Brewmaster in need of some help

[rocius]

Hello, i recently started doing flex runs so far the group size on flex was 10-15 ppl, I'm using a haste(around 8000) and crit build, my elusive brew is up almost 90% of the time, but still on some fights i just get destroyed, its simple to keep my shuffle up always, its also not so hard to purify myself when needed. Healers also said that the dmg i take is way to spiky, so i was thinking of going to haste (also 8000) with mastery instead of crit. Is that wise to do or should i just deal with the spikes?

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

Also if i should go mastery, do i also need to gem for stamina, so far i noticed if i keep my HP above 600k i can survive everything, but the spike dmg is just killing my healers.

[Tech614]

8000 haste is entirely overkill. You can get to 10k mastery if you wish just by neutering this down to 4-5k along with taking 2-3k from crit. If you are spiking too much mastery is always the answer.

Glyph enduring healing spheres, which will essentially pile up full heals to either side of you when needed.

Glyph Fortuitous Healing spheres which will spawn an even bigger healing sphere to your side every time you drop below 25% health with a 30s cd.

Glyph Gaurd on fights with a big magic damage spike. Even when it's not glyphed make sure you aren't just spamming it on cd but using it for abilities that can/will spike your health low.

Glyph of fort brew is meh... and the rest of your glyphs are worthless for tanking raids.

Always maintain above 40 energy to expel harm yourself in emergency situations.

Generally, if you are just spiking and not taking constant massive damage you should be able to heal back up that spike damage before a healer even has time to cast a heal on you.

[thebdc]

Are you using your CDs? It might also help to tell us where exactly you have problems, or ideally post some logs.

[Deleted]

8000 haste is entirely overkill. You can get to 10k mastery if you wish just by neutering this down to 4-5k along with taking 2-3k from crit. If you are spiking too much mastery is always the answer.

Yes and no, if its physical yes. =)

I'd like to throw a pitch for Glyph of Guard (the 30% passive healing is quite useful on low dmg physical fights, in other words all of flex ), Expel harm and Chi wave. If you master those skills, coupled with Zen med, fort brew etc you'll do fine OP. Brewmasters have a lot of reactive skills you need to master, in flex it shouldn't be a mastery issue or even a max health one. As long as you play it right you'll be fine! (Practice makes perfect!)

[rocius]

well its not like i die but i just get complains from healers that i spike to much, i noticed that my self even if i get low i spam expel and chi, but that leads to my healers stressing out and wasting cd's or burst healing with expensive skills. On the guard issue yes i spam it everytime its of cd might not be the best course of action now that i think of it . For that 8000 haste i find that to be the best number for me it gives me alot spheres around me and i have energy to spam everything.

[Jocias]

If you're spiking a lot, keeping shuffle up as much as possible and stacking more mastery, along with proper Purifying Brew, Elusive Brew, and Guard usage should help with that. For getting more mastery, your options are to remove the haste that isn't necessary to maintain a reasonable rotation, which is about 6k, tops, or you could get mastery from crit. As crit continues to give more EB stacks well above 60% crit for 2H, it maintains its value well above the value of crit that you currently have. Haste loses its value at around 6k. Crit also means that you have a higher chance of getting potentially life-saving Expel Harm and Chi Wave crits. I'd start by knocking your haste down by 2k and moving that into mastery. If that isn't enough, then start dropping your crit for mastery.

The basic stat weights are hit to 7.5% > expertise to 15% > haste to 4-6k > mastery to wherever you can survive > crit >>> just about everything else.

Stam is a very poor stat for BrM for effective health. Mastery allows you to shrug off a lot more damage than the extra health from stam will.

Logs would be really helpful. Without logs, all we can really do is try to tweak your stat weights and give you general advice. If you're not doing things correctly, the only way we can know for sure is if you post some logs.

If you use askmrrobot, the stat weights in the screenshot below should get you on the right track. To edit the mastery soft cap, you need to enable advanced weights. If that amount of mastery is too much, just scale it back until you find a comfortable level. If having 8k haste is a must, just change the haste soft cap to 8k. Once you get your stats where you want them, click save and then click the optimize button.
With these weights, you drop 2k haste and 4.5k crit to get up to about 10k mastery.

[rocius]

Hmm i actualy use the askmrrobot, thats where i got my current build, its the prebuild there as PVE:default, as for logs i dont have any and all my raids are done with about 50% of pugs, so my guild doesnt keep track of it also. I will try the to lower my haste and add some of it to mastery, for crit cap i remember reading that at http://sunniersartofwar.com/#stats that 57% is for DW and 2h has 79%, although i noticed that sunnier guide is abit out of date.

[Jocias]

Hmm i actualy use the askmrrobot, thats where i got my current build, its the prebuild there as PVE:default, as for logs i dont have any and all my raids are done with about 50% of pugs, so my guild doesnt keep track of it also. I will try the to lower my haste and add some of it to mastery, for crit cap i remember reading that at http://sunniersartofwar.com/#stats that 57% is for DW and 2h has 79%, although i noticed that sunnier guide is abit out of date.

Make sure you're editing the values in askmrrobot to be what they are in the screenshot. The values I have in the screenshot are custom values. Don't take the actual values as being from simc or anything. I just massaged those numbers to the point where it will give you the stats that you want.

As far as crit is concerned, it does stop generating EB for DW at around 60%. Regardless of if you're DW or 2H at or above 60% crit, you will have more EB stacks than you'll need. Also, crit retains its value above the DW white crit cap for being able to save you with a well timed crit when you're spamming Expel Harm at low health. It's for this reason that crit never really falls behind other stats for either survivability or for DPS.

