http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...85661942&sid=1

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...13300&sid=1#12

Gruul no longer uses Hurtful Strike, and Shatter damage has been reduced substantially. As an added bonus, Hydross is now incapable of crushing. No changes to Magtheridon yet. /cheer

It would seem according to the hotfix thread, that the non-use of Hurtful Strike is not intended, and is being fixed. Still, combined with the other changes, that should ease the bottleneck for guilds to get into the raid game, and also ease the worries about Mandatory Consumables on this fight.

Now just get him some voice-acting or at least more interesting emotes ...

Specifically, quoted from Eyonix:

Did they go overboard with the nerf? I'm hearing 1k damage max on shatter.....

No way. He's a primal force, I don't want any stupid voice acting laming him up.

That's what we experienced tonight, yes. It's difficult to tell from my guild's perspective (our sixth kill now, I think), but it seems that he might be the easier of the two encounters in the zone now.

ugh.
We had him at 5% last week and now they nerf it.
Much as I'll enjoy a less stupid fight, I feel cheated.

EL OH EL.

I can't believe how much they nerfed this.

I would say it's more like 100x easier. They basicly ruined anything at all interesting about him and how he's just a simple DPS fight with a mechanic you have to actually strive against in order to fail.

Whiteknight, I agree. I wiped on 2% last week with him and then couldn't make it the next night when we killed him. I'm disappointed.

Whiteknight: No offense, but everyone had plenty of time to do it the old way. And we all knew this was coming and necessary. All I'm thinking is 1k max shatter... you'd have to have almost the entire raid standing on top of each other to wipe at this point. This would make him a free kill.

Well, if you started with a ready-made guild maybe.
Anway - I just feel a little let down, even though I totally agree with you.

Currently attempting him now, changes I've noticed:

No more hurtfuls,
Shatter max damage is 4k it like it was halved
His hitpoints are around 4.35million (not sure what it was previously)

Should have a kill tonight, I'll post anything else I notice different.

Well, it seems as if they held to their word. Gruul's really is an Ony style dungeon now.

Just killed him, ridiculously easy now. We went in on our first run and called a group hug wipe at 20% with zero expendables so we could get a few melee that needed attunement in. We then killed him with zero deaths.

They went massively overboard. I really can't believe they removed the hurtful strike component, it really wasn't that hard to deal with and at least added a bit of a challenge.

Wow this seems a little overboard. My guild is the only horde one on IC that has killed him, and now it looks like 4 or 5 others should get him this week easily, some of which have never even attempted him although they farm Maulgar every week.

We knew it was coming, but this would really trivialize the fight. If Magtheridon gets hit just as hard, I suppose the new hardest fight pre-SSC will be.... Illhoof? /sigh

The hotfix thread said that Gruul should now be applying Hateful Strike again, but the health and shatter changes are for real.

I wonder if this is something they intended to do all along, or if the Vashj uproar moved the Gruul fix up?

Gruul is supposed to be the Onynia of Outlands (which over 30% of the playerbase has killed), so I am not surprised that the huge nerf.

1k max damage is a myth. I stood directly on top of someone and took around 7k damage in berserker stance, so I guess that's around 56-5700 max now. Still, makes it completely trivial.

The nerf sounds almost silly, but I can't say I'm entirely displeased. We've been pretty frustrated having to throw away money to kill him every week just to get 1-2 people keyed. Now it'll be much less of a chore.

Just killed him 5 minutes ago. Not too bad now at all! The HP change isn't much. The Shatter change however is huge... distance which would previously get you hit for 7000 damage now does maybe 2000. He feels very in line for an entry level raid boss now.

You can land with 3-4~ others and still survive. That's how much they nerfed the Shatter dmg. As far as his melee dmg, at 13-14~ growths the tank's health wasn't spiky at all really.