Shuffle vs Purify vs Guard vs ChiEx (Brewmaster)

[Visian]

Let's look at it from a different side assuming 12 energy/sec (ascension plus raid buffs).

Over the course of 88 seconds a Chi-X monk (with modest haste) will be able to generate about 5 additional chi that is not used up on 11x3-chi explosions and three guards. This gives a grand total of 16 purifies if the person wants to end at zero shuffle accumulated. Plus this assumes perfect execution and 100% uptime on the boss.

During the same period of time with serenity and with the same haste only ~30ish seconds are not covered and we'll round it to 80 seconds of traditional chi generation. 80 into 8 rotations each giving 4 chi, 5 additional BoK thrown in giving a surplus of 22 minus three guards leaving 16 left to purify. Note that this does not include the free purifies during serenity.

In the end BOTH are mostly even with about 16 purifies every ~90 seconds.

Leaving out other differences, there is one main reason serenity pulls ahead and that is what happens after a big hit or in critical health situations. To ensure that all tools are available as needed, most monks will keep 2 chi as a buffer to use guard instantly and followed shortly by purify in clutch situations. Chi-X dumps everything leaving you wide open. A Chi-X monk could use brew, but that is only available every minute not to mention requiring quite a bit of haste.

[Sunnydee]

I think its more about the safetyzone with serenity, that you can run away from the boss and do other things and/or dont have to think about shuffle falling off so you can go straight from a while away from a target to being able to pop a guard right away after a KS. atleast thats how it is for me. being able to not bash my keyboard to thousands of bits after doing something else.

[brookllyn]

Let's look at it from a different side assuming 12 energy/sec (ascension plus raid buffs).

Over the course of 88 seconds a Chi-X monk (with modest haste) will be able to generate about 5 additional chi that is not used up on 11x3-chi explosions and three guards. This gives a grand total of 16 purifies if the person wants to end at zero shuffle accumulated. Plus this assumes perfect execution and 100% uptime on the boss.

During the same period of time with serenity and with the same haste only ~30ish seconds are not covered and we'll round it to 80 seconds of traditional chi generation. 80 into 8 rotations each giving 4 chi, 5 additional BoK thrown in giving a surplus of 22 minus three guards leaving 16 left to purify. Note that this does not include the free purifies during serenity.

In the end BOTH are mostly even with about 16 purifies every ~90 seconds.

Leaving out other differences, there is one main reason serenity pulls ahead and that is what happens after a big hit or in critical health situations. To ensure that all tools are available as needed, most monks will keep 2 chi as a buffer to use guard instantly and followed shortly by purify in clutch situations. Chi-X dumps everything leaving you wide open. A Chi-X monk could use brew, but that is only available every minute not to mention requiring quite a bit of haste.

Why is a chiEx monk somehow getting 47 chi(33-chiEx + 9-guard + your 5 extra) over 88 seconds and a serenity monk is only getting 32 out of 80 seconds? Assuming they have they same chi gen, the serenity monk should have 23ish chi to purify.

Although even so, I do agree that serenity is mostly about control. With chiEx you are losing your ability to time purifies almost completely. You either play the way the talent dictates and hope big hits line up with your dump or you lose any efficiency you could ever hope to gain with the talent.

[Viggen2012]

Why is a chiEx monk somehow getting 47 chi(33-chiEx + 9-guard + your 5 extra) over 88 seconds and a serenity monk is only getting 32 out of 80 seconds? Assuming they have they same chi gen, the serenity monk should have 23ish chi to purify.

Although even so, I do agree that serenity is mostly about control. With chiEx you are losing your ability to time purifies almost completely. You either play the way the talent dictates and hope big hits line up with your dump or you lose any efficiency you could ever hope to gain with the talent.

A slight correction - 44 chi = (33 - ChiEx, 6 - Guard (as Guard costs 2 Chi) + 5 extra)

[Visian]

Why is a chiEx monk somehow getting 47 chi(33-chiEx + 9-guard + your 5 extra) over 88 seconds and a serenity monk is only getting 32 out of 80 seconds? Assuming they have they same chi gen, the serenity monk should have 23ish chi to purify.

For Chi-X, it's pretty much 3+1 chi every eight seconds over 11 rotations. So 11 chi left over from Chi-X then 6 going to guards leaving 5 surplus.

For Serenity yea I did bork it up, they have 10 (not 8) rotations of 4 for a total of 40. Which would leave room for 24 purifies over the remaining 80 seconds.

[Totaltotemic]

However, there is no difference between 100% shuffle uptime and 150%

I feel like this is going to haunt this forum for the entire expansion.

Let's make something clear: Serenity does not force you to stack more Shuffle than you need. It also does not "give" more than 100% Shuffle uptime because you can only get 60 seconds of Shuffle out of it every 90 seconds. The goal is 100% Shuffle uptime. More than that is a waste. Less than that is not enough. If you have more than that, it's not Serenity's fault, it's the player's fault for being bad and using extra Blackout Kicks instead of Purifying Brew.

