[GUIDE] Drunken Savagery: Brewmaster Tanking in [6.2]

[epwna]

Do you need a fair amount of haste to support a good chi explosion rotation?

I'm having a hard time keeping at 3 chi when keg smash comes off of cooldown and power strikes is ready to proc.
I'm guessing the correct thing to do is to get in a normal jab before the keg smash, but my energy regen isn't high enough to fit that in. I'd appreciate any tips you may have.

My energy regen is ~11/s

[Clausi]

Do you need a fair amount of haste to support a good chi explosion rotation?

I'm having a hard time keeping at 3 chi when keg smash comes off of cooldown and power strikes is ready to proc.
I'm guessing the correct thing to do is to get in a normal jab before the keg smash, but my energy regen isn't high enough to fit that in. I'd appreciate any tips you may have.

My energy regen is ~11/s

I think you should only jab if you are about to cap energy, else spam TP and Kegsmash on CD. Haste does not add much to your Chi gain.

[Deleted]

Pls Expel Harm more

[handofdesu]

Do you need a fair amount of haste to support a good chi explosion rotation?

I'm having a hard time keeping at 3 chi when keg smash comes off of cooldown and power strikes is ready to proc.
I'm guessing the correct thing to do is to get in a normal jab before the keg smash, but my energy regen isn't high enough to fit that in. I'd appreciate any tips you may have.

My energy regen is ~11/s

If you have to do a 4 Chi ChiEx, then that is what you gotta do. Delaying KS to get in a jab to make it a perfect 3 is a loss in both damage and shuffle.

[Totaltotemic]

Do you need a fair amount of haste to support a good chi explosion rotation?

I'm having a hard time keeping at 3 chi when keg smash comes off of cooldown and power strikes is ready to proc.
I'm guessing the correct thing to do is to get in a normal jab before the keg smash, but my energy regen isn't high enough to fit that in. I'd appreciate any tips you may have.

My energy regen is ~11/s

No, haste is terrible even for Chi Explosion. Your energy regen is definitely high enough to do a Jab for every Keg Smash, since that's only 80 energy every 8 seconds and everyone has that base.

This is one of those things that there isn't really an answer to make it easier, you kind of have to just play better to make it work.

[Deleted]

The thing with Chi Explosion is that you have to break it down a little to understand that the dps you gain from it is very very very situational.

I apologise if my mathematics here is incorrect at all; I'm unfortunately horrendous at the theorycrafting/data side of WoW, and tend to leave that to everyone else.

Technically, in terms of maximising Chi Explosion damage, firing off 1 Chi Chi Explosions would make Chi Explosion do the most damage (THIS MAY BE INCORRECT BUT YOU GET THE IDEA). However, that's a stupid way to look at it, due to Chi Explosion not being out only damaging ability. In fact, with the exception of certain fights, it's often not even top.

In the circumstance mentioned above;

I'm having a hard time keeping at 3 chi when keg smash comes off of cooldown and power strikes is ready to proc.

It's very simple. Jab to 4 Chi + 1 Chi orb, 4 Chi Chi Explosion, Keg Smash and Chi Orb, 3 Chi Chi Explosion. All the while mashing Tiger Palm to the end of the world.

It's very easy. The less you hesitate and worry about your Chi Explosions, the more the rotation falls into place.

One day I'll do a guide to doing DPS as a Brewmaster but it's literally this;

Mash Tiger Palm

Expel Harm.

[Totaltotemic]

Technically, in terms of maximising Chi Explosion damage, firing off 1 Chi Chi Explosions would make Chi Explosion do the most damage (THIS MAY BE INCORRECT BUT YOU GET THE IDEA). However, that's a stupid way to look at it, due to Chi Explosion not being out only damaging ability. In fact, with the exception of certain fights, it's often not even top.

And to be specific, a 1x CE is almost exactly the damage of Tiger Palm, but you burnt a chi to do it. That's what makes figuring out what's optimal kind of difficult, the CE damage always has to be subtracted by the Tiger Palm amount (except at 4 chi) because you are burning a GCD for it that could have been spent on Tiger Palm anyways.

[ScharfAsATack]

One day I'll do a guide to doing DPS as a Brewmaster...

Energy pooling subsection, please. I'm bad.

[keqe]

Energy pooling subsection, please. I'm bad.

Basically for me it helped to just think that jab is an enemy. You are punished to use jab if you happen to be near energy cap. It is your last resort to not cap. Otherwise I use the sweet, godly tiger palm and expel harm.

[Chuupag]

Energy pooling subsection, please. I'm bad.

Don't Jab unless you're above 80 energy...it's not that hard.

[Deleted]

So

Unrelated but really fun.

You can have a Hunter on Brackenspore sit and burn all of the moss to get themselves to 30 stacks of the damage increase buff, finish the fight, run to Tectus, and nigh on 2 shot his first phase.

Very fun.

Enjoy.

Kill time was 3 Minutes 6 Seconds which is a current Rank 1 speed kill.

Go try it.

