The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Biggety]

Mastery is flat reduction on damage that matters (that scales upwards with more mastery, as opposed to other masteries which either remain linear or scale down); stagger is damage that is more or less irrelevant.

PB is basically a courtesy to the healers, who by ghostcrawler's own statement - "I’m not sure we’ll ever be at a place again where a healer can run OOM spamming heals on a tank" - are more than sufficient to heal any overall damage tanks take.



A full mastery build takes upwards of 15% less initial damage every swing, which is a pretty significant amount. If you can deal with the extra spike damage in a crit or haste build, more power to you, but you're knowingly trading mitigation for damage.

I suppose you are talking about 25s here where you can assign a couple of healers to tank duty. In 10s, I know that the primary issue for our healers is GCD scarcity because our healers have to monitor the raid hps AND keep up the tanks. Fight mechanics make it almost impossible to assign one guy to tanks while the other one or two heal the raid.. Meaning, any time you can give them where they don't have to waste a maintenance heal on you as a tank is time they can spend dropping a HoT on a ranged dps or cleansing a debuff. That 50k stagger you can't clear because you're mastery built with low haste means you just lost 100k hp while the paladin was saving a ranged and you still get gibbed when the big nasty swing comes through.

[kaiadam]

Sure, I guess my statements are more applicable to 25s, but I run with two other 10s groups, one of which also has heroic sha down, and I've never heard the healers complain that anyone is taking too much damage, be it tanks or raid, after the right cds are planned. Tank deaths are usually spike damage. We don't have a brewmaster in that group so I can't say for certainty that stagger damage is completely irrelevant, but unless you're two healing with disc + paladin or something, there should be some hots to go around.

[itsyaboy]

who by ghostcrawler's own statement - "I’m not sure we’ll ever be at a place again where a healer can run OOM spamming heals on a tank" -


If you can deal with the extra spike damage in a crit or haste build, more power to you, but you're knowingly trading mitigation for damage.

I feel like you took his quote out of context to support your claims. GC probably meant in a patchwork type encounter where the only damage is tank damage. That is never the case anymore and you are slowly draining their mana making them heal your huge stagger because the raid is also taking damage.

Secondly, didn't you try to argue haste/crit has no defensive value once before and then you got proven wrong by everyone on the forums and then admitted it was useful just not your preference? Why do you keep coming back to these claims. Saying haste/crit has no value for brewmasters is like saying guardians shouldn't gem crit because gemming straight stamina is better so they don't get globabled. Or paladins should gem mastery/stamina like absalom. Try to convince sloot to get rid of his haste build and go for a mastery build.

[kaiadam]

I feel like you took his quote out of context to support your claims. GC probably meant in a patchwork type encounter where the only damage is tank damage. That is never the case anymore and you are slowly draining their mana making them heal your huge stagger because the raid is also taking damage.

Secondly, didn't you try to argue haste/crit has no defensive value once before and then you got proven wrong by everyone on the forums and then admitted it was useful just not your preference? Why do you keep coming back to these claims. Saying haste/crit has no value for brewmasters is like saying guardians shouldn't gem crit because gemming straight stamina is better so they don't get globabled. Or paladins should gem mastery/stamina like absalom. Try to convince sloot to get rid of his haste build and go for a mastery build.

Why would GC imply patchwerk scenario when every interview he or another designer has done suggested that they do not like them and are moving away from anything that resembles one? We're simply at a point where the damage intake of a tank isn't enough to stress healer mana, period. That, plus the regularity and ease of healing stagger damage makes it basically irrelevant to tanking concerns. Let me illustrate with a crude picture:



I'm pretty sure people generally agree with the shape of the curves. Mastery specs, especially if you don't purify often, will take a higher amount overall damage (integrals of the curve), but their damage intake is smoother. Crit/haste builds dodge more and purify more stagger, but when hits connect a few times in a row their damage intake spikes much higher.

The red line is an imaginary EH point. If your damage intake rises to a point where it spikes past your EH ... well, you die. In this case, I've drawn it such that a mastery build doesn't die while a crit/haste build does. It's an arbitrary point, sure, but it's in the only location that matters - the EH bar could be well above both curves, in which case it's irrelevant what build you're going, or it could be below both, in which case you die no matter what you do.

Slootbag stacks both haste and stamina. Haste because higher AM uptime = smoother damage intake. Stamina because it heightens that EH bar, the same philosophy as mastery stacking on a brewmaster (in our case we don't bother stacking haste because shuffle is up 100% of the time even with no additional haste, and mastery is guaranteed to apply to every hit). Every high level healer agrees - they don't care how much damage you take, they care about the smoothness of the intake. I've never argued crit has no value (although I have for haste), but neither stat helps with smoothing out incoming damage (pre 2pT15). My previous arguments can basically be summed up as: "Mastery is undervalued, haste is way overvalued, crit is really good for damage if you aren't dying."

