Brutallus Strategy Discussion - Page 21

• Falk · 04/19/08, 5:45 PM

Well, as it is now, our tank deaths occur more often than not (if at all) at the inevitable intersection between Stomps and transitions, just past the 3 minute mark for a couple of swaps.

While I can see the sense numberswise for a strategy based completely around taunting off stomped tanks, the practicality of it for us, which is basically taking our break point and multiplying it throughout the entire fight, seems pretty daunting.

Ghando · 04/19/08, 6:08 PM

Well, that's exactly it. If your healers can spam a single tank pretty much freely, it will take some truly stupendous damage to kill him. With this reality in mind, why complicate the process by forcing healers to switch targets rapidly/re-stack HOTs/re-cast their big heals? I guess you're providing yourself with a guaranteed full-health buffer for every stomp, but honestly your healers should be more than capable of prepping a tank to receive a big Stomp/MH/OH combo by this point. "Top the tank off and shield him, spike incoming" has been standard practice since Blackwing Lair.

Even if you're running this strategy right now I think you're making it more difficult than it needs to be. During our learning process there were a number of times where a tank was kinda low or was out of timers and another tank called out on Vent that he was gonna quickly eat the next stomp to catch up. More often than not, the second tank died and we realized that it was better not to get cute with Stomps and just power through them. If your healers can handle the rapid transitions of a 3-tank strategy I'm pretty damn sure they can handle the "Stomp incoming, ramp it up" spamming of a 2-tank strategy. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

• DeeNogger · 04/20/08, 5:38 AM

Originally Posted by Ghando

Well, that's exactly it. If your healers can spam a single tank pretty much freely, it will take some truly stupendous damage to kill him. With this reality in mind, why complicate the process by forcing healers to switch targets rapidly/re-stack HOTs/re-cast their big heals? I guess you're providing yourself with a guaranteed full-health buffer for every stomp, but honestly your healers should be more than capable of prepping a tank to receive a big Stomp/MH/OH combo by this point. "Top the tank off and shield him, spike incoming" has been standard practice since Blackwing Lair.

Even if you're running this strategy right now I think you're making it more difficult than it needs to be. During our learning process there were a number of times where a tank was kinda low or was out of timers and another tank called out on Vent that he was gonna quickly eat the next stomp to catch up. More often than not, the second tank died and we realized that it was better not to get cute with Stomps and just power through them. If your healers can handle the rapid transitions of a 3-tank strategy I'm pretty damn sure they can handle the "Stomp incoming, ramp it up" spamming of a 2-tank strategy. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

With Prayer of Mending, Life Blood, and a whole slew of other things that can be put on the Tank-to-be, tank transitions shouldnt be too difficult (not to mention *when* the transition will occur is plainly obvious). Ill also echo the 'dont get cute with stomp' as just about every time we tryed to have the current tank hold it for a bit longer, eat the stomp, and then switch, it would really stress out the healers. Stomp is a very predictable 10-12k "Are you paying attention healers?" attack just as shadow-flame breath (with warrior class call) was. Healers may take a bit of learning to get the timing down, but once they have some attempts under their belt, its just a matter of paying attention and hitting the key bind for Rank 11 Holy Light instead of the key bind for Rank 7 (or what ever you new fangled paladins use).

• Riot · 04/20/08, 8:38 AM

Originally Posted by DeeNogger

With Prayer of Mending, Life Blood, and a whole slew of other things that can be put on the Tank-to-be, tank transitions shouldnt be too difficult (not to mention *when* the transition will occur is plainly obvious). Ill also echo the 'dont get cute with stomp' as just about every time we tryed to have the current tank hold it for a bit longer, eat the stomp, and then switch, it would really stress out the healers. Stomp is a very predictable 10-12k "Are you paying attention healers?" attack just as shadow-flame breath (with warrior class call) was. Healers may take a bit of learning to get the timing down, but once they have some attempts under their belt, its just a matter of paying attention and hitting the key bind for Rank 11 Holy Light instead of the key bind for Rank 7 (or what ever you new fangled paladins use).

Life Blood, Dee?

world · 04/20/08, 2:25 PM

Life Bloom springs to mind.

