Brutallus Strategy Discussion - Page 2

• Whiteknight · 04/01/08, 5:49 PM

Search WCM for Vicarious vs Brutallus if you're interested in seeing a 2/6 strategy in action. It looks like it takes heavy advantage of iceblock/bubble/cloak in order to reduce the burn healing.

• Relwin · 04/01/08, 5:55 PM

Originally Posted by Graul

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?

Our news page specifically mentions that we went from a Brutallus 'stacked' group (ie. high on magical DPS, slightly lighter on physical) back to a group you'd see us with in Hyjal or BT from week to week. The only notable exception being that one of our Holy paladins, who is sometimes Ret in our farm raids, was Ret for this fight.

• Whiteknight · 04/01/08, 5:56 PM

Perhaps better put in the class forums, but I'm curious about the use of Ret for Brutallus. Particularly if anyone is using an *alliance* ret paladin on him and finds it to be effective use of a raid slot.

Clandestine · 04/01/08, 5:59 PM

Originally Posted by Shelendil

I think it's doable. On our kill we had an oops, and two of three tanks took the first portal. The human form ends up tanking for short durations. Some luck with portal timing may be involved, hence the "likely."

He'll end up tanking a very significant portion of the fight - every single time the tanks need to swap he will tank for the difference in time between the spectral realm tank being ejected from the spectral realm, until that tank taunts Kalecgos and the next portal spawns. That's probably going to end up being at least a third of the fight. The human Kalecgos will definitely die before you can defeat the encounter.

roosevelt · 04/01/08, 6:00 PM

Originally Posted by Relwin

Our news page specifically mentions that we went from a Brutallus 'stacked' group (ie. high on magical DPS, slightly lighter on physical) back to a group you'd see us with in Hyjal or BT from week to week. The only notable exception being that one of our Holy paladins, who is sometimes Ret in our farm raids, was Ret for this fight.

I'm interested as to why you guys were trying to stack casters in the first place. Our melee did very well on this fight so it never was something we considered. Our sometimes holy/sometimes ret pally wasn't in attendance though, otherwise we would have had him in too, and probably gone 2 instead of 3 rogues. This fight really seems like a great showcase for the raid buffs a ret brings to the table.

• Xaviera · 04/01/08, 6:00 PM

I don't see how it wouldn't be a good use. They put out medicore DPS as alliance, but provide a lot of free mana, and thus dps time, to the rest of your mana-using casters. The 3% crit buff without hassling a holy paladin to do it is nice, and a very small individual group buff. I thought it was standard now, regardless of faction, to use a ret paladin when trying to truly min/max the most out of your raid.

Clandestine · 04/01/08, 6:03 PM

Originally Posted by Whiteknight

Perhaps better put in the class forums, but I'm curious about the use of Ret for Brutallus. Particularly if anyone is using an *alliance* ret paladin on him and finds it to be effective use of a raid slot.

We used a ret paladin in our Brutallus kill. Here's our wws: Wow Web Stats

As you can see he didn't really do much damage (he's fairly undergeared and uses several pieces of PvP gear still I think) and obviously, as an alliance paladin, doesn't have seal of blood, but we decided the 3% raid crit and judgement of wisdom made him worth the slot. Judgement of wisdom reduces tapping time for the warlocks by a reasonable amount and I believe it also helps the shadow priest, hunter, and dps shamans.

◊ Praetorian · 04/01/08, 6:03 PM

Originally Posted by roosevelt

I'm interested as to why you guys were trying to stack casters in the first place. Our melee did very well on this fight so it never was something we considered. Our sometimes holy/sometimes ret pally wasn't in attendance though, otherwise we would have had him in too, and probably gone 2 instead of 3 rogues. This fight really seems like a great showcase for the raid buffs a ret brings to the table.

We still had a strong melee group. The main thing was trying to bring more casters over hunters. We've always raided with a dedicated "hunter group" built to maximize hunter synergy, but moved away from that partly due to mistaken views (based on the PTR) about hunter pets being a liability on this fight.

In short, I think that making sure your DPS classes are all in groups that maximize their synergistic potential is more important than stacking specific classes, period. For example, bringing a third 2200 DPS rogue sounds like a good idea on paper, but if it kicks the ret paladin out of the enhance/war/rog/rog/ret group, then it actually ends up being a raid DPS loss.

shed · 04/01/08, 6:13 PM

Originally Posted by Whiteknight

Perhaps better put in the class forums, but I'm curious about the use of Ret for Brutallus. Particularly if anyone is using an *alliance* ret paladin on him and finds it to be effective use of a raid slot.

We used one going 2 tanks (warriors) 7 healers, and rest DPS. He did enrage but died 2-3 seconds later.

Another thing to consider is that mele will generally do a bit less on Brut since he has a lot more armor than any other boss (or maybe most Sunwell bosses have that much).

roosevelt · 04/01/08, 6:15 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

We still had a strong melee group. The main thing was trying to bring more casters over hunters. We've always raided with a dedicated "hunter group" built to maximize hunter synergy, but moved away from that partly due to mistaken views (based on the PTR) about hunter pets being a liability on this fight.

