6 ticks of rip, not 4.

So you multiply your numbers by 3/2 for rip, and you get 218.4 for 4CP, and 273 for 5CP.

Edited for those that don't know better: for raid DPS (if you're in a DPS group), use the flight form quest idol "Idol of the Raven Goddess". Less personal DPS, more raid DPS.

Actually, no amount of armor is useless here (arguably even past the cap) because of the Stomp mechanic. Of course, don't gimp anything JUST to boost armor though - it's only 10 seconds of stomp vs the rest of the fight.

So, Sunwell Plateau. I was just linked to this spell on WoWhead by my guildies--apparently every mob in there inherently reduces my dodge by 20% and raises their own tohit by 5%.

Is this true? And if it is... fuck, I'm going to have to completely regem and reenchant from sack-o'-dodge to sack-o'-stamina, aren't I?

I mean, we're not even close to SP yet, besides maybe trash farming, but if this is what Blizzard wants I guess I should follow along, huh?

(edit) 25 != 20

(edit 2) Okay, looks like from reading the past couple pages I'm pretty much correct. Oh well, may as well just get it over with.

It's really not as detrimental as you think it is. I actually regemmed to get more agi/dodge than I previously had. I find the avoidance goes a lot farther than mass stamina for this fight so long as you can stay above about 21khp raid buffed. WWS. Yea I know. 23 attempts. Bite me.

The value of avoidance scales with avoidance. With Sunwell Radiance, all but the most extremely avoidance-oriented characters will suddenly get more benefit from Sta than Agi, whereas without, Agi could commonly double Sta in value. The clear picture is, as long as Sunwell Radiance is up, stack Sta. Once that buff is gone (there are rumors that it'll disappear once the gate to KJ opens), stack Sta until you can reach unhittability, then go for that.

Actually, I was pretty much 100% pro-stam-stacking, but after seeing practical results of warrior avoidance stacking, it got me thinking a little.

Yes, avoidance is better with more avoidance, so Sunwell Radiance definitely diminishes the value of avoidance somewhat.

On the other hand though, Stamina past a certain point does... not much, either. I'm going to say that you'll need to be able to take a stomp, plus a high MH hit, plus a high OH hit, and have over about 2k hp left as a buffer. That's 5 + 9 + 5 as a worst case, so 21k stamina is 'fine' in that sense. More stamina past that point will only add a little benefit as to being a little margin of error from not being topped up fully before a stomp, or having fewer heals land between stomped attacks. Brutallus no longer parry-thrashes, so if healers can't land heals between that and his next set of attacks, it's a problem with the healers, not the tank.

This is why I believe avoidance stacking can and does give practical results, especially for a warrior tank. If you're not going to survive a second round of combat with 3-4k extra hp, you might as well stack avoidance and reduce the chances that that second round of combat (or the first) lands.

The counter-argument, of course, is the fact that if you can go for more stamina and provide yourself that buffer, why not? So what if I'm taking more damage overall in the course of the fight? I don't die often, and OOM issues from healers chain-spamming heals for some periods of time in a fight isn't a problem nowadays, what with the regen buff and shadow priests.

Personally, like I said previously I'd still recommend going for mitigation and stamina first and foremost as a druid tank. I know I've exploded a very little of the time with how our healing is doing this fight, and I'm overall happy with my decision. We did it with 2 tanks (warrior and feral, tanking through stomp), 7 healers, and shadow embrace, for what it's worth.

A quick question for those that have actually made it into sunwell. (we should today). Do any of the mobs crush?

If not then we do get something back from losing that avoidance. Furthermore in practice the maximum theoretical damage over any given period will be reduced.

Let's say we have a druid under the old model with 70% avoidance (dodge and miss). Then they'll take 15% crushes and 15% normal hits. for a total of 37.5% of the before mitigation damage. With the sunwell model, and no crushes they'd take 30+25 = 55% normal hits.

A high avoidance warrior with 70% avoidance (dodge, parry and miss) would take 30% normal hits outside of sunwell and then 55% inside.

Of course it also depends on the comparative mitigation, and while warriors have a superior setup, it's still close to a a wash.

