Owl definitely stacks. There's a noticeable difference in tank damage taken between our parses with and without our Survival Hunter (Owl pet). It's a tough call as obviously a Wind Serpent would contribute more damage, but when learning go for the Owl every time.

We had trouble last night with my owl knocking debuffs off, even after we'd asked everyone to keep to necessary debuffs only and I think we decided that my owl was the least valuable debuff (either that or our RL who is a Fury Warrior was being driven nuts by the sound) and I HS'd to get a different pet.

I'm wondering how valuable screech really is.

Without CoR, 2/5 into Imp Demo shout caps out the AP reduction on a boss. With CoR up, 5/5 into Imp Demo Shout caps out the AP reduction. If you have a warrior with the right spec there is never a need for an owl or curse of weakness. But if you don't have a warrior with those talents, then get an owl as it will stack with the base demo shout but overall you will find it better to have the hunter focus more on dps with a proper pet and having a warrior debuf him. Plus it is one more debuff spot open up for something else.

Taking slashes as a shadow priest hardly affects DPS at all. There is about a 6 second window, once every slash rotation that you cannot use SWD. As for pushback, with proper spell timing (and an eye on the slash timer) you can pretty much avoid taking any pushback at all by refreshing your instants during the slash cast. We're actually discussing this right now in the shadow priest thread.

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16977-s...fectively/p45/

Frankly I think it's silly to remove your shadow priests from the soaker spot because A) it cuts back on the effective healing of VE, which is huge on this fight and B/C) you're placing someone else in the soaker group who will require extra healing that isn't passive like VE or you put no one in the group and run into potential situations where you have to swap in people to the soaker group because of burns. In all of those cases, the slash healing burden is simply being shifted from passive VE return to an active or reactive role for very little gain (very marginal shadow priest DPS improvement) or even a loss and potential wipe (more healing required on burns, more movement from healers or melee dps to cover slashes).

A shadow priest doesn't need to take meteor slash to apply VE healing to 4 actual soakers.

With our lineup, the 2 shadow priests do not eat slash, but the other 4 people in their groups do. Each meteor slash soak group has another 2 people (total ~7 slash victims including the tank).

We use chain heal through the tank to keep the slash damage topped off.


I like this approach because there are a lot of classes with better pushback protection than shadow priests (e.g. holy paladins, resto druids, mages, etc). And we seldom have to sub people in to the slash groups due to burn - because we already have more than enough soakers, so less random movement.

The soak group just makes a circle with the tank in the center, so c-heal is pretty efficient.


I guess just one alternative way of setting up the soak positions.

I've found that 8 soakers is about as low as I want to go, but this allows me to put 4 ranged with the melee/burn unit that don't have to worry about movement if they get burn, or pushback. Hunters and shadow priests are prime candidates for this, however I've also put warlocks there as well depending on composition due to life tapping concerns when they have 2 stacks of slash.

I only drop to 8 soakers, as a poor burn victim selection can thin out a slash group to unhealable limits if we're not careful.

Wrong, read up on this post: http://elitistjerks.com/714209-post62.html.

I've searched the forums, and didn't find anything regarding this. I'm thinking it would not only apply to Brutallus, but to the whole of Sunwell, and even BT/MH.

There is an item that drops in SMV from Overseer Ripsaw, called [Illidari-Bane Shard]. It adds 45 ap/185 spell damage when fighting demons, but I can't really remember if it goes into a trinket slot, and if it has a cooldown. I've opened a GM ticket, and hopefully I'll get somebody who knows what this is about. I'm thinking that if this is a passive increase, it might be the best trinket for dpsing demon bosses?

No, it ends up (through the questline) becoming a weapon. Those weapons are far inferior to anything we raid with now.

That item by itself does nothing, it is simply the start to a long quest chain that results in a choice of blue weapons that give the listed effects. The weapons are weaker than Karazhan items, and there is no way to get the benefits from the Shard on its own I'm afraid.

I know it ends up as a weapon once you complete that boring chain, but I can't really remember what the use effect on the item is all about. I can't even remember if it went into a trinket slot, or just ended up taking a space in my inventory.

I sure as hell don't remember being able to equip the Illidari Bane Shard the second week of TBC, let alone when demon bosses appeared in raids.

If your guild is desperate for a gimmick to get you over the DPS hurdle, try Traces of Silithyst buff. Until 2.4.2 hits the +5% damage just might do the trick.

We killed him, I just remembered about the trinket at some point, and went "hmm". But it seems there's no magic trinket against demons.

