Are there ranged classes that have threat that is low enough that being in melee range won't be an issue?
Its been discussed at great length earlier in the thread. Summary: Shadow Priests and undergeared or non-regular specs (Affliction Warlock etc) can fit into the middle/front row just fine, but keep hunter/mage/warlock to the back.
This may or may not be a pretty stupid question, but with the mentioned 3x3 grid, do you just not have a 10th person to soak MS? Or do you and they just float in the back next to the grid? I would think if you did that it would create some problems with the back middle person running out of the grid if he has a soaker behind him.
My guild has often done it with 10 soakers. We tend to either make the back line 4 instead of 3, sort of squeezing out our square. Or we position in a way such that the blocked in person is a mage, who likely won't have to run out (Ice block), or has additional tools to do if they do need to (Blink).
The other thing that I've tried to do with my soaker positioning is give the slowest leaners the easiest run out positions, and give people that can either drop the burn or people with the best raid awareness the 'inner' positions that are hardest to run out of.
Anything between 7-10 is fine. We use 7 soakers (Eight if you include the MT) just out of habit. Using less can create problems if several people from that side have had to run out for Burn - and using more isn't really unnecessary. There is no rule saying its required to use 10.
(lines = nb of soakers including MT, columns = dmg with 0/1/2/3 debuff, the last column case is not expected as you do not want people to get 4 debuffs).
Anything between 7-10 is fine. We use 7 soakers (Eight if you include the MT) just out of habit. Using less can create problems if several people from that side have had to run out for Burn - and using more isn't really unnecessary. There is no rule saying its required to use 10.
We have both our melee group and a stacked ranged group stand in the back with the primary burn healer. This leaves 14 people in the front to soak including the tanks. One group is stacked with pallies/mages that can remove the burn to reduce the amount of movement and the other group is positioned such that the ranged dps can easily run over to fill in if needed. We've found that the additional dps by preventing pushback on one group has helped a lot and it is rare that we need to move on over anyway.
We've just started our Brutallus tries, and one thing we're having slight problems with is our secondary burn healer (healing Burn during last 15-20s) not being able to effectively track who has Burn and when it gets into the "critical" stage.
Is there any simple addon that just displays the Burn timers, or even some kind of plugin to Grid or Pitbull to do the same? Obviously BW/DBM display burn timers but it's easy for them to get lost in the middle of stomp/slash/enrage timers etc. I've read through the whole of the thread taking notes along the way, and I've not found anything helpful in this area.
I think standard grid is fine, in two steps (1st is to recognize the debuff, 2nd to display it)
*add aura -> debuff -> 'Burn' (beware of spelling) if english client
*icon center -> display -> Burn
It will show you who has the debuff, for timer bigwigs is ok. Moving bigwigs bars upon Grid may be considered.
You can also use GridShowRaidDebuff or something like that instead of manual settings.
A few additional notes about number of soakers. Most people use 2 shadowpriests, meaning 10 people can be covered by Vampiric Embrace. These 10 should definitely be soaking slashes, since Vampiric Embrace will more or less be enough to keep them up by itself. This means a base of 1 tank+5 in sp group on each spot. However, 6 soakers is cutting it close in case 1-2 gets burn, so i'd recommend using one extra.
Using more than 7 total on each side will probably be worse for the raid. You will get pushbacks on spellcasts, and there is a bigger chance the person getting burn will have slash debuffs plus lose dps by running out of slash zone. In addition, the paladins will receive less mana from healing, and healers might have to focus attention on slash soakers not covered by vampiric embrace.
Obviously BW/DBM display burn timers but it's easy for them to get lost in the middle of stomp/slash/enrage timers etc.
Use DBM. Click through the DBM menu. You can caonfigure which timers / messages to show for each boss. Just tell your burn healers to disable stomp/slash/enrage timers.
....secondary burn healer (healing Burn during last 15-20s) not being able to effectively track who has Burn and when it gets into the "critical" stage.
We solved this issue by simply having the primary burn healer announce on vent when every specific burn victim was entering 15-20 seconds; burn deaths pretty much stopped being an issue after that.
