You don't need Sunwell loot to kill Brutallus, so you have 14 T6 Encounters to farm to be able to gear up for Sunwell, not 1.

I am perfectly fine with Brutallus's tuning at this point in time.

A difficult encounter could potentially prove to be too much to endure (although it can also call upon your best skill). A challening encounter calls for the use of those skills, but the challenge drives you to use the skill to your best ability.

Yes, and I was responding to the statement making the analogy that Illidan requires about full t5. I was pointing out that things would be more similar if you were actually forced to farm the previous tier of content - i.e., t5 - rather than being able to farm the current tier of content - i.e., t6. For Brutallus, you must farm the previous tier. For Illidan you do not.

However, this is largely semantic and too much like bickering.

It seems to me what's really new here is that this is a gear-check, and there has never been one previously in BC. Every prior encounters has been "do not stand in the fire = win" (Archimonde being the epitome of this approach). Gear increases the margin for error but is largely secondary. Most guilds spend enough time teaching people to avoid fire that by the time they learn each encounter they have the gear to beat the next one (once they teach the afore-mentioned fire avoidance).

Brutallus, however, is not like that. And that will be jarring for some guilds.

As Xtatic points out, this is a stupid thing to say. Everyone who's killed Brutallus to date has done so with only one Sunwell kill under their belts (Kalecgos). The loot you'll get in a single Kalecgos kill has negligible impact on your raid's performance, thus you don't need Sunwell gear to kill Brutallus. You need Black Temple gear. Your comment about "gearing up for Illidan" is silly because Illidan isn't a gear check fight.

Actually, I don't think that is quite what he meant, although I do not really want to put words into anyone's mouth. But I would consider the ability to farm newer bosses, that progress in difficulty, in a new instance, on the way to the gear check boss, to be superior to requiring people to go back to the previous tier by putting a gear check in almost immediately. A good example would be Naxxramas - Patchwerk was the gear check, and depending on whether you killed Heigan before or after him, you had 5-6 new bosses to defeat and collect loot from in preparation for the gear check.

I have not attempted Brutallus yet (currently working on Kalecgos) so I cannot comment how that fight "feels" to me or my guild. But I think there will be a problem with tuning in Sunwell that will result in at least one group in the end feeling very unsatisfied and/or frustrated. The reason being that for the first time, there was such a large gap in content that you have a very diverse group of guilds that have killed Illidan attempting to progress in a new raid instance at the same time, instead of it starting out with JUST the top guilds. And all of these guilds are probably fairly bored of BT and would rather not be required to back. You have the world top guilds, who have the best players and have probably suffered less attrition - they will kill bosses very fast. You have your typical server first guild, who probably suffered more attrition, but has t6 on most of their players and will get these bosses with a little more time and effort than the previous group. And then you have guilds in there who may have a core that farmed Illidan for several months, or at least a couple, but that had poor luck with drops or with well geared players burning out, and recruitment is not at all easy at this point if you are not a top guild.

There's no way Sunwell can be tuned for all these groups that are sick to death of Illidan, so clearly at some point it will be adjusted if Blizzard doesn't want it to remain uncompleted by a decent amount of Illidan killers. Brutallus is probably a good example of a fight where a lot of people will get stuck and become frustrated for factors they personally feel are beyond their control (attrition, unattractive server for recruitment, poor luck with drops to make up for what was lost, and so on). But I suppose it remains to be seen whether he will be viewed as just too much by the majority of those attempting him.

I suppose I'm in the minority in this thread so far in that I support the retuning (or nerfing if you will call it that) of content if it's what's needed. I think whatever problems Sunwell does have with people who feel it's too easy or too hard could have been avoided with a release closer to BT's early kills, but unfortunately that didn't happen and now Blizzard has to try and please a larger group from the get go.

Look, I acknowledge that Brutallus will be nerfed eventually. It'll happen because that's how these things always go--Blizzard nerfs all old content, either directly (changes to the fight/mechanics) or indirectly (providing more/better gear) to make it more accessible to players who aren't as committed/advanced/skilled/whatever. They've already made everything drop 50% more set tokens and in a few weeks tons of people will have ample access to T6 quality loot from badge vendors. That's the softened learning curve to Brutallus, at least for now.

My point is that the fight as it stands is just about perfect for the intended audience: hardcore raiders.

As a casual raider who is mid-way through BT at the moment, I can't see what is wrong with the current tuning of Sunwell. Sunwells place in progression and cycle of BC is after BT and the last raid zone before the next expansion. The way it is currently tuned, it seems to be challenging for people who have been farming Illidan for the last 6+ months which is a good thing as they won't steam roll it and having nothing to do for another 6 months or whatever until WotLK is released. For guilds who have only just killed Illidan why should you not have to get gear from T6 instances to progress? With the Kalecgos, trash drops, increased token drops and badge loot you won't be farming it anywhere near as long as the guilds that currently meet the gear requirement. And I don't think that a raid instance should be pointless to farm once the next instance has been released. It was, in my eyes, a shame that once attuned to BT/Hyjal there was no point to go back to SSC/TK.

