After reading through the reams of posts in here, we've started work on Brutallus, and as most people recommend, we're aiming for just surviving at the moment until the enrage, rather than worrying about pushing the DPS mark. The DPS I'm pretty confident we can each with proper and full consumable use, as well as proper use of heroisms, our major problem appears, at the moment, to be healing.
The current healing setup I'm using is as follows:
7 Healers
MT - Priest, Paladin, Paladin (1 FoL, 1 HL, 1 GH in general)
Raid - Shaman, Shaman (Chain healing through the tank on to groups spread out around the tank for easy bounces)
Burn - Druid, Druid
Our slash groups consist of 7 people including the tank, keeping the shadow priests, hunters, melee and elemental shaman out of slash to minimise spell pushback on these classes.
The setup seems to work some of the time really well, other times the raid dies to a slash, someone with burn dies or a tank gets gibbed on a stomp or tank transition. The current things we're doing to avoid tank deaths is calling out 3-2-1 before we taunt off the other tank after the 3rd slash, and calling stomps incoming while using trinkets and cooldowns to survive (feral druid and warrior tanks).
As I said, it all seems to work alright, but then someone dies to slash, to a burn or a tank gets killed in a split second, so I was wondering if we were doing anything wrong that might be improved, or even re-tweaking the healer setup to something more optimal?
If people are dying to Slash, work on positioning so Chain Heal jumps properly. If they're dying to Burn, have them announce when they're going into the last 15 seconds, also communicate with Burn healers if you have 2 or 3 Slash debuffs. If by "burn groups" you meant "Slash groups", that's cutting it a bit tight having only 7 people a side. If too many people on the same side get Burn and have to move, that side will take too much Slash damage (which could also be why you're losing people to Slash). Pushback does bad things to those classes DPS for sure, but you are still better off keeping them in Slash groups if you're confident in your raid's DPS. Also, most healing setups I've seen for Brutallus only have 1 Resto Druid for Burn, with another healing class helping out on the last ~10 seconds, two Resto Druids is probably 1 too many. You could probably sub in another Resto Shaman for an extra Bloodlust if available. Also, I wouldn't have Paladins using FoL on this, it just doesn't have enough throughput. Staggered HLs (upranking on Stomps) is the way to go.
Have your shamans use Searing Totems. Few more DPS there.
Its obvious that your spreading burns ALOT! 26 in 5:07! Spread out! Make sure you tell people they need to slowly turn their character so it is facing out of the group, then move out of the group to the safe spots you have designated for them.
After Armorying a few of your raiders, maybe a few more farms of BT/MH to get some more 4pc bonuses for classes so they can max their DPS/HPS.
I see a lot of people are drumming, that's a good start.
That's just a few things I saw/noticed. Go through the rest of this thread, really good tidbits here and there for more advice.
Hello fellow elitist jerks.
I would appreciate some input on my WWS brut report. Im the ele shaman. Wow Web Stats
What can i do to improve my dps? Been comparing to other shamans and i seem to have low dps but when i check dmg done it seems im doing ok compared to others.
I know i can fit another destro pot in there and we've only killed brut twice so far so im sure i can fine tune a couple of things onces i get more comfortable with the encounter.
At the last kill i had only 35% crit chance during the kill but should be at 42-43% buffed counting the ret pala which might account for the low dps.
I also get rotated out of the second BL instead of the shadow priest but i've been complaining about it and might get the second bl next time around.
Two trees on Burn healing, in my experience, works a treat. Coordination on healing between Burn healers is needed whatever the healer pairing, but with two trees on Burn healing we almost never lose someone (farks being the main reason for any Burn deaths). From my point of view as a Burn healer, the biggest threat to stable Burn healing is chained Burns: four people with Burn at a given point due to one person eating someone else's Burn is barely manageble but highly undesireable and unnecessarily stressful. Timing a combat res as a Burn healer, for whatever reason a death occured, does risk losing a Burn target.
Burn healing for a tree duo is mostly HoT juggling and target prioritising. Ideally one tree is HoT juggling on the three Burn targets fulltime, the second one provides support for final Burn ticks and those who just got Burn with Slash (and is otherwise free to support elsewhere as needed). Full HoTs from one Druid are not enough to save someone from Burn, but well timed Swiftmends and support HoTs are. It can take a while to get used to the particular 'juggling' needed and in intial attempts, if you lose one person to Burn, you may suddenly have a few die as the Burn healers try to adjust. This should not be the case once they are more experienced in Burn healing for this fight.
It should be possible that secondary Burn healer is able to support HoT on the tanks. If you are lucky on Burn targets, the trees are nice support on Slash/tank healing as needed. There is no reason two trees cannot manage Burn healing bar the initial learning.
Hello fellow elitist jerks.
I would appreciate some input on my WWS brut report. Im the ele shaman. Wow Web Stats
What can i do to improve my dps? Been comparing to other shamans and i seem to have low dps but when i check dmg done it seems im doing ok compared to others.
