The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Deleted]

It would depend on just how spikey monk incoming damage is, but if you can control it, it wouldn't be hard to convince your healers to aim for 80% HP instead of trying to top you off all the time, especially if things follow trend and healers are having to deal with low regen and the fear of running oom every fight like the start of most expansions.

I'm sure the values could be calculated without logs, but quite frankly that is beyond the level of theocrafting I would be comfortable attempting right now, although if we can't get some log numbers then I may be forced to give it a go....

I did notice a typo in that quote, so I'll need to jump in someday and do a thorough check, but yes, the latter of your assumptions is correct... I'm saying there should be a balance between BoK and PB, instead of just spamming one or the other.



Just looking at tooltips on an 85 premade, if you used EH and ZS on cooldown, you'd do more healing (not including the 30% bonus from Guard) than Guard provides shielding for, even with the 15% bonus from tiger palm.

It's not a question of whether or not they heal for more than Guard would shield you for, because you will be using the abilities exactly the same, the break point is whether or not the 30% bonus gives more healing than guard shields for and then comparing the uptimes between glyphed and non-glyphed to see whether or not you get a net gain.

[Gallahadd]

new build and some new changes! Not many though, things are starting to stabalize.

Expel Harm's heal has been roughly doubled, not to shabby , anyone know if they're lowering the heal to damage ratio to compensate?

Tier 3 talents got a small buff. ZS got a small base increase and ~5% more AP scaling, should be at a good level about now.

Then it all goes a bit nasty....

Avert Harm: pretty harsh nerf :S, damage transfered is changed from 50% to 30%, and it only last 6 seconds, not 15... and it's on a 3min CD.. I guess it was REALLY op before...

On the plus side the damage can now be staggered.. which is nice.

[Atylia]

new build and some new changes! Not many though, things are starting to stabalize.

Expel Harm's heal has been roughly doubled, not to shabby , anyone know if they're lowering the heal to damage ratio to compensate?

Tier 3 talents got a small buff. ZS got a small base increase and ~5% more AP scaling, should be at a good level about now.

Then it all goes a bit nasty....

Avert Harm: pretty harsh nerf :S, damage transfered is changed from 50% to 30%, and it only last 6 seconds, not 15... and it's on a 3min CD.. I guess it was REALLY op before...

On the plus side the damage can now be staggered.. which is nice.

It was already staggerable, just wasnt in the tooltip.

Yeah it was strong, it was also nice when there was nobody in range to use as a self cooldown of 25% dmg reduction. This brings us down to having a single damage reduction cooldown (Fort. Brew) with a 3 minute cooldown, this needs to be adressed.

As for the guard discussion, last night my Guard was shielding me for 175k on 10 man Heroic, so you need to do about 600k healing to yourself to make up for the Guard shield within 30 seconds, which boils down to 20k HP/s self heal. Not going to happen

[DreDre]

Im curious, will monk be doing the same AOE dmg on live... Ive been thinking if they nerf the aoe dmg, single target dmg will go way down, so how exactly are they going to balance our dps. Currently on beta im usually doing insane dps on aoe packs, other classes aside from warlocks cant keep up with me.

Mod edit: Removed the video. Please refrain from posting PoV videos in threads other than the PoV thread, and refrain from posting videos concerning your opinions regarding the status of the game in general in a thread specifically about Brewmasters.

[Ahsakura]

I sort of skipped around the video but that video made me way more excited than before about Brewmaster. It looks insanely fun.

[Hijiri]

Front page blue post

We changed how Vengeance works.

Vengeance is intended to let tanks generate additional damage and threat as content levels rise, despite not gearing for it (or at least not primarily). We're changing the design to let Vengeance play better with active mitigation, but the new design has some other advantages many of you will like.

As most all of you know by now, the idea of active mitigation is that the buttons a tank presses directly contribute to mitigation and survival. In some cases, this is timing-centric, such as Death Strike. In others, it’s both timing-centric and also involves balancing how you spend your resources among multiple abilities, such as Savage Defense vs. Frenzied Regeneration or Shield Block vs. Shield Barrier. In the latter case, it’s important that both abilities are compelling and compete well with each other. We are changing Vengeance to let those abilities be balanced.

