Brewmaster 5.4 Trinkets

[kaiadam]

Crit has never been a good tank stat. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure it's the single worst secondary stat (aside from spirit) for survival. It doesn't smooth damage, it doesn't allow you to use more useful active mitigation, it does nothing for your EH, and its primary use of generating higher avoidance is even trumped by the widely disregarded parry and dodge stats. Haste is a better survival stat than crit, and we all know how useless that particular stat is. Elusive brew is an awful AM against non-machine gun attacks. As a sidenote, this is exactly why guardian representation is so low in high-end raids, because their main AM is just +dodge. We joke and say that druids don't have AM, they have AP - active praying.

People go crit because it does more damage, pure and simple. Logically, if you're crit-focused right now, you wouldn't want to take a hit to your dps by going with a 2H even if it allows you slightly more uptime on EB. I mean, you could, but that's a bit head-scratch worthy.

If you are crit-capped, haste is your best EB generation stat as you well get more of those crit-capped autos.

Hit will likely generate more EB than crit, up to a certain amount. Simulations required to determine that number, and I'll guestimate it's somewhere between 1500 and 3000 rating over 7.5% with 60% paper doll crit.

----

Back on track ...

2. Thok's Tail Tip Usually Strength Melee Trinket
Currently 14% on the PTR. Though being a Strength Trinket, the flat crit damage, haste and mastery increase applies to all classes.

Holy crap.

For the crit focused player, 75% of their damage comes from crits, 14% more of that = 10.5% damage increase, which is leaps and bounds higher than everything else sans RoRo (the average "good" dps trinket like Renataki is worth ~4% of your total damage). Even if you completely eschewed crit in a mastery favored build you're looking at ~7% more damage.

The haste and mastery boost is also stupid good, if you had around 25,000 rating between those two stats, you're getting a 3500 rating boost from that passive alone, and strength still even gives AP for us. I checked, and there's an intellect version of this as well (where is the agi version???) ... and they aren't mutually exclusive and equippable on the PTR. Well, there's the BIS right there, no further calculations required, for both survival and damage: the INT and STR version of the 14% amplify trinket.

Assuming we can still wear them on live, sigh. Too bad it'll likely be role-restricted soon, but we can hope.

[Radio]

I don't understand this comment. If you are crit-capped, haste is your best EB generation stat as you well get more of those crit-capped autos.

As the others said haste gives very little EB generation point for point so there's no real (read: significant) defensive gain to be made from the haste, compared to stats like mastery which at my gear level provide a lot more defensive benefits point for point. My EB uptime is already pretty high too.

- - - Updated - - -

Crit has never been a good tank stat. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure it's the single worst secondary stat (aside from spirit) for survival. It doesn't smooth damage, it doesn't allow you to use more useful active mitigation, it does nothing for your EH, and its primary use of generating higher avoidance is even trumped by the widely disregarded parry and dodge stats. Haste is a better survival stat than crit, and we all know how useless that particular stat is. Elusive brew is an awful AM against non-machine gun attacks. As a sidenote, this is exactly why guardian representation is so low in high-end raids, because their main AM is just +dodge. We joke and say that druids don't have AM, they have AP - active praying.

People go crit because it does more damage, pure and simple. Logically, if you're crit-focused right now, you wouldn't want to take a hit to your dps by going with a 2H even if it allows you slightly more uptime on EB. I mean, you could, but that's a bit head-scratch worthy.

You have a point in a world where the T15 2p doesn't exist, I know I wasn't stacking crit in T14.

Save for the odd situation where you want to force a 2p proc prior to a big ability, having a high coverage of a +30% dodge buff with the downtime covered mostly by a +~12,000 mastery buff is great. Also, on 10 man heroic the spikes in failed avoidance that you occasionally get are almost never fatal if healers are paying attention. I think the only time when an EB avoidance RNG fail might actually kill me was tanking twins heroic past the enrage, but I actually ended up dodging all but 1 or 2 melee swings throughout the 15 seconds. >.>

Too bad they're nerfing the 2p right on 5.4 launch day.


EDIT: You've at least made me re-consider the value of crit when we're wearing T16 4p, will have to see what feels right once I get there.

[kaiadam]

With the 12% 2pT15, I calculated that 1000 crit rating directly translates to about 200 mastery rating (1000/600 = 1.67% more crit * 12% stagger * 960 mastery rating/stagger = 192 mastery rating, assuming 1% more crit = 1% more uptime on EB). 1000 crit rating is also equal to somewhere around 600 combined dodge + parry rating for total avoidance.

Both of those numbers are effectively 0 if you're only considering activating EB right before a dodgeable attack (snapping bite), or cancelaura'ing EB right before a big attack (talon rake) because neither really depends on you having a big EB stack, just the fact that you have some EB charges, which you will regardless of your crit %.

