The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[matthias9742]

The big problem I have with the legendary tank cloak is that unless we are 100% certain the event is going to kill us, its usefulness is greatly decreased.

Also the extra DPS from the cloak will be nice for both Sanctuary and gift of the Ox procs which help our personal and raid survival. Also with the new glyph that procs a sphere when we are at 25% that sounds like more than enough of an o-shart button to me, especially when my spheres with veng crit for 300k+ in 10m

[kaiadam]

I get the feeling that the brewmaster community on this board is focused entirely too much on optimizing dps at this moment and too little about survival. There are certain tradeoffs of survival vs damage that are generally accepted as favorable such as the DPS meta vs the tanking one due to the unreliable nature of the tanking meta's proc. Yet, the tanking legendary cape has such a ridiculously good and guaranteed survival proc that most brewmasters here are eschewing because they prefer more damage? I mean, I get that we do a lot of damage. I like doing a lot of damage too, but there is a time and place for scumbagging and progression isn't one. As a sidenote - let me tell you a little something about dps: when you see top brewmasters put up those 500k parses, we aren't getting there because we're optimizing gear, we get there because we optimize the encounter, which more survival gear allows us to do/learn more of. Most of my parses were set while I was wearing 10k+ mastery.

You don't defeat a fight by zerging it*, you beat an encounter by learning the mechanics and executing them correctly. Correct execution comes with experience, experience comes from making mistakes, and the cloak allows you to make more mistakes in any given period of time. QED. There's a reason they changed the cloak proc to tank only - I wouldn't be surprised in the least if top guilds required everyone, including int users, to equip a tank cloak for progression in SoO had it not been restricted.

Granted, the cheat death proc of the tanking cloak may not even be used once during a progression fight, but I believe the benefits are still there, just more indirect. Healers have two extremes - pure raid healing and letting hots, smart heals, beacon, splash, etc. heal tanks, and pure babysitting/tunneling on tanks. Healing during progression is usually the latter, at least in a general way among top guilds. As a corollary then, there is less raid healing going on and an increased chance a dps dies.

On the other hand, when you have a proc that saves you from death, healers can afford to be less focused on the tank when you have a guaranteed proc. So most of the time (unless you non-stop proc the cloak, which, well, probably means you have a bigger problem elsewhere), healers will be more vigilant on the rest of the raid and the death rate of the non-tanks will decrease as well.

But to be perfectly honest, you're going to die over and over and over again during progression. The idea that the cape will go unprocced is laughable. The feeling that any of your deaths was a silly mistake or that you never die unless the raid wipes, etc. is a psychological illusion. Take a look at the first kill videos of any guild, and you'll see that it's messy as all hell almost every time. I can personally say that there was at least one tank death in 10/13 of Midwinter's first kills this past tier, and the legendary cloak proc would have earned us a kill roughly 5 pulls earlier, on average, for each fight, whereas dps cape might've earned us a kill 5 pulls earlier for all the boss fights this tier combined. I died once in all of our first kills this tier and I wouldn't even hesitate to choose the tanking legendary cape if I were to go back in time to 5.2's start and given a choice of these cloaks.

And to those who'll stick with the dps capes for SoO progression? Ya'll are nuts

*Yes, I know about Dark Animus. Anomaly that's discovered four moths into a tier doesn't really count though, eh?

[Chuupag]

And to those who'll stick with the dps capes for SoO progression? Ya'll are nuts

I'm still going to say this is more of a personal preference. Thinking back on all of my raid groups kill this tier I can't think of a single instance where this proc on me would have gotten us a kill. My pally co-tank on the other hand...if he had this proc it would have gotten us kills a few pulls earlier. But even still we've had far more sub 5-10% wipes than "crap one of the tanks is dead, no brez, and ran out of survival CDs" wipes.

To each their own, but blanket statements along the lines of "world top guilds do it this way therefor everyone should" doesn't make as much sense to me as looking over your own raid and seeing what is more likely to benefit your specific situation.

[gynshon]

I'm still going to say this is more of a personal preference. Thinking back on all of my raid groups kill this tier I can't think of a single instance where this proc on me would have gotten us a kill. My pally co-tank on the other hand...if he had this proc it would have gotten us kills a few pulls earlier. But even still we've had far more sub 5-10% wipes than "crap one of the tanks is dead, no brez, and ran out of survival CDs" wipes.