• DeeNogger · 04/20/08, 7:21 PM

Sometimes I amaze myself. Yes, I ment Life Bloom. Although Life Blood sounds like a cool spell.

Spleener · 04/21/08, 12:43 AM

So what's the opinion of you guys on haste for your MT healers?

I hit the conclusion that the optimal way for the priest/pally MT spambots to gear is for them to stack all the haste they have and then downrank to make up for the lost regen/increased mana consumption if necessary (ie GH7 instead of GH5, about 100 less mana per cast for about 400 less healing per cast,) since 9 out of 10 tank deaths aren't due to heals not being big enough but rather due to them not landing at the times that they need to (especially during the MH+OH-Stomp-MH+OH damage spike, no heals or avoids in that 2 second window = doom for the most part.) Which basically means that all the haste gear that was written off as terrible for three patches is now useful.

Others in my guild disagree with me, so I'm asking you guys. Do your MT healers stack haste or do they just go in their standard gear?

Vihermaali · 04/21/08, 1:48 AM

We go with standard gear. Well, all of our healers have natural ~1-4% haste from gear they have aquired (and some of the shamans are serious haste addicts), but none of us stacks haste (except the shamans maybe). It's hard enough to avoid OutOfMana already. I'm using gheal rank 2, since I don't have a shadow priest or shaman. I don't think I could downrank more, at least safely.

Oh yea, (re-)killed Brutallus yesterday, and only wipe on him was caused by a tank disconnecting mid-fight. So "no haste stacking" isn't a problem.

Shelendil · 04/21/08, 3:17 AM

I don't think it's practical to get enough haste to make a difference in relation to the swing timer. A little haste buffers your reaction time. A lot of haste is good for certain situations, but I don't think Brutallus tank healing is one of them.

While it wouldn't be wise to have one person spam 1.5 sec heals, you can certainly have your paladins and/or priests alternate in a predetermined way, particularly since this gives your paladins a breather on their mana usage.

Shha · 04/21/08, 4:48 AM

Originally Posted by Skysec

If you're using a double feral tank setup I don't see how they could ever die during tank switches, every tank switch you get a 20% damage reduction buff in the form of barkskin, that cuts down the MH to sub 5k, so unless your healers were really really slow, your bears shouldn't be dying

Unless there is a stomp on bear 1 requiring healers to spam him (and since vent lags etc etc, and the taunt moment isnt that precise - spam probably 1 sec longer then necessary), and bear 2 taunts requiring refocusing healing at same time. Thats exactly what we decided to avoid. Barkskin or not, Brutallus is capable of killing a druid tank in 2.4 seconds (3MH+3OH without stomp). 2.4 seconds is not a problem as long as you have people prehealing him, but it might be one when they are busy countering stomp on other tank.

All of it is manageable, avoidable, etc. But the question remains - WHY? If stomps are completely not a problem with double feral (just paladins switch to higher rank before it happens , everyone else does normal stuff), and taunting off stomp creates even slightest problems... why bother?

Jarlyn · 04/21/08, 5:15 AM

Originally Posted by Shelendil

While it wouldn't be wise to have one person spam 1.5 sec heals, you can certainly have your paladins and/or priests alternate in a predetermined way, particularly since this gives your paladins a breather on their mana usage.

Provided you have a shadow priest to spare for your healers, it's a fairly good idea to have priest bombing flash heals on your tanks for Inspiration procs. Given the way priest mana regen is these days it's not even really a stretch in terms of mana (sp included, of course), and a high uptime on Insp/AF makes a world of difference in tank healing.

Skysec · 04/21/08, 9:12 AM

Originally Posted by Shha

Unless there is a stomp on bear 1 requiring healers to spam him (and since vent lags etc etc, and the taunt moment isnt that precise - spam probably 1 sec longer then necessary), and bear 2 taunts requiring refocusing healing at same time. Thats exactly what we decided to avoid. Barkskin or not, Brutallus is capable of killing a druid tank in 2.4 seconds (3MH+3OH without stomp). 2.4 seconds is not a problem as long as you have people prehealing him, but it might be one when they are busy countering stomp on other tank.

