The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Zambal]

Asking if someone can review my Logs and see how I went. Any feedback on my play/character build is appreciated. Only my 2nd time playing Brewmaster in a dungeon/raid setting but looking at getting into tanking alt raids on it.

I had Power Strikes for every boss but on review I think maybe Ascension would have been better for Wind Lord (solo tanking) because I was having to hit purify every 4-5 seconds and was struggling to maintain Chi.

Currently stacked all-out haste and I quite like it, not sure if I should be looking into crit or

Since you ask for advice I am going to assume you tried to play it like it was a normal/heroic raid and you tried your best to avoid stuff even though it don’t kill you on lfr.

Generally
You are not using keg smash on cd this is most likely because either, your ui don’t let you see when it comes of cd clearly enough or(more likely) when it comes off cd you don’t have enough energy to use it. Because of these you should never use expel harm or jab unless at 70 or higher energy unless you really need one extra chi, right now, to use shuffle/guard/purify.

Tiger Palm is something you should be spamming every time you have nothing else to do, this will increase your damage and because of your statue lessen raid damage a bit as well. Looking at the logs you seems to be using this to little specially considering your low amount of haste.

On wind Lord
The three times you used Breath of Fire is the three times you had big gaps in Shuffle, this would have killed you in a normal raid. Basically don’t use breath of fire, focus on shuffle/guard/purifying brew
Whirling blade, try to avoid this, you got hit twice and it can hurt a lot in the wrong moment.

Protectors
Don’t use spinning Crane kick, the damage on the bosses you are not killing is only for meterpadding.
You didn’t avoid lightning storm

Lei shi
Since Shuffle only matters on the adds you can try to use some more chi wave
Glyph guard for insane raid healing!

Tsulong
You didn’t have cd up for any of the breaths, try to use guard, elusive brew for these

[siccora]

haha from the best trinket to the worst trinket

[Kisho]

Yep, avoiding Rune of Re-origination like the plague. Too problematic to be worth it.

Bloodlust/renataki's, HOOOOOOOOOOO

[imoom]

Well, Bloodlust trinket was also a big dissapoint really.

[Kisho]

Actually, true. Doesn't seem to be a 100% uptime either. Which tbh, if it was 100% it would've been crazy overpowered... But hey. It's still nice, just not automatically BiS.

I think a lot of these will need testing to see how good they are. At any rate, I'm glad Blizz are trying new stuff out, giving us new procs to play around with. Keeps things interesting.

[Yorgl]

Take a look at the following example:

I was tanking 3 windblades on heroic Empress last night with my (crit gemmed/reforged exp capped) 496 brewmaster alt.

The result? When my avoidance failed, I died: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=13629&e=13977
Shuffle was up, stagger was only ticking for a mere 17k right before the burst, and all of my cds had been exhausted by that point. Yet I still splatted inside 3 seconds with random spot heals. EH is still a decently important consideration.

If I had say, 5% more mastery, then I would most certainly have survived that section, and we would've killed empress yesterday instead of having to go back and reclear trash today. But since I mainly tanked normal and challenge modes on that character, I was not geared correctly for such a fight and caused at least one wipe.

How is that supposed to be the lack of Mastery ? Your shuffle uptime is 73% (which, on a tank swap fight where you have a lot of time to build shuffle for when you taunt back is REALLY low), you have windsong enchant and, the most horrifying, you only cast TWO freaking guards in 6 min. I know you're not supposed to have 12 in that time, but two... :-/
I'm not blaming you for not mastering perfectly your BrM (who, moreover is an alt if I undertand correcltly) and I remember myself having the same difficulties not so long ago, and actually I'm still not at the skill cap I wish I was. But this is not because you weren't full mastery, really.

Edit : By rereading that I feel that this might sound mean. I'm not trying to patronize or anything ; I should add that english is not my native language at all so tones are a bit hard for me. If my post seems mean, I'm honnestly sorry !


