Gruul the Dragonkiller

Gruul is a DPS race. That's right, you only have ~10 min. to kill him before he gets huge and starts one shotting offtanks and tanks alike.

Gruul's strategy is not difficult, read about it at www.wowwiki.com, and I'm sure that soon enough Zillaana will post how he wants us to do it, so I won't get into that.

The main thing I need to say is:

DPS Needed
Raid-wide you will need an average of 6666.67 DPS to kill Gruul before he reaches 17 Grows (at which point the tank is risking getting killed in one hit), or an average of 266.67 DPS per raid member (assuming a full group of 25).

Assuming your raid has 3 tanks doing about 150 DPS each and 5 healers doing 0 dps, the remaining 17 DPS classes in the raid will need to average about 365 DPS on Gruul.

Note: From practical experience, 17 grows is unrealistic unless you are lucky, or your tanks are overgeared. A group should try to DPS him down by grow 13. A typical group will go with 6 to 7 healers as well.

Calculation: Gruul has 3.8 million hit points. End of grow 13 equates to 14 *30 seconds = 420 seconds. Assuming 6 healers, 3 tanks doing 150 DPS, and no deaths due to Ground Slam and Cave-in, the average raid DPS for the DPS group (16) is 8,598 DPS, or 537 dps per DPS player. A reasonable portion of the raid is spent moving and recovering from Ground slam so this is a minimum.


*IMPORTANT PART*

537 DPS per DPS player. When looking at WOW webstats, I see people in the 300-400 range. This is simply not good enough, and we all can't be relying on hemioney's 1400 DPS. With even sub par gear; spec, gem, enchant, and spell/ability rotation changes can easily up a players DPS 100-150. I would LOVE to see everyone's kara DPS up to ~500+ by the time we attempt gruul. That is all.

Agreed full heartedly.

I know caster dps fairly well and thought I'd post some input.

Some very easy ways to up DPS that are cheap and assumed for gruul - we will point out if you aren't using these:
-superior wizard oil - free 40spl dmg and dirt cheap
-spl dmg food - ask one of us if you cant get it BEFORE the raid and we'll work with you. Its pretty cheap for an added 23spl dmg.
-READ YOUR CLASS GUIDE POSTED ON THESE FORUMS - don't mean to say you guys don't know what you are doing, but reading a website is gold-free and can dramatically increase your performance. Don't be too arrogant to read cause you've had an alt go to BT or whatnot - I still read over my tankadin guide and effective health article once a week or so cause I always manage to miss something. Little bit of reading = HUGE. And plus, those articles go into a LOT of depth about your class. They are very detailed and I can bet you'll pick up something out of it.

Not so cheap things that are still assumed for gruul and any raid to dramatically raise caster damage in general:
-Enchants!... Get the spell damage enchant... Don't count on the prince dagger to randomly drop. I know a lot of people have S1 stuff and pvp stuff - get it enchanted if its not. I know some of them are really expensive, but at least have the weapon and preferably the head enchant from sha'tar.
-Elixirs/Flasks - Zillaana and a couple other guildies can help make these if you buy the mats. I would suggest flasks if possible for gruul at this time - they make wiping and dieing much less stressful overall while learning encounters. If you wanna really impress us and help out and don't chain pot, chain pot destruction pots (haste pots if melee) - not assumed, but does help. Every bit of damage helps when he's at 2% and one shotting every raid member after the tank


So in summary
Please, oh please bring all consumables. They make HUGE differences during raids, more so than kara. Mana pots, oils, flasks, and reagents. They DRAMATICALLY increase raid dps! While we probably won't kick you for not buying a flask, we will be noticing who is using consumables and remember for use later, when choosing who to take over others.

on the subject of flasks, Gruul's should be a nonissue here because those Blade's Edge flask are pretty damn cheap for what they give you. Should be like 10-15g on the AH; even more reason for me to eat you if you don't have one.

All the posts beforehand have been very well done and cover what I'm gonna say in mine:

Gruul The Dragonkiller:

This fight consists of
-1 MT (any class)
-1 OT (pref. Druid)
~7 Healers
~16 DPS

Since we won't be switching people in and out for High King and Gruul, tanks need to bring whatever dps gear they can manage (arms is more effective with less +hit gear).

Abilities:

*Growth - Every 30 seconds he gets larger and does 10% more dmg. Essentially, it's an enrage timer. He will become large enough that he will 1 shot your MT and then go 1 shot everyone else.

*Hateful Strike - This is done to the person in melee range that is #2 on threat. Hence, the reason why we have an off tank. This attack gives very little warning (timer?) and hits very very hard. If you're not the OT you'll die and corpse dps = 0. Watch your aggro and this will not have an affect on the raid.

*Ground Slam/Shatter - This ability sends EVERYONE a random distance in a random direction. Once you fly away you have 5 seconds to get away from everyone. Every second you move slower and get a "You're turning into stone" debuff. Once the full five seconds are up, everyone is frozen in place, he does a shatter. This does damage based on how close you are to other people, maxing out at 15 yards. The Deadly Boss Mod raid warning will announce that this is about to happen. When it does pay attention to your surroundings, minimap, player bars and get as far away as you can from everyone. Hunter's pets no longer cause damage and I know rogues can cloak of shadows out of it. This is the primary thing that will cause deaths. Be prepared to pot/bandage/healthstone through this.

