Brutallus

[Nortibiry]

[edit] I don't want this thread to get too cluttered so please keep the discussion about farming or raid schedules in a thread I am going to make in guild only chat, and let's make this one about the fight strategy. Thanks!

Bosskillers 1 (http://www.bosskillers.com/cgi-bin/bbguild/index.cgi?action=view_guide&guide_id=344)
Bosskillers 2 (http://www.bosskillers.com/cgi-bin/bbguild/index.cgi?action=view_guide&guide_id=343)
MMO-Champion (http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=306)

From the third link:

[Haythan]

I found a report with a guilds first Brutallus kill.

http://wowwebstats.com/zajchudiypny5?s=4743-5118

[Nortibiry]

I've tried to read a few threads on Brutallus over the past few weeks, here's some information we might want to think about or discuss:

tanks:
Gear to meet an EH minimum such that you can survive a stomp/MH/OH trio of hits. Past this amount of stamina, stack avoidance. I'm not sure exactly what this point is but I'll keep a closer eye on the numbers this week. I've seen people say that in Sunwell they stick right around 18k unbuffed health and just go for avoidance past that.
Use cooldowns on stomp (I've been doing this to some degree, but not 100%). Two avoidance trinkets, last stand, nightmare seeds.
If a stomp does not coincide with the fire..... thingee.... avoid taunting until immediately after the stomp (and communicate with the healers when you do this). They go in and out of sync as they have different cooldowns. Taunting at the right moment means that the stomped tank only takes a couple of hits, instead of having to survive the entire ten seconds.

healers:
Several people have said it is important to stagger heals, ie not only do you have to be spamming the tank, but you need to all have heals landing at different points in time. I have no idea how hard this is to do, or if you have already been doing this, but it makes sense.
I think this is already known by everyone, but I guess you have to just spam heals non stop -- no reactive healing, and no canceling heals that aren't needed (because they probably will be .1 seconds later).

Anyone else find any tips? Comments? I don't really want this thread to be about BT but I really feel we're past the point where we're getting significant raid upgrades out of that place and would like to make sure we're stepping up our game as much as possible instead of blaming everything on gear.

[Raptace]

I gotta ask the dps people on this one after looking at WWS for last night, anyone holding anything back? Anything at all? The reason I ask is this
If you spread out the dps evenly for this fight, with 2 tanks doing roughly 300dps, and us having 8 healers, 1812 dps per person is the number required for this to be a kill. Now obviously not everyone can push those numbers? (Not actually sure what each class can push) but even looking at say, Myself, Phewl, Assault and Jackal each doing about 2100? I think thats a safe number to say then saying Rora around 1900 or so then everyone else around needing to shift out 1750 dps or so to get this guy down... is it just me or are we a far ways from this? Even looking at some of the old numbers and adding in our couple of regulars that are gone dps into it, seems to me we're off some where... I'm not great at crunching numbers but thats what I got out of it.

[Assault]

I'm holding everything back. I didn't use any consumables besides deadly poison for the night of Brutallus attempts.

[Nortibiry]

As far as I know nobody was using full consumables (at least, they were asked not to :)). If I recall the last time we did break out the haste and destruction potions, we literally made no headway versus our previous, unpotted attempt (both were 28%), which to me supports that while the numbers are important, people are just not yet totally comfortable with their fight and all the little things (timing of cooldowns, etc). I'd like to see us get a lot more consistent in our attempts, including having 100% survivability to the enrage timer, before I look too close at raid dps.

That said I do encourage every DPS player to take full advantage of these attempts, don't waste consumables but really evaluate your positioning, your cooldown usage, and anything else you can think of. Monitor your damage output and make sure you know why you died when you die, and how to correct it (or if it is just a healing problem, make sure that is the case, and that someone is correcting to make sure it doesn't happen routinely).

[edit] Oh, while I'm here, I'll suggest that everyone go back and re-read the boss strategy guides over the weekend. You never know sometimes there is some footnote that you missed, or some detail that'll make more sense now that you've seen the fight.

[Lad]

I hope we aren't waiting till we get like 10 fights with 100% survivability to the enrage before we start giving a shit. We don't even get that on bloodboil. At some point we have to just say we're close enough, and hope both DPS and healing click at the same time.

