The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Tips on Healing Direbrew
by Vonya
By now, I’m sure most of you have at least had the opportunity to visit the Brewfest boss, Corin Direbrew.
Having healed him (and yes, died to him, even though I’m overgeared) there are a few little tips and tricks I can recommend.
- Don’t HoT. Leave your Heal over Time spells at home. It pains me to say it, but with the regular entrance of new adds, if you’ve got a HoT ticking on ANYONE, you’ll be grabbing aggro before your tank even realizes that you’ve got a mob on you.
- Drink the beer. That’s not really a healer-specific tip, but it’s important nonetheless. Keep your inventory open and drink the beer when it’s thrown to you.
- Frisbee like MAD. Without a HoT, Prayer of Mending is going to be your most useful “little heal”. With all those adds and the whirlwindy effect from the boss, it can save your groupmates.
- Binding Heal. Don’t forget this little gem. If you need a heal, it’s much lower aggro than your other possible heals to use IT instead of two flash heals.
- Patience. The aggro table of the dwarves that join the fight via the Mole Machines (or Mechanical Grabloids, if you prefer) starts AFTER the machine appears. Feel free to finish a heal when you see one appear, but don’t start a new one until the dwarf add makes it to the tank. (Unless your tank is dying, of course. This assumes you CAN wait.) Be patient, and let your tank get aggro before you start dropping massive heals and stealing adds from him.
- Bubble and Fade. If the tank gets a barrel on his head, you’re probably going to find yourself uncomfortably popular. Don’t forget to fade if you get an add, and bubble if fade’s on cooldown. Frisbees are also good in this situation.
Also, Blizz? If you nerfed the drop rate on the Brewfest mounts, you should realize by now that you’ve dropped it too far. We’ve run this thing more than thirty times in the last three days, and NOT ONE MOUNT HAS DROPPED.
Neither has the remote, for that matter.
Inconceivable!
September 25th, 2008
I’m afraid I must respectfully disagree with one point here, and that is the employ of HoTs. I’ve farmed this poor fella as well, and found that HoTs not only retain their general usefulness, but also are a good ‘airborne’ cast. Let’s say your in the midst of a GH and a drill launches you halfway through. You’ll spend a moment in the air before landing and having to start your GH again- now we’re looking at ~3.5s before your next GH lands (unhasted), not counting the time ‘lost’ when your original GH was interrupted (however far along in that you were). Although not necessarily lethal in and of itself, with instants being castable while in midair, a well-placed Renew at this time can provide a reassuring levelling effect on the tank’s health before you can go back into casting. Yes, you could Shield (suboptimal for Warrior tanks) or Frisbee (which could lose efficiency on the last Frisbee you cast if it hadn’t run its course), but I haven’t found too many aggro problems in the fight that a well-timed Fade couldn’t solve.
Aside from Coren and his two Elite daughters, the other adds hit for negligible amounts (keep IF up) and should not cause a healer to panic. Rather than immediately Fade when I’m the subject for the non-elite’s attention, in most cases (assuming a Paladin for MT here) I can ‘lose’ them by dragging them through Consecrated ground (mind Coren’s Whirlwind here) and save the Fade for a hairier moment. Another alternative (or backup) is Psychic Scream. While DPS classes are urged to be cautious with their AoE to avoid aggroing the rest of the bar by hitting a stray patron, with them being Yellow (nonaggressive), they’ll watch their kinfolk run around willy-nilly in terror and do little more than raise their tankard in a salute to their kin’s (fast-declining) health.
It’s not so much a streessful fight as a bit of a chaotic one with the adds, the Barrelling, and the short Stuns on those who didn’t chug their brew in time. In most cases towards the end I’ll throw a couple HoTs on vulnerable party members and then hasten Coren’s demise with a string of Smites.
Cycle, rinse, repeat!
And no, I haven’t seen a mount or the remote drop either. But I’ve been hearing some funny stories of entire Groups being lost at the run-up to an AV when some prankster pops it up and the unwitting click on it.
Great article!
September 25th, 2008
Why do you keep saying that word?
I do not think that word means what you think it means
September 25th, 2008
I agree with Apoptygmaa on the HoTs. I didn’t really have a lot of aggro problems I couldn’t fade out of.
