Are brewmasters squishy? Only tank alt to get squished by Ordos

[Deleted]

I have a rather neglected 507 item level brewmaster, along with similarly undergeared warrior, DK and bear tanks. However, while my other tanks can cope effortlessly with Ordos, my brewmaster went splat twice in one fight and this caused me rather to lose my nerve, only queuing her as dps for that fight since then. Do you think it was a fluke (e.g. bad healers) or are undergeared brewmasters more squishy than other tanking classes? Any tips for tanking Ordos with a BM?

A similar thing happened last tier on Empress LFR - I went in relatively under-geared on all my alts, but while my other alt tanks were fine, my BM went down twice in the fight (and just to normal Empress attacks, not to the adds).

In less high damage settings - for example, soloing stuff on the isle - my BM is streets ahead of my other alt tanks, with amazing self-healing and dps, and was a joy to level. But with hard hitting bosses, she seems more vulnerable than bears or warriors.

[Demsi]

Well, against ordos you cant expect to survive with so low gear, dunno about empress tho, lazy healers perhaps.

[Zstr]

don't pull boss with less then 35 people, so u have people to share spash dmg, more healing would be on you
so much hurry this day, unpaitient ninja pullers results in people die and wipe

[Deleted]

Well to be honest Orods have one or two hard hitting spell dmg based abilities and one of it is shared between players within 20 yards radius. So, as you said you have 507 ilvl and most likely you are going full crit, so a wild guess is that you have went crit/avoidance build and have low HP/mastery. This is why you get "splat" several times in my expirience with my monk on Ordos.
Advise - use stamina flask + isle buff to get some nicer HP so you can survaive it without stressing the healers, asuming solo tanking. Also u might go for stam/mastery shizzles to increase effective health on low ilvls. This is for LFR/flex ofc. I think as you aquer more and more flex gear you will get enough staminda to go full crit build with no problems :P

[Deleted]

Monks suffer a lot at lower gear levels due to not being able to keep Elusive Brew up as consistently, unlike a druid who will generate enough rage to use Savage Defense / Frenzied Regen or a warrior with Shield Block / Barrier just from their damage taken.

[allaiva]

Monks suffer a lot at lower gear levels due to not being able to keep Elusive Brew up as consistently, unlike a druid who will generate enough rage to use Savage Defense / Frenzied Regen or a warrior with Shield Block / Barrier just from their damage taken.

Tis the problem with the "zomg go crit all the time!" mentality a lot of the community has thrown out =/ Sometimes a mastery build is a much better option.

To the OP: A lot of monk mitigation is something that should be premeditated and the other portion is very much reactionary. Between guard, DF, zen med, etc you have a lot of magic damage mitigation that can be used, and if you're getting hit as hard as you suggest, it might be best to set up a CD rotation of your own for Ordos.

For empress it could very well be a shuffle mismanagement. It's hardly uncommon and people who play many other tanks don't often realize how important it is. +20% parry and +20%(plus additional mastery) stagger is very, very important for monk tanking.

[Art3x]

Are you sure you were keeping stagger up at all times?

[Deleted]

Tis the problem with the "zomg go crit all the time!" mentality a lot of the community has thrown out =/ Sometimes a mastery build is a much better option.

I disagree, no reason to blame crit as it has nothing to do with him dying, or very little at best. He's 507, meaning he probably has timeless gear and a lot of other crap equipped. Can't be compared to 520-530 entrylevel t16 gear. Most likely missing the cloak too (not that id ever advice using the tank one unless fighting hardhitting boss abilities like DW impales).

Probable reasons for dying include low max health, lots of firedamage (the key is to glyph guard and learn how to use self-heals smartly), stupid raid, inexperienced healers etc.

Swapping from ~50->60% stagger can make or break on a heroic boss where the physical damage closes in on becoming unhealable, but generally the real problem is max health. With 507 you can't purify as freely as we can in 560-570+ and even if another 20% of the incoming damage would be shuffled, after 10s you still take the same amount of damage every second until you purify (assuming damage is constant, which it is on Ordos). Point is, raising max health by 100k going from 500->600k would be a lot better than getting a person to reforge 3-4k mastery and dying again. HP copes well with magic damage and providing almost the same EHP as the mastery. Im not saying gear stamina, im saying raise your itemlevel before trying to tank bosses that are 1.5 tiers out of your league. It's like going up with a half-blue 480 tank to Oondasta expecting a smooth kill.