However, I don't deny that for cutting edge players that do content for which they are undergeared, that's a logical choice. But not for 99.9% of the players, including those who have a decent HC progression ; therefore there's no point advising for that (in guides mostly).

[imoom]

I think delicate vial can be better then people think. We DO have alot of dodge, especially with EB.
will need some calculations and testing ofc.
for normal mode the VP hit/agi trinket might end up as one of the 2 best really.

[Deleted]

@ Kaiadam: Interesting points you mentioned.

I had exactly the same issues at our first empress HC tries last ID. Also full on crit/haste but when your healers CD's and your EB runs out than you are just doomed ...
I will go for stamina/mastery this evening and perhaps be able to prove your point a bit

cheers,
imbanane

[Zonex]

Well that's a dissapointment, all the trinkets are absolutely dogshit compared to the VP vendor one. Guess that's gonna stay BiS even whilst being 522...

Might as well take Talisman of Bloodlust as the 2nd BiS, there isn't anything better

[The Madgod]

Take a look at the following example:

I was tanking 3 windblades on heroic Empress last night with my (crit gemmed/reforged exp capped) 496 brewmaster alt.

The result? When my avoidance failed, I died: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=13629&e=13977
Shuffle was up, stagger was only ticking for a mere 17k right before the burst, and all of my cds had been exhausted by that point. Yet I still splatted inside 3 seconds with random spot heals. EH is still a decently important consideration.

If I had say, 5% more mastery, then I would most certainly have survived that section, and we would've killed empress yesterday instead of having to go back and reclear trash today. But since I mainly tanked normal and challenge modes on that character, I was not geared correctly for such a fight and caused at least one wipe.

If I'm reading this right, looks like you could have reapplied EB prior to your death (at least the second one).

You also only used Guard twice, so having that up would have helped.

Also, why didn't you ever consider externals? Whenever I was tanking three windblades, I was rolling cooldowns. You had seven paladins in your raid. That's at MINIMUM seven cooldowns (14 if they were talented) you could have called upon. Why didn't you?

If you had 5% more mastery, you would have lost out on 6000 rating on other stats. You would have to lose your hardcap and take a severe dip in crit... and your energy regeneration is already going to be low at the haste levels you're at... and it shows with your shuffle uptime. I would say that's starting to get into dangerous territory with your active mitigation.

Honestly I don't think that it was because you lacked mastery that you died here. I see a lot of avenues you could have taken that would have highly reduced the likelihood of your death that you ignored.

How is that supposed to be the lack of Mastery ? Your shuffle uptime is 73% (which, on a tank swap fight where you have a lot of time to build shuffle for when you taunt back is REALLY low), you have windsong enchant and, the most horrifying, you only cast TWO freaking guards in 6 min. I know you're not supposed to have 12 in that time, but two... :-/
I'm not blaming you for not mastering perfectly your BrM (who, moreover is an alt if I undertand correcltly) and I remember myself having the same difficulties not so long ago, and actually I'm still not at the skill cap I wish I was. But this is not because you weren't full mastery, really.

Edit : By rereading that I feel that this might sound mean. I'm not trying to patronize or anything ; I should add that english is not my native language at all so tones are a bit hard for me. If my post seems mean, I'm honnestly sorry !


However, I don't deny that for cutting edge players that do content for which they are undergeared, that's a logical choice. But not for 99.9% of the players, including those who have a decent HC progression ; therefore there's no point advising for that (in guides mostly).

To be fair if you look at the death log, shuffle WAS up, so in this particular case the overall uptime isn't relevant, but I do agree that it's somewhat telling.

((also I don't care if I'm being mean. Mwehehehehehe))

[Deleted]

I keep reading about external cooldowns and while I unterstand in principle what they are could someone please enlighten me on what specific ones are available?
Thanks!

[Deleted]

Take a look at the following example:

I was tanking 3 windblades on heroic Empress last night with my (crit gemmed/reforged exp capped) 496 brewmaster alt.

