Following the nerf to Gruul my raid decided we should give it a go. From everything I have read about the nerf, almost everyone should be able to kill him now. However, in our attempts we were having some issues and I believe they were dps related.

Currently, our dps players are quite varied, some have gone with pvp spec for their arena team while others have opted to go for a more pve oriented spec for raid progress. Just about everyone of these players are in roughly 1/2 karazhan level equipment (We've been clearing Nightbane for about 4 weeks in our 2 groups), with the rest being blues from the lvl 70 instances.

The reason I am making this post is that I have not been able to find any type of number range for where dps classes should fall into.

On average, during our attempts, the top two players would be the only ones doing over 600dps, with the number 2 player being just barely over 600 dps (#1 was around 650). Both of these were our two fire mages. Our warlocks (affliction) ranged from 380 to 550dps and our shadow priests were roughly #8 and #10 in damage, which I was told these should be the classes in the top spots. Just want to edit in that the difference in the warlock with 380dps and the warlock doing 550 dps was that the warlock doing 550 was using maximum consumables and getting to about +1100 shadow damage.

At 10 growths we would be at about 50% - 45% health remaining on gruul, with our tank dying during reverberations after the 12th growth. In our best attempt we were down to 28% left at the 14th growth. We are using 6 healers, 2 tanks, and the rest as DPS.

There is a very nice, and very long topic on that exact subject right here:

Sustained DPS

The most helpful thing you can do is /combatlog before a fight and post it using WoWWebStats. http://www.lossendil.fr/serendipity/
If comparing that to other WWS reports in the last few pages of the Sustained DPS thread doesn't clue *you* in to individual performances, you can post it here for others' critiques too.

We got our first kill at 15-16 growths (last few seconds was pretty intense, im not sure if he got the 16th growth off or not). Some of your numbers, the shadow priest and especially the warlock with 1100+ damage, are way way low. However, if these people are dieing early, or spending a lot of time bandaging/life stealing after shatters, that would adversely effect their dps.

As some people have noticed, Gruul is not the best fight to gauge dps, because its a movement fight. Patchwerk, the original fight discussed in the 'sustained dps' thread, was good for checking dps for many reasons. First, it was in, most senses, threat less. Second, the target was stationary, and players too had no reason to move. Gruul does not have these parameters, and thus makes it more difficult to judge a guilds individuals performance just based on some rough numbers. Your dpsers numbers could be being effected heavily by a flawed, or at least, weak strategy being employed by the raid. Or they might just suck, but its not terribly easy to tell.

If your in an "average" guild then the rumors of a free loot gruul are greatly exagerated.
How much are you potting on your 20-30% tries?
Because as we all know an unpotted 30% attempt becomes a kill with pots and flasks.
While it does suck to have to do it that way its something you might have to resort to (we had many people pot up for our first kill, and im guessing the same for our subsequent ones, although we didnt have "required flasking").

We don't need another Gruul thread. Take the convo to an existing thread.