Brm ilvl 495, 16/16 heroic exp., I got DESTROYED on Will of the Emperor 10m normal

[Deleted]

Hi everyone.
Last week, I joined a MSV 10m normal run to help out my friend, I don't really need anything from there. As usual, tanks were impossible to find so I agreed to go as Brewmaster.

The run was going quite smooth, I was having fun, until we made it to Will.

Fight starts, the usual stuff... we kill small adds, Strenghts, bla bla... big bosses appear, I pick mine, generate some aggro and start moving my boss to the usual tanking spot near the stai... WHAT THE HOLY FUCK?! my health bar starts swinging up and down like crazy, and Purifying Brew button lights up almost instantly, indicating I have heavy stagger on me. I clear it quickly with spare Chi I had.

Then, whole fight was an uphill battle for me, which I eventually lost. I simply died from taking more damage, than my healers could heal, and they were spamming me and going OOM.
This happened twice, then the pugs started raging "lol noob tank" "gg retard L2P" the usual shit that ppl in pugs start throwing around when smallest problem appears.
Eventually, a frost DK offered to go blood for this fight, and told me to go WW. The DK was a player who just returned from 2 months WoW break, he was in full 463 blue gear. We one shotted it with him as tank, his health barely moved during whole fight.

I don't remember the last time I felt so embarassed and humilitated, I barely touched my monk since.

I simply have no idea what was happening, what was I doing wrong, so I come here seeking advice. The ridiculous ammount of damage I was taking, I actually thought if I wasn't in my DPS specc, If I somehow didn't respecc to WW by mistake. It literally felt like dps class in dps gear, trying to "tank" a raid boss (but no, I was still Brm).

some points:
I didn't take a SINGLE hit from the big swings during the "dancing" phases. I performed each dance and following counterattack flawlessly.
The 10% nerf buff was active, nobody turned it off.
Usually when someone says monk tanks are bad or weak, ppl say its a L2P issue, that monk tanks are harder to master than other tank classes. But I feel quite confident at playing my monk. I had Shuffle buff 100% uptime. Used empowered Guard and Expel Harm pretty much whenever it was up (the Guard disappeared pretty much instantly). With my haste, my Chi generation was pretty good, I had enough Chi to keep removing my Stagger with Purifying Brew. Ofc used Elusive Brew and Fortifying Brew as well.

Here is my monk armory:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Silkfox/simple

495 ilvl, fully gemmed and enchanted, 2 maxed raiding professions. 16/16 heroic experience as you can see from my title. Food buff, flask, potions were used. Stomped into the ground by 10% nerfed boss (which was easy even before the nerf), which I overgear by more than 30 ilvls...
Please help, so this doesn't happen to me again -.-

[Solial]

I killed this boss on heroic on a monk with lower ilvl than yours as a tank back in... november?
I'm guessing that, regardless of what you said, you weren't keeping shuffle up. Shuffle instantly going to red? Welcome to a boss that hits relatively hard, this boss spends half of his time not even attacking, build up a shuffle during the dance, then use elusive brew coming out of it and whenever you get hit 1-2 times just use purifying brew. Pretty sure you also said it was normal mode, so whenever he uses the gas just use dampen harm or fortifying brew. You are over the hit cap, drop the hit from gems and use stam. More expertise gets rid of rng in your rotation, some people don't like it, some do. At least for the couple of BrMs I check from top guilds, I don't think any gem agility. More haste, crit, or mastery.

Got any logs?

[Deleted]

sorry for being offtopic here:

but yeah, kinda reminds me about a wipenight on lei shi normal, as we had killed sha hc at that point (aka 16/16 hc bosses) i just dont know what happend on lei shi.. getting hit really really hard for some reason..


Im a DK tank btw.

[Deleted]

Nope, I don't have any logs, it was lolaltrun late at night :P
Trust me, Shuffle buff is always up, I use addon to track it, I try to always have at least 10 seconds or more on the Shuffle.
Ofc I wasn't using any CDs during the dancing phases. I was building up my Elusive brew and Chi for Shuffle/Purifying, then spending those when dancing ended and boss started hittibng me
About my gear, its different now, I regemmed for Windwalker specc, the experience in MSV dissuaded me from ever going as tank again until I find why was I getting hit so hard :/

[Solial]

The boss just hits hard, maybe you had a bad string of rng. As I said, you pretty much build up shuffle and then whenever you get hit you use purifying brew, it should be 20k tics easily if he hits you once or twice and will quickly put you into red if you have low hp.