And yeah, I know that you can survive fine even if you've gemmed, reforged, and enchanted for spirit in 10m ... which is why most go with crit. If you can't die, might as well do more dps, right? Just saying that for all those people who think you're going crit to get higher survivability: you're probably misinformed.

[SurrealNight]

Assuming we can still wear them on live, sigh. Too bad it'll likely be role-restricted soon, but we can hope.

lol as if players didn't already scratch their heads at our gearing as tanks already, bidding on a "str" trinket as BiS would get me virtual lynched by the plate wearers and I suppose INT dps as well.

Will be an amusing miracle if that doesn't get changed as you said before live.

[Feali]

Am I the only one noticing that there is an odd number of trinkets with Mastery? It's like they don't want us to wear DPS trinkets so they just put a defensive stat on it.

[Radio]

With the 12% 2pT15, I calculated that 1000 crit rating directly translates to about 200 mastery rating (1000/600 = 1.67% more crit * 12% stagger * 960 mastery rating/stagger = 192 mastery rating, assuming 1% more crit = 1% more uptime on EB). 1000 crit rating is also equal to somewhere around 600 combined dodge + parry rating for total avoidance.

Both of those numbers are effectively 0 if you're only considering activating EB right before a dodgeable attack (snapping bite), or cancelaura'ing EB right before a big attack (talon rake) because neither really depends on you having a big EB stack, just the fact that you have some EB charges, which you will regardless of your crit %.

And yeah, I know that you can survive fine even if you've gemmed, reforged, and enchanted for spirit in 10m ... which is why most go with crit. If you can't die, might as well do more dps, right? Just saying that for all those people who think you're going crit to get higher survivability: you're probably misinformed.

For the most part it's the standard survivability vs. less damage taken overall argument. EB with 2p in a crit build gives you lovely periods of high avoidance and bonus stagger but against a boss with actual dangerous melee attacks you would have a much higher chance to die during the downtime between EB/2p or due to an avoidance fail streak vs. just running a mastery build.

The abudance of tank swap fights these days do also mess with effective uptimes, I'm sure that whether you have a crit build or not you could pretty much guarantee that you will have 15 stacks ready to go when it is time to taunt off your co-tank. Also if solotanking a fight like iron qon (I go WW cause my co-tank has simply never raided as a DPS XD) EB doesn't help in any way to deal with Impale.

But when playing for maximum EB/2p coverage, 1.67% crit, 192 mastery and 600 combined dodge/parry sounds like an attractive all-rounder package to me.


OT:

I didn't include the 14% trinkets in my evaluation because I'm not holding my breath for them to be functional for monks in 5.4 but... it looks like a great DPS whoreing trinket which can double up as a good mastery gain trinket at 14000+ mastery (to match the secondary ratings gained from a 553 trinket) that still gives a high amount of DPS.

- - - Updated - - -

Am I the only one noticing that there is an odd number of trinkets with Mastery? It's like they don't want us to wear DPS trinkets so they just put a defensive stat on it.

I think they're moreso avoiding putting hit/exp on trinkets now, you have options of haste, crit and mastery trinkets in the Agi DPS trinkets at least.

[Feali]

5.4 Raid - Normal - Siege of Orgrimmar - Boss X Loot X - Tank Trinket (5)
and
5.4 Raid - Normal - Siege of Orgrimmar - Boss X Loot X - Agi DPS Trinket (5)
have been removed in the new build. Giving Agility users no Crit damage, Haste and Mastery amplifying trinket but a Multistrike Trinket.

[Radio]

They've fixed the lifesteal trinket so I gave it a try:

The heal seems to be performing two functions, there's two effects that I get healed by:
- Life Steal
- Siphon Essence

Life Steal seems to be the direct lifesteal effect that it mentions on the tooltip.

Siphon Essence seems to be bonus damage/healing that the trinket does on every target afflicted by life steal, it was doing about 900 damage to the targets and 900 healing to me, very consistently. Doesn't scale with vengeance. On AoE pulls in front of the vale gate it was contributing 5-7% of my 800kish dps (had 100k veng at peak), 58,321k DPS by itself in one particular case. On that same pull, siphon essence also did 58,321k HPS, most of it being overheal lol.

Basic gist is:
You hit target, you are healed for 2.65% of that damage done through lifesteal, then target is hit for 900 damage by siphon essence and you are healed for 900.

[Gallahadd]

Nice Radio, thanks for the update. Based on your tests do you think this trinket will be getting alot of use?

kinda sad it's a Tank trinket really :P means will need to swap back and forth between Brm and WW depending on the fight, so we don't get the bad trinkets but do get a chance to roll on ones like this.

[Radio]

Nice Radio, thanks for the update. Based on your tests do you think this trinket will be getting alot of use?

kinda sad it's a Tank trinket really :P means will need to swap back and forth between Brm and WW depending on the fight, so we don't get the bad trinkets but do get a chance to roll on ones like this.

