The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Deleted]

That was changed back in ICC when they made Taunts un-missable. Even for pets / guardians, their taunts can't miss.

I wasn't implying that they missed, I was suggesting that the same mechanic that prevents Army of the Dead and Earth Elemental from taunting bosses probably applies to the challenge mode bosses because they are the same level as raid bosses. I'd imagine all auto taunts don't work on ?? level mobs, at least those in current content, not sure if this is the case for old content. Those type of taunts are different in their mechanics because if they were the same as a normal taunt they would DR themselves and make the boss immune to taunts within seconds.

[Deleted]

Then you would be correct ^_^

[diggorey]

Front page stuff with several interesting thoughts:

Brewmasters were proving extremely strong because they could maintain Shuffle as much as they wanted and Purify a very large amount of Staggered damage. Additionally, despite being very avoidance-heavy, they also were taking very smooth damage, since Stagger blunts so much of the attack’s damage. We reduced the base Stagger amount from 30% to 25%, and reduced the bonus energy regen provided by Stance of the Sturdy Ox from +30% to +10%.

That's what we already know.

The problem with that comparison is that other tanks generally don't have a whole lot of abilities they want to use on the same resource as their active mitigation.

Think about it.

Things that use Holy Power other than SotR/WoG: (nothing)
Things that use Rage(Bear) other than SD/FR: Maul
Things that use Rage(War) other than Shield Block/Barrier: Cleave/HS (with no proc)
Things that use Frost/Unholy runes other than Death Strike: Death & Decay (with no proc), Plague Strike/Icy Touch (only used if you let diseases fall off between Outbreak).

Things that use Chi other than Purifying Brew/Blackout Kick: Guard, Level 30 Talents, Rushing Jade Wind, Breath of Fire, and indirectly (via energy) Dizzying Haze, Path of Blossoms, Transcendence: Transfer, Healing Sphere.
It’s true that monks have many resource-consuming "fun buttons," but they’re not unique in that regard. Bears, for example, are limited by both rage and time (which converts to rage). [...].

For Monks, you mention Guard, which is just as important as Blackout Kick and Purifying Brew, not some auxiliary fun/utility button, and Rushing Jade Wind, which is effectively free because it replaces a Blackout Kick. Breath of Fire and the level 30 talents are available to use for more damage, similar to Maul or SotR or Heroic Strike, or for group healing. If Healing Sphere were free, it’d replace Tiger Palm rotationally, and make them defensively GCD-limited. Dizzying Haze, Path of Blossoms, and Transcendence: Transfer are intended to be used at range, or to get to range.

As a Brewmaster, you shouldn’t be using the level 30 talents rotationally, other than perhaps against sustained magic damage, or where their group healing utility is more useful than your own survivability. We fully intend you to maximize your survivability and damage reduction while actively tanking, unless the utility provided by them is especially useful.

We said MULTIPLE times that if you limit how much chi we can have, what we are going to do? trim the fat and focus 100% of our chi on shuffle and purefying brew. Christ we been there at least half a dozen times on beta.
Every. Single. Time you guys mess with our energy regen, we left our other skills out of the rotation and focus 100% of our effort on shuffle/PB.
Great, then we’re on the same page. Other than niche situations, Shuffle, Purifying Brew (and Guard, which I assume you also are including) should be where you spend your Chi, just as a Guardian Druid uses nearly all of their rage on Savage Defense or Frenzied Regeneration, or a Protection Paladin uses nearly all of their holy power on Shield of the Righteous or Word of Glory.

The thing that has changed significantly since you last tried 11 (or 10.4) energy/sec base, is that Tiger Palm is free, so you have something to do with the extra time.

- 100% uptime on shuffle for 5 mins require 50 BoK uses or 100 chi.
- that leaves us with 55 chi to spend on other things.
If we use PB every 8 seconds that would cost about 38 chi, leaving 17 to spend on other things.
Long story short we can produce 155 chi and need 138 to keep shuffle up 100% and use PB very often.
You shouldn’t need (or usually want) to keep Shuffle up 100% of the time. You should have a limited amount of resources, that you need to intelligently distribute between Guarding, Shuffling, and Purifying. It shouldn’t be as simple as “Everyday I’m Shuffling”.

