[BrM/All Tanks] Theck-Meloree Index (TMI)

[Geodew]

Theck is one of the most influential Protection Paladin theorycrafters and has done a lot of cool stuff. He's a brilliant guy with a doctorate in Physics.

However, he doesn't only do Paladin stuff. He's done something that could revolutionize tank gearing strategies and put numbers to what was before only intuition and guesswork.

Enter Theck-Meloree Index (TMI), a sort of damage-taken-smoothness metric, contrast to DTPS.

After all, any tank can agree that a hit for 700k damage followed by 0 damage for 10 seconds is much more deadly than 70k damage taken every second for 10 seconds. However, both of these show up the same when looking at only DTPS. The former though would generate a number leagues higher in terms of TMI.

See main article: http://www.sacredduty.net/theck-melo...ence-document/

See the making of the metric and its justification as a useful metric: http://www.sacredduty.net/2013/07/01...metric-part-1/

The coolest part of this (and the part related to monks) is that one could import their tank into SimulationCraft and see their gear's TMI score and generate their own stat weights from it. However, SimC needs Brewmaster and Monk coders, preferably with C++ experience, because the Brewmaster module is in need of heavy attention, and currently not really functional.

Disclaimer: Not (yet at least) really affiliated with SimC devs or Theck, though I've conversed with both, as you can partially see from the comments on Sacred Duty. I'm an Engineer and a good coder if I say so myself, but I'm also a Mistweaver or I'd more heavily consider helping SimC out.

[Yohassakura]

For Monks it's pretty clear cut - Mastery is pure mitigation over time or "TMI", stamina decreases the perceived spikes by having a larger health pool.

Everything else contributes to spikier damage or anti-TMI.

We generally don't care so much about this "TMI" as it's already baked into Monks due to shuffle - unless it's particularly hard hitting, and just reforge into some mastery (which isn't exactly needed for 10 mans, unless you're progressing at a high level).

It's interesting on paper, but with our current core mechanics, it makes it seem a little pointless to implement a Brewmaster Tank version.

[Geodew]

You just told me "Stamina and Mastery are good, and the rest are worse."

That's quite different information from stat weights telling you which of the two "good stats" is better, and by how much. This is useful when deciding whether to gem Stam or Mastery, for example.

Sure, you guys CAN and HAVE managed without it, but don't discount having a number representing how good each stat actually is.

I think it was in fact this TMI-type modeling which made Paladins discover that Haste and not Mastery was the best spike mitigation stat.

[Orion Antares]

Not really.

The way a Monk works you stack Mastery if you need physical damage smoothing. If you need spell damage spike protection you get enough Stamina.

It's actually pretty straight forward and the only real decision is if the physical damage or the spell damage is more dangerous.

[NeverStop]

Mastery has the benefit that it gets better the more you have. Also almost all tank killer abilities this tier are Physical (Megaera and Twins are the only exception).

[Yohassakura]

You just told me "Stamina and Mastery are good, and the rest are worse."

That's quite different information from stat weights telling you which of the two "good stats" is better, and by how much. This is useful when deciding whether to gem Stam or Mastery, for example.

Sure, you guys CAN and HAVE managed without it, but don't discount having a number representing how good each stat actually is.

I think it was in fact this TMI-type modeling which made Paladins discover that Haste and not Mastery was the best spike mitigation stat.

Well, dodge & parry shouldn't be ideal in terms of TMI (due to RNG, plus Diminishing Returns) so the only definitive mitigation stat we have would be mastery.

If you want to look at abilities that you can cast, you could infer that haste is the best stat by far, if we can get to 3-4 jabs between every keg smash, because this would allow for jabs to convert to Expel Harm (after the fact heal) or a healing orb (assuming you place it under you, it'd be instantly eaten).

As you're supposed to have some healers in your raid group, they're there to heal you, you're there to take damage, deal damage and assist in keeping yourself alive with some healing abilities, your active mitigation, normal tank abilities (guard, elusive brew) and your cooldowns (Dampen Harm, Zen Med, Fortifying Brew).

For Paladins, the reason that haste is so good is that it speeds up their actions so their active mitigation is active in a shorter space of time, rather than it being a bigger amount, whereas the same can't be said for haste in relation to brewmasters, as the abilities which benefit from haste are post-damage taken.

[Geodew]

How did the BrM community decide which socket bonuses to ignore, for example?

And as TMI is universal this also lets you see how you compare with similarly geared tanks of other specs.

Is this not cool enough to motivate? I'm surprised at you guys.

[gynshon]

You just told me "Stamina and Mastery are good, and the rest are worse."

That's quite different information from stat weights telling you which of the two "good stats" is better, and by how much. This is useful when deciding whether to gem Stam or Mastery, for example.

