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

[redfella]

If you're getting 5 smashes while solo tanking you need to have some talking with your DPS

I'm done with the hand holding, tried it a lot from Highmaul to BRF, but most of us are old, pretty casual and very much set in our own ways. Look at the bright side, at least it's barely enough to kill stuff and I get to scumbag freely.

Edit:

Welp, downed Socrethar, we swapped to trapping the add for today and 4 smashesh only, on some pulls only 3. 17 pulls total, which of 10 were because of shitty interrupts, changed the appointed players and kill on first try. Interrupting is hard I guess.

[keqe]

Hey guys, can someone explain me this? Its a cut of our Mannoroth Log last night.

Environment Overflowing Fel Energy Kabator 471445 (A: 237940) (O: 435109)



The Damage Range of the Pillar in the last phase looks so random to me. In other attempts I got thickled for ~100k, in this attempt i was 2 shotted with hits over 700k and 1,1mio. I don't know how to prevent these oneshots.

Here is an example attempt where the pillar thickles me. Only Vigilance was up, no heavy magic CD aka Diffuse or ZM. Here on average for ~120k

The damage depends on your range from the pillar so if you completely hug it you get hit a lot but if you are 10y from it you only get hit a bit.

[Deleted]

Hey guys, can someone explain me this? Its a cut of our Mannoroth Log last night.

Environment Overflowing Fel Energy Kabator 471445 (A: 237940) (O: 435109)



The Damage Range of the Pillar in the last phase looks so random to me. In other attempts I got thickled for ~100k, in this attempt i was 2 shotted with hits over 700k and 1,1mio. I don't know how to prevent these oneshots.

Here is an example attempt where the pillar thickles me. Only Vigilance was up, no heavy magic CD aka Diffuse or ZM. Here on average for ~120k

On the try with high damage from the pillar, did you by any chance try and soak some gaze stacks before you tanked? to my understanding the gaze debuff amplifiys the damage you take from the pillars.

Edit: I checked your logs, on the two tries you got 1shotted from pillar, you still had gaze debuff which most likely led to this. I cant link anything yet coz low number of posts.

- - - Updated - - -

The damage depends on your range from the pillar so if you completely hug it you get hit a lot but if you are 10y from it you only get hit a bit.

Not sure about this honestly, considering you get knocked into the pillar during glaive combo. The damage ramps up but its never a big burst like he had. He must have soaked gazes before he went in, or else i dunno.

[Deleted]

Yes I soaked Wrath of Guldan Stacks before. Normally I would chain Diffuse + ZM like I already do in P2 to soak tons of stacks, but in P3 I wasn't able to survive the first Shadowforce without Diffuse. I get pushed into the Pillar for the incoming Glaive Combo, and to prevent refreshing my Debuff on the Wrath Targets.

I check other attempts, my Co Tank was also oneshotted in one attempt. And he also had some stacks of Wrath (more or less accidently, he is not on soaking duty in P3).

If thats really the reason I can plan my cooldowns and externals better now. Can someone else confirm that the Wrath Soak is the reason for this?

[Deleted]

Yes I soaked Wrath of Guldan Stacks before. Normally I would chain Diffuse + ZM like I already do in P2 to soak tons of stacks, but in P3 I wasn't able to survive the first Shadowforce without Diffuse. I get pushed into the Pillar for the incoming Glaive Combo, and to prevent refreshing my Debuff on the Wrath Targets.

I check other attempts, my Co Tank was also oneshotted in one attempt. And he also had some stacks of Wrath (more or less accidently, he is not on soaking duty in P3).

If thats really the reason I can plan my cooldowns and externals better now. Can someone else confirm that the Wrath Soak is the reason for this?

If you check the mannoroth mythic thread ( which got pretty good tips for the fight in general) it was reported by somebody awhile ago.

[Quotey]

it's def. wrath stacks. i've reported it a couple times on twitter and i'm sure others have. they presumably don't intend on/can't currently fix it. maybe they dont want you against the pillar (which begs the question why its still there on mythic but w/e)

[Deleted]

I've recently picked up Brewmaster for soloing some old content and has actually enjoyed the game play so thought i'd keep trying it and potentially look at picking it up moving forward (Currently MS Mistweaver) During this time i've also been doing my dailies at brewmaster and talking the elites, now i know this isn't anywhere near a raid situation but i thought it be good time to and practice rotation and so forth.

The thing is, i got really confused. Is it this simple? From what i've read and understood it is Keg smash whenever possible, jab when it's not, use chi to have guard up 100% and use chi explosion when at 3 stacks primarily but also 4 stacks when needed. Is this it? i feel i'm standing around a lot waiting for stuff to come off cooldown.

[Mokuna]

You should never stand doing nothing, your "empty" gcds are filled with tiger palm(which makes the spec very spammy), also having guard up all the time isn't efficient, guard counters your basic mechanics when you're at 100%hp (gift of the ox, expel harm), in a raiding situation guarding at full hp when taking smooth low damage is just bad, you're giving away 2 chis to turn your beacon/hots/aoe/passive heals into overheal and absorb the damage instead, so basically wasting 2 chis (it probably improves your krsi tho, showing how bad this metric is)

Guard mostly has 2 good uses, 1 to counter spike damage, the other is you get 30% bonus to selfhealing when guard is up so you want to drop your hp a bit, guard and then expel harm/strafe into your gift of the ox orbs, the rest of the time guard is mostly worthless, you should never aim to maintain it all the time for no special reason

[Deleted]

Thank you very much for that information, so guard is more of a reactive spell than a proactive one? It's best to use it when needed rather than have 100% up time? I forgot to mention expel harm, i mainly use that when below 35% HP and never even though about using tiger palm.

