Thoranar's attempted explanation of BrM PTR changes and suggestions

[Thoranar]

Tl;dr – My attempt at explaining the Armor buff and stagger nerf.
Tl;dr 2 – My suggestion is to keep armor buff, nerf stagger by only 10% total, and nerf guard by 50%.

Let me preface by saying I’m a mitigation focus Mythic monk. Some monks pride themselves on topping the DPS charts, I pride myself on taking as little damage as possible. This write-up will focus on the mitigation aspects of the armor and stagger changes and will not factor in avoidance such as parry or elusive brew

For this discussion, I’ll be using a mythic parse of Oregorger:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...en&options=130

On this pull, we use a typical tanking swap strategy after every acid torrent, with myself tanking on the pull and after each transition. My warrior tank took 5.62million damage and I took 2.70million damage. I took less damage than over half the raid. At the time, this was the least amount of damage taken by an actively tanking tank on this mythic fight, but since then I’ve seen monks take less than 2 million. I use this as an example of the concern Blizzard has with Mythic Monks and their OP mitigation. The breakdown is this:

Warrior

• Normal– 81.60% - 4.58 Million damage – Average hit taken 82,294
• Mitigated (Blocked/Staggered) – 28.80% - 2.27 Million
• Shield Barrier absorbed – 829k – 8 Casts – 5% uptime
• External Healing Required – 4.58 Million
• Boss Melee swings on Warrior - 36

Monk

• Normal – 50.28% - 1.36 Million damage – Average hit taken 238,194.3 (before stagger)
• Mitigated (Blocked/Staggered) – 74.89% - 8.04 Million
• Guard absorbed – 4.35 Million – 10 casts – 65.37% uptime
• External Healing Required - 1.36 Million
• Boss Melee swings on Monk – 49

Let me start by attempting to explain the Armor buff to our stance. Blizzard is trying to scale down the huge difference in pre-mitigated/staggered damage between the classes. Before stagger came into play, I took 3 times more damage per melee swing than the warrior. This amount is only offset by armor and bonus armor. I currently have +1000 bonus armor. Imagine an under geared Monk, they would take even more. To further compare, a DK takes roughly 150k hits and a Druid takes 193k hits. Now is this a problem? Of course not, because we have stagger. Currently I have 2455 unbuffed mastery which means 6.3% stagger. Base stagger is 30%, Shuffle is 10% so with mastery that equals 46% stagger. That means that 238k hit I staggered 109,569 and took an immediate hit of 128, 624. (I’m using unbuffed numbers for stagger). So blizzard may look at this number and think, “Let’s make them equal”. And if we look at the suggested armor buff alone, that’s exactly what they are trying to do. On live I currently have a Total Armor Physical Damage Reduction of 45% and on the PTR I have 50%. So let’s do some math again assuming that the before armor hit from the melee swing mentioned above is 529,320(238,194 / 45%)

• Live = Melee Swing after armor mitigation – 238,194 (45%)
• PTR = Melee Swing after armor mitigation – 211,728 (50%)

If we apply current Stagger of 46% to the new 211,728 then we get a total immediate hit of 114,333. This is 14k less than before and closer to what the warrior took

To compensate this “alignment” by blizzard, they nerfed our stagger by 30% (10% from shuffle, 20% from stance). Applying the new stagger of 16% to the new 211,728 we get a total immediate hit of 177,851, and a stagger of 33,876.

• Live = 228,194 hit with 46% stagger = Immediate hit of 128,624 and stagger 109,569
• PTR = 211,728 hit 16% stagger = Immediate hit of 177,851 and a stagger of 33,876

With this change, the value of purify is greatly diminished, while the value of guard is increased. In order to keep the intent of the armor buff, while NOT diminishing purify would be to nerf Stagger by 10%. A 10% stagger looks more reasonable

• Live = 238,194 Hit with 46% stagger = Immediate hit of 128,624 and stagger 109,569
• My suggestion = 211,728 Hit with 36% stagger = Immediate hit of 135,505 and a stagger of 76,222

Here the value of purify is still lowered, but not by much.

Finally let’s talk about the elephant in the room that is Guard. GUARD NEEDS A NERF. There I said it, and it’s completely true. It’s no secret that undergeared Monks are not on par with other undergeared tanks. I.e. a fresh 100 Brewmaster will get trucked compared to a fresh 100 Warrior. We experienced this at the beginning of Mists and again in Warlords. The problem with the warlords launch is that blizzard introduced daily Challenge Mode quests that offered the highest iLvL gear. You NEEDED this gear to progress at the highest level in Highmaul. This translated to undergeared monks getting destroyed in Challenge Mode. So on November 25, blizzard hotfixed guards value by 100%. At the time this was perfect. My guards went from 50-100k to 100-200k.

