[LEGION] Brewmaster Discussion

[Tech614]

You can test raid mobs now. There are many all over the world.

Go.

There's no need to guess or assume. You can actively compare yourself to other tanks with similar ilvl.

The difference between Brm and every other tank now is like 10 times the difference between Guardian and everyone else in BRF.

You can literally die in two melee hits without ISB. If you purify a full red stagger bar, you'll be back at max in a single hit, except this time you won't have another purify. The other tanks have armor bonuses, every single one. We do not. Our avoidance isn't as high as the mastery leads you to believe. The other tanks take 200k+ less up front damage and don't have to worry about any stagger. The other tanks take less over damage per second than we take in strictly stagger damage.

If you died in 2 hits to a world boss you should figure out life. They are literally a non issue to tank. Unless you're in a different beta then me? Hmmm....

Hard to take you serious when the entire post comes off as a hyperbolic rant.

[Inuyaki]

If you died in 2 hits to a world boss you should figure out life. They are literally a non issue to tank. Unless you're in a different beta then me? Hmmm....

Hard to take you serious when the entire post comes off as a hyperbolic rant.

lol, maybe you should figure out your life, if you think people have problems in their life because a boss hits hard... what?

Shar'thos DOES hit an ~820brm (iirc I was only 818) for around 50-60% without ISB up. At least he did last weekend.
I don't know what itemlevel they are intended for, but most of the other tanks were around 820 too and had far less problems

[stross01]

Did you guys get any sort of logs? I am very curious to see how you did, as 'hyperbole' works both ways.

It's very possible that they were changed in the last resets, you had access to a better pool of raid pugs than i, or that you fought the trivial ones that spend most of the fight casting (spider).

Doing them at prime time on a Friday with 40 people not behind a language barrier is better than immediately after the servers come up with 20 people with 5 country's random characters for names and the 1000 ping.

If you're fighting them with 850-870 ilvl, your results may be different because if the vast overgear.

[Leblue]

I'd love to see logs from anyone here demonstrating their point. Until then I don't think it does anyone any good to say how many licks it takes to get to the center of the brewmaster tootsie pop for a world boss which will probably be roughly normal raid boss level in how hard it hits.

But hey because anecdotes are fun and what not, I pulled Nithogg just to see how hard he'd hit my level 109 ilvl 786 who has 1.5 million health.

His total hit before stagger was between about 850k to 1 million and some change so yeah that's pretty nasty indeed. I took a few swings from him before he ended up killing me (crushing blows sped this up a bit of course), but he was hitting me for ~500k up front without Ironskin Brew up and about 200k with Ironskin Brew up so it took 3 face melee swings to kill me without Ironskin Brew, but it'll take closer to 5 or so factoring in stagger from just melee swings. No dodges or anything and assuming a 1.5 second melee swing timer puts time to death w/o ISB at 4.5 seconds and time to death with ISB 7.5 or so assuming no dodges and no healing at all (including no self healing). So take all that as you will (~")~.

Also to note: I didn't have the "Dark Side of the Moon" trait, I didn't have Dragonfire Brew active, and I don't have the "Healthy Appetite" trait buffing up my health either nor any outside buffs.

[Aracs]

Just noticed that something wrong with my spheres spawn (too low number of them). Found that this is caused by ISB, so seems like Stagger damage not counts towards spheres spawn (like falling damage). But this needs futher testing.

[Deleted]

Found that this is caused by ISB, so seems like Stagger damage not counts towards spheres spawn

This is intended because Staggerdamage ist implied within the Orb-Spawn-Formula.

[Leblue]

Yeah its not really something wrong with it since when it calculates for your Gift of the Ox it does the damage before stagger. Before they changed it it would make sense to let stagger damage count (because it used to base the chance to spawn after reductions and stagger), but if it were to count stagger now then damage that's staggered would basically be worth twice as much going towards the next orb, Gift of the Mists not withstanding.

[v1perz53]

I am definitely not one of the "sky is falling" types, but doing some research today into how tanks are looking has really opened my eyes as to how barebones BrM actually does look. Are we really one of the only tanks now without any form of damage increasing CD/defense tradeoff? Just offhand (sure to be missing some things), Pallies have Avenging Wrath (CD) baseline and Seraphim (tradeoff) talented, Wars have Battle Cry (CD), Focused Rage (tradeoff), and Avatar (CD) talented, Druids have Maul (tradeoff) baseline and Incarnation (CD) Talented, DK has the ability to use Heart Strike instead of Marrowrend I guess (tradeoff), don't understand DH well enough to comment right now but it does seem like they have talents that can use pain differently for more damage like Fracture.

I guess Monk might have Niuzao as a talented CD, but depending on how the taunt works it can definitely end up being unusable for damage. On top of Monks already having far less CDs than other tanks, having no ability to change or alter damage is another layer that really seems to be missing. Tank damage is hugely important and a big reason why everyone uses prot Pallies in HFC, because of their massive damage. Seems like something is really missing from the toolkit without this. At least BrM used to have touch of death... Maybe bringing that back with the current WW iteration would help a little...

