World of Warcraft Classic: Gruul’s Lair

There are two 25 member raids in Burning Crusade. On one hand, you have the rather strenuous Magtheridon’s Lair and then you have the other you have the one we will be discussing today, Gruul’s Lair. Where are all these guys getting their lairs? Anyhow, honestly Gruul’s lair is going to be a pretty busy place, the two bosses inside are considered to be pretty simple and straightforward. And despite being some of the easiest raid bosses in the game their still more than a fair amount of powerful loot up for grabs.  These two bosses are great entry level raids for players who buy WoW TBC accounts and want to hone their skills before Serpentshrine Caverns.

            Now, and this is very important, just because it’s easy doesn’t mean that you don’t have to give it your full attention. Absent-minded or nonobservant players can easily give a raid a shove in the wrong direction that could be all but impossible to recover from. So we are going to give a breakdown of how the two bosses in this raid work. Even if you are a veteran, there is no harm in doing a bit of a brush-up. Pride comes before the wipe, as the old saying goes.

            To start, I will say that both of these bosses are considered so easy that you don’t really need to be too concerned with party composition. Like, obviously you will need the essentials, healers, tanks, the whole 9 yards. But it mostly works on whatever composition works best for everyone. Not a lot of nasty surprises, but as I said, tanks, healers, DPS all of this stuff is still important, you are just not likely to suffer a catastrophic loss if you have a small majority in any of the build types.

            The first boss, High King Maulgar, is actually considered the harder of the two bosses. He does require some coordination to defeat, but just a little bit of it. His power mostly comes from summoning four adds into the battle. The key to defeating him primarily relies on the players killing the adds in the correct order.

            The first add you want to take down is Blindeye the Seer. He is a healer and killing him first will make the rest of the fight so much easier.   

            Next is Olm the summoner. Not as troublesome as a healer could be, but taking him out of the fight to minimize the reinforcements that are working against you should be high on your priority list.

            Kiggler the Crazed is next but should mostly be attacked at range as he has an ability that activated based on the number of people in his vicinity. If a balance druid is available then it is recommended that they take on Kiggler as they are immune to one of his most frequently cast spells, Greater Polymorph, and a balance shaman can tank this add one on one.

            Lastly, for adds we have Krosh Firehand. Krosh is a magic user that should be tanked against a mage with high health, more than 9000 at least. This tanking will minimize the damage as the Mage’s stats will disrupt much of Krosh’s spellwork. Players, however, cannot stop 100% of enemy spells so players tanking Krosh should be able to soak 9K+ once if they want the healers to be able to top them off afterward.

            And that just leaves High King Mauglar. In comparison to the chaos of the previous adds, the king himself is pretty straightforward in a fight. His mechanics can be minimized by either running away or having a competent tank. And just like that, in no time at all, you will have defeat half of the bosses in the raid and picked yourself up some rather nice loot for your troubles.

            But what about the latter half of this gru(ul)esome twosome, the namesake of the lair himself, Gruul the Dragonkiller. He is going to be the hard one right, after all, you probably had a fairly easy time of dealing with Mauglar. Actually, no, Mauglar is considered the harder of the two fights. Gruul is just as straightforward but with none of the troublesome adds. Again, that isn’t to say there is no way you can lose. Just that as long as you pay a bit of attention to the situation you should be able to coast on through without breaking much of a sweat.

            So, what do you need to pay attention to when it comes to taking down Gruul? Two abilities in particular. First is his growth ability. This buff is literally going to increase his size by 10%, as well as increase his damage by 15%. So while this isn’t a big deal initially, it can quickly grow into some serious tank-slaying potential if you aren’t paying attention. The good news is his strength directly correlates to his size, so you have a good visual reminder to help you keep track of that.

            The second thing you need to keep tabs on is a pair of abilities that combo together. The first is Ground Slam, an attack that launches all the players into the air and inflicts a debuff called Gronn Lord’s Grasp which will slow your movement speed. Five stacks of this debuff will make it so you cannot move and set you up for the second part of this combo. When Gruul casts shatter it will deal damage to all your allies within your vicinity. It’s some devastating stuff, but again the good news is it has a key weakness. There is enough room in this fight to just get the heck away from anyone who is stoned before shatter goes off. Simple, maybe, but if it keeps you alive that is what’s important.

            And there you have it. It may be one of the easier raids in WoW but that doesn’t mean someone couldn’t use a bit of helpful advice out there. And that is advice that we don’t mind handing out when we can. Enjoy your (relatively) easy loot and just try to think of us every once in a while when your new trinkets pop off.