The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Leblue]

That's fair enough, I don't mind it not being worth keeping up single target, I'm just glad it'll be worth using AoE. Although I still want a perk/ability added that gives us a chance to proc a free Breath of Fire when using something single target, maybe Blackout Kick or Jab.

Am I the only one that kinda wants Chi Explosion removed? High Nature damage, Shuffle, Stagger clear and it's an AoE. Basically for any fight where it's specced all you REALLY need to do build 4 chi>Explode>Repeat, MAYBE throw in a few Guards for the big attacks. The only way I can see it not being a must pick for almost all situations is if the damage on it is a fair bit less than Blackout Kick, making it only a good choice when you're going to be heavily AoEing.

It requires 4 chi to get the aoe benefit out of it which is probably not sustainable for long periods unless you've built up enough shuffle to allow yourself to spam it. Shuffle lasts 6 seconds, keg smash is an 8 second cooldown and requires 40 energy, and you need two jabs in that time frame to use the four chi efffect requiring 120 energy per 6 seconds to not be shuffle negative while spamming this. My bigger gripe with it are more that there's potential for a chi to be wasted if the 4 chi isn't strong enough (measuring its value against a BoK + Breath of Fire) since you don't always need to clear your stagger, especially if you're not actively tanking anything. Other than that though, this could turn into another (more sneakily disguised) trap for newer players who aren't looking at it critically that they won't be able to sustain this for longer periods of time and should have a solid shuffle bank built up (which for most fights isn't actually that difficult).

I think it has a place as an interesting talent that could be strong and allow some skillful play to make it really shine, but I also worry about it being a trap for newer players like Breath of Fire currently is.

[Lovestar]

ChiEx grants 2s Shuffle + additional 2s per Chi consumed, so wouldn't that be 10s Shuffle per 4 Chi used?

[The Madgod]

They list it as a baseline 12% AP, so if it follows how they've done things before, that's 1.5% AP per 1 mastery skill, or 1% per 400 rating at the current rates, compared to 1% crit per 600 rating. That's pretty comparable, given that %AP won't apply to your weapon's base damage.

I'm just going to take some stats from a Brewmaster's armory page

Current attack power: 42729
Current critical strike: 47.69%

Breath of fire as depicted on wowhead says thus:

Breathes fire causing 1401 to 1785 (+ 36.26% of Attack power) damage to all targets in front of you within 0 yards.

If Dizzying Haze is on the target, they will burn for an additional 2052 (+ 65.04% of Attack power) damage over 8 sec.

Let's ignore the DoT. With those numbers, with Dizzying Haze up, the attack would deal...

(0.3626 * 42729) = 15493.5

16894.5 to 17278.5 damage

On average, over 100 hits, that equals about...

16894.5 * 100 = 1689450
17278.5 * 100 = 1727850

2(0.4769 * 1689450) = 1611397
2(0.4769 * 1727850) = 1648023
0.5231 * 1689450 = 883751
0.5231 * 1727850 = 903838

1648023 + 903838 = 2551861
1611397 + 883751 = 2495148

So that's 2,495,148 to 2,551,861 damage, roughly.

With 1% additional attack power, the maths would be:

42729*1.01 = 43156.29
1401+(0.3626*43156.29) = 17049.47
1785+(0.3626*43156.29) = 17433.47

2(0.4769*(100*17049.47)) = 1626178.45
2(0.4769*(100*17433.47)) = 1662804.37

0.5231*(100*17049.47) = 891857.78
0.5231*(100*17433.47) = 911944.82

1626178.45+891857.78 = 2518036.23
1662804.37+911944.82 = 2574749.19

so 2,518,036 to 2,574,749 damage.

With 1% additional crit, the maths are:

16894.54
17278.54 (from earlier, but two SI instead of one past the decimal, for parity)

2(0.4869*(100*16894.54)) = 1645190.31
2(0.4869*(100*17278.54)) = 1682584.23

0.5131*(100*16894.54) = 866858.85
0.5131*(100*17278.54) = 886561.89

1645190.31+866858.85 = 2512049.16
1682584.23+886561.89 = 2569146.12

So 2,512,049 to 2,569,146 damage.

