Healing - Monk Tanks

[Sodka]

Normally I don't have a problem healing any other type of Tank (Druid, Warrior, DK etc...) but over the weekend during several heroic MOP 5 man dungeons. I healed something like a total of 2 Monk Tanks during these random runs. I had a hard time keeping up these tanks throughout the runs and almost going OOM quite a bit. For one run I had to use 2 Lay On Hands plus constant spamming of my more powerful healing spells just to keep him up. Has anyone else been seeing this as well?

[loki504]

its a new class. this happend to the dk when they where released to. alot of people don't know how to play a brewmaster.
and they don't know any brewmasters they could ask

[Deleted]

A monk is an active mitigation tank. People in general might not be used to the playstyle (especially in 5-mans).

[nowish]

it sure as hell didn't happen to dks , since they were tuned like mad and were the best tanking class without having to do any "active" mitigation to prevent huge dmg income! I believe bewmasters are weak because there are so many magic encounters and from what I've experienced myself, they don't have alot of magic dmg reduction (for a longer period of time).

[Kuniku]

i've found it can be hit or miss, i think its down to people still learning the class/spec still

[Halifax]

Normally I don't have a problem healing any other type of Tank (Druid, Warrior, DK etc...) but over the weekend during several heroic MOP 5 man dungeons. I healed something like a total of 2 Monk Tanks during these random runs. I had a hard time keeping up these tanks throughout the runs and almost going OOM quite a bit. For one run I had to use 2 Lay On Hands plus constant spamming of my more powerful healing spells just to keep him up. Has anyone else been seeing this as well?

My first couple of days tanking heroics were rough. I was bad at keeping up shuffle, and wasn't using my whole toolkit very well at all. Looking at my health bar, I felt like I owed healers apologies.

Not so much anymore. I actually had a healer get annoyed at me yesterday because I was taking no damage ever (I decided I would try to do a heroic by abusing Keg Smash slow to kite, AoE for GotO orbs and gaurd, and literally took zero damage on most pulls). Monk tanks are powerful in 5 mans imo, but it requires that the person driving it know what they are doing. That might take some time.

[Slummish]

I'm a Brewmaster now. We have something like 5-8 spells used to mitigate damage and several of those have abilities that must be used first to trigger our mitigating abilities. So far, it looks like we should be taking our heaviest damage right at the start of a pull while we ramp up and then after that, the healing needs should level out. If you're healing monk tanks and finding it exhausting and nightmarish the whole time, it's because they're playing like dodge and parry and leather armor are naturally-occurring sources of defense like plate armor, shields, etc.

In other words, they're baddies that either used RaF to the top or leveled as dps and now want faster tank queues in LFD. Healing a good monk tank should be a piece of cake in my opinion. Hell, my self-healing is pretty substantial. At the moment, the only thing brewmasters have trouble with is heavy magic damage.

[Halifax]

I'm a Brewmaster now. We have something like 5-8 spells used to mitigate damage and several of those have abilities that must be used first to trigger our mitigating abilities. So far, it looks like we should be taking our heaviest damage right at the start of a pull while we ramp up and then after that, the healing needs should level out. If you're healing monk tanks and finding it exhausting and nightmarish the whole time, it's because they're playing like dodge and parry and leather armor are naturally-occurring sources of defense like plate armor, shields, etc.

In other words, they're baddies that either used RaF to the top or leveled as dps and now want faster tank queues in LFD. Healing a good monk tank should be a piece of cake in my opinion. Hell, my self-healing is pretty substantial. At the moment, the only thing brewmasters have trouble with is heavy magic damage.

I don't think the RAF people are the problem. When I'm not tanking, I've noticed an influx of very bad Monks lately. I think the 1-90s are starting to show up. The people like me who RAF'd and had a 90 Monk in a couple of days are probably the kind of people who do a lot of planning around the game and understand how it works, and are more likely to be good. Leveling in WoW does not teach you how to play in dungeons; if anything it teaches bad habits that you end up having to break.

My buddy is leveling a Monk, and I watched him "tank" a 5 man at level 40ish with nothing but SCK and Keg Smash and he was perfectly fine.

[smokii]

i've found that in most cases, where a monk tank gets smooshed, is because he isn't keeping up shuffle properly.

got 2 chi, do a blackout kick and add more time to your shuffle buff - which increases the amount you stagger by 20% and increases your parry by 20%.

takes a little getting used to, but once more people get the hang of keeping blackout kick up, it should be ok.

TBH, i think breath of fire should also give shuffle, as trying to balance shuffle and AoE tanking is a little tricky. but for the most part monk tanks should be running in, keg smash, blackout kick, jab, tiger tiger tiger, keg smash, guard, then AoE.

any tank that runs in, keg smashes, flame breathes and spinning crane kicks AoE mobs without fitting in a blackout kick and guard is gonna die pretty quick.

also, a lot of people fail to realise the importance of purifying brew.

[arisoh]

Which heroics were they?

Cause I'm in some raid gear but some pulls in heroics can still get hairy (I hate being less than 70% hp), especially ones that stun (SM cath bastards), the students in Scholo, *HARLAN*, shado pan packs...

[Sodka]

Which heroics were they?

Cause I'm in some raid gear but some pulls in heroics can still get hairy (I hate being less than 70% hp), especially ones that stun (SM cath bastards), the students in Scholo, *HARLAN*, shado pan packs...

I believe one was Scarlet Halls and the other was Mogu'shan Palace I believe. It makes sense that because of this being so new that a lot just do not know how to play their toons correctly?