[Deleted]

did you have guard glyph from elegon fight?

[Nikkaszal]

If you're swearing blind you had 100% Shuffle uptime, and you were dancing correctly, and used your EBrew between the combos, and you were using your cooldowns correctly, and you were STILL getting smashed in the face, then I dunno what to tell ya.

I honestly believe that one or more of the above wasnt done right, because I was tanking this fight in ~470 when I first did it and the healers were marvelling at how little damage I was taking due to all the sexy tools we have for fights like this.

[Kisho]

Considering I tanked the heroic version of that boss, pre-nerf, with similar ilevel and no issues at all, yeah: you're doing something wrong I'm afraid.

The thing is, from what you tell us it sounds like you did it right: save EB for actual tanking (not dancing), keep Shuffle up 100% of the time, use Guard as often as possible... If you kept the Guard glyph from Elegon that could explain some of it, as suggested above.

I personally switch to stamina trinkets for this fight, on normal and heroic. The bosses hit really hard, so it's warranted there.

Another potential problem is while you thought you kept Shuffle up 100% of the time, you may have over-used Purifying Brew, so let Shuffle drop off on occasion. The problem is we have no proof either way, so all I can do is suggest potential fixes and hopefully one of them sorts out your problem.

[Maynards]

draenei, final baton.

[Photek]

I'm sorry but as pointed, you did something wrong. Without logs we can't tell you what exactly you did.

[Quotey]

Was any of your gear broken? God knows I've tanked stuff with gear broken, and it's pretty much like that.

[Totaltotemic]

Armory isn't working right now, so I can only guess as to your gear choices. The most common mistake I see with Brewmasters that are dying when they have good Shuffule uptime and are purifying regularly is an overvaluing of Agility. If you are using two DPS trinkets, gemming haste or Agility, and using Agility leg/shoulder enchants, you likely are only sitting at 525-550k health raid buffed. As great as Agility is for threat, black ox shields, and EB uptime, healers do have cast times and reaction times, and all the EB uptime in the world won't help you when it's down if you've only got 550k health (to contrast, my warrior alt in 481 ilvl has 580k, awful avoidance stats, but I do have a deep enough health pool to not die in 2 hits). For any content you do, there is a minimum health level for all tanks, even if Agility is your best stat. For T14 normals, I'd put it around 600k fully buffed, T14 heroic around 650k, and ToT normals around 700k. I know a lot of people will disagree with that, but it's the truth, healers care a LOT more about your ability to go 100-0 than they do how much overall damage you take throughout a fight.

[Deleted]

You can't die in 2 unmitigated hits as monk with 550k and claim to have survived them as warrior with 580k hp. 50% stagger + 28% armor is more reduction than 58% armor (or whatever rough numbers would be for armor for those gear levels). 2shotting a monk with 550k hp would mean 771k unmitigated melee swings for hp match. Those 2 swings would kill the warrior with 580k hp as well, but with 65k overkill. Monks need less hp. And lol 600k hp needed fully buffed for t14 normal? I just broke that mark in t15 and gotten rather lucky with loot so far.

[Biggety]

Sorry to say, but either you were doing something wrong or the fight bugged. In that gear, healing should be trivial. I tanked the normal version in 470ish gear and took about 2/3 the damage of our paladin tank with 480ish gear. I suspect you may have fat-fingered tiger stance.

[Totaltotemic]

You can't die in 2 unmitigated hits as monk with 550k and claim to have survived them as warrior with 580k hp. 50% stagger + 28% armor is more reduction than 58% armor (or whatever rough numbers would be for armor for those gear levels). 2shotting a monk with 550k hp would mean 771k unmitigated melee swings for hp match. Those 2 swings would kill the warrior with 580k hp as well, but with 65k overkill. Monks need less hp. And lol 600k hp needed fully buffed for t14 normal? I just broke that mark in t15 and gotten rather lucky with loot so far.

