I tank the door side adds and even though I do have a much easier time picking up the adds I take more damage than a feral on the opposite side. We don't CC any mobs, so Beserks really hurt me. Had to stack enough avoidance/block value to make it possible. It allows us to bring 3 paladins to the fight without a ret paladin. Also helps on the caster side keeping up wisdom on every mob and never having issues losing agro on Beserkers. I think I get ~60% avoidance and now close to 30% mitigation but unless you stun Besekers it's going to be a problem living through those 3.3k melee swings.

Again the problems you are putting forth aren't a result of the fight. It is a result of your guild not having enough backups to fill in gaps when someone is missing. Which being on a PVE server, I can understand, because the long farmmode of T6 wore out alot of people, and recruiting on PVE servers sucks, alot. But Blizzard tunes fights for ideal scenarios, where they assume that top guilds have the roster to complete the fight. There is nothing wrong with a fight being impossible without the raid meeting certain requirements, because within those requirements there is alot of flexibility on class makeup. There are plenty of fights that required X amount of tanks in the past, and pretty much all DPS checks favor having more shamans in the raid.

I'm completely agreeing with you that the need for shamans has become outrageous, because they literally make or break fights because of how unbeleivably powerful Chain Heal and Heroism/Bloodlust are. But again, that is not a result of the encounter, the encounter is tuned perfectly for what guilds who are up to him are expected to have available to them. Like I've said before Blizzard fucked up badly with how long it took them to release Sunwell, alot of guilds lost alot of players, and as a result EVERYONE was/is recruiting, making getting good apps that much harder, and I'm not going to get into how ridiculous recruiting on PVE servers is.

The main problems with M'uru is not the encounter itself, it is the attrition that sooo many guilds have faced entering Sunwell, resulting in wasting alot of gear on people who quit, which then forces the guilds to regear new recruits instead of getting players offspec/alt gear, such as DPS gear for healers, tank gear for pallies, etc. Any guild who didn't suffer severe attrition during the grind, or had great luck with recruits, has mains with multiple sets of T6 gear capable of fulfilling multiple roles, and that is who M'uru is perfectly tuned for. Unfortunatly, for a significant portion the thousands of guilds who were farming BT, that is not the case.

DING DING DING

I disagree, in my opinion this is the definition of "perfectly tuned." You can do it with 25 but not with 24. That's the whole idea of tuning -- not too hard, not too easy, just right.

BT fights were doable with 20, that's stupid. They were all too easy. People were saying you never had to adjust your raid group, and you could just take the same 25 through the entire instance, I think that's a flaw. In order for a fight to actually be difficult, it has to require a precise raid group. That's not to say everyone has to bring the same precise raid group (As you can see by all the different m'uru strats), I just think everything should come down to the wire where one missing link is a wipe. That is tight tuning, and that is m'uru, and these are the fights that I like.

Requiring 3 of any class or any role isn't too much to ask. Felmyst requires 3 priests, do you think that's a ridiculous thing to ask for? Before everyone figured out the ledge strat for twins, and everyone thought you needed 5 or more resto shamans for that fight, that was a problem. We brought 6 resto shamans to our first twins kill. That is stupid. That is something to complain about. But 3 shamans, and they can be any spec you want? Two warriors and one druid, or vice versa? This just doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Obviously it sucks that you don't have very many shamans, but that's a recruitment issue, not something to blame on the fight. If anything, blame it on blizzard being stupid with the whole pve/pvp transfer issue. All healers should not be interchangeable, and by that I mean, if a fight requires 8 healers, you should not be able to bring any 8 healers. Certain classes excel at different things, and you should bring the class that will excel the most at each role.

Eh I don't mean doing the fight with 24 people. I'm saying that if I log on and we have our group composition off by 1 key class then we probably should just hang up our hats and try again tomorrow. If we have 4 hunters but only 2 or 3 shaman then we probably shouldn't even bother trying. I don't see class composition as difficulty. You aren't a good player or a good raid because you have the correct class composition. You could take the best players in the world and they would struggle and possibly fail at M'uru with an improper raid composition.

I will respectfully disagree. With the exception of shaman all healers are interchangeable (don't say paladins, blessings can be botted.) Healers should be interchangeable because that allows you to have difficult fights whilst allowing a loosely typed raid group.

