The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[britishbubba]

Interesting that people use HE so often. I think it's pretty much garbage and I think I've only actually used it for one kill and that was Paragons, and looking back I'd much rather have Dampen for Ka'roz or Diffuse for Fiery Edge.
I know I toyed around with it when working on Spoils but having Dampen on the Mogu boss specials feels much more useful.

Maybe I'm just thinking about it in the wrong way.

It just depends on how you're using cooldowns really. HE doesn't overheal very often, and there's a lot of fights where there's things you *could* DH... but you can also just guard those things. If there's not more than one thing hitting hard every 30 seconds you don't really need more than guard, and in that case HE is more useful since it won't ever be a full overheal, and when you couple it with our 4pc it can cause you to have a very potent heal between the purify proc and HE.

I know in 10m that it's often more benificial to run HE as it causes my healers to have to pay even less attention to me. Between Beacon transfers, Chi Wave, EH, HE and our 4pc, BrM doesn't need much attention in 10m at all. There's some fights where I've found DH to be better (malkorok and juggernaut are the main ones) but it doesn't really feel all that strong when you can just guard most big hits anyway.

[Deleted]

Can't remember any progress boss where I ran with HE honestly. It just doesn't impact anything enough to be worthwhile IMO.

[Promdates]

It ends up being between 5-10% of my total healing, and about generally a 20-40% over heal. There often isn't much you NEED Dampen Harm or Diffuse Magic for, save a couple of fights.

[Ailylia]

DH and DM are about lowering damage spikes. Overall they may be less impactful when looking at the long view, but in the reality of things it won't save your life as much as having either of the other talents. That and I don't think a lot of tanks (especially 25m tanks who don't have to concern themselves as much about it) realize the offensive potential of certain cooldowns. Use DM and you can AOE the slimes on dark shamans for example. Use DH and you can stand in the bad on purpose on annihilate on garrosh to increase your vengeance to help blow him up.

The long and the short of it is, in my opinion, HE just pads your healing meters and might make it slightly easier for healers but it will hardly ever change the overall outcome of a fight. DM and DH can save a pull in a pinch.

[kaiadam]

HE just pads your healing meters

A heal that goes off when your hp falls below a certain threshold or if you're using a survival ability is considered padding?

HE is the go-to default talent in the tier unless there's an obvious advantage to be gained from dampen or diffuse imo. I consider the two active talents to be cds you plan to use during the fight - on stacks of electrostatic charge or soaking garrosh annihilates, etc. They are almost never good 'oh shit' cds. If you can't premeditate their use though, HE is the talent that will save your life more.

[SurrealNight]

Agree with above I like DH and in ToT it had countless uses but there are a lot less "tank killer" mechanics in SoO mostly just junk there to enforce a tank swap. For DH the only things I can think of are:
Iron Jugg: Soaking mines or boss hits around 3rd debuff stack. HE is probably fine on this too though.
Haromm: When taking your 4-5th stack though Diffuse Magic could serve same purpose.
Nazgrim: Execute when Guard is on CD.
Malkorok: Blood Rage solo
Siegecrafter: Electrostatic charge.
Garrosh: Annihilates

Think I have HE loaded for all but the above normally.

[Radio]

Immerseus: DM for the odd 2 stack corrosive
Protectors: DM for extending my mark of anguish tanking to extremes
Norushen: DH for taking 3-4+ stack unleashed angers
Sha: HE because there's no point taking DM or DH
Galakras: DM on early heroic kills for easing the fire dot, now use HE on farm
Iron Jugg: DH popped on first 3rd stack Ignite, following 2 charges used on first two mines
Shamans: DH for taking the edge off of 3 frostorm bolts/falling ashes
Nazgrim: DH for execute sans guard
Malkorok: DH for blood rage
Spoils: HE because... yeah
Thok: DH for taking the edge off of high panic stacks
Siegecrafter: DH for electrostatic
Paragons: HE because it's a joke on normal
Garrosh: DM for two annihilates per transition, could use DH for three but no fuss

[Totaltotemic]

Personally I've always found DH to be unbearably useless unless there's a specific mechanic you're looking to avoid with it and you simply can't just Guard it for whatever reason. The only reason it was widely used prior to 5.4 was because HE was pretty awful, but now that it's not it's pretty clearly better than DH unless you're specifically trying to get out of something with DH.

