How To: Offtank Gruul the Dragonkiller

[honorshammer]

Comments, and corrections welcomed.

The reason Paladins work well as the offtank on Gruul is mana lasts longer than rage. The offtank role is one big hit, then nothing for a while. So you take that one big hit, get your mana back from being healed and unleash your threat.


Also mana pots do more for a Paladin than Rage pots do for a Warrior.



The first part of offtanking Gruul is your prefight preparation. You want to boost your spell damage as much as you can for this fight.
If you have trust that your main tank won't go down, you can even sacrifice Uncrushability for more spell damage. However, our Main Tank dies quite often on our attempts, so I go with a fully uncrushable kit for this fight.


The two piece bonus of your Dungeon 3 set and your Tier 4 set are really helpful, but not necessary.


For buffs, you want Unstable Flask of the Sorcerer, Blackened Basilisk and Superior Wizard Oil.


Basically, on Gruul, I open up with a Judgement of Righteousness. I have to be careful because if it crits, I can pull aggro from the MT as he is still moving Gruul into position.
Then I nail him with Judgement of the Crusader. In my tank gear with Judgement of the Crusader up, I have nearly 600 effective spell damage.


I pop the wings (this is to say I cast Avenging Wrath), and get my SoV stack started, and Consecrate. Then I throw my Avenger's Shield. Now it's just a matter of watching my threat, and the melee dps threat, and trying to squeeze in between the two.

I have to watch for Shatters to know when to pop Avenging Wrath again. Since it's a timed buffed, I don't want to waste one second of it flying through the air or being stoned.

You can catch a streak where you dodge or parry a couple of Hurtfuls in a row. This is a good thing! However, it can leave you gasping for mana. That's why you always bring a stack of the Ogril'la Mana pots. Don't wait until you are completely out of mana to use it. Use it when you are around 1000 mana left. You want to give the cooldown some time so you can use it again if needed.

(Archived at http://honorscode.blogspot.com/2007/11/ ... iller.html )

[Dynaheir]

Nice! I'll be starting Gruul really soon and I don't think I'll get to be MT, so now these tips are giving me a solid idea of how to do the Ot job. Thanks!

[Stylaan]

I think it's universally accepted to stand in cave ins between Hurtful Strikes

[adese]

One thing that I found helped with pulling aggro from the MT at the beginning is to judge whatever you want on the boss first (Crusader in Honor's case, I tended to use Wisdom to help with mana), then start laying in with SoR/SoV/what have you. This gives the MT some time to build threat before you go all out.

The downside to this is that it puts you in danger of the melee dps getting ahead of you and being 1 shotted from a hurtful strike. I just have the melee dps hold off for a few seconds until I get a small lead, then tell them to go all out.

I still manage to pull aggro sometimes if the hunters get too zealous with their MDs and some lucky crits.

Finally, I also try to keep Rank 1 Holy Shield up for the whole fight. Especially when we were still learning, that extra little mitigation could help make the difference between you living and dying.

[honorshammer]

I think it's universally accepted to stand in cave ins between Hurtful Strikes

Only up to about Growth 8, after that a Cave In + Hurtful is deadly.

[Brauun]

I've been trying to get a clear answer on this, but I haven't found been able to find one.

What do you guys think about SoR vs. SoV while OTing Gruul? I use SoR when I MT him, but it seems I may be switched to OTing duties soon, or depending on the runs or whatever, and I've never OTed him before, so I'm kinda stressed about which seal to use. Thanks.

[Ordin]

I've been trying to get a clear answer on this, but I haven't found been able to find one.

What do you guys think about SoR vs. SoV while OTing Gruul? I use SoR when I MT him, but it seems I may be switched to OTing duties soon, or depending on the runs or whatever, and I've never OTed him before, so I'm kinda stressed about which seal to use. Thanks.

Personally (and this is for most boss fights), once I have a large enough aggro lead, I like to switch to SoV. I know the proc rate can make it unreliable sometimes (and if I notice a string where it's not coming back up, I'll switch back to SoR for a bit), but I like the higher TPS. Also, the DoT is helpful for continuing to get some threat in during those stupid knockbacks that Gruul does. Just my opinion though, and I've only done Gruul once.

[Daeren]

SHADOWPRIESTS!

We once had a MT group (before I got to be usual MT):

Warrior MT
Me OT
Shadow Priest
Shadow Priest
Warlock

Idea was to have the dots ticking while raid got silenced, and to give MT and OT a generally topped HP at all times.

With that group, I had zero problems staying second on threat lists.

