Brewmaster Meta Gem

[Shootz]

I've looked around and can't find a thread where this has already been discussed but are there any numbers or debates on which will be the best legendary meta gems for brewmasters?

The 20% phys reduction looks really good and I think the latest numbers for it were 1.40 PPM although I'm unsure of the duration.

That said, 324 crit rating is much more appealing to me than 324 stam and if the 5 stack lightning bolt contributes to Ox statue guards that would also be useful. (Plus I don't want to have different helmets for brewmaster and windwalker)

Anyway, which do you guys think will be best for us?

[The Madgod]

You're a tank. Damage reduction is better than damage done.

[SurrealNight]

A straight up 20% phys dmg reduction is pretty massive considering Blizz usually hands out under-tuned damage absorb crap usually. I guess once you over gear or if you aren't pressing content but trying to clear normal and move on to heroics I'll be going for the direct mitigation.

[Shootz]

I just haven't been able to find any information on the duration of the buff it gives. If it's a 5 second duration that procs once a minute then it becomes much less appealing than if it were a 6-10 second duration proccing once every 40 seconds. It procs when you get hit so if you're tanking a single target then I assume the first couple seconds of the buff is completely wasted (depending how long their swing timer is).

If the lightning bolt from the dps meta scales with vengeance and does very high damage then it could be preferable as of course DPS checks are often a large issue during progression and a random brief 20% phys reduction is unlikely to make or break your survival.

It all comes down to the numbers of course, does anyone have info regarding the duration of the buff and how often it is likely to be active? Or even information regarding the dps meta ie. how often it procs and what kind of damage we can expect from it.

[Deleted]

The tooltip says the buff lasts for 15sec. If it has a PPM of 1.4 as you say, it's active 21sec per minute on average.
That results in a 7% damage reduction overall.

Sounds good to me!

[Shootz]

Yeah if it's 15s that's really good

[Deleted]

Isn't it possible to buy both? with 5 primal diamonds

edit: I see this thread is old I just wanted to look if there was any thread about it, I do quite some brewmasters run with the crit one though.

[Deleted]

From my own testing of both gems you get about 30-40% uptime on the dmg reduction meta. The crit meta gave me around 9% of my damage done on Lei Shen hc, however I acted mainly as an offtank on this fight, mainly taunting the boss to the next platform or picking up the boss during Fusion slashes etc. So on a fight you can keep relatively high vengeance throughout, the crit meta should increase your damage done quite significantly. If you're playing 10s I would suggest the crit meta, if playing 25s I'm guessing the dmg reduction meta would be better as 10% extra damage for a tank is quite trivial.

[kaiadam]

Isn't it possible to buy both? with 5 primal diamonds

edit: I see this thread is old I just wanted to look if there was any thread about it, I do quite some brewmasters run with the crit one though.

You can buy as many as you'd like. I have a few spares sitting in either old helms or in my bags waiting to be swapped in if necessary.

Even on something like Ra-den who literally hits for a million damage pre-stagger, I used the dps meta - the tanking one feels totally retarded and useless to me.

[SurrealNight]

Even on something like Ra-den who literally hits for a million damage pre-stagger, I used the dps meta - the tanking one feels totally retarded and useless to me.

But it doesn't improve your crit rating so no improvement in EB stacks right? What about just sticking with the agil/crit% or the pure Crit meta which would boost DPS and mitigation?

[kaiadam]

But it doesn't improve your crit rating so no improvement in EB stacks right? What about just sticking with the agil/crit% or the pure Crit meta which would boost DPS and mitigation?

The dps meta does increase crit rating a tiny amount, but the real benefit is the proc which scales with vengeance. The metagem all by itself did 31k dps on our kill, almost 1% of raid dps in a 25man. We had previously wiped at ~7% before, which means if we only had 2 more meta gems, we would've killed him like three attempts prior. Not that it mattered since we ended up with 14 more attempts left but still ...

I'm a big fan of mitigation, but I despise the tanking meta. A proc-based damage reduction effect is so stupid to me. You either gear so that you're barely survivable with the gem is down and comfortably survivable when it's up - and die every so often when the gem isn't up - or you gear to be comfortably survivable when the gem isn't up - in which case why the heck do you want the tanking meta in the first place?

Also, the dps meta blows the agi/crit% one out of the water, it's not even a fair comparison. Capacitive primal diamond is worth ~10% of your dps, the agile diamond is worth ~1.5-2%. Neither provides mitigation.

[underdogba]

(Plus I don't want to have different helmets for brewmaster and windwalker)

I think this is the real point of this thread.

---------- Post added 2013-04-23 at 03:40 PM ----------

I'm a big fan of mitigation, but I despise the tanking meta. A proc-based damage reduction effect is so stupid to me. You either gear so that you're barely survivable with the gem is down and comfortably survivable when it's up - and die every so often when the gem isn't up - or you gear to be comfortably survivable when the gem isn't up - in which case why the heck do you want the tanking meta in the first place?

