Alot of the "Look at our Brut WWS, how do we improve our DPS?" posts can be answered with several points:

- Bring more shaman
- Bring more hybrids (A ret pally and/or BF warrior and/or shadow priests and/or elemental shaman)
- Bring 7 healers only (Ties in with first point = Favour bringing Shaman healers)
- Set groups up for the best synergy possible
- Do a thorough review of consumable usage for a nights worth of attempts to highlight players who are not giving 100% (Demonslaying elixirs, Well Fed, Destruction Potions, Haste Potions, Mana potions etc)
- Review WWS to find players who are just bad at playing their class (EG: We once had a feral druid dps who preferred to spam mangle every CD instead of shred....) and get them to visit the EJ class mechanics forums before its too late!

All of the "Help us on Brutallus!" comments can be answered with a mix of those points. Using the WWS link on the previous page, that guild needs to: Bring more shaman, less healers, review consumables (Not everyone is using destruction/mana pots I can see!) and check whether those players are specced/playing correctly - because a "top" dps of ~1790 on Brutallus is really quite low.

After Tyrian's post I hesitated a bit on posting but looks like we still need spesific advice. On our latest night on Brut we reached enrage twice. We experienced most problems due to burn targets dying (tree druid and paladin on burn healing), secondly tank deaths and lastly dps. We had 7 healers, we had 5 shaman. I know a ret pala would help but I don't think it would help us close a gap of ~2.1-2.2k. Your critisism and comments are appreciated.

Wow Web Stats

Just commenting on the bolded bit:

You *never* "have" to. All they're doing is reducing their total damage done for a short-term dps gain. Your tank's threat is no different in minutes 3-4 than it is in minutes 0-1, so it's silly to use a threat ability on a five-minute cooldown so early in the fight when they can just stop casting for a bit and stay under the tank until 50-65% (lower percentage if you're getting lusts, higher if you aren't.)

Saying "I have to stop casting for substantial portions of the first part of the fight" is valid. Saying "I had no choice but to shatter/invis" is bad play.

One of the big problems I can see starting off is your shadow priests. First, you have three of them. This is not really recommended. Since shadowpriests are likely going to be your lowest dps, the more you bring, the more dps you have to make up. Secondly, they are not performing well at all. I can't comment much on their spell rotations or anything, but their dps is a good 200-300 below what it should be. I notice their gear is pretty lackluster but if they can't pull more, you need to drop one for someone with more dps.

Also, your shadow priests' dps/VT uptime is hurting your casters in the form of not returning enough mana to them. I notice both of the mages in your two best attempts had to use 5 or more ticks of evocation. This is bad. This is a large dps loss for mages. As for warlocks, Mephi's DPS is much lower than it should be. He has 4pt6 but Bannish is beating him on practically every attempt. On your best attempt, Bannish got 15 more shadowbolts in than Mephi. At an average SB of 3700 (not counting crits), that's 55.5k more damage that he would've done, which equates to somewhere between 100-200 more personal dps. There are many small things like this that would help you to increase your overall dps.

Stack heroisms where it counts. It looks like you used 2 in the warlock/spriest/one hunter (?) group on your last attempt. With your warlocks, this is not quite effective. I'd recommend giving 2 to your hunters or melee group, or mages. Also, 1643 dps for a fury warrior is pretty dismal. Both of your dps warriors need to step up their game (though I notice your MS warrior's gear is not exactly amazing).

All that said, it looks like many people in your raid are not geared well enough or geared correctly to do the dps. Some of them are, but others are lacking things like 4pt6 that would help them significantly.

I would never recommend just 'stop casting for a bit.' That is a big dps loss. Most of our mages/locks use invis/shatter around 85% and never look back. It's easy to get threat capped in that first 15% if you get lucky crits but you should be able to go to 130% threat depending on your positioning. Also, if your casters have shamans in their group give them Tranquil Air Totem until 90% or so. By the end of the fight, you may catch back up on threat if your tanks are bad or you have like 50% crit, but chances of that are low.

Another point about shadow priests is they use up a lot of debuff slots. There's still a 40(?) debuff limit on mobs; since you're presumably pulling out all the bells and whistles for Brut, it's going to be crowded. We had difficulty with losing Deep Wounds (and hence Blood Frenzy) last week when we had two spriests and four locks.

I have a question to everyone in this thread.
2 resto shammies, 1 ele shammy. (caster groups only)
Our healer group gets one of our shadow priests, so we have: 3 warlocks, 2 mages, resto shaman and ele shaman + an spriest.

HOW would you set up these groups? Our mages are telling the warlocks that they get a bigger boost from dps, 1700 without spriest to 2100-2200 with spriest/ele shammy while our warlocks do around 1900-2000 dps without an spriest and with a resto shammy, but with ele/spriest do 2100-2300.

What the mages are telling me is that they deserve spriest/ele shammy more than the warlocks because they get a bigger benefit from it, what the forums and everything else i've read are telling me is buff the warlocks cuz they can pump out mad dps...so as I see it, our warlocks are not performing or our mages are kickass.

help me deciiide!

