The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[kaiadam]

I just look at the logs and the armory. Crit build and haste build are represented.

At this point in progression, top ranks tend to be filled mostly with tanking-focused players who happen to do lots of dps on a kill. E.G. I think I'd rank fairly highly for most fights this tier, but it's certainly not because of the 10k mastery I have.

It's been mathematically demonstrated that the highest dps strategy for a brewmaster, stat-wise, is to cap expertise & hit then max crit -haste is the least beneficial of all our secondaries that increase damage.

[Quotey]

Just dropped to 10M and trying to kill Heroic Durumu. I'm having an issue that me Keg Smashing (or Chi Waving!) with Wandering Eyes up has the potential to just oneshot 3 players. When I hold off on these abilities it's a lot more difficult to stay alive, especially sitting at 4-5 stacks of the mortal wound. Any ideas? We'll probably just use the druid tank instead unless I can figure this out.

[Trendy-Ideology]

Curious how viable or not viable non-stam and non-mastery BrM are in 25s.

Also how batshit crazy would it be to run as BrM for DPS instead of WW?

Taunt whenever @15 stacks of EB.

Taunt back whenever EB wears off.

Still maintains relatively high vengeance.

Offers a lot of theoretical offheals and bubbles.

DPS loss, if any, over WW, should be minimal.

And lastly if a tank goes down, you're there.

---------- Post added 2013-04-18 at 07:42 PM ----------

At this point in progression, top ranks tend to be filled mostly with tanking-focused players who happen to do lots of dps on a kill. E.G. I think I'd rank fairly highly for most fights this tier, but it's certainly not because of the 10k mastery I have.

It's been mathematically demonstrated that the highest dps strategy for a brewmaster, stat-wise, is to cap expertise & hit then max crit -haste is the least beneficial of all our secondaries that increase damage.

Even when you factor in fights with adds that you'd want more energy to translate into more SCK?

[kaiadam]

Curious how viable or not viable non-stam and non-mastery BrM are in 25s.

Also how batshit crazy would it be to run as BrM for DPS instead of WW?

Taunt whenever @15 stacks of EB.

Taunt back whenever EB wears off.

Still maintains relatively high vengeance.

Offers a lot of theoretical offheals and bubbles.

DPS loss, if any, over WW, should be minimal.

And lastly if a tank goes down, you're there.

---------- Post added 2013-04-18 at 07:42 PM ----------



Even when you factor in fights with adds that you'd want more energy to translate into more SCK?

Double tank strat is completely viable for 25H - at least on one tank fights. While it's completely possible to one tank certain fights, bringing a second tank is more raid dps & a brewmaster is about half a healer as well. Triple tanking, on the other hand, except for Dark Animus, will be spreading the vengeance around too thinly for it to be a dps increase.

And yes, haste is still the worst stat for aoe as well.

[Artaius]

So normally I figure this stuff out myself, but I'm stuck here.
I managed by a string of "luck" to get 2 more weapons this week, making my 522 weapon count go up to 4.

The 4 I have are 2x Wu-Lai, 1x Dark Animus, and 1x Kura-Kura.
Going for a Haste to ~6k/Crit build/15% Exp, my first impression was to go for one of the Wu-Lai's and a Dark Animus mace, so I don't have to gem as much expertise, but at the same time, there's a nice amount of crit on the 2nd Wu-Lais, so basically I'm stuck at a crossroads. Anyone have any idea? Fairly sure the Dark Animus maces are BiS, but that could mean something completely different.

[Trendy-Ideology]

Double tank strat is completely viable for 25H - at least on one tank fights. While it's completely possible to one tank certain fights, bringing a second tank is more raid dps & a brewmaster is about half a healer as well. Triple tanking, on the other hand, except for Dark Animus, will be spreading the vengeance around too thinly for it to be a dps increase.

And yes, haste is still the worst stat for aoe as well.

Well, I was going to sim some of this, but I've already run into a few massive snags....

1) It seems to think I can Breath of Flame bosses...

... Can I? I don't see it in most top ranking logs. But there's a BrM with a TINY bit of BoF damage on Megara in a top ranking spot... if it did more damage I'd imagine they'd use it more and it'd be in more top rankings... ?

