[LEGION] Brewmaster Discussion

[Evolved]

Isareth and Leeflow were talking about CJL on the official Legion feedback thread. If CJL did bounce between targets that would be pretty cool. Could even do like a 30% less damage to bounced targets or something. The only things I EVER use CJL for now are the occasional Iskar zap when I have nothing to do in the air phase or for the Ultraxion trash when I zone out and don't have the chi to CE the drakes lol.

Isareth also mentioned, as many others have mentioned, the stagger issues after a fight ends. I don't think there would be harm in having stagger just reset when we are out of combat. Maybe there would be instances where it 'could' case an issue, maybe, but I can't think of them really. If you're chain pulling, it won't reset. If you aren't, you start fresh like every other tank between pulls. Kinda sucks to have to waste a PB charge or two just to clear the stagger between trash pulls or random world mobs while questing.

I'm not sure Blizzard would go for it, because we likely have all the ranged pickup ability that they want to give us. It wasn't like they just forgot to include Dizzying Haze, the purposely pruned it (likely due to the redundancy) and extended Keg Smash, though I wouldn't mind if they pushed KS out to 30 yards. We're one of the most mobile tanks in the game, with a hard hitting AOE range pickup, at only 5 yards less than a DH/Paladin (3 targets only) I just don't know how much compromising Blizzard is going to on it considering how good of a job we already do at picking up adds. Honestly, the loss of Dizzying Haze probably hurts the PVP Brewmasters, as it was useful for spamming on people trying to get away in battlegrounds.

Fortunately, those rare occasions where you want to zap something like Iskar, CJL is hitting hard. (thanks Mistweavers) To give you an idea; at 810, Keg Smash is hitting for 131k, with a 6.5 second cooldown. CJL does 190k in 3.3 seconds of channeling with the same gear. If you've got nothing better to do while a boss is disengaged, zap away.

I agree that stagger should probably clear after combat. I just did a Heroic Violet Hold, and the healer died towards the end but I lived long enough to kill the boss. Then I died to stagger. Would it be possible to abuse it with Shadowmeld?

Its a completely passive talent that you never have to think about to use. It just sort of happens randomly. Outside of it doing weird things like hitting targets very far away from you I don't think its a bad thing. It should be less throughput than RJW or Niuzao, but it delivers on choosing a passive rather than adding a button to your bars (whether in the form of something used frequently like RJW or a cooldown like Niuzao). TBH, I think the level 90 tier (after everything has been tuned) is one of our better talent tiers.

Sounds like a tuning issue in alpha! *insert shock and amaze here*. The coolest thing about Niuzao's damage being absolute trash can useless is that outside of you trying to meet an incredibly tight dps check (i.e. higher level mythic + or maybe some raid testing) this is little more than a QoL issue in alpha. I'm not sure why even bash it until beta when you go "this is badly undertuned". Probably more useful to say it should get the pulsing aoe Xuen has if the intent is to just keep it as a dps cooldown.

I'm saying Special Delivery is mechanically flawed. The damage or proc chance should scale up to reflect that if Blizzard wants it to remain a competitive talent choice. Don't get me wrong, it's neat to watch the first few times, and on a single target fight with 0 movement, it might be competitive with some damage/proc% tuning, especially if there are no harmless critters sitting 20 yards away that it decides to nuke.

As far as Niuzao, he's definitely a tuning issue. If they give him an AOE, I'd like to see something that radiates off of the little cloud that he already makes on the ground. Like Pigpen:

Rushing Jade Wind adds chi now. It adds nothing in Legion. Xuen was damage, yes. Chi Torpedo did indeed heal and damage. All of these had functionality beyond trivial damage and spinning a boss in a circle.

RJW only added Chi on 3 targets. It added nothing but damage ST, and it cost energy to do so. Xuen was damage, no extra functionality was used. Chi Torpedo healing? Come on, nobody outside of Mistweavers even noticed the minuscule healing it did, it was a damage ability. Also, stop calling it trivial damage. It's technically more DPS than Keg Smash, though they are close. Read your tooltips or perhaps, test it out.