That's slightly lower than the additional 1% AP. For crit to pull ahead in damage dealt in this specific case, mastery would need to provide 1% attack power at a bit over 600 rating. Skills or components of skills that scale better with AP would make that rating requirement go higher (like the DoT portion of BoF).

Suffice it to say, unless crit can provide additional damage via a new passive or we see some significant reduction to AP scaling, you're right. Mastery will likely be the go-to stat for brewmasters as far as the spec stands right now with the information we have.

[Totaltotemic]

Suffice it to say, unless crit can provide additional damage via a new passive or we see some significant reduction to AP scaling, you're right. Mastery will likely be the go-to stat for brewmasters as far as the spec stands right now with the information we have.

Ah but if you dump everything into mastery you'll have very, very little crit with Agi no longer providing it, leaving you with practically zero Elusive Brew. This is the WoD stat model at work, stacking one stat at the expense of the others will likely just get you killed, assuming damage taken is actually meaningful this time around.

[The Madgod]

Ah but if you dump everything into mastery you'll have very, very little crit with Agi no longer providing it, leaving you with practically zero Elusive Brew. This is the WoD stat model at work, stacking one stat at the expense of the others will likely just get you killed, assuming damage taken is actually meaningful this time around.

Also true. Of course, we won't have reforging so extra stats will come from gems and enchants. We won't see the large stat differences we have now.

As well, since damage will be less spiky in Warlords due to the healing changes, shuffle might prove to be less impactful than it is now, making EB more powerful a defensive tool in comparison.

As far as pure DPS is concerned, at least, mastery seems to be the winner right now. That's all the theorycrafting proved, roughly speaking.

- - - Updated - - -

That's fair enough, I don't mind it not being worth keeping up single target, I'm just glad it'll be worth using AoE. Although I still want a perk/ability added that gives us a chance to proc a free Breath of Fire when using something single target, maybe Blackout Kick or Jab.

Am I the only one that kinda wants Chi Explosion removed? High Nature damage, Shuffle, Stagger clear and it's an AoE. Basically for any fight where it's specced all you REALLY need to do build 4 chi>Explode>Repeat, MAYBE throw in a few Guards for the big attacks. The only way I can see it not being a must pick for almost all situations is if the damage on it is a fair bit less than Blackout Kick, making it only a good choice when you're going to be heavily AoEing.

Speaking of perks, since they've yet to be quoted here...

All

Enhanced Roll - Your Roll now travels the same distance in 25% less time.
Enhanced Transcendence - The cooldown of Transcendence is lowered by 35 sec, and Transcendence: Transfer is now instant cast.
Empowered Blackout Kick - Damage of Blackout Kick increased by 20%.

Brewmaster

Improved Breath of Fire - Your Breath of Fire spell now always applies its damage over time effect to the target.
Improved Guard - Guard now has 2 charges.
Improved Dizzying Haze - Dizziying Haze no longer has an energy cost.
Empowered Keg Smash - Damage of Keg Smash increased by 20%.
Improved Elusive Brew - Elusive Brew now increases dodge chance by an additional 5%.
Improved Stance of the Sturdy Ox - Increases the Stamina bonus of Stance of the Sturdy Ox by 20%.

Those are all looking pretttty gooooooood. Guard having two charges seems especially nice.

As far as chi explosion is concerned, I don't mind it as much, but I would prefer to see it be an exclusively AoE-fight thing, rather than better than two BoK's single target. As well, it's slightly worrying that you may have to use all of your chi (depending on your talent choice) to use this to its full potential. There's some benefit for banking chi and this does take away from that somewhat.

[Rockets]

Yeah, but BoF is kind of an exception; it's a pure AP ability, where most of our attacks (read: autos and all the strikes) use the normalized monk damage formula, which includes weapon DPS.

Let's say your example monk is using the HWF Immerseus staff, 2/2 upgraded, and otherwise has the same stats you listed.

Current attack power: 42729
Current critical strike: 47.69%
Current weapon dps: 9773.2

KS base damage with a 2h weapon is very simple; it's 10 * (weapon DPS + AP/14).
This is 10 * (9773.2 + 42729/14) = 128253, of which 97732 is from the weapon and 30520 is from the AP.

