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

[Totaltotemic]

Linking Troxism's 7000 google doc here as it is a lot of useful information about tanking in general and tanks going for DPS, despite the focus on Blood DKs.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...8Z63QOAAM/edit

Anyone who's interested and has the time should totally read that, imo.

TL;DR relevant to BrMs (because seriously, no one else is going to read 14 pages of rambling):

-Meaningful tradeoffs to ditch some survivability for extra DPS make tanking interesting and introduces the only real choice tanks ever get.

-Many tanks have the skeleton of this kind of tradeoff, but are usually either not good enough DPS increases or far too big of survivability dropoffs (Chi Explosion is probably the closest thing)

-Breath of Sindragosa is fine from a DPS perspective because it provides a way to do real damage, but its survivability is oddly better than doing anything else which makes it less of a tradeoff and actually just OP

-Changes to BoS gameplay in 6.2 are going in the wrong direction (similar to Serenity change) basically breaking the playstyle to the point of being unreliable instead of targeting what's actually wrong with it

-Rather than straight-up gutting BoS, all tanks should have a meaningful tradeoff where we can give up survivability for extra damage on a fight-by-fight basis because some fights hit a lot harder than others, and going all one or the other all of the time just makes half of the fights boring.

____

I agree with most of his points, but I think he's ignoring that 6.2 is a patch and Blizzard is bad with quick and dirty solutions as it is. Something like a tank overhaul where everyone can have something similar to the Serenity/Chi Explosion dichotomy (with preferably a bit less of a loss on the extra DPS side) just isn't in the scope of 6.2 and BoS is the ridiculously obvious outlier. I think this is something that could be looked at for the next expansion, but right now it's simpler and easier to just gut what's OP and rebuild it later, which has been Blizzard's balance philosophy for over a decade.

In an ideal world, BoS wouldn't heal for nearly as much but would still do the same DPS, and everyone would have something like Chi Explosion and nerfed BoS where you can just decide you don't care how much damage you take on a given fight so you can do upwards of 20-30% more DPS. That's just out of the scope of a patch and more in the scope of an expansion.

[Deleted]

I read most of the doc and I don't agree at all with the sentiment that "You cannot really balance boss damage for both less experienced and very skilled tanks, because the skill gap and general difference in ability to stay alive is just too large to make it fair and fun for both sides."
Hello LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic. I don't think that tank damage is too low in Mythic at all, especially during progression there really is no situation where you think "oh I wish this boss hit me for more so my tanking abilites mattered". If they balanced DPS checks around tanks doing more damage with certain survivability tradeoffs, we'd be in deep shit if they fuck up even in the slightest on tank balance. I don't think the added headache because of survivability balance and then DPS balance for tanks would be worth it. It really sucks that some of the tanks can just DPS-whore like crazy(DK) and some just can't(Druids... lol Treants?), but trying to balance bosses and all tanks around this? No, thanks.

[Evolved]

Isn't a bit over dramatic to claim that BoS is gutted with the removal of the glyph? It was clearly not meant to have 100% up time. The few logs I've looked at from PTR still show it being used with significant DPS gains. The fact that it lasted this long in it's current state is pretty amazing, especially given how strong blood boil still is at AOE and the DPS nerfs that Monks received when they were already behind DK's.

[dcc626]

Isn't a bit over dramatic to claim that BoS is gutted with the removal of the glyph? It was clearly not meant to have 100% up time. The few logs I've looked at from PTR still show it being used with significant DPS gains. The fact that it lasted this long in it's current state is pretty amazing, especially given how strong blood boil still is at AOE and the DPS nerfs that Monks received when they were already behind DK's.

i think if it goes live as is people are still going to have a fit. i still imagine its going to get tweaked for blood.