[Jawless Jones]

Are you sure you were keeping stagger up at all times?

im sure that stagger was up 100% of the time :P

[Gospels]

A lot of healers are not used to healing BM monks as well. They are not a, heal to 100% and they are fine for a few, class they require steady healing. Could be part of the problem

[Kisho]

Brewmasters can be very squishy if you're not sure what you're doing. Even a slight mistake can have large consequences, especially at relatively low gear levels.

Make sure you keep Shuffle up 100% of the time, use EB often (when you have 6+ stacks so it lasts for that long is generally a good rule of thumb), and use CDs.

If you want a better analysis of what you can do to improve, provide a WoL report. Brewmasters really need those to see exactly where you might be going wrong.

[Deleted]

All these people talking about how going crit spec supposedly killed him didn't think this through properly. Most of Ordos' spells are Fire damage, meaning that a higher mastery build would not have helped at ALL since stagger does not work on magic damage. Gearing for Stamina would not have yielded him that much HP anyways so that would not have changed much.

Needless to say, you got gibbed because you either pulled with a low number of people sharing the splash damage or because you didn't use cooldowns properly against some of his abilities. Poor play on a monk is way more unforgiving than other tanks with bigger HP pools and stronger passives (Not that it would make a difference anyways I think, since Armor just gives physical dmg reduction).

Please don't bash on crit builds for the wrong reasons, you are just as bad as the people you are bashing.

[Promdates]

Please don't bash on crit builds for the wrong reasons, you are just as bad as the people you are bashing.

For reference, there are only 3 abilities he has to watch out for as a tank. Magma Crush, which is his "meteor" style ability, which could have killed him we don't know (it also does 5m damage split among everyone in 20 yards). He also has to worry about Pool of Fire, which is easy to avoid. The last thing to worry about is Ancient Flame which could increase his fire damage taken by 10% if he's hit by it.

Without having a log, or knowing what exactly killed the guy... the only thing we can speculate is that he's doing one of the following: stacking crit and having no mastery for bosses that are above his level (although, empress LFR is pretty low for a 507 ilvl), he's dropping shuffle and getting pooped on when it's down, or he's not using CD's when he should for heavy hitting abilities.

FYI, if he has 15 people in range for Magma Crush on Ordos, everyone takes 333k damage before mitigation if all 15 take it.

Brewmasters - 25% damage reduction
Guardians - 25% magical 12% physical
Prot Warrior - 25% damage reduction
Prot Paladin - 15% damage reduction
Blood DK - 10% damage reduction

According to stances and passives, Brewmasters are one of the best at mitigating spell damage, not to mention having some of the best CDs to use against incoming spell damage.

[Art3x]

Ordos' only dangerous moves are spell dmg so mastery is not useful on that. Just pop diffuse magic on the pull and then pew pew him to death.

[Deleted]

Well, against ordos you cant expect to survive with so low gear

You'd think so but my warrior tank, DK and bear are all at a similar gear level and did not seem to find it a problem. It may just be RNG and small numbers, as I won't tank it if there's a better geared tank.

For reference, there are only 3 abilities he has to watch out for as a tank. Magma Crush, which is his "meteor" style ability, which could have killed him we don't know (it also does 5m damage split among everyone in 20 yards). He also has to worry about Pool of Fire, which is easy to avoid. The last thing to worry about is Ancient Flame which could increase his fire damage taken by 10% if he's hit by it.

Thanks - that's very useful. I've not bothered about Ordos's abilities before, as he seems so easy to tank on my other characters.

... stacking crit and having no mastery for bosses that are above his level (although, empress LFR is pretty low for a 507 ilvl), he's dropping shuffle and getting pooped on when it's down,

When I tanked Empress LFR, it was in July, with only gear from one run of the precediing LFRs to precede it, so it was far from 507 ilvl. I just mention it because the other comparably geared tank alts did not die.

...or he's not using CD's when he should for heavy hitting abilities.

Yes, I'm guilty of that - now I know better, I will fiddle with DBM settings to try to make them more obvious. Thanks for the help.

[Promdates]

Don't forget that monks also have the lowest health pool out of all 5 tanks.

[PowerOfTwo]

i dono monks feel so squishy to me to, its currently my OS on my main, so its relatively speaking ok geared and yet i feel like im paper, i've went to sooo many guides and vids and still can't seem to fix it, i allways purify my yellow (around 40-50k, i think per tick if i remember how i set up tmw), i don;t drop my shuffle yet often i die when my stagger is green ffs and i spike like crazy.

