Brutallus Strategy Discussion - Page 33

Cathela · 07/10/08, 2:01 PM

We got our first kill last night using a Paladin MT (me), so a brief word on that if others are considering it.

WWS here

Basically it seems to work fine. In terms of bulk avoidance, the extra blocks seem to roughly cancel out the extra flat mitigation for a warrior; our healers reported no noticeable difference between healing me and healing our Prot warrior (who's slightly better geared than me.) Not having Last Stand or Shield Wall sucks, but LS is only going to get one use per attempt, and SW less than that, so for either a warrior or a paladin the bulk of the Stomps are going to have to be handled through clicky trinkets and nightmare seeds. Neither I nor the warrior ever died outside of Stomps and healer deaths.

Threat for a paladin tank is, as you would expect, excellent. Aside from having exorcism available, I was routinely burning all 8 Holy Shield charges with each cast, and being able to lead with Avenging Wrath meant I had a very large threat lead very early in the fight. (Our dps definitely noticed the difference between having me start and having our warrior start.)

I got gibbed at about 15% due to a 25k burst from Brut within a 1.5-second window when I wasn't quite fully topped off because the healers were running dry. I had no trinket/nightmare buff up, which was probably my fault. (I ran with Moroes plus the Shadowmoon Insignia.)

I was able to do a little bit of healing while our warrior was tanking, but I doubt that had much effect on what our real healers were doing. (3% total healing.)

One tricky aspect (that will apply to any tank combination besides warrior-warrior) was getting Commanding Shout onto me, since our arrangement (soakers grouped around the tank for maximum CH abuse) necessitated putting the tanks more than 20 yards apart. We had to make sure the warrior had a clear lane to run forward and buff me every cycle without running through burn range of anyone else.

Overall, if I had a choice of equally geared, equally skilled tanks for this fight I'd probably go with warrior-druid, or perhaps druid-druid. But a paladin is perfectly viable, and the performance is close enough that gear/skill/attendance differences are more important than class ability difference.

Tyrian · 07/10/08, 2:27 PM

But a paladin is pefectly viable

I agree, however we have always opted for Warrior+Druid when possible and our Protection Paladins come to Brutallus raids as ret. If a guilds been in BT enough to kill Brutallus, raid members should have enough offspec gear to really be able to come in alternate roles if needed anyway. The Druid+Warrior difference is quite hard to ignore, especially for a guild learning the fight that needs the benefits it provides.

Blacksen · 07/10/08, 2:56 PM

Honestly, the only reason you even bring a prot warrior to this fight is simply for thunder-clap. If you can have a DPS warrior do that, you'd probably be best off bringing 2 feral druids.
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The damage differences are kinda hard to ignore :-\ .

Prot Paladins can do well in this fight, especially if you can get fancy with the taunts and stomps.

I actually have wondered if this was possible (we haven't tried it), but assuming that there's a 3-4 second gap between stomps, is there any reason you can't always ensure that the current "off-tank" always gets stomped?
Consider this scenario:
At t=0, Brutallus casts Meteor Slash #1.
At t=3, off-tank taunts.
At t=4, Brutallus casts Stomp.
At t=4.2, original tank taunts.
At t=10, Brutallus casts Meteor Slash #2.

Obviously, when meteor-slashes and stomps were close together, this wouldn't be feasible. But is it feasible elsewhere?

EDIT: I should add that we do already do something similar here, but only at the actual "taunt" rotation. When Brutallus casts Meteor Slash #3 and there is a stomp between #'s 3 and 4, we wait for the stomp before taunting. Only happens 2-3 times a fight though.

Caligula · 07/10/08, 3:01 PM

The cooldown timer on slash is too short to bother with, in my opinion. A taunt resist and you wipe. Also, healers switching tanks 3 times in a 3 second period is will probably result in more tank deaths from lack of heals than just healing through the stomp itself. If it works for you, more power to you, but it's not worth the complication for us.

Blacksen · 07/10/08, 3:08 PM

Originally Posted by Caligula

A taunt resist and you wipe.

I don't think we've ever had a taunt get resisted on Brutallus.

Originally Posted by Caligula

Also, healers switching tanks 3 times in a 3 second period is will probably result in more tank deaths from lack of heals than just healing through the stomp itself. If it works for you, more power to you, but it's not worth the complication for us.

Probably true though.

• Arawethion · 07/10/08, 3:13 PM

Taunt resists at Brut are rare, but possible. Not exactly sure what the mechanic is.

It is theoretically possible to Taunt every Stomp. More precisely: Taunt timers can be coordinated s.t. every Slash goes in the right direction, but Brutallus is immediately Taunted off of any Stomped target. I don't know of anyone who's found it worthwhile to do this.

