(H)Gundrak: anyone done this with something besides 4 shamans?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I tried a few strats on my druids today and I cannot heal through the Elemental boss's poison/mojo puddles that drop every 2 seconds AND dps at the same time. Just not happening. I'd love to hear from someone without the cookie-cutter shammy group that's multiboxed it.

[nathanmnm]

My high lvl group (all been 80 for a few months now) is Druid (TK) Priest (HL) Lock/Mage/Hunter and gundarak was the first instance I ever did in heroic. That boss is rather hard to move about on but I do the following

leave all the dps/group in the same spot (if u look at the area u fight the boss on when u first approach him as a clock with numbers round the edge then i position the group at about 5 oclock)

tank him infront of the group such that u can move both sidways and front/back while still being in range for healing/dps.

when u get the aoe it will be on the entire group so u move - initialy to the left, then forward then right, right and then back (and then make it up, group will start to get split by this point anyway)

The water elemental has limited HP so u dont need uber dps even if u can only cast for half the time, my toons now all have over 2.2k susstained dps but i have been able to down him since they were at about 1.5k or so

I guess the key thing for my group is the healer (priest) he is weak and gets one shotted often in hc however he has pretty good group heals (I use the glyph of holy nova and a castsequence CoH/nova/nova/nova macro so I can spam while moving (comes in handy any time there is aoe as u can move while healing the entire party for about 3k every 1.5s e.g. last boss in VH with the blizzard) Also the PoM is rather effective for when the entire party is taking damage.

Without the instant aoe heal i doubt i could realiable kill this boss tbh. I have tried splitting the group such that only one or two get hit by the aoe however u end up moving other ppl into their pools pretty quickley which i found to cause more problems than just leaving the entire group together - moving whenever hit by the aoe and using instant group heals while moving.

Sorry if this is a waste of ur time as it relies on having a priest, but its the only way I can fight him (as I have a priest healer in my lvl 80 group)

Toons (Hellscream UK) -

Team A (lvl 80s) Greenday (druid tank), Sviatoubiach (lock, affi), Nstar (priest, healer), Decrypt (mage, frost), Encrypt (huntard, surv)

Team B Recrypt (pala tank, 76), Inuet (shammy1 ele/resto, lvl 74), incamoo/indianmoo/escimoo (shammy2,3,4 ele/resto, lvl 73)

[nathanmnm]

If you want a laugh then look up my toons on the armory and check how many times they have downed the gundarak hc boss's - i spent quite a bit if time farming in there for rep and the dps ring from the last boss (for the hunter and the druid dps set).

[Tdog]

I've done it on my 5xPaladins. You can dps while kiting around with melee, It's still an annoying amount of AoE damage though and I have to really burn the hell out of him.

[Stealthy]

I set my druid 5 group up the same way as Hachoo did for his shams in this video:

Hachoo - DK Tank + 4 Elemental Shamans ('http://www.vonderbecke.net/files/wow/movies/Hachoo-HGundrak-Bosses.avi')

I.e., Tank in the middle, casters around the outside.

My setup is one feral, 4 x balance. During this fight I don't use moonkin form at all. Make sure you have Improved MotW / GotW up before you pull - the 75 nature resist is a must for this fight.

1. Make sure Rejuv is up on all toons at all time, even if they are at full health - this is your ghetto healing stream. Use Nourish to spot heal where necessary (Nourish gets a 20% bonus to heal if a HoT is on the target already).

2. At about 60% pop Treants - this is to pick up the boss when he goes into elemental phase, and give you time to initially move your other toons out of the mojo. Have your tank pick up the elemental as soon as possible.

3. During elemental phase make sure you keep moving all your toons out of the mojo - binding keys to make all alts strafe or move backwards / forwards helps a lot here, as you will need to move them several times during this phase. Watch health closely.

4. Burn the elemental down during the 2nd elemental phase - I normally save barkskin and Starfall for this phase, that way you are still doing DPS even while moving.

This is a pretty healing / mana intesive fight - I usually find I need to pop an innvervate towards the end of 2nd colossus phase.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,

S.

