Monk vs DK Tank in ToT

[RuneeBH]

Well, not sure if this belongs here, and sorry if it doesn't, but it pertains to the new Raid and I'm not sure if I'd post it on DK or Monk forums - so here it is

I have a 515 ~ Blood DK
&
a 504 ~ Brew Monk

DK's was my main through heroic progression since MoP dropped (first expansion I ever raided in)

But I'm really liking my monk, the dmg, the avoidance, even though it has a lower iLv (have only done LFR and 5.0 raids)

So the question is, for all of you DKs and Monks out there or anyone else that wants to give their input, weigh the good and the bad, which tank comes out on top for ToT - consider raid utility, healing, dps, threat, dmg taken, etc. - also, gonna be looking into heroics in the next 2~ weeks, so consider that.

Thanks

Also if it means anything our MT is a Warr ( I offtank )

[Robb]

I MT my 10 man team on my monk, and we have a lot of good utility in a number of fights. The main thing for me though, is in my experience a Monk is REALLY good for those oh shit moments, if you are on a fight with not too much motion, and you drop danagerously low, just wiggle and the healing balls will get you from 5% to 100% quite often, all whilst you are doing other things.

Our damage is really nice, afaik we are top in that regard.

Raid healing is nice, would be nicer if they fixed it so we don't put guard shields on people whom already have them, but even without it, it is still a hefty chunk of raid healing.

With Xuen we have an extra tank for certain "sketchy" moments, such as on the third door of Horridon, I have personally found it really useful to tank one of the warlords for me. Only downside to that is obviously the tanked target is static, but it can still work really well.

Expel harm at when you are -35% hp has saved my life more than once, and if you know what you are doing you can be great for fights where there are a lot of big hits, due to our stagger mechanic.

Threat wise we actually have a problem at times, although this is only really on trash, as our AoE is REALLY strong, so you need to be aware of that when tanking trash packs.

All in all, I love my Monk tank (have previously tanked on a Paladin and a Druid in Cata) and in my opinion is a really great tank choice if you are willing to put the effort into it. The monk forums here are a great resource with many knowledgeable people who are happy to help.


Would be intrigued to hear from a DK tank what they think the pluses of their class are, as always been intrigued by the DK but never played one.

[Deleted]

Monk for dmg, and srsly, for HCs, dmg seems to mean a lot!

[rated]

Both are really strong. Monks are arguably harder to play than a DK. Which ever class you are strongest at will be the strongest one to bring into ToT. If you're heavy on leather or plate in your raid this might sway your decision.

[JGWentworth]

I am currently in the process of trying to convince my guild to let me swap to my Monk from my DK.

Dks are really really hard to kill but I kind of feel that's where our pros end.

We do a lost less dps than a monk, our threat generation is poor at best, and we have no raid cds. My raid we also have a lot of people on that tier.

Our tank set bonuses are abysmal this tier on top of it

[Riemu2k3]

I'm Mting as Blood DK with our OT being a Monk. He just rerolled to Monk when 5.2 hits, so might not be fully skill capped and what not, but it's going ok.

Damagewise (Single Target) we are about equal. AoE Trash Aggro always works the same way: the tank with the vengeance has them - ALL of them. I can't pull aggro of the Monk when he previously tanked the pack and still has vengeance left. I also can't aggro his mobs when we start about the same time. But when I tank the pack and have vengeance, he cant overaggro me either. We opted to do trash with just one tank, since its basically the same anyways.

Blood DK has the advantage in fights where you need to tank switch alot (like every 2nd encounter). Pre-stacked Bloodshield is pretty great. We also shine on any encounter that needs self-healing - like Durumu. I hardly ever get bleeding Debuffs on Durumu (nhc) because of the BS, maybe one on the 5th Nuke or sth like that. Our Monk tends to Bleed alot however.

On Twin Consorts, Blood DK can tank the Add (Ice Consort) without needing any healing, therefore your healers wont have any stacks.

Our Monk (haste/crit centered for dps) tends to take about 15-20% more melee damage then our Blood DK (me) however (melee + stagger combined). He also heals himself less than a Blood DK. Therefore, you need to pump more healing into him. He has about 25% Selfheal, while our Blood Dk has 40% Selfheal.

