soadapop

Seems to be a full frontal...blob if you will, not even a cone, anything in front of him seems to get hit by the meteor slash which kind of messes up positioning but not too bad. Guess this has something to do with that rumored paladin taunt strategy, heh.

 

Phantasie

Here is a screenshot from tonight. Where i am standing i got hit with slash. Looks to be a full 180* attack in front of a tangent to his targeting circle with unlimited distance??? If i went all the way behind the tank to the fire wall, i would still get hit.

Green line being a tangent perpendicular to his front, touching the red target circle. From what i was seeing tonight I'm guessing that is what it is now.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....it&s4=&s5=&v=2

 

thorin5

I don't really see it being problem if it is like that now. The only thing it changes really is where to run when you get Burn and he's facing your direction. Our ranged DPS would just go behind their group out of range, or off between the 2 tank groups and about 30-ish yards away from Brutallus to avoid the slashes. Like I said though, not a big deal, but it does call for a small bit of change for those doing what we were.

 

• Intermission

Did the character between you and Brutalis get Slashed? (Looks like a Paladin.) If the splash angle starts at the center of his hitbox, it doesn't seem unreasonable that the cone is simply a slightly larger angle.

Cheers for the image.

 

Phantasie

Noone on the left/upper side of the line got hit, everyone on the right/bottom did get hit.

Now it figures the only *real* 100% of the time safe spot is behind the melee group. Otherwise the burn people would have to be on TankA side when B is tanking and run slightly to be on TankB's side when A taunts. But if its a tangent line techinically you could stand in brut's red circle and not get hit. I didn't have time to test this though, mine was just a couple pull analysis. Speculation at best.

Need more input. Anyone else give him a go tonight?

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....it&s4=&s5=&v=2

 

• Intermission

If your description of slash is accurate, I whipped this up in around 90 seconds... forgive the paint job:



A guildie on vent noticed it resembled a clown face, it wasn't my intention but it makes it easier to explain!

(Eyeballs are tanks, eye area are slash zones, mouth is burn victim zone, freckles are healers, stubble is melee, and his red hair is a no-go zone. The best burn victim zone is the tip of each side of the mouth, as close to brutalis as possible, between the melee and the slash groups. The pink/yellow lines are just the limits of "behind" the mob for melee attackers)

 

Skulli

Its obviously to fix that prot palading "exploit".

 

◊ Cadfael

Hm we wanted to try out a 3 tank strategy tonight. If it is really 180° then this would be impossible to do. If it is around 90° with unlimited distance then it remains viable.

Anyone of you US raids did try with 3 tanks tonight ?

 

cheebamonkey

If you are gonna do 3 tanks then you need to have the tanks moving around. So 3 tanks with 2 soak groups.

 

• Intermission

If you're using 3 tanks to help avoid stomps, you could you do it using 2 slash groups and a little bit of tank movement. Unless I'm missing something, I havent done the 3 tank strat.

 

Illundai

Pardon my ignorance, but could anyone explain me what exactly was the Prot Paladin exploit? This change actually greatly changes our positioning =/. We kinda used the range check on Meteor Slash to outrange Slashes for backups, in case someone soaking got Burn; after which the person just ran out of range of Slash. I'm kinda interested in knowing what exactly triggered this change? If it's not deemed worth of being posted here, PM please.

 

Skulli

Prot pala can do a range taunt. It was possible to taunt him off while casting meteor and the meteor would go to nirvana and doing 0 damage to raid. After that the normal tank retaunt and continues the fight. Would only require one real tank too.

 

Bellise

Ok, so either I am dumb or no one else sees the nerf in this? With unlimited range to the frontal cone, you can actually spread almost infinitely, making the fight a lot easier? With 2 tanks strategy , you will just send burned people to 1 side where he does not turn and problem solved.

Who we are is but a stepping stone to what we can become.

 

cheebamonkey

Well at the cost of being in range to dps the boss. If it is as described then you can have some fun with having the two tanks being fairly close to each other and spreading people out in the small angle made, which should open up the back.

 

Bellise

You can stay in range to dps the boss and still spread a lot more than you could before this change

Who we are is but a stepping stone to what we can become.

 

Skulli

At the cost of healing then
Depends what you are using but chain heal/coh wont be that effective if you spead too much out.

 

• Aldriana

Quick thoughts on the Ret Pally discussion:

Now, I fully admit that the Ret Pally in my guild is probably not typical of alliance Ret Pallies, but using his numbers as an examination of the potential of the class, I think it's pretty easy to argue that an Alliance Ret Pally justifies his raid spot. Working off the WWS of our kill (located here), we make the following estimates of the damage generated by our Ret Pally friend Draynam:

1) His personal DPS was 1681.
2) He was in a group with Rodemboo, Sydric, Shifft, and Gcjr; hence, 2% of their damage can be credited to him via Imp Sanctity Aura. The combined DPS of those 4 players is almost exactly 8000 DPS; 2% of this is another 160 DPS to add to Draynam's total, bringing us to 1841.
3) An additional rogue in that group would have generated about 2200 DPS; hence, the 3% crit aura must account for at least 350 DPS to justify his raid spot. Given that the DPS total is around 28k, this basically says that a 3% crit damage buff must increase raid DPS by at least 1.2%, which is pretty clearly the case (given that the buff to the rogues alone is over 150 DPS).

Conclusion: if you have a good, well-geared ret pally, they are a definite asset to your Brutallus raid. If you don't, then you're better of bringing a more conventional DPSer.

