◊ Vectivus

Brutallus is the second encounter in The Sunwell.

Important Information
- Brutallus requires at least two tanks (and is tauntable)
- Brutallus requires at least six healers
- Slash is 20,000 damage divided by the targets it hits
- Burn is a one-minute debuff that deals increasing damage, and can be applied to nearby players by proximity
- The encounter requires approximately 29166.6~ DPS to beat the berserk timer (500% damage, 150% attack speed)

Things that will get your post laughed at:
- Yes, the fight is, in fact, possible to beat
- No, you do not have to use strictly Feral Druid tanks
- No, Hunter pets do not get, or chain, Burn
- No, no one cares what your group composition was, or how many seconds after the enrage your kill was.

Our guild handled this encounter using a two-tank, three-group strategy. Two Feral Druids each had an equal number of ranged DPS and healers standing with them to soak the Slash, leaving melee behind Brutallus at all times (for maximum DPS potential). The thee groups stood in a triangle-shaped pattern.

It is potentially advantageous to use as many DPS that can remove the Burn/Slash debuff as possible - Rogues, Mages, and Paladins have the upper hand on this basis.

The bulk of guilds that have killed him to date have predominantly used two tanks and eight healers; this means your average DPS player needs to be doing 1,944 DPS.

 

Vhex

Really isn't a whole lot to strategize about this encounter. Tune thread has pretty much already covered it all. Optimize your DPS. Whether this is by taking fewer healers, using more consumables, recruiting 6 shaman or farming Illidan for warglaives. Unless you sploit it with a paladin the positioning only takes a few pulls to get down. From that point on, it's pretty much all about "Do you have the gear and raid composition to win?"

 

◊ Vectivus

Agreed, but I'd certainly rather see the tuning thread used to discuss the finer points of what is generally accepted as being "well-tuned" vs. a bunch of anecdotal jabber about whether or not guild X was able to defeat Brutallus.

The latter can go here.

There's certainly something to be said for constructing an 'optimal' raid setup - once you get past the absolute basics (# of tanks, # of healers), you can get into the details that have differentiated pre- and post-enrage kills (# of Shadow Priests, what synergies/debuffs were or weren't present, etc.).

I would imagine that someone with a bigger brain (or a better spreadsheet!) than I have could concoct a theoretical 'ideal' group template.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

There's specs for classes (affliction vs destruction as an example), gear and gem selections for tanks (stamina vs avoidance), positioning, makeup and assignment of healers, and balance of dps classes. I'd say there's plenty to talk about, especially if you look at patchwerk as a precedent.

(Note: Ret DPS cycle against brutallus is much less of a joke than ret dps cycle against patchwerk)

 

Tyrian

The most interesting thing to discuss about the Brutallus encounter is the very difficult choices you have to make with regards to, "is the extra dps I get by doing this .. worth that risk, if we can't beat the enrage timer?" People have to ask their guild questions like:

- Is it worth having your warlock provide an imp for the tanks and/or be Affliction spec for Shadow Embrace (instead of Destruction and in a caster group)
- Is it worth taking two warrior tanks when a warrior+druid combo will provide more RDPS
- Should we stick our feral druid in 'a tank group' or keep him in the Hunter FI + Shaman w/agi+str totem group to better synergise with dps
- Are our healers skilled and geared enough to make do with 6/7 if we cant beat the enrage timer - or can't we manage without 8.

Those are the sorts of neat questions Brutallus asks your raid and , of course, the answers will vary between guilds depending on your raid composition/gear/skill.

 

Skulli

A tipp for reducing tank damage is to use improved demo, screech from owl (stacks with demo) and shadow embrace (another -5%).
It also helps to compensate the use of CoR.

Burn is bit luck based. On our kill we had like the first half of the fight no burn to heal since only classes that can remove it got it.

 

Setia

Having only one hunter, we made the tank group the GoA group: Warrior-Feral-Shaman-Hunter-Aff.lock. FI was a bit underused, but that is all. We had two caster DPS groups.

 

Pachwa

The best trinket line up you can go with in my opinion as a tank is using [Commendation of Kael'thas] and [Shadowmoon Insignia].

The commendation is not only a truckload of stamina, but since you are only tanking in 30 second intervals, the proc has a chance to go off every single time, and since this guy hits pretty hard, it is more likely to go off than other bosses.

This isn't so much a tip as it is a necessity. Yes, I am sure some guild beat it without imp demo but it is silly to not have it for a fight such as this. Also by using Amplify Magic on your tanks is more free healing.

Ignorance is venemous, and it murders the soul.
Spreading like a virus running rampant, out of control.

 

roosevelt

Our tank group consisted of BM Hunter/SV Hunter/ Prot War/ Feral/ Resto Shaman. It gives reasonable synergy to everyone involved except the resto shaman, who buffs everyone else. We switched the resto shaman into the melee group for a 2nd heroism.

