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

[Deleted]

Am I the only one that wants BrM DPS to get nerfed again? I absolutely hate having to watch a threat meter in conjunction with everything else, in order to not rip aggro from other tanks. It's really bad on stuff with aggro wipes like Blackhand's smash, as I've managed to cause multiple wipes now by pulling aggro with just straight DPS after the P2 transition.

That is a problem with your co-tank and not brewmasters. If he uses taunts correctly there is about 0% reason he should drop aggro.

[Deleted]

Wow, we're not raiding tonight because we had a whopping 6 signups... Starting to get so tired of this shit...

[Xequecal]

That is a problem with your co-tank and not brewmasters. If he uses taunts correctly there is about 0% reason he should drop aggro.

With tank threat being 900% of damage done, it honestly does not take a large DPS discrepancy in a fight like Blackhand to rip off aggro. I've found that in any case where if my co-tank takes the final shattering smash in p1 and also picks up the boss first in p2, popping Serenity at that point is almost guaranteed to rip aggro. Since he taunts off me, he gets 100% of my threat pool. And due to the smash mechanic, I've only had, say, 30 seconds of dps to accumulate threat in the pool since I was last wiped. So the total threat pool is relatively small, and doing 130% of the other tank's DPS over the next 10 seconds pulls aggro.

[Gothmog]

@Daddy

We've had 2 hours of Kromog time and tonight full night incoming.
Your Xuen use? It looks like it's not popped until half the fight or so

I used Chi Burst on Hands, damn good burst. Meaningfully placed as well, since you an piece an outside row that are usually the last to fall.
Transcendence, I really just like to be safe and wait out of GCD when he starts casting. I died on the way down once, despite frenzied Transfer mashing... Don't want it to happen again. I see you're doing the same, just seems it's the safe way to do it.

I suppose you're Mastery build yeah?
That 4 stacked debuff... oh man, what a death sentence!
WHAT is your pally doing then?!


THAT WAS THE MOST ANTICLIMATIC ENDING KILLVIDEO EVER!!!
What a cliffhanger are you for real?! What happened! Who died!

[Deleted]

two things have changed since I last posted (i've been AWOL a while)

1. Multistrike has replaced Crit for me. Mastery and Multistrike together are so nice holy shit.

2. ZEN SPHERE IS EVERYTHING I'VE WANTED. Small reward for perfect execution. Finally the class is interesting to play again.

[hatduck]

@Daddy

We've had 2 hours of Kromog time and tonight full night incoming.
Your Xuen use? It looks like it's not popped until half the fight or so

I used Chi Burst on Hands, damn good burst. Meaningfully placed as well, since you an piece an outside row that are usually the last to fall.
Transcendence, I really just like to be safe and wait out of GCD when he starts casting. I died on the way down once, despite frenzied Transfer mashing... Don't want it to happen again. I see you're doing the same, just seems it's the safe way to do it.

I suppose you're Mastery build yeah?
That 4 stacked debuff... oh man, what a death sentence!
WHAT is your pally doing then?!


THAT WAS THE MOST ANTICLIMATIC ENDING KILLVIDEO EVER!!!
What a cliffhanger are you for real?! What happened! Who died!

...There may have been a small snafu with Sony Vegas. And I may have uploaded it without watching it.

The boss died though. I'm rendering another as we speak.

As for your questions:

My Xuen use was terrible. The attempt we killed it was one of my worst attempts ever, my brain just shut down on some parts of the fight, namely Xuen and the movement death I had towards the end. I intended to use it at the start of every pillar, but just herp'd and derp'd all the live long day. I definitely DON'T use my xuen off the pull though, and that's intended. Pillars were the only legitimately scary part of the fight with our DPS, and they need as much DPS as possible on them.