Having no wiggle room on Chi generation makes expertise HARD CAP our number one secondary stat. This is a problem. No serious tank I know is concerned with having hit/exp being valuable, but having a exp HARD CAP be number one is a little ridiculous. Before the energy change a minor tweak could have changed it.. now that a missed/dodged/parried Keg Smash is even more detrimental to survivability this quirky the hard cap will have to be met.
Can you provide a source for this? We’re skeptical that hard-capping both hit and expertise is optimal for Brewmasters.

So we've been discussing your changes.. you mentioned dropping stagger by 5%, but the new beta build is at 10%.
Yes, you are correct. We ended up reducing it all the way to 20%, not 25% as I said before. I mentioned in another thread that we're looking a lot at tank survivability and will have some more changes for you soon (tm). These are numbers adjustments, not mechanics changes.

The new rotation keeps about the same optimal usage of Purify - 85%. The difference is instead of 80% uptime of Shuffle with that, you have 75% uptime and simply never use anything but PB and BoK. Level 30 talents are never worth using for self-healing purposes, since you would be better off pushing back to 85% shuffle uptime given additional chi.
Sounds perfect. Thanks! We want Brewmasters to use the level 30 talents, but they shouldn't be rotational as they are for Mistweavers.

[Schaden]

So...we're not supposed to have 100% uptime on Shuffle? I understand if he's including times when we're not directly tanking the boss, but if he's not...umm, what? We dont want 20% parry and reducing incoming damage at all times?

[Deleted]

Deathknight (Questionable) is the only Tanking class that can currently have a permanent form of damage reduction (Or in their case, absorption).

The whole point of active Mitigation is that we aren't supposed to chain cool downs, or spend our resource in a way that gives us a 100% uptime of damage reduction / avoidance / absorption. This is solely down to them needing to take damage to prevent damage.

With the way we were, 100% Shuffle uptime while Guarding and TPing for stacks was attainable. This wasn't what the developers wanted, yet we became accustomed too. If every tank was balanced like that, fights would have to be developed around it (Making poor tanks even less desirable). This also worked the other way round, too. If Tanks were able to get 100% uptime on defensive CD's and fights weren't balanced that way, then well played Tanks would trivialise content for themselves.

Personally, I see it as a needed change. If other people see it that way too or not, it doesn't really matter currently. Best we can do is go and test it, which I will be doing shortly.

[Fudge]

Deathknight (Questionable) is the only Tanking class that can currently have a permanent form of damage reduction (Or in their case, absorption).

The whole point of active Mitigation is that we aren't supposed to chain cool downs, or spend our resource in a way that gives us a 100% uptime of damage reduction / avoidance / absorption. This is solely down to them needing to take damage to prevent damage.

I'd agree with this, except they have shuffle tied to our highest dps chi costing move.. So even when we're not trying for AM, we're still using our top dps moves, thus BoK is still a top priority. I'd like to see shuffle attached to a slightly less required move so that we could choose when to actively mitigate as opposed to not.

[Gallahadd]

Either that or they could undo the nerf to Breath of Fire, make it worth using even for Single Target. That way we can choose to either keep up with AM, using BoK or go for a more Dps route and spam BoF.

I think it's too late to start making major mechanic changes, but buffing one Brew only move shouldn't cause too many problems.

[Deleted]

The only time you really shouldn't be going for AM is when you're not directly taking damage from the boss and the OT would be taking over. During that time, we can swap stances to increase our overall damage as;

- We won't be stacking Vengeance
- We won't need the extra threat to hold the boss

I can imagine this is how we're seen to have a non-AM rotation. Just swapping out your stance when your Vengeance starts dropping low and another Tank has already taunted over. This prevents us from generating a large Stagger Stack, but again, I see it being our 'DPS Style'. Sure we can't use Keg Smash or BoF, though we do gain extra Chi from Jab to compensate.

Overall, I do agree that swapping stances is not the best way we could have it, though I can also see shoving Stagger on anything else to give us more problems than good.

It's just one of those 'Don't fix it if it isn't that broken' things.

---------- Post added 2012-09-02 at 03:07 PM ----------

Either that or they could undo the nerf to Breath of Fire, make it worth using even for Single Target.

Buffing BoF would make our AoE damage too high again, which is not what they want.
I would personally prefer if they buffed TP damage and gave it a Chi cost, like WW. Get rid of the stacking buff and turn it into our single target 'DPS go to'. Though, I can see balance issues with that too.

[Teriz]

Yeesh, reading the official forums you'd think the sky was falling. I haven't done Brewmaster yet since I'm mainly focusing on mastering Mistweaver for my guild, but is the BW nerfs really as bad as people on the official forums are making them out to be?

