Namok

Thank you everyone for your fast answers . Finally we tried to use the Tyrian's formation and it turned out to be ashtonishing efficient for raid healing . Thanks so much.

However, we still have some issues with tanks gibs due to bad healing timing (many healing ticking in the same time and some bad periods with no healing... )

Nowadays, one of my main concerns is this one: our resto druid is claiming some help with a Burn timer. She usually uses grid for raid healing, so some king of duration tracking in grid would be great. Has someone found some addon with this kind of functionality? (I know that Bigwigs tracks it but she would prefer to check it directly in grid or some raid frames if possible)?

 

Tyrian

Hmm? Do healing breakdowns on your Paladins and make sure they are using pre-charged max rank Holy Light to coincide with the first super big hit after a stomp. Also check to make sure your priests are Ghealing, instead of flash healing. It might sound obvious/common-sense, but theres always someone who seems to forget to do the obvious things. There should not really be any issues with bad healing timing if you have 5 healers on the mt. Heals will be poured constantly on them.

Another little tip (If people arent doing it already): Take your MT healing priest and the burn druid out the meteor slash group and put them behind the boss. This means that they never have to move, ever, even if they get burn. We noticed that if a MT-healing priest has to move - its very very bad. Although there is also a MT healing paladin, you wont need them to leave the slash groups because they simply can shield the first burn. (And the chance of getting two within 5 minutes isnt high enough). You obviously want your burn druid not in the soak groups because they have a difficult job that requires high concentration. You dont want them to have to move and risk losing their hot stacks ever.

So to be clearer with healing, it looks like:

7 healers
----
1 burn druid - behind the boss, not in any soak group.
1 MT healing priest - behind the boss, not in any soak group
3 shamans - in soak groups in front of the boss
2 paladins (1 mt + 1 burn) - in soak groups in front of the boss.

You dont need more than 8 soakers really, either (7 dps/healer + 1 tank). I would suggest if you excess soakers, you take a few out and put them behind the boss. The other day I took out our highest DPS warlock and put him behind the boss for this reason. Overall with 8 soakers the true raid-wide setup looks visually like (excuse the crude text picture):

O = Tank
X = DPS or Healer

XXX------------------------XXX
XO----------BOSS----------OX
XXX------------------------XXX
--------------------------------
-------------MELEE-------------
-----------Burn----MT---------
-----------Druid---Priest------

Minor tips (mentioned elsewhere in this thread)

- Make sure your mages and warlocks form the back row of the grid so they are out of melee range. This will let them dps up to 130% MT threat, instead of getting stuck at 110% and pulling agro if they stand in the middle/front row of the grid.
- Make sure your Burn Healing Paladin is on the inside of the Grid, closest to the raid. Will give him the most range to the raids safe spots.
- Make sure shadow priests are on the first or second row of the grid from the boss - and - on the side closest to the safe zone.
- Make sure people within the grid are close enough to get the bounce of chain heal. Its closer than people might feel comfortable with. The easiest way to tell if your too far is if you never see Chain heal bounce from the MT to you (aka the second bounce) , then you know your too far away from him. The second bounce of chain heal (after hitting the MT) needs to be able to jump to any of the 8 dps in the grid around him. Theres a great Nihilum video showing this in action.

 

Sprout

Can anyone comment on the pros and cons of where people put the tanks?

If you have one tank at 12 o clock and one at 6, with the burn and melee @ 3, does it cause problems compared too putting the tanks closer (5/9) and the burn @ 12?

Is pulling more difficult with one setup? It would seem like putting the tanks at 90 degrees from each other would be better for healing and better for dps because you dont have to move the 'back' group into position on pull. They can just start dpsing on go.

 

Regen

It is not advantageous to position both tanks 180 degrees of each other as you mentioned, your aim should be able to create basically 3 sides, 1 where only MT1 + his dps/healers get slashed, 1 where only MT2 + his dps/healers get slashed, and one side where melee + Burn healer(s) + Anyone with Burn can run that should NEVER get hit with slash.

Just find a spot, pulling shouldn't be hard at all with a misdirect.

 

uphir

Is there a maximum number of people who can soak the Slash? Meaning, if you add in one person over the "cap", the whole group will take the same amount of damage?