[KvdM]

I've cleared it with the following group:
- warrior tank
- shaman dps
- druid dps
- hunter dps
- paladin healer

For me this fight is relatively easy, because my group stacks a lot of stamina/health buffs + the hunter provides nature resistance. Healing through the aoe is a simple matter of casting flash heals on the dps and the beacon of light auto-heals the tank. When the boss switches to elemental mode for the first time, I pop bloodlust and burn him down as quickly as possible to reduce the aoe damage. I also have a key that makes the dps take a step back (and makes the tank charge). I use this key to simply step out of the puddles every few seconds. And if all else fails, I pop tranquility on the druid and the group should be back to full health :)

[Ronin]

i have done with 5 palas normal geared 1 tank+4retri normal mode...
my successful approach is been this:
keep boss in golem phase till we all full healed or so then...kill the golem and start elemental phase with all cooldown used (a real dps rush). in this way worked easily after 3 4 wipes. redone yesterday, it was easy.

[Taliesin]

I've done him with:

Prot Pali (tank)
Arc Mage
Aff Lock -or- Bal Druid
Ele Shaman
Holy Priest (healer)

The priest is was makes this a cakewalk for me, so my strategy obviously won't work the same for other healers, but a resto druid should be close with the group HoTs. I just spread out in the first circular platform before him, about 10 yards which is enough to reduce the water elemental surge (charge) damage to a minimum, then pull him to the center. Drop a nature resist totem (very important). I just use Prayer of Healing (big group heal) every once in a while during the water phases, and just big heals directly on the tank during the golem phases. Just need to taunt at the start of each phase since there are aggro drops. I don't move except on the tank, since the priest has always been able to keep up with the healing with the totem down.

My shaman will also be alternated with hunter later on (currently level 62), which still provides me with a nature resist aspect for things like this.

Gift of the Wild provides at least some nature resist to the group, but obviously not as much as the totem (like 54-75 resist compared to 120 resist).

[Catamer]

I did this non-heroic mode version of this with 5x pally no problems, the last boss was the hard fight for a 5x pally.
my pallys are 79 so I'll be trying this very soon.

[Malekyth]

I did it with pally - 3 demo/destro locks - priest. The lack of nature resistance totems makes it murder, and it was messy and awful and I seem to remember that neither the priest nor pally survived it, but it's doable!

[Greythan]

Probably done this fight 25 times.

Was the hardest to get a repetitive strategy for me.

That said, my keys:

1) Nature resistance
2) AE healing of priest (although not required as I think any multi-toon healing strat can work)
3) Aggro management (transition through phases)

Number three was my toughest issue. Once I got that down, I might lose one DPS in the fight. Once you get geared in a bunch of level 200 blues from Gundrak and other heroics, this gets pretty trivial (in my experience).

[jimbobobb]

I think most of you make this fight way harder than it is. The puddles do not do enough damage that they require moving out of. Simply spread your guys out a bit, and put their backs against the wall opposite the boss. I'm not sure how you have your druids set up, but speccing one into wild growth makes this fight a joke. Alternatively, having the druids simply rotate tranquility through the two elemental phases would be more than enough. (have two cast it during the first phase and 2 during the second phase)

My group:
Prot Pally
Resto Druid
2 X arcane mage
elemental shaman

I don't even bother with nature resist totem here. I simply put wild growth into my normal healing rotation so that my druid casts it whenever it is up. That alone keeps all of my guys alive. Perhaps if your guys have a bit of a problem with gear, that plus rejuv would be more than enough. Don't bother moving them - just heal through the puddles. Non-stop DPS and ensure that you smack the elemental the moment it gets spit out.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I don't even bother with nature resist totem here. I simply put wild growth into my normal healing rotation so that my druid casts it whenever it is up. That alone keeps all of my guys alive. Perhaps if your guys have a bit of a problem with gear, that plus rejuv would be more than enough. Don't bother moving them - just heal through the puddles. Non-stop DPS and ensure that you smack the elemental the moment it gets spit out.Thanks. After reading this I got to looking at the combat logs. With tauren resist nature plus GotW resists, the puddle was only ticking for about 380 a second, which is less than wild growth by a fair bit. After switching my macros on the bear a bit to control the added wild growth aggro from spamming it and adding WG to the standard rotation so it's up every time the timer is up, I finally managed to down it. Only took one try after switching the strategery. (Note the skeletons in the background.) Woot! :)
http://ugh.scaredsheep.com/wow/DrakkariColossus.jpg

Thanks again. ;)

[edit] Gundrak Heroic cleared. :D:D:D

[Stealthy]

I have two manned every boss with a Paladin and a Resto Shaman. So... ya. :)

Just curious, what spec was your pally when you did this? The boss fights must have taken forever with just two people...