[Toxigen]

Monk hands down, its all about damage these days.

Hard to imagine, I know.

[Ninotchka]

Pulling your DK out will screw your raid out of 11 item levels worth of gear. Are you that much better on your monk that you can make up for those lost item levels?

It also depends on the raid as a whole, not just on what the other tank is. Do you have 5 people on the Vanquisher token already? Do you have a rogue or feral in the group, or a resto with feral offspec?

Player ability is more important than gear. But gear is important too, especially when a group starts hitting dps checks.

If your group hits a roadblock in heroic progression, are there any people in your raid who might blame you for the lost time it took to gear your monk up instead of the DK?

You're not asking just an efficiency question, you're asking a social question. Have you asked your raid leader and your other raiders whether they are OK with the idea of you switching out characters at this stage of progression? Are you coming to us as part of an ongoing argument, or for ammunition in a planned argument?

[cerebro]

I have not played a monk much outside of randoms or arenas as a windwalker. I will however tell you why I LOVE my DK as a tank over other classes.. keep in mind im not aware if monk has duplicate abilities that the dk has.

Self Healing
Death Strike - Love being able to heal myself, especially stacking up a large blood shield just before I know I am about to take a huge hit.
Goul Sack (death pact) - also another one of my favorite CDs being able to get 50% of your hp on demand every 2 minutes, this is a huge lifesaver in combination w/ purgatory
Lichborne - While I don't personally always take this over Purgatory, it still heals you for your whole life every 2 minutes on a full runic bar
Runetap - Freebie little heal when needed, awesome if you macro it with a lock stone.

Arsenal of Defensive CD's
AMS - Almost complete immunity of spell damage without losing aggro
IBF - A Damage reducer, that will also break stun (beautiful for fights like tortos after stomp) and prevent knockbacks.
Vampiric Blood - Increases your max hp AND makes you take 25% more healing (a lot more if glyphed)
AMZ - Raid CD.. while relatively weak still its nice to contribute to helping the raid get through that final huge damage phase on Maegera
Bone Shield - baseline 20% damage mitigation
AOTD - Channeling this spell will make you take less damage equal to parry + dodge

The Fun Stuff
Single Grip
Aoe Grip
Dark Simulacrum
2 Trinket style abilites
Purgatory.. cheat death

[Ninotchka]

My healer says that most of the brewmasters she's run with in LFRs have been mana sponges who tend to roll out of range at the worst possible moment, but I'm sure you have a higher skill than most of them so this wouldn't be an issue.

[Yohassakura]

I have not played a monk much outside of randoms or arenas as a windwalker. I will however tell you why I LOVE my DK as a tank over other classes.. keep in mind im not aware if monk has duplicate abilities that the dk has.

*snip...*

Healing:

Expel Harm - 40 Energy, 15 sec CD unless you drop below 35% hp - then it resets 60k+ heal with vengeance.
Chi wave - 15 sec CD, bouncing heal 30k+ per bounce with vengeance
Gift of the Ox Orbs - You have a chance to proc a healing orb when you deal melee damage (if there's a lot of movement, it can be a pain to use them; though if there's aoe there's a ton that spawn).
Healing Spheres (hardly used - useful for fights like Lei Shen in transition phase)

Defenses:
30 sec Bubble (guard) can be glyphed for just magic damage absorption which also increases the guard amount by 10%.
Elusive Brew - 30% dodge for each proc of elusive brew - procs on auto attack crits, 1-3 stacks per proc depending on your weapon speed.
Diffuse Magic - 90% magic damage reduction for 6 seconds
Dampen Harm - 50% reduction on 3 hits which procs on hits above 20% of your maximum hp.
Fortifying Brew - Increases your hp by 20%, increases your stagger amount by 20% and reduces damage taken by 20%, or glyped for 10% hp and 25% damage reduction (with same stagger amount).
Zen Meditation - Reduces all damage taken by 90%, redirects up to 5 harmful direct spells to you cast against raid members (lasts 8 seconds). Melee attacks break it early (so very useful for breath type mechanics).

