[BREWMASTER] 7.X Discussion Thread

[nuclayer]

As I see there is some dispute still over light brewing and BoB, I'll try shed some light on the current dilemma.
I am going to use the wowhead spreadsheet for brew generation as I have checked all their calculations very closely and I have not seen any errors. That said I will use the following assumptions:
-When running HT have a 100% stagger up-time (i.e will have 15% haste more from HT always)
-Have 30% haste as a standard stat between HT and BoB.
-Duration of 5 minutes

Using the above assumptions the following is observed:
Light Brewing with HT- will generate 47.59 charges (15% haste included in this calculation) and BoB with BoC will generate 68.39 charges.
BoB with HT with 100% up-time we get 69 charges. Light brewing with BoC will generate 54.77 charges.

Even with 100% up-time on HT we only get a small marginal benefit with running with HT on BoB compared to BoC. Thus BoC has better brew generation on average considering the fact you will not constantly be at 100% stagger level during the whole fight.

Here is the link to just the Brew generating spreadsheet for those who want to see how I get to these results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

I will state this: All the information I give above is not to tell you which talents to pick but only to inform you of the benefits of each talent choice. Everyone has different play-styles and preferences that must be respected.

I plugged into your spreadsheet missing 10 KS's and the value was still pretty even. Interesting.

The discussion should then be 10% additional passive Stagger VS the benefits of BoC? Artifact X3 for HB giving 12% pure damage reduction that was up 100% of the time seems really powerful.

[Chuupag]

But barely anything of that 50% was from haste itself. Unlike Ironskin/Purifying brew the CD itself isn't reduced by haste, only from abilities. Thus it doesn't "double dip" like IsB and PB which get CD reduced by haste and also benefit from more KS and TP.

BoB double dips from decreased cd on keg smash as well as more energy for more tiger palms. 2 things, double dip.

Iron/purify triple dip since they get both of the above benefits as well as their own cd being reduced.

[Deleted]

Like I said I will back the 100 talents with some math at some points. But I don't believe the strength of BoC is the 100% BoF uptime.
When you hit Purify and are in total stagger balance, then the purified amount equals 10 seconds of Damage staggered * 0.5. If you just started taking damage for 10 seconds and you purify, the damage is roghly equal to 5 seconds of staggered damage * 0.5f. The real value is somewhere inbetween so lets say 8 seconds * 0.5.

Now if you keep up 100% ISB and u feel the need to purify, then you can instead go IISB -> 3s wait -> PB. That way you would purify 8 seconds worth of stagger + the 3 from the stagger halt, effectively increasing the purified amount by 37.5% which would be even more than the ED gain.

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BoB double dips from decreased cd on keg smash as well as more energy for more tiger palms. 2 things, double dip.

This is not how double dipping works. Thats like saying "haste double dips because it reduces CD of Spell 1 AND CD of Spell 2" but that is not how it works.
At 100% haste, you would get double the Energy, cast double the Kegsmashes. So you would be left with double the Energy to TP, resulting in twice as many TPs.
So you will get 100% more KS and TP.
But I was kind of wrong, it does not scale linear. In fact it scales less than linear. At 0% haste you get 1.3067 BoB/min, while at 100% haste you get 1,9467 BoB/min (this would be 2*1.3067 if it were to scale linear). The reason being, that haste increases brew recharge via KS and TP, but not the brewrecharge via time passing.

On the other hand, considering normal brew recharge, time passing scales linear (since the cd gets reduced), while KS and TP scale squared (CD of Brew gets reduced AND KS/TP frequency increases). The combination of theese two effects makes LB scale better than BoB (Beware that for it to outscale BoB you need probably more than 100% haste or smth)

Edit: changed wording on the outscaling part.

[999DaZa]

I plugged into your spreadsheet missing 10 KS's and the value was still pretty even. Interesting.

The discussion should then be 10% additional passive Stagger VS the benefits of BoC? Artifact X3 for HB giving 12% pure damage reduction that was up 100% of the time seems really powerful.