I know i can fit another destro pot in there and we've only killed brut twice so far so im sure i can fine tune a couple of things onces i get more comfortable with the encounter.
At the last kill i had only 35% crit chance during the kill but should be at 42-43% buffed counting the ret pala which might account for the low dps.
I also get rotated out of the second BL instead of the shadow priest but i've been complaining about it and might get the second bl next time around.
2 chain lightnings to 147 lightning bolts. If you cant keep up a 3:1 rotation with destruction pots, use mana pots.
2 chain lightnings to 147 lightning bolts. If you cant keep up a 3:1 rotation with destruction pots, use mana pots.
I dont have any mana issues at all but with 4piece T6 and decent amount of haste it seems pure lighting yields better dps for me and less chance to mess up the cast rotation. Im gonna give 4.1 rotation a try next kill to see if it changes anything.
When I saw that you were having one of your paladins use a flash spam on Brutallus I was somewhat alarmed as flash spam just isn't enough to keep the tank up. However, looking at your WWS, I guess both realized that holy light was the only way to keep up the tank and as such most of their heals came from holy light. It is also nice to see that with their Holy Light spamming, they each have a fair amount of haste.
Hello everybody.
I was wondering if a kind Rogue could help me out here.
When you use imp expose on Brutallus, how do you open?
I want to get the first 5 CP EA as fast in as possible, yet not fight without SnD up.
Starting with Garrote and then use a 1 CP SnD will not get me the required 5 points before SnD drops, so what do you do?Using AR that early might cause aggro problems.
Although I'm not a rogue, from a general raid effectiveness perspective, I'd say that having SnD falling off for a few seconds at the expense of having over 3000 -armor up quicker is a pretty fair trade off from any point of view. Hell, probably using your first 5 cp on expose and not even worrying about SnD probably is an option (though there would need to be an analysis for that scenario).
Moral of the story, 3000 armor pen is HUGE, and thats for all the physical dps, including the tanks threat.
Yes, i will ofc be using the first 5 CP for EA, the very first CP from Garrote i will use for SnD to get energy faster also, else it takes a while to get 5 CP with bad luck.
Edit:Nevermind, i guess Thistletea will do the trick.
Hello, we have just started working on Brut, and pretty much the huge problem we are having are the tanks dying. We are running with 8 healers. We have 2 druids on Burn, 2 Shamans on Meteor Slash, and the rest of the healers on the tanks. Most of the time it is during a stomp, but we even have tank deaths when there is not a stomp.
Here is the WWS report from last night. Wow Web Stats
Are our tanks not stacking enough avoidance, or is mainly a healing issue? We have always had troubles with keeping the tanks alive since I joined during the Gruul days. Is there anything I can try to do to help keep the tanks alive?
looks like your healing the taks mainly with 2 palas and 1 priests.
however it seems to be common practise, to have your shamans heal the tank also, to provide additional healing, armor buff up time, and you can chainheal the tanks to provide tank and slash healing at the same time.
Hello, we have just started working on Brut, and pretty much the huge problem we are having are the tanks dying. We are running with 8 healers. We have 2 druids on Burn, 2 Shamans on Meteor Slash, and the rest of the healers on the tanks. Most of the time it is during a stomp, but we even have tank deaths when there is not a stomp.
Here is the WWS report from last night. Wow Web Stats
I was looking through your report, and basically your healers are killing the tanks by using FoL during Stomp. 3 healers healing both tanks is more than enough if they simply make sure to be using their max rank heals instead of flashing, and don't synchronize their heals. If you're using a 3-2-1 countdown, tell one of the MT healers to start casting at 2, the other to start casting at 1, and the third to start casting at the taunt (or something similar), so all heals won't land at the same time and overheal, and the next second the tank's dead. You can also use a 3-2-1 countdown just before Stomp, at least until your healers get a hang of it and start watching timers as well.
(I also noted that your MT healers Neenja & Sathias spent some time on healing themselves - leave this to the raid/burn healers!)
Your tanks seem to be having a decent enough amount of avoidance (compared yours to me + my warrior friend @ brut); the issue could also be that your tanks aren't using their cooldowns in the best way possible. You can sort out a rotation so that one tank taunts right after the first stomp, and then both tanks should have enough cooldowns to use on every stomp afterwards, or be able to taunt after the stomps again.
Is it possible for the mages not to use invisibility once for learning brut, especially when tanks cannot afford to wear too much threat gear at this fight? Our mages keep crying that they have to use invisibility once after 2 mins into the fight, and hence lose 5sec dps time in this fight going invisibility.
One of our mage even said that she has 6 cooldowns she can blow at the start of the fight, but cut back to 2 to stay below the threat.
Our mages are grouped together standing in melee range next to our tanks for soaking meteor slash. Wow Web Stats
Why don't you change their positioning then? There have to be other soakers that can be in the frontline instead of them so they are not in melee range.