Wow Web Stats Warlocks had ele shammy/spriest. Granted I was on COD, my dps is...comparable, salahhuddin's crit rate was terrible, and arandel idk. Mages had a resto shaman, and I think that's it.

Wow Web Stats Me, and 2 mages had spriest and ele shammy, and it shows, the others had only a resto shaman. Granted this was a little bit earlier, and I had less gear, i think I did comparable at the time.

What is the optimal setup here?

EDIT: I don't have skull of gul'dan. My other trinket is...quag's eye...

There are various options available to you including swapping in synergistic classes to mages at the 20% mark so their dmg bonus gets a boost. Just be careful looking at the DPS numbers as they are a bit misleading, especially between difference classes. Have a look at total damage (and don't forget to take CoD out of your damage when making comparisons).

Ramsden, thank you for your reply. I read your post but couldn't reply earlier.

Yes we are aware of the spriest situation. At that raid we didn't actually have another choice. In fact one of them (Jene) is our holy priest, he respecced to shadow for this fight. Evrian is a good shadow priest who gave a big break to raiding and lacks gear. Only real shadow there was Cwap. For future fights we plan on bringing two only but there is already a discussion about who gets them. Healers say they will go oom if they don't have one and as you noticed caster dps is going oom without one.

I'm not so expecrienced about the locks but I will paste your reply in our forum anyway so they can find out what's wrong.

I don't think we really planned on how to distribute heroisms but we will consider your suggestion. MS warrior is something like a half time raider and we know he doesn't really have gear for SWP. For future raids I think we will drop to one warrior and make the Fury spec MS for this fight.

bigdogcc thank you for your reply.

Thanks for the tip.

I'm not really sure if we re-applied during the fight but considering that we reached there 2 out of 11 times and even in the best try we didn't really have a chance probably no one reapplied.

Yes we did

Though question to answer right now. We do have an imp might specced pala but he wasn't there that night, the others I don't know really.

I need to check the imp crusader.

I will let the healers know about your setup.

Only one was in slash group, thanks for the tip.

I'd say if you have two spriests to put one with the mage/lock/ele shammy group and then one with the paladins that are on the tanks full-time. You could also squeeze another lock into that group or something. Also don't forget you can move shamans around to put down mana tide for healers that are going oom (it has proven to be a big help for us).

It would help your tanks' survivability if Absolutvodka used Insect Swarm, he only used it once on all of your Brutallus attempts. I know very little about balance druids, but I calculate him spending 355.5 seconds of casting Starfire in a 349 second fight (before counting pushback and casting things like Innervate and treants), so he didn't appear to have any mana issues. This being the case I believe that working in Moonfire and Insect Swarm would be a dps increase, but again I'm not too confident on balance druids.

The only thing I can say about Yihmo is that I think he should start using Swipe. He used it once (accidentally) and did 530 damage, which would make it's base damage about 252. Considering the nature of this fight and that it would take at least 10 second to build a 5 stack of Lacerate every time he takes over tanking, I think he'd increase his TPS by spamming Swipe.

My guild's been killing Brut for a couple months now, and while things are really shaping up and we're getting him down in fewer and fewer attempts each week, we're still got one glaring problem that I'm trying to help fix. Apparently, whatever timer our burn healers are using to keep track of how much time is left on each person's burn is showing them that the burn is wearing off a few seconds before it actually does. I don't know if it's DBM's timer, or some other mod, but I was hoping to get some advice for them on which mod is consistently accurate for this purpose. We've lost several people to this problem because our pally healer who's assisting the resto druid switches from one burn victim to another when the burn timer ends, and then a huge tick of dmg hits the original target.

No man, insect swarm is definitely a large dps decrease for the druid. It hits for nothing, and blows 1 gcd every 12 seconds.

I'd say keeping up IS over a fight is probably a 30k damage loss on brut.

However, if you're good on dps but having tank death issues its worth putting it up there.

Edited for typo.

While keeping IS up is a dps loss (Please don't over exaggerate with "large") at the very least you should try to put it up for every stomp. IS is one of the unique benefits a moonkin brings to the table, try and remember why your raid is bringing you instead of worrying about "large dps decreases" (Hint: its not your personal dps).

As previously mentioned the druid should be using moonfire instead of just chain-casting starfire over and over.

Blacksen:
I also question why your druid is using Moroes' pocket watch over a badge of tenacity, this strikes me as an obviously insane trinket if you are worried about tank deaths (lets be real, the only time any tank should ever die is inside stomp).

Don't post split.

@Knopik:

On the 2100 dps run, Siuan got off 20 more fireballs. You also didn't have a Ret pld, so no JoW, and 3% lost crit. They also had 8% less crit overall. So, there's a lot more in that 500 dps difference than "didn't get a spriest."

If your mages have any mana left, you wasted a spriest on them. You may have to move your spriest around. But, assuming your locks are smart, they can easily turn more mana into more dps more easily than mages can. I do agree with your assessment that you locks seem to be underperforming your mages.

