When are we ready for SSC/TK

[Norskolld]

So we have Gruul down before or around 17 grows, Maulgar is no problem and Kara is a joke (farmed in 1 and a half days with 2-3 teams)

Is this all thats really required for movement into SSC/TK or do we need Gruul down sooner (14 grows or so?) before we have the stats to move on.

As for tank stats I'm at 15884hp 16754armor 62%ish total avoidance.

Any advice would be appreciated. I know Mag is next in progression but from all accounts the fight isnt worth learning and we should go to VR next?
thanks guys

[Ceravantes]

17 grows is to much for killing him the first time, your dps is going to hold you back. You could easily go into both and drop some of the easier bosses, such as solarion and Lurker, I would be hesitant to say Void Reaver as it seems your DPS is not up to par to hit the enrage timer.

The thing with progression is, while it is probably a little more important to have the tank geared, if your DPS and/or Healers are not up to par you can't move forward, this could be a class balance issue, how many healers do you run usually?

It is also foolish to not "learn" Mag, the progression path is there for a reason. It is a fight that everyone has a responsibility for, and you need to find out those who can and can not handle it early rather that later.

[Norskolld]

What should we have Gruul down within in order to meet our DPS requirements?

We run 7 or 8 healers, 2 prot warriors, 2 druid OTs and the rest are dps.

I kinda felt like it might be a DPS issue, but I dont exactly know how i can bring the issue up without slaying the morale of the guild, people seem to get touchy when I try to offer advice on how to put out more DPS.

[Rak]

We run 6-7 healers on Gruul. Have done it with 5, but that was because we only had 5 on. We kill him around grow 14 normally I think. I honestly haven't gone to one of our Gruul runs in a long time so I'm not sure.

Mag is worth learning. The fight is insanely easy now. We downed him our first night of tries, he's really cake now. The tier 4 chests and the quest reward aren't bad at all, as well as the healer shield, so it's worth doing. If you have trouble killing channelers in time, it's another indicator that DPS will hold you back.

You could probably do Lurker easily since it has no timer and the healing isn't that bad. Solarian might be tricky since you'll probably go through a lot of add phases and healers might run dry, but it's worth the try. Void Reaver I would definitely be hesitant about, and maybe Hydross too.

[Ceravantes]

If you can't kill him in 14 grows or less it is a clear DPS issue, and I assure you it will hurt your guilds morale to not say anything and spend weeks wiping in content that is beyond you capability.

The only exception would be if they are threat capping your offtank, but as this is only a melee issue you would have to be very melee heavy in order to not meet the mark anyways.

[Vimy]

Gruul,

For a kara geared raid should be down in 10-12 growths Maximum.

Why so many tanks? Can i ask? I know that many people will have different layouts, but 2 prot warriors and 2 druids (by offtanks prob in bear gear).

Good layout:

1 Prot Warrior MT
1 Druid OT
17 DPS
6 Heals

If you have good heals, 6 is plenty. If not, bring 7, hots are godly during reverberation /silences. Druid is the optimal offtank for several reasons, HOWEVER you could use most tanking classes, druids are great for taking the strikes and for building 2nd threat for the melee. They do not require to be hit to build aggro so a druid allows you melee to go all out.

If you require an additional tank for clearing trash, take a DPS warrior with tank gear (or another druid with good kitty gear for when on Gruul himself). Give the DPS warrior a misdirect and with good tanking gear he can easily tank one of the ogre's leading to gruul.

I would advise you start TK and Magtheridon. Voidreaver and Mag have similar difficulty, one with co-ordination, one with individual player thought. Will allow your guild to start collecting vortexes, trash T5 drops as well as T5 shoulders / pieces from void.

However with 17 growths you will NOT be able to have sufficient dps to kill Hydross. Get gruul consistantly at 12 and move into SSC.

Remember as GM / Raidleader (I assume where you are at) it is your job to make the right decisions for guild progression. Most people dont mind sitting on one gruul if they know they can go to T5 content quicker.

Just my opinion, and how i did it when my guild was still doing Gruul / Mag/ SSC / TK.

-Vimy

[Steakums]

I'm not gonna say this next comment to be mean, but all the posts I've seen so far all say it's a DPS issue, could it be that the DPS is threat capped to?

Ask your dps if they feel capped and if so try and do what YOU can to help that out..we normally down Gruul by 9-10 Grows and thats if we do him at all.

