The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Deleted]

I haven't been able to get 10 stacks of Mana Tea ever.

[Yorgl]

@Gallahadd : Just to nit-pick, it's likely we'll also put expertise/hit caps on the top of the stat table.

[Gallahadd]

@Gallahadd : Just to nit-pick, it's likely we'll also put expertise/hit caps on the top of the stat table.

haha I knew someone would bring that up..... Well I had time to formulate a reply ... and this is it...

I would count Hit/Expertise as 'must cap' stats, i.e there's no point putting them in the prio list as they MUST BE CAPPED, like Defense back in the day, that prio list was more a 'what to do with your reforges, after you're capped' than a 'this is the 100% full list of winning stats'.. With that out of the way, would you agree the list is about right

also... 30sec on brewing stacks... bad bad bad idea, must be 2min at LEAST if not just do away with time limits altogether while in combat. I don't want to lose stacks of my defensive resource just because the boss decided to do a 25 second RP in the middle of the fight, or for example with the flying bug boss, I had to run across a room... or because RNG screwed me and I didn't get a crit .

[limis]

so other tanks will be reforging hit/exp into defencive stats while brewmasters will be keeping "threat" stats ?

fair ?

also why dont they make BoK work as DS workd for DK ? I mean heals even if BoK misses

[Gallahadd]

no Limis ALL tanks will be keeping Hit/Expertise, as they're needed for 'resource' generation

Warriors need their Shield Slam et al to hit, or they get no rage
Pallies need their Crusader Strike to hit, or they get no Holy Power etcetc

This is all part of the new 'active mitigation' model they're putting in for MoP, because now threat is a joke, tanks need something to do

also... did you see GC's reply on the duration of brew stacks? Basically someone asked 'when I use a really slow 2h, with low crit sometimes the stacks drop off' his reply? 'Yeah that'll happen... better use em before they drop off'... guess we wont be getting extended duration on the buff :S

[The Madgod]

Yeah I saw that. It really made me worry about weapon viability. If they just... drop off, then we cannot use them to their full effect, because waiting on using them for a special ability is going to be... problematic. Unless it's like how I expected it to be in the first place, sort of like an ability we use on cooldown for general avoidance. Even then, with more consistent stacks from DW, staves and polearms might be problematic and CERTAINLY less efficient.

[Gallahadd]

yeah it's... troublesome.....

I don't like that we're essentially have to use our defensive CD for fear we might lose stacks, not because we actually want/need to use them...

Of course this is only a problem with a slow 2h and low levels of crit.. This makes me thinks..

Do you think it will be viable to just STACK crit as a Brewmaster? Wall of probably at least 50% incorrect maths coming up...

Base miss, parry and dodge are 5%..

Add in 5% parry for Swift Reflexes Miss: 5% Parry: 10% Dodge: 5% Total: 20%

Add in 20% parry for Shuffle Miss: 5% Parry: 30% Dodge: 5% total: 40%

Add in Elusive Brew Miss: 5% Parry 30% Dodge 35: total 70%!

So totally butt nekkid (naked pandaren.... eww) we're sitting at 70% avoidance, not to mention that any melee damage we DO take will be reduced by 50% due to stagger (30% base, 20% from Shuffle), and that's if it can get through Guard...

So does anyone else think it may actually be TOTALLY viable to get capped for hit and Expertise, and then just stack crit (and possibly even haste...) for faster Elusive brew stacks? I mean with enough crit you could get nearly 100% uptime on elusive brew(given ~1 stacks per crit and a 15 second duration, You'd need to crit 15 times, not an impossible ask, for DW with high levels of crit. And of course this is not accounting for Tiger Strikes, granting 50% haste and extra attacks.) and as long as you don't sacrifice more than 30% avoidance to get there, it's still an avoidance gain.

so am I crazy, or would that be viable

[The Madgod]

This is assuming perfect uptime of Shuffle and Elusive Brew... but yeah it's probably going to be a strong stat. Avoidance's probably still going to be a bit more important in the end, or at least I think so. I doubt it will be very easy to achive enough crit to land a crit every second on average as well as have your hit and expertise at their respective caps and keep up your active mitigation buffs all the time. Perhaps it will be possible in the future, but I doubt a build stacking crit would be viable in 5.0.

[Gallahadd]

True true, the crit levels require would be a little silly, but theoretically it IS possible. Might be one of those things, where as the gear levels get high, you keep a 'base' of avoidance, then put the rest into crit, so as your ilvl increases, you slowly get more crit, and once you reach a certain level you can totally reforge. I can see tanks doing this for fights with hard enrage timers.

