Those are the same formulas, just arranged differently.

Yes, but dividing by 0 is always an ugly solution to something.

Argh, that old post.

I somehow started out convinced the damage was in the form of 9000 / Y, and so initially wrote it out that way, and then when I played with the numbers I realized that wasn't the case, but didn't simplify the expression.

It's 9000 - 450Y, where Y = distance in yards. That's it.

Next time I'll read the entire thread before to post in order to see if someone corrected
the info already. :-)

I think this is very true. In my experience, when I first started this encounter I would always try to run back to my original DPS spot where my rock was if I was thrown on Slam. This is the worst possible instinct, and it affects most players...

Running toward a pre-determined spot after slam is terrible, and can often end up with you running toward someone, and when you notice it you're out of reaction / run time and just put up your little Wiley Coyote umbrella.

Instead, while flying in the air take an objective view of the situation, and I bet most of the time you're best off not running at all, or using your 2-3 seconds of movement making minor adjustments (clusterfucks still happen, but I'm convinced they're more rare than is thought).

So if you had a person 15 yards away from his neighbor, and his neighbor was 15 yards from his neighbor like so:

A ----------15--------- B -----------15---------C

A would hit B for 450*(20-15)*2, C would hit B for 450*(20-15)*2
B would hit A + C for 450*5*3?

No.

A would hit B for 2250
B would hit A&C for 2250
C would hit B for 2250

Damage isn't linear though, not even close.

The minimum range on cave-in would help out alot for us melee dpsers. Also my melee damage is pitiful on him. How some shamans get even close to warlocks/mages on this fight I'll never know.

Are you sure about that? Everything I've seen suggests it is precisely 9000 - 450Y and nothing more complicated than that.

I assume you meant B would hit A and C for that much, and by the way..
9000-450*15 = 450*5 = 450 *(20-15)

Also.. Does that mean that the mechanic doesn't take into account the fact that B is in range of two people? He just hits both of them for the same as he would hit one person?

What would be the disadvantage of having the following setup:

Yeah, if I am 10yd away from A and 15yd away from B when shatter happens, I will hit A for 4500 damage and B for 2250 damage, and will receive 6750 damage total.

And that setup would be perfect. Now you just have to get your raid to those spots within five seconds after every slam....

This isn't scientific, but I think you probably underestimate the distances involved (also of course you are dealing/receiving 10% less damage due to def stance). 10yd is really very little, and means you are just a couple of steps out of melee range with them.

As for the max range, I see no reason to doubt this entry: http://thottbot.com/s33671

I just made the pic to basically reassure myself that I understood the math of the fight. Since we know we can't actually make our positions that precise, we'd want to figure out some sort of PAIR UP strategy right?

Wouldn't that be the best way to go about this? We know there are spots in the room that cause you not to be flung during the ground slam. Why wouldn't the ranged DPS split up between these spots, like so:

A ------- Rock ---------- B

Ground slam:

----------AB-------------

5 seconds:

------<---A----B--->-----

Shatter:

A------------15~---------B (hopefully)

The healers could use the various wall positions that aren't near slam-safe debree, and the melee (tanks/melee dps) could spread out in the rest of the center of the room?

Apologise ahead of time if these seem elementary questions, but I made serious attempts for the first time yesterday (Hooray new guild) and I wanted to figure this out myself.

The main problem I've found, is that in the event of one of the two primary tanks, by virtue of having no deaggro, is that we're the next closest target for hurtful strikes, which, whereas a rogue can evasion tank these, we're pretty much insta-gibbed.

There is no way round that and that's the only problem I really have on this fight, other than this factor coming into account, we won't be able to beat classes that can go hell for leather all the fight, but we can certainly get high enough.

Max range is definitely 20 yards. I agree w/that, but I don't know, damage just doesn't feel linear. If it is I'd almost rather not know considering how well our positioning has worked out for us. I think people trying to push it out significantly further would lead to shatter deaths again, and I'd prefer just having the melee-getting-instagibbed by bugged out hurtful strikes as our only deaths.

Has anyone else here gotten massive lag or such after a ground slam?
Our offtank tends to lag out and needs an intercept to become "unstuck" after some slams.
Also even though he is in range, bam, some rogue with 1/4th his aggro gets instagibbed. Its pretty annoying.

As some previous to me have mentioned, though it was somewhat under-lying in other points, the time given to move to a good position once Gronn lord's grasp kicks in is too small to be able to escape some "unlucky" knockbacks. It's not the randomness of this fight that makes it so difficult to learn, it's the fact that you can't do anything about the result of an unlucky knockback should you get one. The time given to repostion once the snare has kicked in is not long enough for you to do anything about bad knockbacks, resulting in an absolutely unavoidable loss of players.

