BM Monk Optimezed

[evolrider]

I am a 564 BM Monk, my 10 man group is 14/14 and we are just starting heroics. I optimize my monk using the Crit PVE build from askmrrobot. I was looking up some of the top BM monks (heroic) and it appears non of them follow any of the builds on askmrrobot, they seem to gem crit/expertise only. I am not a theory crafter and like the simplicity of askmrrobot and would prefer to use one of the default builds. My question is this, which build should I be using or should I just start optimizing using crit/exp like the monks I looked up and skip askmrrobot? Thanks in advance

[WinterQT]

As a rule of thumb you want to maximize your crit while preferrably sticking to your socket bonuses as they tend to be pretty good this tier. As a brewmaster who's just stepping into heroic modes you do not need to actively go for any mastery either, just whatever you have on your gear should suffice.

I'd suggest getting your 7.5% hit cap and 15% exp cap, capping haste at around 4.5k and spamming crit all over your gear. Pure crit gems in yellow sockets, crit+hit rating in blue sockets and mixed exp+crit gems in red sockets. The reason why you might see others spamming exp+crit gems is the insane amount of red sockets on gear this tier which makes it the obvious solution.

Edit: So generally you're right in following the PVE crit build on AMR, it usually nails it.

[Smurfz]

I actually don't use askmrrobot anymore. Except to find the best hastebreak point on my MW.

What I would suggest doing is going through all of the items you have on your toon and making sure that each one has Critical on it. if it doesn't either look to replace it or reforge one of the other stats to crit. So, that each item as crit. After that try and get as much hit and expertise out of reforging as you can possibly get. Red Sockets are better used for agility gems. The reason for this is simple. You can reforge into expertise. You can't reforge into agility. After that. you want to shoot for 50 percent Crit. But, as much agility as you can Stack in your gear.

[WinterQT]

Red Sockets are better used for agility gems. The reason for this is simple. You can reforge into expertise. You can't reforge into agility. After that. you want to shoot for 50 percent Crit. But, as much agility as you can Stack in your gear.

Not sure if trolling or just didn't see that OP was asking about BrM monks..

[Smurfz]

Yep, BrM monks get a dodge increase from agility so you only go until you have enough crit to maintain elusive brew to 100 percent. Which is about 50 percent. I've heard people say 54 percent is more exact. but, it depends on your weapon choice. I don't use askmrrobot unless I have to. Which for my MW spec is almost essential because it is difficult to find an exact path to a perfect haste breakpoint. with out juggling the numbers for hours. However, because askmrrobot always wants to use red sockets for exp. I don't use it for my BrM spec. You can squeeze out a little bit more dodge and attack power by reforging exp and using Red sockets for Agility. Because, agility also boost you dodge rating. It's also why you want to use agility trinkets. On the BrM spec because your numbers on Haste , Crit and what not don't have to be exact it really isn't that difficult to do the math by hand. All, you need to do is look for a path to get a 15 percent expertise.

my personal preference is to have hast at 8000 to 10000 then Crit to 50 percent then stack as much agility as you can squeeze in. I like the higher haste because that way I can use an ability on every GCD. Most people say that you only need 4000 haste in BrM spec. at 4000 haste it gets difficult to do anything but maintain your shuffle buff. So, I use a higher haste point so I can use all my GCDs.

But, look it up. Do a search on wowprogress.com of one of the higher population servers and then look at some of the BrM monks with high ilvls and you will find a number of them Stack as much agility as possible. its not just me. However, if you intend to do 25 man heroic most would suggest as much mastery as you can squeeze in. I don't do 25 man. so, I can't give much insight on that.

[WinterQT]

Come on man, I don't want to start arguing but this is just nonsense. You scale bad with dodge as a BrM, it doesn't integrate with your abilities and generally you're not a warrior with Riposte. Monk is an active mitigation class. You will gain way more defensive benefit from maximizing your crit to a soft cap of white hits to maximize your Elusive Brew generation. Crit will also affect your self heals and outgoing damage, as well as the shields your statue dropping on your raid group. After crit soft cap, it stops being a useful defensive stat for a BrM and you'd rather invest it elsewhere. More crit for more outgoing damage, more haste for more Gcd usage which will just stack shuffle further and add some more damage (less than from only stacking crit) or more mastery for smoother damage intake.