I'm crit build, and honestly, in terms of the four stack, I felt pretty safe that pull. I don't know why, but I never felt like my life was threatened there. In Brewmasters current state, even a four stack is still doable consider you only have to tank it for 20-30 seconds, and almost all of that can be covered by guard, elusive, shield wall, and dampen. I distinctly remember feeling immortal, and you might even be able to hear me try and tell people "I've got this, don't CD me" as I dropped low one time (even though they still sac me, grumble grumble). Guard is just one hell of a drug.

As for my paladin... I want to say he's one of the stronger paladins in the US. At least within the top 30US prot paladins. This fight, and many others, just seem to be so pro-brewmaster that you can often here me screaming "I DONT GIVE A FUCK IM IMMORTAL" on close boss attempts. Paladins, on the other hand, while strong, just cannot rival the broken bullshit that brewmasters are right now. I've solo tanked Hans and Frans for 30s during the last 10% with not a single heal besides my guards and expels. He can't remotely come close to that anymore, and I know for a fact that kid is literally a god rotationally (even if he struggles with movement sometimes). Thus, many of our strats that he and I develop revolve around me being the guy that takes the most bullshit possible, since what would kill him barely even phases me.

I believe in the last tanking phase he puts out 6 stacks, the first two of which go on to Lide. I only had maybe 5 of our 69 wipes on Mythic Kromog in that danger zone where the boss is just pummeling the tanks, so there might be better way to do stacks, but that honestly felt really safe regardless of whether there was another way to do it or not, and we just opted to go with the one that we knew. I don't even want to imagine how safe I'd feel as mastery spec. I honestly think Mastery right now is completely overkill in my personal raid setting, probably will never switch.

[Totaltotemic]

two things have changed since I last posted (i've been AWOL a while)

1. Multistrike has replaced Crit for me. Mastery and Multistrike together are so nice holy shit.

Yeah I've been thinking the same thing about Multistrike recently. It turns out that if you stack Mastery you don't really need any other kind of defense at all, so why not go for the stat that does the most DPS second?

[Deleted]

Yeah I've been thinking the same thing about Multistrike recently. It turns out that if you stack Mastery you don't really need any other kind of defense at all, so why not go for the stat that does the most DPS second?

The argument of "not great on high movement fights" kinda falls flat with the amount of MS you can get from Mastery gear now. At least in my experience, I always have a suitable level of GOTO orbs, no matter which fight I'm on.

[Totaltotemic]

The argument of "not great on high movement fights" kinda falls flat with the amount of MS you can get from Mastery gear now. At least in my experience, I always have a suitable level of GOTO orbs, no matter which fight I'm on.

What I mean is: does it even matter if they're there or not once you have enough Mastery? You're probably not going to die anyways, so if they are there it's great, but the situations where they aren't don't really matter much anymore because you'll get along just fine anyways. You could have haste as your other stat if you have a ton of Mastery and you'd still be fine.

It does help though that BRF is a lot more GotO-friendly than Highmaul was. We have Oregorger, Gruul, Flamebender, Iron Maidens, and Kromog that all have virtually no movement whereas in Highmaul it was like... Butcher? Even fights like Beastlord and Blackhand don't really have you running around the whole room like Tectus and Brackenspore did, just generally moving from one area to another area every 20-30 seconds.

[Deleted]

2. ZEN SPHERE IS EVERYTHING I'VE WANTED. Small reward for perfect execution. Finally the class is interesting to play again.

How do you manage it? A cast-on-self macro and a cast-on-other-tank macro?

[brookllyn]

With tank threat being 900% of damage done, it honestly does not take a large DPS discrepancy in a fight like Blackhand to rip off aggro. I've found that in any case where if my co-tank takes the final shattering smash in p1 and also picks up the boss first in p2, popping Serenity at that point is almost guaranteed to rip aggro. Since he taunts off me, he gets 100% of my threat pool. And due to the smash mechanic, I've only had, say, 30 seconds of dps to accumulate threat in the pool since I was last wiped. So the total threat pool is relatively small, and doing 130% of the other tank's DPS over the next 10 seconds pulls aggro.

