Aplogies if this has been posted already, or if there is a Maulgar discussion thread, but the search function doesn't appear to be working for me, and I wasn't able to see another topic on it anywhere by browsing.

We had our first attempts on Maulgar last weekend, and got almost every aspect of the fight down except for this. We found that often the timer on the spell shield would be such that it refreshed right as a fireball was about to land, causing the mage to take an unavoidable full strength fireball, even when spamming spellsteal. We tried a few variations on when to start spellstealing at the start of the fight, including even opting to take the full force fireball (it is survivable for him, barely.)

Is this just something we'll have to deal with or is there something we can do to improve the timing? We aren't getting any blastwaves so have ruled that out as a potential interrupt to the timing. Currently our plan is to get that mage and his healer in a private virtual channel on vent for better communication, so that it is easier to top the mage off as each spellshield nears expiration, but improving the timing so that this wasn't necessary really would be the preferred option.

Thanks in advance

We had this problem initially as well. We basically stacked the mage in full stam gear (he had around 11-12k health unbuffed all said), and put two healers on him full time. It worked out really well, because even if he inadvertently took one fireball, it would never kill him or put him at dangerous health levels and he would be right back at full. Granted, our guild is naturally high on healers so stacking healers might not work as well for you guys.

I'm pretty sure there will always be times when the tanking mage has to take a full strength fireball. Just make sure the mage has a minimum of 10k hp, 12 preferably.

Thanks for the quick replies guys. Time to find him some more stam gear I guess, I hate to use a flask on him!

Yeah, we also have 2 healers assigned to the mage. The first week we had an ice barrier mage which made it a little easier but its definitely doable with 2 healers assigned to a mage that can survive a full force fireball.

Get used to it! Just go PVP with him after the raid...it will be fun.

As others have stated, we just heal through a full-strength fireball between every steal. Even though its a big spike, its extremely predictable, and as long as your mage has enough HP, it can be healed no problem.

Some (obvious) tips for healing through it:
The only damage your mage tank is taking is one fireball every 3(?) seconds, with no melee attacks, so there can't be any weird "thrashing 1-rounders" or "crit + shadowflames" Its just soft fireballs, and predicatable hard fireballs.
So: Make sure your mage lets his healers know when his shield has about 3-4 seconds remaining (in vent, or with a whisper macro). This means that the healers can expect one soft fireball followed by one hard fireball. If your healers think about the incoming damage like this instead of just staring at his life bar, it becomes much easier. As a healer, start casting a topping heal to land right after the soft fireball, then start casting your biggest heal to land after the hard fireball. If you have a UI that lets you see the casting bar of your focus target (I do with X-Perl) you can Focus on Krosh and it makes this even easier.

Green stam gear is very useful for this. After food buffs and with an imp, I hit 12K hit points and 10K mana without using a flask. I use three pieces of green of Stamina gear that's level 67 or higher and a few blue items socketed with just stamina gems.

For healing, make sure your healers know to expect the possibility of a spike every 30 seconds. I get a Power Word: Shield just before the spike and use my Fire Ward with about two seconds left on his Fireball, so I have enough time for the GCD to clear and I can spam Spellsteal. I also have potions and health stones for after a bad hit. An enemy casting mod is vital for this fight. We tend to use 1.5 healers on this fight for the mage - one is there for patching me up after a fireball quickly and the other is there for the steady-rate healing.

Due to my low spirit and int going into the encounter (green gear) I ususally start wanding after getting down to 3-4K mana so I have enough left over for Spellsteal.

The baseline for this fight is 9451 HP. A full fireball hits for that - 1. A frost mage is preferable as he can cast Fire Ward and then Ice Barrier in succession to give himself a cushion.

High stamina greens help, but you ultimately want to be able to get enough hit to minimize the chance of steal getting resisted, which is lethal. (Tip: if he casts the fireball just before you steal the debuff, that volley isn't going to get the benefit of -75% damage. This often tends to be lethal since he usually doesn't recast shield until you've had to eat one full fireball to begin with.)

You want to basically get whatever armor you can off of this list (except Gloves of the Deadwatcher; Oblivion is better for this) and whatever weapons you can off this list (Continuum Blade + Star-Heart Lamp is easiest to get). Once you have enough hit from that + whatever you have into Arcane Focus to get max spellhit, stack stamina.

