[LEGION] Brewmaster Discussion

[Inuyaki]

Protwarriors have shared charges (Shield Block and Shield Barrier)
But I agree with the rest, they are already behind in BrM class design and tuning and making statements like "Brewmasters are op in that build" when they clearly are not, just show that they don't even head in the right direction for the rest. I expect the whole WoD scenario as well. So better prepare your BrM for the 2nd raid then

[Muddler]

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.

We don't know why that happened. It's not out of the realms of possibility that Devs are aware of the big overhaul and are paying close attention to define solid mechanics before the number tuning phase begins. There's a lot of assumptions here, with a lot of negativity and cynicism, and I have to wonder if it's any helpful for the purpose of Brewmaster alpha testing. The most important thing is to articulate solid, thought-out feedback for the Devs to work with instead of the "Why bother? It's all futile" doom and gloom I'm reading.

[The Madgod]

Figured I'd post it here but preliminary math does seem to support the idea that purifying brew isn't fully gutted. It takes longer for it to be useful compared to ISB, but it's still going to provide overall reduced DTPS at some point.

Less so once you start figuring in higher stagger levels though. But again, preliminary math.

We don't know why that happened. It's not out of the realms of possibility that Devs are aware of the big overhaul and are paying close attention to define solid mechanics before the number tuning phase begins. There's a lot of assumptions here, with a lot of negativity and cynicism, and I have to wonder if it's any helpful for the purpose of Brewmaster alpha testing. The most important thing is to articulate solid, thought-out feedback for the Devs to work with instead of the "Why bother? It's all futile" doom and gloom I'm reading.

I think it's pretty ridiculous to say that Blizzard doesn't listen when quite a few things that people in the community have talked about have been changed or added. Blizzard won't agree with everything but there has definitely been some changes that are in-line with feedback. I'm not convinced that's a coincidence, especially because of how much I know they know feedback is important and honestly the lengths they go to in order to facilitate it.

[stross01]

Protwarriors have shared charges (Shield Block and Shield Barrier)
But I agree with the rest, they are already behind in BrM class design and tuning and making statements like "Brewmasters are op in that build" when they clearly are not, just show that they don't even head in the right direction for the rest. I expect the whole WoD scenario as well. So better prepare your BrM for the 2nd raid then

Prot warriors do not have charges on Shield Barrier on live and it doesn't exist on alpha. I'm playing mine at this very moment. What are you talking about?

- - - Updated - - -

We don't know why that happened. It's not out of the realms of possibility that Devs are aware of the big overhaul and are paying close attention to define solid mechanics before the number tuning phase begins. There's a lot of assumptions here, with a lot of negativity and cynicism, and I have to wonder if it's any helpful for the purpose of Brewmaster alpha testing. The most important thing is to articulate solid, thought-out feedback for the Devs to work with instead of the "Why bother? It's all futile" doom and gloom I'm reading.

The tuning process isn't even remotely relevant to any of the feedback given in the thread, though.

The doom and gloom, however, is much easier to understand. They don't have any idea of where Brm stands right now, clearly. They ignored every modicum of feedback. They didn't respond to the entire thread from last build, while responding plenty to the others. The other tanks are in less-so, but still, shambles and they've had almost half a year more development time.

Why change things? Just quick-fix us after launch like the other two expansions.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not convinced that's a coincidence, especially because of how much I know they know feedback is important and honestly the lengths they go to in order to facilitate it.

They've given every top brewmaster on the planet alpha access. I hope they stop filing the feedback in the archives, too.

[Inuyaki]

Prot warriors do not have charges on Shield Barrier on live and it doesn't exist on alpha. I'm playing mine at this very moment. What are you talking about?

Sry, had... somewhere in the past. Didn't even notice, because I never used SBar this addon, it felt so shitty compared to Guard and I didn't really raid with Warri, only some easy twinkruns... no need for SBar

@Madgod
Can you provide that math? Because if you get that much stagger with ISB up that PB is worth using, doesn't that mean that the boss hits that hard that you are in more danger of dying if you waste a charge on PB instead of ISB?
Maybe for big skills? So others get cooldowns to mitigate the dmg, we only can purify it after?

[Xiaojin]

Well, I haven't done any new math, but with the change to PB (only purifying 50% of your current stagger), its only redeeming quality is that it is the only "brew spender" other than IsB and we will easily have more than enough brew to have a 100% IsB uptime with the current numbers. So it boils down to "IsB is that almost passive thing that's up all the time ("push this button to indicate that you're still awake") and you only have to decide when to spend your limited PB resources". Brewmasters might have been too strong in some build but I think nerfing PB of all things is the wrong direction.

[Inuyaki]

than IsB and we will easily have more than enough brew to have a 100% IsB uptime with the current numbers.