Not really sure on this one. Best guess is that it's an extra button to hit for stomps. I know as a warrior, I rotate bloodboil trinket - nightmare seed - last stand. I think he rotates trinkets and barkskin w/ Seeds. I think he's stacking armor so high that the badge is unnecessary.


This is incorrect though. The badge adds 11.5% dodge AND armor (you're forgetting the armor contribution from the agility). With a stomp reducing armor by 50%, any bit of armor is extremely significant and worth getting. I know as a warrior, the "key" to this fight is getting your armor as high as possible. I hit 27k armor regularly with full buffs. Once that gets reduced by 50%, armor is much more valuable.

Basically, 100 armor is extremely worth it on a mob that hits as hard as Brutallus, especially when you're at 13k armor for a few seconds.

It's definitely good. But is it better than additional ~6% of avoidance? I would assume not.

The same reason druids ironshield .... BoT is actually an extra ~850 armor while stomped (relatively ALOT of mitigation during stomp) not to mention it also comes with an on use:. How exactly does this compare to dodge? Well that is going to depend on how much dodge you have in the first place and given the nature of the fight between Sunwell Radiance and the fact that you are suicidal if you are droping yourself below 20-21k hp I would think the badge would be more beneficial (remember we are concerned about stomps only --- badge provides no benefits while not stomped, however I strongly believe if a tank dies while not stomped you have greater issues to deal with than the 2% dodge on the moroes trinket).

Edit: I would love someone to do the actual calculations and prove me wrong in terms of Stomp mitigation (dodge from moroes for ~50% of stomps vs. armor (all stomps) + dodge (~50% of stomps) on the badge)
edit2: In my opinion it is impossible to stack enough armor on brutallus, which is why I believe the badge shines
edit3: A quick glance at WWS reports to give an "idea". Yimho(no badge): Max hit: 8931 38.7% avoidance, Myself(badge): Max hit: 7659 48.8% Avoidance. Judging from his armory we have very similar gear (hes missing sunwell t6 boots/bracers, and I don't exactly approve of his helm enchant --- I guess perhaps this also raises the question is he using Major agility + Ironskin Elixirs(which would allow him to replace that terrible helm enchant))

The other advantage the Badge has is that the use lasts for 20 seconds, twice as long as the Pocketwatch, so you can pop it 5-10 seconds before Stomp lands to help your healers get you topped off going into Stomp.

You gain quite a bit more than 300 armor from Badge of Tenacity during stomp. Druids get 5.5 times as much armor from gear as other tanks get, so 308 becomes 308*5.5*1.25 (25% armor buff form priest/shaman crit) = ~2110 armor. Half that and you get 1050 extra armor during Stomp. That's an extremely significant amount. You do get significantly less dodge from the Badge, but dodge is RNG-based mitigation, which can't be counted on nearly so reliably as armor-based mitigation. Plus, as Blackson said, you also gain ~212 armor (during Stomp) from 170 agi (kings and SotF boost the badge's click to about 170, plus 25% bonus), which gives Badge that much more of an edge over Moroes' in terms of non-RNG-based mitigation stats.

Pocket Watch is certainly not a better choice than Badge for a druid, but depending on what you personally value more, it can be equally good.

On another note, I'm wondering why tanks assume that one needs to be tanking Brut with 21k HP. I regularly tank him with around 19.5k, and I've often considered dropping to around 18.5k for more avoidance (Shadowmoon vs. Commendation). I figure that, if your healers are doing their jobs and properly staggering their heals, the only thing you should have to worry about dying to is a Stomp combo (stomp + MH + OH). Since you absolutely will not survive another round of MH+OH hits without heals, no matter how much HP you've got (it'd require like 33k to survive that with the numbers I'm seeing for Stomp combos on WWS), I don't see why you shouldn't gear for as much avoidance as you can while maintaining just enough HP to survive a worst-case Stomp combo. And if you can push your avoidance really high, to the point of 50%+ after Radiance, you'll be even less likely to take a complete combo (dodge the OH, for instance).

WWS shows that my worst-case Stomp combo hits for about 5.2k Stomp, 9.6k MH, and 4.5k OH. That's 19.3k if he gets extremely lucky on RNG for his top-end damage, and I don't dodge, and he doesn't miss. And even if that happens, I still survive. What good is another 1.5k HP going to be against his next MH+OH, were I to be geared for 21k HP? I'm probably missing something, which is why I ask.

It was an educated shot in the dark (20-21k) based on what I normally have on Brutallus (20.5). You have the right idea (I personally use Shadowmoon/Badge) and the only real answer I could come up with for you is the possibility of dodging the next MH but having enough HP to survive the OH swing, which in itself is silly because you have the same chance to dodge the OH (I think?) as you do his MH attack anyway --- or perhaps you got partial heals which was enough to survive another round of RNG (which is why Shadowmoon's on use: can be nice as well), either way you are correct in terms of gearing towards the worst-case Stomp/mh/oh (HP) then stacking avoidance.