The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Trendy-Ideology]

I'd like to point out something about the guard discussion. Vengeance has very little to do with how often Guards are shot out. The amount of damage you need to do scales with your AP. Think it is 16 times your AP you need to do in damage to proc a guard. The only thing that really increases the frequency of statue guards is your straight dps. Add fights will of course help them come out faster but a single target fight it'll always be about X seconds between guards depending on your gear.

Which is tragic.

I wish we had glyph of statue of the ox bubble or some shit.

"Reduces the damage required to trigger your statue of the ox guard by 75%, but decreases the amount absorbed by the same amount"


Instead of high vengeance 400k bubbles, everyone would get 100k bubbles 4 times more often, one would be going out almost constantly.

(Or 1/3rd, or 1/2, would be fine, too)


Or let it grant an ability like nimbus cloud gives a new ability... that lets the statue hold up to 2 or 3 charges, and lets us direct where they go, or release them all at once.


There's things that could be done to make it better. But frankly I think it's already tuned fine as is, it was OP before, I think it got a bit overnerfed because lolroundnumbers, but I'm ok with where it's at now.

[Bryce]

Which is tragic.

I wish we had glyph of statue of the ox bubble or some shit.

"Reduces the damage required to trigger your statue of the ox guard by 75%, but decreases the amount absorbed by the same amount"


Instead of high vengeance 400k bubbles, everyone would get 100k bubbles 4 times more often, one would be going out almost constantly.

(Or 1/3rd, or 1/2, would be fine, too)

Don't you think that'd be a little too overpowered at that point then? With the amount of damage we do as is, the shields would be going out left and right in my opinion and possibly would overlap something.

But I'd settle for healers to tell the dps in a raid that if you have a brewmaster's guard on you you're priority for soaking this or that type mechanics. But sadly I don't see that happening ever and that'll just sit and eat the small amount of raid damage.

[Trendy-Ideology]

Hence the "I wish"

I'd embrace any form of the example though, at any level of balancing.

[Aminance]

How do I improve this brm?
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...minance/simple

DPS single target is pretty bad, aside from the back and ring pvp and meta-gem/enchants, what can I do?
Please help me ;-;

[Trendy-Ideology]

You really don't need extra expertise at that gear level. And I'm avoiding as much expertise as possible now that I'm permanently over exp cap.

You could probably benefit from a bit more haste, unless you're comfortable with that haste, in which case I'd dump the extra stats into crit.

There's really nothing you can suggest with gearing besides "get more" and "reforge different", logs would be way more helpful.


For anyone that wants to see his link in english just remove the /pt from the URL.

[Sunnydee]

Im a bit curious regarding gemming in blue sockets. should i use expertise/stamina to gain more haste/critt from reforging or should i use agi/stam to get more agility (thus loosing secondary stats) ?

[Aminance]

For anyone that wants to see his link in english just remove the /pt from the URL.

Ty dude, just fixed.


I was expecting rotation tips and such. Thinking, Single target dps is a bit bad, compared to our AOEROFLSTOMP.

[Radio]

Ty dude, just fixed.


I was expecting rotation tips and such. Thinking, Single target dps is a bit bad, compared to our AOEROFLSTOMP.

First thing I noticed is Zen Sphere, Chi Wave gives much more single target DPS than Zen Sphere.

Tips:
- never have a spare GCD, if you're going to have a spare GCD, Tiger's palm, you should be using it allll the time
- Keg smash ON CD, always make sure you have enough energy to use it on time
- don't use breath of fire on bosses, it doesn't apply the dot, only spend chi on blackout kicks and purify
- xuen's amazing, only fights I don't use him on are Horridon HC, Tortos, Primordius (he can bug out on megaera sometimes...)
- typical tank DPS rotation priority: KS > CW > BoK > Jab (when it won't conflict with KS CD) > TP
- save guard for predictable damage income periods (such as Horridon's Triple Puncture or Malakk's Frigid Assault), lowers overall chances of death, and also means that you're not using it on cooldown which equals more blackouts
- meta gem / weapon upgrade / more enchants and gems in general will also obviously contribute significantly

[Trendy-Ideology]

Im a bit curious regarding gemming in blue sockets. should i use expertise/stamina to gain more haste/critt from reforging or should i use agi/stam to get more agility (thus loosing secondary stats) ?

Unless you're doing heroics or 25m you should use greens or purples, as haste/hit or exp/crit respectively. Brewmaster don't really gem straight agi unless they're at really high gear levels.

If you really want stam for some reason, use crit/haste/exp + stam.

All secondaries are interchangeable, except mastery which I personally avoid like the plague (considering swapping in some mastery but that's another story).

