Brutallus Strategy Discussion - Page 26

• Xei · 05/18/08, 9:47 AM

My guilds only problem was tank gib.

The single solution I came up with for my guild, which we used and killed him 2-3 pulls later, was MT healer synchronizing.

4 MT healers, broken into pairs. Each pair sets the other as their focus target so they can see their cast bars.

This way they can time their heals so that each doesn't land at the same time. So with ~2.5s heals at worst a heal should be landing every ~1.25s. Once the first cast is sync'd, the rest follow suit assuming they healers are spamming non-stop (which they are, and downranking during non-stomp).

That one change got us a kill tonight, 2/8 with 1 SPriest and dead 8s before enrage.

Pitbuller · 05/20/08, 4:57 AM

19:57'28.061 Greater Earth Elemental gains Swing of Brutallus
19:57'30.074 Greater Earth Elemental's Swing hits Brutallus for 200 Physical damage
19:57'30.737 Brutallus's Swing hits Greater Earth Elemental for 8413 Physical damage
19:57'30.737 Brutallus's Swing hits Greater Earth Elemental for 4769 Physical damage
19:57'31.293 Greater Earth Elemental is afflicted by Death

All was smooth until 24% then someone dropped Earth Elemental. Earth Elemental taunted, boss moved and aggro treshold went 110%. Raid wiped less than 20second.
So Earth Elemental is very bad 0-6min and very good after enrage.

Orin · 05/20/08, 1:57 PM

Originally Posted by Anedris

Curious - what tools do guilds use to ensure that they are staggering heals? Do you just ensure you have healers with a variety of cast speeds (pallies with 2 second holy lights, shaman chain heals and priest gheals at 2.5 seconds, HoTs ticking every 3 seconds, etc.) or do you try to actively plan it? It seems like given variable latencies and possible interruptions (random pushback, slight delay on tank transitions) the latter would not be practical.

If your unitframes show the cast bars of your raid members you can presumably try to adjust (or assign one or two healers to adjust with the other one or two healers just spamming) to ensure your heals aren't landing simultaneous with someone else's, but is the distraction and cast-cancelling that this demands worth it? It seems like you would have to adjust continuously to compensate for latency, random interruptions or pushback, and differing amounts of haste.

I have asked the healers in my guild to install and configure DorjeHealingBars. I haven't fully tested it, but it seems to work as long as your healers all have the proper tank targetted. It is updated on the wowace site, curse, wowinterface and others have an old version from December 2007...

Index of /DorjeHealingBars/

edit: direct link to the .zip on wowace.com. http://files.wowace.com/DorjeHealing...ealingBars.zip

Strydaris · 05/21/08, 1:00 PM

Our guild is just starting on Brut and we are just getting the required potions / elixirs that most recommend to use. One thing that came to my attention was a vanilla WoW item that I am not sure is going to work here.

Crystal Yield

I have found some information that it stacks with sunder armor, but I am not sure if the information is reliable. Also would like to know if it works on bosses. Does anyone know this? If it does work then this could effectively be a decent DPS boost for melee and can be easily used by raid healers on Brut as it has an instant cast time and does not effect pots CDs.

Anyone have any info if this works on Brut?

nfw · 05/21/08, 3:20 PM

Are those self buffs? If so all your melee need to go farm. If it's a debuff it'll probably be resisted a lot seeing it's level 55.
Though if it really works, it'd make for some hilarious world PvP or drama posts on the forums.
P.S. I've been meaning to get some Gift of Arthas next time we do Brutallus, we haven't killed him yet, but it's worth a shot.

edit: by the description it does seem to be a debuff.

Baalzaman · 05/21/08, 5:52 PM

Have tested Crystal Yield - Sunder Armor and Expose Armor both overwrite the Crystal Yield debuff.
Also tested the resist rate on level 72 mobs - no resists.

• Mjollnir · 05/23/08, 12:22 AM

I'm certain it is completely unintended...
Fully buff the raid. Have all melee zone out. Hire an opposing faction lock to slap CoR on them, summon them back, pull immediately thereafter. 1min45sec or so of additional DPS.
I'm not too sure just how helpful it would be for the small hassle involved, but might be the little oomf needed to push some guilds over.

• Xei · 05/23/08, 12:27 AM

Originally Posted by Mjollnir

I'm certain it is completely unintended...
Fully buff the raid. Have all melee zone out. Hire an opposing faction lock to slap CoR on them, summon them back, pull immediately thereafter. 1min45sec or so of additional DPS.
I'm not too sure just how helpful it would be for the small hassle involved, but might be the little oomf needed to push some guilds over.

We used to do things like this when you could duel inside SSC ... its nice pulling the boss when your tank has a full rage bar etc.

Caesium · 05/26/08, 4:55 PM

Hey all,

Just looking for some feedback on our Brutallus tries, we are at the stage where we can start questioning our DPS on our tries. I have my own opinions on individuals DPS but would like to hear yours too.

Our hunters did not receive much utility except their drums.