[Saiyoran]

Chi Torpedo healing? Come on, nobody outside of Mistweavers even noticed the minuscule healing it did, it was a damage ability.

Chi Torpedo healing, AG, and Maelstrom-buffed Healing Surge are all pretty much mandatory for high end CMs on live. The amount of group-wide healing you can put out as a Brewmaster is incredibly important when you are consistently pulling 20-30 hard hitting mobs with no healer in the group. The talent was really crucial for both aspects, it's damage being absolutely ridiculous of course but it's healing also being a valuable tool in keeping your DK and Shamans alive when AG was down. Sorry, just annoys me when people say Chi Torpedo healing wasn't useful.

[Ampere]

They might put a hardcap on it somehow so it never goes over 100%?

Right now it doesn't look like there is one based on the formula Celestalon gave us, but yea they could potentially do that.

[Evolved]

Chi Torpedo healing, AG, and Maelstrom-buffed Healing Surge are all pretty much mandatory for high end CMs on live. The amount of group-wide healing you can put out as a Brewmaster is incredibly important when you are consistently pulling 20-30 hard hitting mobs with no healer in the group. The talent was really crucial for both aspects, it's damage being absolutely ridiculous of course but it's healing also being a valuable tool in keeping your DK and Shamans alive when AG was down. Sorry, just annoys me when people say Chi Torpedo healing wasn't useful.

Well, you have to know that when people refer to something like that, it's done in a general sense, which was obvious by the context. 99.5% of Brewmasters didn't use it for the healing and that healing was likely only there due to the fact that it was a shared talent tree with a healing spec, who needed it for a low cost alternative to RJW. People are not going to call out every little niche scenario from a tiny fraction of people. I'm sure some random person at one point in time also used the healing from it in an old Cataclysm raid while farming transmogs, it doesn't necessarily need to be pointed out.

[stross01]

I know, that's exactly what I said lol. People think it looks great on paper, but it wasn't as great in actual use due to it not being free. I'm glad you agree with me?

SD is garbage. The proc rate is trash, the damage is trash, the travel time is trash and the slow effect is useless due to Keg Smash. There is no reason to ever pick that talent unless they massively buff the damage. It does very slightly more damage than a single RJW does in 5 seconds, and only had a 30% chance to proc from an ability with limited charges.

How is it dumb? When has RJW ever been anything but a DPS/add pickup ability? It's literally an improved version of the current one.

There are two other mechanics like SD in the game that work well. It adds spice and the possibility for much higher burst!

Added chi. Changed the rotation. Doesn't anymore, as it's just damage.

- - - Updated - - -

RJW only added Chi on 3 targets. It added nothing but damage ST, and it cost energy to do so. Xuen was damage, no extra functionality was used. Chi Torpedo healing? Come on, nobody outside of Mistweavers even noticed the minuscule healing it did, it was a damage ability. Also, stop calling it trivial damage. It's technically more DPS than Keg Smash, though they are close. Read your tooltips or perhaps, test it out.

How many targets does Rushing Jade Wind need, in Legion, to start applying tank advantages?

Tuning is numbers. The damage values of almost every ability have yet to be applied. Get that shit out of here.

Chi Torpedo healing is immense with ring and resolve.

[Evolved]

There are two other mechanics like SD in the game that work well. It adds spice and the possibility for much higher burst!

Added chi. Changed the rotation. Doesn't anymore, as it's just damage.

How many targets does Rushing Jade Wind need, in Legion, to start applying tank advantages?

Tuning is numbers. The damage values of almost every ability have yet to be applied. Get that shit out of here.

Chi Torpedo healing is immense with ring and resolve.

SD could work, as I said above, scroll up and read. A little mechanical tweaking, number tuning and the right fight.

It added Chi, on 3 targets. It changed the rotation. We no longer have chi, and it still changes the rotation.

How many targets does Xuen need, in WoD, to start applying tank advantages?