Until you get to the point where you have so much of a stat that you can't reforge out of it, or so much of two stats that reforging out of enough of both becomes impossible because they're both on the same pieces of gear, all secondaries are largely interchangeable, doesn't frankly matter what you gem or enchant most of the time, you can still reforge and get to where you wanna be. This will remain true, until it's not true, in which case ... it wont be true but the solutions are rather obvious. =P

[Alucin]

For blue, I use hit/crit, and will until I have too much hit to reforge out. Then stam/crit I guess.
Red is likewise exp/crit until I can't reforge away from exp hardcap, at which point, agi/crit.

Replace crit with mastery if going for a mastery build.

[Vasilisa]

We started heroics two weeks ago and we are now with 3/12 hc progress (jin'rok, tortos, ji'kun). My gearing strategy hasn't changed since normals, though sometimes I feel that I might be taking too much damage. Perhaps shall I invest in mastery (at least tiny bit?) or "I am doing something wrong"? I try to keep shuffle uptime as high as possible (aside of tortos of course where I run around the room Benny Hill style). I logged out as windwalker (in brewmaster gear) but here is my gear if you'd have any suggestions for anything to change: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ilisa/advanced I dont have tier sadly as this token is avoiding my group. I'm tanking in 10 man group.

[Deleted]

Newbie question here: what do brewmasters do to counter frequent damage spikes, like Sha of Fear's thrash or Horridon's triple puncture?

I got my alt brewmaster to 90 on Saturday and have gotten through to TeS LFR, but hesitate to go into ToT LFR at the moment. I have L90s of all other tanks and they all have a short run active mitigation ability for things like impale - shield of the righteous, shield block/shield bubble, savage defence, death strike. What do brewmasters use? Guard is great for things like Oondasta's breaths but the CD is too long for frequent damage spikes like triple puncture. Do you just stagger the damage and purify it? Where does use elusive brew fit in?

As it happens, I didn't feel Sha's thrash on LFR, so it's more a hypothetical issue at the moment, but am slightly nervous about Horridon/Council. Empress squished me twice though, not sure why - it wasn't the adds; it just seemed to be her regular attacks.

Thanks for any advice!

[Kisho]

So hm... This past Sunday I decided to try out Xuen on Megaera, to see if he attacks properly (since due to some pathing issues or whatever he wasn't able to attack the Venomous head properly). He does! Yay!

...Except now, unless I'm mis-reading WoL, he doesn't seem to be casting Cracking Tiger Lightning. At all. On any boss. http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...j0/details/63/

I've gone through a few WoL reports uploaded since 5.3 and they all seem to show the same thing: only melee damage, no CTL. Is this an issue with WoL or an actual bug in the game?

If you guys could provide some personal experiences with Xuen since the patch, see if you can get him to cast CTL at all, it'd be greatly appreciated.

[Radio]

Newbie question here: what do brewmasters do to counter frequent damage spikes, like Sha of Fear's impale or Horridon's triple puncture?

I got my alt brewmaster to 90 on Saturday and have gotten through to TeS LFR, but hesitate to go into ToT LFR at the moment. I have L90s of all other tanks and they all have a short run active mitigation ability for things like impale - shield of the righteous, shield block/shield bubble, savage defence, death strike. What do brewmasters use? Guard is great for things like Oondasta's breaths but the CD is too long for frequent damage spikes like triple puncture. Do you just stagger the damage and purify it? Where does use elusive brew fit in?

As it happens, I didn't feel Sha's impale on LFR, so it's more a hypothetical issue at the moment, but am slightly nervous about Horridon/Council. Empress squished me twice though, not sure why - it wasn't the adds; it just seemed to be her regular attacks.

Thanks for any advice!

It's usually a matter of juggling cooldowns and abilities, shuffle and the resulting stagger you maintain is a decent buffer for the weaker hitting stacks of most abilities.

Example: Horridon, you don't realllly have to put anything extra up for the first 3 triple punctures, you can at least guard every 3rd puncture. For the later puncture stacks that you take you should make a plan of dampen harm/fort brew/etcetc.

For something like Ji-Kun, if you're only planning on taking 2 stacks you can simply rotate guard and dampen. If you are taking a hit that is only staggered, preparing an immediate expel harm is usually smart and having EB up around the point of impact can reduce the damage from melee attacks before and after.

The basic idea is you can disregard all of the stacks you can guard, while you have to think about what you do for the strikes in between. We take less damage from an "un-active-mitigated" hit than other tanks thanks to shuffle/stagger at least.