You can make an account at warcraftlogs.com and upload your logs to a personal log there.

[darkwarrior42]

I know a lot of people don't like that much haste, but I find that I actually rather like being around 8k haste.... at lower values, I sometimes find it annoyying to both keep 100% uptime on shuffle and purify whenever I need to. It's not like I need that much more mastery... I'm running ~8k haste, everything else into crit, and I solo tank Thok 10H just fine without a paladin in the group (and it was Thok that caused me to go for the higher haste value, actually... despite the value of mastery against his huge physical damage in phase 1, I found that I got more value out of more haste allowing me to purify with impunity without losing shuffle).

That said, it really does depend on why you're dying... if you're getting killed by physical damage, mastery is definitely a good way to go. Favoring mastery over haste tends to result in higher average damage taken, but the damage is smoother and easier to heal. Glyph of Guard is situational, but can be amazing if it's magical damage that's killing you... and if you don't have the 4p set bonus, purifying won't be quite as valuable, making mastery more attractive relative to haste.

[Jocias]

I know a lot of people don't like that much haste, but I find that I actually rather like being around 8k haste.... at lower values, I sometimes find it annoyying to both keep 100% uptime on shuffle and purify whenever I need to. It's not like I need that much more mastery... I'm running ~8k haste, everything else into crit, and I solo tank Thok 10H just fine without a paladin in the group (and it was Thok that caused me to go for the higher haste value, actually... despite the value of mastery against his huge physical damage in phase 1, I found that I got more value out of more haste allowing me to purify with impunity without losing shuffle).

That said, it really does depend on why you're dying... if you're getting killed by physical damage, mastery is definitely a good way to go. Favoring mastery over haste tends to result in higher average damage taken, but the damage is smoother and easier to heal. Glyph of Guard is situational, but can be amazing if it's magical damage that's killing you... and if you don't have the 4p set bonus, purifying won't be quite as valuable, making mastery more attractive relative to haste.

Having more haste is nice. Especially if you're used to playing WW like I am. The thing is, though, the BrM rotation only requires enough haste to use Keg Smash on CD with enough jabs thrown in for the chi to maintain shuffle and enough chi left over for Purifying Brew and Guards when they're necessary. Any haste above that is just extra DPS with no real effect on your survivability. 6k haste should be more than plenty to do the basic rotation with a bit to spare. Once OP gets his ilvl where he has enough mastery to survive and enough crit to keep up his EB stacks, he can move a bit to haste if he wants. Until then, haste to around 6k, stack mastery until you're not dying, then put whatever is leftover into crit.

Without logs, it's hard to tell what's going on, but I have some suspicion that it's the healers that are the problem or not using defensive CDs at the proper time. In either case, once OP gets things sorted out, I doubt he'll need nearly as much mastery.

[Tech614]

If you need 8,000 haste to maintain the brewmaster rotation you are purifying way too much. That simple. Just because the aura of a red stagger pops up on your screen doesn't mean you immediately need to purify. In most situation, a red stagger will drop back down to a yellow on it's own with your other active mitigation. There are obvious exceptions, such as tanking a blood rage, high stacks of panic etc but the chi should already be banked with plenty of shuffle up time for situations like that.

[Rainbowdash]

If you need 8,000 haste to maintain the brewmaster rotation you are purifying way too much. That simple.

probably they're actually wasting chi or energy.

I like more haste for the fights in Siege because there's a lot to do, like picking up adds, throwing kegs, being forced off-target ... In addition to Dizzying Haze using energy, all of these things can distract you from your rotation. So my usual ~4k haste left me a little low while I was learning the fights and I went up to 6k. Now that I can do these fights smoothly, 6k haste is a little overkill. There's really nothing wrong with 8k haste, it's just unnecessary.

.....
For the OP's "spiky" question, it's hard to say without logs. It's probably Shuffle or Elusive Brew.

When you say you have Elusive Brew uptime over 90%, where are you getting that information from? Is it from Recount or Skada? There are two buffs called Elusive Brew -- one is the stacks that you use up, the other one is the actual dodge buff -- and Skada counts them as the same buff. Obviously 90% uptime on Elubrew stacks is not meaningful. World of Logs / Warcraft Logs separate the buffs and track them properly.

If you're ABSOLUTELY SURE that you keep 100% uptime on Shuffle, and good uptime on Elusive Brew, then you can move on to using your cooldowns better. There is quite a bit of spiky damage in Siege, even in flex mode. Such as
- Immerseus's cone breath thingy
- Galakras when there's a bajillion adds on you and a Banner up
- Juggernaut's fire breath thing + heavy fire DOT + mines
- Dark Shamans 5th-6th stack of Froststorm Strike

just as examples. Use cooldowns for these things!!

There's two ways to use Guard. One is to absorb a heavy spike of damage that you know is coming. The other way is to recover from spike damage that you didn't predict by using Guard and spamming heals on yourself. Guard both increases your self-healing and buys you quite a bit of time to recover. I'd advise strongly against using Glyph of Guard, because the small increase isn't worth limiting Guard that way. Unglyphed Guard absorbs almost as much and it works on everything. Only use the glyph if you're absolutely sure that the physical damage is negligible and you will never want to use Guard for it. (On Juggernaut, for example, the most dangerous damage is magical, but the physical damage is very high too and can kill you just as easily.) Glyph of Enduring Health Spheres is very good, because it affects your Gift of the Ox orbs ... so they can pile up into a very sizeable heal.