An extended amount of time to reposition and possibly the removal of safe spots would imo make this encounter much better. There would still be the same element of skill in it, it would still be a DPS race, it wouldn't be a static fight like chromaggus where its the same thing over and over, and random unavoidable deaths due to bad knockbacks would no longer happen since you would have the time to avoid it.

That's my perspective anyway.

Somewhat amusing thread on the R&D forums over Gruul changes in 2.1:

-'Safe Spots' around the room have been removed as they were not an intended part of the encounter.

- 'Hurtful strike' has been changed into a chaining cleave as was previously intended.

-"Shatter" damage is now affected by growth, as previously intended.

- The "Cave In" effect in the Gruul encounter was incorrectly not causing the cave to completely fall in. This has been corrected.

Ahh good stuff, bringing some retardation over here, sorry. But amusing nonetheless.

I don't really agree with this. Unless everyone has 7.5k hp buffed, the frequency of situations where a knockback occurs such that, no matter what actions all involved players were to take, deaths would be inevitable, is far, far, far lower than people make it out to be.

Imagine if after you landed from a slam, the game paused, and you had a minute to look around you, and talk to all the players nearby and plan out where each of you would move, and then gameplay resumed. Would you still die? Almost certainly not. The question then is one of group coordination.

Sure, sometimes a "knockback" will send you two yards sideways and it's irrelevant. Other times it'll send you into a group of people. That's "luck." But it's certainly possible to work out of most of those "unlucky" situations -- but you can't do it by yourself if the people around you are making the wrong decisions too. If you are tossed into a group of idiots, then yeah, I suppose that counts as an "unlucky" knockback for you. :P

As enhancement the main problem I have on this encounter is threat. I actually swap out some of my normal dps gear for items with more stamina, and use a Flask of the Titans instead of Relentless Assault. Otherwise I'm basically threat capped the entire time, and spend almost as much of the fight standing around, waiting to be able to hit the mob without pulling aggro, as I do actually attacking.

If I had the higher threat cap of a range dps'er, or if I didn't have to worry about Hurtful Strike, or if I wasn't constantly dodging the nine or so Cave-Ins that are always near the melee, I could do a lot more damage. It's all about threat. I actually had an attempt last night in which I died about a minute in. I reincarnated and continued to dps -- unbuffed -- and before the end of the attempt I was threat capped.

Obviously a rogue doesn't have to deal with that as much, but they do get the joy of a constant stream of Cave-ins landing on their head. A little off-topic, but honestly I feel bad for rogues nowadays, especially considering the damage I see our 'hybrid' classes doing. Rogues have to deal with whatever ridiculous cleave/whirlwind/anti-melee bullshit ability a lot of mobs have, and their reward for doing so is... uh.. a lower threat cap? A rogue has very little utility, and if that doesn't change I don't think a range dps class, let alone a friggin hybrid class like a shaman, who have loads of utility, have any right whatsoever to be dominating or even competing with rogues the way they are now. Elemental shaman obliterating rogues? Yeah, that's certainly fair...

-Edit-
That's not to say I think anyone should be nerfed. I certainly enjoy this "everyone can deal damage" situation we're in right now. It works because each class has their own unique utility that they bring to the raid. Problem is - rogues don't have any.

This is nothing new -- I was bitching about this going back to Patchwerk when fury warriors and fire mages sharing rolling ignites were topping DMs. If a rogue can't be the clear, undisputed #1 against a mob that stands there and lets you go all-out for 5-7 minutes, then what exactly is their niche?

Certainly off-topic, but it's never made sense to me. Fully buffed rogues should be the ones sustaining 1100-1200 DPS on Gruul, not affliction warlocks of all classes.

I see what you're saying as far as you can't plan everyone to act that way because there aren't enough safe spots/isn't enough time to get to them... But what's the problem with the idea that instead of having to keep 25 people spread out by 20~ yards, you could really have an MT on Gruul, 3-4 other melee, and 20 people spread around 10-12~ positions (Like the hour hands on a clock)? I mean you still have a little bit of time to move (Probably 10 yards worth at max~) so while you're flying from your slam why would it be a bad idea to just use a Couple circles as a basis for where to go?

Say a slam happens and 4 people get flung into the SE corner of the room. Those 4 people would kill each other if the shatter happened now, but instead they know that A + B got assigned to the inner circle, so they go to like 3 o'clock and 5 o'clock, and C+D got assigned to the wall, so they go to 4 o'clock and 6 o'clock on the wall.

I mean I know its chaotic, I've been in there.. but since I was MT healing I didn't really have a position where I got flung around, I was either scrunched up into the N corner or standing on a rock to the NW.