[Aurorawind]

I did use full consumables (Scrolls, etc) for a few of the attempts to see where I was, on the times I was breaking 2000 DPS, or coming close. That way I can get a good comparison for what I believe are upgrades that I'm gathering now.

[phewl]

for the most part i was pretty much going full out on dps, although alot of our attempts we didn't use heroism. I was fully consumabled(as i am for every progression raid) for all of our attempts pretty much, the only thing is i use mana/destro pots at discretion in regards to how well the attempt is shaping up to be. On our best attempts we still are 7000 dps short of what we need to hit, i dont know if a few classes using scrolls/food/pots is going to get us that 7000 dps though.

[Raptace]

As was I Phewl, I am always using full consumables for these raids, and I wouldn't understand why everyone wouldn't be, but *shrug*
Yeah I'm with Phewl on the I don't know if some people just deciding to consume up is really gonna make a huge difference so the question is... what DOES need to be done?

[Vand]

This week I used *nearly* full consumables. The reason I say "nearly" is that is because I will only use destro pots and a second flame cap in execute range, and we have not yet gotten there. Also, the mage group has not been getting heroism because Uela knows that mages need it under 20%. The reason I will only use a single destro pot per attempt is because I need a couple mana pots, even with Lad going shadow (Lad allows me to use flame caps instead of mana gems and avoid evocating for 10 seconds, adding somewhere around 100 to my DPS). So I pop the mana pots early so my CD can be up for a destro pot in the final minute of the fight, where the benefits will be multiplied by execute and heroism.

My guess is that my DPS on a full attempt will be between 1900 and 2100, depending on how kind the RNG is on any particular attempt. But even without those factors, my DPS is averaging somewhere north of 1800. So I would say that I have the DPS needed to pull my own weight, although unfortunately without a whole lot left over to prop up the hybrids.

[Assault]

I hope we aren't waiting till we get like 10 fights with 100% survivability to the enrage before we start giving a shit. We don't even get that on bloodboil. At some point we have to just say we're close enough, and hope both DPS and healing click at the same time.

It's not that I need to see 10 fights with 100% survivability to the enrage before I'll break out the big guns consumable-wise, but I definitely need to see more than one attempt in twenty resulting in everyone being alive til the enrage.

The fight is a gear check and a DPS race. No one gets their first kill on a DPS race with people dead unless they're somehow laughably overgeared for it. This fight is only barely comparable to Bloodboil in my opinion. That is a healing check and an execution fight.

Think back to when we were working on Reliquary of Souls. We basically had to call wipe if anyone was dead going into phase 3, and we had to continue that for the first few kills because we didn't have the DPS to get the job done with people dead.

[Lad]

Did I miss the first RoS kills? I don't think we had any problems in phase 3 till our most recent kills.

And uh, simply because bloodboil is one of the easier fights for DPS does not mean Brutallus is easy for healers. It is still the most difficult fight besides kalecgos. But thats not to say our healers don't need a fuckton of improvement.

[Mithwen]

What we need is for people to show up. Everyone we've got with gear. And if people don't have gear, we need them to get badge gear, which is pretty decent at this point. Honestly, Vand, I know I shouldn't rise to your ridiculous bait, but propping up hybrids isn't the issue when almost every single one of those hybrids is out dpsing our dps class subs. Also, I'd like to point out that a considerable amount of your post is about how my hybrid class props YOU up, and we had to lose an excellent healer for your 100 dps. Prop. Pfffffff.

Now, we've had some bad luck attendance wise. We'll get over that, and through that one way or another. We were stuck on that damn Tidewalker last year this time for similar reasons, and it sucked, and then we got through that.

However, attendance isn't the only issue: I know that people can still squeeze more dps. I know it. The order that I hit my buttons in can result in some pretty different numbers, and I imagine it's the same for everyone. This is the skill part, and it doesn't require consumables. Use every attempt to figure out how and when to use your cooldowns. Discuss it with your group if you need to (ie. please don't use the drums until after Seld taunts, and not right off the pull ... gotta remember to mention that). If you get burned, keep shooting/casting. Move your butt into position ASAP and keep dpsing, and practice how to do that, and practice how to be aware of your environment while trying to maximize your dps.

