Brutallus is the second encounter in The Sunwell.

Important Information
- Brutallus requires at least two tanks (and is tauntable)
- Brutallus requires at least six healers
- Slash is 20,000 damage divided by the targets it hits
- Burn is a one-minute debuff that deals increasing damage, and can be applied to nearby players by proximity
- The encounter requires approximately 29166.6~ DPS to beat the berserk timer (500% damage, 150% attack speed)

Things that will get your post laughed at:
- Yes, the fight is, in fact, possible to beat
- No, you do not have to use strictly Feral Druid tanks
- No, Hunter pets do not get, or chain, Burn
- No, no one cares what your group composition was, or how many seconds after the enrage your kill was.

Our guild handled this encounter using a two-tank, three-group strategy. Two Feral Druids each had an equal number of ranged DPS and healers standing with them to soak the Slash, leaving melee behind Brutallus at all times (for maximum DPS potential). The thee groups stood in a triangle-shaped pattern.

It is potentially advantageous to use as many DPS that can remove the Burn/Slash debuff as possible - Rogues, Mages, and Paladins have the upper hand on this basis.

The bulk of guilds that have killed him to date have predominantly used two tanks and eight healers; this means your average DPS player needs to be doing 1,944 DPS.

Agreed, but I'd certainly rather see the tuning thread used to discuss the finer points of what is generally accepted as being "well-tuned" vs. a bunch of anecdotal jabber about whether or not guild X was able to defeat Brutallus.

The latter can go here.

There's certainly something to be said for constructing an 'optimal' raid setup - once you get past the absolute basics (# of tanks, # of healers), you can get into the details that have differentiated pre- and post-enrage kills (# of Shadow Priests, what synergies/debuffs were or weren't present, etc.).

I would imagine that someone with a bigger brain (or a better spreadsheet!) than I have could concoct a theoretical 'ideal' group template.

There's specs for classes (affliction vs destruction as an example), gear and gem selections for tanks (stamina vs avoidance), positioning, makeup and assignment of healers, and balance of dps classes. I'd say there's plenty to talk about, especially if you look at patchwerk as a precedent.

(Note: Ret DPS cycle against brutallus is much less of a joke than ret dps cycle against patchwerk)

The most interesting thing to discuss about the Brutallus encounter is the very difficult choices you have to make with regards to, "is the extra dps I get by doing this .. worth that risk, if we can't beat the enrage timer?" People have to ask their guild questions like:

- Is it worth having your warlock provide an imp for the tanks and/or be Affliction spec for Shadow Embrace (instead of Destruction and in a caster group)
- Is it worth taking two warrior tanks when a warrior+druid combo will provide more RDPS
- Should we stick our feral druid in 'a tank group' or keep him in the Hunter FI + Shaman w/agi+str totem group to better synergise with dps
- Are our healers skilled and geared enough to make do with 6/7 if we cant beat the enrage timer - or can't we manage without 8.

Those are the sorts of neat questions Brutallus asks your raid and , of course, the answers will vary between guilds depending on your raid composition/gear/skill.

Having only one hunter, we made the tank group the GoA group: Warrior-Feral-Shaman-Hunter-Aff.lock. FI was a bit underused, but that is all. We had two caster DPS groups.

The best trinket line up you can go with in my opinion as a tank is using [Commendation of Kael'thas] and [Shadowmoon Insignia].

The commendation is not only a truckload of stamina, but since you are only tanking in 30 second intervals, the proc has a chance to go off every single time, and since this guy hits pretty hard, it is more likely to go off than other bosses.

This isn't so much a tip as it is a necessity. Yes, I am sure some guild beat it without imp demo but it is silly to not have it for a fight such as this. Also by using Amplify Magic on your tanks is more free healing.

Our tank group consisted of BM Hunter/SV Hunter/ Prot War/ Feral/ Resto Shaman. It gives reasonable synergy to everyone involved except the resto shaman, who buffs everyone else. We switched the resto shaman into the melee group for a 2nd heroism.

I think the biggest thing to beating the dps requirement is eliminating the 8th healer, especially if you feel your guild has underfarmed Bt/Hyjal. At least 1 of our paladins is pretty undergeared too, so most should be to do this if your people are on the ball. Obviously, if all of your dps is in best pre-2.4 gear, you can probably handle 8 just fine.

We used to swap people in and out to form very specific raid setups when learning new content. We haven't had to do that for a long while and can pretty much run raids with a loose setup after the mandatory amount of tanks and healers. This fight seems to require a very specific setup. Has anyone that has killed Brutallus done it with the same group they killed Kalecgos with or vise versa? if not, do you ever see this encounter being setup in such a way, or is just having people sit out or respec something people are going to just have to deal with more now than ever?

If you're doing it with one less healer for whatever reason, if you're using a feral tank before he taunts have him pop Barkskin, the 20% reduced damage while short can smooth out the transitions. Of course as I'm told, druids aren't affected by stomp as much as warriors, but anything to help healing is beneficial.


[e] My understanding is 5/5 imp demo negates the negative affect of CoR.

Thoughts on CoR on this fight?

If this is an April Fool's joke I apologize for replying, but this is a no brainer, just make sure to keep demoralizing shout up at all times.