Garr discussion

[Duerdon]

Here's a post I found on Garr. Since I'd say we have a really good shot at taking down Gehennas now, might as well get this discussion going now. :)

Garr: Physical attacks, as well as fire damage from exploding mobs (utilize fire resist auras and totems)
Garr is a rather challenging fight in appearance, but once the fight is understood can be one of the easiest. (Note this does not take into consideration changes made during 1.5, which are still not yet fully understood). Garr is basically a giant elemental that does a rather limited amount of damage and takes a lot of damage to kill. His greatest weapon is a slow effect (which can be dispelled), as well as a massive de-buff effect. The real challenge in his fight are the EIGHT adds that attack you along with him. These by themselves are relatively easy to defeat if pulled and crowd controlled correctly. They also do a rather limited amount of damage but do explode for quite a bit of damage when they die. The key to this fight is fought before the fight is even started, through proper targeting and execution of tanking and banishing. Four Warlocks are extremely useful during this fight. It can probably be done with less it will require additional warriors. Banishes however are far better than warriors due to the nature of the banished adds not doing damage. This is a mixed blessing though for as they come out of banish they have a tendency to stomp healers, especially when resisting the new banish. This means that having more than four warlocks may be a hindrance if suddenly six adds become un-banished and rampage for even two to three seconds.
First things first, the targeting, this can most effectively be done by utilizing hunters mark and priests mind vision. Basically each add is targeted with a mark or mind vision and warlocks or warriors assist that person’s target so that all eight are targeted. Once this is done the main tank group will have a hunter pull Garr towards the main tank so it can be tanked on the left side of the room. Basically one group can handle Garr since he does not do much damage, but if mana in this group comes up short an additional healer or two can be sent towards that group. The rest of the groups will be having mages or hunters pull the adds towards their respective tanks or warlocks. This will result in x number of adds being banished (for this situation we will say four), and x number be tanking by warriors (once again we will assume four). The four banished adds will continue to be banished while the warriors will tank the other four and eliminate those one at a time. The elimination process should start with the weakest tank (in terms of tanking). For this to be done this one mob should be pulled back towards the rear end of this chamber allowing for people to have easy sight of the mob before it explodes. This area is referred to as the kill zone. Before this mob dies (at about 10%) all melee should move off this add and onto the next add in line. The tank of this add should stand still and take the blast of the dying add. Ranged will produce almost all of this last 10% of the damage. This process will be repeated up to six times until just two are left banished. Once two adds and Garr are left the entire raid will concentrate on killing Garr then the final two adds. This is done because Garr can become quite nasty once all his friends die and this can be avoided (once again may of changed with 1.5). If he does get nasty watch out for exploding adds and a larger amount of damage output by Garr. This still can be defeated however with proper healing on the main tank. Once again the three essential steps toward defeating Garr are:
1) Proper targeting and pulling of adds toward their respective controlling characters (warriors / warlocks)
2) Proper dispelling at the very start of the fight before Garr is pulled towards the side, this allows warriors to get to their adds before healers start getting stomped.
3) Proper recognition of the killing zone and adds life. If this is not done correctly one add can blow up eight or more raid members, which without being said will sufficiently make the raid more difficult.

[Cynic]

This is basically the strategy that gets used in there, but some things have changed sine that post (the 1.5 stuff). Garr gets stronger every time an elemental of his dies, while all 8 are up he's a relative wimp. Also, the adds must be tanked fairly close to garr, if you pull them away he goes into a pipe-hittin rage similar to mags without a tranq shot from what I remember.

LOTS of planning needs to be done so be sure you're good to go on all timers. I believe that all surgers are out of range of the fight but keep an eye on it, last thing you want is a firelord repop halfway through the fight.

We did the hunter mark technique for assigning targets, the adds circle around him and cross through him, so you need to leave the marks up on the targetted ones. making the hunters show up in the assist windows temporarily would also go a long way towards assigning targets quickly. Depending on how uber the locks are feeling ( I try not to do all of them and make folks feel bad), having a lock on 4-5, vw hammering through banish (taunt still seems to work, not sure), and one lock with the healing group to handle breakaways works pretty well.

Since we're tank heavy more often then not, tanking down 2 fairly quick and moving dps to drop garr down aways worked for us once, but as mentioned, a break or explosion at the wrong time and poof goes the raid.

I saw one group take 2, take garr to 75%, take 2, take gar to about 40%, take 2, and take him down the rest of the way.

The benefit to doing this is you never have to worry about garr powered up with a ton of life left to go, so the tank's only really getting destroyed for 30% or so. Also, you have locks freed up to backup banish or dps when you're down to 3 or less elementals, under our current lock loadout.

First run is going to be more of a learning experience for folks whichever strat we use, just to see how hard he hits, how ugly the explosions are, when to blame Jabber, stuff like that.

[Rollinz]

Targeting is the hard part. The more locks the better. 5 locks use all 5 to Banish and kite one add each in the far right sided of the cave. Lock have a macro for pet attack / banish. Once a few hunters are freed up have them back up the locks with ice traps between the Mob and Gar. If he gets away Gar calls them in to explode on him for Huge damage and explosion. The non banished adds kill first, then Gar, then each of the Locks add. GL i want to hear about it :)