Cool Stuff:
Ring of Peace - Mass Disarm/Silence (Alternative is an aoe stun)
Teleport
Ox Statue - AOE taunt in 8 yards of statue and absorb shields to raid members after dealing 1600% of your AP as damage (awesome in aoe situations).
Paralysis - Single target CC.
Tiger's Lust - Run Speed & clears movement impairing effects.
Nimble Brew - Removes all root, stun and fear effects and reduces the duration of future effects by 60% for 6 seconds.
Clash - Deathgrip and Charge in one spell, also stuns targets in 6 yards of the location for 4 seconds.
Dizzying Haze - Throw beer at a set location, slows all targets, does no damage but gives a lot of threat (ideal for kiting) and their attacks maybe misfire causing damage to them (doesn't work on all mobs, doesn't work on bosses).
Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger - Taunts non-boss targets (so useful for some boss fights like Dark Animus where the small adds buff each other if standing close to another small add)
Avert Harm - 20% of all damage to party and raid members within 10 yards is redirected to you, lasts for 6 seconds 3min CD. (Small aoe HoS with bigger CD)
Detox - Cleanse all diseases and poisons from your target.
Grapple - Disarms target, if you get a better weapon, you get a 5% damage reduction buff (as tank).
Disable - 50% slow, if used twice you root the target for 8 seconds.

[NRL1515]

Like people have said before, monk is a pretty high skillcap. Most people that raid with brewmasters (or have at least grouped with them) and think that they are 'squishy' and 'hard to heal', those monks are not being played properly.

I play a brewmaster and am MT in our 10m guild and we're stuck on horridon (we've had a solid 9 man roster, but spent way too much time to help gear up our 10th only to have them mysteriously disappear off the face of the earth 3 weeks later... but that's a different story). However, the amount of abilities we have at our disposal are probably more than other classes, and using these abilities at the right time separates the great from the mediocre.

Self Healing
Death Strike - Love being able to heal myself, especially stacking up a large blood shield just before I know I am about to take a huge hit.

For monks, we have several abilities to deal with self healing depending on the fight and situation. Expel harm is a wonderful ability that allows us to heal ourselves every 15 sec (for the most part, should be used on CD). With high crit, this can easily heal us for 50% of our health. When we drop down below 35%, the cooldown is dropped and we can spam this ability, provided we have enough energy... this makes us nearly impossible to kill.

Goul Sack (death pact) - also another one of my favorite CDs being able to get 50% of your hp on demand every 2 minutes, this is a huge lifesaver in combination w/ purgatory
Lichborne - While I don't personally always take this over Purgatory, it still heals you for your whole life every 2 minutes on a full runic bar
Runetap - Freebie little heal when needed, awesome if you macro it with a lock stone.

- As a monk, we have several talented heals that we can use. Zen Sphere is a ball of healing Chi energy that we can place over any person in the raid (obv including ourselves) and does ticking healing and aoe damage in the immediate vicinity. This scales with vengeance, and if our health (or our targets health) drops below 35%, it explodes, doing extra healing and damage. 2 can be up at any time.

We also have Chi wave, which bounces 8 times back and forth from a hostile target to a friendly target or vice versa. It does a decent amount of damage, and is very useful (for the tank) if there are no raid members nearby. However, you cannot control where it bounces, but it can help out raid healing if your health is solid.

Our last talented heal is Chi burst, which fires a healing/damage burst in a line in front of you to your target which heals and does damage to any allies/enemies in the path. Due to the targeting and movement requirements, zen sphere and chi wave are used more with brewmasters.

Arsenal of Defensive CD's
AMS - Almost complete immunity of spell damage without losing aggro
IBF - A Damage reducer, that will also break stun (beautiful for fights like tortos after stomp) and prevent knockbacks.
Vampiric Blood - Increases your max hp AND makes you take 25% more healing (a lot more if glyphed)
AMZ - Raid CD.. while relatively weak still its nice to contribute to helping the raid get through that final huge damage phase on Maegera
Bone Shield - baseline 20% damage mitigation
AOTD - Channeling this spell will make you take less damage equal to parry + dodge

- This is probably one of our weaker areas as a monk, as our raid CD's aren't as robust as other classes, but that doesn't mean what we have is useless.