As someone mentioned there is nothing stopping these guilds doing Kalecgos and attempting Brutallus to see how far short of requirements they are.

I just want to reiterate what has already been said in the hope that I'm not sounding too repetitive: please don't nerf Brutallus by cutting his hit points or something like that.

The fight is great in distinguishing guilds with possibly different commitment/skill levels - guilds competing via WWS and killing Gorefiend in 2 minutes instead of killing him in 4 minutes are doing the same thing - except, in the case of Brutallus, only one guild gets rewarded with a kill which has direct ingame consequences. The race among guilds should take place ingame, not on a third party (or even think of WWS Scoreboard) website.

This new content indeed needs to last a bit. In this game, PvPers get their chance to differentiate themselves via arena ratings - ingame. Now PvE players and their guilds can differentiate themselves in pre and post Brutallus progression - also ingame. In addition, pre Brutallus guilds get a great medium/long term goal to work for - I really like it.

One possible issue with this is that there may be guilds that have been farming Illidan for many months, yet will have gear issues due to filling the void of quitters. For those guilds, the Sunwell progression might be highly annoying. How much remains to be seen.

First off, reading the posts in this thread gives me the impression that Brutallus is currently tuned right for guilds that have been farming Illidan for 4+ months and are thus completely geared out in t6. Those guilds have already killed him or will do in within a week or two.

Secondly there are guilds who have killed Illidan, but don't have the gear yet. They will be ready for him anywhere between next week and 4 months, which is fine since they will still see Kil'jaeden before WOTLK

Then there are guilds who haven't killed Illidan yet but will do so in say 2 months. After that they need to gear up for 4 months till they are ready to kill Brutallus. Still fine with me if WOTLK ain't out by then

Now it all depends on when WOTLK is coming. If a guild kills Illidan 4 months before WOTLK it means they have no hope of killing Brutallus before the expansion. That is the point where I expect blizzard to hit him with the nerfstick to open up the rest of sunwell plateau for the scrubs, so the place doesn't suffer the same fate as naxx.

About the time it takes to gear up for brut, yes new badge loots and more t6 tokens will help. However, more casual guilds usually also have more members and lower attendancy so I would expect those to balance out.

You seem to be overlooking the fact that with the increased token drops, guilds now will be gearing up faster than the guilds farming Illidan pre-2.4. It won't take guilds just now getting to Illidan the same 4 months. This is completely ignoring the addition of the new badge loot, which has never really rocketed a guild into raiding stardom, but will ease off the gearing process by filling in gaps and providing "itemization bandages" of sorts that may allow some guilds to kill Brut by edging just over the Enrage timer after 2 or so months of farming T6 content/Kalecgos. I believe that any guild that can competently clear T6 content now will at least SEE Kil'Jaeden before WotLK regardless of when it's released (barring a release in under 4 months from now, but that's unlikely) due to the coming presence of detailed strats being released as other guilds progress and potential nerfs, direct or indirect, between now and when they enter into Sunwell full force.

Just to clear up some of the misconceptions about gear requirements - I did approximately 800 DPS on our Brutallus kill in my terrible PvP/DPS gear with a talent spec designed specifically for debuffing (Blood Frenzy, Imp. Thunder Clap, Imp. Demo Shout, etc.) and buffing (Imp. Commanding Shout).

To most guilds, that's probably a waste of a raid slot - someone could have been in there doubling my DPS. At the very least, the guild could have taken someone for that same role with min/max'd PvE gear.

Brutallus is a gear check, absolutely, but a big part of that (and many other) encounters is knowing and employing the various strengths of classes, talents, group composition, and so on.



The interesting thing about this discussion is how it immediately gravitates towards a casual vs. hardcore argument. As has been accurately pointed out, this content (as it currently exists) is designed as a specific check - it looks for foundational understanding of mechanics, appropriate talent specs/gear/gems/enchants etc., strong strategy, and so on. It has nothing to do with how close to the 'bleeding edge' of content you are - the point here is that, given you meet the base criteria, you can be given the tools to beat the encounter.

That's what tuning is about.

If Brutallus had another 100,000 HP, someone could reasonably argue that he is overtuned (given the number of guilds who are killing him at, or just past, his enrage timer). If he had 100,000 less HP, someone could also reasonably argue that he was undertuned (most guilds that have killed him would easily have killed him before his enrage timer). Tuning an encounter that tightly requires an incredible amount of forethought and minute adjustments, and I applaud Blizzard for it.