[Felade]

I think folks just got too used to 100% uptime. I've been messing around with my Warrior and you don't get anywhere close to 100% uptime on their Shuffle equivalent (Shield Block/Shield Barrier). You are also strongly encouraged to save all your Rage for those abilities and not use Rage for anything else (like Heroic Strike or Cleave). Fortunately, you have an ability that's just like tiger palm in that it is a spammable free attack (Devastate).

I think BMs will be balanced around higher uptime on their active mitigation, a lot like DKs. But that doesn't mean we need 100% uptime, or enough energy to generate all the Chi we could ever need for PB and still have energy left over, which is what I think a lot of folks on the official beta forum want when they say "the rotation feels very slow/boring now".

[Deleted]

I think folks just got too used to 100% uptime. I've been messing around with my Warrior and you don't get anywhere close to 100% uptime on their Shuffle equivalent (Shield Block/Shield Barrier). You are also strongly encouraged to save all your Rage for those abilities and not use Rage for anything else (like Heroic Strike or Cleave). Fortunately, you have an ability that's just like tiger palm in that it is a spammable free attack (Devastate).

I think BMs will be balanced around higher uptime on their active mitigation, a lot like DKs. But that doesn't mean we need 100% uptime, or enough energy to generate all the Chi we could ever need for PB and still have energy left over, which is what I think a lot of folks on the official beta forum want when they say "the rotation feels very slow/boring now".

The main problem isn't that you can't get 100% uptime on BK or purify all damage. The problem is that you cannot use chi for anything else, because those abilities (and guard) are too important. Most warrior abilities generate rage or are free with a cooldown. The main abilities a warrior needs to avoid in favor of defensive abilities are heroic strike and cleave, which aren't huge sacrifices, and you still get to use some with Ultimatum procs.

With a monk you have the entire lvl 30 talent set unusable because of chi costs. Breath of fire has a heavy chi cost too, and it is a very important aoe ability. This is the equivalent of a warrior having a high rage cost on thunder clap, and having to choose between thunder clap and shield block in aoe situations.

[Felade]

With a monk you have the entire lvl 30 talent set unusable because of chi costs.

Designed to be useless for us...except when we need a heal more than we need our active mitigation. Which, arguably, is almost never. GC keeps saying "we don't want the level 30 talents to be used rotationally". Another way to put that is "We want them to be worse than everything else you do except in very niche situations". If you were expecting the level 30 talents to be a Monk version of Word of Glory or Death Strike, expect to be disappointed.

Expel Harm is also essentially free (see the section below on how Energy = cooldowns) and is much more powerful than Warriors' self-healing, especially when you consider the level 30 talents.

Breath of fire has a heavy chi cost too, and it is a very important aoe ability.

It looks to me with the nerfs is that this isn't really supposed to be an important AOE ability. Its a "more damage if you feel you need it" ability. We get enough AOE from Keg Smash (equivalent to Revenge) and SCK (only thing close for Warriors is the level 60 talents). Breath of Fire is equivalent to Cleave for Warriors - something extra to do when you are more interested in damage than you are interested in your active mitigation (in other words, trash when you are overgeared/very rarely).

Look at it this way: Warriors have been spamming Cleave for AOE tanking for an entire expansion now, and with active mitigation you essentially never use it. That's pretty jarring (although, atm on live Warriors have too much Dodge and Parry for Revenge to be anywhere close to balanced at 85 and it is taking the place of Cleave right now).

This is the equivalent of a warrior having a high rage cost on thunder clap, and having to choose between thunder clap and shield block in aoe situations.

The energy system can be seen as a replacement for cooldowns (Jab essentially has a 4 second CD, for instance). Our resource is really only Chi. Capping our energy is roughly equivalent to a Warrior sitting on their Shield Slam or Revenge cooldowns. So really, we're in the same situation as Warriors. Jab/Keg Smash/SCK and other Chi generators are all essentially free (with cooldowns). Energy does get interesting with abilities like Dizzying Haze (its almost as if they extend the cooldown on our Chi generators) but they are very situational ( Dizzying Haze is mostly for the initial pull). I could see an argument for making Dizzying Haze free with a CD so it has 0 effect on our Chi generation.

[Deleted]

The level 30 row is not mean't to be used often, doing so creates a nasty hole in which you cannot get Stagger up enough.