Other fight tips:
- Empress does hit us a little hard, healers have to pay attention at lower gear levels
- malakk empowerment can be dodged with EB, and if you forsee some difficulty you can pop guard/fort/diffuse
- sha's thrash is a matter of EBing as many as possible
- megaera = guard 1st breath, diffuse OR fort 2nd breath, guard 3rd
- so on so forth

[Pazx]

So hm... This past Sunday I decided to try out Xuen on Megaera, to see if he attacks properly (since due to some pathing issues or whatever he wasn't able to attack the Venomous head properly). He does! Yay!

...Except now, unless I'm mis-reading WoL, he doesn't seem to be casting Cracking Tiger Lightning. At all. On any boss. http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...j0/details/63/

I've gone through a few WoL reports uploaded since 5.3 and they all seem to show the same thing: only melee damage, no CTL. Is this an issue with WoL or an actual bug in the game?

If you guys could provide some personal experiences with Xuen since the patch, see if you can get him to cast CTL at all, it'd be greatly appreciated.

the fight i notice it most is megerra , not dot just sits in the water and attacks

[Kisho]

Ugh, ignore me, I'm being an idiot. The log I linked was one where I wasn't even in the raid for Ji-kun or Tortos, and I forgot that.

I've since found an LFR report a guildie did for our guild & friends run: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...31/?s=16&e=271

He's bugged for some, not for all. Doesn't cast CTL on Durumu, Primordius, or Megaera. He's fine on Animus, Iron Qon, Twin Consorts, and Lei Shen.

So prior to the patch, on some bosses he didn't melee or cast CTL. Now, he melees correctly, but doesn't cast CTL. It's a step in the right direction at least!

[Dimzum]

We got to do some work on 10man normal council this week (yay for one shot Horridon). We tried having me tank both Frost King and Sul and our druid tank on Priestess. While my damage output was insane (thank you Vengeance), our healers were complaining about us both taking much more damage than our last weeks tries, both the myself AND the druid.

We swapped up and let the druid duo tank while I stayed on Priestess. That seemed to alleviate the tank healing concerns. I couldn't figure out why the change up helped (and sorry no logs). Does keeping guard up and my self healing help that much against spell damage compared to our druid's? He wasn't dealing nearly the damage I was, but if it keeps the healers from freaking out I guess it is worth it.

[Kisho]

Hm. Since when was tank damage a concern on Council? Usually it's raid damage, not having enough DPS to nuke Sul down before Sandstorm, or people failing at mechanics. Especially since Horridon is far more demanding on tanks, and you apparently one shot that.

If you're doing the usual correctly (Shuffle 100%, EB used, Guard on CD, etc.), then I can only imagine that someone, somewhere is doing something wrong. My immediate thought might be that you're standing in the sand patches? They can sometimes be difficult to see under all the AoE effects, the 4 bosses, etc.

The Priestess does crap all damage, so it really doesn't matter who goes on her (she can even be left untanked sometimes). Sul too, doesn't really do much damage. The main problem is Malakk and his stacking debuff; on that note, you're both going to tank Malakk at some point, you'll need to tank swap. So it doesn't matter who tanks them first; you're going to need to sort this issue out at some point.

So yeah. The only thing I can think of, beyond the usual shuffle/EB/Guard, is whether you may be standing in sand patches or not. Beyond that, we'll need logs to know for sure.

[Dimzum]

Yeah she didn't seem to be really hitting me hard at all. The the first week we attempted council I duo tanked Frost King and Priestess while our druid just tanked Sul. We still did the swap, but I'd hold onto Frost King until I was at 10-11 stacks.

The change up was to have one tank start off with both Sul and Frost King for cleave/splash damage during Hero while buring Sul and Frost King together. Ideally I would be the one tanking both since LOLKEGSMASH. The druid seemed to be having real problems though and I would see his health drop like a rock, especially if we just did a quick tank swap on Frost King. Hopefully I can get some logs this week when we get back to it and I can be the one to duo tank (180k dps thank you very much).

[Deleted]

Hm. Since when was tank damage a concern on Council? Usually it's raid damage, not having enough DPS to nuke Sul down before Sandstorm, or people failing at mechanics. Especially since Horridon is far more demanding on tanks, and you apparently one shot that.

Council gives me cold sweats (as a palatank) whereas I love Horridon. I suspect it's because the healers are focusing on the raid damage and I am left to my own devices for some critical burst period.

The priest hits for 150k when empowered (10N). That can add up. Usually it's when I have both the priest and the frost king, probably one empowered, that I feel squishy and can die.

My bear co-tank also said he was rubbish tanking the caster. I guess his bonus armour and his main active mitigation, savage defence, don't work against magic. All he's got is frenzied regeneration, which I find underwhelming on my bear alt. I'm not sure brewmasters are that much better off, with stagger not working either, but I am not that familiar with either spec.