- - - Updated - - -

I agree with most of his points, but I think he's ignoring that 6.2 is a patch and Blizzard is bad with quick and dirty solutions as it is. Something like a tank overhaul where everyone can have something similar to the Serenity/Chi Explosion dichotomy (with preferably a bit less of a loss on the extra DPS side) just isn't in the scope of 6.2 and BoS is the ridiculously obvious outlier. I think this is something that could be looked at for the next expansion, but right now it's simpler and easier to just gut what's OP and rebuild it later, which has been Blizzard's balance philosophy for over a decade.

In an ideal world, BoS wouldn't heal for nearly as much but would still do the same DPS, and everyone would have something like Chi Explosion and nerfed BoS where you can just decide you don't care how much damage you take on a given fight so you can do upwards of 20-30% more DPS. That's just out of the scope of a patch and more in the scope of an expansion.

i agree. the one quote i saw on the dk forums basically stated that monks either need to be made not viable or we are still broken.

made not viable. who thinks thats a good idea?

[Sekk]

-Many tanks have the skeleton of this kind of tradeoff, but are usually either not good enough DPS increases or far too big of survivability dropoffs (Chi Explosion is probably the closest thing)

Based on what we're looking at on the PTS at this point, does any tank spec look like it'll have this dynamic?

[Totaltotemic]

Based on what we're looking at on the PTS at this point, does any tank spec look like it'll have this dynamic?

No. Paladins were close at the start of the expansion but every avenue to do damage has been systematically nerfed into the ground. There's a way for Warriors to be there via level 100 talents but they're all far too weak to matter much. BrMs have CE but it's going the opposite direction from before where the defensive options give up too much DPS for too little survivability. Druids essentially have nothing, and DKs have the obvious BoS he was talking about.

In short, every tank has had anything even relatively outlying caused by the talent system to be systematically targeted for nerfs until the choices are so flat that they either don't matter or some options are so bad that there isn't even a choice.

[Trendy-Ideology]

I really feel like being able to do DPS, be a little self sufficient, and be viable as tanks, is kinda the tradeoff for having what's at the end of the night a very demanding and thankless job.

My pally co-tank already swapped to DPS main because of how gutted his DPS was and how reliant on healers and externals he became. Just stopped being fun and feeling rewarding. That's something I dread with any upcoming nerfs.

[Leblue]

Which is disappointing because tanking is becoming less and less interesting (to me at least) by the day. Being OP is no fun (in terms of BrM and BRF mechanics anyway), but I continue to worry about tanking mechanics being neutered (whether it be trading survivability for damage and vice versa) to not mattering even further. Would it be too earth shattering to effectively kill off tank healing by making tanks self sufficient enough to where roughly standard raid healing (maybe a bit more since there won't always be raid damage) would be enough to keep them alive?

Tanking doesn't feel dynamic enough right now to keep me engaged, but I'm not sure if we're exactly limited in that problem since I haven't raided seriously in any other roles. I'm still not sold on our new "Death Knight Lite" style in 6.2 either, but I'm trying to give it a fair shake personally.

[Gothmog]

I read most of the doc and I don't agree at all with the sentiment that "You cannot really balance boss damage for both less experienced and very skilled tanks, because the skill gap and general difference in ability to stay alive is just too large to make it fair and fun for both sides."
Hello LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic. I don't think that tank damage is too low in Mythic at all, especially during progression there really is no situation where you think "oh I wish this boss hit me for more so my tanking abilites mattered".

Nah, I agree with Troxism here, there's definitely bosses that don't hit for anything at all, even during progress. Think Twin Ogron, Ko'ragh, Oregorger, Flamebender, Hanz outside of Shattered Vertebrae. Then you've bosses like Gruul, Hanz with 2+ Shattered Vertebrae, Kromog with 2+ where you're getting AA'd for 400k and it's difficult, sometimes impossible to see it coming.
The disparities are real.
The choice to do dps game instead of trivial survival should be there.