Do we? They all say it is not doable (though close) in starter gear even with all the haste it has

[stross01]

Do we? They all say it is not doable (though close) in starter gear even with all the haste it has

I cannot keep it up 100% right now with Light Brewing.

[Deleted]

I thought BoB was better now?

[stross01]

I thought BoB was better now?

I only played yesterday with Light Brewing.

But if one keeps ISB up 100% and the other doesn't, there are problems with design.

[The Madgod]

Sry, had... somewhere in the past. Didn't even notice, because I never used SBar this addon, it felt so shitty compared to Guard and I didn't really raid with Warri, only some easy twinkruns... no need for SBar

@Madgod
Can you provide that math? Because if you get that much stagger with ISB up that PB is worth using, doesn't that mean that the boss hits that hard that you are in more danger of dying if you waste a charge on PB instead of ISB?
Maybe for big skills? So others get cooldowns to mitigate the dmg, we only can purify it after?

It's on my spreadsheet. Still in the works. The basics of it though is that in order to determine how much damage you take, you need to add half the remaining stagger pool and any new hit to the new pool, then calculate the stagger dot from there. Thing about that though is that even though you're taking a stagger pool that might be 150% or 200% as big as the pre-stagger hit, you're still dividing that up into 20 / 26 chunks. DTPS is deflated because of that. The issue with it again is that it does push back when purifying is good but it still gets there at some point.

Thing is, we can save charges and we can generate them very quickly. So in all likelihood we can do both.

Well, I haven't done any new math, but with the change to PB (only purifying 50% of your current stagger), its only redeeming quality is that it is the only "brew spender" other than IsB and we will easily have more than enough brew to have a 100% IsB uptime with the current numbers. So it boils down to "IsB is that almost passive thing that's up all the time ("push this button to indicate that you're still awake") and you only have to decide when to spend your limited PB resources". Brewmasters might have been too strong in some build but I think nerfing PB of all things is the wrong direction.

Yeah i think the change is more detrimental for gameplay rather than strict numbers balance. It's undoubtedly much harder to really use the ability efficiently without addons and feedback seems to be that pressing the button doesn't feel great.

Do we? They all say it is not doable (though close) in starter gear even with all the haste it has

If they have Potent Kick at rank 3 and BoB then they are guaranteed enough charges for at least 100% uptime on ISB at 0 haste. 22% haste with no artifact traits at all is just enough so that if you play perfectly and just use ISB, you have 100% uptime.
The problems are likely human error, a lack of artifact perks, and using the wrong talent.

[Deleted]

Lets not forget that tanking in dungeons and raids isn't just about passive mitigation and healing/purification. On harder content - especially during progress - most decisions are made based on the amount of self-provided cooldowns or other abilities which avoid the tank from being one-shot or alleviate the raid from having to invest more into staying alive (ie. Sorka sub-25% on Iron Maidens, the ability to solo tank or solo soak certain abilities).

From the couple bosses that we've tested, my main concern is what do we do once our "passive" toolkit (mastery, IsB) is no longer enough to survive something? Dampen Harm is much weaker, Fortifying Brew is on a 5minute cooldown. Is this where the end-game artefact nodes come in (Breath of Fire) and become essentially mandatory or do we truly lack options compared to the other tanks?

[DisposableHero]

From the couple bosses that we've tested, my main concern is what do we do once our "passive" toolkit (mastery, IsB) is no longer enough to survive something? Dampen Harm is much weaker, Fortifying Brew is on a 5minute cooldown. Is this where the end-game artefact nodes come in (Breath of Fire) and become essentially mandatory or do we truly lack options compared to the other tanks?

Not sure about most tanks but Paladins (going by the talent and artifact calcs since I'm not in alpha) have the following litany of personal cooldowns, though most are considerably smaller than BrM cooldowns in effect:

Divine Protection - 60 second cooldown - reduces all damage taken by 20% for 8 seconds
Ardent Defender - 2 minute cooldown - reduces all damage taken by 20% for 8 seconds and provides a cheat death in that time - cooldown is reduced by 30 seconds from artifact traits (no relics) and up to 60 seconds with relics
Avenging Wrath - 2 minute cooldown - increases damage and healing by 35% for 20 seconds
Guardian of Ancient Kings - 5 minute cooldown - reduces damage taken by 50%

Talent Cooldowns
Divine Shield w/Final Stand - 5 minute cooldown - total immunity to damage and spells for 8 seconds, talent causes a fixate on the boss for the duration of the immunity so aggro is not lost
Knight Templar - causes divine steed to come with a 20% reduction to all damage for 4 seconds and reduces the cooldown to 30 seconds
Aegis of Light - 5 minute cooldown - 20% damage reduction for 6 seconds for you and any party or raid member standing behind you
Blessing of Spellwarding - 3 minute cooldown - total immunity to magical attacks for 10 seconds

