(Brutal)lus

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
61

Follow this guide and win!

Brutallus

TL;DR - Big tank damage, very nonlethal raid aoe damage, Burns need dedicated healers. Follow assigns and do not deviate.

This fight is entirely on assignments and healers recognizing that Meteor Slash damage is very low priority to be healed. Outside of mishandled Burns, the only way you can wipe is if your healers go off-assignment and a tank dies.

The tank damage is very high and increases dramatically when Stomp is on the target. There’s a few tank-specific tricks to reduce or lessen active tanking with Stomp, but in general, you should track Stomp and be ready to pump extra big heals onto tanks when it’s active.

Other than the tank damage and Meteor Slash, there’s only Burn to account for. Burn lasts for a full minute and ticks every second, but only the last 15 seconds do a lot - the last 5 ticks will hit for 3200 each.

Basically, the play is to have all but 1-3 healers assigned to tanks at all times. No deviating, tanks only. The tank healers need to keep a close eye on who the active tank is as it will swap back and forth regularly. Have pre-casts ready for tank swaps and make sure tanks communicate swaps as cleanly as possible.

Druid is specifically very powerful here as it can maintain full tank healing while also handling the majority of Burn damage. No matter your comp, you will want your Druid to be maintaining LBs on both the active tank and any Burn targets. For the last 15 seconds of any burn, 1 other healer needs to help the Druid out as Rejuv + LB will only be about 60% of the healing required for the DoT. If your healing comp doesn’t have a Druid, you need to have two healers focus on Burn healing for the last 15 seconds.

There’s two common strategies to handle this healing assignment requirement:

The Shaman-centric way: It’s possible to have everyone in a meteor slash group close enough to the tank that CH will reliably bounce from the tank to everyone slashed, meaning that all of them will passively be healed up while the tank is still receiving large amounts of healing. The main downside to this strategy is that positioning is fairly strict as CH only has a 10yd jump range - additionally, topping people off after a final slash can be tricky as the other tank will have the boss and need to be spam healed instead.

The Priest-centric strategy: Have 1 Priest handle all meteor slash and Burn damage (while your Druid assists on Burns with spare GCDs), while all other healers keep tank healing. A mixture of CoH and Renew should be used to top off the raid between Meteor Slashes; however, you will lose some tank healing as in the CH strat the Priest would be tankhealing as well. In this strategy, the Shamans do NOT CH at all as the raw throughput of HW can be necessary for multiple unavoided hits on the tank in a row.

Ultimately, any form of strategy where you have only 1-2 healers assigned to topping off Meteor Slashes and Burns, while the rest of the healers spam tanks, is viable. The keys are just to make sure that the tank healers do not deviate from their assignment for any reason, and have a plan for Burns to be handled.

Druid - This fight has constant, predictable tank swaps. Raids usually do 2-3 meteor slashes before swapping tanks. When one tank hits 1-2 meteor slashes respectively, start stacking lifebloom on the other tank so the other healers have as much time as possible to switch. Extra GCDs should be used on Burn targets.

Paladin - Downrank Holy Lights during normal tank damage and use max rank for stomp healing. If you find yourself getting low on mana it’s better to reduce your healing during the non-stomp periods so that you have the mana to max rank for stomp.

Priest - Burn ticks every second, giving you very high value on PoM versus putting it on tank/raid.

Shaman - This is the best example of a fight where the Healing Wave talents are invaluable, as even if you are using CH to top off slashes, you should be weaving in HW constantly as it’s more efficient and much more powerful at tank healing. If you aren’t using CH to manage the slashes, you should stick to almost purely HW; the Meteor Slash damage is not urgent whatsoever to be healed up right away, similarly to Morogrim’s Quake damage from T5.

3 Likes
62

I’m not 100% (not a tank) but I believe we do 2 slashes, taunt, then stomp lines up with the 3rd slash for a fair amount of time after that. Tanks just need to watch slashes but can do swaps during stomps.

63

Thanks for the awesome writeup Andelran.

As a paladin healer, I know it is a fight where I really do want to be spamming holy light all the time, but that is just not possible without being in a shadowpriest group. I tested just now and even using redeemer’s alchemist trinket (40% more mana from pots) and popping dark runes, I cannot even maintain rank 9 holy light for 6 minutes (the lowest rank that doesn’t have a penalty). If I drop to rank 5 holy light, it is really not much better than max rank flash of light in healing output, although it does keep up the 15 sec buff of 2 second holy light. This is why I had been weaving in some flash of lights, I can cast those all day long for ~2100 healing, about the same hps as holy light rank 5 (maybe even a bit better).

64

get the mp5 libram for holy light. if you not using flash that miuch that is
every bit counts

65

That’s a good idea, however the reason we taunt at 3 slashes is by the time you get that third slash your stacks have fallen off. If you taunt at 2 stacks, the stacks won’t fall off and keep stacking up. Now this wouldn’t be the worse thing in the world as a bear I can survive like 6 stacks, but everyone behind the tank will be dead.

66

You wanna do 3 slashes and taunt off stomp.

