MatsT

I would be very interested in how he manages to swap trinkets during the fight... Divine intervention tricks?

On a more serious note, the global cooldowns you will lose by swapping librams is hardly worth it. Go with Libram of Absolute Truth or Libram of Souls Redeemed depending on which one you have access to and how much FoL you are casting. There's not much magical to be done about consumables. You will be able to use your 2-minute cooldowns (mana pot, dark rune, DI) three times in the fight but not four. Exactly when you use them doesn't matter all that much. Elixirs are also pretty standard i guess, flasks are generally weak for healers compared to elixirs so i guess +50 healing combined with either 16 mp5 or 30 int+spirit.

The only special thing i can think about is that depending on your group setup Drums of Restoration may very well be better than Drums of Haste. Resto drums basically adds 25 mp5 over time, which is worth significantly more than 20 haste for a most healers. Depends on your group setup of course.

 

pope master

Super quick question that I haven't found an answer to: Does stomp reduce base armor (i.e. armor value just from items) or base armor + talents or fully buffed armor? Specifically do ironshields and items like the ZA trinket apply after the stomp or are they also reduced by the same stomp amount?

 

sovelis41

It reduces your current armor value (buffed).

You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.

 

pinkhyori

Thanks to all the insights our guild has gained from comments in this thread, we have killed Brutallus twice.

We're going for our 3rd kill this week with a different comp (due to RL issues).

We find our druid tank dying during stomp much more often now. The catch is that we've used the same tank healers since day one. And we're only facing this problem tonight.

If anyone can provide some insight as to this insta-gib problem it will be much appreciated.

WWS report

 

MatsT

Since it's basically the first response to every single "what's wrong with my WWS" in this thread i'm not sure how you haven't realized, but your druid didn't use a single Ironshield Potion the entire evening. I also suspect demoralizing shout isn't kept up properly on some tries, but it's kind of hard to know from a wws. In addition, your tanks are tanking with stomp too much. You need to time as many tank switches as possible for just after a stomp so that you only tank with stomp like 4 times in total during the fight. A good starting point is to taunt just after the first stomp (between 2nd and 3rd slash) and then taunt every third slash but waiting for stomps when possible. This usually means somewhere between 4-6 stomps have to be tanked in total, and you should have trinkets, seeds, last stands up for those.

Also, you should know that the healer setup you are using has to be considered somewhat dangerous. While it's certainly possible to kill Brutallus with the setup you have, and you did so twice, you're gonna have to expect more tank deaths than most other guilds. If you keep trying with what you have now, i'm sure you'll get another kill, you were quite close a few times. If you want a more safe strategy, the norm is that 5.5 out of 7 healers should be focusing on the tank. 1 Restodruid fulltime on burns, 5 fulltime on the tank and 1 utility healer helping out on late burns, tank switches, stomps, people being low before 3rd slash, etc. I would suggest that the holy priest you use for raid healing should focus a lot more on the tanks and let Vampiric Embrace do the bulk of the raid healing. If people in the slash groups are not healed up 5 seconds before the 3rd slash, he can help out with some CoH, but in general keep him on the tanks.

 

sovelis41

This is somewhat dependant on what your healers prefer. My group prefers tanks to eat an entire stomp rather than handling a majority of them through tank switches. Even though our tanks count down from 3 on every taunt and stomp cooldown, there is still a small amount of uncertainty involved that I don't like.

You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.

 

pinkhyori

Thank you for your observations MatsT. I totally missed the ironshield potions and will take note of that in future.

With regards to the healing, I suspect that it might be the change of the healer setup as well.... since in the past we had 2 resto shamans chain healing through the tanks.

However once question I would like to ask, Brutallus tends to hit for ~7k MH and ~4k OH during stomp, for a total of 11k. Since Brut appears to have a 1.2s attack speed, in 2 swing cycles the tank gets hit for ~22k if no attacks are dodged, and given a bad RNG this number can hit 24k and usually instagib the tank. Is there any way around this since the fastest big heal with haste comes at about 1.7s?

We have tried staggering heals, or timing the heals but there seems to be just so much luck factor involved.

 

Caligula

Heal over time - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Specifically

Lifebloom - Spell - World of Warcraft

and to a lesser extent

Renew - Spell - World of Warcraft
Rejuvenation - Spell - World of Warcraft
Regrowth - Spell - World of Warcraft

Also, when eating a stomp, as has been mentioned many many times in this thread, your tank should be using some sort of mitigation item or consumable. Trinkets, Last Stand, Shield Wall, Nightmare Seeds...

If someone wants to run some probability numbers they could. I think you'll find that with 3-4 incoming direct heals, 3-4 hots, and a consumable/item buff, the probability of the tank taking 4 swings with absolutely no heals in between is around 0 (actually I know it's 0 because lifebloom ticks every second).

