The current tank turns attack off at ~10 stacks if needed, so you mostly end up with 12-15 stacks when he switches.

While Dots is right that 2 is still certainly do-able. I would recommend 3 to anyone learning the fight and really anyone in general. As you can see by my complaining above, I had reached the end of my rope on this fight. Last night we went back to 3 tanks for the first time in months and brought in an extra healer. It was a one-shot. I really think it is the safe way to go. Now to kill Illidan tonight and collect some free loot.

Edited: to remove my offending language. Sorry about that moderators.

We found that adding a 3rd tank caused us more problems than just leaving it at 2. Last night we had a 1 shot for our 3rd kill running with 9 healers and 2 tanks. Now that our DPS and healers are getting more comfortable on the fight things are going a bit smoother. If you are having your tanks call for a BoP when Fel Acid stacks too high, tank damage is reasonable and you should never really have any problems. Adding in a 3rd tank just introduces another person that needs healing, another person that DPS have to stay below in threat, and one more person who isn't really contributing much to the encounter (in terms of raw dps/healing). Obviously you have to go with what works for you, we've tried both and have much more success with the 2 tank approach.

We used 2 tanks since our first pull on him and have never seen the disorient followed by knock back wipe, so it's safe to say that it has a really low chance of happening that I wouldn't consider it when talking about two vs three tanks on him. With two tanks we are usually able to switch around 13-15 stacks.

High stacks isn't really as big a deal as people make it sound like. This week our OT disconnected on the pull and came back around 10 seconds after the first fel rage was over so I ended up tanking two full phases. I hit 24 stacks at one point and it was healable. All other switches were at around 12-15 stacks as normal pre patch.

Before we started coordinating BoP's one of our tanks got up to around 39 stacks.. I think he said he was taking 12,000 dmg a tick.. that was a bit ridiculous to heal through. But I agree.. use BoP to force that tank change at about 13 stacks, make sure no one is even close to either tank (down about 10% in threat from the non tanking tank) in threat and just keep the heals up.

We are trying Gurtogg for the first time tonight and I'm planning on using the following setup - It would be great if a guild that is farming Gurtogg could comment whether there are any serious mistakes:

Group 1 (Tankgroup):
Prot-Warrior
Prot-Warrior
Feral
Resto-Shaman
Holy-Paladin

Group 2 (Meleegroup):
Fury-Warrior
Enh.-Shaman
Rogue
Rogue
Rogue

Group 3 (Bloodboil 1)
Pala
Pala
Holy-Priest
Shadow-Priest
Resto-Druid

Group 4 (Bloodboil 2)
Warlock
Warlock
Hunter
Holy-Priest
Resto-Shaman

Group 5 (Bloodboil 3)
Hunter
Mage
Shadow
Resto-Druid
Mage

I know that group set-up can vary a lot for this encounter, I just want to make sure that this setup can work (9 Healers, 3 Tanks, 2 Shadows)

Thanks! I will switch the shadow.

As to healing assignments:
During Fel Rage I want the G1 Restoshaman and one Restodruid to look after the tanks. Both priests and all three paladins aided by the second shaman will heal the fel rage target.

This leaves one restodruid to keep up the raid (don't know how much healing is needed for the remaining two groups with BB).

You will go into FR with 2 BBs on the raid; one with ~10 seconds left and one with ~20 seconds left. I don't think a resto druid will be able to outheal this. What we do is to have the holy priests heal the BB with CoH or PoH. The resto druids can mostly keep the off-tanks up during the entire encounter with stacking Lifeblooms. This will leave you with 3 paladins, 2 shamans and 2 Lifeblooms stacks on the FR tank. One priest will join after 10 seconds also. You should probably assign one shaman to heal melee/tanks that get Fel Acid.

Are you serious? I can keep my group up through 2 BB quite easily as a resto druid. 1 rejuv on all of them before it hits and cycle through 2 lifeblooms. CoH priests request not to be put in the double BB group as near the end of the fight they are blowing dust while I'm near 20% mana and that is while keeping a 3 stack rolling lifebloom on the MT. Resto druids are by far the best BB healers in terms of raw healing and efficiency.


To Bronwyn:

He can be taken down the way you have groups set up but I would switch all of your MT healers into group 2 with the shadow priest. That way they don't have to worry about moving back and forth and can focus 100% on keeping heals up on the tanks. Throw the enh shaman in with the tanks. Sure are you losing some DPS? Yes but having that extra survivability because your healers are able to just worry about healing is well worth it. I would also switch out one of the prot warriors for anything else.. maybe another healer (or shadow priest if you've got one). This fight is extremely easy to tank with just 2 tanks. Telling your players that they will have to stay under all 3 tanks will reduce dps a fair amount (have 1 prot war start tanking and your feral take the first arcing smash to get his rage started). Dps will be higher guaranteed. Have your tanks call out for a BoP at 13-15 acid stacks to force a change preferably when it's about to wear off. Make sure to use amp magic on everyone. Good luck =)

Well after I made my last post asking about the super stacking of debuffs we went back in the next night prepared for the change and one shot him. Actually due to who was online at the time we had 4 tanks, 2 prot warriors and 2 feral druids. We one shot him with 4.5 minutes until enrage with 4 tanks and 8 healers. It definately makes the tank switching rougher but it is doable.

