The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Promdates]

I love using the 4p. The bonus heal when stacking a purify is amazing. It's honestly personal preference though. There is no right or wrong way of gearing for brewmasters (within reason, obv. no stacking int and spirit) when it comes to using 2p/4p/mastery/crit/balanced.

For where I'm sitting though (11/14 25H), the 4p to me is invaluable on fights past dark shaman.

[Dirtdogs]

For Flex and alts you will certainly do fine with a crit build and no 4pc. In later heroics like Thok and Malkorok (particularly blood rage) it can be of some use. Getting Normal > LFR or even flex for normal off pieces would be good. You should not strain to get the not that useful 4pc this tier it has little value in normal fights. Also the offpieces will be better itemized and have more agi/crit ect, all good stats that will out weigh the tier IMO.

[Radio]

Aka, since im mainly doing flex on alt runs/pugs(might do some normals soon if i can be arsed) i should just grab highest ilvl/best stats rather than 4set?

Secondaries don't matter quite as much (considering that a lot of siege gear forces us into haste anyway) but ilvl will almost always trump everything apart from certain warforged vs. non warforged scenarios. Simply having more stam/armour makes the largest difference considering how flexible our gearing priorities are anyway.

[Deleted]

i know this has been already answered and sorry, but i cant a proper answer

i got hc wf malkorok polearm and protectoRs/klaxxi hc weapons, is that +6 ilvl from 2h worth enough for use it or should i keep the 1h

[Promdates]

The 2h will give you more stats outright (stam, agi, crit/haste/mastery) compared to the DW. The DW option gives you more dancing steel procs though. But at +6 ilvl, I'd probably go with the 2h.

Actually, that might be slightly biased, because I prefer 2H over DW currently. It's probably due to us having 3 rogues, a WW and a Enhance.

[Orion Antares]

In general a +6 higher ilvl 2H verse a 60/40 average ilvl of your DW weapons is where the 2H is better. That ignores if you care about crit stacking pasted the DW white crit cap or if you want to try running anemic on haste.

[zurm]

In general a +6 higher ilvl 2H verse a 60/40 average ilvl of your DW weapons is where the 2H is better. That ignores if you care about crit stacking pasted the DW white crit cap or if you want to try running anemic on haste.

How does haste factor into weapon choice?

[SurrealNight]

How does haste factor into weapon choice?

Because once you hit the DW crit soft cap you have to decide if you keep running at current low levels of haste and still stacking more crit for DPS/Heal boost or do you start redirecting rating into Haste or even Mastery?

Managed to get the HC RoRo this week on an off night so think I'll hang on to HC RoRo (flipping crit and mastery procs) + TED. I have Haromm's just don't like the fact half the trinkets budget is just a raw DPS boost and doesn't add to any of our stats.

[Vasilisa]

From videos and tactics I've read Nazgrim hc seems to be quite straight forward. Are there any tips you might give me for this boss? (10 man).

[siccora]

don't bother sit on red stagger, keep shuffle up is important. try to use some CDs on execute. when your healers are in trouble use dumpen harm. try to use guard right before a execute. after execute there will be red stagger, purify that if you can. take the adds to the boss. if you're off tanking, take the shaman and kick him, maybe stun him. don't reach 4 stacks. maybe at the 10% phase.

[Ergar]

Got any tips for galakras heroic and juggernaut heroic? We pretty much already have Galakras down (35% wipe), but any tips would be useful (im tanking adds, not on tower duty).

[britishbubba]

From videos and tactics I've read Nazgrim hc seems to be quite straight forward. Are there any tips you might give me for this boss? (10 man).

If you have enough gear, you can pretty much just afk through the fight as a brewmaster as execute won't one shot you even without CDs, so just roll between DH and guard for the most part and you'll be more than fine living through the executes. If you have 4pc though you'll want to throw it on for this fight. It's one of the few fights where it's truly a strong set bonus, and not just a nice thing to get with your gear.

Got any tips for galakras heroic and juggernaut heroic? We pretty much already have Galakras down (35% wipe), but any tips would be useful (im tanking adds, not on tower duty).

For iron jugg... if you have a CD to use while soaking bombs, use it. You can pretty much just alternate between DH, Guard and FB for each wave you soak

[Leblue]

Got any tips for galakras heroic and juggernaut heroic? We pretty much already have Galakras down (35% wipe), but any tips would be useful (im tanking adds, not on tower duty).