Currently RJW needs 1 target to start applying tank advantages. Unless you don't consider killing things an advantage of course. As we've already gone over, it's fine for an ability to have the purpose of providing extra damage.

You're right, tuning is numbers. (you're clever!) All you currently know at this point are the current values, and the values are currently saying it's not trivial. So, tuning isn't done and you're still calling it trivial damage?

Chi Torpedo's healing (outside of a few niche scenarios!!!) was mostly wasted. You're reaching if you're trying to seriously make the argument that it was used for it's healing properties by tanks in raid, since the majority of it's healing inevitably ends up as overheal. It's like claiming that you were picking Chi Burst to heal your raid, and not because of the massive burst it provided on packs.

[stross01]

SD could work, as I said above, scroll up and read. A little mechanical tweaking, number tuning and the right fight.

It added Chi, on 3 targets. It changed the rotation. We no longer have chi, and it still changes the rotation.

How many targets does Xuen need, in WoD, to start applying tank advantages?

Currently RJW needs 1 target to start applying tank advantages. Unless you don't consider killing things an advantage of course.

You're right, tuning is numbers. (you're clever!) All you currently know at this point are the current values, and the values are currently saying it's not trivial. So, tuning isn't done and you're still calling it trivial damage?

Chi Torpedo's healing (outside of a few niche scenarios!!!) was mostly wasted. You're reaching if you're trying to seriously make the argument that it was used for it's healing properties by tanks in raid, since the majority of it's healing inevitably ends up as overheal. It's like claiming that you were picking Chi Burst to heal your raid, and not because of the massive burst it provided on packs.

Right, yes, right, I said that. It only changes the rotation because it does more damage than its alternatives. You wouldn't even take RJW without 3 readily-available targets on live. I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

And I said Xuen just does damage. I think I did. Yeah, I did.

Currently, RJW will never apply any tank advantages at any number of targets or number of uses. That was a facetious question that went sailing over.

In no world Blizzard designs will an AOE ability overcome other single target options on single target. It just won't happen. Never.

Every talent should not work in every situation. If you don't need aoe healing and immense aoe damage, swap it for something else. I took Chi Burst on a few fights, for healing, during progression. Gorefiend, Tyrant, Mannoroth, Iskar, and Xhul. Also, you're aware you can time your abilities to minimize overheal, ya?

ALSO, please god stop trying to sell Cracking Jade Trash on that feedback thread. Why would you want to keep that garbage around?

[Evolved]

Currently, RJW will never apply any tank advantages at any number of targets or number of uses. That was a facetious question that went sailing over.

It doesn't need to.

I would love to see some logs of you saving your raid through all of that Chi Torpedo healing, preferably one that didn't involve the majority being overheal. Feel free to PM them though.

I think your arms are a bit too short to be reaching for claims that the 90 tier isn't a damage focused one. That's a pretty heavy bias you seem to carry against RJW though, the Psychologist in me is curious.

It's probably been mentioned before, but what happens when our stagger gets over 100%? Falls into the abyss? If we use Fort Brew at low health, it's likely we'll have ISB up through some part of it, and with artifact that puts us over 100%. (with talent 106%?) I'm wondering if the Staggering Around trait wouldn't be better served with something else.

[Leblue]

We can probably stop using 'tune' as a cover-all term.

Tuning is changing number values. Tuning isn't adding new abilities, changing what the ability does, or changing how it works.

Good news! I'm not. I'm using it exactly as it was meant to be: Niuzao's damage is garbage because it hasn't been tuned! In fact him doing a particular amount of damage is the very definition of tuning. You liking Niuzao is obviously an opinion and thats cool as well and what not. I know I'm one of a group of people who've been asking for a Niuzao skinned Xuen since I started playing the spec. No aoe pulse? Long as the tuning of his damage makes him a worthwhile 3min cd for single target/burst phase fights then I'm cool w/ it.

Rushing Jade Wind adds chi now. It adds nothing in Legion.