I was wondering if anybody had done numbers on the SSO neck pieces as to their usefulness.

Brutallus, thankfully, does not crush. It would be HI-LARIOUS if he did though.

Confused.

I have been using the Rawr program to build my gear list. I am not a really active player so my gear doesn't show high end content.

Here is my armory link The World of Warcraft Armory

I have been told that my stam is good but I am lacking on the attack portion and can't generate good threat. I am looking to see what I should replace that will help me be a better tank for my alliance.

One other question I have is if I am tanking even on a single mob should I be using Mangle and swipe now to generate threat with the increased dmg from swipe? Lacerate and Maul last?

Thanks

IMO, threat should not generally be 'geared for', as a bear. If you're using your abilities correctly, and people are pulling aggro, either there's some aggro gimmick at work (in which case, gear for exp+hit+ap+crit, in that order), or your dps is at fault.

Correct rotation for maximum threat (pre-4T6) is: Mangle, Lacerate x3, repeat.
Correct rotation for maximum threat (post-4T6) is: Mangle, Lacerate, [Swipe/Lacerate], [Swipe/Lacerate], repeat. [Swipe/Lacerate] means lacerate if there are fewer than 5 stacks up on the mob, or there is less that 3sec left on the lacerate duration (due to unlucky miss streaks), otherwise swipe. Basically, keep lacerate reliably ticking, while doing as many swipes as possible as well.

EDIT: Oh, you're talking pre-kara, crafted gear... Get Earthwarden.

Braxxis > Earthwarden if you're def-capped, not armor-capped, and don't care about threat. EW will be better when you fix the rest of your gear.

It's probably the 50 armor difference, valued higher than the defense skill on EW since you are probably overcapped with defense (I'm assuming you're wearing Heavy Clefthoof/PvP sets)

edit : beaten to it....

FYI to all cats out there: [Shard of Contempt]. Get it. It's *huge*. Rawr b12.1 includes it, but undervalues it somewhat. Edit it and change it from 80ap to 90ap for a better representation. Depending on gear, it's most likely the #2 trinket in the game for cats, quite possibly even surpassing DST for some.

Here is my general version of the BearPot macro:

Clocks in at 247 characters. I removed all the potions that can only be used in certain areas, and added all the ones the can. The default order is Mad Alchemists if available, if not then Crystal (Ogrila), if not then Aunchenai, if not then Super. Finally if you are not at full health, it tosses in a Charged Crystal Focus.

Here is my specific version of the BearPot macro. Since I am not an Alchemist I removed the Mad Alchemists potion. This allowed me to add /use commands for my trinkets.

Clocks in at 246 characters. Will use trinkets regardless of GCD status.

From personal experience, let me tell you that avoidance is just not reliable on Brutallus. I often got hit like 20 times in a row with 70 % avoidance (still 45 % after Sunwell Radiance). In case you DO dodge, it is usually overhealed anyway.

Your Healers are not gonna get oom on you even if you don't dodge often. The real problem is you getting yourself killed. Plan for Stomp to be the problem and stack armor and stamina. I tanked him with a bit shy of 40k armor and 25.5k hitpoints and it was a real smooth ride.

There are similar problems with dodge for kalecgos too (stuns) and even though i didn't thank felmyst yet i suspect you'd be better off staking stamina there, too (due to spikes).

Still though, no frequenter of these forums has DPS'd Brutallus and has a report to show for it? I'm looking to see howthe current bigshot feral druid dpsers are doing, and what their overall experience is.

Why use

/script local gcd=GetSpellCooldown("Dire Bear Form"); if gcd==0 then CancelPlayerBuff("Dire Bear Form") end;

and not

/script if GetSpellCooldown("Dire Bear Form")==0 then CancelPlayerBuff("Dire Bear Form") end; // tested

or

/script local b="Dire Bear Form"; if GetSpellCooldown(b)==0 then CancelPlayerBuff(b) end; // not tested

I honestly don't think the guilds doing Brutallus at the moment would even consider bringing a feral as a DPS slot. Sorry.