Any more than 3 and the whole group behind that tank prolly dead.

67

So does the druid actually tank through the stomp? Or should the other thank be taunting immediately?

68

Depends on other slash groups stacks.

69

The tank still has to get three slashes.

So there’s going to be times where the tank eats a stomp it needs to be healed through.

The tanks have to realize that and pop a defensive or a consumable.

Ideally it will look like this.

Slash slash slash stomp taunt.

But sometimes they don’t always line up and it will be like this…

Slash slash stomp slash taunt.

70

It’s all on both tanks and healers to carry that fight. Couple things I’d recommend. Some of these are obvious some are not.

Tanks need crit immunity. That means for bears 2.6% reduced crit coming from either defense stat or resilience. (Resilience is a better bang for your buck)

Tanks need to be at armor cap (or close to it)
It’s a little over 35k armor, we are at like 34k

The max slashes a tank can take is 4, however 3 is the max his group soak can take. So it’s imparitive that the taunt swaps occur after 3.

The wild card for tanking on this fight comes from when a stomp will occur a second or two after the 3rd slash. The slash cooldown is like 10 seconds so you have time for the current tank with 3 stacks to take that stomp with a prompt taunt off immediately. I’d never recommend taking a stomp on a new tank. Cause it takes time for the healers to swap. It’s a recipe for a global tank death. So make the 3 slash tank take the stomp.

It’s critical for your tanks or raid lead call out a tank swap with a “x tank taunting in 3,2,1“

Or x tank is taking his 3rd slash and taking the stomp in x seconds.

Calling out when stomp is going out allows for the healers to down tank properly which is the second hurdle with this fight. Max rank casts during stomp, down ranking otherwise.

MANA MANAGEMENT:

Alch shattersun offensive trinket is amazing!!! All healers with alch get it!!

when the tank is non stomped he will be taking tolerable damage. Therefore, the healers shouldn’t ever cancel a cast but by all means down rank. I’d recommend all healers spam during stomp because each meteor slash is predictable damage to be able to heal back up with plenty of time. Let the resto shamans spam chain heal on slashes. All pallys and rdruids transitioning from tank to tank.

Burn victims. Melee is on back side so stay spread and don’t move.

It’s impossible to have burn and take a slash so you need to move behind the boss in range of your single burn healer semi quickly without spreading the burn. If you do you wipe pretty much. (Your biggest pumper, ours a r1 priest handles all the burns, with a rdruid overflow)

Get a weak aura for thr burns. They take more damage the closer to completion the dot is. Last 15 sec is heavy hitting.

Last but not least keep comms extremely clear. Only tanks and raid lead talking. And tell your bears to create a armor potion shift bear macro. It lasts 2 min and it’s what will save the. When their armor gets reduced to like 25k during stomps. The trinket outta MGT for tanks is game breaking in brut.

Hope this helps. I main tank it on my bear. Hit me up with any additional questions.

Edit: bears should be cat when not tanking until 2 slashes go out on current tank to maximize damage and allow for pooling of rage for when they taunt.

Healers should dot the boss on pull to add 20k damage.

If you are going to hit the enrage with the boss really low, everyone which is high on threat run away from the soak groups. The groups taking a slash during berserk is a guaranteed one shot. So make the boss take the seconds to travel to each target but running max range. Those few precious seconds can cost you a kill if he one shots people too quickly. Make him work for that wipe.

71

You want to he over armor cap as stomp reduces armor by 50% and there are times you will eat a full stomp waiting on 3rd slash.

72

You will be with a crit heal and a pot. There isn’t a need to go too crazy, my HP is 23k and I’m not getting global’d. When both crit heal and pot are up I’m close to 50k which is the norm.

73

You get a lot of mana buffs in a raid. You will be OK. I would love to take credit for the write up but it is not mine. It does work though. One thing we do a little differently is our shaman use chain heal and healing wave until just before a stomp and then lesser healing wave through the stomp with the paladins bombing holy lights + hots. This increases the armor buff up time on the tank eating that stomp. It’s typically just 10s for each tank if you time your taunts properly per rotation with the occasional double stomp.

74

I’d just like to say that discussions like this are what these forums are supposed to be for. For the most part, everyone has tried to be helpful.

4 Likes
75

It’s only the first two slashes, next tank takes 3 so the 2 will fall off.

Only the first tank takes 2 slashes. 2nd takes 3. The 2 should fall off by then.

76

Depends on stomp.

If 2nd tank has 3 slashes and stomp is going to hit you let him take the stomp before you taunt.

Typically the rotation will always be 3 slashes.

77

i agree something is missing isnt it?
i know what it needs!
wrath to not have rdf!

1 Like
78

So here it is again.

First tank takes 2 Slashes, next one takes 3. On the 2nd tanks 3rd slash it should line up with stomp. First tank taunts then.

79

Yes but it isn’t ALWAYS lining up that way.

80

No it’s dicey for a couple of them. But if you do the initial one correctly they line up well for most of the encounter.

You just have to use more CDs for those, but if you get it timed right you don’t have to heal a tank through stomp nearly as often.