Gruul's Lair - 25 man raid Healing Assignments

Gruul’s Lair.
There are a total of 7 trash pulls in the entirety of Gruul’s Lair (2 before Maulgar and 5 before Gruul) and in each one, it’s the only time I find myself using my GHeal sparingly: Otherwise it’s Frisbee and Renew, since there’s one to two tanks, and as long as everyone groups up on the Lair Brutes, no one else should be taking damage.

Need about five tanks (sometimes six). The MT tanks Maulgar, a Moonkin druid tanks Kiggler, a mage tanks Krosh, a rogue/furry warrior/spare tank tanks Blind Eye and one to two tanks for Olm. U need 6 to 7 healers for this dungeon, though you can do it with five if you have pally tanks that aren't tanking on Gruul, they tossed on healing gear.

Usually, a pally healer gets assigned the Mage tank on Krosh, for those fast heals. Kiggler has this nasty tendency to polymorph anyone near him, so if you have a resto druid, kiss their leaves and send them over with the druid moonkin tank to Kiggler. Olm is just a gigantic PITFA. One tank can try to tank him, but make sure they’re prepared to run around a lot. He Skillcoils a lot. If he gets away from the tank, he usually will Skillcoil healers (usually ones on the other tanks) and then things can get bad. We used to have just one “tank” on him, but since then have adopted a two tank strat. The healer on these tanks can be any type really. Olm hurts, but he’s not the ZOMG SPIKE type. He’s just annoying.

Maulgar’s tank, usually your best geared one, needs two healers on him. Two priests, a pally/priest is our usual assignment for the Maulgar tank, because the High King has two whammy attacks. Your MT can easily be two shotted if you don’t heal through the Arcing Strikes Maulgar inflicts.

Blindeye? Please. He’s a push over. The rogue/furry warrior/whoever who’s tanking him is going to feel like they’re bathing in Blind eye’s massaging “wrath”. Blindeye dies first because he’s the priest (/sniffle) of the gang, and he’s got so many people interupting his spells, he hardly gets a chance to do anything before he dies. If you’re just starting in Gruuls, you can put a healer on the Blindeye tank, but as soon as Blindeye kisses dirt, move them to one of the other tanks. It will be needed.

Now that that’s done, you have five more trash pulls before Gruul. Repeat above.

Ah, Gruul. Once you can get a rhythm going for this place, Gruul’s is easily done in about 35 to 45 mins. The Gruul fight is a gear check for most guilds starting their 25 man raiding days. His “soft” enrage timer is that every 45 seconds or so, he grows bigger, which causes him to hit harder. There’s only three tanks needed, and make sure melee knows those three tanks need to stay at the top of the aggro list, or else you’re gonna start having dead melee. See, Gruul’s normal hits aren’t so bad, but every once in a while he does a Hurtful Strike to the second person on his aggro list. This strike HURTS. Tanks can take it, rogues usually get one shotted by it.
If you thought melee was the only ones who had it hard, guess again. Ranged has to watch out for Cave Ins, which also hurt more the bigger Gruul gets. They’re annoying but livable through, since you’ll see the CAVE IN happen and have about two seconds to just RUN out of the area it’s affecting (which is small).

He also has an AoE silence, which stinks when it hits at the wrong time, so make sure you have a Tree keeping HoTs up on those three tanks. It may save your raid in case of a unlucky silence.

Then there’s the fun part: Grasp of the Gronn Lord and Shatter!

Basically every 45 seconds or so, Gruul pounds the ground (Ground Slam) and everyone in the raid goes FLYING (no joke, watch the vid.) You and your raid buddies have about 5 seconds to get the F away from each other or else when you freeze and Gruul Shatter’s you, you’re going to kill anyone who’s either on top of you or the five buddies who happen to be within 15(?) yards of you. Deadly Boss Mods has a nice little screen that tells you who’s close so that u can try and minimize this damage, and a Power Word Shield and a Frisbee on yourself also can help in case you’re a tad to close to someone.

Now, as for who’s healing who… depends on your healing make up. The pallies and the druids can usually take good care of the tanks, though Priests should toss a Frisbee to help the melee out in case they get caught in a Cave In. Three to four healers on the tanks is good, any one left over, just have them heal the raid. Keeping the tanks up is important, but keeping DPS alive is VERY important. Dead DPS means your tank gets one shotted because Gruul’s reached Growth 13. The longer the fight, the more likely people will die too fast for you to save. Cave ins will tick for too hard or you’ll run out of tanks.

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Some Arena Tips

(My ratings certainly don’t make me an expert, but these are some tips I found through numerous forums)

Put on as many buffs as possible to minimize witch buffs get dispelled – even bogus buffs

Never start by DPSing a Warrior or Feral Druid. Minimize their rage gain as much as possible

Slow and Focused DPS on Pally until after bubble. Then explode with all you got

Pick out the softest DPS target the other team has and unload

Use LOS to your advantage

A Priest who sees 3 targets clumped will AOE Fear and cause chaos. Do not stack up in the middle of the Arena right out in the open. That's not stacking, that's being fish in a barrel. Keep a distance equal to your healers heal range. This will minimize aoe affects and multiple cc affects from melee classes, and if your healer is getting ganked, it will help you to see it quicker

TBC has been out for almost 1 year, and that there has been 2 Season's + 1 month's time of gear with STA and Resilience out there. Grand Marshal/High Warlord, Gladiator, Merciless, Vengeful and Marshal/General, Veteran, Vindicator. The excuse of not having a good base level of HP and Resilience (see Season 1 for Honor) to contribute actively in Arena or BG is.. well.. starting to be just an excuse.

If you can, Banish a Mage Water Elemental when combat starts. This will prevent a ton of their burst potential by denying another Nova effect.

Get a Mage to Ice Shield as soon as possible. Burn their cool downs early in the fight.

Warlock – Burn them down fast with focused DPS. Ignore everything else and just DPS. This should out DPS any healers heals. If possible, cc the healer, or have a hunter slow their heal affects. Regardless, get the Lock out of the fight fast.

Remember, ignore Warriors and Feral Druids until the end. Throw some cc if you can spare, but otherwise just keep concentrating on other targets.

Get everyone to focus fire on the same target and try to burst him down when one of your druids cyclones the opponents main healer (paladins can't bubble out of cyclone, this is very important). Picking this target is difficult and depends on who you have in your group.

Have Mass Dispel available as a bound key and use it on a pally when he bubbles; it's the only thing that can dispel a pally bubble

Have your regular Dispel available on your bound key and use it a LOT. Use it to remove DoTs, use it to remove the opponent's buffs

A shadowfiend can do a fair bit of damage (and return mana as well) so make sure to send it off to say a caster

If you have Silence, use it... esp helpful to stop a mage from front-loading

Unless something is gonna be sheeped (if you have a mage in your group), dot EVERYTHING. You don't have front-loaded DPS so you won't contribute as much if you just focus fire on one.
Keep your own shield up as you can.

Learn to understand the other classes. If you see a big red pet, you can't fear it away, for example