Sure, you guys CAN and HAVE managed without it, but don't discount having a number representing how good each stat actually is.

I think it was in fact this TMI-type modeling which made Paladins discover that Haste and not Mastery was the best spike mitigation stat.

Monks are a different breed entirely because of several factors. I would explain them all again, but honestly tired of doing so when all the information is contained within the sticky. Others have mentioned some in this thread as well.

One of the main points I didn't see mentioned is that during progression, DPS matters. Even from tanks. On Ra-Den alone, my dps is considerably lower using my current WW reforge setup compared to a normal crit centered build. I am maximized for optimal WW gearing the only thing I do is swap out my tier pieces and WW is set. I do this because we single tank so many encounters right now during farm, but will go back to a Crit centered build for progression. At any rate, on Ra-den my DPS is literally 70k lower than the crit build over 5mins. That is a huge DPS loss, and sure Ra-den is a different encounter, but that applies to Lei Shen, Twins, etc.

For 25m, not so much but every monk raiding progression knows what to stack, and when to stack it because there literally so many threads asking the same question it will make your head spin.

[SurrealNight]

From defensive value standpoint.
Mastery - Increases stagger % (block) EH and how fast the dot builds (requiring haste to purify). RoRo can be set to proc for huge temp boost.
Stamina - Increases health pool EH. For physical damage slot for slot Mastery is better but has no value vs magic damage.
Crit - Improved Elusive Brew uptime/generation (+30% dodge). DW and 2H have two different values where crit stops improving EB generation.
Haste - Improves EB generation but slower than crit. More Chi to purify more often (which Mastery technically increases a need for).

Since well geared 10m BrM are already seeing 50%+ base stagger even when stacking crit it's not really something the average raider is worrying about optimizing anything like a TMI value. I've managed 25m HC raiding mostly crit focused but still carry a decent amount of mastery currently. For progression it seems like a lot will do a full mastery reforge and then work back in crit as gear/farm status increases. Then you have to take into account RoRo and how the crit and mastery versions effect things (along with the caps).

I can appreciate what is trying to be accomplished but BrM are complicated in a more straight forward way that I don't personally feel like I need or would use a tool that intricate. I personally get all that I need from AMR and flipping the Crit vs Mastery stat weights to favor what I'm after currently.

[cyqu]

How did the BrM community decide which socket bonuses to ignore, for example?

And as TMI is universal this also lets you see how you compare with similarly geared tanks of other specs.

Is this not cool enough to motivate? I'm surprised at you guys.

Monks are not the same as any other tanking class, get over yourself dude.

[Orion Antares]

How did the BrM community decide which socket bonuses to ignore, for example?

And as TMI is universal this also lets you see how you compare with similarly geared tanks of other specs.

Is this not cool enough to motivate? I'm surprised at you guys.

The thing is every stat is useful in some way to a BrM's survival. The decision that a BrM needs to make is what they want to focus on doing for a specific fight. Crit for more DPS/healing/avoidance. Mastery for more physical smoothing. Stamina for spell spike protection. Haste for more Purifying brews and healing spheres.

What stats you pick isn't a decision of what is optimal for the class. It's what is optimal for your play style and what your raid needs you to do, extra damage smoothing, extra DPS/healing, or extra spike protection.

Brewmasters are the most dynamic and versatile tank in the game currently.

[Geodew]

Hold up, to some of you, I don't need a book on how BrM works, just give me the low-down. I'm not about to go read the sticky to understand BrM; that's not necessary. I just made what I thought was a basic assumption that you guys are interested in the best survival stats for BrM. But what you guys are telling me is that a) BrM survival and especially Mastery is so overpowered and b) Crit is too good of a dps stat, that everyone stacks dps or Mastery, and thus TMI stat weights aren't very useful? Shouldn't you guys be asking Blizzard to fix this? And if you did, why aren't they?

Monks are not the same as any other tanking class, get over yourself dude.

What do you mean? That's kind of the point of TMI's design. It's universal. You can be a different tank with a different rotation and the index calculation looks at what kind of damage you take and when. It's also normalized by your max HP, by the way, so stamina differences between specs are included.

- - - Updated - - -

The thing is every stat is useful in some way to a BrM's survival. The decision that a BrM needs to make is what they want to focus on doing for a specific fight. Crit for more DPS/healing/avoidance. Mastery for more physical smoothing. Stamina for spell spike protection. Haste for more Purifying brews and healing spheres.

What stats you pick isn't a decision of what is optimal for the class. It's what is optimal for your play style and what your raid needs you to do, extra damage smoothing, extra DPS/healing, or extra spike protection.

Brewmasters are the most dynamic and versatile tank in the game currently.

Ah, ok, this is a much better answer. Let it be noted though that SimC can sim magic damage spikes that happen along with melees etc.

