Need a Brutallus gear check please

[Scargoth]

I need a gear check for as a MT for Brutallus please.

The World of Warcraft Armory

In case you can't see the armory, here're my stats (unbuffed)

16884 health
20284 armor
561 defense (13.44% miss)
30.67% dodge
23.6% parry
28.94% block

In our first full night of attempts on Brutallus we never survived past 3 min. We lost either myself or our feral druid tank each time. I just wanted to see how well prepared I am for this so I can make sure I'm doing my part as best I can.

I used the following consumables:

Bloodberry Elixir
Elixir of Major Defense
Scroll of Protection V
Adamantite Sharpening Stone
30 stamina food
Ironshield potions

I used [item]Shadowmoon Insignia[/item] -> Nightmare Seed -> Last Stand as my stomp rotation.

Fully buffed with commanding shout up I was around 21.2-21.4k health. Buffed armor was about 22.9k before ironshield with imp devo in my group. I did not have a shaman for any totems.

I have tons of other gear pieces, pretty much everything I might want from MH and BT. I do not have the faceplate, so the T5 helm is the best I have right now. I am 16 badges away from getting the [item]Ring of the Stalwart Protector[/item] - never thought I would need it =/

I also have:
[item]Band of the Eternal Defender[/item]
[item]Band of the Abyssal Lord[/item]
[item]Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch[/item]
[item]Figurine - Empyrean Tortoise[/item]

+lots of other more threat-centric items.


People have been telling me I need more avoidance, but I'm not really sure how much more health I can safely shed. My health has been steadily declining since I first started MH and BT (was about 18k unbuffed, now it's 16.8k).

I am inclined to think that I should be ready with this set since I have pretty much all the loot from BT and MH for a warrior tank, I assume it would be mostly gems, enchants, trinkets that might be the issue if anything. Otherwise, it would probably be more of a healer issue for our guild.

[ebs2002]

Are you usually dying during a stomp period, or an aggro-switch, or just randomly in the fight? And are these stomps rofl-stomps, or just normal stomps that you're not getting healed through?

I'm not in sunwell, so obviously someone else with better knowledge of the fight will be able to provide you some insight, but what i've come to understand is:
If you're dying during a tank swap, your healers are probably to blame.
If you're dying during a non-stomp situation, your gearing is definitely off.
If you're dying to a roflstomp, that's just bound to happen sometimes.
If you're dying to a regular stomp, it's either your healers fault or your gearing.

I peeked at your armory, and it looks like you went heavy in +15sta gems, ignoring most socket bonuses. Against Brutallus, from what I understand, you want to be using 5/7's or 10's for more avoidance (even to the point where you want 2 copies of T6 gear, one for EH and one for avoidance).

If you're having trouble dipping below 21k buffed hp, consider getting a warlock in your group for the extra stamina buffer? I believe 21k is your target for Brut, then stacking as much avoidance as possible.

[Rak]

I would recommend more health. Our first few kills I had less avoidance than you, but 2000 more health, and I didn't use the Commendation. I use the pocket watch instead of commendation as I like to use that in my stomp rotation, it's great.

Other than that, the situations posted above are true and you need to figure out which of them is the problem.

[Scargoth]

It was predominantly stomps and tank swaps, I don't recall dying much apart from that, and the same was true for our feral tank as well. Were were calling out our taunts on vent with a 3 sec countdown, so healers knew when we were about to do it.

There were 1-2 roflstomps, but I suppose most of them were "normal" stomps. It's hard to tell the difference when I died in both cases

consider getting a warlock in your group for the extra stamina buffer?

I could ask our locks, but I doubt I would get a friendly response on this one. Do guilds regularly have warlocks provide their MTs with an imp on Brutallus?

So one of you tells me I need more health, the other tells me I need more avoidance... any other votes?

[Prunetracy]

So one of you tells me I need more health, the other tells me I need more avoidance... any other votes?

More experience? If it was your first night, it may just be a comfort issue. talk with your healers and see why they had trouble keeping you up and work from there.

[Kavtor]

Go with the pocket watch over the Shadowmoon.
Nightmare seeds & shadowmoon aren't great clickies for stomps. They're better than nothing, but you're just gaining the health of half an OH hit.
If you're taking the 3 stomp rotation, assuming learning attempts, so shield wall isn't available often, you'd want Pocket watch / seed & LS / Pocket watch.
It's all about not getting hit too often on a stomp.