What should my chi be used on then? Or is it a case of banking it for when you are ready?

[Lysozyme]

I agree with Mokuna if you have the tier bonuses, but it sounds like you probably don't, Tweeb, so you probably won't be able to guard into expel harm spam unfortunately, which means it's not quite as good as with the tier.

Chi should be spent on chi explosion when you don't need it, and banked for when you're about to need it.

And yeah, every single gcd that you're not spending on a different ability should be used on Tiger Palm. It actually does ridiculously high damage. On my most recent Zakuun kill, it did 25.11% of my damage; 31.7% not counting pets.

[Adaren]

The tip I always give to new Brewmasters is to get in the habit of mindlessly mashing Tiger Palm. That leaves your brain free to figure out when you shouldn't be hitting Tiger Palm (e.g. Am I in danger of capping on energy? Do I need to Expel Harm? Is Keg Smash almost off CD? Do I need to dump Chi so that I can Keg Smash?)

Put differently, don't ask yourself "What should I hit during the next GCD?"
Instead, ask yourself "Do I need to hit something that isn't Tiger Palm?"

[Lysozyme]

That's a really good way of putting it. And don't bother using Jab unless you need to generate Chi for survivability reasons. Tiger palm is better. Tiger palm is love.

[Deleted]

That's perfect thank you very much!
So just to clarify, sorry! Spam tiger palm at all times, except, when keg smash is off CD (#1 priority), or need to generate a chi with jab/expel harm (Under 35% becomes higher priority).

Bank up chi, use on guard when appropriate (have to practice this) and look to use 3 chi on chi explosion to gain shuffle and purify.

[Leblue]

Guard = "Freeze my health button because omg I'm taking lots of damage". Other use is preemptive when you have some resolve and some serious trinket procs/potion is up for massive "Lol 1 mill+ guard".

[Adaren]

That's perfect thank you very much!
So just to clarify, sorry! Spam tiger palm at all times, except, when keg smash is off CD (#1 priority), or need to generate a chi with jab/expel harm (Under 35% becomes higher priority).

Bank up chi, use on guard when appropriate (have to practice this) and look to use 3 chi on chi explosion to gain shuffle and purify.

Perhaps this is implicit, but don't let your energy cap either. When your Energy gets > 75 and Keg Smash isn't off CD yet, throw in a Jab to keep yourself from capping energy. You'll need Chi to use Chi Explosion and keep up Shuffle, especially if you're planning to use some Guards as well.

That's a really good way of putting it. And don't bother using Jab unless you need to generate Chi for survivability reasons. Tiger palm is better. Tiger palm is love.

This is somewhat misleading. Jab doesn't do much damage on its own, but the Chi it generates will make up for it by boosting your next Chi Explosion.

Additionally, Jab is always needed for survival. Keg Smash on its own generates 2 Chi / 8 seconds, which (with Chi Explosion) translates to 6 seconds of Shuffle. So 75% uptime. Adding in Jab gives you 8 seconds of Shuffle every 8 seconds even with 0 Haste. Factoring in Power Strikes (triggered by Jab) gives you 2 extra Chi every 30 seconds, which can be translated into Guards.

But the point is you won't have 100% Shuffle uptime if you don't Jab, so you will frequently need to use Jab for survival.

[Deleted]

You don't need to have 100% uptime on shuffle though... but yeah more chi = more survival through guard ,shuffle or purifying.

[Deleted]

Thank you very much for that information, so guard is more of a reactive spell than a proactive one?

No, Guard is both. As an example if you dont have Guard up when Mannoroth's Glaive Combo (Mythic) comes and you don't dodge it you can die when no other Cooldowns or Absorbs are up. On normal or heroic it shouldn't matter, it shouldn't kill you anyway.

In a normal Autoattack Scenario the point is true, its more reactive. But you also need it proactive in some cases for huge spikes especially in mythic and you don't wanna play with WUE or are totally overgeared.


@ Mannoroth Topic: Thx for the replies. We could kill him tuesday. I just saved Diffuse for the first Shadowforce with pushback into the pillar. Second Shadowforce I got pushed in the same direction with the rest of the raid.

[Lysozyme]

This is somewhat misleading. Jab doesn't do much damage on its own, but the Chi it generates will make up for it by boosting your next Chi Explosion.

Jab + 1 extra chi in your next chi explosion does less damage than one tiger palm (ignoring any survivability benefits to generating and spending chi)

[Leblue]

If you're about to cap energy (and particularly if you're using Power Strikes and its up), keg smash still is still on cooldown you'll probably want to use Jab. Tiger palm might eek out slightly in damage, but its really not worth generating chi when the "loss" (loss being almost an inconsequential bit of dps for more survivability/flexibility)give you flexibility in your chi use, purifying, or even setting up a 3 or 4 chi ChiEx. The amount of fights that consistenly allow for some form of cleave (outside of basically Iron Reaver and Fel Lord) makes it so you'll never really want to not be generating chi when its not a deteriment to having energy for emergency expel harms or Keg Smash when it comes off CD.

[guardog]

hi there, just started learning Brewmaster and here are some questions on priority in Chi usage:

Scenario 1
Your Guard has just been depleted by several unlucky boss melee swings, and you're still supposed to be tanking the boss (not swapping soon). Let's say you're using ChiEx and Chi pooling is a bit more difficult considering how ChiEx works, how will you prioritize the spending of your upcoming Chi generated?

Will it be purify the heavy stagger --> guard --> shuffle? Or should we guard first?

Scenario 2
Almost the same as above, this will be starting of pull where resolve is low and no shuffle. You got heavy stagger in the beginning of pull, how will you prioritize your Chi usage when you're using ChiEx?