[SurrealNight]

what you guys are telling me is that a) BrM survival and especially Mastery is so overpowered and b) Crit is too good of a dps stat, that everyone stacks dps or Mastery, and thus TMI stat weights aren't very useful? Shouldn't you guys be asking Blizzard to fix this? And if you did, why aren't they?

Why would we ask Blizz to "fix" any of our mechanics it's basically like crying for a self nerf? They will have to address they fact we will hit 100% physical immunity and crit is a valid choice if EH isn't an issue resulting in a reward of DPS and increased avoidance.

Haste is valued artificially low right now due to the 4P and not many stacking mastery. Once we start shedding the 4P in T16 haste will regain some value probably even more so if you are mastery focused due to the massive amount of physical damage funneled into the dot.

- - - Updated - - -

Ah, ok, this is a much better answer. Let it be noted though that SimC can sim magic damage spikes that happen along with melees etc.

This is really fight dependent as well. With Glyhp'd Guard, Diffuse Magic, Zen Med, Fort Brew + self healing in general all magic spikes are covered by a CD (which from glancing the formula's are based around non-CD covered events). Fights that have constant magic damage (outside of ticking dots) that can't be CD covered are rare.

[kaiadam]

Hold up, to some of you, I don't need a book on how BrM works, just give me the low-down. I'm not about to go read the sticky to understand BrM; that's not necessary. I just made what I thought was a basic assumption that you guys are interested in the best survival stats for BrM. But what you guys are telling me is that a) BrM survival and especially Mastery is so overpowered and b) Crit is too good of a dps stat, that everyone stacks dps or Mastery, and thus TMI stat weights aren't very useful? Shouldn't you guys be asking Blizzard to fix this? And if you did, why aren't they?

To be clear, mastery and stamina are the only stats we have that increase our survivability by a decent amount. Everything else goes towards either avoidance (which doesn't) or other useless stuff (haste.). Hit/Expertise hard-cap is a given.

For pure physical damage, mastery > stamina. For fights with magic damage ... generally mastery is still better than stamina.

Brewmaster gearing is very uncomplicated. Enough mastery to comfortably survive the toughest encounter that's thrown at you, then crit the rest of the way to maximize damage, end of story.

As for how we stack up against other tanks, we should be #4 on the index, behind the plate wearers and ahead of druids.

I think our reaction is something like "we appreciate the attempt, but we already know what's going on, thanks though."

[Pearsyn]

For Paladins, the reason that haste is so good is that it speeds up their actions so their active mitigation is active in a shorter space of time, rather than it being a bigger amount, whereas the same can't be said for haste in relation to brewmasters, as the abilities which benefit from haste are post-damage taken.

You're right about one thing, and you're wrong about the highlighted section.

Haste is so good for Protection Paladins because as you said it increases the Holy Power Generation which leads to higher uptime on Shield of the Righteous, their active mitigation.

Haste also interacts with Sacred Shield to increase the frequency of absorbs from the talent, in other words it increases the amount of damage you are absorbing, making it bigger. Its an incredible damage smoothing mechanic and the absorb is based off of attack power (vengeance). More Vengeance + High Haste = High Absorbs + Frequently + High Uptime on SotR + High DPS being done to enemies. Its a complete package.

Getting on-topic though, I have to agree with the general consensus here that Monks are really not in need of a TMI. Shuffle for monks is your basic TMI or Damage smoothing mechanic, yes mastery increases the shuffle, but if I'm not mistake most monks are stacking Crit > Haste > Mastery. Crit = high uptime on Elusive Brew which is 30% dodge I think (more damage smoothing, taking less damage) In addition though Brewmasters have something that clears all that damage....so they passively* smooth out physical damage and then they can just get rid of that damage.

Theres a reason Brewmaster monks are the best tank for Ra-den.

[Geodew]

Why would we ask Blizz to "fix" any of our mechanics it's basically like crying for a self nerf?

I'm just saying if we optimize an X-spec tank for survival and put him in SimC and he get a trivially low TMI compared to other tanks, that's kind of a problem with the game. If you do the same thing and his DPS is way behind other survival-geared tanks, that's also bad. If anyone in the community was interested in the health of the game and not their ability to trivialize tanking, then they might consider letting Blizz know that they feel their class is too strong. Most people are selfish, though, and won't.

You don't have to cry for a self-nerf, anyway. "Blizz, nerf our survival, nerf crit dps synergy even harder, and buff our base dps to compensate so we're actually stacking survival stats." Fixed, and BrM still plays the same way, and is just as good.

As a final point, I'm sure Blizz has their own SimC-like software. If the community doesn't work on it, they still will, and won't release what they do. If what you guys tell me is truth, I'd expect nerfs a couple months down the line when they discover that monk is OP.