This is exactly how they want us to play. People are just used to having 100% uptime on Shuffle + no need to worry about saving to use Guard + still having Chi left over for the level 30 talents. They are there for option usage, mostly to aid Healing in the Melee during AoE damage or when the Tank isn't taking too much damage himself.

You now have a choice;
Do I use BoK to keep up Shuffle? Do I use a Guard and potentially let Shuffle fall off for a few seconds? Can I risk letting my Stagger get a little higher to hold off a PB and get another BoK in?

It's all in the mind of the Tank. It gives us a more interesting and dynamic game play model, while getting away from the rut we have gotten into, where we can do anything / everything we wanted on demand.

[Felade]

This is exactly how they want us to play. People are just used to having 100% uptime on Shuffle + no need to worry about saving to use Guard + still having Chi left over for the level 30 talents. They are there for option usage, mostly to aid Healing in the Melee during AoE damage or when the Tank isn't taking too much damage himself.

I completely agree with this. Before the choices were easy. Now they're difficult. Not to worry, that's how Blizz wants it and how they'll balance it.

[Deleted]

Speaking of balance; Since we have seen a balance to our Energy regen, I think it is time to bring up the age old discussion of Reforging and stat weighing.

Since we have got a noticable reduction in Chi Generation, I believe (With my napkin style 'theory crafting') it inflates Haste as a more desirable stat in nearly all situations. Of course, straight Dodge / Parry will indeed be better. Though for our off stats such as Crit, Haste does seem more appealing.

I'm by no means a smart guy when it comes to these things, though I will go out and test it in different environments and see how it performs. If someone with said brains can drop some insight, please do.

[Yorgl]

Speaking of balance; Since we have seen a balance to our Energy regen, I think it is time to bring up the age old discussion of Reforging and stat weighing.

Since we have got a noticable reduction in Chi Generation, I believe (With my napkin style 'theory crafting') it inflates Haste as a more desirable stat in nearly all situations. Of course, straight Dodge / Parry will indeed be better. Though for our off stats such as Crit, Haste does seem more appealing.

I'm by no means a smart guy when it comes to these things, though I will go out and test it in different environments and see how it performs. If someone with said brains can drop some insight, please do.

Venyasure/Gothmog, a fellow French player did an amazing job doing a spreadsheet for Brewmasters.
There are a LOT of parameters you can set and it gives the character's SW. http://elitistjerks.com/f99/t129790-...iscussion/p13/

Basically it's : Agility > Expertise to HARD cap (yeah...) > Hit to cap > Haste > Crit > Parry > Dodge > Mastery for the best average DR.
The SS also shows that 2H is slightly better than 1H.

[Felade]

Venyasure/Gothmog, a fellow French player did an amazing job doing a spreadsheet for Brewmasters.
There are a LOT of parameters you can set and it gives the character's SW. http://elitistjerks.com/f99/t129790-...iscussion/p13/

Basically it's : Agility > Expertise to HARD cap (yeah...) > Hit to cap > Haste > Crit > Parry > Dodge > Mastery for the best average DR.
The SS also shows that 2H is slightly better than 1H.

This is something someone should post in the Class Balance Analysis thread - we shouldn't have to stack expertise even to the soft cap, let alone the hard cap.

[Deleted]

That spreadsheet is amazing.

BiG props to to the Guy / Girl / Werewolf for it. I'm going to have a lot of fun with it, seeing how it works etc.

[Yorgl]

This is something someone should post in the Class Balance Analysis thread - we shouldn't have to stack expertise even to the soft cap, let alone the hard cap.

About the soft cap, this is very debatable, but the hard cap, yeah I agree.
It already had been reported, GC asked for some TC supporting the need for the hard cap and an american player was kind enough to link him the SS as we, European players, couldn't.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...36?page=20#382


@Alsayyar : A tip that can be useful, the only fields that have discretes values are "2H/1H", "Enchants" and "Glyph of Guard". The others can have real values ; for example, for the statue of the Ox, it's not only 1 for "having the statue" and 0 for not having it, you can set it to, say, 0.4 to simulate the fact that the shields from the statue are 40% effective, etc...
Also, the values by default for EH/s, kegsmash/s and Guard/s assume that you use them on CD, I prefer to add 1 or 2 seconds to make it more realistic

[Deleted]

we shouldn't have to stack expertise even to the soft cap, let alone the hard cap.

The last time GC mentioned it, he asked for any evidence to back the point. In my eyes, this is it. All it takes is an un-parryable KS / BoK and all is swell.