And that's what we need.

P.S. I didn't see anyone answer your question Raptace, so here it is: Using elixirs is more effective for a lot of people on this fight, so that's why they're not using consumables for every attempt. Since my most effective consumable is still a flask, I'm juiced, but since melee are using agility elixirs (or demonslaying I guess) that go for stupid amounts of money, no, they're not for every attempt.

[Raptace]

I still think everyone should just be using consumables, I've used 6 flasks a week every week since I joined Fulcrum full time, which *gasp* has been over a year now! Lol thats like 300+ flasks I've used. I even remember when I used to sub and I would use a flask right when I got in, and sometimes would only be in for a half hour before the person I was subbing for showed up. I find it hilarious that Assault, a guy that dies what? 2 times the whole night? Won't put on a flask or elixirs or something lol.

I think people should be coming to kick ass, and I honestly don't feel like anyone should be holding back...especially for Brut, I think we need to throw down with this guy, balls to the walls, and see where we really are!

[Aurorawind]

We were flasking and using consumables the other week, just not the one single night when we had many subs and just wanted to run through and polish our technique.

[Assault]

I find it hilarious that Assault, a guy that dies what? 2 times the whole night? Won't put on a flask or elixirs or something lol.I guess I can't say anything other than I very strongly disagree with your opinion on the matter.

I play this game for fun. I do not play this game to spend hours farming for consumables. [Elixir of Demonslaying] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=9224) lasts for 5 minutes. Brutallus is a six minute fight, which means two elixirs per attempt. It requires ghost mushrooms and gromsblood to make. I don't know if you've peeked on the AH lately but there are not many ghost mushrooms and gromsblood available, and the ones that are there are freakishly expensive.

So if I were to hold myself to your standard I would have to make an alt, make him an herbalist, and camp ghost mushroom nodes in my free time. In fact, this is exactly how we got the ghost mushrooms for a lot of the Elixirs of Demonslaying in the raid bank. If every melee were using those every attempt on every demon boss we would undoubtedly have none left.

You can feel free to try to guilt trip me about not using consumables during the learning phase of a fight when people can't even keep themselves alive til the end of the fight, but I will never feel bad about my decision. I'm perfectly happy to listen to constructive criticism, but you, my friend, are dead wrong on this one.

[Nortibiry]

I still think everyone should just be using consumables, I've used 6 flasks a week every week since I joined Fulcrum full time, which *gasp* has been over a year now! Lol thats like 300+ flasks I've used. I even remember when I used to sub and I would use a flask right when I got in, and sometimes would only be in for a half hour before the person I was subbing for showed up. I find it hilarious that Assault, a guy that dies what? 2 times the whole night? Won't put on a flask or elixirs or something lol.

I think people should be coming to kick ass, and I honestly don't feel like anyone should be holding back...especially for Brut, I think we need to throw down with this guy, balls to the walls, and see where we really are!

It is worth emphasizing that the term "full consumables" on Brutallus means a lot more than flasking for everyone, and some classes in particular. Assault touched on it with the melee, who are using two elixirs of demonslaying (not cheap) per attempt, but everyone will be chugging haste/destruction/mana/ironshield pots on a real attempt, using drums, breaking out scrolls (pretty much impossible to actually farm for) and pulling out whatever other tricks they have. I applaud your dedication if you chain destruction pots clearing Najentus trash, but I am not convinced it is necessary and personally don't want to do that much farming.

[Raptace]

I guess I can't say anything other than I very strongly disagree with your opinion on the matter.

I play this game for fun. I do not play this game to spend hours farming for consumables. [Elixir of Demonslaying] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=9224) lasts for 5 minutes. Brutallus is a six minute fight, which means two elixirs per attempt. It requires ghost mushrooms and gromsblood to make. I don't know if you've peeked on the AH lately but there are not many ghost mushrooms and gromsblood available, and the ones that are there are freakishly expensive.

So if I were to hold myself to your standard I would have to make an alt, make him an herbalist, and camp ghost mushroom nodes in my free time. In fact, this is exactly how we got the ghost mushrooms for a lot of the Elixirs of Demonslaying in the raid bank. If every melee were using those every attempt on every demon boss we would undoubtedly have none left.