@Evolved
It's not that BoS is gutted, it CAN be 100% uptime in 6.2. It can also be dramatically less, as RNG dictates. That's his main beef with 6.2 changes. They're removing control over BoS uptime by removing the glyph, nigh all you can do is pray your melee's MS consistently enough.


Paladins still have a bit of it with Seraphim and it does carry a heavy cost of being spikable for a few seconds. It's still the kind of talent that minmaxing players will go for, use it for damage on priority adds. Imperator and Aberrations come to mind, perfect for that kind of scenario.
But yeah.. Seal of Truth nerfed into the ground, Seraphim nerfed.
Warriors and Guardians not having any real tradeoff.
BoS is the bastard child, Blizz doesn't know what to do with it, approaching it with all the wrong steps.


His complaints remind me again why stat attunement is such a bad idea. It's supposed to promote and guide the spec toward the best stat for the role. In case of tanks, that's survivability by default.
Monks get crit which isn't what we stack for survivability.
Paladins get haste, which wasn't what they stacked until several haste-buffing targeted buffs a few months down the line.
DK's get MS, which I completely agree with Troxism there, feels completely redundant without unplanned, emergent BoS playstyle. Try playing non BoS while stacking MS, you're overflowing resources all the time.
Guardians and Warriors get mastery, which actually is their best stat.

So good job blizzard, started with guiding new players wrong in 3 out of 5 cases. Took a few months to fix it to 2 out of 5.

As much as I'd like to see it, I don't think Blizzard will introduce this defensive-for-offensive tradeoff into the world of tanks.

They "kinda" tried it with lvl100 talents, but with the thought behind it being: "harder to play, reap a little more reward". Passive talents vs. active ones.
Seraphim vs. Holy Shield
Serenity vs. ChiEx
Ravager vs. Gladiator
BoS vs. Defile
Guardians.. didn't get this choice

When you make it a dps talent vs. survivability talent, it can very quickly devolves into a noob talent vs. skilled talent. Or tanks feeling forced to take DPS one so they're not dragging the raid down.
Well guess what, DPS have had to do that for a decade now. Pure dps classes that is. You play what gives best bang for the buck.
Or maybe Blizz is just scared to make tanking too challenging.

[Deleted]

To be fair, Guardians can choose to go HoTW on 7/10 BRF bosses for opening burst, and if its a longer fight such as beastlord, use it again. Also not choosing Pulverize at level 100 has been costed as a DPS gain; so that can be taken into consideration, I personally only take pulverize on 3 bosses in BRF for example.

For BoS, I'm not really convinced that it is some great playstyle, it has great rewards but in my opinion it is rather toxic. I'd rather DKs be abusing shadow of death like bears have been abusing ursa major and doing more DPS from their death coils and so on while focusing more on stacking something like mastery so that they get proper mitigation. But really, that's my observation with no real experience of a DK tank; the current playstyle to me seems to be very unappealing and I'd honestly not try it till the default and encouraged way to play DK is the survivability way.

[Totaltotemic]

His complaints remind me again why stat attunement is such a bad idea. It's supposed to promote and guide the spec toward the best stat for the role. In case of tanks, that's survivability by default.
Monks get crit which isn't what we stack for survivability.
Paladins get haste, which wasn't what they stacked until several haste-buffing targeted buffs a few months down the line.
DK's get MS, which I completely agree with Troxism there, feels completely redundant without unplanned, emergent BoS playstyle. Try playing non BoS while stacking MS, you're overflowing resources all the time.
Guardians and Warriors get mastery, which actually is their best stat.

So good job blizzard, started with guiding new players wrong in 3 out of 5 cases. Took a few months to fix it to 2 out of 5.

In theory stat attunements are a great idea. There's nothing in the game that suggests what stat is your best stat, and with 5 different stats that have no mandatory minimums and no caps it can be very difficult to figure out what you're supposed to get without either doing math yourself or just trusting someone else's work.