I got my kodo last tuesday
(NE priest)
September 25th, 2008
@Apop(and I refused to try and spell the rest of that)
Whether or not to use HoTs depends on you and your tank. I choose not to have to go to such lengths to manage my aggro - If I avoid HoTs, I don’t have to do the jumping around. I had a pallytank for about half of the runs we did, but if I’d had a warrior tank, it would have been more difficult to hand off aggro. Plus, both myself and the tank are so overgeared for the instance that I never had trouble keeping him healed without the panicked-insta-heal of the hots, which wouldn’t be true if we’d been finding the fight more difficult.
Some really great tips there on handing off the aggro though, you gave me a *facepalm* moment with the suggestion to keep up Inner Fire. Definitely do that.
@Rattavong
Ten points for catching the reference!
@mrchicken
Tell that to a druid healer who has no Fade, sirrah! *winks* Grats on the kodo!!
September 25th, 2008
Re: Drink the Beer.
Instead of bothering with taking shots when thrown at you, split your biscuits, stacks of food, stacks of water, well… anything that stacks —until your inventory is full. The Dark Direbrew will bounce off you and you don’t get stunned.
Re: Mounts and Remotes.
No mounts, but 4 remotes last night! Another 15 attempts last night and my trinket list is down to 8 needs on the Empty Mug, 5 for the Smoking Pipe, 3 for the Hops, and only 2 for the Coin. Hopefully this weekend will see some generous altathons. I’m going to earn a billion free lowbie runs this week.
September 25th, 2008
I think hots is all I use there! (Being a resto druid, makes it hard not to…)
He’s sooo very easy though (and can be completely aggro-free for the healer) if you just get 1 DPS to do adds. He still dies quickly but it keeps the group’s overall damage down big time! If you don’t have a crappy DPS on them, there shouldn’t ever be more than 1 guy up at a time (when I do adds on my fury warrior, I can even go back onto the boss between kills sometimes).
1 DPS devoting their time to add killing makes a world of difference!
September 25th, 2008
(er, and an addendum, we just let the elite dwarf chicks do their thing… we only kill the nonelites, elites have waaaay too much health)
September 25th, 2008
Hmmm.
I sense that I will have to seek out this Direbrew character and see whats what.
September 25th, 2008
I have to agree with alaphrei here. That’s the way we have been doing it, with the dpser in charge of adds standing next to me (holy priest) and keeping aggro off me. I have to say, we didn’t notice the beers getting thrown at us until yesterday, and so we have largely ignored them. We also don’ bother killing the elite girls, no point as they just respawn, and wasting dps on them makes the fight take longer.
September 25th, 2008
Sat: 10 runs
Sunday: 5 runs
Monday: 5 runs
Tuesday: 23 runs
Wed: 20 runs
Mounts: zero
Remotes: 3
Shankers: 7
I hate this game.
Weakest dps on any adds that are on the healer, tank gets rest (T5/6 druid wearing PVP gear, or Arms warrior in kara tanking gear)
One dps gets Ursula when she pops to prevent barrels going on the tank or the healer.
September 25th, 2008
I use my Renew almost mindlessly. In fact, I spend the vast majority of the fight tossing up Renews on our melee and then casually throwing a Prayer of Mending on the tank on every cooldown. The rest of the fight I just dance around, occasionally hit the Fade button, or enjoy throwing my paltry Smites on top of the rest of the damage.
Though the time that we had a Retribution paladin there was fun; between Sanctity Aura and Seal of the Crusader, I was hitting over 2,000 per Smite there.
Our groups have been like the majority of groups here. Our tank handle Direbrew, the DPS take care of adds, and I take a nap. We ignore Ilsa because she just respawns anyways. Typically an Enhancement shaman snags the adds from me, but it can be either way. And the fight seems almost too easy, in that we’ve had non-tanking specs (or even classes!) handle tanking the fight in pre-badge gear. Our Retribution paladin has tanked; our two Enhancement shamans have tanked (though one is in Tier 6 and equivalent gear); our mage tanked once on a whim; even the hunter’s pet has tanked.
I’ve seen a slew of remotes drop (the perky priestess even has one!), but only one mount and it was the ram. Our Enhancement shaman buddy grabbed it. We’ll keep running for some time, I think!