However, Blizzard didn’t revert the buff once we started getting geared. Now the guard amounts are insane. Here is the same fight but filtered for only my Guard casts:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...95&view=events

On the pull with both trinkets, a pre-pot, and 220% resolve I cast a 1 Million guard (1,003,588). You may also notice a had over half of it still remaining when it wore off. My lowest guard was 155,043 which is no trinket procs and no resolve, the lowest possible I can get. It’s obvious this needs some balancing and Blizzard is attempting to balance this out by making us take more initial damage. However, I have a better idea.

Let’s do one of two things with guard. Keep guard’s amount but decrease the duration from 30 seconds to 5 seconds, and the recharge to 15 seconds. This makes using guard a more active choice for key boss abilities. Similar to Shield of the Righteousness for Paladins and Rune Tap for DKs. This change would not go over well with the masses though as it raises the skill cap of the class.

Or two, reduce guard’s amount by 50%. This is the simplest change and would balance out well with the current health pools of tanks and not effect the play-style.

I know this was a long post so I thank you for reading it all. In summary I agree that BrM need a mitigation nerf, but the current PTR build is not the way to go.

[warbean]

Long time no talk, Thor. I feel for ya BMs and think your Guard suggestion is the most reasonable I've heard. Blizz is taking away a lot of the class identity of monks with the suggested nerfs.

"Some monks pride themselves on topping the DPS charts, I pride myself on taking as little damage as possible."

Back in ToT you had a top 10 parse on everything lol.

Tl;dr – My attempt at explaining the Armor buff and stagger nerf.
Tl;dr 2 – My suggestion is to keep armor buff, nerf stagger by only 10% total, and nerf guard by 50%.

Let me preface by saying I’m a mitigation focus Mythic monk. Some monks pride themselves on topping the DPS charts, I pride myself on taking as little damage as possible. This write-up will focus on the mitigation aspects of the armor and stagger changes and will not factor in avoidance such as parry or elusive brew

For this discussion, I’ll be using a mythic parse of Oregorger:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...en&options=130

On this pull, we use a typical tanking swap strategy after every acid torrent, with myself tanking on the pull and after each transition. My warrior tank took 5.62million damage and I took 2.70million damage. I took less damage than over half the raid. At the time, this was the least amount of damage taken by an actively tanking tank on this mythic fight, but since then I’ve seen monks take less than 2 million. I use this as an example of the concern Blizzard has with Mythic Monks and their OP mitigation. The breakdown is this:

Warrior

• Normal– 81.60% - 4.58 Million damage – Average hit taken 82,294
• Mitigated (Blocked/Staggered) – 28.80% - 2.27 Million
• Shield Barrier absorbed – 829k – 8 Casts – 5% uptime
• External Healing Required – 4.58 Million
• Boss Melee swings on Warrior - 36

Monk

• Normal – 50.28% - 1.36 Million damage – Average hit taken 238,194.3 (before stagger)
• Mitigated (Blocked/Staggered) – 74.89% - 8.04 Million
• Guard absorbed – 4.35 Million – 10 casts – 65.37% uptime
• External Healing Required - 1.36 Million
• Boss Melee swings on Monk – 49

Let me start by attempting to explain the Armor buff to our stance. Blizzard is trying to scale down the huge difference in pre-mitigated/staggered damage between the classes. Before stagger came into play, I took 3 times more damage per melee swing than the warrior. This amount is only offset by armor and bonus armor. I currently have +1000 bonus armor. Imagine an under geared Monk, they would take even more. To further compare, a DK takes roughly 150k hits and a Druid takes 193k hits. Now is this a problem? Of course not, because we have stagger. Currently I have 2455 unbuffed mastery which means 6.3% stagger. Base stagger is 30%, Shuffle is 10% so with mastery that equals 46% stagger. That means that 238k hit I staggered 109,569 and took an immediate hit of 128, 624. (I’m using unbuffed numbers for stagger). So blizzard may look at this number and think, “Let’s make them equal”. And if we look at the suggested armor buff alone, that’s exactly what they are trying to do. On live I currently have a Total Armor Physical Damage Reduction of 45% and on the PTR I have 50%. So let’s do some math again assuming that the before armor hit from the melee swing mentioned above is 529,320(238,194 / 45%)

• Live = Melee Swing after armor mitigation – 238,194 (45%)
• PTR = Melee Swing after armor mitigation – 211,728 (50%)

If we apply current Stagger of 46% to the new 211,728 then we get a total immediate hit of 114,333. This is 14k less than before and closer to what the warrior took

To compensate this “alignment” by blizzard, they nerfed our stagger by 30% (10% from shuffle, 20% from stance). Applying the new stagger of 16% to the new 211,728 we get a total immediate hit of 177,851, and a stagger of 33,876.