Do you mind expanding on what you plugged in? Just so I know exactly what you mean as I am a bit lost by your statement.

For HB giving 12% RD you would need 3 relic slots all attuned for HB, then to have it 100% up-time you would need the legendary chest.

BoF burning affect lasts only 8 seconds so if you running BoC you should have BoF every 9 seconds in an ideal scenario. For a 1 min fight you should have HB for 54 seconds which is 54/60*100=90% up-time per minute. So you will get a 12*0.9=10.8 DR per minute. Which is quite a powerful.

One thing to note HT does have 13.3% more damage in stagger (dot) compared to normal ISB after 10 seconds if you are constantly keeping ISB buff up and in turn allows 13.3% more damage purified than normal. However with the delayed stagger mechanic you can in turn periodically purify 11.7% more than HT. So BoC with HB up-time is seeming very positive as long as you can play it perfectly. (Which isn't always the case)

[nuclayer]

Do you mind expanding on what you plugged in? Just so I know exactly what you mean as I am a bit lost by your statement.

For HB giving 12% RD you would need 3 relic slots all attuned for HB, then to have it 100% up-time you would need the legendary chest.

BoF burning affect lasts only 8 seconds so if you running BoC you should have BoF every 9 seconds in an ideal scenario. For a 1 min fight you should have HB for 54 seconds which is 54/60*100=90% up-time per minute. So you will get a 12*0.9=10.8 DR per minute. Which is quite a powerful.

One thing to note HT does have 13.3% more damage in stagger (dot) compared to normal ISB after 10 seconds if you are constantly keeping ISB buff up and in turn allows 13.3% more damage purified than normal. However with the delayed stagger mechanic you can in turn periodically purify 11.7% more than HT. So BoC with HB up-time is seeming very positive as long as you can play it perfectly. (Which isn't always the case)



In terms of passive 10% stagger (i.e HT) and benefits of BoC is no easy comparison

Sure, I changed your KS used value to different amounts to see how much of a difference in Total Charges Generated would change. I like to make the assumption that as humans we make mistakes and that due to various factors, we would miss some keg smashes. I thought over a 5 minute period, 10 misses might be reasonable - unless you already factored that in.

[Chuupag]

This is not how double dipping works. Thats like saying "haste double dips because it reduces CD of Spell 1 AND CD of Spell 2" but that is not how it works.

That's not what I said at all. Reduces the cool down of keg smash is one benefit. Increasing the amount of Tiger palms you are able to put out is another. These are separate things. Hence double dip.

You even quasi agreed with me later in that very post how normal brews charge even faster bc their cd gets reduced.

[999DaZa]

I thought over a 5 minute period, 10 misses might be reasonable - unless you already factored that in.

I didn't take misplay into account as just want to understand maximum potential of each talent but you are right I should do some misplay calculations sometime and adjustments for moving.

Oh also note the spread sheet will calculate how much energy is left after KS for TP so that is why you are seeing similar results.

[Deleted]

That's not what I said at all. Reduces the cool down of keg smash is one benefit. Increasing the amount of Tiger palms you are able to put out is another. These are separate things. Hence double dip.

If they are seperate, its not double dipping thou. double dipping means the same thing gets affected twice.
Double dipping occurs for example with dots. Haste means that your dot has a lower gcd, meaning you can apply it to more targets. At the same time, haste increases tickspeed (resulting in more damage per dot). This double dips, because one ability scales with haste in a more than linear way (100% haste = 2 times the dots and 2 times the damage per dot = 4 times the damage).

But saying "you get more KS and more TPs" (" Reduces the cool down of keg smash is one benefit. Increasing the amount of Tiger palms you are able to put out is another") because these are 2 factors which get added to one another, not multiplied.

I must admit however that this can be quite confusing since it is not always straight up clear. (About a month ago i thought brew gain scaled exactly linear, was wrong however its a bit better than linear)

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You even quasi agreed with me later in that very post how normal brews charge even faster bc their cd gets reduced.

