Brutallus Strategy Discussion - Page 6

• Whiteknight · 04/02/08, 9:06 PM

Is there a cap on the number of targets hit by meteor slash?
It's something we never bothered checking, we only had 5 people in range ever.

• Intermission · 04/02/08, 9:09 PM

Originally Posted by Whiteknight

Is there a cap on the number of targets hit by meteor slash?
It's something we never bothered checking, we only had 5 people in range ever.

No cap, but you dont want everyone to take it at once because the debuff needs to be rotated around to stop it stacking too high.

Elerion · 04/02/08, 9:35 PM

Originally Posted by Whiteknight

Is there a cap on the number of targets hit by meteor slash?
It's something we never bothered checking, we only had 5 people in range ever.

No cap. For that reason I never understood why some guilds only use those 5 people, increasing odds of a bad burn streak making your soak group too thin. There's minimal reason to do anything other than just stick everyone except melee dps into two soak groups.

• Whiteknight · 04/02/08, 9:42 PM

For our kill we used 5 including the tank, and burn victims got a replacement when they ran out. The choice of 5 was more due to space requirements - the range was pretty short. This part seems a little easier now.

Pwny · 04/02/08, 10:28 PM

We used 6-7 on the slash, keeping shadowpriests, moonkin, elemental shaman and high dps locks out so they didnt suffer from pushbacks.

Danoobiel · 04/02/08, 10:58 PM

Ok, long story short, my guild struggels against Brutallus.

Thats why I'm looking for some help and I think this is the right place to get it.

Our meele group is made of:

1 enhancement shaman
1 2H warrior
1 retribution paladin
2 rogues

I'm also playing a rogue but I'm not in the meele group. I end up in the tanking group with the ferals and our hunter because our boss thinks I'm undergeared (that my be true I got only 3 pieces T6) but I'm in because he knows I'm good DPS.

So the 2H warrior is complaining about haveing to thunderclapp and sundering the boss. Wich got me thinking. If he is in the meele group and I'm not, maybe I could skill and use expose armour for him while he could focus on more DPS. But sadly expose armour lasts 30 seconds and I totally dont know wich finisher cycles to run and how much combo points to use to get the most out of its uptime. I would be really grateful for any help.

Iluminati · 04/02/08, 11:04 PM

Your warrior tank should be doing sunder and thunderclap no problem.

edit: Obviously you could be using 2 ferals. If that is the case your warrior just needs to suck it up and do sunder/tclap/demoshout.

Ghando · 04/02/08, 11:10 PM

The implication is that they're using two Feral tanks (or 1/2 Prot Pallies; either way, no Protection Warriors). For what it's worth, a Feral tank is not a meaningful improvement over a Warrior tank on Brutallus; Ferals take less damage over the course of the fight, but they have lower HP and lack the excellent timers of a Warrior tank. That's not to say Ferals can't work (we used one in our kill last week) but unless you have no excellently-geared Prot Warriors I'd recommend using at least one. And regarding Expose Armor....no. Your DPS is more important to maintain than an MS Warrior's, as it should be considerably higher given even roughly comparable gear. The MS Warrior, like a Shadow Priest, is there for his buffs/debuffs; not personal DPS. Given the choice he should be doing the proverbial grunt work.

• Falk · 04/02/08, 11:57 PM

Originally Posted by Ghando

but they have lower HP

???????????

I agree with everything else, more or less. Honestly though, from a practical standpoint there's just so much difference in style of play, gear (especially avoidance vs stam stacking vs a balance, both on the druid and warrior) and healing strategy that the preferability is going to vary a lot from guild to guild.

For what it's worth, I was taking about 10-15% more damage over the course of all our attempts than our warrior but died wa-aaay less to random RNG instagibs. (Which itself didn't really happen all that often) He was in the same gear setup as running through BT, and I decided to gem out with more stam. (24.5k with commanding, although I was out of range for his shout after pulling brutallus)

Elerion · 04/03/08, 12:03 AM

Originally Posted by Falk

(24.5k with commanding, although I was out of range for his shout after pulling brutallus)

Have him run up and shout you between meteor slashes when you're tanking.

