[LEGION] Brewmaster Discussion

[Breccia]

Hey everyone, I've never played a Brewmaster but...did Celestalon just tell you guys to intentionally let your health get low in order to spawn healing orbs that have a random change to appear, are sometimes invisible, don't move with you, and have an expiration date, causing them to go off and heal you up regardless of the design intent of playing hurt being directly in contrast to this?

[Ultramad]

Hey everyone, I've never played a Brewmaster but...did Celestalon just tell you guys to intentionally let your health get low in order to spawn healing orbs that have a random change to appear, are sometimes invisible, don't move with you, and have an expiration date, causing them to go off and heal you up regardless of the design intent of playing hurt being directly in contrast to this?

Pretty much, there's a lot of nuance to it, and I can guarantee if it goes through, new players will need a damn encyclopedia to figure out how to play brewmasters after we've had it and played with it for a few months and figured out what we can and can't ignore.

[Dalran]

They really want our self healing to be better at lower health %. So instead of spawning orbs, why not give us back expel harm, but have either its energy cost or its healing value get better as your health percentage goes down.

[Evolved]

Hey everyone, I've never played a Brewmaster but...did Celestalon just tell you guys to intentionally let your health get low in order to spawn healing orbs that have a random change to appear, are sometimes invisible, don't move with you, and have an expiration date, causing them to go off and heal you up regardless of the design intent of playing hurt being directly in contrast to this?

Basically, yes. That's our form of "control".

I'm not going to rag on him too hard, atleast he's finally communicating. That being said, the whole idea of it isn't going to be comfortable for anyone involved, tank or healers.

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They really want our self healing to be better at lower health %. So instead of spawning orbs, why not give us back expel harm, but have either its energy cost or its healing value get better as your health percentage goes down.

2 words: "Class Fantasy".

Stumbling around for orbs is "fun". Expel Harm isn't "fun". Never mind how much better EH is in functionality.

[Ultramad]

Basically, yes. That's our form of "control".

I'm not going to rag on him too hard, atleast he's finally communicating. That being said, the whole idea of it isn't going to be comfortable for anyone involved, tank or healers.

Yeah we can't fault him for at least trying. We're getting something most other classes are drooling over, even if many testers are disagreeing.

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Moreover this is going to promote ideal situations where we stand in some sort of ticking fire that does a marginal % of our health in damage in order to make sure we're in the sweet spot such that the next hit we take doesn't kill us, and has a great chance of spawning an orb.

I'm seriously going to lose my mind when I have to consider that for every progression fight next xpac.

[keqe]

I think a guy in the feedback thread summed the ideology of Legion brew quite well:

So then is ISB a trap? We're not supposed to smooth our incoming damage until we're in danger because being in danger is the only way we can pull ourselves out of danger?

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I'd add that we know full well that this sort of design would not work in the live Warlords world, where spikiness is the only threat to tanks, and if you're not at full health, you're about to die.

That is not the Legion world. Legion is very different.

Why does this sound so familiar...

[Ampere]

He's pretty dead-set on Gift of the Ox. I don't really have anything constructive to say, it's an awful and awkward ability.

Oh well.

[Ultramad]

Because we've heard this same thing since Cata. At the beginning of Cata sure, my bear could take 6 unmitigated raid boss melees with no additional mechanics to die. That turned out to be the problem though. Bears were the outlier and things had to be tuned around to make them take damage. What happened? We ended up at the same place we do every xpac where after a year we're back to, "the only way to challenge tanks was to turn up spike damage."

Every, single, expansion.

[Deleted]

So intuitive that Celest had to write a guide on how you're actually supposed to be playing.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...421?page=6#106

I get the idea of the playstyle, but unless boss swing timers are longer than 2s, it's simply not gonna work. The way it could work out would be letting ISB drop when your Mastery stacks are getting high, but since ISB has a 7.5s duration, you'd have to have like 90% healing reduction and -80% attack speed on bosses for that model to be feasible to actually play around.

What he also completely ignores that with the insanely high stagger levels of 35%/40% base 75%/80% with ISB, you simply don't get "dangerously damaged" without a significant Stagger DoT, unless they're throwing some Lei Shi bullshit at us again... and then he says that you shouldn't purify on low HP unless your Stagger DoT deals 10-20% of your remaining HP PER SECOND. Edit: And I completely forgot that the PB would put that DoT to only 5-10% of your remaining HP per second, but it wasn't nerfed, remember guys, it wasn't nerfed.

I expect this design mess to be band-aided with numbers fixes and shoved up and down the balance meter with a sledgehammer for another expansion again and I will for sure not be subjecting myself to that bullshit.