[Quether]

Twins blessed me today with a lovely trinket with a socket and everything after 3 weapons

[Deleted]

After wiping for 2 hours on HC imp (really strange, when we had like 5 dps under 20k in a 20 man group -rolls eyes-), we did a full clear normal in a bit more than 1 hour to gear people up. So I went ChiX for all Normal fights except Imperator (since I don't trust myself well enough with ChiX yet)... My dps went up by a bit, but not as much as I expected. Only did some decent damage (94% overall, 77% for my bracket) on Butcher, but not so good on the rest... Haven't come close to dying anywhere though, so that's fine, but I had hoped for a bit better results. I must be doing something wrong here. I can post logs if people want to check

[ScharfAsATack]

Don't Jab unless you're above 80 energy...it's not that hard.

Yeah, I'm working on it. I've gotten to somewhere around the 90th percentile on Butcher, but I still feel like I'm missing a lot of opportunities to... not jab.

[Chuupag]

After wiping for 2 hours on HC imp (really strange, when we had like 5 dps under 20k in a 20 man group -rolls eyes-), we did a full clear normal in a bit more than 1 hour to gear people up. So I went ChiX for all Normal fights except Imperator (since I don't trust myself well enough with ChiX yet)... My dps went up by a bit, but not as much as I expected. Only did some decent damage (94% overall, 77% for my bracket) on Butcher, but not so good on the rest... Haven't come close to dying anywhere though, so that's fine, but I had hoped for a bit better results. I must be doing something wrong here. I can post logs if people want to check

I was in a similar boat the other day. We were missing our offtank, and our backup tank wasn't geared enough for Heroic Imp pulls so we did a alt/newbie/carry run in normal. I forgot to switch to chiex until I'm looking at my damage on butcher...bemoaning the fact that the fight ended with ~20 sec before I could xuen again, and made 99% percentile on it with serenity with a mastery build.

Does this make me cool Misume? Scumbaging normal meters unintentionally?

[Deleted]

Lol, I haven't even switched to Xuen (never thought about it), so I think I actually did all normal fights with RJW...

Still Brackenspore 61% (overall) 19% (bracket) just... sucks...

[Chuupag]

Lol, I haven't even switched to Xuen (never thought about it), so I think I actually did all normal fights with RJW...

Still Brackenspore 61% (overall) 19% (bracket) just... sucks...

Touch of death every mind fungus you can. My raiders joke about my touch of death "tombstones" on the logs bc you get this massive rectangular up thrust on your dps graph when you use it.

[Alucin]

Just gone back to brewmaster (and monk) - doing H Highmaul, still a little undergeared but getting there.
I've been mastery gearing due to the undergearing side of things.
The tectus polearm thing dropped for me last night and i haven't seen much on the enchant value front.

Where does the bonus armor one sit against the other procs (well, mastery or crit)?
From what i've read various places, bonus armor as a stat is what to aim for, but obviously the 'below 50%' thing has an impact.

I assume I should take the mastery one? (it is 12 crystals different though, so i don't want to choose the wrong one)
might be very obvious but i haven't read anything about the enchant values anywhere

[Totaltotemic]

Enchant values vary heavily by boss. Bonus armor enchant comes out the best at low gear on always-tanking fights. Mastery peaks ahead of bonus armor as you get better gear (likely because bonus armor is a flat AP value whereas mastery is a percentage), and it just procs more with better gear since you get taken below 60% (they hotfixed it a while ago to 60%) much less often and can go 5-10 seconds before Blackrock procs once it's up. Thunderlord (crit) is generally the best for any tank swap fight (i.e. Mar'gok and Ko'ragh) and is generally always the best for DPS.

[Schize]

I recently leveled up a Brewmaster Alt to do guild Alt/Carry runs after maining Resto Shaman, and I have a couple questions that I'd like clarification on.

1) What's the current consensus on when to use Chi Wave vs the other talents? I've been running predominately Chi Wave, but I noticed on some fights that other Brewmasters might take Chi Burst. Other than positioning, how is the usage different? I've basically been using Chi Wave whenever it's off CD and I've taken some damage (which is almost always). Is this optimal, or is there a better usage case?

2) I'm currently running Ascension, as banking that extra Chi feels like I have more leeway in using Purifying Brews. However, I've noticed that a lot of other Brewmasters tend to use Power Strikes. Should I stop using Ascension as a learning crutch and move on to Power Strikes right away, or give it some time? Is Power Strikes solely for squeezing out that extra DPS from ChiX, or should it be taken as a standard?

3) I'm currently just using a crafted 630 staff, but since this is an alt, I'd likely only get whatever weapons drop off normal or bonus loot. As such, if I end up with two 655 1H weapons, would it be worth using over a 630 crafted 2H piece? a 640?

4) Lastly, there are some logs from the first raid I brought my Brewmaster to. We forgot to log Kargath/Butcher/Brackenspore, and I switched to WW for Twin Ogron since our MT wanted to practice positioning during Quakes in preparation for Mythic. Since I can't post links quite yet, my Brewmaster is "Pavise" on Sargeras-US if anyone is inclined to look through them for me.

I've really been enjoying the class, and playing a Brewmaster is extremely satisfying. This is also the first time I have ever played a tank in any content outside of 5-mans, and any class specific or general tips would be greatly appreciated.