[BREWMASTER] 7.X Discussion Thread

[fringemoo]

At that point it is probably wise to just forget about RJW and just use Special Delivery. This is probably somewhat intended. You being unable to use RJW is less about BoS and more about just energy regenerating at ridiculous pace that you have to tiger palm too often to not cap.

Which is why I use SD, and also why BS cd makes the rotation worse / rigid.

If BoS had no CD, my rotation (outside of BoS combo abuse) would be about the same at my haste level. I use BoS as much as I can while also keeping energy not capped and using other abilities on CD.

As much as you can is KS followed by BS until KS is ready again, which would push every other ability off the table.

Generally energy has no value apart from being converted to brews at a pretty terrible rate (throug TP), you could argue about giving up on BS globals just to TP but at the conversion rate and the dps difference between BS and TP it would be pretty silly.

In theory blizzard could wake up tomorrow and decide that brewmaster no longer has energy and nothing major would change. You would still be limited by globals and BS cd (being short). There might be some minor issues with someone deciding to go turtle and spam KS, TP and brews but that's hardly engaging or relevant play.

But that's another point, why even have energy when all of your abilities have CDs.

[keqe]

Well, at worst you would do BoS TP BoS TP since Blackout Combo makes TP hit like truck (if Face Palm procs the 200% bonus damage from BoS combo and face palm are multiplicative resulting in 800% increased damage. TP has the potential to hit the hardest of all of our abilities.

You are right that energy is almost pointless. But that is more because we are the only spec which has it without any sort of combo point system and it clearly isn't made to work without one and still make complete sense.

But personally I don't mind the "cycle" of having possibly every 3rd ability be Blackout Strike. At least with low haste it makes you almost never hit same button twice in a row and gives sort of nice feel to it. But I can see if many don't enjoy it.

But TP will gain quite a bit of value from Face Palm trait (proc for 3x damage and 1s extra brew CD reduce) and set bonus increasing this by another 1s. So TP will reduce CD of brews by 2s or 3s. So spamming it over BoS will have clear advantage from defensive PoV.

[999DaZa]

For those interested in which Talent choices in the 3rd Tier to take in correlation to your character's Haste.

(There are spaces in the link address as I don't have permission to actually link yet )
https : //drive.google.com /file /d/ 0B_xjf00Jjgt1NU8yWGJFekdSX1U/ view? usp=sharing

Things to note about this test:
-Only done with Blackout Combo Talent
-Keg Smash Combo is always used when it Keg Smash comes off cd
-ISB buff is ALWAYS maintained, hence a charge is consumed every 6 seconds to keep this up.
-Tiger Palm is only used ONCE every 6 seconds
-Regards to BoB usage is used before the engagement for 3 charges(+3 charges) thus will be used every 90 seconds when comes off cd during engagement.

The numbers are the available charges that can be used for Purify thus the more used in a fight the less overall damage taken.

Key Findings: If your Haste is 23% or above it is more beneficial to take Light Brewing talent over BoB for Tanking longer than 1 min to have more purify charges.

[redfella]

For ease of use, here's the above posters link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_x...JFekdSX1U/view

It's pretty weird feeling swimming in energy if we do our rotation right. At 24% haste I just couldn't spend enough vs. what I gained. It's like it doesn't even matter if we had energy and they just kept TP as spammable tbh.

Without BoC I'm doing (if above line is available, it takes priority no matter the conditionals):

	if ready( 'keg_smash' ) then rec( 'keg_smash' ) end

	if ready( 'tiger_palm' ) and energy >= 90 then rec( 'tiger_palm' ) end

	if ready( 'blackout_strike' ) then rec( 'blackout_strike' ) end

	if ready( 'breath_of_fire' ) then rec( 'breath_of_fire' ) end

	if ready( 'chi_burst' ) then rec( 'chi_burst' ) end

	if ready( 'tiger_palm' ) and energy >= 65  then rec( 'tiger_palm' ) end

With that APL list, I almost never get to recommend Breath of Fire or Chi burst when they come available, since we go past the 65 Energy breakpoint so fast. They linger ready way too much.