I'll stop derailing this though, I don't mean to. This is probably better discussed in the tuning thread, carry on M'uru fans!

Also don't get me wrong I feel M'uru is an excellent fight, it is just frustrating at one point or another for probably 90% of people who have seen it.

I agree with this 100%, but there is an inherent problem with the concept of raid makeup. All classes are not the same. If it was doable with any composition, then wouldn't it be too easy with the "right" composition? If you could just throw any 4 good dpsers at a doorway, get a good tank, get a good healer, and then that would work, then wouldn't it be too easy if you actually had the ideal group? (feral druid, resto shaman, 2x rogue, dps warrior, enh shaman) Obviously on the surface the idea of class composition doesn't equal difficulty, its just the idea that if any group makeup can do it, then it is too easy with the best group makeup.

Therein lies the problem. If they can ever figure out how to make a fight difficult without raid stacking then it will be the best fight wow has ever had. I appreciate the back and forth on this, certainly understand your points of view. I apologize if my frustrations with this particular fight are seeping into my arguments, but I felt the same way back at the end of Naxxramas when we had to recruit 3 warriors and 3-odd healers to finish the zone, etc. It is a recurring problem.

We haven't killed M'uru yet so it's certainly possible my opinion is flawed, but I really disagree with the whole, "you need the perfect raid composition to have a chance at M'uru". Summer slack had some toll on our raiding so we only had a few full nights at him, usually lacking the classes we wanted to take, too, but there's definitely more than one or two "perfect" setups that would work for killing him, both in terms of DPS and healing. You don't 'need' 5+ shamans to kill him, you don't 'need' 2 stacked melee groups to kill him, etc.

I can see how certain raid setups could be slightly preferred over other, but it's not really a problem - if your guild can afford to sustain 50 raiding accounts and keep them all geared to have every possible raid comp available to you, more power to you. Otherwise, chances are the fewer raiding players you have, the better gear they have on them - so the less choice in raid setup you have, the more your superior gear can make up for.

edit: the absolute need for Prot Paladin, I don't really have a problem with as the pala doesn't need superior gear and even if you don't have one regulary, you can have a Holy one respec. Same for the whole 4 tanks argument, my guild doesn't even HAVE 4 raiding tanks, we had our DPS warrior spec prot for this fight and it's working just fine; the point I'm trying to make, sure going from 10 or even 11 healer Twins to 5-6 healer M'uru is a vast change in raid setup, but the one thing it teaches us is that people need to gear their "offspecs" better, and be ready to perform in more than one role - which I think is a great thing, anyway.

I think what this and Twins could have used is what Trouble pointed out a while back - the healing requirements of both encounters could have been brought closer together without nerfing them simply by decreasing the raid damage on Twins but chopping a couple minutes off the enrage timer and increasing the raid healing requirements of phase 1 M'uru while reducing the health of the adds a little.

My understanding on the shamans score is that they are for phase 2. The power of bloodlust in a 90-second DPS burn and healing scramble is understandably immense. This isn't a problem with M'uru though, it's a problem with what shaman bring to the raid as compared to what other healers bring to the raid.

Shamans are also phenomenal healers for P1; depending on your positioning, they will dominate everyone except your Resto Druids. The DPS benefits of totems over 6+ minutes of P1 also can't be understated.

I would have to agree with you here. I think that it is kind of silly to keep full time prot paladins and other specialty classes on your guild's roster. What is NOT stupid, however, is keeping a solid group of players in each class that are capable of playing any of the roles within that class. Even your top DPS warrior should know how to (and be ready to) tank whatever he needs to. That's how these things should work, imo. We have a Holy paladin respec prot whenever we need to use one, and we found ourselves going to that option quickly when we were learning Felmyst and M'uru. Just keep those players geared in their offspec and you will be fine!

As for "perfect" groups for M'uru, I think that notion is ridiculous. Guilds should play to their strengths. I think I would have preferred to run the way SK did for the fight, but we don't have the hunters to do that really. They used 3 and MD'd the Sentinels to their tank if I'm not mistaken. What happened to work for us when we were just trying to make sense of the fight was that just about two melee groups could kind of "lock down" their respective sides while we determined if that left us enough raid slots to handle the rest of the room. Low and behold it started to work and we began to piece together our strat. Every guild should do what works for them the best, in my opinion!