To each their own, but blanket statements along the lines of "world top guilds do it this way therefor everyone should" doesn't make as much sense to me as looking over your own raid and seeing what is more likely to benefit your specific situation.

Have to agree. Our progression wasn't halted because of tank deaths this tier. We had a lot of wipes where the extra dps would have made a difference, either in enrage checks, or preventing another cycle of bad things, aka Frostbite on Council, etc. 10m /= 25m in this regard.

[kaiadam]

Like I said, whether or not you remember them, you have died before and cost progression for your raid team. This statement is true for any tank who has done any progression at all. Maybe it's not strictly first kill progress. Maybe it's farm on the first four bosses when you're working on Megaera, you cost 20 minutes last week and 15 minutes the week before. Regardless, you have died before you were 13/13 that the cape would've prevented, and that cost you time and that time could have been spent on progression but was instead spent on a run back.

I wasn't a psych major but I've taken enough classes and know enough about the brain that memories are basically glorified lies that you tell yourself to make you feel better. Unless you can record and point out every single progression/progress farm fight you've been on, you cannot trust what you remember, especially 4 months into the tier. In this case, our memories are even worse than usual - low % wipes stand out in your memory, whereas wipes that resulted in tank deaths are easily glossed over. You automatically have a bias when it comes to "remembering" how many low wipes vs how many tank death wipes you have. Again, I repeat - you cannot trust your memories here.

Also, to put things in perspective, lets be super generous and say that the cape proc is as much damage as the legendary proc, and lets say you do 20% the damage in your raid. So you'd need to wipe to the boss at under ~1.5% without the dps cape to say that the dps cape would've made it. And while it's not outside the realm of possibility to have a few 1.5% or lower wipes per tier, the number of times that happens is going to be pretty low, far lower than tank dead no rez wipes. And this is for a 10m - in a 25m you're looking at sub 0.7% wipes.

On top of that, a wipe at 1.5% isn't as "bad" as a wipe to a tank death. Meaning, the most important currency for killing a boss is experience/execution. Losing a fight at the last second means your raid team got almost all they could learn from that pull in. Wiping due to a premature tank death costs you much more. So in a general statistical sense, I can say with utmost confidence that regardless of your progression, raid time, raid team, skill etc., you're going to progress faster with the tank cloak than the dps cloak, by a significant enough degree that there's really no wiggle room.

Which cloak you wear, having that knowledge, is of course, your personal preference. Example: I have alts in another guild, off-server who I raid with during Aussie times in a 13/13 ten man guild. I know for a fact that doing dailies, getting coins, LFR, research, valor capping, gemming, etc. would make the toons I play there more successful and bring faster kills for the guild, yet I completely ignore them all because personal preference. I accept that I'm not doing all that I could be to further progression, but I go in with the full knowledge of what is optimal and what isn't. I'm giving my view, personal opinion if you like, as a fairly accomplished brewmaster with literally tens of thousands of hours of high end raiding/raid leading experience that there is no way in hell the dps cape comes close to the tanking one if you're interested in progression. That being said, for pugs, alt runs, my tertiary 10m guild, etc. I'll still use the dps cape, 'cause fun > progress there, but if you're serious about SoO progression and you think the dps cape is better for it, I stand by my earlier statement - you're nuts.

Edit: I fraps our kills and I also happen to keep the fraps for very low wipes in case we ever make a blooper/official video of a fight. Looking through my home computer's files (gogo remote access), I count exactly two wipes for us this last tier that were lower than 1.5%. Neither were lower than 0.7%. You can also consider that we had 16 tank deaths over 13 fights in our actual kills. Now just imagine how many tank deaths halted progression pulls before that.

[Pariah]

My position on the cloak has always been on how quickly we can obtain them. I'm sure that information is available now but I haven't asked around. If they take as long as the current cloaks took to get (AKA: after progression) then the DPS cloak is coming on. If we get them early, the tank cloak is the no brainer. And once farm has commenced, DPS cloak always (assuming the vengeance cap nerf goes and stays live).