The downfall of attunements is ironically the opposite of Blizzard's normal problem, that being that they didn't actually go far enough to make it fulfill its purpose. They just kind of slapped the attunements on there, made some specs absolutely ensure that this stat will always and forever be the best, and kind of forgot about the rest. Why is it that Paladins had their entire stat system turned upside-down via hotfixes while BrM's attunement being nonsensical just doesn't seem to matter?

Attunements were a great idea hampered by the fact that WoD is a rushed expansion and had too many new ideas with not enough developer bandwidth to make sure they worked correctly. This is what we're seeing in the talent system as well. It turns out that the cookie-cutter talent trees were incredibly easy for developers to manage because they never made a commitment to ensuring there were multiple viable choices. These days, they are forced to create 3 compelling talents that each share similar roles yet are not just numerical deviations (lest they just be boringly one-dimensional like the L45 talents) and it turns out that it's very difficult to do that 7 times for 34 different specs so we get stupid things like Serenity getting nerfed to the ground because it's a 30 second solution in a world where even taking 5 minutes to think of a proper solution is too much time.

This whole discussion is essentially a result of the fact that there are so many problems with systems design in WoD (largely due to a rushed gameplay testing period because it was already behind on the art side) that in the time this post could be read by someone that actually matters, they could have put band-aids on 5 other problems that matter more than whether or not the 0.01% of people playing the game that are unhappy with the way one specific choice in one spec plays out at a high-end raiding level want a certain change.

[Deleted]

To be fair, Guardians can choose to go HoTW on 7/10 BRF bosses for opening burst, and if its a longer fight such as beastlord, use it again. Also not choosing Pulverize at level 100 has been costed as a DPS gain; so that can be taken into consideration, I personally only take pulverize on 3 bosses in BRF for example.

For BoS, I'm not really convinced that it is some great playstyle, it has great rewards but in my opinion it is rather toxic. I'd rather DKs be abusing shadow of death like bears have been abusing ursa major and doing more DPS from their death coils and so on while focusing more on stacking something like mastery so that they get proper mitigation. But really, that's my observation with no real experience of a DK tank; the current playstyle to me seems to be very unappealing and I'd honestly not try it till the default and encouraged way to play DK is the survivability way.

I mean, no offense meant, Lyuben, but if you've literally never played DK you're better off keeping your opinion to yourself lest somebody at Blizzard reads uninformed stuff like this and acts on it. You're genuinely just talking straight out of your ass on this one. I can hear a sphincter flapping.

The entire reason BoS is so good for DKs, and the entire CoI playstyle is so great, is because among all the other great things it does, it fixes the hilariously awful issue of GCD-capping that Blood DKs have even in bare-bones iLvls. With BoS, instead of filling every single global and still wasting resources like Americans waste food, you actually have a sensible RP dump, and whether or not you cast CoI or DS or BB, whether or not you pool runes so you can CoI when you go out of melee range is a hell of a lot more engaging and intelligent than the alternative, which at this point boils down to "ME BIG STRONG DEATH KNIGHT. ME STACK MASTERY. ME SMASH FACE ON KEYBOARD DO GOOD BLOOD SHIELDS. SOMETIMES ME ALSO REMEMBER TO PRESS DEFILE BUT BOSS MOVE SO ME SAD. MAYBE IF ME REALLY SMART ME REMEMBER TO DEPLETE BLOOD RUNES BEFORE ME CAST BLOOD TAP."

[Deleted]

I mean, no offense meant, Lyuben, but if you've literally never played DK you're better off keeping your opinion to yourself lest somebody at Blizzard reads uninformed stuff like this and acts on it. You're genuinely just talking straight out of your ass on this one. I can hear a sphincter flapping.