Use Xuen if possible because he'll do more damage to galakras (has a soft enrage) than you will with RJW and adds should die quickly if you're marking a kill priority. When are you starting a raid cd rotation? We wait until 60% before we start rotating raid cooldowns and pop lust at 40% though you could certainly push that back to 70% for raid cds and 50% on bloodlust. Bloodlust should be treated like a healing cooldown. Make sure your two groups are close enough to use avert harm. Its still a raid cd :P

Iron Juggernaut is pretty simple. Use dampen Harm, Guard, and Fortifying Brew for mines (only real damage other than the cone) and just make sure you're quick on the mines. I like to take tiger's lust here to help my co-tank with a speed buff (he's a dk) making his life easier on mines and after the transition is over. You'll want to try and overlap two cds per shock pulse (there are 3) with one being a damage reduction. Again if you have a point where people are loosely stacked you can collapse during the cast for Avert Harm and AMZ.

[Ergar]

I have no idea about raid cd's yet, we only had 3 tries, but it was rather easy so we got to p2 on 2 tries i think. Is xuen really better than RWJ? Atleast Sunnier tells to get rwj for adds, if you're "downstairs".

E: Also, does juggernaut's flame vents count as an aoe effect? Got heroic warforged trinket from protectors yesturday, and i thought it would be pretty sweet for it, if it did reduce it.

[britishbubba]

I have no idea about raid cd's yet, we only had 3 tries, but it was rather easy so we got to p2 on 2 tries i think. Is xuen really better than RWJ? Atleast Sunnier tells to get rwj for adds, if you're "downstairs".

I've run RJW for all of our galakras kills. It allows you to AoE and not get locked out of stunning charges, interrupting heals, and swapping to banners and totems as fast as you should. As long as you're running two groups in the boss phase for awhile so stacks can drop, you should be fine and not need the little bit of extra damage that xuen would get you. That and not generating EB stacks whenever you're using SCK has the possibility to hurt depending on the wave.

[Leblue]

It really depends on how much his raid is struggling on the adds though. If they're not struggling, Xuen actually lines up somewhat nicely with the larger add waves while still being available for the last minute or so on Galakras when you'd pop lust and have a decent amount of vengence. Yes RJW will net you more overall damage and let you kill the adds faster, but when you're wiping on Galakras I'm assuming you're wanting to scrape for every dps bonus you can get to kill it.

Something else to keep in mind, the only adds that really take some time to kill are the bonecrushers and tidal shaman. In a lot of ways its almost needless meter padding because the smaller adds don't really matter that much. They aren't what causes your raid trouble, its the adds that actually take focusing to kill that will give you trouble. If you really need to stop and do something you can always cancel a SCK channel after you've gotten the chi to tend to the more immediate task at hand.

In a lot of ways this will come down to "What is your raid struggling on" to pick which of the two talents you want.

[cyqu]

I love using the 4p. The bonus heal when stacking a purify is amazing. It's honestly personal preference though. There is no right or wrong way of gearing for brewmasters (within reason, obv. no stacking int and spirit) when it comes to using 2p/4p/mastery/crit/balanced.

For where I'm sitting though (11/14 25H), the 4p to me is invaluable on fights past dark shaman.

4p did 1.1mil healing my last Heroic garrosh kill, 38% was overhealing. pretty meh imo.

[Promdates]

4p did 1.1mil healing my last Heroic garrosh kill, 38% was overhealing. pretty meh imo.

You're in a 10m, where you will get weaker hits, and probably won't have as high of a stagger dot that I would. In which cases, your 4p will do less healing than what mine would. Personally speaking though, I've had the 4p be as high as 63% over healing, but still do 10% of the healing (malkorok 25H) and as low as 20% over heal. It just depends on how you use it and what setting you're tanking on.

If you think it's "pretty meh", perhaps you should just use no tier and all offset items. Cause the 2p is considerably worse than the 4p.

[cyqu]

You're in a 10m, where you will get weaker hits, and probably won't have as high of a stagger dot that I would. In which cases, your 4p will do less healing than what mine would. Personally speaking though, I've had the 4p be as high as 63% over healing, but still do 10% of the healing (malkorok 25H) and as low as 20% over heal. It just depends on how you use it and what setting you're tanking on.

If you think it's "pretty meh", perhaps you should just use no tier and all offset items. Cause the 2p is considerably worse than the 4p.

Yea, I really don't know how much better it converts in 25man. Was just using because we solo healed heroic garrosh. Will probably end up switching over for warforge pieces and what not.
The 2p is laughable though.

[SurrealNight]

Yea, I really don't know how much better it converts in 25man.

Looked at our Malk kill where I solo tank BR and it was 3 mil healing (almost 10% of healing done) with 45% overheal. On lighter hitting fights it pretty much does jack squat cause I don't purify that much now days outside of progression fights.