Hi guys,

My guild is working on the 2nd week into Muru, so far the side groups are pretty much settled and fine tuned, ie. no leaks, killing every waves 2-4sec before the next,tanks are not really dying all over and healers on them gave the go that mana is sustainable into p2.

Now the problem that my guild faced is regarding the Sentinal part. My question is: Is it really an absolute must for hunters to MD the sentinals that spawn like really far from the sentinal tank (we tank it on the left side from the entrance). Atm, my guild is using 3 hunters and 1 elemental shaman + a feral tank on the entrance side, and we are just comfortable with the dps and threat issues every waves. If the 3hunters are to md the far away spawns which will probably eat up like 5-6sec of dps time in this extremely tight for time encounter, I am fairly certain that my side will start to leak or fall below the required dps time.

A solution to this loss in dps time by the hunters would be to call out on vent for assistance on my side by either a mage/s.priest on Muru to help us. But before I resort to this, I want to know if there is anyway for the Sentinal tank to pick up all of them no matter where they spawn reliably? I seen some guilds do Muru with 1 hunter or no MD for the tank, how are they doing the sentinal pickups reliably?

True, but you also have 7 weeks of sunwell gear that SK didn't when they first beat M'uru (not to mention it was a harder fight). You don't get the full duration of the 2nd heroism anyway.

We beat him without a single warglaive in our raid. There are multiple ways to meet the dps checks.

Hi All,

I have been the Sentinel Tank for our guild (Same guild as Grapess [scroll two posts up]) for the past two weeks, I seem to be having a little trouble with the Sentinel on the far side of the room. Majority of the time I can get to the sentinel without trouble and pull it back to our paly tank.

The only time I do face trouble is when it spawns on the far side from where we are tanking and darkness spawns in the center. If I drag it from the north side (considering where we enter from is the south) my dps and healers have issues, if I drag it from the south side I am worried about aoe in the raid. I was looking to get the an md only in situations like this, where darkness spawns and the Sentinel spawns on the wrong side.

The darkness will despawn about 8-10 seconds before the next void spawns. You have to hold your void sentinel at the edge of the darkness and move quickly to your paladin tank as soon as the darkness dissipates. Your DPS have to take the void sent down to about 40% or so and then do a hard burn once the void is in position. It takes a bit of timing on both the tank's part and by the DPS, but it's perfectly repeatable. Just make sure the void doesn't die in the center by M'uru where your pally tank can't reach them.

20 leatherworkers?

I can't wait until they nerf those damn drums.

Amen.

Posting because you are from my server. The whole reason behind 3 hunters is so you only have to take 3 tanks, which is 1 for each door and 1 prot paladin for the sentinels AND void spawns. With this you get to take an extra dps so i don't think sides should have any issues at all because you are doing the fight with an extra dps than is required from our experience.

The Sentinels are pretty much dead for us before the patch appears on the wall where the next sentinel is spawning so our Warrior has ample time to get there pick it up and drag it back to our prot pally where it dies, Rinse/Repeat. If they die slow and the sentinel is already spawning voices are raised and we fix it immediately.

We have set times when to push it over for p2 according to big wig timers on the enrage. Mages switching off to help sides puts this all out of whack and we go from a 4 minute p1 to a 5 or 6 just because the timing is crucial.

K edited because it isn't the whole reason you take 3 hunters but it is a definitely an upside and if we actually had 3 hunters in the guild we sure would be doing it that way.

Just a comment on the tank/healer ratios and the complaining going on, specifically the difference between various Sunwell fights.