Fortifying Brew - increases our health and damage reduction by 20% for 20 secs. Very useful, and can be glyphed to provide an extra 5% dmg reduc at the cost of giving 5% less health. Basic shield wall.

Diffuse Magic/Dampen Harm - Diffuse magic reduces magic damage taken by 90% for 6 seconds, very useful for fights such as elegon (breaths/annihilation) and lei shi (spray). Dampen Harm allows you to take next 3 attacks within 45 sec that deal damage equal to 20% or more of your total health are then reduced by half, 1.5 min CD for both.

Avert Harm/Zen Meditation - I include these both together even though they are separate spells because most people use them in conjunction with one another. Zen Meditation reduces the damage done by the next attacks done in the next 8 seconds by 90%. It breaks on melee attacks, but still reduces the damage of that melee attack by 90%.

Avert Harm allows you to receive 20% of the damage done to raid members within 10 yards, which can then be staggered.

Popping both together really reduces damage during stack and aoe healing phases, such as lightning storm on Jin'rokh and rampage on Megaera.

We also have mini-CDs which aren't really CDs but work to reduce the amount of damage we take. The stagger mechanic allows to take a certain percentage of the damage of an attack up front, but the remaining percentage will be dealt as a dot. We can purify this damage at the cost of 1 chi at any time we see fit. We also have Guard (which scales with vengeance) which is a shield that absorbs damage and increases our self-healing by 30%. We can glyph this to increase the amount of damage absorbed by 10%, but it will only absorb magic damage (again, useful for fights such as elegon and lei shi).

The Fun Stuff
Single Grip
Aoe Grip
Dark Simulacrum
2 Trinket style abilites
Purgatory.. cheat death

- We have clash (not very reliable) which is a cross between charge and death grip, grapple weapon (disarms and allows the monk to deal extra damage to disarmed target due to temporary weapon upgrade), roll, transcendance (like a warlocks teleport), we can place healing spheres on the ground for people to pick up later, and we can summon a guardian to help off tank an add if need be.

Personally, I've never had as much fun playing this game as I have with my monk, because it requires me to know most of the abilities in my toolkit and apply them at the right time. I was in the same dilemma as the OP at the beginning of 5.0, I rushed my pally to max level once MoP hit, but kept my monk on the back burner. Our raid group started a little late, but our other tank was a pally as well, so to help with gearing I switched to my monk and I've never looked back. Meter-wise, I've been top dps for quite a lot of fights, my raid heals (+ raid guards) are ridiculous and have out-healed our 2nd and 3rd healer - depending on the fight - many times.

Placed in the right hands, I believe a Brewmaster monk can be a very devastating tool, and can allow your raid group to overcome certain challenges and obstacles (or cheese certain mechanics) that other classes could hope to come close to achieving. Yes, there are some things we don't do as well as other classes, but usually we have an ability or two in our toolkit to allow us to solve that problem in a different way. I don't see myself changing classes ever again.

Putting up our Black Ox Statue allows us to place Guard on any random raid member every time we deal a certain amount of damage.

[cerebro]

Like people have said before, monk is a pretty high skillcap. Most people that raid with brewmasters (or have at least grouped with them) and think that they are 'squishy' and 'hard to heal', those monks are not being played properly.

I play a brewmaster and am MT in our 10m guild and we're stuck on horridon (we've had a solid 9 man roster, but spent way too much time to help gear up our 10th only to have them mysteriously disappear off the face of the earth 3 weeks later... but that's a different story). However, the amount of abilities we have at our disposal are probably more than other classes, and using these abilities at the right time separates the great from the mediocre.

For monks, we have several abilities to deal with self healing depending on the fight and situation. Expel harm is a wonderful ability that allows us to heal ourselves every 15 sec (for the most part, should be used on CD). With high crit, this can easily heal us for 50% of our health. When we drop down below 35%, the cooldown is dropped and we can spam this ability, provided we have enough energy... this makes us nearly impossible to kill.