You can feel free to try to guilt trip me about not using consumables during the learning phase of a fight when people can't even keep themselves alive til the end of the fight, but I will never feel bad about my decision. I'm perfectly happy to listen to constructive criticism, but you, my friend, are dead wrong on this one.

On the note of the Demonslaying elixirs, dude, I completely agree I'm way off on that one! I had no idea they only lasted for 5mins, yeah, 2 every atttempt is a really big difference to the elixirs that I'm used to like Adept's Elixirs that last an hour lol. So my bad there dude.
So minus the ultra expensive stuff like that, for classes that would use those things.
Its much easier for me to "full consume" than you Assault, I use 2 flasks a night+food+oils. And I do use those on every attempt. I'm just trying to say I think people should be giving it their all...

[Raptace]

And Nort, no I don't chug destro pots during shit where I don't need it. Usually for me a mana pot is higher dps. But being a herbalist does help my ability to have the pots I need.

[Vand]

Honestly, Vand, I know I shouldn't rise to your ridiculous bait, but propping up hybrids isn't the issue when almost every single one of those hybrids is out dpsing our dps class subs. Also, I'd like to point out that a considerable amount of your post is about how my hybrid class props YOU up, and we had to lose an excellent healer for your 100 dps. Prop. Pfffffff.

Thanks for not rising to the unintentional bait. :)

I know that hybrids are absolutely essential to raid success. My point was that it is the pure DPSers job to be propped up enough by the hybrids to allow the total rDPS be higher due to the synergy. Adding Lad as shadow will probably get us close to an extra 2k rDPS (including his own DPS), in addition to giving mana back to one of our most awesome healers. So that's probably even better than adding another pure DPSer.

[Lad]

I'm also a terrible player, so hopefully I won't suck as much from now on.

[attic]

Let me apologize in advance for hurt feelings.

I spent some time looking over Brutallus kills (not the "4 minute LOL" kills, the "squeaking by at 5:50" kills). The majority of those raids (perhaps as high as 90%) are running with 7 healers. If we could do the same we'd have had a kill tonight. What needs to change so we can do this?

[Tierran]

My guess would be, without actually changing characters for anyone, have a paladin go Ret. But I dunno if tanks would live then, I'd guess they probably could, but I'm no healer and have no idea what that situation is like.

[Raptace]

I've sort of wondered this for awhile Uela, the truth is that we seem to have enough healing trouble as it is. If we could have another dps, Tier has it right there to have one of the pallys go Ret, would the tanks live? Not sure, maybe the guild bank could fund a respec and we could have an experiement to see how tough our healers are without one of the pallys?

The way I see it we really have 2 days left of raiding to go here, why not try this out for half the night or so, see if thats the key. True enough, if we had one more dps'r and our healers can keep everyone up, I'm all for it.

[benseac]

I've sort of wondered this for awhile Uela, the truth is that we seem to have enough healing trouble as it is. If we could have another dps, Tier has it right there to have one of the pallys go Ret, would the tanks live? Not sure, maybe the guild bank could fund a respec and we could have an experiement to see how tough our healers are without one of the pallys?

The way I see it we really have 2 days left of raiding to go here, why not try this out for half the night or so, see if thats the key. True enough, if we had one more dps'r and our healers can keep everyone up, I'm all for it.

Having a ret paladin would make healing easier for me (and Lyre, if Mal was the one to go ret) as I/we shouldn't have to refresh the judgments I'm/we're casting on Brutallus. Heck, we could even judge light for poops and giggles for the little extra bit of healing. Plus for 2 points into the improved sanctity aura talent, all players within the aura's range will get a 2% increase to damage. Throw the paladin in group 5 and that could be a somewhat decent damage increase by everyone.

I'm of the mind that since we have two days with which to down this turkey and we've shown good progress, it might be worth it to try the last hour or so tonight (if we're still fighting him) using a ret paladin to see how the +DPS/-heal would affect the battle.

[Aurorawind]

I'd actually suggest trying this out for the first half of the night instead of the last.