I want to play my Monk most in legion, but as someone with all 11 classes at 100 and a very easy ability to pick a new main, it is getting harder and harder to decide to chose my Monk. Really seems like the class that in legion is able to accomplish the spec's task at a baseline but doesn't really bring anything else to the table beyond that.

[risingforce]

Are we really one of the only tanks now without any form of damage increasing CD/defense tradeoff? Just offhand (sure to be missing some things), Pallies have Avenging Wrath (CD) baseline and Seraphim (tradeoff) talented, Wars have Battle Cry (CD), Focused Rage (tradeoff), and Avatar (CD) talented, Druids have Maul (tradeoff) baseline and Incarnation (CD) Talented, DK has the ability to use Heart Strike instead of Marrowrend I guess (tradeoff), don't understand DH well enough to comment right now but it does seem like they have talents that can use pain differently for more damage like Fracture.

I guess Monk might have Niuzao as a talented CD, but depending on how the taunt works it can definitely end up being unusable for damage. On top of Monks already having far less CDs than other tanks, having no ability to change or alter damage is another layer that really seems to be missing. Tank damage is hugely important and a big reason why everyone uses prot Pallies in HFC, because of their massive damage. Seems like something is really missing from the toolkit without this. At least BrM used to have touch of death... Maybe bringing that back with the current WW iteration would help a little...

Yeah, that's what concerns me -there is no trade off for dps/offensive/rush play; maybe we're missing something?

PS and yes we are all missing that Touch of Death, ToD resulted in some real fun clutch kills and always felt part of being a monk. RIP

[Aracs]

Yeah its not really something wrong with it since when it calculates for your Gift of the Ox it does the damage before stagger. Before they changed it it would make sense to let stagger damage count (because it used to base the chance to spawn after reductions and stagger), but if it were to count stagger now then damage that's staggered would basically be worth twice as much going towards the next orb, Gift of the Mists not withstanding.

Let me explain the problem.
I've started a fresh lvl 100 brewmaster (so no freaking Obstinate Determination nonsense). During starting quests (Order Hall and Artifact) I've noticed that damage, which I receiving, is quite high, i.e. need to spam effuse after each pack. I've checked skada and like 80% of damage taken was due to Stagger (I've used ISB a lot), and orbs healing was quite low (major healing component was Healing Elixirs, then Chi Wave and only then orbs). After that I've started to do quests in Stormheim and decided not to use ISB. Surprisingly, I could pull 5 mobs without much problems, healing from Elixirs, Orbs and Chi Wave was quite sufficient, also orbs healing now is a major component of my self healing approx the same as Elixirs.
The way I can explain that strange behaviour: only damage after Stagger counts towards orbs spawn and any damage which has been Staggered is just lost for the orbs counter. But I don't know how to test this properly.

[Inuyaki]

Relog to clear the counter (I guess it does reset it?), spec out of HE and Mists, dont use artifact, pull a mob that das not so much dmg, use as much isb as possible without purifying.
Technically an orb should spawn the moment you die, which we don't want, so just heal once with effuse and see how much effuse healed. You should now spawn an orb at that spot.

- - - Updated - - -

But hey because anecdotes are fun and what not, I pulled Nithogg just to see how hard he'd hit my level 109 ilvl 786 who has 1.5 million health.

His total hit before stagger was between about 850k to 1 million and some change so yeah that's pretty nasty indeed. I took a few swings from him before he ended up killing me (crushing blows sped this up a bit of course), but he was hitting me for ~500k up front without Ironskin Brew up and about 200k with Ironskin Brew up so it took 3 face melee swings to kill me without Ironskin Brew, but it'll take closer to 5 or so factoring in stagger from just melee swings. No dodges or anything and assuming a 1.5 second melee swing timer puts time to death w/o ISB at 4.5 seconds and time to death with ISB 7.5 or so assuming no dodges and no healing at all (including no self healing). So take all that as you will (~")~.

Shar'thos with ilvl827, 2.1mio hp, 20.42% armor, 6.45% Versatility, High Tolerance skilled. I just stood there doing nothing. Took him 4 hits going through 2 HE charges and killing me.
Minimum hit: 527.1k
Maximum hit: 593.3k
Average hit: 562.1k

Can anybody test him with another tankclass?

[Aracs]

Relog to clear the counter (I guess it does reset it?), spec out of HE and Mists, dont use artifact, pull a mob that das not so much dmg, use as much isb as possible without purifying.
Technically an orb should spawn the moment you die, which we don't want, so just heal once with effuse and see how much effuse healed. You should now spawn an orb at that spot.

Yep tested, in both cases orbs spawns at low (~50k) health, so stagger works as intended. Thanks.

[Deleted]

I keep seeing people say "oh it's just tuning, don't worry." The mechanics of how BrM mitigation works is not tuning, it's a mechanical issue with how they've crafted the actual abilities.