Yes normal brews do, since their CD gets reduced (like you stated yourself) but BoB does not get its base CD reduced via haste.

[Xahz]

I will concede that whole post on the 45 talents atm. Again at work so can't really dive deep into anything. But your point on BoB only scaling linearly is wrong. It is also a brew so it double dips with haste. The base cd of BoB is 90 seconds. 15% haste got it down to 45 or 50 seconds depending on how tight your rotation was. 50% reduction on just 15% haste.

You should concede that your whole post regarding HT vs ED was wrong as well, because there wasn't anything in that post that resembled accurate math or an unbiased assessment.

This, however, is not even taking into account the 10% FREE haste you get from taking HT that you trade the almost negligible 6 second dodge buff for, which again may net you 1 additional dodge if the stars align. That haste reduces that additional damage taken between the two to a much smaller number as you will gain a few brew charges over the course of the fight with which you could purify more.

What is with this bullshit language you keep using to try and downplay other people's analysis and exaggerate your own opinion? How is a 10-15% dodge buff "almost negligible"? It's a straight 10-15% reduced damage from avoidable attacks, which are the vast majority of the damage you take on most encounters, over a six second period.

The comment about ED vs HT; I'm apparently not going to change some people's minds about total damage taken vs spike damage. Taking 66% more face damage or taking 10% more damage overall is a no brainer to me. My numbers were using total health percentage...but some people want to argue semantics instead of actually thinking critically so I'll leave it at this: healers love stagger, healers hate spike. If you spike they react with fast expensive heals and waste mana on you.

Right - you tried to call what was almost a 15% damage reduction a 5% damage reduction, and me pointing that out is "arguing semantics"? Get a grip. Yes, your numbers were using total health percentage; your numbers were also completely wrong, and that statement is irrelevant to the discussion because you were still using percentages. I can't believe you would have the gall to accuse me of not thinking critically when you can't even multiply properly.

[The Madgod]

So there's a loooot of wild math going on here. Was asked to step in and clarify some stuff.

]Yes, yes it does. -2sec on your brews every 6sec grants more brews than 15% haste, and you're not even going to get the 15% haste bonus all the time with HT regardless.

The 10% haste bonus is actually right about even with the brew gen from BoC at the same haste levels, so no, you're wrong there. Note that the haste bonus is multiplicative and thus tends to be larger than a straight additive bonus.

I understand perfectly how stagger works. HT falls behind once you push purify because with Elusive Dance, 65% of 80% is a bigger number than 50% of 90%, thus more of the damage you took has been removed. As long as you weren't taking enough damage to erase 100% of your HP bar before you got to hit purify, HT is worse. With BoC, you also have far more damage shoved into your stagger via the stagger freeze ability and thus when you purify you're purifying 50% of a much bigger value, and thus take less damage.

You're making the argument that damage reduction is universally more important than damage smoothing, which isn't the case. HT does have a valuable use, as does ED. Situation matters.

Furthermore, additional smoothing beyond the minimum required to survive burst enables healers to more use cheaper, efficient heals to maintain our health pool. If you take X% less damage per second, thats X% less healing per second needed, and higher burst healing has a proportionally higher mana cost. This is arguably the whole point of Brewmasters.

This is all well and good, but people are arguing that they need to take HT because they're in danger of getting gibbed by bosses if they don't have that full 90% reduction. I'm simply pointing out that if a 90% reduction is required, then no other tanks can possibly be viable. Selfheal doesn't help you if you get one or two shot, block gets you one or two shot as soon as the RNG fails you, and having 40% DR from armor instead of 20% isn't going to save them in this weird hypothetical world where you need 90% DR from High Tolerance to not instantly die.

You're forgetting that other tanks have actual passive defense. Yes that factors into EH but monks need the higher EH in order to be on a similar level of defensiveness simply because we don't have any passive defense, aside from rogue levels of armor and our active abilities too don't really reduce damage taken (save purifying) aside from relatively small amounts when factoring in artifact traits.