Artifact Talents
Eye of Tyr - 60 second cooldown - deals damage to nearby enemies and causes them to deal 25% less damage to you for 9 seconds

[Hinalover]

So after going over some logs, I can make a few points about Celestial Fortune

a) Triggers on MOST heals. A few exceptions
- Healing Elixirs
- Gift of the Ox/Greater Gift of the Ox (possibly a bug)
b) Heals for 115% of the original heal; Germination heals for 1000 HP, Celestial Fortune heals for 1150 HP

Edit:

So after personally testing, the 115% heal from CF maybe a bug of some sort. I just tried doing some testing with EotT on the target dummy and no matter how much vers or what-not I could only get 100% heal of the original heal. I've reported the issue to the devs in the meantime.

[pakky]

b) Heals for 115% of the original heal; Germination heals for 1000 HP, Celestial Fortune heals for 1150 HP

Edit:

So after personally testing, the 115% heal from CF maybe a bug of some sort. I just tried doing some testing with EotT on the target dummy and no matter how much vers or what-not I could only get 100% heal of the original heal. I've reported the issue to the devs in the meantime.

CF scales with the buff that you get when entering a dungeon with pugs, it's probably a bug yeah

[Antifu]

Can we keep the complaints to legit discussion about what doesn't work instead of "they're not listening"? It's not useful anywhere. No one class got feedback in a day. I just skimmed by 15 posts to read these last few which actually included some content.

My real issue that I have is that our active does not actually reduce damage taken. It delays it into a dot which then requires us to use our shared resource system to actually do the reduction. Without pushing purify we're never actually reducing damage actively. Which is then where the choice in the spec comes in: smooth or reduce. I think the problem is everyone feels like they're wearing paper without the smooth, so they feel forced to maintain that and not reduce. Does the math show if that's feeling or fact, though? I think that's what the community should focus on showing the devs.

The other point I have is our control over our fate. A quick comparison of *abilities*. This doesn't include numbers which make the difference of overall survivability, but just why it feels bad to monk right now (feel free to correct me where I'm wrong):

DK: MwR and DS iirc somewhat compete in that MwR gives less RP per rune, but both are on demand reduction or healing. MwR (and AMS on a longer cd) also acts as their short term magic reduction. I don't have numbers, but I believe they also compete on damage as I imagine BS/MwR don't have a 1:2 damage ratio that matches their runes. AMS/DRW/VB are baseline cds. *Only* tier 75 doesn't contain a way to manage their survival.
DH: DSpike is on-press damage reduction. Doesn't compete with other AM or DPS, but is limited to 2. SCleave is on press healing tied to DPS. EW is their magic AM which looks like it doesn't compete w/ DPS or other AM/Heal. FBrand/Meta are baseline CDs. 100/108 tiers don't affect survival, but all tiers do have a damage option.
Pally: SotR is on demand reduction, and doesn't compete in either DPS/AM. LotP is on demand w/ a CD and doesn't compete in either. Holy Shield seems like their only magic reduction AM if they take it. DP/GoAK/AD (AW to a lesser extent) are base cds. 15/45/60 don't appear to have survival talents. Only 45 has neither surv/dps.
Warrior: SB/IP (VR to a much, much lesser degree) are on demand reduction that compete w/ themselves and DPS. Competition is low, though, as IP is 10 rage, but high for dps. IP (SR again to a much lesser degree) is their active magic reduction. LS/SW/DShout are base cds. 15/45/60 don't have surv options. 15/60 (Not counting crackling thunder) have neither DPS or surv.
Druid: IF/FR are on demand and compete w/ themselves and DPS. Competition is low between each other, but high for dps. MoU is their AM magic. IB/SI(x2) are their base cds. 30/60 contain neither dps nor surv talents.
Monk: ISB/PB are on demand compete with themselves, and only 1 is actual reduction. GotOx is on demand healing, but randomly available. Magic AM is wrapped into ISB. FB/ZM are base cds (ZM to a less extent as it's usefulness is situational). 30/60/90 have no surv benefity with only 90 having a dps benefit.


OK. With all this listed out I think it's easier to show the issue everyone has been saying. While it might be true that our DTPS is that of other tanks (only logs and theorycrafters can prove this) our ability to control our fate is decidedly less than other tanks. Our personal heal (only warriors don't have one but they have a strong, low cost shield instead) is tied completely to RNG which does increase during the time that you want it to be available, but the use of it is more awkward than anyone else. Our damage *reduction* is only effective when tied to the use of our smoothing which competes with itself. Our personal CDs are fewer in number than any other tank when you consider 1.) ZM is situational and 2.) both are *5* minutes. Our talents are also tied for least useful for survival. I didn't compare masteries, but if we're going to be the dodge tank we should also dodge...a lot more than other tanks.