[lunchbox2042]

Hey everyone, I've never played a Brewmaster but...did Celestalon just tell you guys to intentionally let your health get low in order to spawn healing orbs that have a random change to appear, are sometimes invisible, don't move with you, and have an expiration date, causing them to go off and heal you up regardless of the design intent of playing hurt being directly in contrast to this?

I think it was Celestalon telling players not to play Brewmaster.

[Evolved]

Chance to spawn rate formula will help some of the proc'ing issues, but it still doesn't solve the awkwardness of using them.

Kind of. Right problem, different solution. We're going to err in the player's favor here, and make HealthPercentAfterDamage based on the same Damage amount as the left part of the equation is (ie, the full damage of the hit, before absorbs, before stagger, instead of after stagger).

OLD: (0.75 * Damage / MaxHealth) * (3 - 2 * (CurrentHealth - (Damage - Stagger)) / MaxHealth)
NEW: (0.75 * Damage / MaxHealth) * (3 - 2 * (CurrentHealth - Damage) / MaxHealth)

That will ensure that ISB doesn't reduce the chance to generate an orb on any given attack (but still will on the next attack by virtue of being higher health).

I get what he's trying to do, but I just don't see the benefit of any of it. I don't see the "control" that he's saying we have in regards to staying alive. I definitely don't think it will be an interesting or fun way to play a tank. As he put it, "riding a dangerous wave". Sounds like high blood pressure in the making.

[stross01]

OLD: (0.75 * Damage / MaxHealth) * (3 - 2 * (CurrentHealth - (Damage - Stagger)) / MaxHealth)
NEW: (0.75 * Damage / MaxHealth) * (3 - 2 * (CurrentHealth - Damage) / MaxHealth)




Also, I posted on the thread that Ox orbs aren't proc'ing Celestial Fortune after a couple hours of trying. That seems to be pretty relevant.

Can anyone get logs to support/reject?

[fringemoo]

I like this part:
"Mastery is not just plain dodge, it's key to recognize the difference; it acts as a fairly reliable form of dodge, when you need it (and not when you don't)."

We get a 'fairly' reliable dodge we can trust in, apart from it being 'fairly' reliable it also alows you to dodge magic damage and aoe.

I also want to see healers keeping brewmasters low intentianlly.

One interesting tidbit:
"It is not necessary to move the boss to pick up Gift of the Ox healing spheres. ANY movement in the right direction will pick them up."

Is that actually right? Can someone test?

[Ultramad]

Well realistically the range on the orbs is supposed to be something like 8 yards, however in practice it looks like it's significantly less.

[stross01]

One interesting tidbit:
"It is not necessary to move the boss to pick up Gift of the Ox healing spheres. ANY movement in the right direction will pick them up."

Is that actually right? Can someone test?

You need to stand on top of them and wait on the alpha. Now, I am not certain if it's the alpha realm's latency or that's how it'll be from now on.

[Lilamos]

In the current build the orbs are broken half the time and can't be picked up at all. Like, you could be jumping up and down and them and it won't have any effect.

To illustrate, someone posted this video in the thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ivE...ature=youtu.be

[Rilas13]

Yeah we can't fault him for at least trying. We're getting something most other classes are drooling over, even if many testers are disagreeing.

Pretty much this, the whole time we kept thinking that the skill ceiling and floor were at the same level and the class was undertuned which is why people couldnt stay alive. This is a serious risk/reward playstyle that no other tank has. I'm not sure if I will like it yet but I am happy blizz is considering leaving in this high twitch spec that when played well is nigh unkillable.

[Evolved]

Gift of the Ox + Celestial Fortune fixed for next build.

Another quick and easy change.

[Ultramad]

In the current build the orbs are broken half the time and can't be picked up at all. Like, you could be jumping up and down and them and it won't have any effect.

To illustrate, someone posted this video in the thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ivE...ature=youtu.be

Yeah, that's just phenomenal. haha. I feel like I've personally done that dance a few times myself!

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Another quick and easy change.

Why does it feel like these last two changes might have gone longer to be addressed if not for today's festivities?

[Evolved]

Pretty much this, the whole time we kept thinking that the skill ceiling and floor were at the same level and the class was undertuned which is why people couldnt stay alive. This is a serious risk/reward playstyle that no other tank has. I'm not sure if I will like it yet but I am happy blizz is considering leaving in this high twitch spec that when played well is nigh unkillable.

It still doesn't work like that, even playing "correctly". It's also important to remember that Blizzard would never allow that kind of strength to continue. There's a reason we got nerfed after BRF. This also goes against the whole mentality of trying to make Brewmasters have an easier barrier of entry that they were striving for. If a dev is telling you that a tank class is unkillable, you can expect heavy nerfs.