[LEGION] Brewmaster Discussion

[Ampere]

They read feedback, but obviously they think they know what's best for the game or they wouldn't be working as developers. I think they are too stubborn lately though.

The spec overhauls have gone way too far IMO, especially for specs that were fun on live. Brewmaster on alpha is already set in place, they'll tune it to be a functional spec, but the actual feel of the spec is terrible and it's easy to want no part in testing it further. Look at Blood DKs, they'll only make incremental changes, they won't fundamentally alter the direction they chose with the alpha iteration of the spec. The fact that nerfing Purifying Brew is a perfect example of how they want decisions to be LESS meaningful, not more meaningful. They can go on and on about how low uptime on AM makes the choice more significant, but it doesn't. You'll still strive for the highest uptime possible and using abilities as they are available, you'll just be less able to achieve high uptime.

The real solution to fixing tank healing was what Troxism outlined in his Blood DK/tanking document, remove Beacon of Light and all passive tank healing that effectively completely covers all of the external healing that tanks need. Blizzard has shown no interest in taking this route, only making slight nerfs to these heals and instead choosing to heavily overhaul tanking.

If you want Brewmasters to be like 6.0 (without the overpowered part) or like they were in MoP, you're literally wasting your time by giving feedback and it's only an exercise in frustration. The fun reactive healing gameplay is gone

[Aracs]

If you want Brewmasters to be like 6.0 (without the overpowered part) or like they were in MoP, you're literally wasting your time by giving feedback and it's only an exercise in frustration. The fun reactive healing gameplay is gone

What are you talking about?
Bears, Vengeance, ProtPals and Blood still has exactly "Reactive Healing".
Warriors has "Reactive Absorb".
And only BrMs has actually nothing reactive (spheres are too random to be reactive).

[Deleted]

Okay just did some math on the current iteration (might not be 100% accurate rounded some numbers here and there and left out some minor things)
(https: //docs. google. com/spreadsheets/d/1VCPxlyTo3ANUUKDPewh8Bpao28SZYv0PMv2nNNKez1s/edit?usp=sharing)

Considering that you max out artifact with 3/3 extra relics for isb duration, + set boni and taking Lightbrewing you are very close to keeping up ISB (about 97% uptime)

Overall this means that with 0% haste and 0 additional mastery you take about as much damage as a disc priest overall. It is more smooth but it is quite alot.
Funny enough that disc has about as many CDs too.

When you get about 30% haste and 20% mastery you take as much damage as a bear facing away from the boss who just reached level 110 using no traits/relics/abilities.
Keep in mind you have to have about 70 apm while he has 0.

On the gain through stats:

1% haste grants about 0.5% dmg reduction
1% mastery grants about 0,86% dmg reduction (varying based on current mastery level)

I do realize number tuning is still going to happen but considering that it probably needed a buff and now is as bad as a disc priest tanking bosses this
is really weird.

Keep in mind that I might have misscalculated somewhere and feel free to check my math/do your own.

[Elamahpla]

If you're on or in the Alpha, please leave feedback on the forums

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...2846470?page=2

It might not seem like much, but the more feedback, the easier it is to fix how awful things are looking

[Leblue]

I really want to reiterate when you're putting any sort of feedback, no matter how against things are you need to make it as clear as you possibly can what the actual problems are (as some others are doing there now) and try to keep away from simply saying "blizzard is stupid/clueless/whatever" because that's a quick way to devalue the rest of a post (right or not, they're human). While I'm concerned by how early we're getting mythic raid testing, this is a great opportunity as well for feedback in an actual challenging raiding environment for the spec that should hopefully succeed far better in showing glaring flaws in the current design and tuning of the spec.

I also hope this hammers home the need to be relatively decently tuned before doing harder raiding content since I think they should have a rough idea of how things will be tuned rather than still in a phase where we're missing a spec and classes clearly aren't tuned yet.

[bubky]

How much of a choice are people finding ISB vs PB on the alpha? especially now that PB is half as good.

When the class blog came out it seemed quite interesting to me. But its starting to boil down to basically shuffle in my mind. 35% to 75% stagger is a pretty big survivability difference if they are trying to push the whole choice / not relying on having AM up all the time thing.

I was bored at work so I had a think about how I would improve it. What if stagger amount was less binary, and tied to our rotation to give us more choice there.
For example (numbers pulled out of nowhere)

Jab gives you 5% stagger for 15 seconds. Reapplying refreshes the duration and increases the buff based on old effect (ie if you have X% stagger for half duration left reapplying would give you 1.5X stagger for 15sec. And doing so again at half left would give you 1.75X and so on)
Tigerpalm gives you 30% stagger for 1 second

With same energy cost / damage across both.
The idea being spamming energy on Jab gives you a base low level stagger buff all the time with a higher % the more you cast it (but has a reasonable limit). And spending energy on TP would trade average stagger level over time for a short term boost.

