Fight Overview and changes from Heroic.
Gruul dishes out a fairly hefty amount of both physical and magical damage for tanks, and the debuff he puts on us means that we can employ a 3 tank method for Mythic. Gruul still casts Inferno Slice at 100 energy, which must be split among your companions, (so you'll want to have 3 groups set up if you're using the 3 tank method, more on that later), which now deals a larger amount of both magical and physical damage to the tank taking it, we found it a good idea to use a CD like sac for every second Slice each tank has to take. On this note, it's worth mentioning that Gruuls energy does increase quicker on Mythic so he will cast the slice a lot more frequently, hence the need for the crazy tanking organization.
The only new ability that Gruul has is Flare, which basically sends some fire balls around the room at various intervals, which are a pain if they hit you but relatively easy to dodge, so we wont spend too much time on those, for tanks they are just your basic "stand out of the bad" mechanic.
There is one ability that is somewhat enhanced on Mythic although this doesn't really affect tanks too much but worth noting, and this is that Petrify will now affect everyone in the raid apart from tanks, so just try to avoid standing next to people about to explode when not tanking to minimize extra damage taken.
Tanking Rotation.
I will try and explain the tanking in the easiest way possible but first, lets have a look at Overwhelming Blows a little more closely; The debuff itself lasts for one minute from each application, and unfortunately the stacking 10% damage increase makes this pretty pants to try and heal 2 tanks through on mythic, when adding to the blows you will also be taking more Inferno Slices and melee attacks, it's just not worth it, even if you do have exceptional healers.
Groups: We went with 2 groups on either side of Gruul, and one behind him, and we tanked him in the middle. We had one group of 6 (Group A), one of 7 Group B) and a small group of 4 (Back Group) at the back.
If you get it right, you should have 9 slices in total before he goes into his destructive rampage phase.
So Group A takes 2 slices
Back group takes one Slice
Group B takes 2 Slices
rinse and repeat.
The tanking is where it gets a little complicated, but for me, once I had written it down it made more sense. I will actually use our toon names instead of tank 1, 2 and 3, as it helped me out. (If you want to rewrite it with one two and 3, I would be tank 1, Drake would be tank 2 and Lala would be tank 3)
So here goes...
~I taunt the boss and stand on the tanking spot.
~Drake taunts into group A (Slice 1)
~I taunt back.
~Drake taunts into Group A (Slice 2) and keeps the boss, moving himself into the tanking spot.
~LalaGirl taunts into the back group (Slice 3)
~Drake Taunts Back
~LalaGirl taunts into Group B (Slice 4) and keeps the boss, moving himself into the tanking spot.
~I taunt into group B (Slice 5)
~LalaGirl taunts back.
~I taunt into Group A (Slice 6) and keep the boss, moving myself into the tank spot.
~Drake taunts into Group A (Slice 7)
~I taunt back.
~Drake taunts into Back group (Slice 8) and keeps the boss, once again moving into the tank spot.
~Lala taunts into Group B (Slice 9)
~Drake taunts back.
(Please consult my highly professional visual guide* below that denotes where each group is, the boss is the purple blob in the middle. It's that detailed, I have even highlighted where the door is in case you need to run like a little girl when wiping :))
The boss will now go into his rampage phase.
After the rampage I pick up the boss again and we just repeat the process. it's worth noting that at this point I will still have my last lot of overwhelming, not to worry, get some nice big fat guards up and having your healers keep an eye on you is fine here, thanks to stagger working the way it does (for now at least), Monks can cope with this just fine, though if you're feeling a little squishy you can pop Fort Brew here if you like, as this is the biggest damage you will take.
As I said previously, we used an external CD on each tank's second inferno slice, we run 2 Ret Pallys so we just rotated the Sac's (they both took Clemency) and we also used pain Sup and Barrier from our priest, but any externals will be fine here, it just helps take the edge of the second slice as it was one shotting us at times without them!!
Talents and Glyphs.
I use Zen Sphere (Though Chi Burst would also be nice here to help out after slices when it's up), Diffuse Magic (nice for the magic part of inferno slices and if you "accidentally" get hit by the floaty orbs), Xuen for extra DPS (tight enrage on this one) and Soul Dance - which has incidentally become one of my "Go To" talents lately.
Glyphs I ran Zen Med and Fort Brew, then the third doesn't really matter, I think i ended up with rapid rolling, but for me personally there wasn't a third glyph that really mattered.
If you can get your head around that lot, congratulations!! I'm currently working on guides for Mythic Oregorger, Hanz & Franz, and FlameBender
Be Good!!
*If you would like your own highly professional visual accompaniment for your blogs/posts my drawing skills can be purchased for a small fee :D