If you claim that your crit/haste BrM never spikes above your EH line, then as I said previously, more power to you, and you can pretty much do whatever you want - but I expect high enough damage in this next raid to stress tank damage at least to a moderate amount and I'm going in with mitigation turned to the max.

Here's an example that helps illustrate the above:

Exhibit A: Here's the damage intake for my monk last week on Feng, a fight where I stacked crit (dps parses lolz).

Exhibit B: Here's the damage intake for Slootbag last week on Feng, the same fight.

The difference? He solo tanked the entire thing while I had an offtank to taunt some stacks. And our spike values were still roughly the same.

Further edit: In case it seems like I'm saying mastery is the only stat that matters, I'm not. After you've determined how high the curves are for each fight in particular, you can design your gear and EH points so that you generally aren't in danger of dying. Once you can insure you aren't dying, then do whatever feels best for you. Crit for additional damage, add in haste to look good on the damage taken meters, etc. Example: that log of myself I linked above. Right now though, we're approaching unknown content (even if tested on PTR, they do tuning before releasing live), and I don't want to wipe the group a few times figuring out where the optimal bar to set that EH at since time is a luxury we don't have upon release of new content.

[Deleted]

Your graph should look like this for 10 man t14 Heroic raids :



More spikes with mastery, and the spikes of crit/haste aren't much larger than the mastery ones.

[Deleted]

Why would GC imply patchwerk scenario when every interview he or another designer has done suggested that they do not like them and are moving away from anything that resembles one? We're simply at a point where the damage intake of a tank isn't enough to stress healer mana, period. That, plus the regularity and ease of healing stagger damage makes it basically irrelevant to tanking concerns. Let me illustrate with a crude picture:



I'm pretty sure people generally agree with the shape of the curves. Mastery specs, especially if you don't purify often, will take a higher amount overall damage (integrals of the curve), but their damage intake is smoother. Crit/haste builds dodge more and purify more stagger, but when hits connect a few times in a row their damage intake spikes much higher.

The red line is an imaginary EH point. If your damage intake rises to a point where it spikes past your EH ... well, you die. In this case, I've drawn it such that a mastery build doesn't die while a crit/haste build does. It's an arbitrary point, sure, but it's in the only location that matters - the EH bar could be well above both curves, in which case it's irrelevant what build you're going

Not read your arguments before but this is where you lost me.

Tanking has moved on from only "if you can survive", that's all thats relevant.

If the red line is above both builds then the crit/haste builds wins outright in every single way, damage taken, damage done, threat, healing done to raid (both by yourself and the healers).

For BrMs who are in cutting edge guilds, they may well have the EH issues in crit/haste build and may be optimal in a mastery build when undergeared, and once they have beaten the encounters in a mastery build, there's no need to optimize afterwards. However if you're doing content geared appropriately, mastery builds are inferior.

In a 10 man guild, going as a mastery based tank when not required could severely gimp your raid, in 25 man, the impact could be negligible.

[kaiadam]

Your graph should look like this for 10 man t14 Heroic raids

I was just providing a high level view. If those are the curves you suggest, the general theme is the same: mastery builds will take more damage overall but spike less, and therefore at progression levels where the top spikes and your EH are perilously close together, will end up surviving more. For what it's worth, on PTR, our gear was scaled up to ilvl 530 (It may have been 527? Regardless, still higher than what I expect we'll actually encounter them on live at) when we were testing the heroic modes of the last 3 encounters and tanks were still getting trucked. I mean obviously, if you have a tier's worth of gear on top of what you should have when you're hitting those bosses up, then of course that EH bar is high enough that you can not care what build you're going. When you're progressing though, you'll often find that you're bumping up against that EH bar more often than not.

If the red line is above both builds then the crit/haste builds wins outright in every single way, damage taken, damage done, threat, healing done to raid (both by yourself and the healers).

I don't disagree. Having evaluated where the red line should be, my brewmaster (who is -still- half a tier's gear behind the top brewmasters - stupid valor upgrade system *grumble*) is ranked like top 30 on every fight this tier. My healers still say they have their trigger fingers on their flash heal every time I taunt though, and getting "monk'd" is now a catchphrase in my guild :P

I can't totally agree with the "appropriately geared = no mastery needed" statement though. It seems like a design flaw that a tank at appropriate gear levels doesn't die when they prioritize nothing for mitigation. I agree when you're overgearing a fight that none is needed, but then again I guess our definitions of appropriately geared and overgeared do not merge. (For me, appropriately geared = roughly 15-20 ilvls lower than what your current target drops.)

I'm merely defending my decision to go full mastery for unknown encounters.

[Ahsakura]

So who's planning on jumping into ToT tonight?

[djtravitrav]

I'd personally trade mitigation for damage all day long, but that's my personal preference of playing the game. It's not like healers can't keep up, and if they aren't, then they should focus better.

I get that when you're in a progression guild and you're throwing like hundreds attempts at bosses just to see what sticks you want to play on the lowest possible skill curve so the least amount of mistakes possible are made, therefore maximizing your chances at a kill, but I simply do not approach the game in this manner, and never have.

