The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Asmalya]

Thats really weird. I've literally never had this happen apart from once on stone guards and that was because he attacked the one i wasn't attacking and i hadn't keg smashed yet so he out aggro'd me..

Thats the only reason why i'd see Xuen tanking a raid boss, also you have only mentioned one boss, are you sure that the boss isn't immune to taunts? such as Army etc

No two bosses. Blade lord and Amber-shaper. And i never use Xuen right at the start. Esp since i start second most the time so i use him when its my part tanking so i have more ap to boost him.
I honestly have no glue what happened.
All i did see was the boss suddently having Xuen in his target and thats not something that should happen.
And no it was not only short for some random ability and then switched back.
They both stayed on him.

Very strange.
Never happened before from what i can tell too so ya..

[gatecrasher]

I can confirm that he is taunting. Last night during Stone Guard he was stealing agrro when I had a good lead.

[Valsh]

I'm not entirely sure he's taunting, you can see the provoke debuff when he actually does taunt. Sometimes he just spawns with equal level threat to the target that's tanking(only noticed this when I'm tanking my self), just have your co-tank taunt or let the boss kill xuen - not a big deal. Happens mostly on multi-target fights, stone guards/elegon/wind lord. Haven't seen it happen on windlord yet.

You can filter worldoflogs reports to show the amount of provokes cast over a night and which targets he hit with it.

[Deleted]

If you read Xuen tooltip in spellbook it says as Brewmaster Xuen will taunt the target

[Deleted]

I had a couple of issues with Xuen on stone guards but this is fairly easily explained when you consider the level of vengeance you have and the fact that you inherit dogs from the other tanks on the first round of taunts that have very little threat on them (thanks to the reduced damage they take when not grouped). I just held back Xuen untill I had tanked all of the dogs at least once and I had no problems after that. Stone Guards is just one of those twitchy fights where threat can be hard in the first 30 secs thanks to the mechanics and a bit of rng.

[SurrealNight]

To avoid this bug the obvious thing to do is unglyph Jab and unequip your weapon and re-equip it. To think I've been running it for a few weeks without noticing the Stacks.

F me no wonder it felt like my EB stacks generated faster with DW instead of 2H. Still feels like it does more DPS but I haven't done any real testing (have 489's for both options).

[seigert]

Could anyone tell where I can see how many energy are generated per second? Or give any formula to convert my current haste rating into energy/sec?

[siccora]

yes, you can move your mouse over "energy regen" and you see the energyreg/sec

[Promdates]

Could anyone tell where I can see how many energy are generated per second? Or give any formula to convert my current haste rating into energy/sec?

I know for WW it's 10% of haste = +en/sec (15.25% haste = +1.52 energy/sec). It could be the same for BrM. I'm not logged in to double check it though.

[Grubjuice]

Questions i have (mostly for trash fights since i am still in running dungeons, not raids):

1) what is going on when I use Summon Black Ox Statue right next to a pack of mobs? It looks like the mobs are aggro'd to the Statue, not to me. I am not exactly sure what's going on and how to take advantage of this.

2) is there a macro that can recognize my black ox statue as the target of Provoke as in: /cast [@Black Ox Statue] Provoke?

3) I was running with Glyph of Breath of Fire under the assumption that even if the disorient is almost immediately broken by my DPS, it at least resets the swing timers and casting of trash mobs giving me that fraction of a second I need to set up leg sweep or shuffle, is that a fair assumption or is it basically useless for pve tanking?

4) Should i put Guard up right away at the start of a trash pull? or should i prioritize getting Shuffle up within the first 4 global cooldowns and use guard after i have had a chance to Tiger punch a few times? (Usually my trash pulls are Clash > Keg Shash > Breath of Fire (glyphed) (>Leg Sweep) > Jab (Power Strikes) > Rushing Jade Wind (shuffle) > SCK/SCK etc. so Guard often does not get put up for several seconds).

[SurrealNight]

-Snip-

1) Did you Glyph the statue? If so it has it's own personal taunt which I find more annoying than helpful. If not it will "proximity agro" either way and will agro mobs that see it as if it was a party member standing there.
2) You have to use the /target Black Ox Statue /targetlasttarget I believe to do that. If anyone has figured out the [@ X] name that works I haven't seen it posted.
3) I'm not sure about the swing timer thing but probably correct and yes it will interrupt casting so it's not a bad Glyph for trash packs and maybe some heavy add fights (Wind Lord?).
4) I usually put up Shuffle first, it's hard to beat 20% avoidance/20% Stagger as a priority and if you are trying to do TPx3 that is a lot of GCD's before you have that mitigation up. The changes in 5.1 will make this a bit more forgiving but I'll even go so far as to make my first Guard without full TP. Depends how hard you plan to get hit initially.

I'm still using Power Strikes so I have both up within 3 GCD's though usually (Guard is off the GCD so you can pop it the second you have 2 Chi generated).

[SSHA778]

Could anyone tell where I can see how many energy are generated per second? Or give any formula to convert my current haste rating into energy/sec?

10.00 * (1 + haste%) = energy_per_second, so if you have 15% haste, then you will generate 11.5 energy per second.

Alternatively, just look under the melee section of your character traits and you'll see it listed there.