Mastery:
Getting 600 rating for a 1% AP increases the AP component of the base damage by 1.5%, an increase of 457.8 damage for ~0.36% of the total.
600 rating is also 0.625% stagger. In combat you start with 50% stagger from stance + shuffle + base mastery + raid buff, so 600 mastery is worth 1.25% burst damage reduction.

Crit:
With the legendary metas gone and no amplify stat, I'd guess we're going back 2.06x crits using the old meta gems; each 600 crit rating is then worth 1.06% of the base damage.
1% crit also increases EB uptime by about 1%. One of the levelling perks they added will boost EB up to 35% dodge like it was in T14, so 1% crit is worth about 0.35% dodge.

So overall, we get:
+600 mastery is worth 0.36% base DPS and +1.25% burst DR.
+600 crit is worth +1.06% base DPS and +0.35% avoidance.

Measured like this, they're actually weighted pretty equally; they're both worth ~1.4%-1.5% total to DPS and DR. Neither the avoidance from EB nor the DR from stagger suffer diminishing returns, so that's equal too. So to some extent you can say "they're both worth about the same, take mastery if you want more damage reduction and crit if you want more DPS".

...but avoidance is still the worst defensive stat around. Maybe that'll change with the new healing model, but I kind of doubt it.

[Totaltotemic]

1% crit also increases EB uptime by about 1%.

Not really no. In a world where 10% crit is the baseline and you get none from Agility, going from 10% crit to 11% crit is a 10% increase in EB.. not 1%.

[Rockets]

Not really no. In a world where 10% crit is the baseline and you get none from Agility, going from 10% crit to 11% crit is a 10% increase in EB.. not 1%.

I'm not measuring uptime by seconds, I'm measuring it as "what fraction of the fight is it up". Going from 10% crit to 11% crit means you're going from 10% uptime to 11% uptime. This is what I meant by it not having diminishing returns. In a 10 minute fight, with 10% crit you will get about 1 minute of EB uptime -- 10% of the fight. At 11% crit you will have EB up for 11% of the fight. So with EB now being 35% dodge, each 1% crit is worth an average of 1% * 35% = 0.35% dodge over the course of the fight.

[The Madgod]

With 100 auto attacks, 1% more crit = 1 more proc of EB. at 3 seconds per auto attack, that's 3 stacks every 300 seconds, or 1% more EB uptime overall.

[Totaltotemic]

Going from 10% crit to 11% crit means you're going from 10% uptime to 11% uptime. This is what I meant by it not having diminishing returns.

Oh percentage points instead of percentage, oops. I see what you mean.

An interesting addition though is that you're correct in that avoidance and stagger don't have diminishing returns... but they do scale exponentially.

See, you did the Stagger calculation with this in mind, 49.375/50 is 1.25, but you forgot that dodge is not the only kind of avoidance there is and it doesn't start from 0. For example, my character sheet has 8.02% parry and 22.19% dodge. I forget what the miss chance is at the moment, but I'll say it's probably somewhere around the 25% of total dodge we'd lose from Agi due to the change, so let's just call it 30% avoidance base, and 69.65%/70% is 0.995% less total damage taken. So the 1% crit is about 1% less overall damage taken, which is obviously inferior to the 1.25% burst damage taken, but not quite as low as 0.35%.

[Leblue]

ChiEx grants 2s Shuffle + additional 2s per Chi consumed, so wouldn't that be 10s Shuffle per 4 Chi used?

My bad, I didn't catch that part and was assuming old model of this where it was only BoK amount of shuffle (need sleep). I do hope its more worthwhile in aoe vs single targets otherwise it should just pretty much replace BoK if you take the talent. I'll look more into this when I've actually gotten some sleep though zzz

[Lovestar]

My bad, I didn't catch that part and was assuming old model of this where it was only BoK amount of shuffle (need sleep). I do hope its more worthwhile in aoe vs single targets otherwise it should just pretty much replace BoK if you take the talent. I'll look more into this when I've actually gotten some sleep though zzz

Yeah I'm waiting for someone who's Good At Math™ to explain what you're actually supposed to do with ChiEx.