I'm going to use Savage Defense (a short duration large dodge buff) and Frenzied Regen (a large instant heal) as examples. Getting the balance between SD and FR right is challenging. We want SD to win on average, but you’re limited on how often you can use it, and it’s not necessarily reliable -- sometimes you really need a heal NOW, and so FR is the right button. SD should win, but FR shouldn’t be too far behind, and they should scale similarly.

SD scales with the incoming damage: if BossA hits you for 60k, and BossB hits you for 120k, then SD is twice as valuable (in absolute terms) on BossB than on BossA. FR scales with your attack power: even a few 5man trash mobs will cap out your Vengeance, so your AP will be the same on BossA as on BossB. FR isn’t any stronger on BossB than BossA.

On top of that, AP and boss damage scales differently as ilevel rises. We tried a solution to that problem where FR scaled exponentially with AP in the last build. That has worked fairly well, but still failed at keeping SD and FR balanced when boss damage was significantly different from the baseline we used as a tuning point. For example, 25-player raid bosses hit twice as hard as 10-player raid bosses, which makes SD twice as valuable.

But wasn’t this post supposed to be about Vengeance? Currently, Vengeance increases your AP by 5% of the damage taken, stacking up to the cap, which happens quickly. We are changing Vengeance to increase AP equal to 5% of the damage you take for 20 sec. This buff will "roll" so that as it gets refreshed the unused part is added to the new buff, similar to how Ignite or Stagger work. The net result will be that Vengeance stacks by the amount of DPS being thrown at you over 20 sec. There is no cap.

Additional nuances:

•Avoidance will not count against you. Avoiding an attack will extend the current Vengeance stack back to 20 sec (as if you were hit again for the same DPS).
•Blocks, absorbs, Stagger and Shield of the Righteous will also not count against you. The damage before these effects is used for the Vengeance calculation.
•To reduce ramp up time, we bump you up to halfway to whatever your average Vengeance level would be based on each individual hit. Essentially, we skip the first 10 sec of ramping.
•Tank damage in 5-player groups will decrease. We think this is a good chance because it is weird and demoralizing when tanks consistently top damage meters in dungeons.
•Tank damage in 25-player groups will increase. We think this is a good change because it makes tank DPS as relevant in 25-player raids as it is in 10-player raids.
•With this change, Brewmaster damage will be extremely overpowered. We will fix it, but you may get a build where they are ludicrously good.

[Deleted]

It was already staggerable, just wasnt in the tooltip.

Yeah it was strong, it was also nice when there was nobody in range to use as a self cooldown of 25% dmg reduction. This brings us down to having a single damage reduction cooldown (Fort. Brew) with a 3 minute cooldown, this needs to be adressed.

Let's hope this is just another case of them bouncing from one extreme to another untill they find the sweet spot. I can see why they thought to nerf it and dropping the amount would seem reasonable, but dropping the amount, the length and increasing the cooldown seems a bit over the top, lets hope they drop one or more aspect of the nerf come live. After all paladins have hand of sacrifice which is 30% for 12 secs on 2 mins, if you talent it, you can cast it twice before triggering the CD. Granted it's a single target, but still comparing the two I know which one I would prefer as things stand. In the most recent blue post, they did list one of the classes they feel is not fully tuned is monks so fingers crossed.

[Gallahadd]

Sadly I doubt they'll change it much Valient, the 'not tuned yet' was talking more about Dps monk from what I understand. It's true the nerfs were pretty savage, and this change leaves Monks with a TINY pool of defensive CDs (really only Fortifying Brew Baseline), I think this REALLY needs to be addressed.

The Vengeance changes are.... pretty nice actually, seeing as I vary rarely do 25mans outside of LFR, I'm guessing I wont see much of the benefits, but I'm glad they're continueing to tweak the system, rather than saying "Yup, that just about fulfils it's purpose, call it done" and moving on. I LOVE that now Avoidance/Blocking etc will still work with Vengeance, I always thought it was a bit wierd that Vengeance was supposed to help us keep threat as we geared up, but as we geared up our avoidance/mitigation improved, and Vengeance granted far less AP.. Also.. no cap on Vengeance? Why is it down the line I see people solo tanking things that should require 2 tanks, just because they get SSOOOO much AP that they can shield/heal through things they shouldn't.