*Cave in - This is pretty self explanatory. Large rocks fall down from the ceiling and you get a debuff saying you're taking damage. You'll take a lot of damage, so the best thing to do is move out of it.

*Reverberation - This is an AOE silence that silences 1/4 of the room. This is why we spread out and try to stay spread out. This is MOST IMPORTANT FOR HEALERS (caps were necessary). If this becomes an issue we'll simply assign spots.

The Fight:
The fight starts with Gruul standing in the center of the room. Whoever is tanking will charge in and front load a ton of threat. Gruul will be tanked in the middle of the room. The OT will wait a little bit (~3-5 seconds) then start building threat. It is important for all melee to have omen and to STAY BELOW THE OT ON THREAT (see hateful strike above). As the pull is happening all the casters/healers want to try and evenly spread out 360 degrees around the room. Unlike Maulgar the pull is the easy part here.

After the pull you just have to pay attention. We'll be doing our best to call out when stuff is happening, but keep an eye on your boss mods or raid warnings.



Summary:
-2 tanks. Other tanking classes bring dps gear.
-Hunters FD a lot and make sure you MD onto the OT every time its up to keep them at #2 threat.
-Melee: DON'T PULL AGGRO
-Ranged: DPS a lot, you have more leeway with your pulling aggro.
-Healers: Spread out, seriously. Elbow room will save us from wiping.
-EVERYONE: Falling rocks HURT. Move out of them.
-EVERYONE: If you fly up in the air and you didn't mean to do it, run as far away from other people as you can before you're frozen.

Gruul drops some pretty good loot for many classes considering how easy and early on he is. Read this and become familiar with the fight in general and there's no reason we shouldn't down him in one night.

Here's a video that I made the second time my old guild ever killed gruul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPAby8kigZs

(It was a free trial of the software so don't mind the icon or the low resolution.)

DPS NEEDS:

I don't know how many of you look at the WoW Web Stats reports when we post them, but some of our DPS has been a little lackluster. If your gear is at least 5-Man blue quality or above (everyone's pretty much) then you should be able to put out AT LEAST 550-600 dps on most fights. I understand some classes provide more utility or aren't that great against a certain boss, but there have been some people with consistently low dps across all fights.

If you're pretty new or haven't gotten to raid much you have some leeway. But for the rest of you, Here are some things you can do to improve:

*Gems - I'm still looking for the exact post, but it was mathematically proven that if an entire raid upgrades from green to blue quality gems the raid gains about 2-3% dps. That may not seem like much, but when you're learning new content you need every bit of dps you can get. A general rule of thumb, if you raid in it then you put a blue gem in it.

*Enchants - These used to be very pricey and some still are (primals ftl), but every piece of gear should that has an available enchant should be enchanted.

• Helm - Glyph from respective Rep Vendor
  
• Shoulder - Aldor or Scryer rep enchants. (If you're not exalted that should be your #1 focus with your gold)
  
• Chest - Can be done by enchanters
  
• Bracer - Can be done by enchanters
  
• Gloves - Can be done by enchanters
  
• Belt - None available
  
• Legs - Healing enchant is made by Aldor tailors, Spell damage is made by Scryer tailors. AP/Crit is Cobrahide leg armor from LW, Stam/Agil is Clefthide leg armor from LW. There are uncommon and epic versions of both of these. The epic requires a nether, so feel free to need these in heroics or look into buying them. We have a few stockpiled in the bank that can be used for these.
  
• Boots - Can be done by enchanters
  
• Rings - If you're an enchanter then you NEED to have your rings enchanted. THIS IS AN ENCHANTER ONLY ENCHANT.
  

Here is a list of every enchantment by slot: http://www.wowwiki.com/Enchantments_by_slot

*Consumables - If the first two weren't enough, here's another way to spend your money to improve your dps. For hard or new content every person must have full consumables.
These include:
-Flask or 2 elixirs
-Food buff
-Necessary potions
-Weapon buffs (oils, grinding/weight stones, poisons)
-Misc: There are consumables for your chest and shield that reduce damage done. Unless your a tank those are not necessary.

Everyone should be chain potting to maximize your dps. Yes it's expensive, but we have alchemists in the guild that can make most of them and they really help. Tanks should be using ironshield pots, melee dps should be using haste pots, casters should be using mana or destruction pots and healers should be using mana pots.

While this is important it is only required/highly recommended for new or difficult (ZA) encounters. A list of consumables can be found here,http://www.wowwiki.com/Consumable , or simply ask any of the officers.

*Spec and Rotation - If you're doing everything you can above and your dps is still not where you'd like it maybe it's time to re-evaluate what you're doing. You should research your raiding spec and what rotation you should use. Most of this has been done already and is located in forums and board posts. A compilation of class guides can be found here: https://tradegoods.forumotion.com/member-chat-f4/class-guides-t4.htm

Other useful sites include:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/ - Theorycrafting to the nth degree.
http://www.maxdps.com/ - Plug in your stats and what gear you have available to you and it will show you what gear will maximize your dps.



If you have any questions about how your doing or what you can do to improve feel free to talk to any of the officers or myself.