Tuning might fix how much we stagger, how much we clear, how much dmg we actually take etc, but at the end of the day if our mitigation is tied together and requires us to burn two charges of a connected resource to actually function, then it will never function comfortably on relevant content or content you don't overgear because you will simply run out of charges to work with OR sit at one charge and decide if you want to clear a trivial amount of dmg with Purify or bleed to death with ISB. It's a heinous design and if we're actually trying to do our jobs and limit our dmg intake, will result in literally no options once we run out of charges.

One idea I saw earlier that I really liked was to have our extra resource be Brew which we build in increments like rage through our energy spenders. We'd then spend Brew EITHER on our mitigation options or on damaging tradeoff abilities if we don't need the mitigation. No need for shared cd's, no need for the months and months of problematic balancing issues I can already smell on the horizon.

ps. we only got Expel Harm back after the forums blew up, those of you who are actually running the tests and playing the Beta please don't give up on getting the mechanics of this spec fixed.

[Julmara]

maybe a buff to armor is all we need ^^

[Leblue]

I mean, what's there works it's just not a carbon copy of every other tank and plays differently. I do think there are a couple points that might be potentially annoying but outside of cutting edge progression I'm not sure its a huge issue. Really what I'd like to see is a small 1 to 1 and a half minute minor cool down to take some pressure off Ironskin and Purifying brew and for Gift of the Ox to be more frequent but weaker so it feels less like your betting on one number on a roulette table and betting on first 12 instead just while averaging out to be similar in overall healing.

[v1perz53]

I definitely don't want Monk to be a carbon copy of other tanks, but it does feel like there are aspects just straight up missing from BrM. For example, as I mentioned before there is no way to increase damage or trade survivability for damage. Keg Smash is your highest DPS ability while being the best defensive (damaging) ability. As BrM, currently you wouldn't do anything differently with your damaging abilities whether you were actively tanking or offtanking waiting for your turn to grab the boss. There is also no way to decrease your damage taken controllably aside from your default active mitigation. If ISB+Purify with Ox healing isn't enough, you are out of answers (assuming a fight like many where shield wall is used at a specific time). A Bear or Pally has defensive abilities they can chose to stack if they really need, or spread out if they want smoothing.

I guess as a tank I like feeling in control, and part of that is having a few knobs to turn that let me fine tune what is going on, while BrM just feels currently like it needs a few more knobs.

[Leblue]

I definitely don't want Monk to be a carbon copy of other tanks, but it does feel like there are aspects just straight up missing from BrM. For example, as I mentioned before there is no way to increase damage or trade survivability for damage. Keg Smash is your highest DPS ability while being the best defensive (damaging) ability. As BrM, currently you wouldn't do anything differently with your damaging abilities whether you were actively tanking or offtanking waiting for your turn to grab the boss. There is also no way to decrease your damage taken controllably aside from your default active mitigation. If ISB+Purify with Ox healing isn't enough, you are out of answers (assuming a fight like many where shield wall is used at a specific time). A Bear or Pally has defensive abilities they can chose to stack if they really need, or spread out if they want smoothing.

I guess as a tank I like feeling in control, and part of that is having a few knobs to turn that let me fine tune what is going on, while BrM just feels currently like it needs a few more knobs.

Sadly that's pretty much the goal of how they want tanks though. Way back they actually addressed it and directly said they didn't want to do trade-offs of defense for offense. Here's the actual post from sparkle dragon in January.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20420493025#1

and more directly tackling trade-offs

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...3025?page=5#84

[v1perz53]

Sadly that's pretty much the goal of how they want tanks though. Way back they actually addressed it and directly said they didn't want to do trade-offs of defense for offense. Here's the actual post from sparkle dragon in January.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20420493025#1

and more directly tackling trade-offs

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...3025?page=5#84

Yea, I definitely remember this quote, but it is so odd since literally every single other tank can trade defense for offense in some way, be it Focused Rage for War, Maul for Druid, Seraphim for Pal, Fel Eruption for DH, or Heart Strike for DK. Every one of those things trades some form of defensive resource for purely offensive purpose (except slightly for Seraphim, but it still fits). Despite this quote, BrM is literally the only tank who cannot do this. Are these really excellent sources of damage? Mostly no, but the point remains. And on top of that, many tanks have the option to prioritize abilities that do more DPS but have less defensive benefit by changing their rotation. Monk has neither.

[Rilas13]

Doing 2 world bosses last night I didn't have any issues. Didn't watch the other tanks but I'm kind of over the whole "sky is falling" thing.

Glad I'm not the only one. I was following the trend of assuming it was terrible before I got into beta. Been dungeon running this week with my BrM. Honestly it feels fantastic, I am incredibly more sturdy then any other tank that I watch as a DPS or a healer.

[stross01]

Glad I'm not the only one. I was following the trend of assuming it was terrible before I got into beta. Been dungeon running this week with my BrM. Honestly it feels fantastic, I am incredibly more sturdy then any other tank that I watch as a DPS or a healer.

Dungeons and raids are not similar. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

A decent Brm can solo almost all mythic0's through cheesing, los'ing, kiting, and cc'ing. Raid bosses fill your stagger bar in 1-2 hits and cannot be cheesed, los'd, kited, or cc.