I don't know why it's a debatable thing for progression oriented tanks.

[gynshon]

Which cloak you wear, having that knowledge, is of course, your personal preference. Example: I have alts in another guild, off-server who I raid with during Aussie times in a 13/13 ten man guild. I know for a fact that doing dailies, getting coins, LFR, research, valor capping, gemming, etc. would make the toons I play there more successful and bring faster kills for the guild, yet I completely ignore them all because personal preference. I accept that I'm not doing all that I could be to further progression, but I go in with the full knowledge of what is optimal and what isn't. I'm giving my view, personal opinion if you like, as a fairly accomplished brewmaster with literally tens of thousands of hours of high end raiding/raid leading experience that there is no way in hell the dps cape comes close to the tanking one if you're interested in progression. That being said, for pugs, alt runs, my tertiary 10m guild, etc. I'll still use the dps cape, cause fun > progress there, but if you're serious about SoO progreession and you think the dps cape is better for it, I stand by my earlier statement - you're nuts.

And you are discounting other people's opinion and progression experience. Being that in every game, almost every tier I have been at the top or near the top of progression, I also have an idea what I am talking about. I also have an eidetic memory and can recall the most random stuff that no one else would remember and I can say with certainty, that 95% of our wipes during progression were not tank death related that prevented the progression. Lei Shen is a perfect example of this. Wipes were to dps falling off platforms, not executing soaks, missing balls, etc etc etc. Was pathetic really...

You gave an example of Megaera and that is a pretty good argument for the tank cape as the mechanics allowed for it, but it is also a strong argument for the dps cloak because you could squeeze out a little more and prevent that 2nd/3rd breath and take out the danger entirely.

Either way, I will have the tank cloak for specific encounters, but will wear the dps cloak more often than not. If it becomes an issue where premature tank deaths are apparent, then I will swap.

[Deleted]

I can say with certainty, that 95% of our wipes during progression were not tank death related that prevented the progression. Lei Shen is a perfect example of this. Wipes were to dps falling off platforms, not executing soaks, missing balls, etc etc etc. Was pathetic really...

Lei Shen is also a perfect example of where the dps cloak wouldn't have prevented a wipe. You still need to weigh the amount of sub 1-2% wipes against the amount of wipes through tank deaths.

I have the feeling most people dismiss a lot of tank deaths because either the tank or the healer fucked up and instead of adjusting the way they gear, they just tell themselves to play better. Sure, if you and your healers play perfectly you won't need the tanking proc but everybody makes mistakes and if you have the means of covering up those mistakes you'd be a fool not to use them.

[gynshon]

Lei Shen is also a perfect example of where the dps cloak wouldn't have prevented a wipe. You still need to weigh the amount of sub 1-2% wipes against the amount of wipes through tank deaths.

I have the feeling most people dismiss a lot of tank deaths because either the tank or the healer fucked up and instead of adjusting the way they gear, they just tell themselves to play better. Sure, if you and your healers play perfectly you won't need the tanking proc but everybody makes mistakes and if you have the means of covering up those mistakes you'd be a fool not to use them.

Not necessarily. How about that extra DPS that prevents you from getting another set of ball lightnings before 2nd intermission? We had a good 7 or 8 2% wipes before we killed it. Would it have made the difference in terms of day we killed for the progression race? Probably not. But if tanks aren't dying then why not?

[Radio]

Since we raid 2 nights and tend to do our progression fairly overgeared, I'd say that all of the premature tank deaths I have experienced would not have been saved by a single instance of damage being completely absorbed.

- once on heroic Megaera I had a brainfart and had put guard on cooldown during rampage, first breath comes up and I brainfarted again by not using self heals cause I thought that I would have my guard, I died when the breath still had more ticks to go, chances are I would've blocked one tick, suffered the next tick immediately and died.
- couple of moments on heroic Horridon farm/first where on the 4th gate our DPS are distracted by pink dinosaurs and there are 2 bears, a shaman and a dinomancer on me, and both of my healers were... 50 yards away from me for some reason? I wasn't going to get through that with a single damaging ability absorbed.
- the couple of times I've fucked up on heroic Tortos bat kiting, tank cloak would never work there
- once on heroic council where I had sul (silenced), malakk (frigid assault) and marli (empowered) on me, another case where tons of medium sources of damage are rushing in at once and I hadn't adequately prepared myself at the time, the single wrath or frigid assault tick absorbed probably would not have saved my life

Those are the only fights (10m 8/13) where I've died prematurely, and I don't believe any of them would've been saved by the cloak proc. Since it simply absorbs the single killing blow and then goes on cooldown for a minute, it is very unlikely that the mistake that either you or your healers made will simply be mitigated by that split second of gained time, all of the cases where I died were fundamental errors of play.