Try swapping once before any of your smashes. If you swap really quickly, he should be able to add all of your previous threat to his own pool before yours is cleared and he will keep that until his next smash. That means when you come back down he has twice the threat he would have had and it becomes very difficult to rip off of him. Same should work in P1 but whats the issue with you pulling threat and him just taunting right before a smash anyways?

[Saiyoran]

@misume

You answered my question on reddit like two weeks ago that for cm times crit/multi is optimal,which is what I thought. I can't decide which to enchant though. Like all my pieces are crit/multi except trinkets (I have evergaze and tablet which is bis for CMs) and off pieces. Do you think multi/ba off pieces or crit/ba off pieces? Thunder lord enchant or multi?

I know it doesn't matter much but progression raiding just isn't that interesting right now (kromog progression next week might change my mind) so I'm filing my time getting CM gear and stuff.

[Deleted]

Is Zen Sphere better damage single target compared to chi wave? I tried it on some of the Oregorger pulls and it seemed about the same for a lot more management. I was just casting it on myself then my co tank and then myself again and repeating that.

[Adaren]

You answered my question on reddit like two weeks ago that for cm times crit/multi is optimal,which is what I thought. I can't decide which to enchant though. Like all my pieces are crit/multi except trinkets (I have evergaze and tablet which is bis for CMs) and off pieces. Do you think multi/ba off pieces or crit/ba off pieces? Thunder lord enchant or multi?

If you're goal is to maximize DPS, then MS is generally more DPS. That said, I'm pretty sure MS is only ahead because we start with way more base Crit, so Crit may be ahead depending on your exact stat numbers.

So I believe the most correct answer is "Sim it". If you don't want to do that, then MS is probably more DPS.

Is Zen Sphere better damage single target compared to chi wave? I tried it on some of the Oregorger pulls and it seemed about the same for a lot more management. I was just casting it on myself then my co tank and then myself again and repeating that.

I think it should be; my napkin math had two target ZS as the top talent for that tier. I'd be open to anyone correcting me, or running more complete comparisons with Simcraft.

I wouldn't expect it to be ahead by a lot though. If it "seems about the same", then that's probably expected.

[Gothmog]

@Daddy

I feel Kromog is a REALLY rng fight though. We were on it for an hour and a half tonight, as long as it took to kill it and I felt quite safe for just about all of it. Oh, I'm crit build as well.

I died "gibbigshly" on the kill though. It can be argued that I should've Guarded it and it's true - I was not using Guard proactively in Frenzy at all. It's one of those fights where the damage can be really brutal and I just simply want that Guard for when I drop low. Mastery is supposed to be that mitigation that only lets me drop low and not dead.
While this death was totally avoidable, that was 270k damage at once, cannot be reacted to - and at 0 stacks. Imagine having +40% damage taken, while healers are busy AoE healing the breath up ^^

It's part of what makes Kromog dangerous though, now I know to always have something up for when the Breath ends, because he always seems to do a melee+Fists of Stone the milisecond he stops breathing. The bastard.

It's also one of the reasons I don't consider ChiEx very viable on Kromog yet. It'd be doable, but you'd be spending some Chi "manually" puriying at times. Or having to halt rotation to catch Staggers. I checked top ranks on him, no brewmaster ran ChiEx.


Multistrike is definitely REALLY strong there though... as long as you don't get gibbed before you can pick them.


Iron Maidens.. had 2 hours of early pulls on them and that's another fight I'd not go in without Serenity yet. BF and Blackhand appear the same, so... can pretty much conclude that it's 6/10 with ChiEx and the last 4 with Serenity xD

[Deleted]

Just you wait. I'm bringing Chi Ex back.