 

Regen

I don't believe so --- I don't see how something like this could be viable in anyway either... Best case scenario you are going to have ~10 people eating one slash, 7 is quite manageable.

 

uphir

I'm just wondering how few people we can safely have soaking. Ideally, as the raid becomes more geared + proficient at farming Brut, the fewer people will be soaking the Slash. The people standing behind the melee, especially classes like hunters, do much higher DPS without Slash's spell pushback.

 

lairpie

As your raid gets to be farming brutallus, pretty sure you're way more likely to wipe because someone died from a slash and burn or too few slashers or too much healing going to slashed people or something compared to missing that extra 50 dps or whatever. Unless you're just trying to set dps records, seems like continuing exactly how you were doing it seems best.

Brewmaster of WBC (5,9,1/6)

 

Regen

As already stated in this thread (fairly sure within the last page) this pushback has such a minor effect on their overall dps. Being geared/proficient will not really allow you to move any amount of people out of slash to the point where you can notice the difference in rDPS. You are asking for unnecessary trouble with less than 7 per side (Maybe 6?).

First slash
20000 / 10 = 2000
20000 / 9 = ~2222
20000 / 8 = 2500
20000 / 7 = ~2900
20000 / 6 = ~3333

Second slash

35000 / 10 = 3500
35000 / 9 = ~3888
35000 / 8 = 4375
35000 / 7 = 5000
35000 / 6 = ~5833

Third slash

50000 / 10 = 5000
50000 / 9 = ~5555
50000 / 8 = 6250
50000 / 7 = ~7145
50000 / 6 = 8333
50000 / 5 = 10000
50000 / 4 = 12500
50000 / 3 =~16666

I'll let you determine what number is reasonable for yourself.

 

Sprout

From a beginners standpoint bringin 8 (maybe 7) seems safer because of people having to move out of the area when they get burn. If you have 6 to start ou need to have a rotation of people not in a soak group to head in if the group loses a member, a la BB if someone dies.

Plus you dont want your tank getting that 8k hit right when they get stimped for an instagib.

Seems to me 8 is the sweet spot. Any comments from people who have done it?

 

uphir

Using 9 is actually fine for getting out when you are the burn target. If you position the soak groups so that each one is a 3x3 grid with the MT in the center, the burn target can just peel away from whichever edge of the grid they're on and move to the burn safe spot.

 

woo-haa

Having less people in soak groups (and more in safe spot) raises the raid DPS because burn targets don't have to run to safe spot and back. It also makes burn healing easier because less people will have Meteor Slash debuff when they get burn. We have run both 7 and 10 soakers, and I agree that something in between is the safest bet with highest DPS.

 

Kissmyaxe

We do it with 6 and it works great. Having 2 people ready to jump in in case one of the soakers has to move ensures that you never have less than 6 people getting hit.
Obviously we have all the mages/paladins soaking as they can remove the first one they get.

The way I see it if you try with many soakers is that you get lower DPS from push back and more people moving. Also it increases the chances that your burn victims will have slashes on them.

As for positioning, we use:

The replacements are really close to the meteor slash area, therefor when they need to move in you usually have 7 soakers (for a few seconds) since moving in is faster than moving out.

 

Akj

We are still in the process of learning the fight but we've been using a 2x4 grid or 3x3 grid with MT in the front row so far. I have a question to guilds using the 3x3 grid with the MT at the center. Dont the dps classes at the sides of the MT (2nd row) struggle with threat issues due to being in melee range?

 

Tyrian

No, unless you run with 8 warlocks who do 2200+ each. Put smart choices in the front two rows of the grid that you know wont be able to get 110%+ threat. Tonight, for example, I put a recruit mage/warlock recruit in said position (They couldnt pull agro if they tried). Shadow priests go here nicely too, since they can't really pull agro with ~1400 dps.

If your guild has many warlock capable of getting so much threat, you probably have brutallus dead and don't need advice here!

 

Jagiya

We generally roll with something like this:



Advantages;
- We use 2-3 Shadow Priests and 2 Resto Shamen, so the required slash healing with 9 soakers on each side is fairly minimal.
- Burn movement is straightforward; minimal risk of people spreading to others whilst trying to escape the slash zone. (The very concept of a "grid" layout horrifies me to no end. I envision burning. Lots and lots of burning.)
- Overall healing stability; allowing slash/raid healer(s) to commit a little extra to the tanks when/if necessary.
- Multiple burn targets on 1 side still provides us with a very stable slash group after they've ran away.