In short, I think that making sure your DPS classes are all in groups that maximize their synergistic potential is more important than stacking specific classes, period. For example, bringing a third 2200 DPS rogue sounds like a good idea on paper, but if it kicks the ret paladin out of the enhance/war/rog/rog/ret group, then it actually ends up being a raid DPS loss.

This sounds absolutely correct. We made the mistake of assuming that our tanks needed ToL aura (even when we were running 8 healers) which bumped our survival hunter into a crap group. When we redid group setups, and as the healers learned the fight, we dropped to 7 healers and gave the survival hunter a good group back, even in spite of no ToL/no imp on the tanks, and got the kill before enrage.

dakalro · 04/01/08, 6:26 PM

Originally Posted by Whiteknight

I think there's quite a lot worth discussing regarding brutallus strategy. While most guilds are killing him with 2/8, I personally think 3/7 is a much more stable lineup. With 3 tanks you can guarantee that no tank is taking a stomp. Also the meteor slash soak groups are easier to heal.

Our kill was done with 2/7 using a war/pally for tanking. The war provided com/imp demo/imp tc. I found (anecdotally) that the pally was quite an effective tank due to the nature/speed of Brutallus' melee attacks. Fairly frequently the pally gets to leverage Ardent Defender. Maybe a druid is more ideal because of the higher armor, but a pally is definitely workable.
My feedback with using 7 healers is you're much much more exposed to the RNG and tank-gib is a real issue. If you have the dps to do it with 8, or the 3 tank strat, you should take advantage of that because it'll shorten the learning curve.

Once we raise our raid's dps numbers a little, I'll probably switch in a 3rd tank and totally remove the RNG from the equation completely.

One (minor) strat we used was to have the tank not currently getting hit swap to [Nightfall]. For a fight where most guilds are coming down to the line and getting the kill 10-15sec *after* the enrage, I think using the retro weapon in the tank downtime contributes quite significantly to raid dps. I put this in the same minor optimization bucket as having your druid tank dps during his breaks - but even the little gains matter in this fight. It's certainly better than a tank-geared warrior dual wielding.

Agreed on the paladin part, out of all the tries paladin was the one that died the least. More healing but prolly highest immunity to gibs. Ardent Defender + Commendation really shines on this fight it seems, especially on a tank with ~24k hp. Unfotunately we wanted a 3rd shaman in raid so he hopped on his alt (T4/ZA gear) and healed/hero - ended up 2nd healing done (but it's a shaman so ...).
Killed with 2/7, druid/druid (dps warrior imp thunderclapping/sundering, holy paladin gone retri) with 6 physical/10 caster and weirdly wasn't even a very high dps try. Seems that just like Kaleg there's a lot of options for what is essentially a very tightly tuned fight.

Din't CoR, at least not after the first night afaik, 4 warlocks, 2 CoDs up when they weren't falling off. May have helped but I also specced affliction (that's pretty much a large dps loss, around 500+ at this point for me only doing Corr/SB due to debuffs falling off) so was a lot of damage lowered from boss.

Sholdak · 04/01/08, 6:30 PM

Regarding CoR, from our experience not using it makes a pretty huge different for tank survival. We went from 8 healers with CoR to 7 without and did much better at keeping the tanks up (both with Imp Demo shout). I'd say if you can get him down in 6 minutes without it, even if you have to stack groups towards casters a bit, don't use it.

Also, I don't think it's been mentioned yet, but keeping Inspiration or Ancestral Fortitude on the tanks is essential. We had 3 resto shaman spam chain heal on the tanks. That along with shadow priest VE was enough to keep up all the soakers. I assume most guilds wound up doing something similar.

Suggestive · 04/01/08, 6:31 PM

Originally Posted by Sholdak

Regarding CoR, from our experience not using it makes a pretty huge different for tank survival. We went from 8 healers with CoR to 7 without and did much better at keeping the tanks up. I'd say if you can get him down in 6 minutes without it, even if you have to stack groups towards casters a bit, don't use it.

Tell me this is a joke....

Sholdak · 04/01/08, 6:38 PM

Edit: Nvm, apparently missed the cap on AP reduction thread.

KamPa · 04/01/08, 6:45 PM

Originally Posted by Clandestine

I'd be interested in seeing how you manage to kill Kalecgos with two tanks.

While admitedly we didn't kill him, we got him to 2% using 2 tanks - so seeing as we still need to improve, those who already got him, could easily do it. It is quite a race though.

Spherus · 04/01/08, 6:50 PM

Our kill was with ~10 seconds left on enrage timer using 7 healers and 2 tanks (both warriors). I think we had 1 death to burn throughout. Interesting to see how far hybrid specs have come since pre-BC (our raid had both a ret pally and myself as balance).

I can't really comment on CoR as our raids are generally very caster-heavy.

Suggestive · 04/01/08, 6:50 PM

Originally Posted by Sholdak

If you can kill him in 6 minutes without it, what benefit do you get in risking tank death to kill him in 5:50? Shrug...
Then again we also have a pretty heavy caster composition, so it didn't make as much of a difference for us.

