Healing Naxxramas - Grobbulus (10 man)
October 7, 2008 by Matticus
Filed under All Stories, Featured, Naxxramas, PvE Healing, Raid Strategy
Welcome to Grobbulus! You’’ll run into him right after Patchwerk in the Abomination wing. Once the room’s been cleared out, get ready to grab Grobby!
Abilities
He puts a disease on players at random called Mutating Injection. It’s very important that it does not get dispelled! There’s a boss in Blood Furnace (the big floating Eye) that drops poison clouds all around the room. This boss also drops poison clouds. If the disease on you gets dispelled or if it wears off, then you drop a poison cloud.
Slime Spray is another ability of his which hits for a decent sized amount. Any players who are affected will spawn slimes. DPS needs to kill slimes when they spawn!
- Poison Cloud: Deals a moderate amount of damage
So how do you handle it?
The Process
Tell your tank to pull Grobby in a clockwise direction. Don’t move him too fast. You don’t want to rush him around because it takes time for poison clouds to wear off.
Your DPS and healers will be standing in the middle and shooting outwards. Melee players will be standing behind Grobby as he is being tanked. Don’t forget to kill Slimes as they spawn!
If you get hit with a Mutating Injection, run and stay behind Grobbulus until it wears off. The main idea here is to keep the poison clouds on the exterior of the room thereby leaving the middle area relatively clean. Once diseased players are in a safe position, then all you need to do is Cleanse or Dispel them. The debuff will wear off and a poison cloud will expand where they were standing. Make sure they run back after the debuff wears off.
Healing
I suggest using a 2 healer on tank, 1 on raid setup. Grobbulus does not hit really hard and the damage should be manageable. The concern here is the amount of players absorbing AoE damage from Poison clouds. As long as they are alert and aware of where they are relative to the clouds, they should have no major issues.
Other Notes
Grobbulus’ abilities are Nature based. Consider using Aspect of the Wild or other Nature Resistance abilities (Totems?). I do not know how effective using the resist is but it could help the raid stay alive longer than normal and buy more time. I haven’t had a chance to test Nature Resist. But it isn’t a necessity.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or to E-Mail updates on the top right. Thanks for visiting!
I'm Matticus and I play a Dwarf Priest. My home is in Conquest, a raiding Guild that I have founded. Every week, I log 12 hours raiding on Ner'Zhul.
Wynthea is the Troll Priest with the best Mohawk on Nazjatar. Currently, I raid 5 nights a week, and PvP occasionally. I started playing WoW in May 2005, and raiding end-game in May 2007. My guild is currently working through 25-man WotLK content. I've tried playing other classes, but Priests are my passion. I am extremely fond of Dwarves.... especially with Ketchup. 
My name is Sydera and I like to heal things--think Florence Nightingale with foliage. I play a night elf druid on Ner'Zhul, and I raid 12 hours a week. As a guild officer for Conquest, I coordinate healing and recruit new raiders. I started playing WoW in Fall 2005, and it was love at first click. Before I discovered the joys of Broccoli-stalk healing, I raided as a holy paladin, and I now have alts in all healing classes. I have to say, though, bark beats poofy dresses and heavy plate in my book.
Interesting read. I’ve never set foot in Naxx in either the old world nor the new so this is exciting stuff to read.
Thanks, Matt.
@Durnic: Glad you enjoyed it! I’ll most likely continue to update these boss pages as necessary. As I write them, I’ll eventually string them all together onto one page for easy access when people get to that stage.
Matticuss last blog post..Space Goat Live (Shadow and Light): Another healer blog
You indicate the poison clouds only do moderate damage, and recommend using 1 healer for the raid, so I take it a lone healer has little or no trouble keeping the rest of the raid alive? Are melee players stupidly difficult to maintain compared to casters?
Assuming the tank crawls along in a fairly slow pace (i.e. walking backwards), was there a very large gap between them and the still persisting poison clouds?
@Yggdrasil: Aye. One healer should have little trouble at all keeping the rest of the raid alive. You may have to adjust as necessary when there are Slimes. Consider having the 3rd healer bounce back and forth in between.
In regards to the melee question and tanking question, I didn’t notice a very large gap (see the screenshots above). The melee players might put slightly more stress on since they’re going to be taking more damage than casters due to their proximity to poison clouds. It’s kind of like a stop and go fight. Tank boss. Boss farts. Move boss, stop. Boss farts. Move boss, stop. Boss farts. Move boss, stop.
I wish I could give you the approximate yardage or distance that the tank moves but I can’t be the that detailed :(.
This sounds like a one Tank Boss. Is that so?
Galohearts last blog post..Guild Crap!
Gluph strategy is actully the same posting u put on Grobblus when i click on it trows me to the wrong strategy plz fix thx keep up the good work.
@Wildruid: I fail.
Fixed! Thanks!
I read your strat, and it sounds about right, my group had a few VERY large problems on this fight.
First off, toward the end, the Injection comes super quick, now with this most of the healers are close to or out of mana.
2nd big problem is the initial hit from the injection is HUGE, i also play a priest so i’m on dispell duty when their out of range and in the correct spot. i’ve also been throwing bubbles to mitigate damage.
Now my questions are, One- Is our DPS too low? as i said most of the healers are out of mana and i myself was on raid healing and injection healing and its a huge mana drain especially around 30% its just way too quick.
Should i stack Mp5 for this fight and just let the injection tick and toss a greater heal on the victim?
any advice would be awesome, thanks in advance!
@Galoheart : It’s wise to keep the second tank to pickup the slimes that will spawn, especially handy around 30% when you start to get a lot of spawns.
@Yggdrasil : I tank him according to the green glow on the floor, everytime he does a mutating injection a green glow will appear under him aswel, I just move in such way that mele has room to dps and don’t stand in the glow (that is expanding) should be about 5-10 yards. by the end of the fight I’m almost always moving. slow but steady
Tell everyone to go full out at about 30% to get him down asap, espacially when group is not geared it can be helpfull, if you have a shaman, thats the time to use heroism.
We used a healer on maintank, a healer on the offtank and a raidhealer/switcher if either of the other two healers get the debuff. We have the offtank usually a pally handling the adds, I take it as you don’t mention tanking the adds I presume you allow these to roam free?
Plodderss last blog post..Request for new registrants / potential registrants