The result? When my avoidance failed, I died: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=13629&e=13977
Shuffle was up, stagger was only ticking for a mere 17k right before the burst, and all of my cds had been exhausted by that point. Yet I still splatted inside 3 seconds with random spot heals. EH is still a decently important consideration.

If I had say, 5% more mastery, then I would most certainly have survived that section, and we would've killed empress yesterday instead of having to go back and reclear trash today. But since I mainly tanked normal and challenge modes on that character, I was not geared correctly for such a fight and caused at least one wipe.

Now imagine if you would've had more haste instead of all that useless mastery

Then you could've thrown out some chi waves that take <1s to bounce inbetween you and the adds and heal for 100k+

That would've helped you live through the adds, guaranteed.



I honestly don't get people gemming mastery, it's terrible. IF you need EH you should go with stamina, it's better. (pre 5.2)

[Kisho]

Well that's a dissapointment, all the trinkets are absolutely dogshit compared to the VP vendor one. Guess that's gonna stay BiS even whilst being 522...

Might as well take Talisman of Bloodlust as the 2nd BiS, there isn't anything better

I think that's an exaggeration. The problem it seems is that we're used to having some 'clear winners' from T14: I mean, anything compared to the double agility goodness of the DMC card will seem awful; same with Terror in the Mists.

Bad Juju is basically an upgraded Bottle of Infinite Stars, and how can you say Renataki's is terrible compared to the VP vendor one? One has expertise, the other has hit, and both are agility procs. Sure, they're delivered in different ways, but they're ultimately similar enough.

---------- Post added 2013-02-14 at 01:43 PM ----------

I keep reading about external cooldowns and while I unterstand in principle what they are could someone please enlighten me on what specific ones are available?
Thanks!

Basically, healers have two types of cooldowns: raidwide cooldowns to reduce damage dealt to the raid (Devotion Aura, Spirit Link Totem, etc.), and single target cooldowns to reduce damage taken by a target. The latter is what we mean. Here's a couple examples:

Ironbark
Pain Suppression (absolutely fine to use assuming not a tank swap fight)
Life Cocoon

Etc. Those sorts of things.

[The Madgod]

I keep reading about external cooldowns and while I unterstand in principle what they are could someone please enlighten me on what specific ones are available?
Thanks!

Well since I gave the example of paladins, they have Hand of Sacrifice and Hand of Protection (though that's niche, since it drops threat... great for fights like Gara'jal though!)

Druids have Ironbark, priests have pain suppression and Power Word: Barrier (if disc), Guardian Spirit (if holy), and Void Shift baseline, monks have Life Cocoon, and shamans don't really have any good tank cooldowns.

[Deleted]

I was actually looking for an exhaustive list. Sorry!

I just wanna make sure I don't miss any if I reseach them myself.

Paladins and Shamans surely have some. Any non-healer classes?

edit: too slow. Thanks Madgod!

[The Madgod]

Any non-healer classes?

edit: too slow. Thanks Madgod!

No problem!

And I don't think so. They're either raid-wide cooldowns and therefore best saved for when the raid's going to be taking severe damage and not just the tank(s), or they're personals.

[Glurp]

Warriors can use Safeguard/Vigilance as an external. I'm sure there are other DPS specs/classes with external tank cooldowns but I can't think of them right now.

[siccora]

Well the Shamans Mastery is a bit of a Tank "CD". Instant heal on a low tank from a shaman is worth a shield or something else.

[The Madgod]

Warriors can use Safeguard/Vigilance as an external. I'm sure there are other DPS specs/classes with external tank cooldowns but I can't think of them right now.

Thats true... but I don't think that there's any other cooldowns. Don't remember mages having one, nor warlocks... hunters... etc.

Well the Shamans Mastery is a bit of a Tank "CD". Instant heal on a low tank from a shaman is worth a shield or something else.

I'd call that a heal

[siccora]

yeah but the lower the hp, the greater the heal. that's why shamans don't have that oh shit button spell.