You should probably read: Curse of Weakness

Jalhar · 04/01/08, 6:50 PM

Originally Posted by Sholdak

If you can kill him in 6 minutes without it, what benefit do you get in risking tank death to kill him in 5:50? Shrug...

Maths say that DPS outputs on tanks with CoR + 5/5 imp demo shout or w/o CoR + 5/5 demo shout are more or less the same. Thus, your "experience" only show that your healers learnt to handle the fight better after some tries, not that your tanks took less damage.

As for us, we got our first serious tries on him tonight, we are using a classic bear + warrior combo, with 7 healers. With a bit of healing tweaking we pretty much removed the RNG on tanks. However, we do have a problem to deal with the burn when too many players who can't remove it get it. We do have only 1 full geared resto shammy avaiable atm, so a CoH priest is doing some raid healing too, that leaves only a paladin + me half of the time on burn players. I find it interesting that some managed to do it with a T5 geared shammy, we may use a new recruit only half geared in that case. Chain heal is really really powerful ^^

Gofa · 04/01/08, 6:52 PM

Any ideas how to improve tank healing?

The last days we had ~150 trys on him and saw the enrage like 3 or 4 times. Some wipes were because of overaggro / meteor group dead etc.. but 9 out of 10 wipes were because of a tank's dead.

We run with 2 warriors as our tanks, who chainpot ironshield potions + nightmare seeds. We've tried using an affliction warlock, but it didn't help. The last two raids we didn't have a hunter aswell, so that's an additional 5% mitigation loss. On the other hand we had a 5% wipe due to enrage timer without having a hunter for the debuff in the raid and the tanks survived just fine.

We have 2 priests + 2 palas spamming heal on the tank + 1 (or 2 - depending on setup) shamy(s) spamming chainheal on the MT aswell (+ healing meteor group). 2 druids are healing burn and they through some hots on the tank if they have a spare second for it.

It's not the transition, that is killing our tanks, neither is it a manaproblem of our healers... Is it just bad luck after stomp or are we missing something?

We use amplify magic on our tanks and dropped from 8 to 7 healers due to the enrage timer. We can't make it otherwise, we lack some dps. Our tanks have full BT gear.

Any help would be appreciated.

dakalro · 04/01/08, 6:58 PM

Originally Posted by Jalhar

Maths say that DPS outputs on tanks with CoR + 5/5 imp demo shout or w/o CoR + 5/5 demo shout are more or less the same. Thus, your "experience" only show that your healers learnt to handle the fight better after some tries, not that your tanks took less damage.

As for us, we got our first serious tries on him tonight, we are using a classic bear + warrior combo, with 7 healers. With a bit of healing tweaking we pretty much removed the RNG on tanks. However, we do have a problem to deal with the burn when too many players who can't remove it get it. We do have only 1 full geared resto shammy avaiable atm, so a CoH priest is doing some raid healing too, that leaves only a paladin + me half of the time on burn players. I find it interesting that some managed to do it with a T5 geared shammy, we may use a new recruit only half geared in that case. Chain heal is really really powerful ^^

It was for the totems and hero mostly since we're a 2 caster group most of the time and only have 1 enha 1 resto mains atm. Even if he was T4/ZA, that's still 2k +healing, a bit of haste and decent mp5, with a 1400+ dps shadow priest (on kill). We had enough priests available to use as raid healers but shaman brings a lot more really.

Trouble · 04/01/08, 6:59 PM

Use ferals. Use 3 tanks. Taunt off stomp.

◊ Lord BEEF · 04/01/08, 7:06 PM

Originally Posted by Gofa

Any ideas how to improve tank healing?

The last days we had ~150 trys on him and saw the enrage like 3 or 4 times. Some wipes were because of overaggro / meteor group dead etc.. but 9 out of 10 wipes were because of a tank's dead.

Your druids need to keep lifebloom up on the tanks. You don't need both druids healing the burned person heavily until the last 10 seconds of each burn.

I like to keep all three hots on the tank, and use whatever time I have left to lifebloom burned people, and make sure to get hots on the next tank that's about to taunt. The other druid focuses more on burned people but still keeps lifebloom and rejuv on the current tank.

dakalro · 04/01/08, 7:08 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

Your druids need to keep lifebloom up on the tanks. You don't need both druids healing the burned person heavily until the last 10 seconds of each burn.

I like to keep all three hots on the tank, and use whatever time I have left to lifebloom burned people, and make sure to get hots on the next tank that's about to taunt. The other druid focuses more on burned people but still keeps lifebloom and rejuv on the current tank.

Naturally renew from the priests is useful as well.

Exactly same as we're doing (1 druids focuses on tank, minor on Burn, other on Burn, minor on tanks), with 1 of the shaman topping Burn victims at the start.

Had a lot of different strategy attempts and lot of time put in, switched a lot due to player availability but once you get a stable setup and people get more used to it it's gonna fall into place. There's a lot resting on Stomp healing and the transition healing and quite possibly sometimes, luck.