Here is a WWS link to our furthest try: Wow Web Stats

You're comments are much appreciated

Baalzaman · 05/26/08, 5:21 PM

Looks like you are running with 8 healers? One of them (Colossus) seems a bit unemployed - was doing a bit of dps on the side. I suggest dropping one healer, replace with a warlock if you can and get that warlock putting up Curse of Recklessness. With the amount of melee/hunters you have you should see a substantial boost in raid dps from that change.

cheebamonkey · 05/26/08, 5:22 PM

Originally Posted by Caesium

Hey all,

Just looking for some feedback on our Brutallus tries, we are at the stage where we can start questioning our DPS on our tries. I have my own opinions on individuals DPS but would like to hear yours too.

Our hunters did not receive much utility except their drums.

Here is a WWS link to our furthest try: Wow Web Stats

You're comments are much appreciated

I would strongly recommend dropping 1 tank healer. Probably a pally. With three resto shaman you should be able to have all three bouncing chain heals off the tanks and that should easily make up for the loss of a tank healer while providing plenty of healing for the raid.

Also you can pull all three hunters out of your soaking groups to lower the amount of spell pushback they get. Seven soakers on each side is plenty, however if you get two burns in a row on one side you'll need someone to jump into that group else you risk losing people who have low stam.

You can also put a resto shaman in with your tanks, windfury for them will help our a lot with threat and shaman really don't need a SP for this fight.

Dropping fire elementals at the 2 minute mark will do about 100k damage with 4 shaman easily probably more.

Finally put up CoR on the boss, your physical dps will shoot way up, and if you can't find a 3rd lock to do that then get rid of CoE. Your mages may complain but your raid will thank you when you kill the boss.

Caesium · 05/26/08, 5:34 PM

Originally Posted by Baalzaman

Looks like you are running with 8 healers? One of them (Colossus) seems a bit unemployed - was doing a bit of dps on the side. I suggest dropping one healer, replace with a warlock if you can and get that warlock putting up Curse of Recklessness. With the amount of melee/hunters you have you should see a substantial boost in raid dps from that change.

That's interesting, never noticed he was so free to do DPS. Our main reason for 8 healers are just re-assurance of the healing on the tanks due to their odd death.

Originally Posted by cheebamonkey

I would strongly recommend dropping 1 tank healer. Probably a pally. With three resto shaman you should be able to have all three bouncing chain heals off the tanks and that should easily make up for the loss of a tank healer while providing plenty of healing for the raid.

Also you can pull all three hunters out of your soaking groups to lower the amount of spell pushback they get. Seven soakers on each side is plenty, however if you get two burns in a row on one side you'll need someone to jump into that group else you risk losing people who have low stam.

You can also put a resto shaman in with your tanks, windfury for them will help our a lot with threat and shaman really don't need a SP for this fight.

Dropping fire elementals at the 2 minute mark will do about 100k damage with 4 shaman easily probably more.

Finally put up CoR on the boss, your physical dps will shoot way up, and if you can't find a 3rd lock to do that then get rid of CoE. Your mages may complain but your raid will thank you when you kill the boss.

The hunters were my main concern for DPS, it's great that you mentioned the push back from soaking. That's defo something which could be causing their DPS to be lower. They are not receiving the best utility at the mo either, maybe that could help quite a bit.

CoR and Fire Elementals are also something which would be great to encourage more.

Thanks for the input guys, i'm still interested if anyone notices anything else ! thx!

orcsgotbooty · 05/26/08, 5:52 PM

Besides the fact he is dpsing much of the fight, why in god's name is Colossus using so much flash heal? He is destroying his mana.

seminarca · 05/26/08, 9:36 PM

Is pushback from 3 slashes every ~minute that big a deal for Hunters? We used everyone (except the melee) in soak groups, and our two BM Hunters topped DPS at 2,262 & 2,253 on a kill that went 17 seconds over the enrage (scaled back on consumable usage trying a slightly different raid comp, had a Rogue dc at ~6%).

Just thinking out loud here, 3 slashes a minute is 18 total over the course of the fight. Assuming each one pushes back ~1 second and the average autoshot time is ~2 seconds (accounting for haste procs/drums), that's a loss of 9 autoshots. At an average of 1500 per autoshot (averaged from WWS), that's 13,500 damage lost, which is roughly ~36 dps. Am I missing something, or is that within the ballpark?

I guess that could be worth it if the healing can cope with extra slash damage.

Kaelana · 05/27/08, 4:43 AM

Originally Posted by seminarca

Is pushback from 3 slashes every ~minute that big a deal for Hunters? We used everyone (except the melee) in soak groups, and our two BM Hunters topped DPS at 2,262 & 2,253 on a kill that went 17 seconds over the enrage (scaled back on consumable usage trying a slightly different raid comp, had a Rogue dc at ~6%).

Just thinking out loud here, 3 slashes a minute is 18 total over the course of the fight. Assuming each one pushes back ~1 second and the average autoshot time is ~2 seconds (accounting for haste procs/drums), that's a loss of 9 autoshots. At an average of 1500 per autoshot (averaged from WWS), that's 13,500 damage lost, which is roughly ~36 dps. Am I missing something, or is that within the ballpark?