No not my gut. It gives the most brews by a significant margin. It provides a much higher uptime on a 6% DR (or more with relics). These alone make it comparable to the other 2. Plus it's flexible. You need more single target damage for a time? It does it. You need to freeze stagger for an oh crap moment? It does it. The BoF uptime really shouldn't be overlooked though. And it gives you 100% ISB uptime with plenty of room for purifies.

I'll grant that it's not as simple as BoC 6.2% DR < HT 7.4% DR. But to be frank, choices in tanking are often not that clear. Now I believe I saw some math over at brewing mastery that pointed out that with consistent red stagger HT surpasses BoC in brew generation. But that environment may or may not be that realistic. And that is just one aspect of the talents, albeit probably the most important one.

You mentioned my blog, and I can say pretty confidently that yeah you'll see those levels of stagger fairly often once you hit raiding content. Despite higher HB uptime you will still take higher burst damage than via HT, so if you're looking to further smooth intake, HT is superior. As well, HT will generate more brews via the higher haste than BoC once you average at yellow stagger. Obviously this is dependent on the encounter as tank swapping will reduce the brews generated, but if you're focused on in-combat situations that's going to be significant.

Stagger Freezing, as well, is also notably limited in its uses. Realistically, it's only worth really using if you are planning on cheesing it and maintaining the stagger freeze for an extended period of time for something like multipulling trash in Mythic+. Its issue is that you don't ignore that stagger, you just delay it. There's benefits to that, but it's not good for general use as the whole point of it is to build up a lot of stagger in order to increase smoothing for the short-term to be purified during a period of low damage intake. You can use it in an emergency, but its 3 second duration means there's a gamble if you aren't out of trouble in that short period of time. You could argue this almost requires BoB to be talented and held on standby for emergency brews, as you can quickly burn through your stockpile trying to delay damage long enough for the danger to pass, again depending on the situation.

Blackout Combo is a strong talent for players who want a bit of everything as well as a more complicated ability priority. It's got solid damage, decent damage reduction, decent damage smoothing, and a bit of cheese potential, but the other two talents outstrip it in their given areas of focus: damage smoothing (HT) and damage reduction (ED).

You even quasi agreed with me later in that very post how normal brews charge even faster bc their cd gets reduced.

Yes normal brews do, since their CD gets reduced (like you stated yourself) but BoB does not get its base CD reduced via haste.

At this point you're both arguing semantics and your time would be better spent actually discussing the math and data.

What is the reasoning for the 30% haste number many people are recommending? Does it bring Keg Smash to a clean integer CD or something?

33% reduces KS to a rough 6 second CD but the general benefit of the 30% haste number is due to you beginning to see the GCD cap for the spec. At 41.5ish% haste you see an absolute lock on GCD's (calculated using a 15 second window and a non-integer number of average casts of abilities, based on talents and haste) and you have to then choose between using CD's or wasting energy. At around 30% though you start to see about 1 or fewer GCD"s available in an average 15 second timeframe. Due to player error and the fact that the average can obviously fluctuate depending on where you place that 15 second window, you'll likely start seeing GCD capping at a much lower haste level, hence why 30% is recommended as the maximum.

To the point on BoB starting off cooldown, mea culpa. This however just reinforces my overarching point that cooldown always look better right after they are used. Pick a different time table or three and you will still find the same conclusions I made above. Low haste between cooldown light brewing wins. Medium haste between cooldown they about tie. Medium haste right after you use a cooldown the cooldown obviously wins. Who remembers trashing dps on meters when a fight ended exactly after xuen disappeared. *raises hand*

This also doesn't take in account the added perk of have 4 charges coming into a tank swap vs 3. You would then make the argument that you could just save BoB for the tank swap...but then you run into the trap of losing total effectiveness because you sat on your cooldown and very well maybe have gotten more charges overall with light brewing in that case.