Keg Smash could give the same buff as jab and make your next tiger palm free.
And ISB could be kept on charges with PB but turned into a minor reactive cd since we seem to be lacking in reliable/useful ways to react to unexpected burst damage. Just turn it into guard or expel harm but scale it off current amount of staggered damage so that purify can be made strictly better mitigation.

[DisposableHero]

I really want to reiterate when you're putting any sort of feedback, no matter how against things are you need to make it as clear as you possibly can what the actual problems are (as some others are doing there now) and try to keep away from simply saying "blizzard is stupid/clueless/whatever" because that's a quick way to devalue the rest of a post (right or not, they're human). While I'm concerned by how early we're getting mythic raid testing, this is a great opportunity as well for feedback in an actual challenging raiding environment for the spec that should hopefully succeed far better in showing glaring flaws in the current design and tuning of the spec.

While I agree with this, it won't help, because what is wrong is blizzard's design direction for tanks. Taking survivability away from tanks and forcing healers to babysit us in even remotely challenging content sucks all the enjoyment and sense of accomplishment out of playing a tank. Its utterly contrary to the entire idea of active defense, and it is quite frankly a design decision they need to do a complete 180 on, and take the concept of "tank healing" out of the game, and have tanks entirely be responsible for their own survival bar the occasional external cooldown or burst healing in an emergency.

[Saiyoran]

While I agree with this, it won't help, because what is wrong is blizzard's design direction for tanks. Taking survivability away from tanks and forcing healers to babysit us in even remotely challenging content sucks all the enjoyment and sense of accomplishment out of playing a tank. Its utterly contrary to the entire idea of active defense, and it is quite frankly a design decision they need to do a complete 180 on, and take the concept of "tank healing" out of the game, and have tanks entirely be responsible for their own survival bar the occasional external cooldown or burst healing in an emergency.

I don't think I've ever agreed more with someone on these forums. I've posted this in multiple threads on the forums. It's honestly stupid that I can't function properly without a healer babysitting. Where's the fun in my role being entirely about surviving but not having much say in even that?

[Tech614]

While I agree with this, it won't help, because what is wrong is blizzard's design direction for tanks. Taking survivability away from tanks and forcing healers to babysit us in even remotely challenging content sucks all the enjoyment and sense of accomplishment out of playing a tank. Its utterly contrary to the entire idea of active defense, and it is quite frankly a design decision they need to do a complete 180 on, and take the concept of "tank healing" out of the game, and have tanks entirely be responsible for their own survival bar the occasional external cooldown or burst healing in an emergency.

Umm, there are plenty of ways to make tank gameplay interesting without being Gods who can survive by themself. That is not a problem, the problem is brewmaster tuning and what they think is OP is clearly flawed.

Tanks needing healing is part of the trinity system. If you don't want the trinity system then go play an MMO without it. Completely taking out 1 part of the trinity system while keeping the rest would be a massive gameplay flaw. Sounds like you don't want to trust your healers, well tough shit. Just like you have to trust your dps to kill bosses and adds fast enough you should have to trust your healers to keep you alive, just as your healers should trust you to have up a DR when needed.

Ways to make tank gameplay interesting include non boring dps rotations, min maxing dps with survival, choosing to do more damage over hitting something that will give better survival and making those decisions. You don't need to be some unkillable God for the gameplay to be interesting. You already have the most important role in the party, establishing threat and positions mobs properly.

[Rilas13]

@Tech614, I agree. Was going to say it myself before I saw your post. I have been against this tanks being way too sturdy for awhile now and I am glad they are changing this design in Legion. Tanks in the past two xpac have been able to solo some raid content that is a few months old. This in itself is ridiculous. Tanks should be sturdy, they should take a hit better than anyone. But the person taking all of the damage from a boss that would kill anyone else in the raid in two hits shouldn't be able to survive without any attention from a healer.

[Elamahpla]

Even if there's a small chance that Blizzard will listen to the outcry of the community, you need to make your post or make your point. If you don't say anything, then any of your complaining later will be in part due to your silence.

[stross01]

Even if there's a small chance that Blizzard will listen to the outcry of the community, you need to make your post or make your point. If you don't say anything, then any of your complaining later will be in part due to your silence.

The build's thread had 4 pages had 50+ thorough posts in it.

Zero of them were responded to. Zero ability changes, positive or negative, were made based on feedback. Zero of the artifacts bugs were fixed.

It's pretty obvious they aren't interested in our thoughts.