Your gear is similar enough to mine, and I tank Brutallus just fine. (I've got faceplate, Kaz'rogal shield, a handful or dodge gems)

[ebs2002]

Do guilds regularly have warlocks provide their MTs with an imp on Brutallus?

On Brutallus, I don't know because I'm not there, but it's not an outlandish request if the tank is dying. My guild does it on high-dps fights in T5 all the time (FLK's shammy tank, Morogrim if we don't have our main tank on, etc).

I do agree that if this was your first attempt, maybe it's a comfort issue. And I like the pocket watch suggestion over the Shadowmoon Insignia, I thought about suggesting that but wasn't sure exactly how stomp mechanics worked.

[byechee]

How many and what types of healers do you have solely on tanks?

Your gear is more or less fine and should make brutallus do-able. The only minor suggestions i would make are the akama pants if you have em, and the ring you mentioned. your trinkets are fine, if you did want a bit more avoidance, I would swap the commendation for moroes, certainly not the shadowmoon, as its passive avoidance is just above and beyond anything else, and there's no reason to say that 1750 hp is a marginal use ability, as HP is never a bad thing.

oh and having an affliction warlock running 2/2 imp and 5/5 shadow embrace is very very good for the first few kills. make someone do it.

[Xav]

Moroes + Commendation is easily the best trinket setup. Commendation will proc every tank rotation, and Moroes has the best clicky of any trinket. 20.5k buffed hp is fine - that's what I had our first few kills.

Major Agility + Major Defense is the best elixir combo, not Mastery. For damage-mitigation, anyway. (Again, it's what I used for our first kills.. all heavy avoidance/mitigation stuff)

[Scargoth]

Ok, thanks for the feedback. It sounds like it's safe for me to shed 500-600 hp if I need to re-gem for some avoidance. I'll also try the commendation + moroes combo.

You're right about the experience part, this was just one night of attempts, I'm sure we'll work out all the kinks. I posted here because I wanted to make sure I'm doing what I need to be doing to get the best result.

We have a lot of work to do on our healing team in general, not just for Brutallus. I believe we had 3 resto shammies, 2-3(?) holy pallies, 2 CoH priests, and 1 resto druid. One problem we've already found and plan to address was that the 3 shamans did not always target the MTs for their chain heals and we think that the AF buff wasn't up nearly enough because of that.

We also have a lot of mixed advice flowing in about group setup, so that situation is pretty fluid right now. I was placed into a full healing group with a pally, the tree druid, a healing priest and a shadow priest -- the VE gains were nice. Our Feral tank was in a group with 3 hunters and a shaman with AGI totem I believe.

Since we only lasted about 3 min max, we might want to try to put the tanks together (as long as range isn't an issue), something like: War MT, Druid MT, Pally (imp devo), Shaman (AGI), warlock (stam buff) - or tree druid for tree buff. It would be nice to have AGI totem for both tanks as well as devo (assuming it helps the feral tank through stomp), and to make sure both tanks have commanding shout somehow.

[Scargoth]

Ok I've done a significant re-gem and swapped a couple items:

[item]Destroyer Greathelm[/item] > 10 dodge
[item]Onslaught Chestguard[/item] > 10 dodge x2, 5 def/7 stam x1
[item]Girdle of the Invulnerable[/item] > 10 doge x1, 15 stam x1
[item]Praetorian's Legguards[/item] > 10 dodge x1, 5 def/7 stam x2
[item]Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch[/item] + [item]Commendation of Kael'thas[/item] trinket combo

New unbuffed stats:

16184 health
20079 armor
534 defense (12.36% miss)
33.87% dodge
23.83% parry
25.86% block

[Scargoth]

Just a quick follow-up... my guild <Rising Anarchy> downed Brutallus this last week for our first time!

Thanks to everyone for your helpful advice!

I ended up tanking him with about 19,950 health fully buffed, but I had lots of avoidance and my armor was about 25.6k fully buffed with imp devo, major defense elixir, major agility elixir, and ironshield potions.

We're going for our 2nd kill tonight, thanks again for all the help!