Point to where in my post I said unmitigated. Warriors have block and spam shield barrier, monks don't. If Chi Wave or Guard aren't off cooldown, you have dodge and parry, that's it. If you get unlucky and don't dodge or parry for 3-4 hits in a row, having 100k less HP but 2k more Agility won't help you live. The idea that Brewmasters should gear for as much Agility as possible is a false hope of returning to the full avoidance paradigm where 100% coverage means you never take an unmitigated hit, but that only works for shield tanks, not Monks, DKs, or Druids. The difference between 50 and 55% EB uptime doesn't help you at all when EB is down. Stacking Agility at the complete disregard for stamina is a sure way to get yourself killed.

[Zonex]

you seem to be oblivious to the fact that a brewmaster has Expel harm with desperate measures and GotOrbs. If the boss is hitting you hard enough to kill you so fast, you shouold be proccing Desperate Measures like mad so your only line of defense ISNT Guard and Chi Wave, its Elusive Brew EH and GotO and more.

With EH and GotO alone you can tank prolly about 7 hits in a row without heals, if youre decent. Dont say monks need Effective Health, bad monks do, or decent onks with terribad healers

[Deleted]

Point to where in my post I said unmitigated. Warriors have block and spam shield barrier, monks don't.

Implying shield block can be up 100% of the time or something, and warriors can't go through some periods of time where they get hit a couple of times in a row without blocking/parry'ing/dodging? Ok...

If you're that worried about dipping low and being unlucky through 80% avoidance or so, expel harm has no cooldown below 35% and zen sphere detonation is amazing. Both of these will heal for a ton if you get hit hard enough for it to matter.
Also not sure why you compare 2k agility with 100k hp. Not only would you not gain 100k hp from 3k stamina, but most monks aren't even gemming agi but crit/exp/hit/haste/mastery.

[nightfalls]

*edit* read that you don't have logs...

No logs honestly makes this entire discussion moot.

[Totaltotemic]

Implying shield block can be up 100% of the time or something, and warriors can't go through some periods of time where they get hit a couple of times in a row without blocking/parry'ing/dodging? Ok...

If you're that worried about dipping low and being unlucky through 80% avoidance or so, expel harm has no cooldown below 35% and zen sphere detonation is amazing. Both of these will heal for a ton if you get hit hard enough for it to matter.
Also not sure why you compare 2k agility with 100k hp. Not only would you not gain 100k hp from 3k stamina, but most monks aren't even gemming agi but crit/exp/hit/haste/mastery.

Warriors don't use Shield Block except in very specific circumstances. I was of course referring to the base chance to block that puts Warriors at least over 50% chance to not have a straight unmitigated hit through. In that specific circumstance, if the warrior hasn't used Shield Barrier to absorb some damage at least once every 3 or 4 seconds, they're just playing wrong. Speaking of reactive healing/damage reduction...

More maximum health increases not just your healer's buffer zone to react, but yours as well. Does it matter if you get into EH spam range if you die one second after you're at 35%? What if you go straight from 36% to 0%? How do you react with GotO orbs when you're spiking so much that you're at 60% health after every attack?

The numbers involved in the Agility and Stam comparison aren't technically relevant to the logic of the question: why is reducing damage taken over the length of the entire fight, or decreasing the time in which you're vulnerable from 50% of the time to 55% of the time matter so much more than making sure you don't get gibbed when that inevitably will happen? I know asking Brewmasters that have been performing "just fine" for 6 months to reevaluate their thought process is a lot, but just look at the merits of the argument itself and forget what the current paradigm is for a moment. Why is using 2 DPS trinkets better if you're sitting at such a low max HP that you can die before anyone can react? The fact is that pure stamina is the only thing that increases your "unlucky EH" (effective health if you don't happen to get those dodges/parries), and choosing Agility over it at every possible junction is not smart gearing.

[lokatii]

Well reading this does make me feel good about getting h. will down (realm first) as brm, honestly its easy as hell to tank though. Make sure you have a CD up when tanking, either dampen harm, fort brew, symbiosis or ask for an external, iron bark, sac, pain sup something. Even an armor pot works really well if nothing else is available. So anyways right after dance i pop EB because you probably have a lot of stacks by now from beating on the boss during his dance. After brew or if I'm taking a lot of damage I pop the DH or fort or one of the aforementioned cds and wait. Once my vengeance gets super high I pop guard and its usually insanely high, I use a vengeance tracker for guard specifically. Remember not to expel harm until you get low hp, and save some energy for it since it will have no cd. Man just talking about it I want to do that fight now lol.