[kaiadam]

Getting on-topic though, I have to agree with the general consensus here that Monks are really not in need of a TMI. Shuffle for monks is your basic TMI or Damage smoothing mechanic, yes mastery increases the shuffle, but if I'm not mistake most monks are stacking Crit > Haste > Mastery. Crit = high uptime on Elusive Brew which is 30% dodge I think (more damage smoothing, taking less damage) In addition though Brewmasters have something that clears all that damage....so they passively* smooth out physical damage and then they can just get rid of that damage.

Theres a reason Brewmaster monks are the best tank for Ra-den.

Avoidance isn't damage smoothing, rather, the direct opposite. Stagger smooths damage, mastery increases stagger amount. Brewmasters are the best tank for Ra-den because of an unintentional oversight that stagger is the only tanking mechanic in the game that mitigates fatal strike plus shuffle is up 100% of the time, which completely invalidates fatal strike, turning it into a glorified melee that often hits for less than his auto-attack.

I'm just saying if we optimize an X-spec tank for survival and put him in SimC and he get a trivially low TMI compared to other tanks, that's kind of a problem with the game. If you do the same thing and his DPS is way behind other survival-geared tanks, that's also bad. If anyone in the community was interested in the health of the game and not their ability to trivialize tanking, then they might consider letting Blizz know that they feel their class is too strong. Most people are selfish, though, and won't.

You don't have to cry for a self-nerf, anyway. "Blizz, nerf our survival, nerf crit dps synergy even harder, and buff our base dps to compensate so we're actually stacking survival stats." Fixed, and BrM still plays the same way, and is just as good.

As a final point, I'm sure Blizz has their own SimC-like software. If the community doesn't work on it, they still will, and won't release what they do. If what you guys tell me is truth, I'd expect nerfs a couple months down the line when they discover that monk is OP.

Our full-mastery TMI is likely #4 (maybe #3) in the list of tanks. The difference is we scale tremendously with mastery, so next tier's full mastery build might land us in the #2 spot (we all know who's at the top -_-). DPS-wise, we've never been anything short of the best damage dealing spec in the game all this tier, and that's also unlikely to change next tier regardless of whether we're stacking mastery or not.

There's actually very little crit synergy, avoidance and the 2pT15 conversion are both terribad.

[Yohassakura]

You're right about one thing, and you're wrong about the highlighted section.

Haste is so good for Protection Paladins because as you said it increases the Holy Power Generation which leads to higher uptime on Shield of the Righteous, their active mitigation.

I'm not sure if you misunderstood me there but, by that I meant that Mastery increases block amount (or to say it another way, increases the damage reduction provided by SotR).

From Paladins sticky:

Mastery - Divine Bulwark. - Increases the damage reduction of Shield of the Righteous by 8%, adds 8% to Bastion of Glory, and increases your chance to block by 8%.

This seems to agree with me that the total amount of blocked damage is increased.

[Orion Antares]

I'm just saying if we optimize an X-spec tank for survival and put him in SimC and he get a trivially low TMI compared to other tanks, that's kind of a problem with the game. If you do the same thing and his DPS is way behind other survival-geared tanks, that's also bad. If anyone in the community was interested in the health of the game and not their ability to trivialize tanking, then they might consider letting Blizz know that they feel their class is too strong. Most people are selfish, though, and won't.

You don't have to cry for a self-nerf, anyway. "Blizz, nerf our survival, nerf crit dps synergy even harder, and buff our base dps to compensate so we're actually stacking survival stats." Fixed, and BrM still plays the same way, and is just as good.

As a final point, I'm sure Blizz has their own SimC-like software. If the community doesn't work on it, they still will, and won't release what they do. If what you guys tell me is truth, I'd expect nerfs a couple months down the line when they discover that monk is OP.

The thing you're not getting is that monks are so much more dependent on play style for what is the best for the monk's survival. It's less about the stats for the class and more about the stats for you. In all honesty a Crit build can be as safe as a Mastery build if you are able to hit all your buttons at the right times. You need to be able to personally watch for and react to those spike moments rather than just running through a DPS and cleanse rotation like you would with a Mastery build.

I don't see blizzard nerfing this either. It goes along with their concept that you should be rewarded for playing in a more active style. Mastery stacking and cleansing is a lazy way to play, imo.

[kaiadam]

In all honest a Crit build can be as safe as a Mastery build if you are able to hit all your buttons at the right times. You need to be able to personally watch for an react to those spike moments rather than just running through a DPS and cleanse rotation like you would with a Mastery build.

What's to stop you from being as vigilant in a mastery build and reacting to the spikes as well? In any reasonable comparison played by similarly skilled brewmasters, the mastery-based one will survive significantly more stuff than the crit based one.