I think the biggest thing to beating the dps requirement is eliminating the 8th healer, especially if you feel your guild has underfarmed Bt/Hyjal. At least 1 of our paladins is pretty undergeared too, so most should be to do this if your people are on the ball. Obviously, if all of your dps is in best pre-2.4 gear, you can probably handle 8 just fine.

Also Isotope, Dwarf priest : http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...yjal&n=Isotope

 

Clandestine

You can use Amplify Magic on the entire raid safely to assist with Burn. No incoming damage is increased through use of it.

 

Graul

We used to swap people in and out to form very specific raid setups when learning new content. We haven't had to do that for a long while and can pretty much run raids with a loose setup after the mandatory amount of tanks and healers. This fight seems to require a very specific setup. Has anyone that has killed Brutallus done it with the same group they killed Kalecgos with or vise versa? if not, do you ever see this encounter being setup in such a way, or is just having people sit out or respec something people are going to just have to deal with more now than ever?

 

falonub

If you're doing it with one less healer for whatever reason, if you're using a feral tank before he taunts have him pop Barkskin, the 20% reduced damage while short can smooth out the transitions. Of course as I'm told, druids aren't affected by stomp as much as warriors, but anything to help healing is beneficial.


[e] My understanding is 5/5 imp demo negates the negative affect of CoR.

 

Krazen

Thoughts on CoR on this fight?

 

Sealclubber

Last week We ran 2 extra healers (9 total)for Kalecgos, I imagine the same will be true this week. I think rather than being a negative thing it's good that the encounters are tuned in a way that encourages you to tweak your raid from fight to fight, while at the same time the encounters are tuned well enough that if you stack healing or dps one way or the other you'll either fall short on DPS or fall short on healing.

 

Pachwa

If this is an April Fool's joke I apologize for replying, but this is a no brainer, just make sure to keep demoralizing shout up at all times.

Ignorance is venemous, and it murders the soul.
Spreading like a virus running rampant, out of control.

 

Jarlyn

CoR was pretty much solely responsible for turning several frustrating sub-5% wipes for us into consistently being ahead of the enrage timer. I was cautious of tank healing at first, but it isn't really noticeable and the difference in DPS is substantial.

 

◊ Vectivus

CoR is dependent on the same factors in this fight as any other:
1. How many Warlocks in the raid?
2. How many Shadow Priests in the raid?
3. How many Mages in the raid?
4. How much physical DPS (Rogues, Warriors, Hunters, Ret Paladin[s], Enhancement Shaman, etc.) is in the raid?
5. Is 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout available?

Prioritize the Curses that will give you the most net damage. If you've got 3 Warlocks and 2 Shadow Priests, for example, but only 2 Rogues and a Hunter, CoS will probably give you higher returns than CoR. That said, with 3 Warlocks, you probably have CoS, CoE, and CoR all up.

 

Shelendil

For your first kill you'll almost certainly need to swap, but Brutallus will only get easier with gear. Especially since many of the belts, boots, and bracers in Hyjal and BT were poorly itemized compared to the Tier 6 counterparts that drop early and often in Sunwell.

More specifically: a raid set up for Brutallus will likely kill Kalecgos, but there are many raid setups that can kill Kalecgos and not Brutallus.

 

Skulli

Just let a non bm-hunter use a owl and the screech abiltiy (-210 atp), wich stacks with demo, will compensate CoR.

 

Clandestine

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

 

Giske

29.2k actually, his health 10.5M, not 10M.

 

Shelendil

I think it's doable. On our kill we had an oops, and two of three tanks took the first portal. The human form ends up tanking for short durations. Some luck with portal timing may be involved, hence the "likely."

 

• Whiteknight

I think there's quite a lot worth discussing regarding brutallus strategy. While most guilds are killing him with 2/8, I personally think 3/7 is a much more stable lineup. With 3 tanks you can guarantee that no tank is taking a stomp. Also the meteor slash soak groups are easier to heal.

Our kill was done with 2/7 using a war/pally for tanking. The war provided com/imp demo/imp tc. I found (anecdotally) that the pally was quite an effective tank due to the nature/speed of Brutallus' melee attacks. Fairly frequently the pally gets to leverage Ardent Defender. Maybe a druid is more ideal because of the higher armor, but a pally is definitely workable.
My feedback with using 7 healers is you're much much more exposed to the RNG and tank-gib is a real issue. If you have the dps to do it with 8, or the 3 tank strat, you should take advantage of that because it'll shorten the learning curve.

Once we raise our raid's dps numbers a little, I'll probably switch in a 3rd tank and totally remove the RNG from the equation completely.


One (minor) strat we used was to have the tank not currently getting hit swap to [Nightfall]. For a fight where most guilds are coming down to the line and getting the kill 10-15sec *after* the enrage, I think using the retro weapon in the tank downtime contributes quite significantly to raid dps. I put this in the same minor optimization bucket as having your druid tank dps during his breaks - but even the little gains matter in this fight. It's certainly better than a tank-geared warrior dual wielding.

 

Urraca

Have people been doing this with only 6 healers and 2 tanks?? That seems way too risky to me.

 

• Amera