Also, again, tuning can only be intelligently discussed when it is looked at in the context of its target audience. Magtheridon can easily be killed by a 10-15 man group in Black Temple gear - that doesn't necessarily qualify him as "undertuned". In terms of progression for T4 guilds, most every successful guild at that level in recent history (the past 6-8 months) has killed Lurker and/or Void Reaver before having even remote success with Magtheridon. That would suggest that Magtheridon was over tuned. The fact that a smaller group can kill him now is a product of the change to the Mental Exhaustion debuff - theoretically, a 10-man group could have killed him before, but requiring the MT to click a cube might have been a bit of a stretch.

Changes like Magtheridon, and the introduction of encounters like Brutallus or events like the ZA timed run, seem to suggest that Blizzard is becoming much more adept at tuning their content.

This was something I was thinking about myself, since I've seen a lot of people who were in hardcore or semi-harcore raiding guilds quit due to burnout from lack of new content, and recruitment at this stage is very difficult. I wonder if Blizz could have produced something better if they lessened the DPS requirements on Brutallus but added more strategic elements. I think Kalecgos is a great example of a strategy fight, and I'm really enjoying learning it. I don't see anyone who has been killing Illidan for a while as not being able to beat this boss (Kalecgos), even if their gear isn't the best for whatever reason.

full disclosure: I'm currently working on t5, and nowhere near this content- but I have a quick question.

How does Brutallus specifically, and Sunwell in general, compare to Naxx (previously considered the pinacle of raiding)? from a specators point of view, there are certain similarities between SP and vanilla wow "end game"- how do these encounters line up? Does brutallus line up with patchwerk? Is there anything on level with four hoursmen yet?

To a certain degree this is true. However, the problem with Magtheridon wasn't that guilds (from my perspective - in two different T4/T5 guilds) were wiping excessively on him. It's that they weren't even attempting him. My main guild pulled him exactly twice, in two different attempts weeks apart, and only because we had about 45 min to kill before the raid ended.

I have no idea if Magtheridon was overtuned or undertuned. All I know is that the leadership was all "not worth the risk vs reward" and never even seriously tried to kill him. And from talks with other raiders around my level, that is a common factor. Almost every guild that gave Mag a serious try killed him. The problem was convincing the raid leadership to give Mag a serious try.

I think there's a fairly good argument that if you couldn't skip A'lar and Hydross, more guilds would have attempted and killed Magtheridon.

All that haste gear your healers have been dumping for 6 months going 'WTF we'll never want that' comes into play now, a 6 minute long fight is not a mana issue, if you have 7 healers with 15% haste you have "an 8th healer". People not willing to use up bank slots for extra raid usable gear sets shouldn't be complaining about content tuning.

Tuning at the maximum would require everyone in your raid to have enchanting, 4/5 members with leatherworking, let the people that benefit the most get alchemy or JC; for everyone to have exactly the proper spec for a fight and then require the best item in each slot with the best gemming. Almost everyone agrees this is a bad idea as the RNG isn't going to give everyone the best possible item and for all but the most extreme telling 20 people "go get LW now, we need our Drums" isn't going over well either.

The balance is how do you make it fun for the raid above while not making it impossible for another group at 90-95% of that -- thats proper tuning. The 100% perfect group is still going to feel a rush/challenge getting something down with 10-15s to go on an enrage timer -- they're used to stuff like 2-3 minute Gorefiend kills where constructs never get in the raid.

For those that can't seem to do the DPS I don't really know what to say, 1800 isn't a crazy number, you don't need a stacked group to reach that as a DPSer. You do need to understand when to use your cooldowns and what potions benefit you most in a given encounter -- if you're a mana user how many of you farm demonic runes and drink destruction pots (Just one example)?

Why do people keep saying Brutallus is less of a strategy fight than Kalecgos? Granted Kalecgos has far more movement and less predictability, but that doesn't make it more "strategic." Despite relatively simple (and self-evident positioning and class/spec roles), Brutallus requires tremendous forethought (isn't that the definition of strategy?) on how to best maximize your raid DPS. It's really the only fight thus far that forces guilds to learn how to use class synergies and sync their abilities/cooldowns for maximum effect. In previous encounters enrage timers did not penalize groups for suboptimal DPS decisions (such as Bloodlusting mages pre-20% rather than post). Brutallus, however, does. If you aren't devising ways to eek out a few hundred more DPS here and there then you aren't trying hard enough, and frankly, the fight wasn't meant for you.

Really, though, when discussing proper tuning, it comes down to the following:
a) An encounter is over-tuned if a raid is forced to drastically altar it's "normal" composition in order to have a legitimate chance at defeating the encounter.
b) An encounter is under-tuned if a "normally" composed raid does not have to play nearly flawlessly for initial kill(s).

