Brutallus Strategy Guide (Sunwell Plateau)

Author: Pride
Date: May 23, 2022
Expansion: TBC Classic

Sunwell Plateau Raid Guide

Brutallus

Brutallus, the Pit Lord, is the second boss players will encounter in the Sunwell Plateau raid. He is located in the Dread Scar part of the raid, a short distance away from the arena where players fought Kalecgos, with barely any trash in the way.

Brutallus may seem simple, due to his low number of abilities and the fact that there’s only one phase, but do not be deceived. This fight is a massive gear & DPS check which used to be seen as the biggest gatekeeper of the Sunwell Plateau raid, stopping raids with insufficient raid DPS right there. Your raid will need to come prepared, with everyone — and DPS players in particular — bringing their A game.

This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to put an end to the vile Pit Lord, before he burns you all alive.

Everyone should have potions, elixirs and flasks appropriate for their role in this fight — it is a very tight DPS race
Quickly move to your designated spot at the start of the fight — if you don’t, the tank will die to Meteor Slash
Immediately move to the designated spot if you get afflicted by Burn
Make sure you never get close to other players while afflicted by Burn, as you will spread it to all players within 2 yards
Use defensive cooldowns & Master Healthstone when necessary to survive, particularly if you have Burn
Paladins, Mages, Rogues: You can remove Burn with Divine Shield, Ice Block & Cloak of Shadows
Warriors: Keep Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap up on Brutallus at all times

Always stay at the designated spot, either behind Brutallus or on his side, and never near a tank
If you ever get hit by Meteor Slash or if Brutallus parries your attacks, that means you’re standing at the wrong spot
You don’t have to move anywhere if you get Burn, but make sure you’re not within 2 yards of other players
Use your cooldowns when your raid uses Heroism / Bloodlust for maximum damage output
Watch your threat — you will wipe the raid if you get aggro

Use your cooldowns when your raid uses Heroism / Bloodlust for maximum damage output
Watch your threat — you will wipe the raid if you get aggro

People can die very quickly here which will likely cause your raid to wipe — you must stay focused for the full 6 minutes
Burn deals increasing damage, with the last 10 seconds dealing 3200 damage per second — healers responsible for raid healing will need to pump heals into players afflicted by it at this time
Tank healers need to pay attention; your tanks will taunt off each other every 3 stacks of Meteor Slash, so be ready to heal the new tank
Use Super Mana Potions and Dark Runes as much as you can — this fight is long and taxing on your mana

Use all of the avoidance / mitigation gear you can for this fight — Brutallus hits incredibly hard
Quickly move Brutallus to the designated position at the start of the fight, and then never move from your spot
After the opposite tank has 3 stacks of Meteor Slash, you must taunt Brutallus off them
You can delay your taunt a little bit if Brutallus is about to use Stomp. Taunt right after he Stomps, but don’t delay it more than 4-5 seconds
Call on voice chat when you’re about to taunt, so healers can react
Use defensive cooldowns to survive if Brutallus happens to cast Burn on you — Stomp will remove it, so you have to survive until then

Abilities

Brutallus is a 1 phase encounter with only 3 abilities to worry about.

Brutallus slashes with his blades, dealing 20,000 Fire damage split evenly between all players in a cone in front of him. Additionally, ever player hit is afflicted by a debuff which increases their Fire damage taken by 75% for 40 seconds. This debuff stacks up to 100 times, which is completely overkill, as this ability will 1-shot most players at just 6-7 stacks, dealing 11,000 damage per player even when split between 10 players.

This is the main ability of this fight and the one that you have to deal with most often — the raid is positioned in such a way as to counter it. You should have at least 6 players stacked behind each tank so the damage is split at least 7-ways, else everyone will be taking excessive damage. Furthermore, your tanks will need to taunt off one another when the tank opposite to them has 3 tanks, causing stacks to reset instead of endlessly stacking up.

Cast every 11-12 seconds.

Brutallus stomps on his current target, dealing 18,850 to 21,150 Physical damage and reducing their armor by 50% for 10 seconds, while also removing Burn. Stomp’s damage is pretty scary on its own, but the armor reduction debuff is absolutely petrifying. Your healers will need to spam heal the current tank like there’s no tomorrow while they have the Stomp debuff, and the tanks should be prepared to use defensive cooldowns if necessary to survive.

A small trick that helps make Stomp a bit more manageable, is to have tanks wait until Stomp comes and taunt immediately after, while tank swapping for Meteor Slash. This won’t always be possible, as Stomp and Meteor Slash don’t line up perfectly due to the latter being used every 11-12 seconds, but doing it as much as possible will make a huge difference in preventing tank deaths overall, allowing you to bypass Stomp frequently.

Cast every 30 seconds.

Brutallus burns a random player, applying the Burn debuff to them for 1 minute. At first, Burn will deal 100 Fire damage per second to them, but the damage is doubled every 10 seconds, so 200 damage per second after 10 seconds, 400 damage after 20, 800 damage after 30, 1600 damage after 40, and finally 3200 damage per second for the last 10 seconds of the debuff, for a total of 63,000 damage over the Burn’s duration.