The entire reason BoS is so good for DKs, and the entire CoI playstyle is so great, is because among all the other great things it does, it fixes the hilariously awful issue of GCD-capping that Blood DKs have even in bare-bones iLvls. With BoS, instead of filling every single global and still wasting resources like Americans waste food, you actually have a sensible RP dump, and whether or not you cast CoI or DS or BB, whether or not you pool runes so you can CoI when you go out of melee range is a hell of a lot more engaging and intelligent than the alternative, which at this point boils down to "ME BIG STRONG DEATH KNIGHT. ME STACK MASTERY. ME SMASH FACE ON KEYBOARD DO GOOD BLOOD SHIELDS. SOMETIMES ME ALSO REMEMBER TO PRESS DEFILE BUT BOSS MOVE SO ME SAD. MAYBE IF ME REALLY SMART ME REMEMBER TO DEPLETE BLOOD RUNES BEFORE ME CAST BLOOD TAP."

I dunno, I never claimed to have played a DK, or to be an expert, I just said that it seems like an unappealing playstyle to me which is why I'd not try it. If the default playstyle of a tank is to go maximum damage and abuse stat stacking, it just seems unintended.

Plus, it does affect other tanks; as an example my guild 3 tanks blast furnace and we have an unholy go blood for it, and he brings feldspar over to my side during transitions. Now, this is really fucking annoying because all he does is spam breath and he constantly gets adds, particularly ones which have been mind controlled, now I can't taunt those so those are pretty much lost to him forever which sucks because he's not meant to tank them. Stuff like this doesn't really strike me as intended or fun or really something I want to be in the game. They buffed druid level 100 talents because they were underutilized, why not buff DKs? Why is only one talent being used ok?

[Hellkung]

I mean, no offense meant, Lyuben, but if you've literally never played DK you're better off keeping your opinion to yourself lest somebody at Blizzard reads uninformed stuff like this and acts on it. You're genuinely just talking straight out of your ass on this one. I can hear a sphincter flapping.

The entire reason BoS is so good for DKs, and the entire CoI playstyle is so great, is because among all the other great things it does, it fixes the hilariously awful issue of GCD-capping that Blood DKs have even in bare-bones iLvls. With BoS, instead of filling every single global and still wasting resources like Americans waste food, you actually have a sensible RP dump, and whether or not you cast CoI or DS or BB, whether or not you pool runes so you can CoI when you go out of melee range is a hell of a lot more engaging and intelligent than the alternative, which at this point boils down to "ME BIG STRONG DEATH KNIGHT. ME STACK MASTERY. ME SMASH FACE ON KEYBOARD DO GOOD BLOOD SHIELDS. SOMETIMES ME ALSO REMEMBER TO PRESS DEFILE BUT BOSS MOVE SO ME SAD. MAYBE IF ME REALLY SMART ME REMEMBER TO DEPLETE BLOOD RUNES BEFORE ME CAST BLOOD TAP."

How is him giving his albeit inexperienced opinion talking out of his ass? It's an opinion, no need to to tell him to stop sharing it. If Blizzard is dumb enough to act on it, we're screwed already...all of us.

He's not the only one. I personally dislike the BOS playstyle and I pick the hard, challenging route on all of the tanks that I play.

It makes the entire spec revolve around the maintenance of a single talent. There's other reasons I enjoy my DK.

[Deleted]

How is him giving his albeit inexperienced opinion talking out of his ass? It's an opinion, no need to to tell him to stop sharing it. If Blizzard is dumb enough to act on it, we're screwed already...all of us.

He's not the only one. I personally dislike the BOS playstyle and I pick the hard, challenging route on all of the tanks that I play.

It makes the entire spec revolve around the maintenance of a single talent. There's other reasons I enjoy my DK.

Idk I just think giving your opinion on how a spec ought to work is completely pointless when you have little-to-no experience with the core workings of the spec. I can respect it when somebody doesn't like BoS that has actually tried to play it (even if honestly I find it a little bit weird, but at least you ain't a furry or something), but it just doesn't make sense criticizing the way BoS works as "toxic" when you've never actually played it yourself.