I just feel so naked with basicaly 1 reliable cd the absorb on guard is nothing and dodge is well... dodge -.-* sometimes when im spikeing i pop dampen harm, but the stacks arnt even consumed so its not like im taking massive hits, just cant figure it out.

Edit: update, just talked to our MT , i had to OT garrosh tonight, he, pala was avereging like 70-170k white hits on garrosh p2, i was avg 230k.... and he has close to 200k more hp than me, i thought the idea for BM is we take constant, medium dmg, i take constant huge dmg, and i geared for EH not crit , he'd prolly only hit like 10-15% harder in a crit build but still, how does that go? dodge dodge dodge dodge - boom dead!. Hes like 564 im 540 but still... he overgears garrosh i shouldnt struggle this much.

[Promdates]

i allways purify my yellow (around 40-50k, i think per tick if i remember how i set up tmw), i don;t drop my shuffle yet often i die when my stagger is green ffs and i spike like crazy.

First: STOP DOING THAT. Yellow stagger means the dot is ticking for between 3-6% of your health. You're just wasting Chi at that point removing a very minor dot (If you have 800k hp that's 24k-48k ticks you're removing, it's nothing damage). How much mastery do you have, what's your gear level, which boss are you fighting, did you check your log and see exactly what you died to, was it magical or physical damage that killed you? There are too many variables to check and see what you were dying to, and I 1,000,000% promise that it had NOTHING to do with your stagger dot. Regarding the Dampen Harm thing, if you're dying when you use DH and it doesn't remove any stacks then you're probably dying to not being healed enough or you're dying because you have too many adds on you.

As a brewmaster, if you are doing what you are supposed to be doing, and you have more than the base 5% mastery, you're not squishy in the least. Show me a log and armory, I'll tell you what you're doing wrong and how to fix it.

[allaiva]

I just feel so naked with basicaly 1 reliable cd the absorb on guard is nothing and dodge is well... dodge -.-* sometimes when im spikeing i pop dampen harm, but the stacks arnt even consumed so its not like im taking massive hits, just cant figure it out.

Well, Fortifying Brew is pretty good. And then there's Zen Meditation if it's a spell cast (rather than a melee swing, such as Corrosive Blast). Also 30% dodge isn't something to snuff. With EB up and shuffle we're talking 75-80% avoidance.

i dono monks feel so squishy to me to, its currently my OS on my main, so its relatively speaking ok geared and yet i feel like im paper, i've went to sooo many guides and vids and still can't seem to fix it, i allways purify my yellow (around 40-50k, i think per tick if i remember how i set up tmw), i don;t drop my shuffle yet often i die when my stagger is green ffs and i spike like crazy.

I'm with promdate here. 40-50k ticks aren't what will kill you. If you're tanking 20 adds then maybe they will, but more likely it's a healer issue if you're not dying to spike damage. If it actually is spike physical damage you should look into some more mastery at that point. If you're coming from a WW gearing, you probably have a bajillion more haste than you need and probably a large number of +160 agi gems. Both will significantly decrease your crit and mastery which are the go to choices for BrM.

All this being said; logs, character link, and boss examples would be a better place to start >.>

[PowerOfTwo]

First: STOP DOING THAT. Yellow stagger means the dot is ticking for between 3-6% of your health. You're just wasting Chi at that point removing a very minor dot (If you have 800k hp that's 24k-48k ticks you're removing, it's nothing damage). How much mastery do you have, what's your gear level, which boss are you fighting, did you check your log and see exactly what you died to, was it magical or physical damage that killed you? There are too many variables to check and see what you were dying to, and I 1,000,000% promise that it had NOTHING to do with your stagger dot. Regarding the Dampen Harm thing, if you're dying when you use DH and it doesn't remove any stacks then you're probably dying to not being healed enough or you're dying because you have too many adds on you.

As a brewmaster, if you are doing what you are supposed to be doing, and you have more than the base 5% mastery, you're not squishy in the least. Show me a log and armory, I'll tell you what you're doing wrong and how to fix it.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Wuggems/simple

Here you go sir, any imput is apreciated, like i said i tryed going through alot of material and at this point i just feel like i need a spectator or something pointing out things im not grasping. Edited my OP with tonights garrosh experience, paragons before went pretty smoothly yet even there i spiked frightningly 2 or 3 times.