[Mark of the Champion] works considerably well if you have not had the best luck trinket-wise. Naxxramas is a pretty docile clear if you can convince your raid to plow through it. It's a guaranteed trinket, that's on par average AP-wise to the [Berserker's Call] (not including cooldown stacking however). You can also get some Sapphiron shoulder enchants while you're at it, and a nice dose of nostalgia.

Kind of stupid to give it to a melee when its fairly lackluster in comparison to other melee trinkets, whereas it's the second best caster trinket in the game against demons.

Hello there,

we've been trying against him for 2 nights and managed to bring him to 30% at enrage.

As all of our DPS, we didn't used any kind of consumable. There's still a lot of problems with healing, but I'm confident about that.

Our biggest issue right now is threat. Most of us caster were threat capped during every attempt, altrough our DPS is far from being optimal. I'm talking about having to stop DPS during the very early of the fight (~30sec).

I frapsed some tries and looked at Omen after the 1st switch and after 2 mins.

Our tanks managed to do about 45k threat after 35 sec (1st swtich) and about 130k threat after 2 mins. The average data I could see from other guilds are : 55k after 35 sec and 160-190k threat after 2 mins.

Our basic group tanks are :
MT1 (warrior), MT2 (feral), Holy paladin, Restau Shaman, BM hunter.

or

MT1, MT2, Pala, BMx2

Is there some things we could do to help our tanks ?

Do your tanks do something special in order to generate more threat ?

Yeah, the heavy hitting casters get a tranquil totem for about the first tank rotation or so and the tank gets a Bloodlust on the pull and whenever else possible.

We tried to give WF to the war and I keep thinking it's a good idea. Tranquil air also was used for the very first % of every try.

I think we'll try harder.

You might be doing this already but we have the feral tank go first so the warrior can get debuffs up and have a full rage bar ready to unload on the swap. We've always had better threat generation from our ferals anyways. You said MT1 was the warrior so I didn't know if that denoted order.

Just to clarify on what might sound obvious. What actual % number are you referring to when you say 'threat capped'? Ask this to your casters. Tell your casters to stay OUT of melee range and nuke to ~120% threat. Being threat capped on Brutallus is not necessarily hovering at 95% tank threat, or even hovering at 110% threat if your at a safe distance. Of course, you are putting alot of trust into Omen to do this... (But ive never had it fail me!)

Obviously ive seen our casters (specifically, our warlocks) stand in melee range and get to 110% and die instantly - but assuming you all position yourself at range (and he does have a big melee range, so be very careful) you should be able to dps up to 120% safely. Ranged = 130% VS melee = 110% is a perk of ranged classes - so be sure to use it to your advantage.

We don't give our warriors windfury (Although we tried it once when we learnt the fight and concluded it wasnt needed). They do, of course, get double or triple misdirects in succession. No tranquil air either.

Generally as a mage I start off Brutallus like this:

While hes misdirect pulled and comes into range of you and the tank = 2-3 Scorches.
When he just reaches the first tank and encounter begins = 3-5 fireballs. (Personal preference)
After that, blow your load -> Drums + Flame Cap + Combustion + Icey Veins + Icon/Skull + Destruction potion while spamming fireball. During this period you can easily get to 110% threat, but thats not a problem at range. Its also possible to get to 120-125 and thats when you will want to be careful. But based on my experience - it shouldnt really be much of a problem - barring you getting lucky with crits and/or your tank unlucky with rage generation.

Do windfury/tranquil air help? Yes, they can. But its more important to look at why you actually find yourself needing them and not be too quick to jump the gun and say 'im threat capped, give tanks windfury quick!'

Have your tanks had aggro issues before? Brutallus hits hard enough that they should always have more than adequate rage. If threat has only been an issue on this fight, use some of the suggestions already posted (Tranq Air the dps, WF the warrior, have Feral tank first, casters out of melee range, etc). If its been a consistent problem, ask your tanks to look into some Threat-based theory crafting.

Please forgive me if this was asked/answered in the 500+ earlier posts here... I read about 100 of them.

Is there a benchmark fight that will test your raid for sufficient DPS before going to Sunwell and pulling this guy? I know Gorefiend has frequently been mentioned as a "benchmark encounter" for DPS, but he has also been said to have low armor (which explains why melee so often tops on this fight).

We put out about 26k raid dps on our Gorefiend kill last night. That's about 3k dps shy of what's needed for Brutallus, but of course Gorefiend ghosted 2 dps, thereby cutting us back some.

Here's my question: is there a number on Gorefiend (or some other pure-DPS fight) we should shoot for before heading to Sunwell? Or are the two bosses too incongruous for this purpose?