When looking at a snapshot of time, you are correct if the CD is off. When looking at overall, BoB is superior. Ultimately it depends on what you are looking for, and what you are interested in. There's also added benefit to being able to gain a large amount of charges at an opportune time. Its why I don't say you shouldn't take LB ever, because they're both very viable choices.

High Tolerance and Elusive Brawler are basically mirror opposites of each other. One lets you stagger more and gives you haste based on your stagger color, the other lets you purify harder and gives you a bit of dodge and damage done again based on your color of stagger when you purify for 6 seconds. The caveat there is of course the sticking point. So for 6 seconds after you purify you get either 5, 10, or 15% dodge and a damage buff of the same magnitude. Harken back to when bears were the worst tank in the game for 5 straight tiers. Can anyone tell me why they were the worst tank? Because they relied on dodge, and relying on a chance to not get smacked in the face is never a good place to be. 6 seconds is also a very small time frame in terms of white attack swings. A dual wield boss might hit you 4 times and a slower boss twice in those 6 seconds. Even if you purified off a red stagger you are only getting 15% more dodge for those 6 seconds. Even factoring in our mastery you will probably only dodge 1 more of those swings against a DW boss...and probably not even 1 of the slower boss. For this reason the dodge aspect of Elusive Brawler is pretty crap, and you are really only taking the talent for more stagger purified off and maybe the damage boost for 6 seconds...maybe.

Do note that while you are more of a mana sponge, there's still points where ED is valuable. Again, you DO reduce damage taken. As well, due to the dodge, if you can string purifies well enough you can benefit from a higher Mastery breakpoint, but this is a bit more limited to dungeons and Fortification cheese. The increase in damage is also something to consider, if only for the utility of it. I think that ED does have situational benefits, but I wouldn't say that it's the default go-to for most content.

[Chuupag]

A 15% dodge buff for 6 seconds is crap. A bosses swing timer is usually 1.5 for fast attacking bosses and 3 for slow. In 6 seconds you will get attack between 2 and 4 times. 15% of 2 is .3 and 15% of 4 is .6. Not even a full attack chance. Show me math showing otherwise.

"Almost a 15% damage reduction"...didn't you call it 10.9% in that post? This is also not even comparing apples to apples. Who is to say that you have to purify at the exact same damage intake while taking one talent over the other. If I have taken 66% less face damage than you I don't feel in a lot of danger. Hots and efficient heals will keep me up until I decide to purify...which is probably quite awhile after you are forced to purify bc you have spiked so hard. Everyone is going to purify differently based on their healer comp and damage intake.

I was using percentage of total health through the the entire post, it would have been confusing to at the end completely change the frame of reference. If you want to keep comparing apples to red spray painted orange go right ahead. How about you post something constructive rather than just shit all over someone's else's work without providing any real alternative assessment other than "you are wrong and stupid".

[Deleted]

it is however important to note, that on a fight with infinite duration BoB grants about 2-3 times as much brew than LB does. even if the time window makes you juuuust miss one cast, this would still make you get 1-1.5 times the brew (which is the absolute worst case, and still more).

The choice itself is after all preference.
BoB:
-Way more Brews
-One more button to press/ability to track
-"Bursty" brew gain (this can be played around via smart thinking)
LB:
- More base charges
- You passively gain 100% of the Talent (except if sitting on 4 Brews ofcourse)

[Ampere]

A 15% dodge buff for 6 seconds is not crap, it's on average 15%/(100% - average avoidance%) damage reduction for 6 seconds. Saying that 6 seconds isn't long enough for it to matter, well then why is ISB worth using? Only 6 seconds (I know it's longer with traits)

Elusive Dance is a pretty massive damage reduction talent, the 65% purifies go a long way. If you aren't dying to spike damage and care about damage reduction, I see no good reason to skip Elusive Dance.