If you need to boost your hit a bit, Scryer's Bloodgem (or Arcanist's Stone if you went Aldor) and Starkiller's Bauble are your best bets.

I usualy say something along the lines of "potential big one next" when i see he starts casting a fireball without having refreshed the shield. I then hit my fireward and get ready to hit spellsteal. The priest healing me also puts shield and PoM on me... i could probably take another big one if needed but it never happened.
I never have a warlock for imp but the seer tank is in my group and gives me commanding shout and i use a flask of titan (cost alot less than having a wipe due to mage tank dieing). 1 Shot means bad healing =)

Sounds like the healing is similar to the healing on the caster Emp in aq40: steady stream of reasonably moderate damage with the occasional spike. In this case the spike is very predictable.

My guild is going to be trying Maulgar tomorrow for the first time. There is some confusion on how to handle the shaman ogre. There seems to be a lot of miss information regarding how to handle him. I've read that he cannot be tanked in melee range because he 'swings too fast and too hard'. I've seen in videos using 2 hunters for tanking (stacking NR and Stam). However, if you *can* tank him in melee, because the lightning shield turned out to be BS, a feral druid would be ideal (immune to the sheep). Is that possible?

Kiggler arcane explosions. Two hunters or a moonkin (since it can't be poly'd) are your best tank options.

Sorry for the derail but this seems like the best place to ask questions about this encounter. I'm wondering what lvl of gear is neccesary on the tank for the high king. Our tank is quite well geared but nevertheless we had hit+cleave happen at the same time once and he went from 100% to dead in what was essentially a single hit. Now from all our attempts this seems to be a fairly rare occurence but we haven't had particularly long attempts yet.

What stats do tanks have for this encounter? Is it beatable if two normal hits would kill your tank if he doesn't get a heal, since it seems that cleave can happen at anytime?

Thanks

Does improved fire shield work as a reflect on Krosh?

We use a very well geared feral druid for the fight. Warriors just don't have the mitigation (if they are in TBC blues/Tier 3) to handle the burst damage Maulgar can put out.

I'm not sure of that stats our druid has, but he's probably over 20K AC.

Yeah, we killed him twice by now, with warrior tank on Maulgar. Had to use flasks and stoneshield pots. Tank has something like 15k health and 17k armor (without SS pot) buffed.

We do it weekly with a warrior MT, have had no problems with the healing other than it being a bit spikey if he gets hit without stoneshield/insp up.

Imp Fire Ward will work. Unfortunately, it still doesn't make for "2 points well spent" unless you're really struggling and want to institute a Get out Jail Free maneuver 20% of the time.

I suggest your tanking Mage make a macro for his healers to alert them when his Shield wears off - that's what ours does.

We haven't had much problems with our warrior as MT. I believe he runs around 16.5-17k health flasked, no imp, but otherwise using the typical consumables you'd expect from your tank in a raid encounter.

We've killed him without using any stoneshields or flasks with a druid MT and it really isn't even that spiky. There are the occasional spikes (usually one per kill) where he gets two or three consecutive crushing blows but they're not enough to kill him so if the healers are on the ball and get some big heals on him shortly after that is a non issue. I've been the only priest healing the druid MT and I don't have inspiration. We usually have me, two pallies and a druid so no shaman armor buff either.

If you're having trouble keeping a warrior up, I'd definitely recommend going with a druid.

Our first day of attempts I had 17.6k hps (flasked) and 14k ac (no SS) and our healers were able to keep me up. I was also running around 41% avoidance and 23% block. There was the occasional combo of 2 of Mighty Blow/Arcing Smash/Crushing Blow that was a bit scary but after the first couple attempts as we got used to the pace of the incoming damage we found it was very possible to keep me alive even when two of these occured back to back.

With a SS pot (we are definately stocking up) and some more hps (hoping for more Kara "upgrades") next week it should be even smoother.

That said, there is still some impressive burst damage, and we haven't tried our feral tank out there yet, so these comments can't be taken as a comparison, just firsthand feedback from a tank who has only been beaten on for 5 hours to date