Needless to say, players targeted by Burn will require massive healing, particularly during the last 10 seconds. Moreover, the last 20 seconds will be impossible to heal through if they are afflicted by Meteor Slash, meaning they need to immediately move to a designated spot (typically right next to the melee) so they don’t get hit by it again. Burn can be removed by Divine Shield, Ice Block and Cloak of Shadows, so at the very least players of those classes don’t have to worry about it too much.

To make things worse, the Burn will spread to all other players within 2 yards of the target, which makes it necessary for everyone to be spread out slightly and be careful while moving to the Burn spot. 2 yards is a very small range, barely larger than your character’s model, so it will be pretty easy to avoid spreading it — just be careful while moving to the Burn spot.

Cast every 20 seconds.

After 6 minutes of combat, Brutallus will go into a hard enrage, increasing his damage by 500% and attack speed by 150%. This effectively means that you have 6 minutes to defeat him or wipe, as he will decimate your raid seconds after enraging.

Raid Composition & Preparation

Every player should come prepared with consumables, such as potions, flasks and elixirs, appropriate for their role. This fight is a very tight DPS race with Brutallus hitting like a truck, and everyone will need to perform at the peak of their ability to come out of this fight with a kill. DPS players will need to be flasked, healers will need to have Super Mana Potions and Dark Runes, tanks should be using all the defensive consumables they can get, etc.

It is impossible to overstate just how high Brutallus’ damage is. To that end, it will be vital that you keep all of the damage-reduction debuffs you can on him, such as Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap — so having at least 1 Warrior of any spec here will be very beneficial. Other classes can apply those debuffs too, but Warriors typically have the strongest versions.

Finally, there is no excuse — everyone should have a Master Healthstone for this fight. It will give you a very slightly better chance of surviving Burn when your healers are struggling to keep up. Losing a single player here can make the difference between a kill and a wipe, so use your Healthstones!

Brutallus is one of the most merciless fights in Sunwell as far as healing is concerned — there’s just so much damage. It would be foolish to even try this fight with less than 7 healers for most guilds, with many guilds running as many as 9 here. It is not a bad idea to swap some of your DPS players and the 3rd tank to healing duties / healers here. Bear in mind that this is still a 6 minute DPS race however, you can’t keep stacking healers to survive as then you won’t make the DPS timer.

3-4 of your single target healers (Holy Paladins and Restoration Druids) should be assigned to tank healing full time. The remainder of your healers will need to raid heal, with Restoration Shamans & Holy Priests being the best at this task once again thanks to their powerful AoE healing spells.

Additionally, 2-3 of your healers will need to be assigned to taking care of players afflicted by Burn. Restoration Druids will excel at this task, thanks to their healing-over-time spells. They can do incredibly efficient healing to counter-act Burn‘s damage-over-time, on multiple targets at once, including the tanks. It’ll be easy to keep players alive by using Swiftmend and letting Lifebloom finish during the last 10 seconds of Burn.

Due to the way the Meteor Slash mechanic works, ranged DPS will have a massive advantage over melee DPS for this fight. The fewer melee DPS you have in this fight, the better, unfortunately. It’s still very much doable for melee-heavy raids, but you want at least 7 players soaking on each side, meaning having way too many melee will inevitably force them to attack the boss from the front.

This fight only requires 2 tanks, though most guilds will be running 3 in order to deal with other fights in the Sunwell Plateau, which works just fine here. The 3rd tank can essentially be a back-up in case 1 of the 2 primary tanks dies, which is a very likely scenario unfortunately.

Any combination of tank classes works, but Protection Paladins will be great thanks to their high threat output combined with their ability to use Divine Shield and then cancel it right away in order to remove Burn off themselves if necessary. Protection Warriors are also great in this fight as their Shield Wall can give the healers 10 seconds of breathing room or save their lives in a pinch, but their threat output is pretty poor, so they should ideally not be the initial tank.

All tanks should be using the best mitigation / avoidance gear they have available so as to maximize their effective HP. Brutallus hits hard, if it hasn’t been clear so far.

The Pull

There is just one robot and a single pack of blood elf type enemies before Brutallus. After your raid has killed those, move ahead, and you’re forced to watch a lengthy roleplay interaction between Brutallus and Madrigosa, Felmyst’s original self.

After the roleplaying is over and Madrigosa is violently murdered, your raid should jump down from the ledge overlooking Brutallus and start moving towards the left (as you jump down), to the east side of the room, so you’re looking at Brutallus’ right side. This will be where you pull him to.

When your raid is fully buffed up and ready to take on this absolute beast of a boss, have your raid position as follows:

You will be pulling Brutallus to this position by having a Hunter use Misdirection on the tank on the right side, who will be tanking first. Ranged DPS and healers on the right side can be positioned behind the tank in advance, but the left side players & melee will need to reposition once Brutallus is in position.

The reasoning behind this positioning is simple: ranged DPS & healers form a camp behind each of the 2 tanks so as to evenly split Meteor Slash damage. Tanks are on opposite sides so they can taunt off each other when one of the sides has 3 stacks of Meteor Slash, allowing the stacks to fall off. By having the raid in this V shape, with melee in the vertex of the V, you ensure that your melee DPS won’t be getting parried, thus dealing maximum DPS. Healers are positioned on the south side of their respective stacks, so they can reach melee & players afflicted by Burn.

