AC went into Gruul's Lair with high hopes of actually downing Gruul himself. We started on time which is really nice. High King went down on the 6th try. It is really all about the pull. Everyone needs to be coordinated and with new people being brought into the raid it will always take several tries to get it down. You guys can look at the stats right here. You will be redirected to the stat specifically on our High King kill.
After killing High King, we tried Gruul 3 times and we ate dust on each of our try. DPS was an issue and at the same time cave ins was deadly. People just need to become more aware of the cave ins and move out of em.
I was looking at the wws stats and found very interesting numbers in terms of tanking. I was mainly focusing on the 2nd and 3rd try on Gruuls. From what I am seeing, his average damage on a tank is around 5-6k and his crushing blows can go up to 10-11k. The crushing blows are the killer here, 11k blow is huge.
I guess I need feedback and comments from everyone who has experience MTing and OTing Gruul. I want to know what baseline stats you had before you went in for Gruul.
- How much HP buff/unbuff did you have?
- How much Armor? How much avoidance?
- It might be time for me to stack up +stamina gems and is it ok to sacrifice avoidance/mitigation?
- Should an MT have different stats from an OT? Is there any difference?
Edit: I have been reading alot of comments about having an OT off tank. Yes we have a couple of druids that can off tank, but we also have 3 protection warriors. If we had an OT off tank, what would the other protection warrior do? sit down and bandage? Would you rather have a druid in cat form doing damage than a protection warrior doing no damage?
7 comments:
Note that I don't have any experience as a tank or a warrior. I've been a healer the whole time but I have healed my share of tanks. Here's the best advice I can offer you:
Stack stamina gems, unless the socket bonus is insanely good.
Why?
Avoidance and mitigation are good things to have, but in the end whether or not you take hits is still a dice roll. I don't think there's a huge difference between 21.95% dodge and 15.81% parry if your mitigation aspects drop that low.
I mean you lose a couple percentage points in dodge and parry, right? So what? You could gain almost an extra 1k health. If you can break past 15k health, it would be a boon for your healers because it increases your maximum capacity. No matter how you slice it, you WILL get hit, regardless of your dodge and parry. Having a higher health cap gives more "OH SHIT" room for the healers to work with.
I would rather take a guy with 15k health and 20% dodge, parry and block over a guy with 10k health with 41% dodge, parry, or block. Because there is always that ONE chance where he can get critical'd or crushed and he would get taken down in two or so shots.
Don't get me wrong, all that avoidance stuff is GREAT to have. But I still think high stamina's more important just for the cases you take huge blows.
Higher health pool results in a higher margin of error for your healers.
One more tip, remember Gruul does silence. If you have several Paladins, have them set up a rotating Bubble so they can heal through the silence during Growth 8 onwards or so (use your judgement).
Hope that helps!
The Gruul fight was designed for a druid OT. Warriors have trouble gaining aggro without taking damage constantly, druids do not have this problem. Without an OT right up there in the aggro list, your melee DPS will be severely capped.
Also, druids have a lot more armor, which is what you need to survive hurtful strikes once about the 16th growth comes in.
I would say don't bring 3 prot wars. Or if you can spare the dps, bring them but make them DPS that fight (except for of course the MT).
This fight is easily done with 2 prot tanks. Utilize intervene on silences up until about 8-10 growths depending on your HP pool. if the hurtfuls are taking you below 25% HP then you don't want to risk intervening.
Use your moroes trinket early so you can use it again once or twice at higher growths. As an OT you can time it to be active for 2 hurtfuls, as an MT use it during silences.
As OT you want as much Stam and armor as possible. Gruul represents the first fight of many that favor mitigation/stam over avoidance. After 8 growths the healers are going to have to spam the MT and heal a lot of dmg on the OT. They can't afford to cancel casts if you dodge or parry, so you avoiding an incoming attack isn't really saving them any mana.
Socket 12 stam everywhere you can. Usually the only worthwhile socket bonuses are ones that give you stam.
Save shield blocks for silences too. Anything you can do to lower the dmgs from silences.
In the end you can have full t6 and 25,000HP and you still won't be able to down Gruul if you're only doing getting him down to 50% at 10 Growths. For my guilds first kills on gruul we got him around 15-16 growths and that took shield wall and last stand from both tanks. Now we down him closer to 10 growths. Eventually the cave-in's will 1 shot people.
It would seem to me that you need to have Shield block up as a 1st priority, everything else comes next. Thunder clap and high avoidance helps because all the hits you avoid will not eat up your shield block before another is ready. (and you'll have a better chance of avoiding being crushed if it does)
Stacking stamina you'll need to eat up a 11k hit and give healers time to heal. You'll be getting more crushing blows if stacking stamina in place of avoidance unless he is a slow enough hitter that you can constantly keep the block up.
My view is a minority here though, Bizzam over at Tank Hard! had a very similar post a while ago about the high king.
Heya Brig,
This is slightly OT, but might help your raid DPS issues.
You seem to be really melee-heavy - lots of rogues and feralcats.
Your guild would be extremely well-served by getting access to a couple of debuffs you currently don't have - Expose Weakness and Blood Frenzy. Adding those two things would be enormous, given your group composition.
I know that you guys are casual and don't want to "force" spec, but putting the suggestion out there to see if someone wants to try it certainly can't hurt anyone.
(Recruiting an Enhancement Shaman wouldn't be an awful idea either.)
Stacking avoidance will help in situations where you are taking so much damage over the course of the fight that your healers are running out of mana.
If the problem is spikey dmg killing you your going to want higher stam/armor.
Later on avoidance will become important again for certain BT/Hyjal bosses.
I also believe I read somewhere on EJ that avoidance doesn't actually lower crushing blows unless you can get your total over 85% since bosses are supposed to crush 15% of the time. I could be wrong though, I read that a looong time ago.
I also believe I read somewhere on EJ that avoidance doesn't actually lower crushing blows unless you can get your total over 85% since bosses are supposed to crush 15% of the time. I could be wrong though, I read that a looong time ago.
Adding avoidance doesn't affect the 15% crush chance on the combat table, true.
However, an incoming dodge, parry, or miss doesn't "eat" a Shield Block charge, which is important when the 3rd attack comes in the 6-second SB window.
Higher avoidance means more of this (within 6-sec SB window):
Block / Dodge / Block (can't be crushed, as SB is still up)
instead of this:
Block / Block / Possible-Crush (as SB is now down)
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