"• With this change, Brewmaster damage will be extremely overpowered. We will fix it, but you may get a build where they are ludicrously good. "

This worries me though.... If Brews are balanced around the crazy high levels of AP that it might be possible to get if you're in a 25man, wont that make them a bit weak in 5/10 man content? I know bliz aren't stupid, but it's the kind of thing I can see happening "Hey the monk in my 25h raid was able to one-shot the boss because of his insane amounts of AP" *Blizz Nerfs Monks* "Wait... now I can't tank 5mans..."

I guess we'll just have to see what happens in the next few builds, time is getting short though, this seems like a big change for so late in the beta.

[The Madgod]

This worries me though.... If Brews are balanced around the crazy high levels of AP that it might be possible to get if you're in a 25man, wont that make them a bit weak in 5/10 man content? I know bliz aren't stupid, but it's the kind of thing I can see happening "Hey the monk in my 25h raid was able to one-shot the boss because of his insane amounts of AP" *Blizz Nerfs Monks* "Wait... now I can't tank 5mans..."

I guess we'll just have to see what happens in the next few builds, time is getting short though, this seems like a big change for so late in the beta.

Brewmasters will be overpowered with this new variation of Vengeance because we take more damage per second than any other tank. Ironically, it's quite possible that they could buff us to nerf us.

And I'm quite sure that we'll find that they'll get us to that sweet spot where we're pretty similar to how the other tanks perform in all three group sizes. Blizzard's proven that they can make some solid changes, I doubt they would screw over their newest tank that badly.

[Deleted]

After looking through the thread (From a relevant point of time), I haven't really seen a discussion over Brewmaster tanking stats. I have been playing around on the Beta a lot, Tanking all the content that was testable up until now, and I'm wondering what people think of my stat weights;

These are currently based off a DW Tanking stand point.
(Mostly to get double procs from Windsong)

Trash / 'Standard' Fights
Hit = Expertise (Cap) > Agility > Dodge = Parry // Crit > Stamina > Mastery > Haste

Slow, Heavy hitting Fights (A kin to Sha of Fear Heroic Thrash / Dread Thrash);
Hit = Expertise (Cap) > Agility > Mastery > Stamina > Dodge = Parry // Crit > Haste

Magic Heavy Fights;
Hit = Expertise (Cap) > Stamina > Agility > Haste > Dodge = Parry // Crit > Mastery

Since I am DWing, I have a higher emphasis on Crit to stack my Elusive Brew quicker, so I equal it with Parry / Dodge.

For my example listed, The Sha of Fear, I favour Mastery to negate those massive gibbing hits. A great post by Mione about the subject can be found here;

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...?page=177#3533

With the buff to Haste, making it 8/s, I have been lowering it in my reforging, unless it comes to a magic heavy fight where I cannot stagger casts. In that cast, I favour it for increased energy regen (stacking Chi quicker to use on Zen Sphere or Chi Burst). Is this completely wrong and Glyphing Guard with normal reforging suffice? or am I fine currently?

I am by no means a theory crafter in the slightest. I am just wondering if someone, who does have brains, can give me some feedback / correct me if my ways of reforging currently have merit / fail.

[Hijiri]

A couple of "I'm not on beta, please excuse my noobish " questions,

1. For the hit/expertise cape is it because of dual wielding, the changes to vengeance, to obtain double windsong, or for use in mechanic for example elusive brew?

2. Also if my goal is just to go with one of the three sets above since I don't plan on gear switching for LFR Mogushann/Heart of Fear would it be best to choose the 2nd or 3rd set since I'm confident the dps will kill the trash?
(Am thinking of 2nd or 3rd, but I'm not sure of the pros/cons of choising one for the whole raid. Probably x boss will hit me harder)

[The Madgod]

A couple of "I'm not on beta, please excuse my noobish " questions,

1. For the hit/expertise cape is it because of dual wielding, the changes to vengeance, to obtain double windsong, or for use in mechanic for example elusive brew?