Adds damage and fills in dead time. Chi's gone as a resource (which is another issue entirely) so that's not a big deal really looking at the ability in and of itself. Now if you want to argue "hitting X targets reduces brews by 1 second" or something then that's possible, but it also lines it up to be THE talent to take unless you give Niuzao and Special delivery likewise treatment. Going based off none of the tier is defensive at all, I'm going to go ahead and say its fine as it is within this particular tier outside of hard number tuning.

All of these had functionality beyond trivial damage and spinning a boss in a circle.

Damage is functional? I'm not sure what you're asking for since in this instance you're not indicating at all what you're looking for, you're just saying it doesn't have enough. While RJW is up, you gain 10% damage reduction if it hits 3+ targets? While Niuzao is alive you share part of your damage and healing taken with him? Special Delivery leaves a Gift of the Ox Orb in its wake? Like sure we could tack on extra little defensive bonuses, but we could also just let it be a tier where you pick an extra way of dealing damage. Not every button (talent or otherwise) has to be a swiss army knife.

I'm not sure Blizzard would go for it, because we likely have all the ranged pickup ability that they want to give us. It wasn't like they just forgot to include Dizzying Haze, the purposely pruned it (likely due to the redundancy) and extended Keg Smash, though I wouldn't mind if they pushed KS out to 30 yards. We're one of the most mobile tanks in the game, with a hard hitting AOE range pickup, at only 5 yards less than a DH/Paladin (3 targets only) I just don't know how much compromising Blizzard is going to on it considering how good of a job we already do at picking up adds. Honestly, the loss of Dizzying Haze probably hurts the PVP Brewmasters, as it was useful for spamming on people trying to get away in battlegrounds.

I know as much as I'll miss Dizzying Haze, we'll probably be alright without it with the massive keg smash range extension (and hopefully an increase to travel speed). It was crazy good and will be missed and was great flavor to boot.

I'm saying Special Delivery is mechanically flawed. The damage or proc chance should scale up to reflect that if Blizzard wants it to remain a competitive talent choice. Don't get me wrong, it's neat to watch the first few times, and on a single target fight with 0 movement, it might be competitive with some damage/proc% tuning, especially if there are no harmless critters sitting 20 yards away that it decides to nuke.

I wouldn't say its mechanically flawed, but I would say the range it can possibly go to (up to 30 yards and its picking targets like critters) being dropped down to maybe 10 ~ 15 yards would probably help it be more useful when it procs. Its a flavorful, passive way of giving you more damage though and I find it really hard to argue with when they want to have that sort of talent in the tier to give people that option.

It's probably been mentioned before, but what happens when our stagger gets over 100%? Falls into the abyss? If we use Fort Brew at low health, it's likely we'll have ISB up through some part of it, and with artifact that puts us over 100%. (with talent 106%?) I'm wondering if the Staggering Around trait wouldn't be better served with something else.

Going to take a stab and say nothing. One of those things where you go "am I okay having passively more stagger but knowing a portion of Fortifying brew is useless?". At the moment I'm going to hazard a guess and say "yes".

Currently, RJW will never apply any tank advantages at any number of targets or number of uses. That was a facetious question that went sailing over.

I consider dps a tank advantage. Then again I want to be more than a sack of meat the healers heal.

In no world Blizzard designs will an AOE ability overcome other single target options on single target. It just won't happen. Never.

What if they designed a button (or talent in this case) or chose to take a traditionally aoe talent/button and said "you know what, they've got gaps in their rotation and they can fill it with this button. It may be better than their filler when its up, but that's about it". I mean if you really hate it so much you've got options.

Every talent should not work in every situation. If you don't need aoe healing and immense aoe damage, swap it for something else. I took Chi Burst on a few fights, for healing, during progression. Gorefiend, Tyrant, Mannoroth, Iskar, and Xhul. Also, you're aware you can time your abilities to minimize overheal, ya?

