits around 95%. At 95%, Garr starts ordering his Firesworn to explode, one at a time. You'll resist most of them, but it's worth mentioning because if you're unlucky, these can kill you. The explosions also cause a knockback, which normally don't move you, since you're in a corner. If they do, however, get back in the corner quickly. If more than one explosion hits you, it's now time to pop your healing trinkets, healthstones, or healing potions. This will be the only time you truly take a good bit of damage, so don't spare any effort to get through it.

Fire resistance aura may help, but other than that, try and survive. There are eight Firesworn, and generally, I resist all but two or three of their explosions. After each Firesworn explodes, Garr will Enrage, increases his attack speed by 9% (stacking additively). He doesn't hit any harder, just faster, so our gear set still remains well-suited. After all adds are down, his attack speed is increased by a total of 72%.

...and that's the fight! From then on, it's you vs. Garr. Generally for me, the fight takes between 2 1/2 to 3 hours from the pull, so I hope you've got a while!

Comments

With a 3% drop rate, and assuming it takes 4 hours total (including travel time to MC and Surger soloing) to kill Garr, it will likely take "only" 133.2 hours (33.3 weeks of farming) to get [item=18564]Bindings of the Windseeker[/item].

I recommend the TimetoDie mod to estimate how long it will take to solo Garr. It updates with each % of his health as to how much longer it will take him (and other mobs, for that matter) to die. It's a WoWAce addon, and is available for download here: http://files.wowace.com/TimeToDie/TimeToDie.zip.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I keep getting hit by Immolates. What am I doing wrong?
A: Assuming you have geared for passive uncrushability (or close to it), this means a Firesworn is getting behind you. Be sure you're deep in the corner, and you're facing straight out from the wall. The immolates only get on you when an unmitigated hit from a Firesworn lands on you.

Q: Core Hounds keep killing me! WTF?!
A: That's common for your first time in. They can be a big pain. One thing that helps is to mark them with different raid icons as you see them. That will help you keep track of them as you go along.

Q: Why can't I just solo the trash, too?
A: You can solo Surgers and Annihilators. Fire Lords hit for fire damage and spawn adds that must be killed quickly, Core Hounds have special abilities (some are dazes, some are less harmful) and their attacks cannot be blocked, and the level 63 Giants have a knockdown effect. Without a different strategy, you won't be able to solo these.

Q: That warrior only took ~30 minutes to kill him. Why do you take much longer?
A: Warriors generate some rage from dealing damage, and additional rage from blocking. Since Paladins don't generate mana this way, and he dispells our seals every 20 seconds, it's very difficult to keep up any meaningful DPS cycle. Judgement of Light does make AFKing it much easier, though.

[moduspwnens]

Reserved.

Please offer feedback.

[moduspwnens]

Reserved.

[Janduin]

An alternate (and very easy) method of getting to the surger to kill is jump in lava immediately wearing healing gear and just swim all the way there, stopping occasionally to spam FoL on yourself. Make sure to use Blessing of Light too.

Many people, myself included, use the NW corner of Garr's room as a safe spot instead, next to (usually) a Dark Iron vein. It seem less touchy than the east spot. You will likely need a Swiftness potion and a Invisibilility potion to run there though.

Edit: Obviously the FoL method isn't viable for warriors...but hey, this is a paladin site

[Worldie]

*reported for sticky*

[Worldie]

So how exactly you survive when core hound X and tunnel core hound decide to syncronize their path and come at same time ?

[moduspwnens]

So how exactly you survive when core hound X and tunnel core hound decide to syncronize their path and come at same time ?

You don't. That's 100% possible and I've seen it. In this case, your best shot is to grab ONLY ONE of them, and pull it as far away as you can. If you make it to the lava and survive, awesome. You probably won't though, so be sure you spend as much time as possible pulling that one out of his way while the other keeps going so they don't chase you into each other next time.

Whether their patrols are even the same length or not (would they be out of sync next time around anyway), I don't know. I'll have to do further testing.

Most times, though, they aren't in sync. They're both on relatively long patrol routes, so you can normally call the plan I outlined the rule (unless there's a better one?), and treat this de-synchronization procedure as the exception.

[Worldie]

Actually the only way i found to survive was running directly into the lava, aggroing everything in the process. Bubbling and jumping to the safe spot near Ragnaros hound looked like working... not always (many times i got killed by flame spawns) but often.

[Janduin]

If you use NW corner of Garr's room as safe spot, you should have zero problems with Core Hound pats.

[moduspwnens]

If you use NW corner of Garr's room as safe spot, you should have zero problems with Core Hound pats.

Post screenshots / video? Does it take more Invisibility potions? Is it more dangerous to get there? What about the Surger normally solo'd?

[Worldie]

btw modus, remove the useless links on images in the OP i'm too lazy to do it

[moduspwnens]

btw modus, remove the useless links on images in the OP i'm too lazy to do it

: P done.

[Janduin]

Next time I do it I'll get screenshots. You still have to solo the surger. You need 2 invis pots, and I usually use 2 swiftness pots too to get to Garr using this route. But the safe spot is not touchy, you don't have to get it exactly right to be safe, and zero Core Hounds. Look for it in the original Garr soloing thread, someone marked it on a map I believe. It certainly was not my original idea

[Seloei]

So how exactly you survive when core hound X and tunnel core hound decide to syncronize their path and come at same time ?

had that just now, so i ended up soloing a Lava Annihlator on the path from (first exit -> invis pot -> safe spot) and standing there instead. On the map it's just inches north of what modus proposed as the "waiting spot" marked with a white dot. The long pat never came near me and it took 5 minutes longer to kill the add than the pot cooldown was up, but no need to run back.

[Lowgrus]

Great guide I've already solod Garr but I was wondering if anyone was ever going to put a Barron Geddon guide up... I mean one half of the binding = useless imo!