2. Also if my goal is just to go with one of the three sets above since I don't plan on gear switching for LFR Mogushann/Heart of Fear would it be best to choose the 2nd or 3rd set since I'm confident the dps will kill the trash?
(Am thinking of 2nd or 3rd, but I'm not sure of the pros/cons of choising one for the whole raid. Probably x boss will hit me harder)

In terms of Hit / Expertise, it's because a lot of our survivability depends on actually landing our attacks, instead of in the olden days when your defensive abilities were just purely cooldowns and passives. We can't afford having less than 1% hit anymore.

As for stat priorities, I'd recommend the first a bit more than the other two. I haven't had a chance to test raids, but if you're taking mainly magic damage, then you're probably not taking much stagger damage, which allows you to spend some of the chi used for PB on ZS, instead of just bumping up your regen to allow for both. It's not as efficient as the magic fight priority would be (not necessarily the one Als posted, mind. His setup would be good depending on certain factors. If there's some melee (and not just very little), I wouldn't think sacrificing avoidance would be a good idea), but it works if you only want one set of gear.

The heavy damage and magic damage setups are more for min-maxing your sets for maximum usefulness for a particular fight. Tanks will often have multiple sets of gear (at least one for melee fights and one for magic fights). The "standard" stat priority would be the one you would use if you don't have / can't be bothered to get multiple sets.

[Deleted]

Agree with cute Batman. IF you plan on only Tanking LFR and don't want to carry around two gear sets, the top stat priority will be fine for you.

I'm only looking into other options due to me having the ability to get additional gear sets for certain fights if needed.

[Deleted]

On the value of mastery, I stumbled across this which talks about the co-efficiency between shuffle and purifying brew. As mastery basically just increases the strength of purifying brew I thought it would be good to post it here as this guy puts it far better than I could.

Taken from http://www.disargeria.net/2012/07/29...shuffle-uptime

For a long time in beta, Brewmaster mitigation wasn’t very clear to us. We knew we had to keep up Shuffle, and we knew we had to use Purifying Brew. But when? How often? That’s a really hard question to answer.

So back when energy regened at 10.4 per second for Brewmasters, we were faced with a bit of a problem: We couldn’t keep Shuffle up 100% of the time AND use Purifying Brew with any sort of frequency.

As part of a discussion on this, Strawberry summed up the problem as such:

The logic behind it is basically this: Since clearing stagger is our only real damage reduction (shuffle/stagger only delay damage, they don’t prevent it), there is SOME amount of stagger damage that’s optimal to clear. The only reason that number isn’t 100% is because we don’t have enough chi to keep Shuffle up 100% of the time and do that at the same time. The problem for optimization is, given you have a limited amount of Chi, how much of your Shuffle uptime can you sacrifice to clear more of your Stagger stack?

The “easy” way to handle that is to just pick some number and use it (e.g., 30%, which corresponds to your Stagger going to Moderate). However, that’s not truly optimal, and you have to adjust it based on damage taken (if you’re taking lower damage, as in 5 mans and such, you may want to use it at 15% instead since you only hit 30% once in a great while. If you’re fighting a boss that does a lot of damage, you may want to wait until 50% since you hit 30% all the time, and would end up killing stagger uptime). Mastery also affects it – while mastery does smooth out damage, it also shifts more to be purified, so mastery may actually reduce the uptime of Shuffle and be somewhat counterproductive. (as an aside, I do agree with your assessment that it’ll be a fairly bad stat in its current state).

That’s why I used the formula I did. It basically estimates the optimal time (which I found to be ~75-80% of stagger damage cleared) to use PB. The way it’d work in game is fairly intuitive – you start off by using PB at 30%, and adjust up or down depending on how fast you’re taking damage on the fight. But that kind of intuition is hard to simulate (or find a formula for), which is what makes the rotation so hard to pin down.

This sort of set the tone for discussions about Purifying Brew and Shuffle uptime, although Astrylian was the first to suggest this line of though.

Strawberry had been working on a simulator to model this kind of thing, so this formula is more in the context of that.

Yeah, I treat parry as a damage reduction for estimating the value of BoK. It tends to work out well enough, since it just needs to figure out a good value to start using PB based on how much damage is being taken – or more accurately, how fast you get to some stagger value.

In a practical sense, it doesn’t work out that cleanly since avoidance results in spikes rather than smoothed out damage, so you’re going to be above your “target” amount for stagger. Manual smoothing of damage is the whole point of this “Active Mitigation” thing, afterall. However, the end result is the same if you can purify about the same % of the total stagger damage over the fight.