I remember watching a holy paly solo Sarathstra one time...took him about 10 minutes, but he did it easily....

Cheers,

S.

[Zappy]

I recently started farming this on my 5 druids in trinity form (feral, tree, 3xboomkin). The key is to space your toons out far enough from each other to where the puddles don't overlap, then you can simply heal through it. The first half the fight, i use the occassional wild growth, then I found that dropping my treants during the second half of the fight made it extremely easy, and I just dps like normal. I don't even use wild growth til the very end. When my dps and tree starts to get low on health, I cast Tranquility, and that's usually more than enough heals for the fight.

Currently, I can farm heroic UT Keep, Gundrak, and Drak'tharon by skipping the second boss. If anybody has any good strategies for this one with 5 druids, I'd love to hear that one.

I'm guessing Nexus should be pretty easy as well, i just haven't got around to trying it yet.

--
Druids:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hakkar&n=Larrÿ

Shammys:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hakkar&n=Zappyzap

[Tdog]

Protection. Yes, it takes freaking forever - I highly recommend keeping your DPS toons alive to avoid this method. lol (bad pulls before bosses, dps dies and I pull the boss anyway type of thing). I like to do speed runs, but sometimes I push too hard.LoL. Same here, I'm constantly dying on stupid crap, usually pulling too many groups at once but then on the boss fights I one shot em w/o losing anyone.

[jimbobobb]

Currently, I can farm heroic UT Keep, Gundrak, and Drak'tharon by skipping the second boss. If anybody has any good strategies for this one with 5 druids, I'd love to hear that one.

I'm guessing Nexus should be pretty easy as well, i just haven't got around to trying it yet.

Again, I find most people simply overthink this stuff. I just put my guys against the wall opposite the stairs. I put wild growth into my rotation for when he is active, and I strafe my group out of the blizzard (keep them stacked on top of each other and just strafe when he starts casting blizzard - it has a cast time). If you just kept starfall up, would it take care of the tiny adds? I aoe on my mages, but am honestly not sure if just your starfall would be enough, or if you would need to use hurricane or such.

Other stuff I simply brute force with aoe healing:

I just use wild growth to survive the second bosses aoe lightning beams in the occulus. Just sit my guys in one spot, have them all take the aoe when it comes around, and use wild growth whenever it's off cooldown. Never moving your guys and just eating the aoe means he dies super fast.

Same deal with Loken in Halls of Lightning. Take the aoe, just smash on heals on the group, nuke nuke nuke.

This kind of stuff might take a bit of gear, but I was definitely killing all of gundrak and drak'theron when I was newly 80 still wearing greens (WIld growth is stupidly good)

[KvdM]

Again, I find most people simply overthink this stuff. I just put my guys against the wall opposite the stairs. I put wild growth into my rotation for when he is active, and I strafe my group out of the blizzard (keep them stacked on top of each other and just strafe when he starts casting blizzard - it has a cast time). If you just kept starfall up, would it take care of the tiny adds? I aoe on my mages, but am honestly not sure if just your starfall would be enough, or if you would need to use hurricane or such.
Just spread out your group and you don't even have to strafe out of the blizzard. Just heal the one character that ends up in the blizzard.

[thegdr]

Group = protection tank, 3 arcane mages, resto shaman

Gundrak = 4/5 bosses are cake for me, poison spitting elemental causes me fits. I'm probably only successful 30-40% of the time on him. My key is I pass through the backspace key and try and back out of poison. My dps is getting close to the point that I could probably just not move. We just the nature resistance/mage armor I still take a lot of damage from the poison

I have completed Gundrak, Nexus, Drak'Tharan(skip 2nd boss), Utgarde Keep, killed bosses is almost all of the heroics

My quick daily rotation is gunrak 3 bosses(moorabi,eck,snake guy), utgarde all the way through, about an 60 mins total, Once I get this dang fight figured out I would like to make a full clearing of gunrak/uk my rotation.

[DLoweinc]

Mixed group here (disc priest, prot pali, elemental shaman, arcane mage, moonkin)

I just spread them out against the rail in the room before that boss (elemental boss in Gundrak), the one that is the corridor between the rooms prior and the rest of the instance.

Then i just strafe left after the first puddle and strafe right after the second. I have a few aol heals if i need them, but i tend not to need them anymore.