Like, I can see that at 2 Chi you're break-even with a normal BOK Shuffle (6s / 2 Chi vs. 6s / 2 Chi) and then it deteriorates from there, so that for 4 Chi you're worse off on Shuffle duration (12s / 4 Chi vs. 10s / 4 Chi).

But you're also getting a free automatic Purify, which you sort-of have to just take, since banking Chi becomes impossible with ChiEx (you can pool until 4, but at that point you're going back to zero if you want to keep Energy from capping without wasting Chi).

ChiEx seems to heavily encourage taking Ascension so you can at least keep 1 Chi sitting around for an emergency "real" Purify (since ChiEx will be constantly helpfully randomly purifying off green Stagger dots with a pool of like 20,000 damage) or be 1 GCD away from Guard at all times. Not that this really changes what's already standard-practice, but... whoo, another reason to love Ascension I guess.

OK so actually, on reflection, it kind of seems like you can ignore the Purify part and just boil this down to "It's BOK but it has 20% shorter Shuffle uptime in exchange for AoE damage". The Purify part is like a casino game.

I mean yeah, you can just keep doing 2-Chi ChiEx for max Shuffle uptime but a) meh and b) this negates the huge benefit of having 2-3 Chi sitting ready at a moment's notice for Purify & Guard. So I'm interpreting that you're better off just pooling to 4 (5 with Ascend) and then dumping to minimize the windows of time where you're caught with no Chi.

O_O maybe I'm missing something but this talent sounds kind of "eh?" the more I stare at it. Like, at first I assumed it would have all these clever ways of gaming it, but then, most of those actually sound like a stupid idea since this doesn't remove the need for either Real Purify or Guard.

Following a cycle of 2 Chi > ChiEx leaves you with nothing banked and basically it's just BOK, but green. Moving up to 3 Chi > ChiEx requires you to first generate the 3rd pip, then dump (on-GCD...), and you could have done this with BOK + Purify anyway (in this case you're basically gaining 2s to Shuffle as a 'consolation prize' for Purifying). Moving up to 4 Chi is just less-efficient use of Chi than 2x BOK, unless you actually need the AoE damage.

Hm. Maybe what you actually want with ChiEx is Chi Brew, letting you follow an 'efficient' 2 Chi > ChiEx spam cycle safe in the knowledge you can insta-Guard or Purify if an emergency sweeps in. As long as your emergencies politely wait 45 seconds before occurring.

>.< ... uh. Yeah. The more I think about this one, the more it just sounds awkward as hell. But I'm Slow™ so hopefully someone will explain what I'm missing.

[Deleted]

ChiEx seems to heavily encourage taking Ascension so you can at least keep 1 Chi sitting around for an emergency "real" Purify (since ChiEx will be constantly helpfully randomly purifying off green Stagger dots with a pool of like 20,000 damage) or be 1 GCD away from Guard at all times. Not that this really changes what's already standard-practice, but... whoo, another reason to love Ascension I guess.

Windwalkers are getting +1 Chi as a leveling perk, so who knows if it's even included in Ascension anymore. I guess they might be giving WW 6 max chi. I wish they added the same to Brewmasters as a perk.

[Gallahadd]

I do hope its more worthwhile in aoe vs single targets otherwise it should just pretty much replace BoK if you take the talent.

It DOES replace BoK, if you take it . But yeah I'm a dumbass, I was comparing it to ONE BoK... Totally forgetting that for 4chi you could kick twice. So I'm guessing Soul Dance will be the standard boss tanking choice (are there really any bosses that DON'T have at least one heavy magic attack? That's a serious question btw, I've not played since ToT , but I'm coming back soon.), then for things like Add tanking/Hcs/Challenge modes/farming take Chi explosion and roflaoespam.

[Rainbowdash]

Chi Serenity actually supports a low-haste, low-resource rotation very well. I think. It might be because I'm a weirdo and I run Chi Brew. With how I play right now it would fit in my rotation perfectly.

We're gonna have to play with Chi Explosion to see how big a deal it is being unable to bank Chi. Just going off my gut, I feel like it would work a lot better with more haste.