As for the Brutallus tanking questions, we are very close to kill him and our only problem on our 2nd night on him was our Warrior MT getting exploded in a few seconds. I'll put this down to not having our A team of healers there as it was. We go back tonight with a maxed raid and some of our best DPS players back who couldn't make it last time (despite us frequently getting him to 55% at 3 mins without chain potting/bloodlust/drums). DPS is no worry so if we can keep the MT up this time he should die swiftly tonight.

For stats I started off in a makeshift group with 2 hunters, a resto shaman and a random. This meant I got GoA and provided LotP to the hunters (swapping idols between terror and raven god when I was tanking and DPSing respectively).

We had a few tries like that but then I requested to be moved to another group. We lost the crit on the hunters and the GoA but I gained Commanding Shout and Devotion Aura.

On Armour: I run armour capped as it is. But in this fight I also chain chugged Ironskin Pots for the extra armour as well as having devotion aura up. This is due to the stomp debuff so even having lots of armour past the cap, I used it for the -50% armour 10 seconds in each tanking phase.

When not tanking I was going cat form and continuing to DPS. I see no reason to build rage/aggro when doing this and being in Cat is at least contributing a little more toward the tough DPS requirements here.

Stats wise as I said I was armour capped and running close to 39k with pots and devotion. I was using a Flask of Fort and with Commanding Shout + normal raid buffs I was running 26,500hp (I gemmed for full stam + new resilience helm enchant). It was touch and go in the hunter group but moving into the group with devotion and commanding meant I was never the tank that exploded inside of a second or two.

Other tips:
-Keep a careful eye on your timers. You can't be dicking about in Cat form when hes casting a 3rd meteor strike on MT1.
-Use Barkskin. The way the fight works you can have it active at the start of every one of your tank phases. No reason not to, I like to time it so I'm casting 1 second before Meteor strike 3 is cast. Even casting earlier, its still a hefty chunk of damage reduction for 5-8 seconds.
- Keep an eye on the Stomp timer. Stomp timers that come exceptionally close after the 3rd meteor strike can, with some healer communication, be left on the tank to take before you immediately taunt off, meaning that stomp does nothing.
- I found dodge incredibly unreliable. My dodges were very low (due to the aura he has) and I decided to swap out Badge of Tenacity for a darkmoon 51 stam trinket (along with the Heroic MT one). You are getting so much overheal this fight I find a massive HP pool is much more reliable than a high dodge%.
- Be ready with AoE taunt. In ~45 tries not hit capped I've had 1 taunt resist. Still, don't let it ruin you, a quick AoE taunt that you are ready for can save the day.
- Threat: Don't think that just because you are continusaly taunting and watching timers you can forget about generating threat. Several times some of our warlocks pulling ~2.5k dps pulled aggro from me or the warrior tank because I was so busy watching hp ready to pot macro, timers for when I'd be taking what, that I wasn't doing full TPS. A ranged pulling aggro seems to just result in him 1 shotting them without moving (at least in our experience) and returning to you but losing 2500 dps isn't really an option in this fight. I was chain drumming just for the little extra threat it gave.
- Don't be tight with consumables, as mentioned use armour pots at every CD, use 30 stam food every wipe. One thing we realised was that the way the fight works once you know the mechanics everyone pretty much has to go all out each try because any try could be the kill if a tank doesn't die. Thats the point we left it on Friday night, with all the mechanics long ago sorted we were just going all out each fight and hoping that the tanks didn't die. DPS was fine (no warglavie sets either, the warrior that has our only 1 (MH) wasn't there).

Due to AFKs we've not raided there since Friday but are going back tonight and as said we are very confident he'll die.

Casting Barkskin 1 sec before Meteor - with GCD does this allow you enough time to go Bearform and taunt?

I take it you mean Ironshield and not Ironskin?

1 second before he starts to cast it, yes. I started off casting it much sooner and then just worked on casting it as close to taunt as possible.


The armour one.

Ok, pot macro versus Ironshield potion on Brutallus. After 1 day tries i think the former. Also the inspiration buff is really something you cant miss even for a second. Especially warriors.