 

Madlax

A little contribution:
We used a 2 tank, 7 healer and 6 soaker(including tank) setup.
Also we used a pretty common raiding setup, could have swapped a random for another destro lock though.
Soaking groups consisted of:
3 mages + spriest + shaman
spriest + 4 healers

Slash #1: 20000/6 = 3333 damage
Slash #2: 20000/6*1.75 = 5833 damage
Slash #3: 20000/6*2.5 = 8333 damage
A Bad Slash #4: 20000/6*3.25 = 10833 damage

Several goodies:
Shadowpriests are, with Vampiric Embrace, insanely good for soaker healing.
25% of roughly 1400 DPS means 350 HP/Second/Target.

The shaman in the soaking group is advised to use a healing stream totem.
170 HP/Tick/Target sums itself up.

Those 2 combined in the mage group give ~870 HP/Tick.
In a 40 seconds tanking rotation this sums itself up to 17400 healed - per person.

Downside of 6 soakers? Have 1, in the worst case 2 backups ready for soaking in case someone of the primary soakers gets a burn.

As for class usability:
Arms warriors with blood frenzy basically contribute 400+ DPS.
Our arms warriors found this lockouts kill kinda depressing though, needing to stack up with some more expertise first to counter some rage starvation.
Ret paladins are a pretty nice buffer aswell.

 

cheebamonkey

We tried to use a taunt rotation to eat stomps which didn't work out for us and since we wanted to make sure we killed him we only went with 2 tanks. So to make the stomps managable we had each tank pop some sort of trinket, cooldown, or consumable to help mitigate the damage. It's a bit more expensive than the 3 tank strat but it helps a lot with dps. The tank healing team consisted of 2 pallies and 1 holy priest for inspiration plus any extra hots our resto druids could toss up.

 

Rathore

We are using a 2 tank rotation with 1feral/1prot. Last night was our first night of attempts and it is my initial thought to maximize avoidance, of course not at the cost of gimping my hp pool too much. Seem'd to work out well with the only problem being during a stomp, as expected. Is stacking avoidance the general consensus of the prot warrior population for brutallus?

 

Renew

Brutallus is a very simple boss to figure out and from what I can tell, just a gear check.

The healing strategies out there are fairly numerous, this is good to see. Something people should add to their healing strategy would be to have Shaman landing their Chain Heals on the person tanking the boss as Stomp happens/during the duration of it ("the EJ method"). It gives a chance to proc Ancestral Fortitude and also gives extra healing relief that the tank healers need so they don't require an SPriest. Dealing with Burn is pretty simple healing-wise, a Druid can solo heal the Burn target all the way down till 10-20 seconds to go and from there I seen dual Druid strats and or Druid+Big Healer strategies finish off the deadliest part of the Burn timer.

I do not feel a Druid is easier to heal than a Warrior. The biggest thing about bringing a bear to help tank is Mangle and Faerie Fire being up on the boss for synergy with the physical DPS classes. This was the main thing we lacked week one (our bear was busy with work that night) and now for week two we added him in. Our DPS was pretty amazing overall this week and it was due to building our raid so that every group 'worked'.

Our weakest group was maybe the tank group: Prot Warrior, Feral Druid, Restoration Shaman, BM Hunter and myself a Holy Paladin. I give the tanks 1%+Hit, so it's not too bad as we have never seen a taunt resist yet. Our Hunter's shaman was also used to lust a different full dps group.

Last week we didn't use a Ret Paladin and this week we did. I don't have last week's WWS due to not having an updated auto /combatlog mod (Got Loggerhead on WoWAce). We are alliance, I always have boasted about how easy it is to keep up JoW etc on a boss as Holy, but i am really starting to believe that a Ret Paladin is better at the task. It allows me to focus on keeping more people up and during progression content that is actually a challenge, it is almost needed.

I have seen some prot Paladins tanking Brutallus which to me is pretty cool. If mana isn't an issue, I don't see why that Protadin cannot spec for imp sotc. A Prot Paladin does give you JoW though, which to me seems more of a raid benefit.

As Gurg was saying earlier, they thought Hunters were bad dps, but in reality a good player is a good player. If you give them a strong group they will put up numbers they are supposed to to get the job done. Don't feel you need to copy X or Y guild, play to your guild's strengths as usually over thinking things will set you off course.

Original strat we had:


We had to tweak it tonight though due to the new cone:


- Wow Web Stats

Edit: We feel comfortable with 8 healers, 2 tanks, 2 spriests if it matters.

Confidence is not Arrogance.

 

Jalhar

Wow, thanks for your pics, they are very clear and help to understand what has changed. Can all the healers reach the burning targets from everywhere ? We use 1 healer for burn, and one additional healer (the druid who keep hots up on MT) for the last seconds, and I don't want to run in range problems for the burning players.

I have another question : can you still take the burn from "inside" the boss, ie in front of the tank ? It's pretty useful to give those spots to healers, for the said range issues.

As for taunt resist, has everyone seen a taunt resist on Brutallus ? After one and an half nights if tries on him, I can't remember us facing a taunt resist, which leads me to think he may be different from other bosses on this point, ie he cannot resist taunt.

 

Renew

I usually stand in front of one of the tanks so both can get devotion+draenei aura, so yes it's a good spot for the burn healer (my role in the fight). Also, I am still soaking the damage with the group.

Confidence is not Arrogance.

 

• Intermission

Clearly that's just a rip off of my Brutalis Clown Face I posted above! http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/9400/brutlolyy0.gif

In seriousness though, it worked quite well for us once melee got used to their reduced space. The unlimited range Slash makes it very easy to move when you have burn, and the 180° cone/tangent meant that our second enhancement shaman could totem the hunters and remain in range, with plenty of room to spare.

 

Illundai

We've definitely had taunt resists. I didn't have combatlog running at the time, but it did wipe us.