To cap your white hits and gain the maximum amount of Elusive Brew stacks you will need to be raidbuffed with 60% crit while dual weilding or 79% crit while using a 2hander.

With haste the maximum that you'd ever want to have is 7896 because when talented into Acsension you will gain exactly 15 energy a second (=120 energy during 8 seconds) which is enough to keep Keg Smashing every 8 seconds followed by two Jabs. The truth is that you don't practicly need that much energy cause you'd be chi waving / tiger palming and using other abilities that are also on the Gcd. Hence to feel comfortable and not energy starved as a BrM without dropping shuffle and having enough energy to waste chi on the occasional expel harm you'd suffice with 4.5k haste. You can go a bit higher if it feels more comfortable but 7896 is pretty much the "hard cap" at which more becomes useless.

As a BrM who just started heroic modes and doesn't have too many stats to spare, I'd cap hit and exp, haste to around 4.5k and crit all the way assuming you dont reach the 60% raid buffed mark yet. Mastery over that point or if you have a 2hander push crit all the way to 79% (which is still not reachable unless you happen to have trinket procs). It will benefit you way higher both in terms of defensive and offensive ability than gemming agility.

[britishbubba]

As a rule of thumb you want to maximize your crit while preferrably sticking to your socket bonuses as they tend to be pretty good this tier.

Just slamming crit into every socket will give you more damage overall last I checked. Which is the primary purpose behind stacking crit anyway as the defensive values of crit are so far behind mastery (and even haste)

[Deleted]

(and even haste)

Hu, what? I mean, you can not drop Shuffle with 0 haste, what's the exact benefit of Haste? Purifying everything?

[Gethe88]

Hu, what? I mean, you can not drop Shuffle with 0 haste, what's the exact benefit of Haste? Purifying everything?

I think that was his point. Haste has little defensive value, but Crit has even less.

[britishbubba]

I think that was his point. Haste has little defensive value, but Crit has even less.

^^^ What this guy said.

Crit has practically zero defensive value, literally every other stat is better than it in terms of defensive value. The point of me stating that though was someone saying you should match socket bonuses, which is imo pointless as crit is better than agi for dps (and most sockets are agi bonuses), so you might as well just slam crit in every socket as the agi gets you very little unless you care about defensive value... in which case you're not gemming crit.

EDIT: Here's a quote that describes it better

Regarding pure survival, crit is more or less worthless. More crit means higher elusive brew uptime, but there's only a limited amount of time during an encounter where elusive brew is useful. Uptime higher than that amount is essentially wasted - just from agility and random amounts of crit you'll find on SoO gear, you're well beyond that point already. Even if crit does add useful evasion, you're basically converting crit rating to dodge rating with an exchange tax, no less. No intelligent guide in the history of WoW has ever advocated stacking avoidance for tanks beyond far outgearing the content.

If you were to assign a numeric value for how much each point of a particular stat adds to your overall survivability, my approximate educated values would be something like:

Crit - 1
Haste - 1.5
Agility - 3
Hit/Exp- 15 (assuming not at cap, of course)
Mastery - 12
Stamina - 10

If you're interested in survival and nothing but survival, the answer is abundantly clear - meet accuracy caps, then gem/reforge into mastery or mastery/stamina and enchant stamina when mastery is not available. Unequivocally, that is the best survival setup, any other argument is fallacious.

While the "try out [insert setup] and adjust mastery after seeing results" strat seems to be a good plan, it's subject to the most heinous of errors: confirmation bias. In other words, if you think you'll be able to survive without mastery, no matter how many times you die, you'll rationalize it as the fault of the healers, and if you think you're struggling to live, you'll remember every dangerous spike that came close to killing you even if you never die. Take a good look at your raid, go through previous logs, compare deaths, and if you're dying more than you think you should, then go mastery/stamina. Also, don't go back and reassess after one week's worth of data, try for a month for statistical significance.