- As a monk, we have several talented heals that we can use. Zen Sphere is a ball of healing Chi energy that we can place over any person in the raid (obv including ourselves) and does ticking healing and aoe damage in the immediate vicinity. This scales with vengeance, and if our health (or our targets health) drops below 35%, it explodes, doing extra healing and damage. 2 can be up at any time.

We also have Chi wave, which bounces 8 times back and forth from a hostile target to a friendly target or vice versa. It does a decent amount of damage, and is very useful (for the tank) if there are no raid members nearby. However, you cannot control where it bounces, but it can help out raid healing if your health is solid.

Our last talented heal is Chi burst, which fires a healing/damage burst in a line in front of you to your target which heals and does damage to any allies/enemies in the path. Due to the targeting and movement requirements, zen sphere and chi wave are used more with brewmasters.

- This is probably one of our weaker areas as a monk, as our raid CD's aren't as robust as other classes, but that doesn't mean what we have is useless.

Fortifying Brew - increases our health and damage reduction by 20% for 20 secs. Very useful, and can be glyphed to provide an extra 5% dmg reduc at the cost of giving 5% less health. Basic shield wall.

Diffuse Magic/Dampen Harm - Diffuse magic reduces magic damage taken by 90% for 6 seconds, very useful for fights such as elegon (breaths/annihilation) and lei shi (spray). Dampen Harm allows you to take next 3 attacks within 45 sec that deal damage equal to 20% or more of your total health are then reduced by half, 1.5 min CD for both.

Avert Harm/Zen Meditation - I include these both together even though they are separate spells because most people use them in conjunction with one another. Zen Meditation reduces the damage done by the next attacks done in the next 8 seconds by 90%. It breaks on melee attacks, but still reduces the damage of that melee attack by 90%.

Avert Harm allows you to receive 20% of the damage done to raid members within 10 yards, which can then be staggered.

Popping both together really reduces damage during stack and aoe healing phases, such as lightning storm on Jin'rokh and rampage on Megaera.

We also have mini-CDs which aren't really CDs but work to reduce the amount of damage we take. The stagger mechanic allows to take a certain percentage of the damage of an attack up front, but the remaining percentage will be dealt as a dot. We can purify this damage at the cost of 1 chi at any time we see fit. We also have Guard (which scales with vengeance) which is a shield that absorbs damage and increases our self-healing by 30%. We can glyph this to increase the amount of damage absorbed by 10%, but it will only absorb magic damage (again, useful for fights such as elegon and lei shi).

- We have clash (not very reliable) which is a cross between charge and death grip, grapple weapon (disarms and allows the monk to deal extra damage to disarmed target due to temporary weapon upgrade), roll, transcendance (like a warlocks teleport), we can place healing spheres on the ground for people to pick up later, and we can summon a guardian to help off tank an add if need be.

Personally, I've never had as much fun playing this game as I have with my monk, because it requires me to know most of the abilities in my toolkit and apply them at the right time. I was in the same dilemma as the OP at the beginning of 5.0, I rushed my pally to max level once MoP hit, but kept my monk on the back burner. Our raid group started a little late, but our other tank was a pally as well, so to help with gearing I switched to my monk and I've never looked back. Meter-wise, I've been top dps for quite a lot of fights, my raid heals (+ raid guards) are ridiculous and have out-healed our 2nd and 3rd healer - depending on the fight - many times.

Placed in the right hands, I believe a Brewmaster monk can be a very devastating tool, and can allow your raid group to overcome certain challenges and obstacles (or cheese certain mechanics) that other classes could hope to come close to achieving. Yes, there are some things we don't do as well as other classes, but usually we have an ability or two in our toolkit to allow us to solve that problem in a different way. I don't see myself changing classes ever again.

Putting up our Black Ox Statue allows us to place Guard on any random raid member every time we deal a certain amount of damage.

Thanks for that bit of info, my only question is, doesn't using your healing abilities require you to use chi/energy which severely gimps your dps if you have to switch to a healing mode?