M'uru generally is done with 6 healers, some guilds use 5. Most guilds take 4 tanks, some make due with a well-geared (read: full-time) Prot Paladin tanking Spawns + Sents and a few MD's. Most guilds quickly realize that you don't need a decked out Prot Paladin to tank adds that hit for ~300. Having a Paladin who normally raids holy works just fine. After the first 2 weeks of attempts, my guild just stopped having the paladin respec at all. We killed M'uru last reset after 268 pulls (according to a quick wc -l of the WWS history). Last night we only had time for a few attempts on him but got to P2 each time. Our holy paladin just puts on some SR and a bunch of healing gear. We essentially have a 7th healer. With the +Healing to +dmg conversion, he puts out a LOT of threat. While he lacks some of the cooldowns Protadins enjoy, our warlocks haven't had issues with threat. We've run with 2 warlocks (due to disconnects) and threat was tight but manageable. We have 3 warlocks in when we can and the kill happened with 3. Once the last set of spawns are dead, this paladin is now able to provide a decent bit of MT healing for P2 while our Shaman and Priests can focus on raid damage (87% of Entropius' P2 dmg was Negative Energy in P2 for a kill). For reference, we had 3 Resto Shaman, 2 CoH priests, 1 Druid and 1 Tanking Holy Paladin. All 3 Shaman and 1 of the priests gets a Shadow priest. The other priest is given an extra inervate and swapped in for Mana tides.

When comparing to other fights..
First off, for reference we have 2 Feral tanks and 1 Prot warrior tank. 1 of the Ferals MT's, the other is more of a "swing-spec" and will kitty dps or tree-heal when required

We do Felmyst each week with 7 healers. We have one of our tanks switch over to his alt paladin to tank. This paladin has basically ZA gear + a Felmyst shield (we've had a lot) I don't think he's ever stepped foot into Hyjal or BT on that character. On twins we have one of our ferals go tree, an ele shaman go resto and either a shadow priest go holy or someone swap over to their (T6-geared) alt healer. Going to M'uru the feral is back to bear, elemental shaman back to ele and a holy paladin puts on some SR gear. Sure, for the first kills we went from 8 to 10 to 6 on those fights, but you aren't getting your first kills all in the same week. By time we had our first M'uru kill we were taking 9 healers to Twins and could likely drop to 8 if we were forced to do so (no point now, 9 is safer and we're waaay ahead of the relaxed enrage timer).

Point being, you don't need a prot paladin for any of these fights. If you have one, have him tank something meaningful and use a Holydin on the adds which CRIT for 600 and do ~80% shadow damage. You also don't need to sit people and swap others in on every other fight. Sunwell has taught us how people need to learn to play a CLASS, not a spec.

That pretty much hits the nail right on the head. The best players are the ones who can swap from spec to spec and barely miss a beat. Sunwell somewhat forces that to happen with its drastic differences in raid requirements from one fight to the next. This instance was very well designed and balanced, people saying it should be more like the shitholes that are BT/Hyjal is just ridiculous.

Darkness isn't really some sorta evil horrible thing that will instagib you the moment you touch it, anyway. It's CAN be a bit risky, but you can run through it with a sentinel on you; especially if you can wait for it to start a void blast cast and get out of his range into the darkness while it's casting - that way you won't even take any swings while you're in the darkness itself, and by the time it catches up with you you're out of darkness already. Moroes' pocket watch works wonders also if you find yourself running through the darkness with the sentinel bashing on you, or if worst comes to worst you could pop last stand or something.

We haven't killed M'uru yet (whee summer slack) but on our last tries on him, I've been cruising through the darkness so many times and I haven't died a single time because of it, just have to make sure you're smart about it ie wait until you're topped before going in, be ready to use cooldowns, try to time it around a void blast etc. Definitely no need to waste misdirects and DPS time due to that.

There is never a reason to step into darkness with a Sentinel on you, and I think that'd be pretty risky. Sentinels either spawns 10 seconds before a darkness spawns or 10 seconds before it despawns. You either drag it across before the darkness is up, or hold it until the darkness despawns and then drag it across. Either way the Sentinel will end up at the correct spot when it's dead and your tank never steps into darkness.

What these guys said.

To add to that, one of our shamans respecced 4 times in last nights Sunwell raid from Kalec to Muru, which I found pretty funny. I think he usually does 3, but I guess some last minute raid changes/DC's happened.

We do have a "main" prot paladin, but he is holy for Brut+Felmyst+Twins anyway! Which is half the instance. Our MT goes Arms on Brut many raids. Our locks are always taking turns at Affliction when needed. Our main (and only) holy priest is often shadow. Even one of our BM's goes survival if I cant make the raid.

You really don't need to make many massive raid substitutions when BC throws so much gear at you. Every player should have their offspec gear ready, and offspec knowledge/experience to go with it.