Brewmaster - OP tank?

[Deleted]

The thing to bear in mind with Elusive Brew and relying heavily on a huge dodge % for most of their avoidance was that it would only have worked versus physical damage and made them highly vulnerable in fights with large magical damage (like most of DS atm).So the dodge bit is only prevalent 10 out of every 45 seconds and I'm going to assume we can use Sparring as well for another avoidance based short cooldown. The rest of the time we are looking at Guard, the Drunken Haze debuff and Stagger, which isn't as disappointing to me as I first thought because less reliance on avoidance and more on absorbs/deferring incoming damage means less RNG in the active tanking model.

So, with that in mind, what about Guard and the Tiger Palm stacks? Is it a personal stacking buff with a duration or do you stack it up like holy power then spend it on a +15% (assuming you go for all 3) Guard? Would seem a bit fiddly to be building Chi and Tiger Palm stacks at the same time - would make more sense if it was a degrading buff you had to maintain occassionally, like a reverse Sunder, or you'd have to be hitting Tiger Palm all the time and Guard a lot less often than I'd imagined.

[The Madgod]

So, with that in mind, what about Guard and the Tiger Palm stacks? Is it a personal stacking buff with a duration or do you stack it up like holy power then spend it on a +15% (assuming you go for all 3) Guard? Would seem a bit fiddly to be building Chi and Tiger Palm stacks at the same time - would make more sense if it was a degrading buff you had to maintain occassionally, like a reverse Sunder, or you'd have to be hitting Tiger Palm all the time and Guard a lot less often than I'd imagined.

As I say in the Brewmaster text wall (lul :< ), it's a stacking buff with a duration of 30 seconds.

Assuming Guard doesn't stack, it might be a mechanic so people can choose whether or not they would prefer a larger shield and larger self heals less of the time or a smaller shield and smaller self heals more of the time. If it does stack, that seems like the tiger palm + guard combo wouldn't be that great, unless you really like self healing. I am not yet in beta so I can't really say for sure what level of damage people'll be taking, nor if Guard stacks or anything of that sort, this is all just speculation.

[Ivirus]

With Elusive Ale being reduced to a 10 seconds duration, I'm worried about trying to tank on Monks, as it was going to be my reroll. People saying it's supposed to be like the current Divine Protection and Shield Block for Paladins and Warriors, they also have shields to block with whereas Druids, Death Knights and Monks don'. Druids currently have bonus armor and stamina. Death Knights currently have great self heals, bonus armor and stamina.

As of beta, Monks' biggest avoidance was Elusive Ale. Monks also don't have bonus armor or stamina right now in Ox Stance, albeit they do have higher base damage reduction of 20% compared to other tanks' tank stances. I don't feel it's enough, however, to try and balance survivability.

I do realise this is still only the very beginnings of beta. Things aren't even close to being finalised and not everything is implemented or it's bugged. I just hope Monk tanks get something to help their apparent lack of survivability at the moment.

[The Madgod]

With Elusive Ale being reduced to a 10 seconds duration, I'm worried about trying to tank on Monks, as it was going to be my reroll. People saying it's supposed to be like the current Divine Protection and Shield Block for Paladins and Warriors, they also have shields to block with whereas Druids, Death Knights and Monks don'. Druids currently have bonus armor and stamina. Death Knights currently have great self heals, bonus armor and stamina.

As of beta, Monks' biggest avoidance was Elusive Ale. Monks also don't have bonus armor or stamina right now in Ox Stance, albeit they do have higher base damage reduction of 20% compared to other tanks' tank stances. I don't feel it's enough, however, to try and balance survivability.

I do realise this is still only the very beginnings of beta. Things aren't even close to being finalised and not everything is implemented or it's bugged. I just hope Monk tanks get something to help their apparent lack of survivability at the moment.

Blizzard isn't going to release a broken class, not at this point in WoW's lifespan. I'm confident that we'll be just fine.

[Niyari]

Deja vu... I really hope we don't have another DK tank on our hands lol. I remember tanking 3 drake Sarth at teh beginning of WotLK, the entire fight consisted of "parry, parry, dodge, dodge, parry, HIT/FLAME BREATH FOR 90% OF YOUR HP, parry". As fun as it was to be an avoidance tank, it's not fun for the healers when you don't avoid everything.

[The Madgod]

Deja vu... I really hope we don't have another DK tank on our hands lol. I remember tanking 3 drake Sarth at teh beginning of WotLK, the entire fight consisted of "parry, parry, dodge, dodge, parry, HIT/FLAME BREATH FOR 90% OF YOUR HP, parry". As fun as it was to be an avoidance tank, it's not fun for the healers when you don't avoid everything.

Considering how stagger is designed to smooth out incoming damage, I think Blizzard's learned their lesson from the early models of Death Knight tanking. As I said, I'm confident that the Brewmaster will be most quite good.

And I'm pretty sure at three drakes, every tank was getting flameblasted for 90% of their health

[Malthanis]

Considering how stagger is designed to smooth out incoming damage, I think Blizzard's learned their lesson from the early models of Death Knight tanking. As I said, I'm confident that the Brewmaster will be most quite good.

Especially since there's no charge-based tanking CD here. It looks like the CDs have their full intended impact for their duration, instead of getting knocked off early like Bone Shield could.

[The Madgod]

Especially since there's no charge-based tanking CD here. It looks like the CDs have their full intended impact for their duration, instead of getting knocked off early like Bone Shield could.

Yeah, definitely. They seem to get that RNG is going to be a potential concern, so they are keeping it out of the CD's as much as possible.

[Apellosine]

Look through all those monk talents and abilities and point out their armour increase to their leather armour, now realise why they need a lot of avoidance and damage smoothing abilities.

[Daos]

Look through all those monk talents and abilities and point out their armour increase to their leather armour, now realise why they need a lot of avoidance and damage smoothing abilities.

Well to be fair, it seems likely that Monks will get some sort of additional passive damage reduction beyond the 20% from Stance of the Drunken Ox, whether that's in the form of armor or something else. If they don't, Monks will have difficulty surviving anything during the significant periods of time that cooldowns will not cover, since a rogue in normal leather gear will get hit for considerably more than 120% of his total health by a boss should he take a full melee attack to the face.

It seems likely at this stage that we don't have the entire picture of how the class is supposed to operate.

[Gallahadd]

Aye, I'm thinking we've not seen the Brewmaster's full toolkit yet, Drunken Ox needs a serious buff, they're missing the 15% stam all tanks get, and don't seem to have a 50% DR CD, which all the other tanks have, and thus fights will be balanced around.