• Live = 228,194 hit with 46% stagger = Immediate hit of 128,624 and stagger 109,569
• PTR = 211,728 hit 16% stagger = Immediate hit of 177,851 and a stagger of 33,876

With this change, the value of purify is greatly diminished, while the value of guard is increased. In order to keep the intent of the armor buff, while NOT diminishing purify would be to nerf Stagger by 10%. A 10% stagger looks more reasonable

• Live = 238,194 Hit with 46% stagger = Immediate hit of 128,624 and stagger 109,569
• My suggestion = 211,728 Hit with 36% stagger = Immediate hit of 135,505 and a stagger of 76,222

Here the value of purify is still lowered, but not by much.

Finally let’s talk about the elephant in the room that is Guard. GUARD NEEDS A NERF. There I said it, and it’s completely true. It’s no secret that undergeared Monks are not on par with other undergeared tanks. I.e. a fresh 100 Brewmaster will get trucked compared to a fresh 100 Warrior. We experienced this at the beginning of Mists and again in Warlords. The problem with the warlords launch is that blizzard introduced daily Challenge Mode quests that offered the highest iLvL gear. You NEEDED this gear to progress at the highest level in Highmaul. This translated to undergeared monks getting destroyed in Challenge Mode. So on November 25, blizzard hotfixed guards value by 100%. At the time this was perfect. My guards went from 50-100k to 100-200k.

However, Blizzard didn’t revert the buff once we started getting geared. Now the guard amounts are insane. Here is the same fight but filtered for only my Guard casts:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...95&view=events

On the pull with both trinkets, a pre-pot, and 220% resolve I cast a 1 Million guard (1,003,588). You may also notice a had over half of it still remaining when it wore off. My lowest guard was 155,043 which is no trinket procs and no resolve, the lowest possible I can get. It’s obvious this needs some balancing and Blizzard is attempting to balance this out by making us take more initial damage. However, I have a better idea.

Let’s do one of two things with guard. Keep guard’s amount but decrease the duration from 30 seconds to 5 seconds, and the recharge to 15 seconds. This makes using guard a more active choice for key boss abilities. Similar to Shield of the Righteousness for Paladins and Rune Tap for DKs. This change would not go over well with the masses though as it raises the skill cap of the class.

Or two, reduce guard’s amount by 50%. This is the simplest change and would balance out well with the current health pools of tanks and not effect the play-style.

I know this was a long post so I thank you for reading it all. In summary I agree that BrM need a mitigation nerf, but the current PTR build is not the way to go.

[Thoranar]

Back in ToT you had a top 10 parse on everything lol.

That was 10man and fun vengeance

[Totaltotemic]

We've been saying that what makes the most sense is a 10% Stagger nerf and 33% Guard reduction in the BrM guide sticky for months now.

It's obvious that the armor buff is trying to equalize the post-armor raw damage between tanks (although your numbers are pretty far off because the armor tooltip in-game only refers to damage taken from same-level mobs, raid bosses are around 10% lower reduction than that). What doesn't make any sense is why BrM's only active mitigation would be less than half as good as anyone else's before stats. Stagger having 100% uptime doesn't mean that it's okay to have only 10% base compared to the 25% base SotR, Savage Defense, Shield Block, or Death Strike because the real active mitigation is in purifying, which does not apply to 100% of Stagger all of the time.

[NjxCrash]

this prob makes the most sense all you need now is a blizzard Monk dev to actually read this and understand its the right way to go.

[Osmodius]

I am quite shocked they've not touched Guard, but instead decided to remove a large portion of BrM's ability to actually be an active tank.

[Lodion]

I am quite shocked they've not touched Guard, but instead decided to remove a large portion of BrM's ability to actually be an active tank.

Blizzard are using Ogres to select which abilities to nerf: http://www.hearthhead.com/card=2080/mogor-the-ogre

[Yesil]

Okay suggestions but the problem doesn't lie purely in Guard. I'm of the opinion that the issue is a combination of how much Guard absorbs and how Stagger works. Would also be interesting if people actually realized that maybe the old tanking classes (excl. DK) are just outdated and not really fit for the design decisions being taken today? Sure, the classes are being customized for todays designs but they still keep their core elements, which are maybe what needs a tweak?

[Osmodius]

Blizzard are using Ogres to select which abilities to nerf:

Theory only strengthened by the Provoke nerf.

(Also lol, I can't quote you properly because I'm not allowed to post links on a new account)

[Lodion]

Sure, the classes are being customized for todays designs but they still keep their core elements, which are maybe what needs a tweak?

I've seen lots of people suggest this... and I agree. But the time for that is at the start of an expansion. For now all Blizzard should be changing is numbers... not this wholesale ripping apart of the brewmaster playstyle, with a massive nerf to top it off.