[Lovestar]

Chi Serenity actually supports a low-haste, low-resource rotation very well. I think. It might be because I'm a weirdo and I run Chi Brew. With how I play right now it would fit in my rotation perfectly.

I think everyone can agree right now that Serenity is gasm-level good.

For me the T100 row is a stereoscopic picture, my left eye is seeing Soul Dance for dealing with being magically violated, and my right eye is seeing Chi Serenity for everything else.

In the middle is a big blind spot I'm not aware of because there's a melting dragon and a blob of Flubber covering it up.

[Leblue]

Serenity doesn't interest me too much in that we won't be able to very actively avoid haste effectively while gearing up with reforging gone and gems being more scarce. At least when we're at the "I'm not going to be picky with what I get" stage of gearing (first few weeks). That said I could see it as a nice buffer for fights that hit us hard enough to pretty much park us in a higher stagger to where we want to puify more often to reduce the damage we're taking (I'm think how hard locust at the end of the heroic paragons encounter or heroic garrosh hits).

Soul dance looks incredibly useful for fights like Lei Shi which is where our lower health kinda kicked us right where it hurts. It'll be a pretty solid mitigation talent against constant magic damage fights, but for just a burst here and there I think the cooldowns available to us might be the way to go.

Chi Explosion (now that I've figured out how to read) seems like the go to aoe talent if for no other reason than we're getting shuffle while saving gcds and aoeing. Very interested to see some numbers on this. If anything, it'll make managing stagger during aoe a bit easier.

[Chuupag]

Alright not to derail the discussion away from next expac but I have a pressing question needing answered. My guild has been stuck on normal Garrosh for ~120 pulls at this point. I have about 2 or so people who just screw up mechanics fairly often, but no real ability to replace them. And by fairly often I'm meaning dying to Iron Star/Annihilate/Whirling Corruption more than 3 times a night. I've always been the sort of raid leader who tries to dumb down mechanics or just take a whole lot more responsibility onto myself than would be normal just to make sure my more special raiders can still do stuff, b/c again no real ability to replace them. At this point I have hammered in just about all the mechanics into their heads and it is just the adds that consistently screw us up. +5 adds on the tank and people getting eaten by a random +2 or 3 add out in the boonies. I need someone to explain what I need to do to just kite the adds from phase 2 transition 2 through the end. I trust my healers and my offtank to just solo Garrosh the whole way down, I just need the ability to take the adds completely out of the equation for my special dps.

[The Madgod]

Alright not to derail the discussion away from next expac but I have a pressing question needing answered. My guild has been stuck on normal Garrosh for ~120 pulls at this point. I have about 2 or so people who just screw up mechanics fairly often, but no real ability to replace them. And by fairly often I'm meaning dying to Iron Star/Annihilate/Whirling Corruption more than 3 times a night. I've always been the sort of raid leader who tries to dumb down mechanics or just take a whole lot more responsibility onto myself than would be normal just to make sure my more special raiders can still do stuff, b/c again no real ability to replace them. At this point I have hammered in just about all the mechanics into their heads and it is just the adds that consistently screw us up. +5 adds on the tank and people getting eaten by a random +2 or 3 add out in the boonies. I need someone to explain what I need to do to just kite the adds from phase 2 transition 2 through the end. I trust my healers and my offtank to just solo Garrosh the whole way down, I just need the ability to take the adds completely out of the equation for my special dps.

The Sha creatures, you mean?

Well what I did which worked rather well was I kept on rolling while spamming Dizzying Haze. If you've got a priest who's on the ball, you could have them set up feathers to further boost your movement speed. Have hunters / rogues dump agro onto you just in case you miss one or two.

[diggorey]

Well what I did which worked rather well was I kept on rolling while spamming Dizzying Haze. If you've got a warlock, having a gateway set up from one end of the room to the other (max distance but still equidistant from the center, assuming that's where your raid's "grouping up") might not be a bad idea. Alternatively / in conjunction, if you've got a priest who's on the ball, you could have them set up feathers to further boost your movement speed. Have hunters / rogues dump agro onto you just in case you miss one or two.

That's basically what I did too, except using the gateway. Iirc, using the gateway sets all your threat to zero, which means Sha adds going wild.