1) what is going on when I use Summon Black Ox Statue right next to a pack of mobs? It looks like the mobs are aggro'd to the Statue, not to me. I am not exactly sure what's going on and how to take advantage of this.

Proximity aggro. It's the same reason why mobs run to you if you get too close.

2) is there a macro that can recognize my black ox statue as the target of Provoke as in: /cast [@Black Ox Statue] Provoke?

#showtooltip
/targetexact Black Ox Statue
/cast Provoke
/targetlasttarget

Doesn't require a target change or anything, as it instantly reacquires your last target. If you don't have a Black Ox Statue up, it should just taunt your current target, but I haven't verified that.

3) I was running with Glyph of Breath of Fire under the assumption that even if the disorient is almost immediately broken by my DPS, it at least resets the swing timers and casting of trash mobs giving me that fraction of a second I need to set up leg sweep or shuffle, is that a fair assumption or is it basically useless for pve tanking?

The disorient will generally break ASAP, but it will stop any casts that are going on (sometimes it doesn't work on your current target). Save it for later in the casts to get the maximum effect, although be wary if the entire pack consists of casters, because you'll synchronize their cast times. No clue on swing timers, as the duration shouldn't last longer than a swing timer.

4) Should i put Guard up right away at the start of a trash pull? or should i prioritize getting Shuffle up within the first 4 global cooldowns and use guard after i have had a chance to Tiger punch a few times? (Usually my trash pulls are Clash > Keg Shash > Breath of Fire (glyphed) (>Leg Sweep) > Jab (Power Strikes) > Rushing Jade Wind (shuffle) > SCK/SCK etc. so Guard often does not get put up for several seconds).

You use Guard in the manner that makes you easiest to heal; it doesn't matter when that is. If your health drops like a rock at the start of the pull, then that's a good sign you should use Guard earlier, even though it won't have as much AP tied to it. If it doesn't, then there isn't a desperate need to put it up ASAP.

[Grubjuice]

Thanks guys, i did not realize Guard was off-GCD but i should have considering WoG, and Shield Barrier and Savage Defense are, , ,

I will try to get into the habit of taking advantage of that fact.

[Otora]

So I have been going with the typical stat priority with mastery and stamina at the bottom and Haste>Crit at the top. With this priority I felt like my mitigation was not very good and I had times where I would nearly die or would die and it was stressing my healers out pretty badly. I decided to switch to the mastery/stam build and in my MV and HoF runs last night I had very little problem with near death experiences and my overall mitigation seemed great. Any thoughts?

[Grubjuice]

probably since your gear is low quality (as everyone's is because we are in the first patch of the expansion) you simply need more effective health which is what stamina and mastery provide. Stamina and Mastery will allow you survive bigger hits despite poorer gear. But in the long run you take more damage because of less active mitigation.

at higher gears levels haste and crit will become more important as effective health becomes less of a concern.

[SurrealNight]

Any thoughts?

Normal or HM? I haven't felt the need for Mastery/Stam on any normal mode encounter so far. I'm going to take a guess that your Guard/Shuffle/PB/EB use is lacking. Stam/Mastery are passive mitigation stats so if your active abilities are deficient you would see an improvement stacking them but really need to see if you have some deeper underlying issues. I'm not even using the stam/armor meta.

Doing fine on first HoF boss as well with Haste>Crit and pulling > 65K, lazy guild DPS just isn't high enough to down him last phase last week.

[Otora]

Normal or HM? I haven't felt the need for Mastery/Stam on any normal mode encounter so far. I'm going to take a guess that your Guard/Shuffle/PB/EB use is lacking. Stam/Mastery are passive mitigation stats so if your active abilities are deficient you would see an improvement stacking them but really need to see if you have some deeper underlying issues. I'm not even using the stam/armor meta.

Doing fine on first HoF boss as well with Haste>Crit and pulling > 65K, lazy guild DPS just isn't high enough to down him last phase last week.

Well we did a MV clear and did dogs on heroic and the rest on normal, then HoF for the first 2 bosses and we have cleared 4/6 in HoF so far. My typical uptime on Shuffle is 95% or higher. But I am also only at a 472 iLevel

[SurrealNight]

But I am also only at a 472 iLevel

That would explain it. Kind of a low item level for this far into the tier so Heroics + deep into HoF will probably stress your EH pretty bad. Probably can start bleeding back some stam/master as you get more drops and you'll enjoy the boost to haste+chi generation.

I'm kind of the opposite, 9th best geared BrM on server and I just killed Will on normal last week... Itching for something that can stress out i485 finally!

[Ahsakura]

This is a bit different and much lower level than has been discussed, but as I'm approaching 90 here I'm trying to decide what professions to go with. I'm 100% sure I'm going Alchemy but not sure on the second. The guide says Blacksmithing is 2nd best but I'm torn between that, engineering, and leatherworking.

Any input on professions from those that have been raiding and such?

[SurrealNight]

Any input on professions from those that have been raiding and such?

Depends on your alt-itis. I'm LW + BS and the static rewards are great (not having to buy leg enchants!) but not having time to level a second character enough I miss not being able to fuel either profession myself.

If this is your only 90 and your not in a hard core progression guild (which I assume you aren't or you'd have RAF"d day one) than I would vote for LW + Skinning.