What bosses, if it is usable on them, can be BoF'd? (I've tried randomly on a number of bosses... never seems to apply the DoT)

2) It's non BoF damage sims (I swapped in blackout kick but my understanding of Simcraft fine-tuning is really bad) is REALLY low, way way lower than ANY of my "patchwerk" logs.


Any insight into this? I'd love to start playing around with simcraft myself so I could see without having to affect live raids, the impact changing my stats will have.


Edit: Finally got chi-wave edited in and working properly. DPS seems more where it should be.
Still interested in anything else special people do to similar a real fight and your DPS in simcraft.

[Deleted]

So normally I figure this stuff out myself, but I'm stuck here.
I managed by a string of "luck" to get 2 more weapons this week, making my 522 weapon count go up to 4.

The 4 I have are 2x Wu-Lai, 1x Dark Animus, and 1x Kura-Kura.
Going for a Haste to ~6k/Crit build/15% Exp, my first impression was to go for one of the Wu-Lai's and a Dark Animus mace, so I don't have to gem as much expertise, but at the same time, there's a nice amount of crit on the 2nd Wu-Lais, so basically I'm stuck at a crossroads. Anyone have any idea? Fairly sure the Dark Animus maces are BiS, but that could mean something completely different.

Your reforging and gemming looks really really odd to me. Anyway hit/exp/haste have a cap, and you try to avoid mastery, so wu-lai would be clear winner here if you ask me because you'll want to maximize the crit on your gear. Haste/exp/hit should be able to reforge into/out of enough from the stat that is non-crit.

[siccora]

At this point in progression, top ranks tend to be filled mostly with tanking-focused players who happen to do lots of dps on a kill. E.G. I think I'd rank fairly highly for most fights this tier, but it's certainly not because of the 10k mastery I have.

It's been mathematically demonstrated that the highest dps strategy for a brewmaster, stat-wise, is to cap expertise & hit then max crit -haste is the least beneficial of all our secondaries that increase damage.

well, i don't know. i just look at the logs and the armory. i always run with a crit build so i cannot compare it. just a question. do i have higher vengeance with a mastery build?

[Brucemighty]

I have question. Our guild is currently working on the first boss of TOT. The other tank is on the same item level, yet I tend to steal aggro even after he taunted back. I built my toon based on this tanking guide here. We know that monk needs more agil, crit to activate defensive cd. Is my dps too high that I have to stop dps until aggro drops enough? I mean I should keep attacking so I get to give shield to other raid member. It is frustrating that I have to careful when to attack.

[Kisho]

I have question. Our guild is currently working on the first boss of TOT. The other tank is on the same item level, yet I tend to steal aggro even after he taunted back. I built my toon based on this tanking guide here. We know that monk needs more agil, crit to activate defensive cd. Is my dps too high that I have to stop dps until aggro drops enough? I mean I should keep attacking so I get to give shield to other raid member. It is frustrating that I have to careful when to attack.

Monks generally do more DPS than other tanks. You may also find tanks who ignore their DPS, only focusing on survival. Which is fine... to an extent. But at some point, you need to be thinking about maximising your DPS as well, especially in a 10 man environment.

Furthermore, if the other tank is taunting off of you then you'll have vengeance while he won't. Which means you do far more threat anyway, so yeah, it can be very easy to pull aggro back. So in short, there are 3 issues at play:

1. Monks are high DPS tanks anyway, and
2. Other tanks may not bother with their DPS, and
3. You have vengeance while the other tank doesn't.

So yeah, aggro issues can happen at taunt switches. Just stop attacking for a few seconds, should be fine.

[Lefrog]

So yeah, aggro issues can happen at taunt switches. Just stop attacking for a few seconds, should be fine.

Other than this you can glyph retreat and roll around within the boss' hit box. You can always switch stances or just cancel aura your vengeance off as well. Plenty of ways to drop threat as a tank, but really the only one that doesn't involve a dps loss is glyph of retreat.

[Chuupag]

@Trendy

Think BoF dot will only be applied if the boss gets dizzying haze from KS. And as far as I know the boss has to be able to be affected by movement impairing affects for dizzying to be applied...which most bosses aren't able to.

[Trendy-Ideology]

Just weird that simcraft would overlook such an obvious mistake.


Though this is a good reminder to try harder to make sure I'm BoF'ing any/all adds.