This argument is complete nonsense, because it ignores the role of reducing throughput damage. You can make this same oversimplified argument to claim that avoidance is useless too.

The reality is that even though the absorb shield proc isn't 100% uptime, it contributes to reducing the likelihood of tank death because when it is up, the probability of a burst scenario goes down. There is always RNG in tanking, bosses have a range that is rolled for how much each melee swing hits for, and then there's the implications of whether you avoid something or not. The notion that you consciously can "gear so that you're barely survivable with the gem is down and comfortable survivable when it's up" is complete nonsense that could only relate to real play if there were no such thing as avoidance and every boss swing always landed for exactly the same damage.

[Dorfie]

I got the "dps" one. Tank damage is important in 10 mans.

[Deleted]

But it doesn't improve your crit rating so no improvement in EB stacks right? What about just sticking with the agil/crit% or the pure Crit meta which would boost DPS and mitigation?

DPS legendary meta-gem has 324 static crit, which I'd say is not far from the current 216 agility from the one you're currently using in terms of mitigation. Then you have a damage proc for almost 10% extra damage or 3% higher crits. Obviously those higher crits can also mean expel harm, healing orb, or goto crits, but I doubt you run into situations a lot where that 3% higher selfheal would have saved your ass to begin with. If you're using the current agility metagem I don't really see a reason to swap to the tank legendary one, unless you're feeling REALLY spikey for some reason and healers are already struggling with keeping you up (in which case you probably could have already considered the stam/armor one by now).

[kaiadam]

You can make this same oversimplified argument to claim that avoidance is useless too.

I do, and most of the community does as well - when was the last time you saw a brewmaster (or any tank this expansion, really) gear for dodge/parry even though they are the stats that reduce overall damage taken the most? I personally use elusive brew as a 2pT15 generator and less as a DR cd, for example.

The notion that you consciously can "gear so that you're barely survivable with the gem is down and comfortable survivable when it's up"

How is this complete nonsense? There is a level of survivability for each encounter that once you reach it, you are unlikely to die in the normal course of events. For me, I took around 10k mastery as the survival point because with that amount, I feel as if I'm still in danger of dying if I play like a retard/bosses still take me down to execute range sometimes, but I don't really die. That's comfortably survivable for me. The remainder of my stats can be dropped into crit for dps.

If I were to use the tank legendary gem, I still wouldn't be able to drop any more mastery, because those close scrapes and near deaths could easily turn into actual deaths. On the other hand, it won't really increase my survival much - Ra-den hasn't killed me yet in all our attempts unless half the raid was dead already or we failed to meet a dps check.

I mean, the gem is less random than a +3% dodge gem, but that's essentially equal to the amount of damage avoided with the gem.

Edit:


Ok, so this better illustrates my point. It's more of a graphical depiction than actual data (otherwise the overlap would be much smaller). Blue line is the usual amount of damage that goes out during the fight. Red line is where you're normally at, survivability wise. Green line is your new survivability line, with the tank metagem.

Only when the encounter damage is higher than your EH do you die (thus the black death zone.) The tank metagem does not noticeably decrease the death zone - I actually had to double its effect just to make the difference visible. It serves to increase the max survival range a fair bit, but doesn't do much to the lower end of the spectrum which is where you need it.

[Deleted]

Well there you have it. The crit meta is better in both 10s and 25s. Haven't seen Midwinter's Ra-den kill yet, kaiadam. I'm curious of how much vengeance you built up during the p1 strikes?

[kaiadam]

My pov video of our kill is in my signature if you want to see specifics, but I generally floated around 200k at the start to around 450k at the end. As you probably know, fatal strike hits for less than his melee attack so it doesn't noticeably move our vengeance meter =/ We two tanked it because vengeance is stupid. I don't doubt that a solo tank might hit 500k or even slightly higher vengeance at the end.

[SurrealNight]

Think the arguments for the DPS meta are pretty strong, hard to argue if a 25m Ra-Den tank says the tanking meta doesn't help. Though I agree with the points made that much DPS ending the fight sooner and beating the enrage timer is probably better than a slight reduction in overall damage taken and no improvement in reliable EH outside of the Stam.

[matthias9742]

Something I am slightly curious about is the healer meta. Does it work on abilities that cost energy? If so would that be of any use to a BM tank? Wowhead entry clips the text short

http://www.wowhead.com/item=95345

[Fhi]

Something I am slightly curious about is the healer meta. Does it work on abilities that cost energy? If so would that be of any use to a BM tank? Wowhead entry clips the text short

http://www.wowhead.com/item=95345

Here's the full text:

Chance on casting a helpful spell to make your spells cost no mana for 4 sec.

Pretty sure it has 0 use for energy users - someone out there would have tried it by now and if it did, we'd have heard about it.