[Yesil]

I've seen lots of people suggest this... and I agree. But the time for that is at the start of an expansion. For now all Blizzard should be changing is numbers... not this wholesale ripping apart of the brewmaster playstyle, with a massive nerf to top it off.

Indeed, I agree that it should be done at the start of an expansion but clearly this isn't what Blizzard has in mind! If the current changes go through, then we will have a completely different playstyle from what we have in live currently.

[Osmodius]

Indeed, I agree that it should be done at the start of an expansion but clearly this isn't what Blizzard has in mind! If the current changes go through, then we will have a completely different playstyle from what we have in live currently.

It doesn't seem like there'll too much of a playstyle, though. Removing our tools to mitigate damage (namely keeping up shuffle, and stagger in general) and replacing it with nothing else isn't giving BrM a different playstyle. It'll just be PB and Chi X. Or just Chi X, I suppose.

[Yesil]

It doesn't seem like there'll too much of a playstyle, though. Removing our tools to mitigate damage (namely keeping up shuffle, and stagger in general) and replacing it with nothing else isn't giving BrM a different playstyle. It'll just be PB and Chi X. Or just Chi X, I suppose.

Not true; Elusive Brew.

With the current changes, there's absolutely NO reason to Purify. Just eat it and let healers heal or run ChiEx and just get it for free.

[Osmodius]

Not true; Elusive Brew.

With the current changes, there's absolutely NO reason to Purify. Just eat it and let healers heal or run ChiEx and just get it for free.

Well, EB, yeah. But that's off the GCD and there's not much you can do to generate stacks (are we gonna run that talent, the one in Power Strikes tier, that gives EB doesn't it?).


Chi X seems like it'll be default without much choice. Soul Dance is now dead, an amazing 3% stagger for magic damage. Serenity, wow, I can... use PB 5 times for free. I'm hyped.

[Yesil]

Well, EB, yeah. But that's off the GCD and there's not much you can do to generate stacks (are we gonna run that talent, the one in Power Strikes tier, that gives EB doesn't it?).


Chi X seems like it'll be default without much choice. Soul Dance is now dead, an amazing 3% stagger for magic damage. Serenity, wow, I can... use PB 5 times for free. I'm hyped.

Chi Brew gives EB. Nope, nothing besides that talent generates EB but sadly we're getting some tools to fix that problem (Archimonde trinket and T18 set bonuses).

Soul Dance is currently 30% of magic damage taken = Stagger. I feel it's a bit lackluster but depending on the next tier, it might actually be somewhat viable during progression.

[Osmodius]

Chi Brew gives EB. Nope, nothing besides that talent generates EB but sadly we're getting some tools to fix that problem (Archimonde trinket and T18 set bonuses).

Soul Dance is currently 30% of magic damage taken = Stagger. I feel it's a bit lackluster but depending on the next tier, it might actually be somewhat viable during progression.

No, Soul Dance is 30% of your current Stagger works on Magic Damage, is it not? So at the moment, ~46% stagger (base+shuffle+0mastery), we have ~14% stagger for magic damage.

With the stagger nerf to ~16% (base+mastery), we have ~4.8% stagger for magic damage. That's almost literally negligible.

[Yesil]

No, Soul Dance is 30% of your current Stagger works on Magic Damage, is it not? So at the moment, ~46% stagger (base+shuffle+0mastery), we have ~14% stagger for magic damage.

With the stagger nerf to ~16% (base+mastery), we have ~4.8% stagger for magic damage. That's almost literally negligible.

Ah, of course. Thanks for the correction! Then yeah, #SoulDance #topkek.

[Osmodius]

Ah, of course. Thanks for the correction! Then yeah, #SoulDance #topkek.

I always thought Soul Dance was of dubious quality. But with this change... surely they'd have to alter the talent. No one in their right mind would take it for 4-5% magic stagger.

[GarGar]

Thank you Thoranar for the information.

I'd be interested in seeing how today's PTR patch affects things mathematically. Looks like Stagger from Ox stance is back up a bit, damage is up a bit. Hopefully they address Guard in the next few builds so we can test that too.

[Thoranar]

Thank you Thoranar for the information.

I'd be interested in seeing how today's PTR patch affects things mathematically. Looks like Stagger from Ox stance is back up a bit, damage is up a bit. Hopefully they address Guard in the next few builds so we can test that too.

They are making progress. They changed it to an overall 10% stagger nerf which is right on the money and they are attempting to fix the stagger mechanic as well. Ironically I was going to do another full right up on why and how that mechanic should be changed, but blizzard is making a good first step already.

Stagger not working on attacks that ignore armor is good, but that will not fix things like Kromog's Smash and Hans/Fran's body slam which monks for the most part can ignore even on mythic. They need to change the mechanic to not work on attacks that are also not blockable. That would even the playing field and make using guard and External CDs more required (as it is for other tanks).