Well how its looking...I take RJW for consistent damage where there probably isn't a burst phase or there're adds at some point. Niuzao if there's a burst phase or pure single target if he's tuned to still do more, and someone who doesn't want either can take SD. Where's the problem? IMO if RJW outdoes Niuzao in single target over the course of a fight that's a number tuning issue, but that's my opinion.

[stross01]

Good news! I'm not. I'm using it exactly as it was meant to be: Niuzao's damage is garbage because it hasn't been tuned! In fact him doing a particular amount of damage is the very definition of tuning. You liking Niuzao is obviously an opinion and thats cool as well and what not. I know I'm one of a group of people who've been asking for a Niuzao skinned Xuen since I started playing the spec. No aoe pulse? Long as the tuning of his damage makes him a worthwhile 3min cd for single target/burst phase fights then I'm cool w/ it.



Adds damage and fills in dead time. Chi's gone as a resource (which is another issue entirely) so that's not a big deal really looking at the ability in and of itself. Now if you want to argue "hitting X targets reduces brews by 1 second" or something then that's possible, but it also lines it up to be THE talent to take unless you give Niuzao and Special delivery likewise treatment. Going based off none of the tier is defensive at all, I'm going to go ahead and say its fine as it is within this particular tier outside of hard number tuning.



Damage is functional? I'm not sure what you're asking for since in this instance you're not indicating at all what you're looking for, you're just saying it doesn't have enough. While RJW is up, you gain 10% damage reduction if it hits 3+ targets? While Niuzao is alive you share part of your damage and healing taken with him? Special Delivery leaves a Gift of the Ox Orb in its wake? Like sure we could tack on extra little defensive bonuses, but we could also just let it be a tier where you pick an extra way of dealing damage. Not every button (talent or otherwise) has to be a swiss army knife.



I know as much as I'll miss Dizzying Haze, we'll probably be alright without it with the massive keg smash range extension (and hopefully an increase to travel speed). It was crazy good and will be missed and was great flavor to boot.



I wouldn't say its mechanically flawed, but I would say the range it can possibly go to (up to 30 yards and its picking targets like critters) being dropped down to maybe 10 ~ 15 yards would probably help it be more useful when it procs. Its a flavorful, passive way of giving you more damage though and I find it really hard to argue with when they want to have that sort of talent in the tier to give people that option.



Going to take a stab and say nothing. One of those things where you go "am I okay having passively more stagger but knowing a portion of Fortifying brew is useless?". At the moment I'm going to hazard a guess and say "yes".



I consider dps a tank advantage. Then again I want to be more than a sack of meat the healers heal.



What if they designed a button (or talent in this case) or chose to take a traditionally aoe talent/button and said "you know what, they've got gaps in their rotation and they can fill it with this button. It may be better than their filler when its up, but that's about it". I mean if you really hate it so much you've got options.



Well how its looking...I take RJW for consistent damage where there probably isn't a burst phase or there're adds at some point. Niuzao if there's a burst phase or pure single target if he's tuned to still do more, and someone who doesn't want either can take SD. Where's the problem? IMO if RJW outdoes Niuzao in single target over the course of a fight that's a number tuning issue, but that's my opinion.

He doesn't do anything. He just attacks. No pulsing AOE, no tank-related abilities, no damage. They need to 'tune' some point to using it. If it's just pure single target, it's pretty bad. I'm not partial or against Niuzao. You may have me confused with someone else.

Bad design. Lazy design. Unintended. Many possibilities, with the most likely being this is a player-invented construct that it's supposed to fill gaps. It just happens to now.

Is 'Damage is functional?' a question or a statement? There aren't abilities that have zero interaction with the game other than simply damage that I can think of. And yes, those are all decent ideas.

Agree with part of it, but disagree with 'we'll be fine'. They'll just never put in a situation where we can cheese shit again.

-skip Evolved.

Again, RJW is just damage. Time for it to go. "Do some damage" hasn't had a place in WoW for 4 expansions. #1

Again, RJW is just damage. Time for it to go. "Do some damage" hasn't had a place in WoW for 4 expansions. #2

It will never exist in this game. An optional AOE ability will never outdo its single target counterparts.