I think in terms of HPS it should be worth it, if I have the time I'll try to run it through a proper raid environment.

[Ampere]

I doubt that we'll be able to benefit from those strength and intellect amplifiers on live servers, nice to dream though.

I'm in a 10 man so I'll use whichever trinkets drop, I've been preferring agility trinkets so far this expac.

[Inthislzon]

I doubt that we'll be able to benefit from those strength and intellect amplifiers on live servers, nice to dream though.

I'm in a 10 man so I'll use whichever trinkets drop, I've been preferring agility trinkets so far this expac.

I think otherwise. The CD-reducing trinkets state "only for agi damage/str damage/etc" while those state nothing. Also seems odd giving one to everyone except agi DPS users.

I'm sure as hell getting one as soon as they drop, if they do increase my stats healers/casters/platedps can cry all they want, i'm getting one.

[Feali]

I still believe the trinkets are not going live like this. Some are just retardedly OP especially the Caster DPS ones.

[Shootz]

Any confirmation on whether the AMP trinkets work or not? I've been putting together a 5.4 BiS spreadsheet and can't finalise the trinkets until I know!

[gynshon]

Any confirmation on whether the AMP trinkets work or not? I've been putting together a 5.4 BiS spreadsheet and can't finalise the trinkets until I know!

Due to work and well....laziness I won't be able to help with trinket testing on PTR this time around. Have to save energy for progression...

Shootz - what are you basing your BIS lists off of? Also, I don't mind creating a script on my website that will host this where people can see them as actual links if you are interested.

[Feali]

Any confirmation on whether the AMP trinkets work or not? I've been putting together a 5.4 BiS spreadsheet and can't finalise the trinkets until I know!

Looking at your BIS list: Has anyone tested the BrM set bonuses extensively? After looking at my healing done for Garrosh P1 (which was kind of purifying intensive) it didn't win me over one bit. Only like 1-2% which I would gratefully trade against 3 warforged pieces.

[Inthislzon]

Due to work and well....laziness I won't be able to help with trinket testing on PTR this time around. Have to save energy for progression...

Shootz - what are you basing your BIS lists off of? Also, I don't mind creating a script on my website that will host this where people can see them as actual links if you are interested.

Slight off topic, but i get the following message trying to enter your website.

You are attempting to register from a country that is known to house spammers, and we will not tolerate it.

I'm from Spain, is that intended? Or just a bug? I'm not even trying to register, just clicking your signature.

[gynshon]

Slight off topic, but i get the following message trying to enter your website.
I'm from Spain, is that intended? Or just a bug? I'm not even trying to register, just clicking your signature.

We had some initial spam after launching so I took measures a little extreme and blocked a ton of country IP codes. I am slowly reversing those, so you should be gtg now.

[Inthislzon]

We had some initial spam after launching so I took measures a little extreme and blocked a ton of country IP codes. I am slowly reversing those, so you should be gtg now.

Yep, working now, tyvm

[Shootz]

Due to work and well....laziness I won't be able to help with trinket testing on PTR this time around. Have to save energy for progression...

Shootz - what are you basing your BIS lists off of? Also, I don't mind creating a script on my website that will host this where people can see them as actual links if you are interested.

I used a combination of wowdb and wowhead. Wowhead is a great resource as it has all the loot tables compiled into an easy to read list, but it seem's they are missing a few pieces (Like Haromm's Talisman) so I was able to fill in the blanks using wowdb.

Also, my BiS list was compiled looking at each piece separately rather than what my overall stats will look like with all the pieces combined, this means it might not be actual BiS once you've picked up every piece. I tend to have put the pieces that don't have mastery on them in the 'Overall' column whereas everything highlighted in blue likely has mastery on it. (This would change dramatically if all of a sudden we were required to stack mastery in 10 mans, but it hasn't been the case so far)

You're welcome to use my spreadsheet in any way you like, I'm also open to feedback on any changes that could/should be made. I mostly use it as a personal guide to tell me which bosses to use my coins on and to make my loot preferences transparent to all of the other agi classes in the guild. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

Looking at your BIS list: Has anyone tested the BrM set bonuses extensively? After looking at my healing done for Garrosh P1 (which was kind of purifying intensive) it didn't win me over one bit. Only like 1-2% which I would gratefully trade against 3 warforged pieces.

Prioritising tier items as BiS mostly came about due to their stats in comparison to off pieces as well as the number/colour of sockets in the tier pieces. Should the bonuses be underwhelming (As they seem to be) then Thunderforged off pieces would definitely be better, however I never put Thunderforged pieces on my list because I raid 10 man and have yet to be full BiS by the end of the tier. I only have 3 TF pieces right now and I got two of them last week, one being from Ra-den.