I tested energy values of 60, 55, and even 50, but it doesn't help much at all, since BoS/KS come out of CD so often that using them on CD puts us so close to cap, or briefly at cap.

I'm wondering if I should just remove the "TP to avoid capping energy (energy >= 90) -> TP)" part.

[keqe]

It seems quite obvious that the amount of haste we need to get GCD locked isn't much. But the energy you gain from extra haste is meant to go to tiger palms which you use instead of BoS. With set bonus and artifact trait those TPs reduce brew CDs substantially.

So from pure defensive PoV haste still has value even if you are already GCD locked with less of it. You just use BoS less and TP more.

[redfella]

So basicly what you are saying keqe, is to not BoS if you are near capping?

[999DaZa]

I m just thinking with the artifact traits , the Blackout Combo talent would most likely be used with Breath of fire to keep the damage decrease buff up at all times. I guess it will become a trade off between an Keg smash combo and Breath of fire combo but how I see it if we spamming TP and with tier sets bonus it will make Breath of fire more Valuable as TP will reduce the brew cd by at least an extra second.

[keqe]

So basicly what you are saying keqe, is to not BoS if you are near capping?

You will probably lose damage, but if you just want survivability skipping BoS cooldown for more Tiger Palms should be worth it. At least with Set bonus.

This is why haste might not be that great after all as we can't use all that energy without penalty. But Face Palm+Set bonus Tiger Palms give more brew per energy than keg smash so they should be quite strong from defensive PoV, yet even more DPS loss if you decide to skip keg smash.

[redfella]

I see. For now, I'm just trying to find max dps APL first though. What would you guys suggest as a workaround for getting BoF and Chi Burst recommended on CD -- should we just ignore that we might cap during casting them?

[Inuyaki]

-Regards to BoB usage is used before the engagement for 3 charges(+3 charges) thus will be used every 90 seconds when comes off cd during engagement.

Or you know... you could use it when it really comes off cd, not only every 90sec...


Also I guess this is all for prepatch now? Because ISB duration is longer in Legion and also you should try HT which seems to be the default talent in progression right now

[redfella]

Or you know... you could use it when it really comes off cd, not only every 90sec...

Oh, BoB gets affected by TP/KS as well? (I've been other talents)

[Inuyaki]

Ofcourse... it's a brew, isn't it?

[redfella]

Yeah, makes sense, it's just something that I didn't think of heh

[keqe]

Quite tells how bad Light Brewing is when half of the value of BoB is missing and it barely beats it.

[999DaZa]

Or you know... you could use it when it really comes off cd, not only every 90sec...


Also I guess this is all for prepatch now? Because ISB duration is longer in Legion and also you should try HT which seems to be the default talent in progression right now

Correct this is only for the prepatch at the moment but to calculate it for the legion artifact traits won't be that hard.

Reason why I say used it before the engagement is to give the BoB talent the most amount of theoretical Purifying brew charges available for that fight's duration. Just to illustrate if you use in 20 seconds into the fight, you would only be able to use it once in 100 second fight but If you used 3 ISB then used BoB and started the fight you could used it again thus increasing the amount of available charges for Purify. Its every 90 seconds as that's the CD of BoB.

Ofcourse... it's a brew, isn't it?

I actually forgot about that it completely skipped my mind and from testing in game turns out that Keg Smash and TP actually do decrease BoB cd. So the numbers I have posted are skewed. Will recalculate this into the equation and for HT get back to you but taking this in consideration for Blackout Combo Talent BoB will be better. Will post the numbers later to confirm this.