Failing that, DBM has individual timers for each burn casted by the boss, and you can configure said mod to show nothing else.
Just wondering, have any guilds tried having at least one slash soaker use a [Gift of Arthas] and can the slash proc the effect? If it can proc it I would think that having some one in the raid use it could be a significant DPS increase depending on how many melee/hunters you have (depending on how tight your raid is on debuff slots).
We've just started our Brutallus tries, and one thing we're having slight problems with is our secondary burn healer (healing Burn during last 15-20s) not being able to effectively track who has Burn and when it gets into the "critical" stage.
Is there any simple addon that just displays the Burn timers, or even some kind of plugin to Grid or Pitbull to do the same? Obviously BW/DBM display burn timers but it's easy for them to get lost in the middle of stomp/slash/enrage timers etc. I've read through the whole of the thread taking notes along the way, and I've not found anything helpful in this area.
I use GridStatusBrutallus, which adds a counter to the victim's Grid frame, counting down from 60. The first 20 seconds are green, then yellow, then the final 20 seconds show in red, so you know they're in that critical stage. It also shows how many slashes they have, so you can judge whether you need to be healing them more heavily, and you can see when slash has dropped off them. I also added Burn as a debuff and changed my Grid "Health Bar Colour" to bright red for this debuff - so anyone with burn is bright red, plus they have the countdown timer - everything you need to see at a glance.
EDIT: Apparently there are two such mods floating around. I use one by Daboran of Xavius (EU) (found here: RapidShare: Easy Filehosting ). This is the one that adds a counter coloured by time remaining (green = low healing, yellow = moderate healing, red = final seconds, hard healing).
The mod I linked previously (GridStatusBrutallus : WoWInterface Downloads : Ace: UnitFrames) actually calculates the incoming damage and colours the counter accordingly - so if someone has multiple slashes, it will colour their counter red (not necessarily according to time elapsed).
A green indicator means the DPS is lower than 1000 and could be healed through with a single triple-lifebloom stack. Yellow means more than 1000 DPS but less than 2000 and the target needs some additional healing. Red means DPS is more than 2000, heal as much as you can. If you are using the modul on a text line indicator, the first numer shows the elapsed time and the second number displays the number of Meteor Slash debuff stacks.
Now that I am use to the first mod, I don't think I will want to switch now - but the wowinterface one seems like it would be very handy for someone fresh to Brutallus.
Possibly a stupid question, but in the case of a war/dru tanking pair, is it possible to have them close enough together that the druid gets commanding shout refreshed from the warrior, while still being in 'correct' tanking positions, assuming 2 3x3 grids? The shout is only 20 yards range, and it seemed to me that I would have to run forward a little bit into Brutallus' model to refresh it, which makes me nervous when there's possible burns about.
Possibly a stupid question, but in the case of a war/dru tanking pair, is it possible to have them close enough together that the druid gets commanding shout refreshed from the warrior, while still being in 'correct' tanking positions, assuming 2 3x3 grids? The shout is only 20 yards range, and it seemed to me that I would have to run forward a little bit into Brutallus' model to refresh it, which makes me nervous when there's possible burns about.
From a first thought a can't imagine a positioning which lets the two tanks standing no more than 20 yards from another and does not create much hassle.
But from what I am told from our warriors it is not really much of a problem for them to run over a few steps and shout me. They only have to do this twice in a fight and they just need to keep an eye for slash timer and perhaps burns. In addition to that, I only really need that shout when I have to tank through a stomp and don't have my trinkets / nightmare seed ready .
We've been learning the fight tonight, and we got the positions right, it seems it' sonly a matter of getting more "raw numbers on the screen" now (only done less than 10 Illidan kills after all...)
When tanking, I'm running between 1200 and 1400 TPS when I have a quick look at Omen on this fight, depending on how often my slams crit etc. DPS are saying they're holding back a bit (warlock and mages mostly) ... is it normal or do I have to work on my gear choices to pump that number up ?
We've been learning the fight tonight, and we got the positions right, it seems it' sonly a matter of getting more "raw numbers on the screen" now (only done less than 10 Illidan kills after all...)