All of it is manageable, avoidable, etc. But the question remains - WHY? If stomps are completely not a problem with double feral (just paladins switch to higher rank before it happens , everyone else does normal stuff), and taunting off stomp creates even slightest problems... why bother?

I was not advocating a 3 tank, taunt off stomp setup, I was just merely pointing out that in a 2 tank setup, where you taunt every 3 slashes, if you use 2 ferals, they should not be dying in tank transitions. I think the only time I ever died during a tank transition was during our first few attempts

(This was in response to your post stating that you used a double feral setup and that the only times you had tank deaths was on transitions)

Shha · 04/21/08, 4:46 PM

Well our tanks/healers are ok geared, so Brutallus from this aspect is imo the easiest fight in Sunwell so far - as long as you have gear its really pretty simple exection (not complaining, hes clearly meant as a gear check and not much more). Our dps had a lot of attrition so that sometimes gets iffy (bringing people in really subpar gear), but we manage.

• Astrylian · 04/21/08, 7:05 PM

My guild is preparing for Brutallus, and I whipped this diagram up... I haven't seen a good diagram of the tanking rotation, including meteors/stomps/taunts, so tossing it up here for anyone to use. Note that he doesn't always use his abilities exactly on time, but it's usually pretty close. Just keep in mind that there may be a bit of deviation from this near the end. If anyone sees any inaccuracies, please let me know, I'll try to get it fixed.

EDIT: Updated to use a slightly better taunt rotation: 2/3/3/3/3/3/3/3/3/3/1 instead of 3/3/3/3/3/3/3/3/3/3. This reduces the # of Stomps you tank through by 1.

Bronwyn · 04/22/08, 2:17 AM

We have only one problem left regarding Brutallus and that's burn. We run 2 tanks, 7 Healers. Our dps always hit 50% HP when there's 3 minutes left. Our best try was 16% - we invariably lose people to burn even though two of our best healers are on it:

Resto-Druid (Yeru)
Priest (Bruderjoram) in later tries we subbed the Priest for a Paladin.

WWS from our best try (16%): Wow Web Stats

Any tipps from burn healers how these two can be more efficient? (We have 9 soakers on each side, including tank). Burnvictims run behind the melees.

Sapp · 04/22/08, 3:29 AM

This is entirely anecdotal, and coming from someone who hasn't (yet) killed him, so take me with a grain of salt.

From our pulls it seems like, while priests CAN be good triage for burn victims, it's really easy for a less than perfectly focused priest to mis-time when to step up his healing and lose a burn victim. Particularly so if they're trying to worry about things like pre-shielding the next tank for a transition, or shielding a Stomp's first melee round.

The absolute best way to deal with burn appears to be to have two resto druids, both assigned to hotting burn victims and the current tank. With lifebloom(3)+rejuv, x2, burn victims will basically stay at 100% for the entire duration even if they're slashed. When you hit the 3200 mark they'll start to dip a little bit for those few seconds, and then burn expires and the residual hots will top them back up. It's easy and safe.

Iluminati · 04/22/08, 3:32 AM

Originally Posted by Bronwyn

We have only one problem left regarding Brutallus and that's burn. We run 2 tanks, 7 Healers. Our dps always hit 50% HP when there's 3 minutes left. Our best try was 16% - we invariably lose people to burn even though two of our best healers are on it:

Resto-Druid (Yeru)
Priest (Bruderjoram) in later tries we subbed the Priest for a Paladin.

WWS from our best try (16%): Wow Web Stats

Any tipps from burn healers how these two can be more efficient? (We have 9 soakers on each side, including tank). Burnvictims run behind the melees.

Are people spreading burns? That's what it looks like from your log file. At some points 3 people have burn at the same time. That's very, very, very bad. Otherwise my advice is to use a druid and a pally or double druid. Priests should be on your mt spamming for inspiration.

On a raid composition note - 3 hunters and none are survival? Your slam warrior is pretty weak in personal dps, should be above 1500 at least.