• Falk · 04/03/08, 12:20 AM

I would have suggested it, but it generally wasn't a problem and we both had our hands full tunnel-visioning calling timers and other stuff. I actually had to have a rogue spam whisper me if faerie fire fell off, despite having Demon on my screen.

On the other hand, you're right... wow. I specifically (and painfully

) regem everything for more stam and turn down an easy way to get another 1.5k?

Zaran · 04/03/08, 12:54 AM

I believe we used 9 soakers per group (including tank) and when someone got burn they just moved. This way even 2 people moving from the same group is a non issue as there are still more than enough left to split the slashes.

Of course that number would depend on how many melee you were to bring week to week.

• Shifft · 04/03/08, 1:29 AM

Originally Posted by Ghando

And regarding Expose Armor....no. Your DPS is more important to maintain than an MS Warrior's, as it should be considerably higher given even roughly comparable gear. The MS Warrior, like a Shadow Priest, is there for his buffs/debuffs; not personal DPS. Given the choice he should be doing the proverbial grunt work.

Well Expose Armor (talented) is 450 more armor pen than a full stack of sunders so it's actually far better for raid DPS to have a rogue expose assuming you're not using a warrior tank.

Shha · 04/03/08, 1:56 AM

Originally Posted by Clandestine

I'd be interested in seeing how you manage to kill Kalecgos with two tanks.

A bit offtopic, but thats our general strat. 2 tanks doesnt really give any problems. It does require however a good aggro holding on the inner demon, because IF you keep losing aggro, the human guy will eventually die. Overall 1 more healer 1 less tank is safer for us.

The implication is that they're using two Feral tanks (or 1/2 Prot Pallies; either way, no Protection Warriors). For what it's worth, a Feral tank is not a meaningful improvement over a Warrior tank on Brutallus; Ferals take less damage over the course of the fight, but they have lower HP and lack the excellent timers of a Warrior tank. That's not to say Ferals can't work (we used one in our kill last week) but unless you have no excellently-geared Prot Warriors I'd recommend using at least one. And regarding Expose Armor....no. Your DPS is more important to maintain than an MS Warrior's, as it should be considerably higher given even roughly comparable gear. The MS Warrior, like a Shadow Priest, is there for his buffs/debuffs; not personal DPS. Given the choice he should be doing the proverbial grunt work.

The main thing for us , that makes us use ferals on Brutallus, is simply that they overcome stomp mechanics. A feral who actually uses armor buffs (GOA/ironshields/scroll of armor) AND is spammed by shamans for ancestral fortitude sits at around 48k armor it seems. Im not sure about the exact number, but in general - Warrior tanks take 10500 or so dmg on stomp (max hits). Our ferals got max hits of 7k or so, on multiple attempts - barely noticeable. Blowing LOH towards the end before potting actually completely negates stomp in some cases - druids are capped on armor even after that (i believe the % for armor are additive now, and +25%+30%-50% =net GAIN of 5% on stomp). Either way ferals really help conserving mana on stomps, and let us go dow to 6/7 healers. Double feral also as mentioned lets you use expose. If you have mutilate rogue (its ok with the buff to it), using one of his finisher for imp expose, he will still only land 200-300 below combat rogues. On other hand that 450 armor gives ~3.5% physical dps - so about as much as MS warrior brings in raid buffs.

Phantasie · 04/03/08, 2:14 AM

I think they changed him overnight. his targeting circle is now a bit smaller. No idea if that actually changed anything.

Gragnarth · 04/03/08, 3:57 AM

Beat him tonight 10 seconds before enrage, using 2 prot warrior tanks(our first kill was 1 bear, 1 Prot warrior). If your tank healing strategy involves Ancestrial Fort/Inspiration (and ours does) the difference in damage taken between bears and Warriors is negligible.

The main advantages of Bears are:

The ability to DPS in cat while the other tank is tanking giving them about 250 higher DPS then a warrior tank.