The fact that PB basically varies in value by how often you use it, but you can’t just use it at a set time, makes it pretty hard to calculate.

I’m still working out the best way to keep the running calculation in-game. I’m thinking the best way will be to aim for a specific % of damage cleared, and keep track of how much you’re clearing vs how much you’re taking to give a % cleared so you can have a metric for how well you’re doing.

But what does he mean?

Basically, there’s a balance between the amount of damage you’re transferring through Stagger, the amount of damage you’re avoiding from Shuffle, the amount of bonus damage you’re transferring through Shuffle, and the amount of damage you’re removing through Purifying Brew.

So at the 10.4 energy per second baseline mark, we found that optimal Shuffle usage was somewhere around 65-85% uptime. That’s pretty low!

So what changes at 13 energy per second? Well, the theory is still sound, but what happens is that we can maintain Shuffle with a much higher uptime AND still use Purifying Brew with moderate frequency.

Shuffle should be kept up as much as reasonably possible, but it’s not exactly reasonable to reach 100% thanks to missed attacks, uses of Guard (which should be used often), or well timed Purifying Brews.

We’ll cover how to time Purifying Brew another time, but until then, keep on Shufflin’!
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So depending on how regularly we can reasonably use purifying brew will determine the value of mastery, I think personally I wont be going out of my way to stack it (ofcourse there will be exceptions) instead favouring dodge/parry for more "genuine" avoidance. This will be subject to testing and probably altered on a fight to fight bases, considering we will have access to instant reforges during raids I will be making great use of reforgesaver addon, with the only real semi permanent decision being gemming/enchants.

We need to consider our role in raids, for instance if we are kiting then I imagine we go all out haste as our kiting tools are energy spammers? If we are add tanking, then we might go for crit for pure dps if we can keep them stunned through leg sweep and breath of fire so on so forth.

[Deleted]

With the current design and energy regen, Mastery seems like it is going to just up in value as our passive Haste levels increase. As you posed, from the Monk Shuffle thread, it is not realistic to get a 100% uptime of Shuffle and a constant flow of PB. Mastery stacking heavily favours constant PB use, which means less Chi for BoK if Guard is used properly.

His opinion of Mastery being quite a counter productive, and there for useless stat in its current state, is completely agreeable. With Heavy Mastery, we lower the uptime of Shuffle to a point where we may, over a long fight, take more damage.

As for kiting, I assume we wouldn't be reforging into Haste as our distance AoE does not produce damage. Since it is a high Aggro spell, consistant spamming wouldn't be needed. Without being on the beta currently (Says I have to patch but the launcher appears to have no patch), SFB doesn't cost enough to kill us Energy wise either. Even though Haste, in this situation, seems to be very helpful, I don't see us needing to sacrifice our Mitigation Stats for a short part of a fight (Where we may have to Tank them at one point, or swap to Boss Tanking after kiting). We may have a fight like Maloriak again, though I don't know. While testing on beta, raids did not have anything like this, at least not that we needed to kite.

For actually tanking adds, I would assume a Dodge = Parry // Crit build, whatever your preference is. Overall, they work out just as well as each other (Presuming you're duel wielding).

[Deleted]

The more I think about this the more I feel like it's not going to be a black and white as this.

Alot of the discussion being had about stats I feel is aimed at the concept of 1 tank tanking the boss for the duration of the fight. Whilst this can and does happen there are also fights with constant tank switches thanks to single or stacking debuffs applied by the boss. If we consider these then mastery takes a whole new shape:

Assuming you are tanking for 20 seconds between taunts. You can Guard 10 secs before taunting, then pool chi to allow you to blackout kick x 2 giving you ~12 secs of shuffle when you taunt. This means you have to blackout kick once after 6 secs but before 12 secs to maintain shuffle for ~18 secs of the 20 secs (probably closer to 16-17 secs with human error etc). You are then left with the choice of hitting a final blackout kick for 100% shuffle up time or using your remaining chi to clear Staggers repeatedly using PB.

In this example mastery becomes quite a strong stat as you are able to achieve a very high conversion rate from stagger to mitigation through Purifying Brew.