When tanking, I'm running between 1200 and 1400 TPS when I have a quick look at Omen on this fight, depending on how often my slams crit etc. DPS are saying they're holding back a bit (warlock and mages mostly) ... is it normal or do I have to work on my gear choices to pump that number up ?
That TPS is fine. Options to help this would be:
1) put tank in WF group. This obviously is a huge TPS increase but overall very dependent of what sort of raid composition you have.
2) Depending on how many hunters you have MDs are a very important initial threat boost so DPS can start immediately.
3) by far the easiest thing if it's a problem is have your shammies in caster groups drop tranq air for first 20-30 secs or so and it should be non issue past that.
I've lurking around for quite awhile and have learnt plenty about the fight. We're going to be on our 4th night on Brutallus and it seems that we can only hit enrage once each night. Most of the time its due to random tank death, and I am wondering how can I minimize this from happening.
I've attached our two WWS below and if anyone could give any tips for the tanks, healers or dps that will be awesome.
I've lurking around for quite awhile and have learnt plenty about the fight. We're going to be on our 4th night on Brutallus and it seems that we can only hit enrage once each night. Most of the time its due to random tank death, and I am wondering how can I minimize this from happening.
I've attached our two WWS below and if anyone could give any tips for the tanks, healers or dps that will be awesome.
We usually assign one healer to start healing the new tank ~1sec before he is taunting, incase of a massive burst. Make sure all your tank healers are using max rank during stomp, make sure all the heals arent landing at the same time. We usually ask our shamans to chainheal through the tank, (if you position the groups properly chainheals will hit the tank and anyone else in need of healing in that group.
I agree with what you are saying and that is what we did. However we did have occasions when the tank gets hit for 13k then 6k and 6k again. That's 25k damage and I'm not sure if we're not debuffing the boss correctly, or if the tank is doing something wrong, or just plain bad luck.
Random tank deaths aren't really occurring during a taunt transition, but during normal healing period which makes the healers (including myself) baffled as to what just happened.
You don't get 13k hits outside stomps. If you do, you better check your tanking gear if it isn't broken. And if it is Stomp - there's cooldowns, PoM/PW:S to absorb initial impact and make sure tank lives.
I've lurking around for quite awhile and have learnt plenty about the fight. We're going to be on our 4th night on Brutallus and it seems that we can only hit enrage once each night. Most of the time its due to random tank death, and I am wondering how can I minimize this from happening.
I've attached our two WWS below and if anyone could give any tips for the tanks, healers or dps that will be awesome.
Tank avoidance looks about right for a first kill, so if they're taking 13k from a single hit, then either 1) demo wasn't up when the warrior took a stomp or 2) the druid for some reason decided to go cat form...
Healing seems to be your biggest problem. For one thing you cannot bring a prot pally to heal on this fight, especially if you're still learning it. Make him go ret, or sit him out and get another dps in. You don't have the DPS to pull this off using 8 healers. Brutallus is a fight where just chucking more healers at it won't help. You should have all 3 shamans & both priests solely healing the tank. CH bounces off the tank will more than take care of slash healing. Your priests need to stop wasting gcd & mana using flash heal and just chain spam gheal the entire time. Have the two priests start early on the new tank during transitions.
*** It is imperative that you drill these two things into your healers: 1) You have to be spamming heals on the tank at all time - there should be no period of non-casting or even raid healing, 2) Healers have to know the tank taunting rotation as well as if they were tanking themselves so they can anticipate when taunts are coming.***
Druid + pal on burns work fine, particularly as neither of these classes have armor buffs so are less useful as tank healers.
Individually, DPS looks alright for the most part, but you guys really haven't put in much effort at maximizing composition. Your balance druid needs to start chain chugging pots, or you need to replace him. Regardless of his raid buffs if he can't pull 1500 he's not worth taking over another lock/hunter/mage. Like I said above your prot pally needs to go ret, or just bring another dps. Also, one of your priests should go imp DS. CoH seems awesome at first for soaker healing, but if you've got 3 resto shamans, it's mostly redundant ('sides your priests should be spamming gheal on the tank the entire time anyways).
08/19/08, 3:32 AM
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