The two maxims I have above leave a great deal of room as to both what constitutes "normal" and what gear level is required. Those factors are open to debate and left to the developers to decide. Still, I'd argue "normal" comprises a wide range of compositions that focus on creating raid synergy rather than brute force. As far as gear level is concerned, Brutallus was obviously tuned under the assumption a raid is in full T6 level gear (ilvl 141 and greater). That assumption may be unfair to fresh Illidan guilds, but those guilds can take solace in the fact that they will be gearing up far more quickly (three token drops rather than two), Kalecgos, Sunwell trash, and, in a week or two, ilvl 141 Badge gear.

I am much more worried about tuning encounters around certain tradeskill related consumables than about the gear requirements. Drums are just new elixirs and in my opinion should be completely removed. The difference in power between group x and the same group respecced to leatherworkers is a bit silly.

They will eventually kill Brutallus too you know, just with a lot more effort which it perfectly fine. People tend to forget that spending 10 nights on the same boss wasn't exceptional pre TBC.

Basicly, Blizzard can't do this right in one go, and the reason for that is that they've had to large a gap between raid instances releases. The 10 month gap between BT and SP has caused a huge amount of guilds who have all their core members within 2 pieces of perfect gear. Everyone has t6 set bonuses. So the only way for them to balance is to use that as a basis, and make an encounter where you have that, flasks/elixirs, food buffs and oils and potions, and if you play perfect you win, if not, you lose. And I think that was the goal for Brutallus, and from the stories, they achieved pretty much that.

However, if you don't have that, you're pretty much chanceless. And that's bad for a lot of guilds who only killed Illidan in 2008. I don't think it's normal to have an enforced gear farm, and I'm pretty sure that without Illidan / Archimonde weapons / trinkets (which are still 1/week) on a majority of your raid, you'll still be hard pressed. (Though MrT heroic offers some leeway in the trinket department for certain classes). The badge gear is of no real help, it's usually worse then T6/weapons from t6 instances, and you can't afford the margin. It'll help if one drop is really unlucky (We got 1 halberd from najentus, on approx the 35th kill), but not much beyond that. So he'll get nerfed in the future. Which will envoke a lot of QQ's as always (There are people crying on the wow forums about the removal of the kara attunement as we speak), but also diminish anyone killing him after the nerf, which isn't that great in my opinion, because it's original tuning wasn't meant for a fluid progression, but a cause of Blizzard being even slower then they usually are.

The fact that they made the gearcheck a demon is also dubious, giving a lot of weight to warglaives which are about as random as you can get. And I don't like the leatherworking thing either.

Wasn't enforced gear farming the norm for all of pre-BC raiding? It's a mechanic that was abandoned for TBC, but given the need to stretch Sunwell over the 8ish months until Wrath, it seems logical to pull it up again. And as has been mentioned several times, it is quite likely that Brutallus will be nerfed about 4 months before Wrath's release.

With the increased token drop rate guilds will be able to quickly get 4pt6 on everyone. Sunwell trash drops and Kalecgos loot will easily make up for a few missing trinkets.

Enforced farming was somewhat an issue, but I don't think it was quite as heavy-handed as the current Sunwell tuning.

Let me say that I'm not surprised about the current tuning whatsoever. Blizz knows a lot of high-end guilds have been bored out of their mind for ages and want to give them a challenge rather than a pushover. That said, because of it...it's probably tuned a bit higher transition-wise than any previous instance carry-overs.

Vael didn't require months and months of farming Rag to beat, AQ40 was a pretty smooth transition for a guild that had killed Nef a couple of times, and Patchwerk didn't require months of farming C'thun (in addition to being the 6th boss in the difficulty sequence) They required some farming, but not a lot.

Just comparing to my guild.. we are working on Illidan and have killed Archimonde 5 times, killing most of the other bosses in BT and Hyjal quite a good number of times in the last many months. We aren't anywhere near the raid DPS requirement for Brutallus, even though we actually have quite solid DPSers when it comes to theorycrafting, good specs, good rotations, etc. It's mostly gear at this point, lack of 4-set T6 bonuses and critical drops. We've gotten rather unlucky on certain drops, but are slowly getting there.

But, like I said, I expected him to be tuned this way simply due to logistics and wanting to offer the farming guilds a challenge. I have, however, had to unfortunately calm my guild down about the fact that we basically can't do much of Sunwell for quite some time even though they were pretty amped about it. Most of them are pretty bored of BT and Hyjal at this point--as we have been in there a non-trivial amount of time, even if it's not as much as the long-term farming guilds--and wanted something new. But, that's how it goes. At least the 3-token change and some very nice badge loot will speed up the bridging of the gap somewhat--I know everyone was appreiciating the extra token drop this week.