[Evolved]

I know as much as I'll miss Dizzying Haze, we'll probably be alright without it with the massive keg smash range extension (and hopefully an increase to travel speed). It was crazy good and will be missed and was great flavor to boot.

I wouldn't say its mechanically flawed, but I would say the range it can possibly go to (up to 30 yards and its picking targets like critters) being dropped down to maybe 10 ~ 15 yards would probably help it be more useful when it procs. Its a flavorful, passive way of giving you more damage though and I find it really hard to argue with when they want to have that sort of talent in the tier to give people that option.

Yeah, it was fun to use but it was just another keybind that I rarely ever pressed. When they're trying to prune abilities, it's a pretty obvious one to take. We will for sure be just fine without it.

Yeah, I think reducing it's range would make SD quite a bit better. Though I'm not going to lie, watching a keg drop on a squirrel is almost worth the price of admission. The 3 second drop time could stand to be toned down a bit too.

Again, RJW is just damage. Time for it to go. "Do some damage" hasn't had a place in WoW for 4 expansions. #1

It's not going anywhere, "trust me".

[stross01]

It doesn't need to.

I would love to see some logs of you saving your raid through all of that Chi Torpedo healing, preferably one that didn't involve the majority being overheal. Feel free to PM them though.

I think your arms are a bit too short to be reaching for claims that the 90 tier isn't a damage focused one. That's a pretty heavy bias you seem to carry against RJW though, the Psychologist in me is curious.

It's probably been mentioned before, but what happens when our stagger gets over 100%? Falls into the abyss? If we use Fort Brew at low health, it's likely we'll have ISB up through some part of it, and with artifact that puts us over 100%. (with talent 106%?) I'm wondering if the Staggering Around trait wouldn't be better served with something else.

It does need to when it wants to be in the game. All superfluous talents and abilities are gone or going.

"Saving the raid" isn't the term I'd use. I'd say "contributing".

Oh my god, a psychologist wow. I hope that's relevant to Legion Brewmaster discussion. When you're done posturing, or whatever it is you think you need to be doing, stay on topic. If you're looking at Chi Torpedo's healing as irrelevant, you should probably consider its damage, too. In a raid setting, outside of ring and bis gear, it's almost zero. Even on imps, its damage isn't even 1% of a single imp's life!

And, our stagger is 50% as effective against magic. That's what I guess the 'extra' is for. It's a pretty dirty solution, but whatever.

It's not going anywhere, "trust me".

It probably won't survive in its current incarnation.

[gregstafelam]

The problem on using taunt to pick adds is: sometimes you need to have the taunt ONLY to switch tanks on boss... like xhul

[Leblue]

He doesn't do anything. He just attacks. No pulsing AOE, no tank-related abilities, no damage. They need to 'tune' some point to using it. If it's just pure single target, it's pretty bad. I'm not partial or against Niuzao. You may have me confused with someone else.

If the talent tier is "pick a way to do more damage" I don't see how he doesn't fit in. Neither of those three abilities have anything to do with actually making you tankier. The no tank related abilities for Niuzao (although iirc he has a taunt that you can use for non boss mobs?) isn't actually a problem looking within the talent tier its on. The pulsing AOE may come back, it may not. Its sort of them deciding if they want to give it back to him or make it strictly single target. I have no idea why you even mention that he does no damage when we both agree number tuning hasn't occurred for Niuzao. Him being a pure single target cooldown (if tuned properly) certainly won't fit the bill every encounter, but there's another talent to fill the aoe dps gap anyway (albeit not in 3 minute cooldown form).

Bad design. Lazy design. Unintended. Many possibilities, with the most likely being this is a player-invented construct that it's supposed to fill gaps. It just happens to now.