Will I be taking a mastery heavy set to most normal fights, definately not. Will I want the option of a mastery heavy set for the above example and other similar ones, hell yes.

If you are looking to min max on a fight by fight basis, mastery is a stat that needs considering, if you are looking for a one size fits all setup, then I can't see mastery being something of use.

[Ahsakura]

I feel like this post from over at Elitist Jerks from member Mackeyser has some good information regarding this stat conversation.

Tsukiyuri reposted Mione's Googledoc spreadsheet modeling tank balance using the Sha of Fear heroic fight as an example.

There's a link to a thread on the WoW forums here but I don't have enough posts to link it, but the original post is over on EJ

Mione's conclusion was that that specific *type* of fight was one where a HEAVY Mastery build for Monks seemed to model as much, much stronger than any other tank build.

I would encourage a full read as it's pretty long and I think pretty insightful.

I realize much of the theorycrafting is trying to model which stats are best.

The answer may be that there are two answers. Active mitigation may be creating multiple foci rather than a singular focus for our best stats and that focus will be dependent on the fight, i.e. the boss dmg, the mechanics, target swaps, etc. Specifically, we very likely will have have an Agi/Stam/Hit/Haste ring that's generally BiS, but also have an Agi/Stam/Mastery/Crit ring that's BiS for "Stagger Fights". From what I've been gathering, the active mitigation model will require Brewmasters to maintain two gear sets. One gear set will be for trash and the typical boss fight (or even the atypical boss fight). The second set will be for those "super heavy hitters" or for those with thrash type mechanics that require tons of Mastery above all else to slide the scale to Stagger as much damage as possible.

Based on the posted info thus far, it seems with the tremendous power of Stagger on certain Active Mitigation fights, we're likely to have multiple "optimal stat sets".

[Deleted]

Will I be taking a mastery heavy set to most normal fights, definately not. Will I want the option of a mastery heavy set for the above example and other similar ones, hell yes.

If you are looking to min max on a fight by fight basis, mastery is a stat that needs considering, if you are looking for a one size fits all setup, then I can't see mastery being something of use.

Fully agree. Though, it does not push away the fact that Mastery, with the passive Haste we will get at later tiers, will inflate naturally. More Haste passive will increase Energy Regen, meaning more Chi generation, leaving more Chi over for PB. In the end, it does look to be headed to that Black and White stance. I don't think Mastery will be our 'Go to' stat at the end of the expansion, though, I can see it being a better choice then than now.

[Deleted]

Fully agree. Though, it does not push away the fact that Mastery, with the passive Haste we will get at later tiers, will inflate naturally. More Haste passive will increase Energy Regen, meaning more Chi generation, leaving more Chi over for PB. In the end, it does look to be headed to that Black and White stance. I don't think Mastery will be our 'Go to' stat at the end of the expansion, though, I can see it being a better choice then than now.

When you refer to "passive haste" is this based on the assumption that higher ilvl gear will offer more haste or is there some kind of class mechanic I am missing that increases our haste with gear? If it is the former then I really can't see our haste increasing much at all as it is not anywhere near the top of our priority list now, nor can I see that changing in further tiers.

[Deleted]

Apologies, let me try again (I assume everyone lives in my head and can understand my ramblings). It is the former, no talents give us Haste with better gear. I suppose I should say 'The amount of Haste that may appear on gear'.

I am, of course, assuming that with Tier 16 we will have plenty of Haste on gear (This is just an assumption remember and not fact). I am taking this thought from the other Energy Classes in-game (Rogues / Feral Cat), how much Haste inflates as a stat because of how it appears on gear, then how much additional we can gain from reforging un-wanted stats to it. I will use end-game Rogue gear, as an example;

http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=-490 - Rogue Tier set. (Let's take this with a grain of salt, as I am aware we aren't Rogues and we may well get Hit / Expertise on our later Tiers) 3x items with Haste

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/item/78413
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/item/78462

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/item/77091
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/item/77095

It is shown that these two are not BiS items. Though, I am taking these into account due to the ilvl increase, most Rogues taking them as FL Heroic items are still out of reach for some and ease of access.

These amounts of Haste increase it's value as a stat since we can get quite a lot of it. This also increases Mastery as a stat, as we can balance out to fit in more PB's with the Haste and more Stagger with the Mastery.