◊ Silmeria · 07/10/08, 3:16 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

Taunt resists at Brut are rare, but possible. Not exactly sure what the mechanic is.

It is theoretically possible to Taunt every Stomp. More precisely: Taunt timers can be coordinated s.t. every Slash goes in the right direction, but Brutallus is immediately Taunted off of any Stomped target. I don't know of anyone who's found it worthwhile to do this.

I'm pretty sure Premonition runs with a taunt-off-stomp strategy, no? I know of a few other guilds who do it as well, it's perfectly viable.

Cathela · 07/10/08, 4:01 PM

He can resist a taunt; it's definitely happened to us. It's very rare, but it appears that the base 1% chance for any spell to miss still applies.

You can recover with mocking blow and challenging shout/roar, or maybe a BoP on the tank if it's late in the fight and the OT is second on the aggro list.

Originally Posted by Tyrian

I agree, however we have always opted for Warrior+Druid when possible and our Protection Paladins come to Brutallus raids as ret. If a guilds been in BT enough to kill Brutallus, raid members should have enough offspec gear to really be able to come in alternate roles if needed anyway. The Druid+Warrior difference is quite hard to ignore, especially for a guild learning the fight that needs the benefits it provides.

Agreed. In our case, the key factor was that our prot warrior and I both have 95%+ compared to 60%-ish for our ferals, so we opted for consistency.

Denogran · 07/10/08, 4:07 PM

Originally Posted by Tyrian

If a guilds been in BT enough to kill Brutallus, raid members should have enough offspec gear to really be able to come in alternate roles if needed anyway.

This is true, but not entirely accurate. I have a pretty decent set of Ret gear, but A) offspec Tier items have been really hard to come by as we tend to run with quite a number of pallies/priests/warlocks and more importantly B) Why bring an offspec Pally with a pretty decent set of gear when you have a full time Pally with nearly best available gear/tons of raiding experience?

I certainly wouldn't argue that druids are the best for this fight - they clearly are. But if your guild only runs with one well-geared feral druid who gets pissed off and gquits after your first Brutallus kill, you might have to improvise somewhat.

And given that I found myself insta-gibbed pretty much as frequently as my warrior counter-part, with reports of significantly better threat from my tanking than a warrior replacement, I'd propose that paladins are no worse choices than warriors as tanks for this fight.

I'd definitely recommend using two clicky-trinkets though, as in our 35 attempts with me tanking, I never died to a non-stomp situation.

• Arawethion · 07/10/08, 4:25 PM

Clicky trinkets are nice, but it's really hard to top Commendation.

Dejime · 07/10/08, 4:40 PM

Well, the problem with Commendation is it doesn't proc too much when you need it. Given the internal cooldown, it's bound to proc within 5s or so of tank switching. Unless a stomp comes directly after the switch, Commendation is relatively useless-as there's no reason why a tank should die in any non-stomp situation. I'd rather have a poppable trinket that I can use when I need it-mainly, right before stomp. This guarantees me the extra stats I need to survive a stomp.

Moriantum · 07/10/08, 5:52 PM

I've noticed some people place their two burn healers behind the melee group, with the safe zones on either side of them. I'm wondering if it would also be possible to put one MT healer in each of the burn safe zone areas, so that if they get burn they don't have to move at all, and can continue to heal the tank while still being in range of the burn healers.

◊ Silmeria · 07/10/08, 5:57 PM

As long as you have a plan to handle slash healing effectively, you can place your healers anywhere for all intents and purposes. You see a lot of healers clustered in front of the tank so they can soak chain heals bouncing off the tanks.

Denogran · 07/10/08, 6:30 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

Clicky trinkets are nice, but it's really hard to top Commendation.

This was my thought for about 30 of the 40 attempts till I realized I absolutely, positively, only died during stomp. Now the Commedation is nice and all - the stamina and proc are both awesomesauce - but if the effect isn't going off during a stomp (or more accurately 2 of the 6 stomps you take), then the only thing you're left with is a 57 stamina trinket. Which is really nice, but nothing compared to passive avoidance (which moroes, the artifact, and the Insignia all have a good amount of: ~1.5-2% each) plus an additional 15% avoidance, 2500 armor(haven't done the math on the effective health gained as I don't have the artifact) or 1750 health for the times you really need it.

The Commendation is a great all-around tanking trinket, don't get me wrong. But when the critical part of a fight lasts all of 6 seconds you have to gear to that. Put it this way, you're basically comparing a trinket with 57 stamina to a trinket with 338 dodge, or a trinket with 36 def, 32 dodge and 1750 extra health.