September 25th, 2008
All you people that keep yawning about how easy this fellow is, I give you a big Harumph. Sure, most of the goofballs crammed into the nether regions of BlackRock these days are so overgeared that Ragnaros is cowering in hopes you continue to ignore him. But for some of us, we’ll take all the tips we can get.
And hopping around and hoping we’re somehow out of range of that multi-directional insta-kill disarm while the tank and dps are trying to kill adds while constantly scrambling around with a barrel on their head and hoping the mage doesn’t mis-click the AOE and send half the bar in at us -
You can KEEP your ding-dang ram. I’m going back to slapping the snot out of these sheep outside of Orgrimmar.
September 25th, 2008
Tips on DPSing Direbrew:
1) Keep the mobs off the healer’s face. Trap them, fear them, frost nova them, AoE them. Bite their ankles if you have to. Give the healer a chance to stick to his job and worry about your health, not their own.
2) Drink your beers. Nothing better than getting drunk during your job.
3) Once Diren hits 25% health, go nuts on him (and still keep an eye on your healer).
–
In all my runs, I’ve seen all trinkets enough times and two mounts, both rams. Didn’t roll on either of them because I already have it.
September 25th, 2008
I’ll throw in another vote for HoTs on this one.. Depending on how much everyone else moves around, I usually just plant myself in the front corner of the room.. PoM/Renew and the occasional big heal, if someone gets tagged.. As for adds, most of the groups I’ve been in have been pretty good at keeping them off.. If not, though, I just Scream at ‘em or Fade, and that works.. Plus, they hit like pansies, so if I get tagged, I just drop a Renew on myself and usually my frisbee bounces off me too and I’m good as new.. I do find that it’s terribly difficult to heal with a barrel on your head, but usually if I get hit with one, we’re close enough to the end that he’s down before the stun wears off..
September 26th, 2008
Well, it seems I’m not the only one, but I also vote for using HoTs in this fight (Being a resto druid it’s the only thing I can :p) With a decent group (meaning a group who knows what they are doing) they will pull the adds to themselves with some AoE or a trap or something like that. I’ve run it once with a pug where our dps was too low and where the fight almost became difficult, but overall this fight is very easy
September 26th, 2008
Pfft!
We ran it 30 times in two nights and got ONE stamina trinket drop, which our warrior was desparate for and we’ve never seen a mount, no sir.
But if I see that flaming pipe or coin once again I’m going to aggro the whole bar out of sheer frustration …. 0_o
September 26th, 2008
@draiggoch
I ended up with the coin, btw Im a shadow priest
No one wanted it and no one else could DE so I got it to see if you could atleast DE them. Alas no such luck so now I have a +stam trinket and the coin.
@all
We only got 3 tries since 2 of the people where repeats from earlier runs.
Nothing real exceptional, we did get 1 remote though.
The group consisted of a pally tank and druid healer which worked out fine for heals and tanking. I would downrank dot and fear the adds to help keep the healer clear, or the mage would frost nova them, the rogue well was useless and afk through most of the fights. Though when he wasnt the fights went much nicer.
September 29th, 2008
I’m not so sure I agree with no HOT. In fact, the quicker you kill the boss the less you have to heal. I would suggest to be on the offensive side. Smite away. I did the brewfest with 2 geared lvl 70 and 1 lvl 69 rogue. We 4 man the brewfest and I died 3 times out of possible 4. The last time no one died because instead of healing, I was smiting away whenever I can. I would HOT, POM or flash heal. Never really had to use my big heal.
At least the tank never died in any of the attempt. Cost me 7G and all I got was Ram mount, coin and healing trinket. I want that kodo mount! So I can ride side by side next to a hordie.
September 30th, 2008
Sorry for the frivolous comment, but when I first saw the title of this post out of the corner of my eye, it first registered on my brain as “Tips on Dealing Hebrew”, which had me doing a triple take.
If you’re ever searching for a topic to write about, I’d love more stories about the ways that you first learned how to manage aggro and the beauty of working the holy trinity. Your posts about 5-man grouping were influential on my early WoW career, and only now, a year later, and I’m leading 25-person raids on T4 and T5 dungeons, I’ve finally implemented the formal Main Assist concept along with assist macros for all DPS in my groups.