If the proc was more like WotLK Ardent Defender, then I'd care for it more, saving you from a killing blow then applying an effect to protect you from damage for the next couple of seconds is far more relevant than absorbing a single hit.

[Zonex]

Talking about progression from 25-man tinted goggles doesn't do people progressing in 10mans any good. Fact of the matter is, in a 10m, your health pool can sustain what a mastery stacking 25man monk is trying to do (experience finding). I have done progression, and actually, I'm pretty sure i did progression in gear a bit more shitter than the rest of you. You know, what made the biggest difference? the 2 set.. my gear didn't change, my ilvl stayed pretty low too, it's just i could control it all better. Now.. what happened when i was actually doing those fights again the next week with a boat load of upgrades, that put me at the gear level, other monks started with? It was a cake walk..

Let's face it, in a 10man setting, unless you have ZERO expereince on the boss, or you dont completely trust your healers, or both, you're going to do fine going on the dps front.

I see people bringing up the notion that about 1.5% wipes.. that is a very very VERY old argument. Half the encounters we do nowadays, have phases which work in certain intervals, and have more/better dps lets take advantage of them. In ToT, the hard "tank" gibbing encounters to my recollection (during progress), were Horridon, Frost King Malakk, Megaera, Durumu, Primordius, Dark Animus, Lei Shen, and Ra-den. Now.. look at those fights closely, all of the danger phases can be handled with very easily manageable set of cooldowns (even Primo, use EB, and have sphere/HS/EH ready incase). The only analogy to this set of bosses, was Ra-den, but even then, taking 3 healers made it quite trivial.

The "tank-gibs" just don't come to 10mans as often as you think. The other raiders in a 10man group hold mor erespopnsibility for the encounter mechanics than each individual 25man player does, and thus that means they can fuck up more, which believe me.. is the vast vast VAST majority of how progression wipes take place.

Your cloak opinion maybe be valid for 25man raiders, but a 10man progress raider has a much more economical loss from taking survivability instead of so much extra dps.

[matthias9742]

Having played a DK and already gotten a preview of a better version of the cloak via purgatory, the times that proc will save you are about 1% of the time. Mostly it will be where you or your healers fucked up so badly absorbing 1 hit will not change much. Since it comes up about as much as 1-3% wipes, it becomes a matter of personal preference and I prefer to rely on my skill and damage, and IF there is an encounter that the tank cloak will be good for, I'll buy one and put it on.

Also I would hardly call the DPS a BrM brings to the table scumbagging. For my raid group I often am able to push out as much as or more DPS than my DPS raid members (I won't go into skill level atm). For our group that means shorter encounters and less healing for my healers to worry about.

Too many people in this thread talk as if you are permanently locked into your cloak decision for some silly reason. I need a picture of that taco shell girl. . .

[Deleted]

I suspect cutting edge guilds may well clear the place before getting the legendary cloak in the first place thus making some of kaiadam's points irrelevant.

Still, while undergeared, the tanking cloak will definitely be superior earlier on in the patch cycle, but towards the dying embers of the expansion I expect to see most BrMs in the dps cloak if it remains in it's current state.

[Ampere]

No, you'd still die, just one hit less of drain life (if you have like 15+ bats on you, it'll be as if it wasn't even there).

This is a big weakness in the proc, it doesn't have an "Ardent Defender" style bump back to a health % so if you die from many little attacks the cloak proc is almost worthless.

My position on the cloak has always been on how quickly we can obtain them. I'm sure that information is available now but I haven't asked around. If they take as long as the current cloaks took to get (AKA: after progression) then the DPS cloak is coming on. If we get them early, the tank cloak is the no brainer. And once farm has commenced, DPS cloak always (assuming the vengeance cap nerf goes and stays live).