[arisoh]

I believe one was Scarlet Halls and the other was Mogu'shan Palace I believe. It makes sense that because of this being so new that a lot just do not know how to play their toons correctly?

Stuns are horrible for brewmasters which SH and Mogushan have a lot of (FU SKULKERS!!). A mistimed stun can happen just as shuffle falls off, or if you get chain stunned, then no active mitigation there. Being the tank with the weakest armor (at 475 ilvl we have around 17k armor) and lowest hp, we rely heavily upon our active mitigation more than most tanks.

[morbidjbyrd]

If a monk tank gets stunned, he is gonna get fucked up over the next few seconds. At that point the Brewmaster is little better than a rogue tanking.... They really need to do something about that.

That is something you definitely need to keep in mind. However, the real issue is that you likely just got two bad monk tanks one weekend. If you think about it, two is hardly a viable sample size for any conclusion. Well besides that you are bad at statistics lol.

[The Madgod]

I'm a Brewmaster now. We have something like 5-8 spells used to mitigate damage and several of those have abilities that must be used first to trigger our mitigating abilities. So far, it looks like we should be taking our heaviest damage right at the start of a pull while we ramp up and then after that, the healing needs should level out. If you're healing monk tanks and finding it exhausting and nightmarish the whole time, it's because they're playing like dodge and parry and leather armor are naturally-occurring sources of defense like plate armor, shields, etc.

In other words, they're baddies that either used RaF to the top or leveled as dps and now want faster tank queues in LFD. Healing a good monk tank should be a piece of cake in my opinion. Hell, my self-healing is pretty substantial. At the moment, the only thing brewmasters have trouble with is heavy magic damage.

I used RaF and I'm the guy who wrote the guide on Brewmasters on this board. Let's keep that blanket judgement out of threads, as it has been proven time and time again to be incorrect.

To BE on topic, however, since Brewmasters do have a fairly high skill requirement (we have four different things we need to manage in order to survive, not including timing of "oh shit" cooldowns, positioning, and encounter mechanics), you will find that there's a bit of a gap in between the good and the bad. I barely need heals in my 5 mans. The last couple times I ran, I topped both the damage and healing meter AND there was a relatively small gap between me and the DPS in terms of damage taken and at times I wasn't even taking the most damage. I've also been hearing plenty of Brewmasters who have been having lots of trouble surviving. As well, stuns and magic damage, as well as extreme burst can and will knock us on our ass in 5 mans, so you should be prepared to help in that regard.

[SurrealNight]

In other words, they're baddies that either used RaF to the top or leveled as dps and now want faster tank queues in LFD. Healing a good monk tank should be a piece of cake in my opinion. Hell, my self-healing is pretty substantial. At the moment, the only thing brewmasters have trouble with is heavy magic damage.

I used RAF and probably know the class better than any 1-90 leveler out there, keep Guard/Shuffle up close to 100% and have ranked on almost every boss our guild has killed so far, and never had issues with heroics even when I was going in originally with questing greens.

OP has just gotten unlucky with pug BrM's that haven't figured out the class yet, as others have mentioned comparing to DK's it's pretty much the same thing. BrM seem to come in either really good or really bad varieties as there is very little middle ground. Healing a BrM that isn't keeping up Shuffle/Guard is probably a nightmare.

[mooshimanx]

When you are leveling you can get away with just using Breath of Fire to consume all of your chi, which people just do since BoF does a lot of damage and is "fun." The problem is that actually understanding shuffle and stagger and how to use Blackout Kick and Purifying Brew starts becoming important at some point.

[Sierra85]

you'll find you have people learning how to properly play at end level. when you're leveling the content is really faceroll but when you get to end game heroics thats where the step up is where you have to push some buttons properly. a good healer will carry them through though.

[mooshimanx]

i've found that in most cases, where a monk tank gets smooshed, is because he isn't keeping up shuffle properly.

got 2 chi, do a blackout kick and add more time to your shuffle buff - which increases the amount you stagger by 20% and increases your parry by 20%.

takes a little getting used to, but once more people get the hang of keeping blackout kick up, it should be ok.

TBH, i think breath of fire should also give shuffle, as trying to balance shuffle and AoE tanking is a little tricky. but for the most part monk tanks should be running in, keg smash, blackout kick, jab, tiger tiger tiger, keg smash, guard, then AoE.

any tank that runs in, keg smashes, flame breathes and spinning crane kicks AoE mobs without fitting in a blackout kick and guard is gonna die pretty quick.

also, a lot of people fail to realise the importance of purifying brew.

If Breath of Fire gave shuffle nobody would ever use Blackout Kick.

When you are leveling you can get away with just using Breath of Fire to consume all of your chi, which people just do since BoF does a lot of damage and is "fun." The problem is that actually understanding shuffle and stagger and how to use Blackout Kick and Purifying Brew starts becoming important at some point. Not to mention playing Pac-Man with your drunken heal balls.

[Hanto]

I tank on my monk quite frequently in heroics and so far have gotten nothing but praise from healers, some saying I'm easier to heal than other tanks. There's just a lot of people that don't know how to play them. Shuffle and Purifying Brew are the single most important damage mitigation combos you need to use, try yelling at any future monk tanks (by yelling I mean suggesting) to work on that and all will be good!

[Sodka]

Actually on my last run which is the one I had to use two LOH on, I was going to ask "Why are you (the tank) taking SO MUCH damage? but did not want to create any drama so I just healed through it.