Literally the entire defensive benefit of Serenity is more chi to Purify with more frequently, not more chi to stack Shuffle with. If you're mindlessly stacking Shuffle to 2 and 3 minutes while using Serenity, you're doing it wrong.

This really isn't that complicated, one talent does more damage while the other lets you Purify at more appropriate times and more frequently. You can try to find skewed examples in logs all you like, but your theory that Chi Explosion is more damage reduction than Serenity fails a very basic absurdity test. If Serenity gives you more effective chi than Chi Explosion does and isn't restricted in its use like Chi Explosion, it must be better for defensive purposes. Everything else is just fuzzy logic trying to argue a point whose premise doesn't even make sense because it's being overcomplicated.

Forget Guard, it's irrelevant to this comparison. Forget Shuffle's value, because unless you're arguing that 100% Shuffle uptime isn't necessary that's also irrelevant. Forget even the value of each individual Purify. What matters is that Chi Explosion provides no defensive benefit other than 2 seconds of extra Shuffle every time you use a 3x CE, whereas Serenity provides 60 seconds every time you use it, and the more Shuffle you have for free the less you need to spend your Jab/Keg Smash chi on Blackout Kick and can Purify more. That's all there is to the comparison.

[handofdesu]

Just a note: Ascension is crap for BrM & even worse when taking Serenity.

Additional energy coverts to chi at 40 energy for 1 chi. So to match power strikes (4 chi per minute), the +15% energy from Ascension would have to be worth 160 energy per minute, or 2.66 energy per second.

Seeing as it takes 17.6 energy per second before Ascension to gain that much from it, we can safely say that Ascension is not nearly as good as PS for Chi generation at any reasonable levels of haste.

Further, when you have Serenity, you cap energy once every 90 seconds which reduces the value of the increased regen from Ascension.

[Seldoncrisis]

Just a note: Ascension is crap for BrM & even worse when taking Serenity.

Additional energy coverts to chi at 40 energy for 1 chi. So to match power strikes (4 chi per minute), the +15% energy from Ascension would have to be worth 160 energy per minute, or 2.66 energy per second.

Seeing as it takes 17.6 energy per second before Ascension to gain that much from it, we can safely say that Ascension is not nearly as good as PS for Chi generation at any reasonable levels of haste.

Further, when you have Serenity, you cap energy once every 90 seconds which reduces the value of the increased regen from Ascension.

You have a base 10 energy/sec which ascension also takes into account plus bloodlust and raid haste buff. I prefer chi brew because of the elusive brew stacks it gives, but ascension is not as bad as you make it out to be.

One thing that no one has mentioned is how you only need to have shuffle up when you're getting hit. Every single boss has large chunks of time where you're either tank-swapped out or the boss is doing some mechanic/casting something. There is always downtime where you're not getting hit.
You can use this downtime to save up chi brew stacks, pool up some chi, and try to get ahead of the shuffle curve as you swap back in to tank. I make sure I always have shuffle up when I'm actually taking hits.

That being said, obviously serenity gives you more mitigation than chi explosion due to more purifying brews. However, the tradeoff is that chi explosion gives you significantly higher dps. This means the boss goes down faster, thus less chances for people going oom, dying in fire, etc. I do about 90% as much DPS as an actual DPS class single-target with chi explosion.

I don't think it's an either-or here anyway... use both talents. I would use serenity if we ever got to a point where damage taken is holding me or the raid back. That point hasn't come yet and maybe it never will, because Brewmasters are pretty strong right now. Even with chi explosion, I take about 10% less damage/sec than our warrior tank.

[handofdesu]

Your math is a little off. You have a base 10 energy/sec which ascension also takes into account. I prefer chi brew because of the elusive brew stacks it gives, but ascension is not as bad as you make it out to be.

If I'm wrong, how much energy regen per second pre-ascension does it take?

[Deleted]

While the camp of ChiEx and Serenity are on the crusade to prove who is the supreme king I would like to mention that on fights like Imperator where more than half of the damage taken is magic Soul Dance is actually beating both in terms of survivability so here you have one reason why to not always use ChiEx.

[Seldoncrisis]

If I'm wrong, how much energy regen per second pre-ascension does it take?

No you're right, I edited my post. The math is right but you have to take into account bloodlust and the raid haste buff and how those get multiplied in by ascension as well. I wouldn't use ascension because I believe that chi brew is far and away the strongest talent in that tier because it also gives 10 elusive brew stacks/min, but I don't think ascension is that far off from the other two if you take into account lust/buffs in terms of overall chi generation.

There's also the scenario of being low hp and low energy and needing an expel harm right now. Ascension would help there more than the others(if you're low HP, chances are your resolve is pretty high too).

While the camp of ChiEx and Serenity are on the crusade to prove who is the supreme king I would like to mention that on fights like Imperator where more than half of the damage taken is magic Soul Dance is actually beating both in terms of survivability so here you have one reason why to not always use ChiEx.

Yeah I think you have to pick the right talent for the fight. I've considered soul shuffle for imperator, but since I've only run it on normal I haven't run into survivability issues, so I'd rather have the increased DPS and the ability to put ranged threat/damage on the adds from 40 yards away.