I don't know why it's a debatable thing for progression oriented tanks.

You'll have the cloak in the first week of 5.4 open based on the PTR quests. There was a blue post that said they want people to be able to use these legendaries for progression. Basically just takes some "quests" on Timeless Isle and then killing the 4 new Celestial world bosses.

I'll still use the dps cape, 'cause fun > progress there, but if you're serious about SoO progression and you think the dps cape is better for it, I stand by my earlier statement - you're nuts.

It really depends on the situation and what a raid struggles with. I'm sure the Niuzao proc would save me sometimes, but my raid's problem is low dps more than me dying.

Based on the heroics we've done:
Jinrohk: doesn't matter
Horridon: I got globaled on our first kill, cloak proc might have saved me
Council: Not sure that I ever died other than an intentional wipe, raid dps being too low and frostbite were issues
Tortos: I kite bats, if they reached me the Niuzao proc wouldn't help
Megaera: Died a bit early on before I got a CD rotation, now all wipes are related to dps/healer/other tank deaths
Ji-Kun: Cloak could have been decent for soaking a big tick of infected wounds or a talon rake
Iron-Qon: I've messed up and got stunned in a tornado before, periodic storm damage would have killed me regardless of cloak
Twin Consorts: I aggroed too many little adds with no CD or stun and died, doubt the proc would help much from the many attacks

I think Horridon and Ji-Kun are the only fights that the cloak would have been noticeable on, but Horridon would have greatly benefited from the dps cloak for killing adds faster. For my guild there's almost no question the dps cloak will be more beneficial.

[Deleted]

All this cloak talk doesn't effect everyone equally. I see two people who are actually gonna be killing the bosses while undergeared and vid guides telling them what to do, that's Ginshen and Daught. Rest will most likely only kill the bosses when the gear allows them, making these concerns petty in comparison. 1-2% more or less wipes won't effect you at all as a lot more of your wipes will be to human error, not in "I made a mistake" but rather "I am not good enough to execute this mechanic".

This is not to shit on anybody, I myself am in a rank 209 guild and therefore not killing hard bosses while undergeared. And I understand the concern but truth of the matter is that it won't matter as much as you think. So grab one of each, see which ever fits you best and go with it.

TL;DR: The cloak is gonna be a much less significant contributer to kills in low-end guilds than high-end guilds. So chill.

[Ampere]

All this cloak talk doesn't effect everyone equally. I see two people who are actually gonna be killing the bosses while undergeared and vid guides telling them what to do, that's Ginshen and Daught. Rest will most likely only kill the bosses when the gear allows them, making these concerns petty in comparison. 1-2% more or less wipes won't effect you at all as a lot more of your wipes will be to human error, not in "I made a mistake" but rather "I am not good enough to execute this mechanic".

This is not to shit on anybody, I myself am in a rank 209 guild and therefore not killing hard bosses while undergeared. And I understand the concern but truth of the matter is that it won't matter as much as you think. So grab one of each, see which ever fits you best and go with it.

TL;DR: The cloak is gonna be a much less significant contributer to kills in low-end guilds than high-end guilds. So chill.

Agreed. In a more casual guild (like mine) it will come down to the question "do your tanks die a lot?" (whether from poor tanking, poor healing or both). If so, take Niuzao, if not take Xuen.

[Bryce]

Been thinking of dropping a profession for a better one than Alchemy. I'm leaning towards either BS or possibly Leatherworking for the agi fur linings. I have engineering with alchemy right now. I just don't know if the cost of LW would make up for it or if I should just go the safer route and get BS. What are your thoughts on it?

[Quotey]

Drums of Speed are the best.

[Chuupag]

Been thinking of dropping a profession for a better one than Alchemy. I'm leaning towards either BS or possibly Leatherworking for the agi fur linings. I have engineering with alchemy right now. I just don't know if the cost of LW would make up for it or if I should just go the safer route and get BS. What are your thoughts on it?

There is no "better" than alchemy. Crit and Armor Elixirs give you the best bonuses of any profession.

[Rumblefist]

Go with Blacksmithing and Alchemy. Both give you secondary stats and in my opinion, secondary stats > agi.