Don't fall victim to the belief that your gear is fine for "only normal modes" and that you're overgearing it already. People throw out the "overgear" key term a lot, but the actual amount is relatively fluid depending on your current raid setup. If a guild right now is barely killing Garrosh with ilvl 570 gear, does that mean they are overgearing the encounter compared to top guilds which cleared SoO normal with an average ilvl of 530? Objectively, sure, but given that both guilds barely squeaked by the kill, doesn't that imply they are at the same relative level, ie. ilvl 570 is *just right* of a gear level for the first guild to kill Garrosh, so how is that overgearing?

If you're having difficulty surviving in normal modes, treat it like how I and other top brewmasters did for progression week(s): full-on survival mode. Progression is never going to behave nicely and throw you consistent, smooth damage that you can recover from easily. The fact that you're struggling implies that situations will get out of hand and you'll be hit with instances where you'll be glad you had the extra survival. *points to the 4-5 first kills for the past two tiers I've been tanking where we killed the boss -through- 15 seconds or more of enrage because I was able to survive 900% extra damage*

PS. I have 8k haste because my loot luck sucks. Ideally I'd roll with 0, but alas, that's not possible so I settle for what I have.

TL;DR matching socket bonuses is pointless really unless you NEED expertise or hit as crit always is more damage than agi, and mastery is always more survivability than agi, making matching the agi really kinda meh.

[allaiva]

I would highly suggest using expertise/hit gems to reach those caps if you need or want to match socket bonuses. Otherwise you're best gemming for secondary stats (be that mastery or crit for your desired build).

When I started into heroics I went a bit more mastery heavy to help my healers out some. Did it drop my damage? Sure. But my survivability increased significantly and I didn't notice any significant change to EB uptime while tanking. Since then I've returned to a more crit focused build, but that's mainly because of the rate of our progression and healer comfort over anything else.

Remember you're a tank and not a dps. Damage is fun, but focus on staying alive no matter what it takes rather than dealing extra damage (that's the dps' job). If you're having issues with survivability or getting hit harder than you and your healers feel comfortable with get more mastery or work on cooldown management. In either case, stick with 4-5k haste and go from there for whatever secondary stat you choose (be that mastery and/or crit) and gem the heck out of that.

A point on the Agi gemming, if you want dodge, gem for dodge. If you want crit, gem for crit. The gains of both those from agi are minor when you look at it objectively. Sure the net dodge/crit increase is huge from all the agi on your gear, but pales in comparison from the small amounts gained from a gem socket. The primary goal of agility is to increase your AP and you gain sooo much more from vengeance that it's impractical to actually gem for it when you can get better results from aiming towards more secondary stats. The only reason a "BrM" would gem full out agility is if they're only off-spec BrM and main WW.

[Babylonius]

Crit has practically zero defensive value, literally every other stat is better than it in terms of defensive value.

Does Crit not provide Elusive Brew? Can't your Expel Harm and Chi Wave crit to provide more healing?

Crit may not provide the defensive effect that Mastery does, but it provides a steady stream of dodge through EB. Haste provides less defensive value than Crit once you're able to keep shuffle up 100% of the time. Haste's only defensive value after that point is increasing the frequency of Auto Attacks which Crit to produce EB stacks, but that is mitigated by Crit, or to allow for spare Chi to Purify.

Until you can keep Shuffle up 100% of the time, haste has defensive value. Until you can keep EB up 100% of the time, Crit has defensive value. Mastery is still the best stat for survivability from physical damage, and stam is best for magic and good for physical, but don't count out Crit. Just do a boss w/o using EB and see how that feels.

[britishbubba]

Does Crit not provide Elusive Brew? Can't your Expel Harm and Chi Wave crit to provide more healing?