I mean, I think its a bit weird too that a clearly aoe talent has the potential to be the go to choice in single target. Its entirely player constructed because a lot of what players are operating on is how things feel, and a good number didn't like the slowing down of the playstyle so when they find out that they can fill those gaps with something of course they're going to attach to it. So long as Niuzao's single target is enough to outweigh using RUW single target the only people you'll see still taking it are those who want it for the feel good value of always having a button to press even if its not optimal. When saying "people will pick Niuzao over RJW even single target" that's also a numbers tuning issue. I actually give props to this talent tier having the option of a cooldown, a button you'll want to press frequently, and something entirely passive and two of them actually have functionally different roles as methods of doing damage.

Again, RJW is just damage. Time for it to go.

Really now? I mean, Protection warriors even have a tier of talents that are strictly "Do some damage" in different flavors even in their 45 tier.
http://legion.wowhead.com/talent-cal...ior/protection

Of course, this is simply an opinion on how you feel about a tier of talents that's strictly damage. I'm cool with a tier that just has toys to do some extra damage.

"Do some damage" hasn't had a place in WoW for 4 expansions. #2

Here's my problem with this, and I'll even keep this strictly to tanks. There have been options to tanks to just "Do some damage". I'm not saying its widespread, but they do occur and they have a place because doing damage is part of a tanks job as well not only for killing a boss but for maintaining threat which obviously hasn't been near as much a thing since WotLK, but I'm going to assume you get what I'm saying.

Level 90 Protection Warrior tier: All damage
http://www.wowhead.com/guides/classe...ection/talents

Don't worry though, back in MoP warriors had 90 and 60 talent tiers that were basically just damage. Exceptions being Avatar increased rage generation, Stormbolt could stun mobs that weren't immune (used it for damage in most raid environments), shockwave had a stun but was on the same tier as bladestorm so take that for what its worth, and dragon roar had a small knockback(also generally used for its damage).

Cataclysm? Pulverize for bears was just damage by consuming lacerate. Nothing else to it really.

Wrath of the Lich King.

I'll let you pick whether DKs matter or not since even it wasn't until they started formalizing Blood as the tanking spec (even then it had "just damage" talents!). I mean if we want to just stick to blood though we've got Heart Strike and Dancing Rune weapon just being a dps cooldown as it didn't even have the parry component yet.
Prot Paladins Hammer of the Righteous and Avenger's Shield just did more damage in another way than you had baseline.
Feral Druids Beserk was strictly a damage (or threat) talent and mangle was just a damage talent.

Burning Crusade

Prot Paladins got Avengers shield to do...damage for threat!

Really the thing to take away here is there've been talents in the past 4 expansions that have existed. I'll give to you that in BC and Wrath the need to more efficiently generate threat was a big deal and you could argue that was part of performing the tanking role. But I mean, if just having talents for damage hasn't had a place, why are there so many passives even in cataclysm that strictly increase the amount of damage you as a tank do (passively of course because that's way more entertaining than being able to choose to take a button that does that).

Prot Paladin - 8 talent points to simply deal more damage without going into other trees
Blood Death Knight - 6 talent points to simply deal more damage
Bear Feral Druids - 10 talent points to simply deal more damage
Protection Warriors - 9 talent point to simply deal more damage.

I'm going to go ahead and say there's a place for damage talents depending on the class and the toolkit it already has, but in the end that's obviously an opinion.

[stross01]

Listen.

LISTEN.

I'm not talking about talents like "do this and this to make this do more damage".

I'm talking about "hit this button to do damage". Pretty huge difference.

Burning Crusade: Avenger's Shield: Ranged slow, silence, bouncing aoe ability. Not damage.

Wrath of the Lich King: What a mess. Get me a Wrath talent calculator. Almost every DK ability was relevant to AOE threat or runic power generation.

Cataclysm: Pulverize. Consumed Lacerate to grant crit chance to increase rage generation to increase mitigation.

[DisposableHero]

A math problem for Celestalon and co at blizzard.

If a boss melees once per second for X damage, and we stagger a percentage of that based on our state, then in the next second our danger level is our up front damage taken percentage of our current state (states being ISB up and ISB down for this discussion) plus the one tenth of the value we have staggered. Every hit that we do not dodge therefor adds our stagger percentage of the bosses melee to our stagger pool which decays at a rate of 10% per second. So if we are ISB up, we gain 75% of boss melee damage per second and decay 10% of that pool per second.