33% reduces KS to a rough 6 second CD but the general benefit of the 30% haste number is due to you beginning to see the GCD cap for the spec. At 41.5ish% haste you see an absolute lock on GCD's (calculated using a 15 second window and a non-integer number of average casts of abilities, based on talents and haste) and you have to then choose between using CD's or wasting energy. At around 30% though you start to see about 1 or fewer GCD"s available in an average 15 second timeframe. Due to player error and the fact that the average can obviously fluctuate depending on where you place that 15 second window, you'll likely start seeing GCD capping at a much lower haste level, hence why 30% is recommended as the maximum.

Thanks. I suggest maybe mentioning this reasoning, at least lightly, in the guide since it can appear to be a "random" value without this information.

Is this GCD capping threshold present even without RJW? I do feel like I have few spare GCDs at ~15% haste using RJW, but I know if I go SD for raid bosses that will free up a lot.

[Deleted]

It comes down alot to your talent choice (RJW vs SD) and your BoK playstyle. if you always use two globals between every BoK, then you can go even higher than 41.5% and still not waste globals (again depending on skill/lag/movement etc.)

[The Madgod]

Thanks. I suggest maybe mentioning this reasoning, at least lightly, in the guide since it can appear to be a "random" value without this information.

Is this GCD capping threshold present even without RJW? I do feel like I have few spare GCDs at ~15% haste using RJW, but I know if I go SD for raid bosses that will free up a lot.

Might consider that!

And yes, this is baseline. At 30% haste RJW actually suffers drastically as you only want to use it when you don't want to use any of the others. If I remember right SD provides more damage at about 17ish% haste with BoC, 21ish% haste without... but don't quote me on that. I want to say the specific numbers are on the guide but yeah. Obviously there's still value with RJW in as much as its consistent so its useful for add pickup if KS is on CD but yeah, damage-wise, SD will start to win out at higher haste levels.

[h0wl]

A 15% dodge buff for 6 seconds is not crap, it's on average 15%/(100% - average avoidance%) damage reduction for 6 seconds. Saying that 6 seconds isn't long enough for it to matter, well then why is ISB worth using? Only 6 seconds (I know it's longer with traits)

ISB offers guaranteed damage smoothing, 15% dodge offers only potential damage reduction. It's true that 15% dodge will average at 15% reduction over the course of a fight (I'm assuming 15% dodge in a vaccum to make things simple) but it's less reliable in a pinch since you are unlikely to soak enough hits in 6 seconds to count on 15% dodge making a difference.

Chuupag pretty much explained this already, but here's another way of looking at it: 15% dodge can mitigate up to 100% damage over a period of 6 seconds, but it can also mitigate as little as 0%. That's why average damage reduction is misleading - it assumes that occasionally mitigating a large amount of damage is enough to compensate for occasionally mitigating no damage. In reality, the risk outweighs the reward, since mitigating more damage than necessary over a 6 second period does little more than save your healer some mana, whereas mitigating less damage then necessary can spell a wipe.

Of course, 15% dodge is never bad to have; I only say it's a "risk" if we are considering a situation where you are making a tradeoff between reliable or unreliable mitigation.

Also, hi everybody /

[Chuupag]

There is also the fact that that 15% dodge chance can waste a dodge you would have already had due to our mastery.

[keqe]

There is also the fact that that 15% dodge chance can waste a dodge you would have already had due to our mastery.

On the other hand it can make a "breakpoint" happen sooner, guaranteeing a dodge a stack earlier depending on mastery.

[Chuupag]

On the other hand it can make a "breakpoint" happen sooner, guaranteeing a dodge a stack earlier depending on mastery.

If your gear is poorly optimized and you're not trying to gear around the breakpoints already yes...granted not everyone has enough offpieces to make this feasible.

The point is that pushing Purify with the ED talent does not guarantee you a dodge generated by the 15% chance given by the proc during the duration of that proc. You will on average only get a dodge from that proc every 2 or 3 times you purify.

[Interim]

/still amazed theyre blanket nerfing

go ahead n try a ret pld or prot war on as brm lmk how that works out for ya.