[Ergar]

Only fights where i've taken other than HE (out of the first 9hc bosses) are:

Immerseus, DM for corrosive blast
Nazgrim, DH for executes (could prolly take HE, if i would pay more attention to cooldowns)
Malkorok, DH for Bloodrage

[Ergar]

Just a random question: Does keg smash not count as a single target spell, to something like Galakras healing totems? Noticed it yesturday, when i kegsmashed the totem, and it didnt take any damage from it. Think the same has happened on other bosses, allthough i can't remember which ones.

[Totaltotemic]

Just a random question: Does keg smash not count as a single target spell, to something like Galakras healing totems? Noticed it yesturday, when i kegsmashed the totem, and it didnt take any damage from it. Think the same has happened on other bosses, allthough i can't remember which ones.

Keg Smash is classified as an AoE, see Dark Animus for the perfect example.

[Sunnydee]

Is anyone out there still Using power strike?

Tried it out again after few months of Ascension, felt almost smoother (allthough only did on dummy w/ 5 purify a minute and a 5man)

Is this talent underrated or just plain bad overall?

[Totaltotemic]

Personally I'm not sure why anyone of any spec would ever use Power Strikes over Chi Brew. The latter has far more control over what you get to do with the chi and when, and that's even completely ignoring the extra EB (which, although not that valuable, is still something). Power Strikes needs a 15-18 CD to be useful, 20 is far too long and gets way too close to Chi Brew's value to be any good.

[Deleted]

I personaly love power strikes. At 5k5 haste it gives me more chi than ascension allowing me to have ridiculous amount of shuffle. Useful for some boss phases where you cant hit anything but stil take dmg (terrace dream world of garrosh comes to mind). And on every boss, this allows me to focus more on CD management, positioning, etc. But thats because I am fairly knew to tanking my monk at a decent lvl. I tried chi brew for paragons and sticked with it a while. I really like it, but PS allows me to passively improve my focus on the fight so...

[Promdates]

Having the extra chi slot is really helpful, if you're really having issues with having the chi to do stuff then PS is more than adequate. Generally though, people take Ascension for the 5th chi slot to bank chi on a consistent basis.

[Sunnydee]

Having the extra chi slot is really helpful, if you're really having issues with having the chi to do stuff then PS is more than adequate. Generally though, people take Ascension for the 5th chi slot to bank chi on a consistent basis.

well i rarerly hit that fifth chi. happens "sometimes" when i know i need to bank some. but generally i just BoK at 3 and always keep 1 backup for purify. think il try PS next reset in raid and see how it goes

[Promdates]

If you bank 2, it gives you the option of being able to purify or guard depending on the situation. That way you're always safe and prepared for anything that comes.

[SurrealNight]

If you bank 2, it gives you the option of being able to purify or guard depending on the situation. That way you're always safe and prepared for anything that comes.

Agree I doubt I'll undo Ascension for any fight until/unless they change those talents around again. I like having 2 Chi banked and 3 slots to play with and not worry about wasting one or energy capping on accident. Malk being able to store up 5 Chi right before Blood Rage is a bonus to.

The extra EB from Chi Brew is meh and Power Strikes just feels to sporadic and adds another thing to track to use properly. Maybe I'm just lazy but something to be said about reducing the number of buffs/debuffs/CD's you have to follow while tanking when possible.

[Deleted]

Yeah, you might convince me to try ascension again talking all sexy about it. How much haste do you think is needed to ensure shuffle decent duration (I tried it las night on garrosh, and between the purifies and guards I sometimes had shuffle fall off which never ever happened before with PS). I have 6300 haste. And doesn't feel like enough. I'm rocking a balanced setup with 10k mastery UNbuffed, and 8k8 crit and exp hardcap.

Should I lose some crit and/or mastery to make my haste go up to enable an ascencion chi to better manage chi banking and CD usage ?


I only cleaned SoO NM on monk this week, in 2 nights (one dedicated to garrosh since pugs...) but I have 11/14 heroic paladin tank/dps.

So if you can give me some insight on this talent line to begin heroics next week @ 555ilvl and 4pc, I'll take it into consideration since monk is proving more more fascinating to play as tank


armory : http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...%A8le/advanced

no logs ;'( because pugs and lazy

[Dirtdogs]

As long as you are not spamming PB and you are not energy capping you should have no problems keeping up shuffle w/ Asc > CB and PS. It has been the clear winner for a long time now and most (BrM) monks use it every fight.

You could shift some mastery into crit and haste if you don't feel like you need the suriv for your specific fights on monk.