It's hard to argue that the current model is impossible to tune. I find myself easily finding contradictions in any specific problem I might come up with. I think the root of my problem is 2 fold 1.) in order to take less damage I have to choose to take higher spikes* 2.) I feel less empowered with the current toolkit to control my fate than other tanks.


I also want to take the time to talk about our talents. On the whole I really feel so much less excited when I look at them as when I look at, for example, blood DK. I really think we need some love here. Here are some specifics, but they're pretty subjective:
15: This is going to come down to (and it does every...single...time) what does more damage or more self-healing. We spent all of WoD just changing as the tide changed. They don't do enough, though, to feel worthwhile with the exception of chi burst which is good situationally. Blizz should pick a situation where these are good, and tune them to be good in that situation.
30: eh, TL for life.
45: I think these are good. Active=better but harder to use. Passive=worse but easier.
60: Not much to say. RIP Dave. It just feels bad to lose him baseline since a lot of our kit is gone already, but I'll probably pick Dave in raids and LS everywhere else. RoP might be situationally good, but it's probably one of those things I'll try to minmax w/ on progression then end up never using again outside pvp.
75: Make these 1m cds and I'd be happier, I think. It puts them in line w/ like AMS/DP/BS. I don't think our big cds are still in line w/ other tanks even w/ that change, but it gets us closer... Also, I've always wanted HE to be good. Maybe if we really do live in a world where tank health is either full or gone it will be.
90: I don't like damage tied into pets. No other tank has this. When another tank pushes a dps button they also do more threat. When we push Xuen (and I assume Nuizao will be the exact same) we don't. I also don't think pets that taunt and tank are that useful. They often make poor positioning choices, and the only time I've found it useful across 2 expansions is on dark animus.
100: I don't have much to say here except FM is the only talent that doesn't seem underwhelming. The math here might prove me wrong. 2 (3 if you want to include brew-stache but you shouldn't) of our artifact talents are mixed into our 5m CD known as FM. As such I think it'd be good to have as many as possible. I think this is really more of an issue w/ FM. It shouldn't be 5 minutes if 2 artifact talents are going to be directly tied to it. I really don't see the point in it. I think our artifact talents really need some decoupling.


I want to complain about damage, but I won't. I just pray that all tank damage and dtps is within 5% or so. I want to play monk in legion, but based on current direction it looks like I'll end up w/ guardian. I'm still hopeful, though.

Last thing, I would proofread, but I typed a lot and I don't want to. Sorry.

[Inuyaki]

How did the raidtest go?

[Deleted]

I'm not in alpha so I can't test myself, but from what everyone's saying Purifying is at best completely useless and at worst a punishing trap. Why not add some basic additional functionality to it to make sure it's even remotely valuable to press? I'm sure some of these have been put forward before but..

Purifying Brew could clear stagger and offer one of the below as a slightly different mitigation alternative to simply maintaining ISB or being punished for using PB.
1- Proc a heal based on stagger cleared
(This would automatically scale with your dmg intake as your stagger increases)

2- Proc a smaller flat dmg reduction/mitigation, something like -15% dmg taken or +parry%
(This option would still maintain the idea that ISB is our main mitigation and that we should be using that for when we predict large amounts of incoming dmg. The 'alternate' reduction we got through purifying should be weaker, but still help us survive instead of simply being a window of zero mitigation if it costs us ISB uptime)

3- Give us a secondary active outside of Stagger/Purify (ie. activated -dmgtaken% or +parry% on a short cd like MoP Barkskin or a charge system like live SVInstincts)

Personally, there are two things I particularly enjoy in tanking: choice where my skill can result in better tanking, and an ability to react. I'm impressed by the choice and ability to prioritize mitigation that druids have at the moment, because different mitigation to counteract different types of damage is fun and engaging. It allows players to make decisions. For reactive play, without guard and without HFC 4pc I don't see why we should lose Expel Harm. RNG as core mechanics for a role that is inherently meant to be able to react and plan is not good design and is definitely not fun™, especially RNG baked into our only reactive heal. It leaves us at the mercy of bad luck without leaving room for player skill to overcome it. If they spawn in a bad spot then you're stuck with the choice of either being a bad tank because you move the boss to pick it up or being a bad tank because you don't maximize your ability to keep yourself alive.

Edit: And purifying 50% of stagger is just asinine, can we reverse that and just pretend it never happened?

[Inuyaki]

Not a single opinion about the raidtest on Friday?

[keqe]

We lose dizzying haze in the same expansion that introduces this



(found from http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Legion!-Great!)