I have no clue if my simcraft is set up right but I guess I could start playing with different haste/crit values and see if that changes my dps results at all.

[SurrealNight]

Though this is a good reminder to try harder to make sure I'm BoF'ing any/all adds.

To me being able to BoF while still maintaining perfect Shuffle/Guard use just means you have to much Haste. How much DPS could you gain on ALL fights by swapping that haste into crit and just ignoring BoF for RJW/SCK/KS spam on add fights?

I don't really consider myself all that good (I'm usually to lazy to pre-pot unless it's progression fights) but current build has me ranked 11/12 N with 7 of those in the top 100. So what ever I am doing is keeping me up there in DPS. I'm not expertise capped either FYI.

Eager to see where I end up in heroics when we start them next week.

[Trendy-Ideology]

To me being able to BoF while still maintaining perfect Shuffle/Guard use just means you have to much Haste. How much DPS could you gain on ALL fights by swapping that haste into crit and just ignoring BoF for RJW/SCK/KS spam on add fights?

I don't really consider myself all that good (I'm usually to lazy to pre-pot unless it's progression fights) but current build has me ranked 11/12 N with 7 of those in the top 100. So what ever I am doing is keeping me up there in DPS. I'm not expertise capped either FYI.

Eager to see where I end up in heroics when we start them next week.

I present:
http://i.imgur.com/ELioY8O.png
My meterwhoring page of shame.

Tank you're drunk, go home, you're not a dps.

For comparison of stats.
http://www.wow-heroes.com/character/...an/pinuppanda/

If there's any boss I could BoF, you can bet I'd keep it up fulltime if I could.

And yes. Yes I do log LFR. Cause I like making my page of rankings bigger. =|

(Also keep in mind I'm still rocking a 510/496 combo)


btw I have the utmost respect for you as a player from our conversations so I'm not knocking your tanking at all, I'd bet you're probably a better tank and your focuses are where they should be, on tanking. But I enjoy the DPS I do, and I like seeing how much DPS I can do since normals atm are farm content and we're trying to gear up a lot of new people atm so we're not pushing heroics quite yet.

[gynshon]

I present:
http://i.imgur.com/ELioY8O.png
My meterwhoring page of shame.

Tank you're drunk, go home, you're not a dps.

For comparison of stats.
http://www.wow-heroes.com/character/...an/pinuppanda/

If there's any boss I could BoF, you can bet I'd keep it up fulltime if I could.

And yes. Yes I do log LFR. Cause I like making my page of rankings bigger. =|

(Also keep in mind I'm still rocking a 510/496 combo)


btw I have the utmost respect for you as a player from our conversations so I'm not knocking your tanking at all, I'd bet you're probably a better tank and your focuses are where they should be, on tanking. But I enjoy the DPS I do, and I like seeing how much DPS I can do since normals atm are farm content and we're trying to gear up a lot of new people atm so we're not pushing heroics quite yet.

That's the problem. It's normals. Not trying to be an elitist, but no one cares what you rank on normals because all the better players/guilds have since moved on to heroics. Yes, there are some good players not doing heroics yet, but they are in terrible guilds because this tier is how many weeks old? 7 weeks I think? That is a pretty long time to not have at least one heroic down.

[kaiadam]

To me being able to BoF while still maintaining perfect Shuffle/Guard use just means you have to much Haste. How much DPS could you gain on ALL fights by swapping that haste into crit and just ignoring BoF for RJW/SCK/KS spam on add fights?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ps7a815560.png

Note the shuffle bar, breath of fire damage, and how I reforge as much haste away as I possibly can. Chi is almost a wasted resource at this point, it's like I can't throw enough of it away.

Tank you're drunk, go home, you're not a dps.

Yep, we do more damage than a dps. And take less aoe. And heal way more as well. Bow down to the tank overlords

Breath of fire doesn't work on most bosses, but it does on most adds.

Also, I don't think a sim of tank damage is entirely useful, there's too many outside variables to consider. For example, on Lei Shen last week, wol said I did around 270k dps and this week I did 320 and the only difference is that we spawned two extra bouncing bolt adds during second transition.

well, i don't know. i just look at the logs and the armory. i always run with a crit build so i cannot compare it. just a question. do i have higher vengeance with a mastery build?