Without ISB damage taken next second is 65% of boss damage plus 10% of stagger pool. With ISB the damage taken next second is 25% of boss damage plus 10% of stagger pool.

Now if our choice is to let ISB drop, or purify 50% of our pool than we must accumulate a pool 20 times the size of 40% of the bosses damage before purifying causes us to be in less danger of dying than maintaining ISB.

So the question becomes, how long must we tank with ISB up to obtain a pool that high. Well the pool must be 20 times 40% or 800% boss damage. if we grow our stagger pool by 75% per swing, and it decays by 10% of total value each second, an interesting thing happens here. When our pool is at 750% of boss damage, it decays by 75% of boss damage due to ticks and grows by 75% of boss damage due to staggered melee. At this stage, it is impossible to grow the pool further and our damage taken per second is 100% of the bosses melee, as if no staggering were actually taking place. In practice, you pool will go down from this point naturally due to dodged attacks and ramp back up when you fail to dodge, reaching a steady state somewhere before this happens due to dodge.

What this means is there is no mathematical point possible where purifying staggered damage under current mechanics makes you safer if it results in ISB falling off. Which means the only time you should ever purify is with charges above and beyond those necessary to maintain 100% uptime on ISB, and the only way ISB vs purify is every going to be an actual choice, is if they reduce the amount of damage that ISB staggers and increase the amount of damage staggered passively to compensate.

In other words, as many have been saying intuitively, Brewmasters must be safer with ISB down for purifying to be a correct choice over maintaining ISB.

[Totaltotemic]

I'm talking about "hit this button to do damage". Pretty huge difference.

Literally what RJW has been for its entire existence. RJW has not, and never has, "added chi." It cost energy and providing chi was to compensate for the fact that you lost out on a Jab if you used RJW. Legion RJW costs no energy, and even the GCD doesn't come at a cost of anything, therefore it doesn't need to provide anything for compensation for a cost that doesn't exist.

In fact, the entire row has always been about adding damage and doing nothing else of value related to tanking. It was in 5.0, 6.0, and now is in 7.0.

[stross01]

Literally what RJW has been for its entire existence. RJW has not, and never has, "added chi." It cost energy and providing chi was to compensate for the fact that you lost out on a Jab if you used RJW. Legion RJW costs no energy, and even the GCD doesn't come at a cost of anything, therefore it doesn't need to provide anything for compensation for a cost that doesn't exist.

In fact, the entire row has always been about adding damage and doing nothing else of value related to tanking. It was in 5.0, 6.0, and now is in 7.0.

I'm not sure if none of you can read or don't want to acknowledge what I'm saying:

Damage. Pure damage. Nothing but damage.

ABILITY. DO. NOTHING. BUT. DAMAGE.

I can translate it into other languages upon request.

[v1perz53]

So I think the major point is this. There is nothing wrong with tanks having abilities that just do damage and nothing else. There is also nothing wrong with talents that add buttons that do damage and nothing else. In fact, for years the first kills of new content have relied on tanks sacrificing some defense for more damage, there should always be ways to do this, and in fact that isn't even the case with RJW/Niuzao. You just do more damage with them than without, in different ways depending on what you picked. Active sustained vs burst vs passive in that tier, all damage. Is it super interesting? Not really, but is it totally awful and needs to be removed? Definitely not.

[stross01]

So I think the major point is this. There is nothing wrong with tanks having abilities that just do damage and nothing else. There is also nothing wrong with talents that add buttons that do damage and nothing else. In fact, for years the first kills of new content have relied on tanks sacrificing some defense for more damage, there should always be ways to do this, and in fact that isn't even the case with RJW/Niuzao. Is it super interesting? Not really, but is it totally awful and needs to be removed? Definitely not.

The point is that it's insulting towards a design team and a playerbase to have an ability that just 'does damage'.