Someone asked about fel rage people getting hit harder/faster and I say yes we have noticed that. We used to not lose anyone to fel rage and the last two weeks we have had a very hard time keeping people alive sometimes and looking over the logs we have seen people taking anywhere from 25-40k damage in 1-2 seconds when they die. We just soulstone the person who gets fel rage and hope for the best. We run with 4 warlocks so between soulstones, combat rezzes and self rezzes we have always been able to keep the entire raid up.

Thottbot World of Warcraft: Fury
Thottbot World of Warcraft: Fury

He casts this on himself during Fel Rage. Not sure how it works, but I'm guessing it's a chance per hit thing. If he stacks this up fast in the beginning, you might end up in trouble.

Yah mages are a bit painful as fel rage targets. It can be done but it is hard. Holy priests are tough as well. One night where we wiped repeatedly one of our 2 holy priests got Fel Rage 7 times and not once did it hit one of our 3 rogues. Sounds like you are almost there. Good luck!

The healing requirement on this fight really is a bit ridiculous and could do with toning down.

It really isn't that bad. We do it quite comfortable with 8 healers and 2 shadow priests, that shouldn't be too bad for most guilds to get. Improved VE is really good for this fight btw, we have our shadowpriests competing with our healers for most healing done. We put our shadow priests in the bloodboil groups that go twice per round.

We use a similar strategy. How are your shadow priests for threat though? Ours are constantly having problems

Im using Fetish of the Sand Reaver - Items - World of Warcraft as a shadow priest on bloodboil and it allows me to keep VE non stop on , assuming you are using 3 tanks. Also make sure your priest is grouped with a shammy using tranq totem instead of WoA

We are still experiencing problems with our tanksetup - sometimes switches don't work (I guess that's a matter of experience) and sometimes one of them dies during fel rage (I guess that's a matter of healer assignment).

We have healed fel raged priests and one lock successfully, but we -always- failed to keep up our icemage (who got rel raged roughly 6-8 times during the night).

Unfortunately, in our 7% wipe, we hit the enrage timer

One thing that I observed is that tank communication over vent is essential for this fight. When our tanks were more proactive in managing their aggro and acid-wound stacks, the fight became a lot more manageable. Some really helpful calls our MT made:

#1: BoP on tanks when their acid-dot is too high to reduce aggro
#2: Calls on the current Gurtogg MT to stop attacking if they get too high in threat
#3: Misdirect on tanks whose aggro is too low
#4: Extra heals on tanks that have just swapped off with high number of acid-wounds stacks.

Are you still running with 4 tanks? Try 2 tanks.. really it is the way to go. Your healers will always know who to heal (tanks call for a BoP at about 13 stacks). Your DPSers don't have to stay so low on threat then as well and can put out considerably more dmg. We run some threat capped DPSers with only 2 tanks.. I can't imagine using 4 or tbh even 3. Drop 2 tanks add 2 dps. Your healing is obviously fine since you can keep people up until the enrage timer.

Here is what I posted before:

I would switch all of your MT healers into group 2 with the shadow priest. That way they don't have to worry about moving back and forth and can focus 100% on keeping heals up on the tanks. Throw the enh shaman in with the tanks for agi totem (dodging those cleaves acts dual purpose as it reduces damage inc and stops fel acid from being applied as often). Sure are you losing some DPS? Yes but having that extra survivability because your healers are able to just worry about healing is well worth it. I would also switch out one of the prot warriors for anything else.. maybe another healer (or shadow priest if you've got one). This fight is extremely easy to tank with just 2 tanks. Telling your players that they will have to stay under all 3 tanks will reduce dps a fair amount (have 1 prot war start tanking and your feral take the first arcing smash to get his rage started). Dps will be higher guaranteed. Have your tanks call out for a BoP at 13-15 acid stacks to force a change preferably when it's about to wear off. Make sure to use amp magic on everyone.

Thanks - he's down. We used 3 Tanks, 10 Healers, 2 Shadows. Well, it worked for us. Took us around 6hours of attempts.

Your post seem to assume that his raid has a lot of paladin healers and no shaman healers.

Another data point for you, killed him for the first time tonight:
2 tanks (bears)
9 healers (with an obscene number of sp's making up for the fact that one of our healers was a prot pally).
-B