This is actually a far deeper question than it appears. The "usual" answer is no, mastery doesn't affect vengeance since it's pre-mitigation damage that counts for vengeance. However, that's not exactly the way vengeance works in reality. A perfect example would be the shockwave from Qiang in the spirit kings fight last tier. If you soaked with zen med, you get bumped to ~150k vengeance. If you soaked with shieldwall + dampen, you'd get 90k, an obvious case where the initial damage is always the same.

You also get more vengeance after taking a few slashes in will of the emperor, or if you're tanking lei shen with the decapitate debuff. What does this all mean? Well, I'm an awful scientist so right now I don't actually have an answer. But either way, even if mastery affects vengeance, the amount that we can stack will not sway it to a significant degree.

[SurrealNight]

Well you run 10m and I run 25m so we aren't even competing against the same pool of BrM's. I'm lower ranked thank you on some and vice versa so sorta impossible to compare. I do have a 528 MH but I don't think it makes a huge DPS difference as a BrM compared to if WW.

My main point is I still do very well in multi-target fights and take the approach of limiting haste to generating Chi only for shuffle/guard + PB and the rest goes into Crit. I'm just thinking the opportunity cost of extra Crit isn't worth having the extra Chi for BoF on add fights.

[Trendy-Ideology]

That's the problem. It's normals. Not trying to be an elitist, but no one cares what you rank on normals because all the better players/guilds have since moved on to heroics. Yes, there are some good players not doing heroics yet, but they are in terrible guilds because this tier is how many weeks old? 7 weeks I think? That is a pretty long time to not have at least one heroic down.

I'm not elite though. And my guild isn't. And even the top raiding guild on the server, despite being ranked 329 West on WoWprogress, isn't really "Elite" by some people's definition.


I don't have a beef with you, but you don't speak for "everyone" so you really shouldn't go slinging around "no one". A lot of people find my rankings noteworthy. I care about them. They make me happy.

You're right, the "better" player and guilds have moved onto heroics. But that doesn't make everything us little people are doing irrelevant. If everyone in the better guilds, and all the better players, have moved on to heroics, then I'm looking at myself compared to my peers, and compared to my peers, I'm doing rather well. I see no reason to rain on my parade.

What you said here, felt to me like the internet and WoW equivalent of seeing two younger kids playing on the playground, hearing one of them go "hey look what I can do" and feeling the need to walk over and tell the kid "No one cares".

---------- Post added 2013-04-19 at 04:05 PM ----------

Well you run 10m and I run 25m so we aren't even competing against the same pool of BrM's. I'm lower ranked thank you on some and vice versa so sorta impossible to compare. I do have a 528 MH but I don't think it makes a huge DPS difference as a BrM compared to if WW.

My main point is I still do very well in multi-target fights and take the approach of limiting haste to generating Chi only for shuffle/guard + PB and the rest goes into Crit. I'm just thinking the opportunity cost of extra Crit isn't worth having the extra Chi for BoF on add fights.

We may get to compare notes on 25s this tier depending on how circumstances we're currently working out play out. (We might be moving to 25s) But I was only pointing out the rankings for fun and to illustrate where my head's at when I'm contemplating things that affect my DPS.

And I totally get your point. But we already know I like having extra haste to throw around, so I think that's just a playing preference difference. Though I have a sneaking suspicion that depending on how things play out I may be rocking some extra stam and mastery like you are now if we end up swapping.

[SurrealNight]

Just an FYI my stam blues are because I was breaking hit cap so I replaced them with the next best for that slot, and mastery forging was a "better than nothing" trying to shed hit/exp/haste since I don't do the 15% exp cap. So my profile may look a little weird but it's not choices made cause I do 25m.

I did clear our first Lei Shen kill with a Stam flask + LW wrists but it wasn't really needed, just didn't want to have a wipe result from me barely dying in an "oh sh*t" scenario like getting 2-3 big adds to tank + boss or something stupid.

Actually was amazed how well BrM can hold up as we had one attempt where I had to take 30+ stacks in P3 several times (getting them bop'd off) as other tank died almost right away and only died after the raid was exploded anyways.

Oh and BoP doesn't clear your stacks but if you get it right at the end of lightning lash it will give you those last few seconds you need before /cancelaura to clear it.