If you wanted dodge, you'd gem dodge. Don't delude yourself into thinking that the dodge we get from crit is actually a good conversion rate. If BrMs went crit for the defensive value alone, everyone would stop at like 50% instead of just stacking it all day until they actually need mastery on a boss.

As for crit heals? Not guaranteed. What matters in tanking? Guaranteed survivability.

Crit may not provide the defensive effect that Mastery does, but it provides a steady stream of dodge through EB. Haste provides less defensive value than Crit once you're able to keep shuffle up 100% of the time. Haste's only defensive value after that point is increasing the frequency of Auto Attacks which Crit to produce EB stacks, but that is mitigated by Crit, or to allow for spare Chi to Purify.

Yes, an in terms of pure defensive value, gemming full dodge will give you better results than gemming full crit. Haste is still a better defensive stat than crit because it actually directly reduces damage through being able to purify.

Until you can keep Shuffle up 100% of the time, haste has defensive value. Until you can keep EB up 100% of the time, Crit has defensive value. Mastery is still the best stat for survivability from physical damage, and stam is best for magic and good for physical, but don't count out Crit. Just do a boss w/o using EB and see how that feels.

Doesn't make crit a better defensive stat, or even a good defensive stat for that matter.

No one is saying don't stack crit. Just don't let you fall into the thought that crit is actually a good defensive stat, because it's not.

[Babylonius]

No one is saying don't stack crit. Just don't let you fall into the thought that crit is actually a good defensive stat, because it's not.

I'm not saying its a good defensive stat when compared to Mastery/Stam, I'm arguing against saying its totally useless. You reiterated what I said about haste's defensive use being to Purify, as well as what I said about it not being better than Mastery/Stam.

These is a big difference between "not as good" and "useless"

[britishbubba]

I'm not saying its a good defensive stat when compared to Mastery/Stam, I'm arguing against saying its totally useless. You reiterated what I said about haste's defensive use being to Purify, as well as what I said about it not being better than Mastery/Stam.

These is a big difference between "not as good" and "useless"

I never said useless though. Practically zero =/= useless.

EDIT: My entire point was you ignore socket bonuses because frankly agi does very little for us in terms of offensive capabilities since crit is just better than agi point for point for DPS. If you were going defensive (in which case you're likely not gemming full crit) you could argue gemming for the agi bonuses because then they're actually useful.

[WinterQT]

My entire point was you ignore socket bonuses because frankly agi does very little for us in terms of offensive capabilities since crit is just better than agi point for point for DPS. If you were going defensive (in which case you're likely not gemming full crit) you could argue gemming for the agi bonuses because then they're actually useful.

I still see no point ignoring socket bonuses when most of the sockets on current gear are red sockets where you can gem exp+crit since you need a ton of expertise as it is - while gaining the benefit of a socket bonus, over skipping it entirely. Sure, crit benefits you more but since you need to achieve a very big exp cap, there is no reason to completely skip bonuses. Any gain in stats is helpful after all.

I would gem pure crit ONLY in case i already meet the expertise cap. Adding mixed gems would still benefit you more than reforging into exp and gemming for pure crit.

[britishbubba]

I still see no point ignoring socket bonuses when most of the sockets on current gear are red sockets where you can gem exp+crit since you need a ton of expertise as it is - while gaining the benefit of a socket bonus, over skipping it entirely. Sure, crit benefits you more but since you need to achieve a very big exp cap, there is no reason to completely skip bonuses. Any gain in stats is helpful after all.

I would gem pure crit ONLY in case i already meet the expertise cap. Adding mixed gems would still benefit you more than reforging into exp and gemming for pure crit.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...smash/advanced

All my exp comes out of mastery/haste. I don't lose any crit from forgeing to exp cap, so if I want more dps (which I do since I just outgear all fights) I want to just gem full crit. Agi simply isn't worth it for socket bonuses as with vengeance, crit just gives more damage. The agi gems in my gear are from having to swap WW for gary.