I lead our guys to TK/SSC and we skipped Mag til the beginning of this year and I wish i had pushed ahead and learned him way back. Woulda helped in other fights to have this happen, plus as others have mentioned his gear isn't terrible pre SSC/TK.

I will also say, the hardest part of SSC/TK imo is learning the trashpulls right off..lol i recall many fun wipes on stuff like hrmm what does this guy do...

[Ceravantes]

Gruul,

For a kara geared raid should be down in 10-12 growths Maximum.

Why so many tanks? Can i ask? I know that many people will have different layouts, but 2 prot warriors and 2 druids (by offtanks prob in bear gear).

Good layout:

1 Prot Warrior MT
1 Druid OT
17 DPS
6 Heals

If you have good heals, 6 is plenty. If not, bring 7, hots are godly during reverberation /silences. Druid is the optimal offtank for several reasons, HOWEVER you could use most tanking classes, druids are great for taking the strikes and for building 2nd threat for the melee. They do not require to be hit to build aggro so a druid allows you melee to go all out.

If you require an additional tank for clearing trash, take a DPS warrior with tank gear (or another druid with good kitty gear for when on Gruul himself). Give the DPS warrior a misdirect and with good tanking gear he can easily tank one of the ogre's leading to gruul.

I would advise you start TK and Magtheridon. Voidreaver and Mag have similar difficulty, one with co-ordination, one with individual player thought. Will allow your guild to start collecting vortexes, trash T5 drops as well as T5 shoulders / pieces from void.

However with 17 growths you will NOT be able to have sufficient dps to kill Hydross. Get gruul consistantly at 12 and move into SSC.

Remember as GM / Raidleader (I assume where you are at) it is your job to make the right decisions for guild progression. Most people dont mind sitting on one gruul if they know they can go to T5 content quicker.

Just my opinion, and how i did it when my guild was still doing Gruul / Mag/ SSC / TK.

-Vimy

In my old guild we constantly ran a 3-4 tank set up for everything that should not really be an issue, if you have to stack a raid to kill gruul before 14 grows, especially with the new gear available pre raiding at all then you have a problem that needs to be addressed with your dps.

As to blaming this problem on DPS, I did say it was possible they were threat capped from their offtank, but as I said, unless the majority of thier raid is melee that should not matter.

[Shortypop]

My guild is new into SSC/TK - one lurker kill, three VR kills and 2 maggy kills. We started getting gruul down about growth 14/15, and now manage growth 12 regularly. We went gruul - VR - maggy - lurker.

Our 25man set up is usually 4 tanks, 7 healers - often three of those 4 tanks are prot warriors.

Things that could be causing your dps problems: dps dieing to shatters, threat-capped or lack of dps (gear, spec, rotation).

In my mind VR is easy (the trash is a pain tho), maggy is technically difficult, but once you've got it, I think it's easily repeatable, lurker (well, I thought he was easy the night we downed him, but had difficulty with him last time). Trash-wise ssc trash (at least til lurker) seems easier than the TK trash.

Hope these thoughts helped.

[Vimy]

Of course there could be threat capping.

However as I indicated, with a druid offtank melee shouldnt be threat capped. Beyond this, if your main tank is threat capped (hard to be on gruul) then assist him with misdirects to get it further and further.

As i said in my post, layouts differ. 3-4 Tanking classes is not an issue, but PROT warriors do reduce dps. So beyond your main tank, it is difficult to justify bringing another prot warrior to gruul.

[Rak]

In my mind VR is easy (the trash is a pain tho),

Yes, he is easy. The entire fight is killing him before he enrages, though. And considering this whole thread is about a low DPS raid, and then throw in that VR has the highest boss armor in the game, and it doesn't seem like an assured boss kill for them.

[Clifford]

We followed the general advice of only moving to Void Reaver once we could easily down Gruul in 12/13 growths.

My single biggest piece of advice for Void Reaver is: Dead raiders do no damage.

We have only killed him three times before focussing on SSC but every time I had to drum this into people's heads. Once they stayed alive it was easy enough to kill him.

[Norskolld]

Thanks for all the tips and feedback guys. Tommorow we're making our first push into either TK/SSC/Mag after our Gruul kill.

Depending on the group makeup and how the kill goes will determine our destination be it Mag, Lurker or VR.
I'm sure i'll be back in this thread soon asking for more advice :P