Deaggro skills always depend on two things - how much DPS threat you are doing and how much threat your tanks are producing. So really, it's a two-way street.
From your WWS I can see that your druid starts the tanking rotation - this is very good for threat since the warrior can safely apply all the debuffs before having to worry about threat.
It's true that your tanks can't afford to wear threat gear, that's why you put them in a DPS group (which I see from your WWS that you have also done). ANYWAYS it does look like your tanks could pump out a bit more threat but of course you should use your deaggro spell on Brutallus. It's actually a very fine art.
As a mage you have to consider several things:
a) When to use invisibility. If you use it too early you dump too little threat and it's wasted.
b) Do I let it tick for the entire duration or only 1-2 ticks?
In an "ideal" Brutallus situation you would do so much DPS that you have to use your deaggro spell AND after using it, you'd still be at around 129% threat when the fight ends!
But ok - enough of that.
Having your ranged DPS standing at melee range is just stupid. Use healers/low DPS casters in melee range and warlocks/mages etc and any other high DPS people in range. A good tip for mage (and paladin) positioning is to have them stand FURTHEST to the burn spot. That way you have people that can't remove it close to it and this should lessen running time (and lessen or remove burn spreading).
I can also tell you that you won't kill Brutallus with 8 healers. The try you linked took 6 minutes 25 seconds and you still lack almost 2 million damage.. That's a HUGE deficit. :>
Drop 1 priest, get a high DPS class in. Consider dropping another priest for an extra healing shaman for totems in all groups. You seem to lack decent group setups and alot of drums.
Look on the bright side - you managed to survive over 6 minutes! Now just boost your raid DPS by about 7K and you have a kill! GOOD LUCK!
To alleviate some of the problems we were having, I buffered the Slash groups with the hunters (adding 1 extra person to each side) and made a few slight changes to raid positioning and MT healing (using HL, HL, GH, rather than FoL, HL, GH) and a bit of blind luck. The kill was a bit shonky (I died at 1%, our druids slash group mostly died from a 4th slash, and he enraged @_@) but a kills a kill
Our mages keep crying that they have to use invisibility
Our mages are grouped together standing in melee range next to our tanks for soaking meteor slash.
These comments are silly, do you realise that?. If I was a mage in your guild id be crying as well, because having me stand in melee range to soak is downright silly when I want to be doing max DPS.
It would mean they can only dps to ~90-95% MT threat standing in melee, instead of ~120-125% MT threat from range. The difference is big for DPS because we can push/ride the MT's threat alot harder without pulling agro. For reference, my soak groups generally look like this:
Front line (in front of the tank, melee range) = Resto Shamans, Holy Priest, Holy Paladin
Middle line (next to the tank, melee range) = Shadow Priest and any undergeared DPS (Or non-standard dps specs, like affliction warlocks) you bring who you know couldnt pull agro if they tried, since the middle line is still in melee range
Back Line (behind the tank, range distance) = Warlocks, Mages, Hunters.
Any spare warlock / mage / hunter that cant fit in the back line of three, are kicked out of the soak group and put behind Brutallus instead. There is never, under any circumstance, one of them in melee range unless they are an undergeared new recruit.
We've actually found that we can fit four people into the back line of each soak group, by having an empty gap behind the tank instead of a person. That makes eight slots for out-of-melee-range dps, which should be enough.
If you're one or two over that, put the extras behind the melee as Tyrian suggested. I recommend picking the people who will benefit the most from being knockback-free. (Our spriests love being behind the melee.)
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
To alleviate some of the problems we were having, I buffered the Slash groups with the hunters (adding 1 extra person to each side) and made a few slight changes to raid positioning and MT healing (using HL, HL, GH, rather than FoL, HL, GH) and a bit of blind luck. The kill was a bit shonky (I died at 1%, our druids slash group mostly died from a 4th slash, and he enraged @_@) but a kills a kill
After 3 nights of solid attempts, we were running up short on enrage (~4% was our best attempt). The raid comp was, admittedly, not min-maxed as well as I would have liked. We were running 8 healers, and after reading a lot of comments here about dropping to 7 healers, I decided to do that instead. We ended up going with 3 shamans (2 chaining, 1 HW spamming), 1 Paladin spamming HL, and 1 Priest spamming GH (2 Druids on Burn). I could probably have that shaman chaining instead, but I liked the big heals during stomp (and the additional heroism, 3 restos, 1 enhance, 1 elemental shaman on the kill, instead of another paladin or priest).
We ended up dropping him 3rd pull into our 4th night on what should have been a pre-enrage kill (Brutallus Death - 6'03"). There were one or two under-preformer's, and a botched 2nd heroism for the melee. If you are getting single digit wipes, and are using 8 healers, I would strongly recommend cutting out a healer and adding a solid DPSer. It is by far the easiest way to inject a large portion of DPS into the raid. Other than that, thanks again to the contributors here. Pretty much everything you need to know about the fight can be found on these pages.
You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.
07/25/08, 12:58 AM
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