EDIt: I mean yeah, if agi gave some real benifit It'd be worth... but really what do you get out of it? Some AP that doesn't scale with vengeance, less crit than a crit gem gives, and a small amount of dodge. Is 60 agi per gem really worth that?

[Smurfz]

I was looking at your set up Britishbubba and I'm not trying to say anything negative. But, I don't understand the Gemming set up you are using. On your boots you have an agility Gem in a Yellow socket. Which could be replaced with a Crit gem and you would get the socket bonus. On your waist you have a Crit Gem in a red socket and if you switched that to agility you would get a socket bonus. So, if you basically switched the gems in those to items you would have the same number of crit and agility gems but you would get a couple socket bonuses. Then you have an agilty gem in a your ring which is a blue socket. But you have a Crit gem in your weapon which is a red socket. So, if you put a Crit gem in your ring you still wouldn't get the socket bonus. But, you would be able to put an agility gem in your weapon and you would get the socket bonus on your weapon and you would have the same number of Crit gems that you had previously.

But, I will say that agility gems increase your Dodge, Critical strike and attack power. So, you really can't go wrong with agility. But, as I also said you need to make sure you have enough Crit to keep your elusive brew up.

[britishbubba]

I was looking at your set up Britishbubba and I'm not trying to say anything negative. But, I don't understand the Gemming set up you are using. On your boots you have an agility Gem in a Yellow socket. Which could be replaced with a Crit gem and you would get the socket bonus.

If you read my full post...

"The agi gems in my gear are from having to swap WW for gary." Those 3 pieces that have agi gems in them are shared with my WW set, and I havent' regemmed them

On your waist you have a Crit Gem in a red socket and if you switched that to agility you would get a socket bonus. So, if you basically switched the gems in those to items you would have the same number of crit and agility gems but you would get a couple socket bonuses. Then you have an agilty gem in a your ring which is a blue socket. But you have a Crit gem in your weapon which is a red socket. So, if you put a Crit gem in your ring you still wouldn't get the socket bonus. But, you would be able to put an agility gem in your weapon and you would get the socket bonus on your weapon and you would have the same number of Crit gems that you had previously.

No I wouldn't, I'd have less because I'd have agi/crit or exp/crit gems in spots there were 320 crit. 160 crit > 60 agi (the amount you get from the bonus) in terms of dps.

But, I will say that agility gems increase your Dodge, Critical strike and attack power. So, you really can't go wrong with agility. But, as I also said you need to make sure you have enough Crit to keep your elusive brew up.

The dodge is negligable, and crit rating scales your dps better with vengeance than attack power does since you know... vengeance doesn't scale AP at all. Could argue matching gloves and belt bonus MAYBE. The crit rating just scales better than the agi with high vengeance fights, and as I only tank paragons and siegecrafter anymore anyway, I'm sitting high on vengeance most of the time.

[Smurfz]

I don't think you are understanding entirely what I'm saying.

Look at your Boots. the Unrepentant heels. In those you have an agil Gem in a Yellow socket.
Then look at you weapon. Kor'kron spire of supremacy it has a RED socket. But you have crit gem in it.

So you have a Yellow gem in a RED slot and a RED gem in a Yellow slot.

If you switched those 2 gems around you would be Changing out the same 2 gems you would just be getting the socket bonus. Even though the socket bonus would be marginal. It still wouldn't change the number of Crit gems or Agil gems you had on your current set up.

The same can be Said with your Waist ( cord of black dreams ) and your ring ( reality ripper ring ) You could put a Crit gem in the ring and move the agil gem to the Waist in the red socket and you would again gain a Socket bonus.

Even though the Gain would be marginal it would still be a gain and would not sacrifice anything. You would still be using the same Gems you would just be repositioning them.


I agree with everything else you have been saying. for the most part. There really is not point wasting a socket for exp if you can get the exp and hit else where. As long as the reforge isn't sacrificing any crit. So good job on getting your exp and hit from reforging.