[Assault]

In my opinion we have the dps to kill this guy with our current set-up of eight healers, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. All we have to do is execute the fight properly with everyone doing their maximum damage while applying their best consumables and, most importantly, staying alive, and it'll be a cinch.

I agree that Malicyte going ret would probably be the next step if we thought we absolutely must reduce to seven healers, and that's not a terrible idea. It is unfortunately really difficult to properly work a ret pally into the group makeup.

A ret pally requires windfury. This is non-negotiable. So he could be in group five. That would mean removing either me or Jackal from group five, which would be a sizable dps loss. He could be in group one, but that would require either removing Xaan (no devo aura, which is armor that is not affected by Stomp) or Etri (no tree aura). Yes, Malicyte could theoretically use devo aura instead of sanctity aura, but I'm sure that would be a major hit to his dps. The only other option is to put him in one of the remaining groups and make that shaman drop windfury instead of wrath of air, which would also be a sizable dps loss, since it would be a caster group. We already have the healer group getting GoA instead of wrath of air for Haythan. I guess that group could get windfury instead and Haythan could go without GoA, which would reduce everyone's attack power against the boss by around 22, which is non-negligible across the entire raid, not to mention reducing Haythan's personal dps.

My point is that none of these are good options. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I don't like it, and I don't think it's necessary.

[Vand]

Yes, it would be difficult to put Mal into a group that would maximize his ret DPS. However, even if he simply remained in the healers group and received absolutely no group synergy, that would still be at least 1000 rDPS that we are not receiving now. Plus, as Xaan said, it would free up Xaan and Lyre from having to reapply their judgments. So while it would be difficult to maximize his DPS, it would be very easy to receive substantial benefit from the switch.

So let's not rule out the possibility because of how difficult it would be to maximize. However, I do agree that we likely have what it takes with out current setup.

[Nortibiry]

Yes, it would be difficult to put Mal into a group that would maximize his ret DPS. However, even if he simply remained in the healers group and received absolutely no group synergy, that would still be at least 1000 rDPS that we are not receiving now.

This is pretty much exactly what I was going to say. I'm not sure what totems the tanks are getting right now -- is it windfury? (if so, and if threat is alright, we might want to switch to GoA actually). Losing the healer would suck, but I'm not sure how much healing we'd gain out of Xaan and Lyre by freeing them from judging, especially on a fight where it's not so much healing done as sustained spam healing. If we change anything I'd lean towards this being that change, but I'm not sure yet we'll have to... although I don't know that I'd say a kill is going to be super easy :)

[benseac]

If we change anything I'd lean towards this being that change, but I'm not sure yet we'll have to... although I don't know that I'd say a kill is going to be super easy :)

I'm with you there Norty. We got him to 4% last night so we're right on the cusp of victory. I think we should exhaust our ideas using the current configuration we have now before we change it again, though if we do change it again, Mal going ret would be the change I could see being a good choice.

[Raptace]

Yeah I'm agreeing with you guys there that we probably don't need to do it, but if we were/had to make the change, like we said before, and has been said, one of the pallys going ret is the answer.

[Vand]

if threat is alright
I would not want to lose any of the threat being generated by tanks. I am very often above the tanks in threat, depending on the 30% cushion in order not to pull aggro. When the RNG goes in my favor, pushing my DPS up over ~2100, I find myself vascilating between 10% and 20% over the tanks' threat. Yes, I could invis, but the time that takes drops my DPS by a non-insignificant amount.

[Lockon]

On the topic of healing for the Brutallus fight:

"Make all healers have an addon that shows when stomp is inc, or make somebody announce it. Before stomp is added make sure to time it so that your big heal with land right after he gets stomp. All healers spam the tank and he should be fine.

Also for shamans, if they are CH'ing make sure that they use HW on the tank when the group is fine. I see a lot of shamans just spamming CH when the group is fine. So during stomp if the group can manage instead of CH'ing use HW.

Now for the MT switch. Both tanks announce 3 seconds before they switch, then you have one or two guys prehealing. Which means they load a big heal that will land 0.01-1 second after the tank stomps. So he wont die.

Fix that and I am sure it will go much easier."

- Bananen, Nihilum officer