I guess that could be worth it if the healing can cope with extra slash damage.

You missed the amount of damage loss from steadyshot casts getting pushed back, so the damage loss should be significantly higher. As a rough gauge, I'd double that figure to take the steady shot losses into account.

Kegsta · 05/27/08, 8:30 AM

you only recieve 12-13 meteor slashes the entire fight, its really not something you need to worry about, we use everyone soaking besides the 5 melle and have a single resto shaman bouncing the chain heal from the tank, he handles it fine with the VE healing up 1/2 the raid. I would definatly reccomend using 7 healers aswell,
we use
2 trees healing burns + LB stack on tanks when they can
1 Shaman chain healing the tank onto raid.
3 paladin spamming HL on tank in spriest group
1 priest spamming gheals on tank.

before our first kill we found after a night of contant tank death wipes that it was the warrior tank screwing up, not the healers,he wasn't using his cooldowns for the stomps, wasen't wearing the heroic MGT trinket and wasen't using ironshield pots, thank god for WWS is all i can say.

Namok · 05/27/08, 11:27 AM

My guild is currently stepping into this new encounter. We have just had our first try. So we have been working on guild positioning and keeping tanks alive

.

We run in the typical 2 groups with 10 members taking the meteor slashes (the other 5 are the melee party).

I've completely read this thread; In fact I love this forum and I've checking it since our first days in SSC/TK but this is the first time I've tried to post something

.

I would like to know more guild positioning advices. We typically make 2 lines of people in each group behind the tank. Something like that (sorry for the drawing, but I think it is quite self-explanatory):

x..x..x..x..x
...................tank
....x..x..x..x

Is this correct enough? May I receive some suggestions about better positioning? Is there an optimus pathing for people who takes the burn and run to the burn-safe-spots behind the melee group?

A second question is the following one. Our resto druid is claiming some help about some grid functionality for tracking the burn duration (not only who has the burn debuff but also how long it takes to finish? Does anyone knows a confortable way of tracking it (I know that Bigwigs tracks it but she would prefer to check it directly in grid if possible)?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Pitbuller · 05/27/08, 12:20 PM

ranged = @
healer = #
tank = X

@.@.#.#
.@....X
@.@.#.#

Now chain heal is much more efficent and ranged is still out of melee range.

Kegsta · 05/27/08, 12:46 PM

we used basicly a 3 by 3 grid with the tank in the middle, 4 at the back if theres 10 in the group, put your mages and paladins on the side opposite the burn spot and the shamans in the position nearest to burn spots so the totems can still reach people who are burned. Slow trees go up the front aswell so they have the least distance to run.

we heroism a druid on the pull so threat in not a problem and dps can stand within melle range.

Tyrian · 05/27/08, 1:03 PM

Heres our setup:

O = Tank
X = DPS (Or healer)

XXX
XOX
XXX

BOSS

Couldnt get much easier! After having tried a few setups, the 3x3 grid is exponentially superior. Remember, its strength lies in two words: chain heal. Three shamans cast three chain heals - always directed through the main tank. There is no dedicated raid healer - your three shamans will have all their chain heal 2nd/3rd bounces topping the raid up instead. With a typical 7 healer setup the healing looks like this:

- 1 druid on burn healing
- 1 paladin on burn healing
- 5 MT healers. (3 shaman, 1 priest, a paladin)
===
- Of the 5 MT healers, the 3 shamans are always (and only) casting Chain Heal through the current MT in the 3x3 grid setup. These shamans, although aiming heals at the MT - are also the raid healers - yet there is no dedicated full time' raid healer' needed.

Sprout · 05/27/08, 1:42 PM

Originally Posted by Pitbuller

ranged = @
healer = #
tank = X

@.@.#.#
.@....X
@.@.#.#

Now chain heal is much more efficent and ranged is still out of melee range.

We also are just starting on Brut and Im a bit confused on something. Everything I read indicates that the 180 degree slassh is from his nose. If you setup in that fashion, dont you have 2 healers not getting the slash?

Bula · 05/27/08, 1:54 PM

Originally Posted by Sprout

We also are just starting on Brut and Im a bit confused on something. Everything I read indicates that the 180 degree slassh is from his nose. If you setup in that fashion, dont you have 2 healers not getting the slash?

Brutallus hit box is rather large. It's quite possible for people to be in front of the tank and have everyone still be in front of brutallus himself.

Sprout · 05/27/08, 6:22 PM

Originally Posted by Bula

Brutallus hit box is rather large. It's quite possible for people to be in front of the tank and have everyone still be in front of brutallus himself.

If thats the case, where does the 180 degree slash plane start? 1/2 between the center of the hitbox and the edge?

Anedris · 05/27/08, 7:13 PM

I don't think it is a 180 degree plane. I think it's a 120 degree arc beginning in the center of his hitbox, and the 180 degree claim came from people's impressions (120 degrees from his center seems like 180 degrees from his nose). I haven't actually tested this, though I can absolutely confirm that you can stand inside his hitbox and still get slashed.