My guild is attempting Gruul's for the first time this weekend.

What stats should I be at?

If it matters, we have (2) holy priests (1) holy pally and (2) resto droods.

First... get more healers...

Second probably if you are pushing 1500+healing and can heal two - three tanks at the same time you should be just fine. Learning the High King pulls is a pain, but once you get the pull you are fine.

For Gruul the requirements get harder. You need to have probably 7k health unbuffed. Plus you need to be able to learn to avoid damage. I highly recommend everyone load DBM so you can keep track of the abilities and whose too close to you on ground slams.

You'll need at least 1 more healer, 2 or 3 for first learning it.

We do Gruul with 6 healers and Mag with 7.

A single healer on whoever is tanking the priest. Any class is good here.

You'll need a single healer on the mage tank ( who happens to be a mage too ). The mage takes little damage, and then takes a shot for about 9k and needs to be healed back up VERY quickly. ( and don't stand near the mage ....he has a blast nova that really hurts )

Shaman tank ( 2 ranged DPS, hunters are good here ). One will get polymorphed and the other will get damaged. Only need to heal one target at a time. We usually have a priest or paladin.

Warlock tank - this tank ( or tanks ) will take a lot of damage from death coils and melee. Having 2 tanks is good for a taunt rotation to try to keep him away from both the shaman and the mage. You can usually get away with 1 healer here...we usually use a druid

High King - you'll probably want 3 healers here, a hot healer ( druids yay ), and 2 "big heal" healers, shaman/priest/paladin.

You kill the priest, then warlock, then ranged on the mage and melee on the shaman. As each of those dies the healer that was healing the tank for the priest, warlock, etc moves to help heal the tank on High King.

I suggest reading up on this:
http://www.wowwiki.com/High_King_Maulgar

As for personal stats:
Make sure you have 8k+ hp, and probably around 1200-1300 healing.

The hardest part about High King is the pull. The actual healing isn't TOO demanding if you take enough ( geared ) people.

Interesting. We do it totally different in some respects. We do everyone on the Priest. Once he's down Melee go and kill the warlock and the ranged split off and down Kiggler. Kiggler tends to be deadly with his throw back ability that punts you across the room. The last to die is the mage before we down the HK.

We're usually really heavy be it melee or ranged and if we split off that early, I think we'd have a hard time healing through some of the damage that the Warlock does. Add to that, a warlock tank can get death coiled into the mage, and we like to take him out as soon as we can. Usually the Shaman is near the cave leading to Gruul, so it's difficult for him to knock back too many people for us.

My Stats (Unbuffed):

Health = 7524
Mana = 9290

Bonus Healing = +1307
Mana Regen = 236

I'm working on improving my +healing with enchants, but farming really, really sucks - as if I had to tell you that.

Is my mana regen too low? Will that will improve with the right enchants? I will admit, I am always the first to run out of mana. I always drink a pot, and self innervate for bosses, and the feral droods sometimes have to throw me innervate me as well. I tend to overheal, and I know it.

It would be nice to follow the rules and only have to stack lifebloom + rejeuve, however, it's just not enough. I'm always forced to use regrowth at some point. :frown:

The most important thing for Grull is to download DBM. Staying away from people during shatters = win. Spread out. Gruul is a dps race. Gotta get him down quick before he enrages too big.

Have a warlock enslave the giant felhunter that spawns and tank the warlock with that. He has a gnarly taunt ability. Still really good to have a druid in feral dps gear to jump to bear when the warlock kills the giant felhunter, before he spawns another.

We have our locks banish the puppies and just tank the Warlock. The healing isn't too intensive when spread out over 2 tanks and we usually don't have the blood pact to spare ( I like to have one in the tank group and one in the mage tank group ) >_<

Try to enslave one of the pups next time :)

They do really heavy damage. Then after the warlock is down, dismiss pet and kill it.

I think we've only had 1 lock sign up for this week *sigh*

My Stats (Unbuffed):

Health = 7524
Mana = 9290

Bonus Healing = +1307
Mana Regen = 236

I'm working on improving my +healing with enchants, but farming really, really sucks - as if I had to tell you that.

Is my mana regen too low? Will that will improve with the right enchants? I will admit, I am always the first to run out of mana. I always drink a pot, and self innervate for bosses, and the feral droods sometimes have to throw me innervate me as well. I tend to overheal, and I know it.

It would be nice to follow the rules and only have to stack lifebloom + rejeuve, however, it's just not enough. I'm always forced to use regrowth at some point. :frown:

you could do with a bit more +healing, and a slightly bigger mana pool.