[Elamahpla]

50 isn't too many, but the fact stands that your voice is out there. Can't sit idly and expect it to change by itself.

[Khorm]

Tanking peaked in MoP, now it's just boring.

Tanks may have done more damage than the DPS but we actually had to tank to do that. Now we just play like a DPS class and do less damage than them. Make us have to tank to survive.

[stross01]

50 isn't too many, but the fact stands that your voice is out there. Can't sit idly and expect it to change by itself.

It was in the top 5ish posted-in threads.

And I do post. Just nothing was responded to. I don't think they really care about the lowest, soon to be lower, played tank spec.

[Leblue]

Something to keep in mind as well, the build we get is usually several builds behind the build that the devs are currently working on. I'm not saying we'll see all of the feedback within the next three or four builds, but it is something to consider. They could very well be unsure of exactly what to make of the 50% purify and/or already decided they won't do it, but put it out in the wild just to see reactions and the potential feedback generated from it to where maybe something from it can exist in another form to be an overall boon to a spec. Will this/is this always the case? Of course its not, but I'm not 100% ruling it out. I'll begin my big freakout in late beta if things are still looking wonky.

[stross01]

Something to keep in mind as well, the build we get is usually several builds behind the build that the devs are currently working on. I'm not saying we'll see all of the feedback within the next three or four builds, but it is something to consider. They could very well be unsure of exactly what to make of the 50% purify and/or already decided they won't do it, but put it out in the wild just to see reactions and the potential feedback generated from it to where maybe something from it can exist in another form to be an overall boon to a spec. Will this/is this always the case? Of course its not, but I'm not 100% ruling it out. I'll begin my big freakout in late beta if things are still looking wonky.

Well, since the latest 7.0 can release at is about mid-August, that leaves them with 4 months to finish the alpha and beta.

That leaves 120-140 days left to fix everything and have it ready to release. They're releasing a build every 6-13 days. The smaller builds having almost no changes, the larger ones having changes for only their favorite-to-work-on classes.

This gives them 9-20 builds to make everything playable. This all assumes a September 21st launch date (lol).

The "it's only alpha" attitude can probably be thrown out the window at this point.

[Leblue]

The "its only alpha" thing needs to die in a fire outside of someone complaining that the mage is doing 5% more damage then them. The only time numbers are important in alpha in how precise they are are when they define how a mechanic works (see ISB and Purifying Brew). I'm certainly not saying to just take a "sit back and just chill" attitude because that gets nothing. I am asking to continue giving feedback even if its the copy pasta you see across the class alpha forums for things that haven't been fixed/changed because it'll probably take at least a couple builds for anything to go in. When we hit beta, we can kiss trying to fix anything mechanical (outside of something that is akin to nuking the class from orbit) goodbye because its basically number tweaks at that point (hence why my actual freak out won't start till then). Until then though, feedback feedback feedback.

[The Madgod]

The attitude of "They won't listen anyway" just reinforces the likelihood of the thing you don't want happening to happen.

Provide feedback so at least if it's all broken by release you can say you did your part and you tried. Otherwise it's just pointless white noise for everyone.

[stross01]

I am asking to continue giving feedback even if its the copy pasta you see across the class alpha forums for things that haven't been fixed/changed because it'll probably take at least a couple builds for anything to go in. When we hit beta, we can kiss trying to fix anything mechanical (outside of something that is akin to nuking the class from orbit) goodbye because its basically number tweaks at that point (hence why my actual freak out won't start till then). Until then though, feedback feedback feedback.

And one final bit of clarification.... When we set out to build 36 artifact acquisition experiences and weapon trait trees, we had to figure out the order in which we wanted to tackle that work. We decided to prioritize development of many of the artifact acquisitions inversely to the amount of change that was being planned for a given specialization.

We specifically wanted to get specializations like Shadow, Discipline, or Outlaw into players' hands as quickly as possible to get feedback and have more time to iterate on what we knew were very large changes. On the other hand, specializations like Frost mage, Assassination, and Destruction didn't experience any sort of fundamental overhaul, so they felt like safer choices to leave until later in the Alpha cycle.

The second part of this just roasts my ass to cinders. I'm not sure there's a more 'fundamentally overhauled' class/spec than brewmaster, but it was saved for second-to-last. We lost a resource. We have energy with no relevance. We have some bullshit shared-charge system that hasn't ever been tried before. We have an artifact with new-never-tried-before physics that is a hehe joke at best. Maybe they should've started earlier on it.

This sort of disconnect leads me to believe we'll launch exactly like MoP and WoD: in a flaming heap that will be solved with a giant bandaid that causes problems in later tiers, ultimately leading to the same cycle of spec redesign between and mid-tier.