[NRL1515]

Thanks for that bit of info, my only question is, doesn't using your healing abilities require you to use chi/energy which severely gimps your dps if you have to switch to a healing mode?

No they changed it in 5.2 where the CD is doubled (at least for chi wave), but none of the lvl 30 talents require chi to use... just longer cooldowns.

Yohass included several abilities that I fogort/left out, as either I don't use them at all, or they are SUPER niche and I haven't found a use for them yet.

The gift of the Ox orbs - forgot about these as I'm so used to every 10 sec or so strafing left or right a couple of steps and picking these up that it's just 2nd nature now, and is another one of our self-healing 'abilities'. They have a chance to drop every time you do damage.

Elusive Brew - I can't believe I forgot about this 'CD' as well, gives us a higher chance to dodge melee attacks - VERY useful on boss abilities such as Thrash from Sha of Fear and during the 'regular' tanking phase of Will of the Emperor.

[cerebro]

I currently have a 90 windwalke I use only for Pvp, I'll def give tanking a shot tonight. It felt "funky" while leveling and I really hated that the charge ability worked 1/2 the time. Especially that it does not work vs bosses.

[NRL1515]

I currently have a 90 windwalke I use only for Pvp, I'll def give tanking a shot tonight. It felt "funky" while leveling and I really hated that the charge ability worked 1/2 the time. Especially that it does not work vs bosses.

Usually if the charge/pull/stun doesn't work, the taunt part of the spell will. Granted, it is a very funky and fickle spell, but when the stars align, it's awesome.

[Radio]

Thanks for that bit of info, my only question is, doesn't using your healing abilities require you to use chi/energy which severely gimps your dps if you have to switch to a healing mode?

Chi wave does a shitload of damage (and is free to use), I'm cheeky and spam it on cooldown and it quite often deals about 20k DPS by itself and about 10k HPS over the course of the fight. When you're at high vengeance Expel Harm deals a nice amount of damage (since it deals damage in proportion to the amount of effective healing it does) and while it uses 40 energy, it generates 1 chi. Healing sphere is our only casted heal which consumes energy, doesn't generate chi, and doesn't deal damage, though it's only used in niche situations (was great for Lei Shi where the goal was to survive first, do damage later).

[Rumblecrush]

godmode option: prot pally

[Nikkaszal]

My healer says that most of the brewmasters she's run with in LFRs have been mana sponges who tend to roll out of range at the worst possible moment, but I'm sure you have a higher skill than most of them so this wouldn't be an issue.

Badly-played Brewmasters are far more noticeable than any other tank, so that's not surprising. When played well, however, we're ballin' tanks.

We really, really, REALLY excel at soaking predictable large hits, especially those which happen rather frequently or those which are dangerous tank-murderers (Triple Puncture, Talon Rake, Hard Stare etc) due to our plethora of tools available to negate them. In addition, attacks which ignore armor like Snapping Bite can be Staggered (and we can also have 90%+ avoidance for that with smart EBrew usage) giving us a further edge.

[Callypso]

Badly-played Brewmasters are far more noticeable than any other tank, so that's not surprising. When played well, however, we're ballin' tanks.

We really, really, REALLY excel at soaking predictable large hits, especially those which happen rather frequently or those which are dangerous tank-murderers (Triple Puncture, Talon Rake, Hard Stare etc) due to our plethora of tools available to negate them. In addition, attacks which ignore armor like Snapping Bite can be Staggered (and we can also have 90%+ avoidance for that with smart EBrew usage) giving us a further edge.

This. A nice example was our first Horridon kill, after we lost our DK to an unfortunate spike burst in the last phase I ended up solotanking Horridon for over 2 minutes (he was very high on HP has the dinomancers were healing and our dps kinda sucked... First killl remember? :P). I was able to roll Guards, Dampen Harm, Fort Brew and Zen Meditation for nearly every puncture after I reached 5+ stacks.

DK on vent: "How the fuck are you still alive and not taking more damage from puncture with all those stacks?!?!?!"
Me: "I'm just that good!"

Still puts a grin on my face