A few tips on Gruul:

Barksin mitigates 10% of the damage from Shatter. You aren't likely to need it for anything else it and the cooldown is small enough that it will be ready every time.
You can use barkskin once you have been turned to stone, ie just before you take the damage. The time just prior to turning to stone should be used to put healing over times on yourself and other nearby people, especially if they are already injured.

You'll have to deal with Maulgar first though.
The problem with Maulgar is that there never seems to be enough healers to cover everyone that needs heals. The 3 most important things to heal, imho, are:

1. The main tank on High King Maulgar.
2. The mage who is tanking the ogre-mage guy.
3. The tanks on the warlock mob, and the felhounds once your warlocks have possessed them (these have loads of health and require a lot of healing to keep up, it will probably die after a while but if you can even just extend its life by 20-30 sec this is enough).

If nobody in your raid is taking the initiative to assign healers to different roles, you should take the initiative yourself and try to organise the healers to specific targets. It's a lot easier if you don't have to constantly check loads of different targets to see if they need a heal.


-Annikk

A few tips on Gruul:

If nobody in your raid is taking the initiative to assign healers to different roles, you should take the initiative yourself and try to organise the healers to specific targets. It's a lot easier if you don't have to constantly check loads of different targets to see if they need a heal.-Annikk

Nope, Guild Leader is all over it. Here is the plan.

Myself and another Resto Druid are assigned to party members.
Priest on Tank
Priest on Tank
Resto Pally on Tank
Resto Pally on Off-Tank

That's the plan as of last night's "in-game whispers", it could be slightly different than that.

Now keep in mind, this is the first time for all of us - we are a very casual guild - and mostly in it for the learning experience (and hopefully the fun). NOBODY is expecting to one-shot anything. At least, I hope not, because they will be very dissapointed. :grin:

I do have another question (sorry if it's really silly).

Again, my first 25-man. Is there a way of seeing everyone's health bars without crowding my screen? In a 10-man, I simply drag everyone from the raid list onto the left side of my screen, keeping "major" players close to MT portrait for easier access. But, in a 25-man, wouldn't that just be too crowded?

I apologise in advance if there is a really simple answer to this question, but again, never had to do it. I'd like to at least be able to monitor all the tanks and healers' health bars.

Again, my first 25-man. Is there a way of seeing everyone's health bars without crowding my screen? In a 10-man, I simply drag everyone from the raid list onto the left side of my screen, keeping "major" players close to MT portrait for easier access. But, in a 25-man, wouldn't that just be too crowded?Are you using the default UI? If so, just "pull out" the tanks (using the class tabs?) and put them on your screen.

I use an addon that has larger bars than the default RAID interface and in a 40-man AV, I don't find it much of an issue (in terms of screen space). But I have the party UI disabled in RAIDs.

I know quite a few healers use Grid which makes a nice smaller box (in a Grid!) showing all player's health, debuffs, etc. Combined with Clique you can just mouse click (you assign spells to clicks and shift-click, etc.) on the target to heal, decurse, cure poison, buff, etc.

Of course, you can use Clique with the default UI as well (my pally friend does that).

Does the default RAID UI hide the party UI when you are in a RAID? That's really the big issue. IMO, you don't need to see both (RAID and party UI). When the RAID UI (or Grid) has all you really need to see.

I don't recall the default UI hiding the party UI when in a raid ( probably why I didn't hide mine for the longest time ). I now use grid and it's a god send for raids.

http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Grid

Personally I just show health bars by class, rather than by group. This makes it a lot easier to keep the tanks grouped together.

There is a really nice addon for healers called Healer Range Alpha, this fades out the boxes for people who are out of range of your healing spells. This way you can look at the health bars of the raid and always see instantly who you can and cannot heal.

http://www.warcraft-mods.com/Healingrangealpha.html


-Annikk

I pulled everyone out by class, and kept my tanking classes at the top of my screen, then healers just below. Went well.

And Gruul's Lair? What A Riot! I can't wait go move forward. I absolutely loved it.

As for healing assignments, I much preferred healing MT over the party. There's nothing worse than being out of range or LOS of someone who is in desperate need of a heal. I'm gonna have to look into that add-on.

It really is a good one. It also works with addons like CTRA and so on, if you use those for your bars instead of the default UI.


-Annikk

I recommend Grid for raid healing... It grays out the names of the people who are not in range.

I didn't realise Grid did that. That is also a nice choice then :>


-Annikk