I mean, the way Blood DK works baseline is already toxic. If his co-tank wasn't breathing on mobs, he'd be Blood Boiling them because ayy lmao that's a thing we have to do just to turn Blood Runes into Death Runes with Blood Tap now. If his co-tank wasn't playing BoS, he'd just be wasting literally thousands of RP every fight because you physically just can't Death Coil often enough to spend all your RP as Blood. It's a fundamentally broken spec design-wise and BoS just fixes a lot of the idiotic shit about the spec. Are there issues with BoS in its current iteration? Sure. But denouncing BoS as "toxic" having never played it just seems like overstepping your mandate by a whole lot to me.

[Nikkej]

Posted this in fix monk but idk how active it is. I am not asking for some indeepth reviiew . Just some pointers:


Went back for my monk after playing the Prot Pala since "OMG ZMOMG NERFBAT INC" PatchNotes.

I have had some bad logs before, getting some stick on here and has been trying to improve, I still feel I can do better.

Specc Brewmaster
Logs from "Fun/Social/Gear Raid" Not so serious but I tried to do my best (4Bosses HC BRF): https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...&view=rankings
Amory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...r/Nikkj/simple
Own input: I did quite well on HansFrans and Iron Maidens. On Thorgar and Darmac it aint good tho. I would be really happy if someone who is good at this could throw an eye on the 4 kills, or at least Maidens/HansFrans and one of the others.

[Trendy-Ideology]

Why is it whenever someone wants to say something offensive they prefix it with "no offense"?

If you're gonna be a horse's ass, you might as well just own it, embrace it, instead of couching it in some faux-apologetic bullshit.

[Deleted]

Why is it whenever someone wants to say something offensive they prefix it with "no offense"?

If you're gonna be a horse's ass, you might as well just own it, embrace it, instead of couching it in some faux-apologetic bullshit.

It's to draw a line between saying "you are an idiot" and "what you said there was idiotic". I generally think Lyuben is level-headed most of the time, but even smart people say stuff that ain't all too bright sometimes. I wanted to point that out despite not having any issue with Lyuben himself. There's nothing faux-apologetic about it. I genuinely don't mean to offend him - what he said was just ill-informed and made little sense.

[Hellkung]

Idk I just think giving your opinion on how a spec ought to work is completely pointless when you have little-to-no experience with the core workings of the spec. I can respect it when somebody doesn't like BoS that has actually tried to play it (even if honestly I find it a little bit weird, but at least you ain't a furry or something), but it just doesn't make sense criticizing the way BoS works as "toxic" when you've never actually played it yourself.

I mean, the way Blood DK works baseline is already toxic. If his co-tank wasn't breathing on mobs, he'd be Blood Boiling them because ayy lmao that's a thing we have to do just to turn Blood Runes into Death Runes with Blood Tap now. If his co-tank wasn't playing BoS, he'd just be wasting literally thousands of RP every fight because you physically just can't Death Coil often enough to spend all your RP as Blood. It's a fundamentally broken spec design-wise and BoS just fixes a lot of the idiotic shit about the spec. Are there issues with BoS in its current iteration? Sure. But denouncing BoS as "toxic" having never played it just seems like overstepping your mandate by a whole lot to me.

Well I agree with what you're saying it's just that I can also see where he's coming from. For all the top parses that the top-tier Bloods are posting up where they do like 45k+ DPS and are still solid tanks, there's a whole group of people who have their co-tanks do all the work and fail at the talent horribly.

And I also agree about the state of DKs. If there was one thing that the class was screaming for all throughout MOP, it has always been an aoe RP dump. I just personally don't think 100% uptime is or should be the goal and I know quite a few people agree. It makes the entire spec revolve around BOS maintenance instead using it as a CD which it is. There's tons of things they could do to with it.

[Chuupag]

So 'no offense' why is a prot pally main lurking in a brew thread telling someone their opinion on a blood dk is uninformed.