I don't know what future raid content will hold, but I'll gladly swap out to serenity and soul shuffle if it's actually needed for some fights.

[brookllyn]

Another issue with ascension that is often overlooked is that you have to use more of your GCDs on jab(and more Blackout Kicks) in order to get that chi out of it whereas power strikes and Chi brew are off the GCD and give you extra chi for free. Since TP is way more damage than jab, you lose out on the ability to hit more tiger palms and I'm not entirely sure that 2 jabs + a blackout kick is more damage than three Tiger Palms. This is diminshed somewhat when using ChiEX since 1) the damage is higher per chi and 2) you only need to use one GCD per chi dump and 3) AoE cleave makes tiger palm damage look pathetic.

[tachycardias]

The simple fact is that Serenity gives about 20 extra chi every 1.5 mins. You can use that to purify much more often than with Chi Exp. It's not about shuffle uptime, it's about # of times you can purify. Also, Serenity pretty much allows you to forgo haste entirely, putting it into more valuable stats. Serenity is simply better than Chi Exp in most cases where you want to maximize survivability.

[Seldoncrisis]

The simple fact is that Serenity gives about 20 extra chi every 1.5 mins. You can use that to purify much more often than with Chi Exp. It's not about shuffle uptime, it's about # of times you can purify. Also, Serenity pretty much allows you to forgo haste entirely, putting it into more valuable stats. Serenity is simply better than Chi Exp in most cases where you want to maximize survivability.

Yeah, there is no question serenity gives you more survivability through way more purifying brews. My angle is that even with chi explosion, I still take ~10% less damage than our warrior tank and I haven't run into a boss up til now where I felt like survivability was an issue.

There are many facets to having a successful raid, among those being healer throughput, damage throughput, and tank survivability. If survivability and healer throughput are not an issue and your raid is getting bottlenecked by slightly under-par raid DPS, why wouldn't you try to contribute to help that issue instead of trying to push your survivability even further?
Your healers having more heals to throw on the DPS generally won't make the DPS do more DPS. You on the other hand can significantly raise your damage and help them out a bit.

Like, if you've got say 10 people in your raid and normally the tanks do about half dps of your dps classes, and you run 2 healers, you can think of it as having effectively 7 dps(6 actual dps + 2 tanks).
If your healers aren't having problems but your fights run long, you could run chi explosion and be closer to 7.5 dps.

It's kind of similar with that other post in this forum about mistweavers where the guy exclusively fistweaves in mythic and contributes about 10k dps while putting up 40k hps.
He sacrifices a small amount of his healing power to bolster his raids dps by a significant amount. The same principle is true here, you sacrifice a bit of your survivability to boost your raid's DPS.

If your raid's DPS is doing awesome and ahead of the curve but your healers sometimes struggle, then by all means, go serenity.

[Totaltotemic]

The only wrong answer when it comes to the level 100 talents is saying that one of them should be used all of the time without regard to situational application. Serenity is good at reducing physical damage taken. Soul Dance is good at reducing magical damage taken. Chi Explosion is good at doing more damage without regard to how much damage you're taking. Why can't everyone just leave it at that? There's no need to argue over whether someone should use one or the other all of the time because it is up to each individual raid to figure out whether more damage or more tankiness helps kill bosses more, and it's certainly not so ubiquitous that it's anything that can be proved one way or the other without considering the nuances of an individual raid group.

The only points that need to be argued about those talents are when people get their inner workings wrong and try to say that Serenity does more damage than Chi Explosion, or that Chi Explosion reduces damage taken more than Serenity, or that in a 75% or more magic damage situation Soul Dance is worthless. Each talent has its purpose, but which purpose you need for each boss depends a lot more on your own group than on general principles.

[Deleted]

Just a note: Ascension is crap for BrM & even worse when taking Serenity.

Additional energy coverts to chi at 40 energy for 1 chi. So to match power strikes (4 chi per minute), the +15% energy from Ascension would have to be worth 160 energy per minute, or 2.66 energy per second.

Seeing as it takes 17.6 energy per second before Ascension to gain that much from it, we can safely say that Ascension is not nearly as good as PS for Chi generation at any reasonable levels of haste.

Further, when you have Serenity, you cap energy once every 90 seconds which reduces the value of the increased regen from Ascension.

You don't really take Ascension for the Chi generation, it also allows you to use more Expel Harm in a tough situation. And what if you fucked up and need Chi for Guard/Purify and PS isn't ready? Ascension will be more useful then. Of course in a world where everyone plays perfectly that's not relevant - but nobody plays perfectly.

[handofdesu]

You don't really take Ascension for the Chi generation, it also allows you to use more Expel Harm in a tough situation. And what if you fucked up and need Chi for Guard/Purify and PS isn't ready? Ascension will be more useful then. Of course in a world where everyone plays perfectly that's not relevant - but nobody plays perfectly.

Well, in a 5 second window Ascension will give you as much as 10 extra energy... which might help, or might not, depending on the magnitude of the error made.

Chi Brew is clearly better for 'opps' type situations, since it gives 2 Chi AND 5 Elusive Brew stacks.