[Xiaojin]

I planned on switching to my DK as my main in Legion, but after trying Windwalker (which I absolutely love with the Legion changes) I gave Brewmasters another try (I want a fun off-spec as well). I have to admit, it doesn't feel as bad as I initially feared. I never really liked the idea of healing orbs as a central class/spec mechanic, hence my dislike for the new BrM gameplay with its focus on Gift of the Ox for self-healing. But I seem to have so much energy, that I can use Expel Harm whenever I like to consume my orbs without having to feel bad about it. That fact made BrM way more appealing than it sounded like after just reading the ability descriptions. Also, Blizzard actually seemed to have improved boss movement, yay. No more Velhari running far away because you dared moving your toes.

But I wonder if I will be able to continue playing like this in Legion. Right now, I have a decent amount of haste and I'm also specced into High Tolerance (I don't want the complexity of Blackout Combo while still familiarising myself with the pre-patch changes and Elusive Dance is just not worth it, at least with the little damage you receive outside of raids). Thoughts/experience from beta on this? I.e., will continue to be able to use EH without worrying that I "waste" too much energy that does not go into more TPs? My fear is that a lack of haste and/or buffs to TP (Face Palm, set bonus) will make EH too unappealing (which probably is what Blizzard wants anyway in terms of our class/spec fantasy).

[Deleted]

Just some theoretical math for perfect play. If you fight a boss for one minute and you are right next to him all the time, always able to attack him (like I said, theoretically )

In one minute you will have 60 free globals. Chi burst fills 2 of theese while BoF fills 4 (disregarding the BoC for now).
Leaving you with 54 globals left, of which 20 will be used for blackout kick.

So you have 600 energy and 34 globals.

The relationship between TP and KS is 1:1.6 (in 8 seconds you generate 80 energy using 40 for KS leaving 40 for 1.6 TPs, everything scales linear with haste)
That means out of theese 34 globals you will use 13 times KS (actually 13.07 but lets round here) and 21 TPs, costing you a total of 13*40 + 21*25 = 1045 Energy. So you need about 74% (1045/600) haste to get gcd capped under the conditions of perfect play.

Perfect play is obviously not always possible considering lag and boss times. On top of that you miight need a global for something else at some points (Dave/EH/Artefact) but between 74% and 30% there is also a huge gap.
Quick sitenote: at 33.33% haste you have 800 energy resulting in 10 KS and 16 TPs resulting in 8 free globals.

While this is a reasonable sized margin for error it gets completly destroyed if you pick up RJW. even at perfect play you would only have 8 RJW and thats not even more damage than the SD procs in one minute so that kind of sucks. Maybe RJW should cost energy and grant brew reduction or something, I don't know. Or Make TP cost more, grant more brew and deal more damage

[Ampere]

3. Pressing purify is extremely unsatisfying from the psychological point of view but not just, I noticed there are times when you are taking heavy physical damage you press purify and it's instantly back to where it was and it makes sense.

This is my biggest issue with the spec right now. I know it's doing solid mitigation from going over my damage meter, but it feels bad.

Just kind of a bummer, but obviously if we had 100% purify with our massive stagger amount we'd be overpowered.

[redfella]

This is my biggest issue with the spec right now. I know it's doing solid mitigation from going over my damage meter, but it feels bad.

Just kind of a bummer, but obviously if we had 100% purify with our massive stagger amount we'd be overpowered.

For me, overlaying stagger bar over my HP relative to my HP has left purifying feel more rewarding than just seeing the percentage decrease. It might jump back up again, but it would have jumped higher if I didn't purify.

[Xequecal]

Well, at worst you would do BoS TP BoS TP since Blackout Combo makes TP hit like truck (if Face Palm procs the 200% bonus damage from BoS combo and face palm are multiplicative resulting in 800% increased damage. TP has the potential to hit the hardest of all of our abilities.

Wait, what? How does a multiplicative 30% increase turn 300% damage into 800% damage? Even if it double dips on the 30% bonus and increases that by 200% as well you get 570% damage, not 800%.