Disadvantages;
- Because we have no-one sitting out of the slash groups, burn healing can get a little scary at times; as we often see an excess of unecessary burn damage. Fortunately the slashes fall off before the burn damage becomes excessive; but there's no denying the difficulty in keeping several 3-slash burns up simultaneously.

The soakers at the front are our healers and hunters, removing the potential threat issues of having DPS within the 110% threshold; and also allowing them the opportunity to help out on burn healing if necessary. "Long distance burn running" is also prevented by sticking Mages and Paladins at the back of the slash groups; as they'll shed it and carry on with their role. (We try to promote as much "uptime" as possible.)

In previous discussion I mentioned our preference of 2x Warrior over 1x Warr & 1x Bear; however in our first kill we ended up resorting to the latter; as our Enhancement Shaman didn't show up and we were forced to use the OT's Shaman alt to fill the gap. In an entire night of attempts, the bear died quite often (perhaps 7-8 of our ~16 or so attempts) whilst I only died once. I'm still struggling to determine why we're experiencing so much instability with the bear, yet I'm being kept up with ease.

As demonstrated, the diagram is designed on an 8 healer basis, but pending requirements and composition, we can easily replace one of the Holy Priests with a Shadow Priest for more efficient slash coverage, DPS and VT. We went with 8 healers during learning to provide a little more stability, as we weren't being held back by the enrage timer; rather people dying before we got to it.

I don't know how strongly I'd recommend our method to anyone else as it clearly has it's flaws and is open to alot of refinement. But it does get the job done, at least.

 

Regen

Pretty much what we use as well, we try to leave a path through the middle of the dps so no one has to break off and potentially run along the outside -- Just run straight to the safe zone.

There is a moderate amount of luck involved in whether you will take a burn with 3 slashes on -- If you are doing it right it will fade before it gets unhealable, if you aren't you didn't run fast enough (EDIT: Confirmed by Cad you are bad if you have 3 slashes on for the last 15 seconds). As for burn healing the two usually consist of a pally/druid which might be standing in front of melee, but behind brut's mid point (overall covering more potential targets) - With 7 healers druid rolls hots on burns + current MT, paladin usually stays on MT until the last 10-15 seconds of burn.

As for your druid.. he has to be doing something wrong because our "gib factor" is significantly less than that of a warriors on this fight (and regardless should only be an issue during stomp).

 

◊ Cadfael

No it's not possible.

Meteor Slash has a 40 second duration and Burn has a 60 second duration, whereas the last 15 seconds or so are critical. It's possible that a player gets Burn and then while running to the safe spot, picks up another slash, in the worst case the 3rd one. Still that's 40 second minus reaction time and if that goes significantly into the critical burn time, then the player's reaction time is somewhere in the vicinity of 10 seconds which simply means he had the reaction time of your average glacier and should be made aware that he has to move as soon as he gets burn. If the player can't do that repeatedly, it's up to the raidleader to replace him with someone who can do that.

 

Brodnax

Within the concept of maximizing threat , do any guilds have their dps warrior spec/use piercing howl every 5 seconds. It sounds good on paper, extra 61.5 damage every 1.5 seconds by the tank provides around 100 additional tps.

 

world

It was showed somewhere on these forums (can't remember where though sorry ) that piercing howl doesn't actually count as a 'daze' effect when considering heroic strike, so this wouldn't work.

 

Iluminati

It's too bad really, because it would be amazing for steady shot damage as well

 

nfw

It works with shield bash, though I'm not sure if Brutallus can be dazed.

P.S. has anyone actually try submitting that as a bug? Has Blizzard ever clarified that?

 

Skyhoof

How much +hit or +spell hit do your tanks use on Brutallus? We get a couple of resists a night with both our warrior and paladin tank. Even with a quick challenging shout from the warrior, this usually wipes us. I've seen elsewhere in this thread that Brutallus has a 1% chance to resist a taunt. Is that assuming the person taunting is maxed out in either +hit or +spell hit? Thanks.