[New to Brew] Ironskin Uptime

[Kenjer]

Hello,
I've recently started playing brewmaster quite often, to try to start preparing for potentially tanking for my raid group, instead of DPSing as WW. Most of my gear came from WW, but i am starting to switch pieces out.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...low/Aeg/simple

I've read quite a lot about ironskin brew 100% uptime being easy, and even people that end a mythic+ with 5-6 minutes of ironskin time left. However, I've been struggling to keep that 100% uptime, and even if i manage it, i have nocharges for purifying.

My typical "filler" rotation is blackout strike->X where X alternates between the keg throw, tiger punch (both to reduce brew cooldowns) and breath of fire (to keep the dmg reduction up as much as i can). I also try to blackout strike before each ironskin.

Help appreciated! I've only been tanking on this spec for a couple of days now. I've had good success in mythics up to +6, but want to improve so i can start going at the real prize!

[Malakkar]

Effectively, the idea behind 100% Ironskin uptime is that survivability is not necessarily a hard metric defined by damage mitigated + healing done to self. In fact, high Ironskin uptime generates survivability by utilizing overhealing as effective healing, as 15-50% of a given healer's healing is usually overhealing, due to HoTs and misfires on tanks with healing mechanisms. By smoothing out our damage intake, and by never being topped off, we avoid overhealing on our top end, and turn it into health instead, raising mana efficiency. While metrically this does not look fantastic, in reality it's what makes us such a strong and easy to heal tank. Ideally, you can maintain 100% Ironskin uptime while purifying every 10-25s based off tier, legendaries, haste, talent setup, boss uptime and tank swaps.

As far as pausing stagger goes; the short answer is that you're doing it too much. You're missing chances for empowered tiger palms and probably fucking up your keg smash timing by focusing too much on it. Pausing your stagger is useful if you are very close to a purify and the 3s will make the difference WHILE you are taking ludicrous amounts of stagger damage, AKA you probably fucked up somewhere. It is also useful as an answer to very specific mechanics, namely channeled physical abilities such as the strikes from the Ilgynoth dominator tentacles, or the Wrathguards in BRH, or even Spellblade Aluriel's channel.

For trinkets, pick up a Darkmoon Deck: Immortality. It's our BiS even in M Nighthold, with the exception of a couple magic damage heavy fights. It's a god tier trinket for Brew due to our naturally low base armor, and will reduce the damage you take by 10-25% in physical damage situations. Otherwise, your stats look decent - aim to keep haste around 20% when learning Brew w/ Blackout Combo, especially before 4pc, but generally just take the ilvl upgrade. Mastery breakpoints are more or less a mathematical ghost - they aren't worth chasing, and their net impact on your overall damage intake is so miniscule as to be irrelevant. With that said, a decent amount for mitigative purposes is aim to be over 30%, generally keeping crit around 11-12% behind your mastery. These are very general guidelines to streamline your gearing process. Versatility is hard to find, and is alright for general use, but partially depends on legendaries (bracers greatly devalue haste for mitigative purposes, greatly raising value of other stats) - it is however a nice answer for magic damage along with crit.

[Deleted]

1. What Malakkar wrote about pausing stagger. Don't do it on a regular basis. It's a waste of BoC as long you're not VERY familiar with your BM, the fight and the mechanics you want to deal with by pausing stagger specifically.
2. IF you're not doing this yet, get used to the idea of spending BoBrew basically on CD (after having spent your brews, of course). It's a big mentality change to stop considering BoBrew a cooldown, especially with SDelivery taken. IF there is nothing coming up that will require you to use brews otherwise (i.e. usually start of a fight), you much rather want to burn 3*ISB + BoB + ISB and play with the remaining 2 charges, than sit on an unused BoBrew. It's a brew generation and SD proc loss. This took me a while to change in my own playstyle but the difference it makes is huge.

[Raiz]

What both of the above said. If they can keep up with 5-6 min ironskin brew it's because they're most likely using all their BoC on keg smash and using BoB on CD (and also using tiger palm here and there. I use TP after every BoC combo pretty much, unless I'm energy starved. If that's the case, I just stop using TP and wait for another BoC combo).

It's pretty huge QoL because you'll have plenty of brews for purify.

You only use Pause stagger if you think you're gonna take a LOT of damage (e.g : 2nd pack of HoV in your most difficult m+ level).

Edit : Also it helps if you have relics for Potent Kick as it gives you 0,5 more sec of stagger.

[Inuyaki]

If you have not enough brew charges...
get some haste and play HT instead of BoC.
HT+MV is better in most raid fights anyway, especially when you are not that good with BoC yet

[Will]

If you have not enough brew charges...
get some haste and play HT instead of BoC.
HT+MV is better in most raid fights anyway, especially when you are not that good with BoC yet

For goodness sake can we stop spreading this nonsense. If you want a many brews as possible you go boxb and BoC, not HT. HT with constant heavy stagger is only superior if you're not using boxb. But the haste from HT has no effect on boxb CD nor does it affect fort brew CD, which both benefit from a boc'd KS!

HT should only be used in situations where additional stagger is useful ie:to survive huge hits like hyrja shield of light on 15 tyrannical etc

BoC is just so much more flexible, aside from the merits of the stagger pause discussed above, you can also achieve greater bof uptime which stacks nicely with the bof relic to reduce incoming damage, it also allows a *significant * single target dps gain through the triple damage tp's

[PinDrop]

For goodness sake can we stop spreading this nonsense. If you want a many brews as possible you go boxb and BoC, not HT. HT with constant heavy stagger is only superior if you're not using boxb. But the haste from HT has no effect on boxb CD nor does it affect fort brew CD, which both benefit from a boc'd KS!

HT should only be used in situations where additional stagger is useful ie:to survive huge hits like hyrja shield of light on 15 tyrannical etc

BoC is just so much more flexible, aside from the merits of the stagger pause discussed above, you can also achieve greater bof uptime which stacks nicely with the bof relic to reduce incoming damage, it also allows a *significant * single target dps gain through the triple damage tp's

Haste gives you more brews, HT gives you haste. To say there is "no effect" is completely false. A lower cooldown on KS means more uses, which means more brew CD reduction. More energy, more TPs, more CD reduction. Inuyaki's point, which was that using HT would gain you more brews "when you are not that good with BoC yet" was completely true, no nonsense whatsoever.

Your point is valid as well, though, BoC will give you even more of a benefit, and is also flexible once you no longer need the brews and want more dps than HT's haste will give. But, that requires more skill. If someone who is not as skilled often accidentally combos Purify or Ironskin when unneeded, then HT will benefit them more, as combos have the potential to be "wasted", while HT is passive.

The answer to be gained from all this is that talent choices may not be the factor in brew uptime, but player skill, so pointing at A or B talent as an "obvious choice" is not helpful to that individual, when they cannot even fully utilize the potential of either talent.

[Inuyaki]

^ this!

Thing is, the 10% more stagger is so good in many fights. There is a huge diff between 85% and 95%.
I run BoC mostly in farm, too, but in progress I mostly use HT because of that 10% stagger and it is not even really so much worse brew gen...