Bronwyn · 04/22/08, 3:51 AM

Originally Posted by Iluminati

Are people spreading burns? That's what it looks like from your log file. At some points 3 people have burn at the same time. That's very, very, very bad. Otherwise my advice is to use a druid and a pally or double druid. Priests should be on your mt spamming for inspiration.

On a raid composition note - 3 hunters and none are survival? Your slam warrior is pretty weak in personal dps, should be above 1500 at least.

The burn spread happened after it was a clear wipe (both MTs down at ~17% or so).

One of our hunters (Erckul) is survival.

As to our slammer, he usually is fury specced like me and thus lacks experience but he's the one with Cataclysm's so ... But dps doesn't worry me at all - in basically all of our tries we had Brutallus at 52% when 3 minutes were left - this obviously excludes 4 heroisms and 2 mages one warrior doing more dps in execute range.

Thanks for your tips.

As for two resto druids lifeblooming the victims - Yeru (our best resto) says that the 4 hots aren't nearly enough. I will try though.

Iluminati · 04/22/08, 4:08 AM

Whoops, I didnt see thrill of the hunt so I assumed BM, my mistake!

Sticking just to healing this time, 4 hots ~should~ be enough to keep up a burn victim, unless they get an extra meteor slash debuff after the start of burn. Burn with three stacks to start IS healable, it is just more intense. If someone with burn realizes that burn is going to run out before meteor slash, give them a soulstone as that is NOT healable. However most guilds prefer to bring just 1 resto druid so putting two on burn is not usually an option. My advice is 1 druid/1 pally on burns. Make sure the burn person is "helping" when the burn ticks get very large (healthstones/health potions if possible). You do 0 dps when you're dead.

KamPa · 04/22/08, 4:46 AM

Originally Posted by Iluminati

Are people spreading burns? That's what it looks like from your log file. At some points 3 people have burn at the same time. That's very, very, very bad. Otherwise my advice is to use a druid and a pally or double druid. Priests should be on your mt spamming for inspiration.

3 burns at same time is pretty normal, seeing as he casts one every 20 seconds. Perfectly healable, unless 2 of those are on triple meteor slashed people, that's when I can't keep up, together with Resto Druid. It's when some additonal HoT, at very least, is pretty much needed, until Meteor debuff drops.

Vazu · 04/22/08, 6:24 AM

So, tonight I noticed our Mages were doing substantially less DPS on this fight than I see them do on Gorefiend. Now, obviously you don't have to move on Gorefiend but they were 400-500 less in some cases. After reviewing their WWS logs, I noticed a TON of partial resists on their fireballs. Is anyone aware of an amount of base FR that Brutallus has? I was really shocked to see those logs.

Johnneke · 04/22/08, 8:30 AM

We are currently learning Brutallus and I have some questions. We are currently running only 1 shadow priest, due to the fact that our raid leader is a mage our main caster group always is 3 mages, 1 spriest & 1 elemental shaman. We are typically raiding with 3 warlocks aswell and at best we will have 1 resto shaman in our grp filled with a remainer. Now last night we also tried with the spriest and elemental shaman in the warlock group but the mages whined so hard that after 2 tries they switched him back claiming they tried to keep mana although our wws log claims differently, anyways my question is is a mage really not able to dps after a certain amount of time without a spriest if they are trying? I know pretbc on patch which we did without a spriest that they had no problems without one.

• norg · 04/22/08, 8:35 AM

Originally Posted by Johnneke

We are currently learning Brutallus and I have some questions. We are currently running only 1 shadow priest, due to the fact that our raid leader is a mage our main caster group always is 3 mages, 1 spriest & 1 elemental shaman. We are typically raiding with 3 warlocks aswell and at best we will have 1 resto shaman in our grp filled with a remainer. Now last night we also tried with the spriest and elemental shaman in the warlock group but the mages whined so hard that after 2 tries they switched him back claiming they tried to keep mana although our wws log claims differently, anyways my question is is a mage really not able to dps after a certain amount of time without a spriest if they are trying? I know pretbc on patch which we did without a spriest that they had no problems without one.

Your existing setup with the Spriest in with mages + ele shaman is probably preferable to using that Spriest in with the warlocks. Just try and make sure you at least get a shaman, and suck it up.