It’s important to note that everyone needs to be at least 3 yards away from other players in order to avoid spreading Burn, though in reality you should aim for slightly bigger gaps as players will be sloppy when running to the designated spot in a panic. Typing /range 6 on an addon like DeadlyBossMods will allow you to see that you have enough distance from other players — unfortunately most addons don’t allow you to have a lower range check than 6.

The Fight

After the fight starts, your group has 12 seconds before Brutallus uses his first ability — Meteor Slash. Use that time to position correctly, and start nuking Brutallus. When your tanks have enough of a thread lead, your raid should use Heroism / Bloodlust along with personal DPS cooldowns.

The first thing you will notice, before Brutallus uses any abilities, is that he hits very hard. Your tanks’ HP will be bouncing up and down like crazy throughout the entire time. To make his damage slightly more manageable, one Warrior should be assigned to keeping up Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap on Brutallus for the entire fight, while a single Hunter does the same with Scorpid Sting. There’s no way around it though, his damage is just insane and your healers must be focused on pumping heals on the tanks at all times.

Then 12 seconds in, Brutallus will use Meteor Slash for the first time, so the real fight finally starts. If you’ve positioned correctly, the first one won’t hurt too much — dealing only 2,000 Fire damage player if you have 10 players stacked up per side. However, everyone hit will take a stacking debuff, increasing their Fire damage taken by 75% for 40 seconds. The damage will be too much at 4 stacks, so your tanks should taunt off each other when the opposite side has 3 stacks — allowing for their stacks to reset before they need to take over tanking again.

The tanks will repeat this dance throughout the entire fight, with Meteor Slash coming on a fixed timer of 11-12 seconds. It will be very beneficial if they call out on voice chat that they’re about to taunt, so healers can switch to the new tank quickly.

The next ability you will see is Burn, 20 seconds into the fight. A random player is afflicted by this 60 second damage-over-time spell, dealing light damage at first, but ramping up to 3200 Fire damage per second during the last 10 seconds. Players cannot survive the last 20 seconds of Burn if they have the Meteor Slash debuff on them, so they must quickly move to a designated spot, right next to the melee, as shown in the picture below.

The idea here is that you need to be behind the Brutallus, so you aren’t getting hit by Meteor Slash, while also staying close to healers. For that reason, it will be imperative that players move behind the boss, but close to the front of the melee stack — move too far away and you’ll likely die at a lack of healing. Furthermore, the targeted players should be careful with how they move — you need to be quick with moving, so run between people, but don’t get too close to them; you will spread Burn to any player that gets within 2 yards of you.

Brutallus will be using Burn every 20 seconds, but at least Paladins, Mages and Rogues can remove Burn with Divine Shield, Ice Block & Cloak of Shadows respectively. Given how scary its damage is, having one of these classes get targeted will be extremely fortunate for your raid. Everyone else will need to get pumped with heals, particularly during the last 20 seconds.

The final mechanic that your raid will need to deal with is Stomp, which Brutallus will use 30 seconds in and then every 30 seconds on the dot. This is what’s commonly known as a “tank buster” in MMOs: it deals a lofty amount of damage (5-6k on tanks, will 1-shot anyone else) to Brutallus’ current target and applies a debuff to the target, reducing their armor by 50% for 10 seconds. Yes, that’s right, 50% reduced armor, on a boss that’s already hitting like a truck. Your tank healers and tanks must be aware of Stomp‘s timer at all times and be ready to pump heals / use defensive cooldowns if necessary.

Thankfully, there is one way you can make dealing with Stomp a bit easier. Your tanks are taunting off one another to deal with Meteor Slash anyway — there is no reason why they can’t work Stomp into the rotation. This won’t always be possible due to the timing of these 2 abilities, but it can help a good bit where possible. If the opposite tank just got the 3rd stack of Meteor Slash with Stomp coming up in 3-4 seconds, just wait and taunt the boss AFTER it has used Stomp on the opposite tank — that way, you completely circumvent that Stomp!

And that is all there is to this fight. It is a very harsh healing check, with a strict DPS timer attached to it, as Brutallus will go Berserk after 6 minutes. In practice this means that your raid needs to deal at least 29k DPS as a collective, with each player doing about 1950 DPS each. To make meeting the DPS check a bit easier, you should save your 2nd set of Heroism / Bloodlust casts until your DPS players have access to their cooldowns again, allowing them to do the maximum amount of damage possible for them — this can definitely make the difference between a kill at 5:55, or a wipe at 6:15.

Congratulations on defeating the Pit Lord! You can take a breath — one of the most significant roadblocks is now out of the way, and your raid can proceed further into the Plateau!

About the Author

Pride

Classic WoW is my jam, with a passion for PvP. Most know me as Baranor, the ret paladin guy, but I'm secretly a druid main, don't tell anyone. In my free time I play Switch games, particularly JRPGs. Some day I'll be making my own games and I humbly hope you play those too!