[sleepness]

So who's planning on jumping into ToT tonight?

We just jumped in. Just downed Horridon, when enraged he hits like a fricking truck.

[herpecin]

with the removal of Chi cost from lvl 30 talents, anyone else feeling like they have WAYYY too much haste?

[SurrealNight]

So who's planning on jumping into ToT tonight?

Downed Jin'roh in like 2 attempts (no PTR practice) and worked on Horridon (10+ stacks wasn't bad in my gear) then I got booted and stuck in a 1k person queue for my server =( They downed Horridon w/ an OS tank pretty quick after and nearly downed Council so seems pretty easy for a half way heroic geared group. I don't think it gets hard tell 4th+ fight.

Working keeping me busy this week so probably will get to come in for Tortos or where ever they are at after tomorrow.

[Eneroth]

So after all the work that has been done, are there any hard stat weights for us at this point? And on top of that what is perhaps the best web site or add on to punch the stat weights into?

I have been using Reforge Lite, but honestly I have not been getting the best results with this. I have heard of WoW Reforge and Ask Mr. Robot. Any advice would be great. And if I missed something then I am sorry. We are hitting ToT on Friday and I want to make sure that I have the best reforge that is possible.

I keep hearing about the argument of Mastery being a high stat weight, to being low. Right now I am trying a Hit Cap, Hard Exp Cap, and then working on Crit. To keep my Elusive Brew up as much as possible. Before that I was had a Hit Cap, Soft Exp Cap, and then worked on getting my Haste up.

At this point in time can't post any links, or I would to my character. Tatsuro on Alleria.

As you can tell my gear isn't the best, but it was more of a fault of having issues in 5.1 and not being able to push through the content as much as I would like.

Thanks again, and if this posted in the wrong thread then I am sorry. I hope to get a reply soon, so I can do some more reading and trying to get things squared away before our raid on Friday.

[gynshon]

Don't go for Hard Expertise cap for now as the BIS list I was putting together has tons of Expertise on it already and will be easy to cap while maintaining the lower haste cap and maximizing crit.

[Deleted]

Whould you be so kind and share the list with us?

[webster259]

Don't go for Hard Expertise cap for now as the BIS list I was putting together has tons of Expertise on it already and will be easy to cap while maintaining the lower haste cap and maximizing crit.

Are you saying that the BIS list will allow us to easily reach the hard exp cap or the soft cap and which haste cap are you looking at in the list that you are putting together/when you are gemming and reforging?

[Zonex]

It's not a haste cap, its more of a haste floor. In BiS, you'll obv have t15 4set, and so that devalues haste relative to crit more than it already is. Mastery will still be crap with all that gear, so what happens? you look for gear that has Crit + hit/exp on it. That's why you get so much exp, that hardcap comes pretty naturally. Simmed out, it looked like in BiS youll have about 15k crit, 5k haste, 1.5k mastery, and 21k agi.

5k haste is more than you'll need with the 4 set, as most people can work from 4k -> 7k, and for some the lower limit is 0, nonetheless, the most optimum setup will put you at somewhere around 5k haste, if you like it or not.

[Gondlem]

What's funny about your statement is that mastery is NOT in fact flat damage reduction and its effectiveness is directly tied to how much you PB. Tier 15 four-piece is GREAT for a mastery-heavy setup.

Flat spike damage reduction, if you want to be picky about it. The damage from stagger is pretty irrelevant, at least in a 25 man setting. Which is not to say you should never PB, of course taking less damage is always nice, but taking ticking damage every second really isn't going to kill you unless it ends up outrageously high because you're being careless. Taking a 400k hit from a boss will potentially kill you, and reducing the amount of damage you take from that swing is what counts. The 4p is nice, because it essentially saves you chi over the course of a boss fight and that's always valuable, I definitely wasn't saying it's bad. It's just not as impressive as the two piece to me.

Note that I didn't say a progression tank should always use a mastery build (IMO it's fight dependent), but that the focus of a progression tank on a hard hitting boss should be reducing up-front damage in a bad RNG scenario. As in, say, will you die if you don't avoid anything for 4 swings and your healers have to move because of a fight mechanic. Those deaths are what waste pulls in a progression scenario.

Of course if the boss doesn't have a realistic chance of killing you, you should be gearing for a mix of damage reduction and DPS, or just for DPS.

[Deleted]

So, quick recap on priority trinkets anyone? We use a DKP-like system so I want to spend in the right place, and with a Druid as second tank, I need to roll right :P

[Kisho]

So, quick recap on priority trinkets anyone? We use a DKP-like system so I want to spend in the right place, and with a Druid as second tank, I need to roll right :P

If it's got agility, it's pro. I'm not sure if there's strict BiS, but the ones to watch out for would be trinkets like the Talisman of Bloodlust, Rune of Re-origination, Renataki's, etc.