[Worldie]

It's actually a very odd group. But interesting.

[Brauun]

I did my first run as OT yesterday. I was in fact assigned to the third tanking spot, but I ended up getting 2nd on the aggro pretty damn fast, even if the official 2nd tank had Gruul constantly MDed on him by hunters. And it's not like the other warrior was a bad tank or anything, but I dominated him by a good margin, and even when the the huntes MDed and he came back second, I had to hold back not get on top of him again. I was using SoR, and I do not have Improved Judgements. With flasks, oil and food buffs I had 420 spell dmg, and I had my Libram of Zeal equipped.

With this said, I can now safely say it is very easy being the OT on Gruul as a tankadin.

[Vesper]

I have to say while OTing Gruul is a job any tank can do, it's one that's tailormade for druid OTs. In the months I did it, 90% of the time I had to auto-attack so as not to surpass the MT in threat.

[jere]

I have to say while OTing Gruul is a job any tank can do, it's one that's tailormade for druid OTs. In the months I did it, 90% of the time I had to auto-attack so as not to surpass the MT in threat.

Off Topic:
Do you mind tossing me a PM sometime about druid threat cycles. I have been playing my alt druid a bit more and am having trouble in the threat department. I want to think it is my AP (1400ish unbuffed) in bear form, but it could be my rotation. Mind you, this is primarily for 5 mans/heroics/kara, but I wouldn't mind knowing how it is done in bigger raids as well.

[Vesper]

Off Topic:
Do you mind tossing me a PM sometime about druid threat cycles. I have been playing my alt druid a bit more and am having trouble in the threat department. I want to think it is my AP (1400ish unbuffed) in bear form, but it could be my rotation. Mind you, this is primarily for 5 mans/heroics/kara, but I wouldn't mind knowing how it is done in bigger raids as well.

It's a slow thread! Hoping no one minds if I do it here.

It's actually a slightly more complex answer than you'd think.

Generally, the cycle is to use mangle whenever it's up, keep a lacerate x3 stack going, and then use maul as a rage dump. Faerie fire also helps with threat (and improves dps), but it costs a GCD, so if you're really rage starved, you may not want to use it. Honestly, I can't remember a time that I've been so rage-starved that I cannot afford not to use druid debuffs.

However, there are plenty of compelling arguments that swipe is a better use of rage than lacerate, even after the 2.4 buff.

You should be gearing for AC, sta, and agi as a bear tank (with some +hit and +expertise, and AP mixed in when you can afford it, of course). Agility gives you far greater returns as a feral than as a prot tank -- you only need 14.7 agi for each % of dodge, 2 points of agi = 1 ac, and 25 agi = 1% crit, which is a huge plus for threat.

If overgeared for the encounter (e.g. normal dungeons), I generally tossed on my kitty gear to tank.

It's been a couple months since I've played my feral fulltime, since my guild rerolled Horde and I leveled a prot pally to try one out.

[Uthadanin]

Hunter misdirects on Gruul is also priceless. When you have 4 hunters in your 25 man, its super easy to keep the 3 tanks as 1,2,3 on gruul.

Question: Is gruul tauntable? I was trying to taunt durning growths 4-8 to get threat b/c I was #3 tank and didn't get misdirects.

[2ndNin]

Having now MT and OT'd this fight I can honestly say that threat is not an issue for a tankadin (surviving it is slightly harder, but I blame various other things ).

I find opening with shield (as mt), then crusader and start lazily building threat with vengence (don't use consc, I have problems pulling from the MT for the first few growths), once the MT has threat drop consc, wings judgements and your normal cycle remembering that holy shield can be dropped in fairly easily as the strike doesn't crush. When running back the key thing is to get in quickly to keep vengence up, however if it falls off its generally easy enough to get it back without losing threat. I always find its better to have an misdirects on the 2OT rather than on you as threat should only be an issue of not overtaking the MT. Vengence is pretty ideal for this fight, as you have long times when you can build stacks, and the threat from it is nice and strong even if you don't have the mana to actually do a lot of threat (a 20K lead lasts a reasonable time with vengence ticking), also the early ramp up is ideal for not pulling from other tanks as the early threat is sensitive, and suddenly getting hit you will completely stop attacking and drop aura and stuff

Cave ins up till growth 8-10 are very useful, and warrior OTs (and likely druids, but not tried) do want to stand in them for the mana / rage. Growth 10+ your healers stop being lazy and keep you topped up, so don't stand in any more cave ins. The cheap pots are incredibly useful from the ogrila vendor.