[Deleted]

@misume
(I have evergaze and tablet which is bis for CMs)

Are these actually BiS for CMs? I've just been running with the trinkets that I had, BFD and Pol's. Granted I didn't even bother enchant my gear back to crit from mastery cos I'm so poor. Speaking of CMs though I've done 7/8 gold so far just gotta find time for the last one but why exactly are DKs considered the best for CMs? Monks seem ridiculously good with their toolkit. Serenity + BoF spam makes some of the harder trash packs a complete joke. The DPS is solid too and being able to ToD every boss always helps.

[Roshar]

Are these actually BiS for CMs? I've just been running with the trinkets that I had, BFD and Pol's. Granted I didn't even bother enchant my gear back to crit from mastery cos I'm so poor. Speaking of CMs though I've done 7/8 gold so far just gotta find time for the last one but why exactly are DKs considered the best for CMs? Monks seem ridiculously good with their toolkit. Serenity + BoF spam makes some of the harder trash packs a complete joke. The DPS is solid too and being able to ToD every boss always helps.

I don't know how Blood DPS is now but before the Blood Boil nerf it was pretty ridiculous in CMs. That combined with loads of self-healing, and the extremely useful mass grip made running CMs with a Blood DK a completely different experience compared to any other tank.

[Deleted]

Are these actually BiS for CMs? I've just been running with the trinkets that I had, BFD and Pol's. Granted I didn't even bother enchant my gear back to crit from mastery cos I'm so poor. Speaking of CMs though I've done 7/8 gold so far just gotta find time for the last one but why exactly are DKs considered the best for CMs? Monks seem ridiculously good with their toolkit. Serenity + BoF spam makes some of the harder trash packs a complete joke. The DPS is solid too and being able to ToD every boss always helps.

DKs are strong due to multiple reasons. The damage before the 30% bloodboil nerf was absolutely over the top, and is still very good now afaik. Massgrip makes things a lot easier and pulls quicker. Also, their spellcopy thing can copy boss abilities that hit for an absolutely retarded amount. Their self heal is strong as well - but you can say the same about monks. I'm sure I forgot something, but all in all DKs are the complete package for CMs.

Just you wait. I'm bringing Chi Ex back.

Seems absolutely viable, at least for the earlier bosses. I switched this week to ChiExplosion with Multistrike enchants because I finally got some gear last week - from ilvl 678 to 688 - currently at 5/10 mythic, and I didn't come close to dying as far as I remember. We started on Kromog yesterday.. that seems like a fight where you'd reeeally want Serenity though.

[Saiyoran]

Are these actually BiS for CMs? I've just been running with the trinkets that I had, BFD and Pol's. Granted I didn't even bother enchant my gear back to crit from mastery cos I'm so poor. Speaking of CMs though I've done 7/8 gold so far just gotta find time for the last one but why exactly are DKs considered the best for CMs? Monks seem ridiculously good with their toolkit. Serenity + BoF spam makes some of the harder trash packs a complete joke. The DPS is solid too and being able to ToD every boss always helps.

Proc armor and on-use armor are pretty much the dream combo as far as trinkets. Tablet is essentially Lucky Double-Sided Coin with 3x the passive secondaries because lolscaling, and is the agility answer to scabbard for DK tanks. Evergaze proc armor is more than alch trinket proc agi so it comes out on top there.

DKs are superior in most*** dungeons because of the fact that they often don't require healing (something a monk can do in many situations as well), mass grip is a massive boon (for grouping adds to stun or for cleave damage), army is very good since it basically tanks for you for about 10 seconds, which is stronger than any defensive in the game in terms of how much time it is up for when you use it, Dark Sim is downright broken as shit (see Everbloom world record video of 4 dks and a boomkin going around Dragon Breathing everything to death), and because Blood Boil/Defile (even after the nerf) is ridiculous AoE damage (superior to brewmasters and just under prot warrior in a CM burst situation with all cds, trinkets, etc.).

***I'm trying to bring Brewmaster CM times back just you wait guys I'm trying really hard.

Also Serenity+BoF is really good but gimps your AoE damage since ChiEx is what you'd want to be running with ideally.