Come to think of it, in 3.0 (a week or 2) you could bring a Disc priest to use Penance during Stomp.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...s/Caligula.png

 

sovelis41

A spike like that can certainly happen right on a stomp, and is why it is essential that your tanks are hitting some kind of cooldown when the stomp is coming up. Things such as a well timed shield block and/or PW:S will also help bring that spike down. The only luck involved if you don't prepare for it properly. If you're worried on a particular stomp just have NS'd heals ready or some such (improper taunt within 3-5 seconds of a stomp, for example), but you can't count on that all the time.

Anyways, all of this is really old and dated as far as strategy is concerned. Your healers just need to get into the Brutallus healing mode, which is a constant stream of heals from the start of the fight until it's over.

You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.

 

• Daboran

Although in theory there's a way for a heal to save you from the worst-case scenerio, in practice there will always be the odd try where Brutallus will just destroy your tank by connecting with everything while your healers have inadvertantly synced heals or have been forced to run due to Burn etc.

The important thing is to recognize when "someone messed up" and distinguish that from just "RNG bad luck". Bad luck is pretty uncommon I have to say, usually someone messes up.

 

Mihir

Have Xanytos spec holy so he can heal with holy light instead of FoL on the tanks.

 

MatsT

Yes, there is certainly a luck factor involved, and there are some gibs that can't be avoided. It's certainly possible for the tanks to get 25k hp, but i've seen burst of more than that too, What we did was to make sure we had an affliction warlock in the main tank group, providing ~1k hp to tanks plus -5% dmg on boss via shadow embrace. If you are desperate, you could combine this with devotion aura and/or grace of air totem. These methods gets removed in 3.0.3 though, but it won't really be an issue after that anyway.

Additionally, some people try to "desynch" their healers to make sure there's a steady stream of heals landing every 0.5 sec or so, but personally i think lag and spellhaste prevents that from working.

 

Abbichum

Has anyone gone with a 3 tank strategy, and if so, how does that work out?

Our guild has 3 Illidan kills, and we managed to kill kalec on the second pull last night, so were looking at brutallus on sunday. We had a few goes at him last night, managing about 50%, gettin the basics sorted out, but our tanks arent really fully t6 at all, so they would die due to Stomp at some point. With the enrage timer being so silly now, dps shouldnt be a problem and we should be able to taunt brutallus when he does Stomp with a 3-tank setup, if i understand it correctly. Positioning would be something like 3 separate tank groups with soakers and just taunt whenever he stomps?

If someone has advice/clarification for this tactic i would appreciate it.

 

LittleHamster

This is from the PoV of a guild that just started sunwell after 3.0.2.

We started with the three tank strategy just because we carry on with the same group after Kalecgos. Killed Brutallus twice and both times we had tank deaths. What we did was have our feral and prot warrior start first, tank swap every 3 slashes. Prot pally stands with melee group in prot gear. When a tank dies, prot pally moves into position of the dead one. I know it's not the smartest strategy but this might give you a first kill.

 

Yaelle

Well that can work, but it adds luck dependency. If one tank dies in the wrong moment, you might have a fourth meteor slash on one soaker group.

Why not just bring another healer ?

 

LittleHamster

From what our healers say, meteor slashes don't hurt much anymore. It's the burns and stomps that kills now.

As for other ways to survive through stomps, I think this thread has already covered them. On top of my head, there's ironshield potion, trinkets, nightmare seeds etc for your tanks. Priests and shamans also have heals that adds armor to the tanks. We haven't tried extra healers, but we are already on 8 from our Kalecgos setup.

 

Lucinde

I actually think it's easier with two tanks. No quadruple slashes problems, no 3-group positioning, no people stuck with burn, no range issues and so on. Have your third tank dps or stack some debuffs instead. Or you could just have him respec, because felmyst is a 1-tank fight and for Twins you only need two melee tanks.

Besides, everything that made Brutallus hard got completely removed with the patch, dumbing it down to nothing more than tank and spank. The only thing remotely dangerous now is the burn. With the enrage timer effectively removed you can now easily afford to run 8 healers, but with the melee damage lowered, you don't actually need them.

Just heal through stomps as they come and taunt every 3 slashes. If your tanks are still dying it's because your healers are reacting to the switch too slow, which is really odd since they can heal through Bloodboil as well and he's less predictable. To fix that you can easily afford to have one shaman bounce heals off of the second instead of the current tank to have some sort of heals coming in after a taunt while the others are switching.

Also tell them to stop cancel-casting within 5 seconds of a stomp. It's ok to have 60% overhealing on brutallus if that's the way to keep the tanks alive and kill it.

 

Anobix

We have done it with both, the 3-tank setup makes it even easier. The way to do it is have the tank that will take stomps be on the other side that is not taking slashes and when he is about to stomp, taunt, and then the other tank taunts off of you immediately. has worked fine.

 

Xelopheris

You sit 1 healer for 1 tank and triple your number of opportunities for taunt resists. It's not optimal, and definitely not intended way of beating the encounter.

 

woo-haa

You can get around the first three or four Stomps if the second tank taunt after two slashes. He'll be much easier if you use the 2-3-3... rotation since your tanks can stack cooldowns on the Stomps instead of spreading them out.