The ability to go Barkskin>Bear Form>Taunt, making the chance of dying during the transition alot less (20% less damage talen)

Larger HP pool

Inaiwae · 04/03/08, 4:02 AM

I do not understand how Insipiration changes damage taken proportions between ferals and warriors? Stomped druid is at 19k armor, stomped warrior is at 9k (guessing). In fact, inspiration should favor druids, since they gain more armor. And armor scales linearly.

angi · 04/03/08, 4:03 AM

Has someone tried to work with 2 Priests and a Pain Suppression rotation to heal the warrior tank through stomp, when using a feral and a warrior? (2 Min CD, 1 Stomp per Minute on the warrior should work with 2 priests?)

cheebamonkey · 04/03/08, 4:12 AM

To illustrate the point on soakers

       Slash Number      1         2        3      
Soakers  
4                      5000      8750     12500
5                      4000      7000     10000
6                      3333      5833      8333
7                      2857      5000      7142
8                      2500      4375      6250

We've always ran 8 that was we never have to sub someone in however it's possible to do the same thing with 7 given enough hp for the soakers.

Lodekim · 04/03/08, 4:13 AM

Honestly, after having done brutallus both with 2 warriors and with a warrior and a druid, it doesn't feel that much different between the two. Both warriors and the druid could get burst hard, the druid got burst a little less hard, but the warrior can have some cooldown up for every stomp.

I haven't looked at how Stomp and Inspiration interact, but it seems to me that with the cooldowns, while a druid might take less on individual hits, a warrior can be popping trinkets, nightmare seeds, last stand, shield wall, whatever. Given that neither class is going to live through 4 stomp hits with no healing, it's gonna end pretty closely.

The benefit of a druid comes down to doing a bit more damage and having a combat rez, innervate, and faire fire, which are definitely worth it, but by no means necessary.

Once you get a solid healing strategy down, any tank should be fine.

edit: To those mentioning pain suppression, doesn't that drop threat? That seems like it would be really bad to me, given that tanks are trying to hold against 2200-2500 dps warlocks on many of these parses, it seems unreasonable to expect them to be able to take a threat drop.

Vhad · 04/03/08, 4:17 AM

Doesn't drop threat, just makes whoever has it generate 5% less threat in the duration.

roosevelt · 04/03/08, 4:18 AM

Originally Posted by angi

Has someone tried to work with 2 Priests and a Pain Suppression rotation to heal the warrior tank through stomp, when using a feral and a warrior? (2 Min CD, 1 Stomp per Minute on the warrior should work with 2 priests?)

Bringing 2 disc priests to the fight is a pretty horrible idea, so I'd imagine not. The healing ability you lose from just one disc rather than holy priest is enough to outweigh any benefit of PS, much less two, aside from the fact that you seriously risk problems by chaining PS on tanks because of the aggro drop.

Most guilds have learned to either heal through stomp on tanks, or avoid stomp by using a third tank.

Originally Posted by Vhad

Doesn't drop threat, just makes whoever has it generate 5% less threat in the duration.

Care to offer a source for that? The tooltip itself definitely seems to say "reduces a friendly target's threat by 5%." Either way it shouldn't matter on this fight, but this would be seriously news to me.

Gragnarth · 04/03/08, 5:18 AM

Originally Posted by Inaiwae

I do not understand how Insipiration changes damage taken proportions between ferals and warriors? Stomped druid is at 19k armor, stomped warrior is at 9k (guessing). In fact, inspiration should favor druids, since they gain more armor. And armor scales linearly.

Tanks are stomped for a tiny portion of the fight.

Druids are already at armor cap without inspiration. Warriors get near it with AF/insp. On top of armor warriors have another 10% reduction from defensive stance and a static 500-600 off from blocking every hit. Its a given that tanks are going to be hit hard during stomps, my point is simply that Ferals dont really offer any more sustained mitigation then warriors do if your warrior is getting AF/insp.

• Daboran · 04/03/08, 5:33 AM

Originally Posted by roosevelt

Care to offer a source for that? The tooltip itself definitely seems to say "reduces a friendly target's threat by 5%." Either way it shouldn't matter on this fight, but this would be seriously news to me.

Pain Suppression - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft but I'll admit the tooltip does infer that it reduces current total threat by 5%