Moriantum · 07/10/08, 6:36 PM

Originally Posted by Silmeria

As long as you have a plan to handle slash healing effectively, you can place your healers anywhere for all intents and purposes. You see a lot of healers clustered in front of the tank so they can soak chain heals bouncing off the tanks.

Two things, if they are clustered in front of the tank won't they still have to move when they get burn? And also, if they are clustered, won't they pass the burn to others before they get a chance to move?

malthrin · 07/10/08, 6:49 PM

Originally Posted by Moriantum

I've noticed some people place their two burn healers behind the melee group, with the safe zones on either side of them. I'm wondering if it would also be possible to put one MT healer in each of the burn safe zone areas, so that if they get burn they don't have to move at all, and can continue to heal the tank while still being in range of the burn healers.

You can't take too many healers out of the soaking area. Meteor slash is 20000 damage divided amongst the number of targets that it hits. The third meteor slash is hitting for 250% of that damage - 50k. Now, your worst case scenario is that 3 soakers on the same side have gotten Burn and had to run out. How does that third Meteor Slash look?

#soakers        -3    slash
10               7    7142
9                6    8333
8                5    10000
7                4    12500

If everyone but the melee is soaking, you'll probably have 9-10 soakers per side. Subtract two burn healers and you're at 8-9 soakers per side. If you take out two more healers and drop down to 7-8 per side, you will have people occasionally get 1-shot by Meteor Slash. If you can live with that while your healers get more comfortable with the tank healing, go for it, but know the risks.

Moriantum · 07/10/08, 7:00 PM

deleted because I realized my mistake

broods · 07/10/08, 7:52 PM

Any idea how to deal with spellpushback on brutalus? As an elemental shaman i dont have any talents that reduces spellpushback and i take a pretty large hit from all the pushback.

Tried a diffrent strat with only a few soakers so that i could dps by the melee and my dps was 150-200 higher but unfortunately the guild wants the old strat where we all take meteor slash.
So whats my options here? Just soak it up and deal with it?

seminarca · 07/10/08, 9:06 PM

As an Elemental Shaman you'd be unlikely to have access to a Concentration Aura in your group, so a spare Earth Shield is probably your best bet. Healers should probably be ok with just their talents and Holy Paladins in their group, so any Earth Shield not being used on a tank could potentially go to an Elemental Shaman or Shadow Priest.

Tyrian · 07/10/08, 9:20 PM

Any idea how to deal with spellpushback on brutalus?

An indirect way to handle spellpushback is to use things like Drums (Which use the GCD anyway) while he casts Meteor Slash. Also, you may want to use a mana pot (Assuming you can't destruction) towards the end of a cast. It's not really a perfect way to handle pushback, but does make a (somewhat trivial) difference.

Seife · 07/11/08, 12:10 AM

A Mana Potion does not invoke a global cooldown.

PitiChatMignon · 07/11/08, 6:02 AM

Originally Posted by Blacksen

Honestly, the only reason you even bring a prot warrior to this fight is simply for thunder-clap. If you can have a DPS warrior do that, you'd probably be best off bringing 2 feral druids.
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The damage differences are kinda hard to ignore :-\ .

The difference doesn't come from the classe difference but from who tank the first and as a consequence the longer time :
Blacksen - WWS
Blacksen warrior : took 152 hits and dodge 46% of the total hits : 152/0.54 = Brut tried to hit him 281 times.

Yihmo - WWS
Yihmo druid : took 128 hits with 40% dodge : 128/0.6 = Brut tried to hit him 210 times.

Total damage on the tanks is :
Blacksen : 788K
Yihmo : 609K
Difference is 788/609 = 1.29
Blacksen took 29% more damage

total "time tanking" is :
Blacksen : 281 hits
Yihmo : 210 hits
Difference is 281/210 = 1.34
Blacksen tanked 34% longer.

In fact blacksen suffered less dps, BUT, the avantage of the druid is not how much damage he tooks over the cours of the fight, it is only that he took less during stomps.

Zaniel · 07/11/08, 10:24 AM

Hey guys, I don't know if this is appropriate to the thread, but I sure hope so, since there's nowhere else really to go and I've tried milking these forums for as much as I can. See, my guild is stuck on Brutallus last night, and we've been closing the gap steadily but surely until last night. We finally saw a 9% pull Wednesday, then 7% last night, and finally a 3% wipe... and I just don't know how to get more from my people.

WWS here.

A 3% wipe shows we're almost there, but those last 3 percentage points seem to take forever. Can people look at the logs to see what we're missing, or if people are slacking? It just seems like we have everything down except the raw numbers, but given our gearing that shouldn't really be a problem.

I hope you guys can help -- seeing a 3% wipe after a night of twenty-odd pulls just blows my mind. Any suggestions, criticisms, and/or critiques would be very, very appreciated.

Thanks.