I might make a 'lolheroics' set keeping a raid set with the proper stats on, but then have a set for heroics/scenarios etc that is stacked crit, I'll still be survivable enough for heroics, but with much much higher damage.

[The Madgod]

Pf. Man, that's nothing. If the dungeons are truly going to be like Wrath heroics, I'll be running around with just a helmet, belt, cloak, boots, and my weapons shouting "THIS IS SPARTAAA" whenever I taunt.

[Deleted]

Would that make Windsong preferable over Colossus?

[Yorgl]

also why dont they make BoK work as DS workd for DK ? I mean heals even if BoK misses

DS doesn't work that way in MoP.
It was only a fix for Cataclysm as requiring hit/exp cap for DKs in Cata was unfair. Now everybody is on the same page, as Gallahadd mentionned.

[Gallahadd]

Would that make Windsong preferable over Colossus?

I was actually thinking just that earlier although tbh I'll be DW, so I'll just rock one of both

although if this is to be believed, Wingsong currently has no ICD, and can proc multiple times, allowing you to have all three of the stats rolling, which could be pretty fun, but is more than likely not WAI

[Deleted]

I still don't get why the tanking stance is a direct increase to health, and not an increase to stamina. The scaling is going to be really good, especially now that we're bound to see big numbers. Now I'm perfectly aware that they nerfed it, and I think it's fair, but that wasn't the right way to do it. They should have changed it to a +20% stamina or something. (Not only because of scaling issues, but also because every health buff (long or short-term ones) or cd is going to benefit directly from the stance. (Fortifying brew, fortitude, shaman healing buff, even food and elixirs, etc...)

Back in WotLK, DKs had the same thing on their tanking presence and blizzard had to remove it because of these reasons.

Monk tanks remind me a lot of DKs when they first came in game. Devs are throwing a lot of nice ideas here and there that are working quite fine when you look at them separately, but when you add them together, it leads to something VERY hard to balance. (Remember shadow of death, old lichborne with +20% or so avoidance etc...)

It can't be good.

[Deleted]

I was actually thinking just that earlier although tbh I'll be DW, so I'll just rock one of both

although if this is to be believed, Wingsong currently has no ICD, and can proc multiple times, allowing you to have all three of the stats rolling, which could be pretty fun, but is more than likely not WAI

I have seen the three procs at the same time a lot while healing so I can say that as it is right now it works that way

[Gallahadd]

very very true Ash, tbh I see it being changed to stamina either before the beta ends, or very very soon after, Druids had the same thing back in TBC, Dire Bear form grants bonus health, but it was nerfed because it just scales WAY too well.

good to know Vynka, lets just hope that it's meant to be like that, and they're not going to nerf it any time soon , if it IS meant to be that way, I can see it being the must have enchant for.... well for pretty much everyone, who DOESN'T want some combination of Mastery, Crit and Haste?

[Grubjuice]

I would like to ask if any one here who has experience playing Brewmaster on Beta can give me a sense on what sorts of the uptimes you are able to get on BM's various avoidance/mitigation/defensive/self-heal abilities?

I know that Shuffle lasts 6 seconds (put up by BoK)
Guard last 30 Seconds (increased in effectiveness by Tiger Palm)
Zen Sphere (if you are using it and not one of the other talents) last 16 seconds
Elusive Brew lasts one second per stack up to 15 seconds


Which abilities are you prioritizing for maximized up time over the course of a fight and which abilities are best used to anticipate predictible sources of damage. And how does Purifying Brew fit in?

[Gallahadd]

Fairly small build (end is in sight me thinks )

YAY Free Tiger palm is back good good, so now hopefully keeping the 15% guard buff up should be easier, always a good thing

Our tanking stance got a tooltip fix (the energy regen wasn't actually nerfed last patch, it was a tooltip bug, which is now fixed ;p)

Zen Sphere got a *possible* nerf... Anyone surprised? No.. Me either..

not bad changes really, we all new ZS was coming, and it's nice to have free TP's back.. I wonder how long it'll stick around for this time

NINJAEDIT: Seems the "Nerf" to ZS actually isn't , it's in fact a BUFF to the periodic damage, which is wierd... now instead of scaling with varying numbers, the spell as a whole has a 71% AP scale, which means the periodic heal scaling is unchanged and the damage actually had a very small buff. the detonation did get a ~40% scaling nerf though, no biggie.

[The Madgod]

Don't forget the set bonuses... not very flavorful, but they get the job done. Hopefully we're getting close to a retail build.

[Hijiri]

Armor of the Red Crane

http://mop.wowhead.com/itemset=1133

Seems to favor mastery/crit? Did Monk use parry since there is none on it? I noticed dodge was low too.

Above is the 497 normal version.

There is also the ilevel 483 Raid Finder and 509 Heroic