BrM with a Side of AskMrRobot

[SurrealNight]

You feel comfortable with 14.5 & ascension, I feel fine with 11.5 & chi brew.

Was mostly just trying to give some numbers based on things that can be actually tracked. From a programming standpoint tying PB to the # of moderate/heavy stagger is about as good as a general example you can give without writing up each boss fight. Pretty sure I covered these distinctions in my own post.

So technically the Chi needs change per fight based on 1) How often you need/should clear stagger 2) single tank vs tank swap 3) how much you want to use L30 talents.

I doubt AMR is going to put in a "How many times do you Purifying Brew?" option was just trying to show the logic between different haste caps. I already stated that 11.33 Energy would generate enough Chi for 100% Shuffle/Guard uptime and you are getting 4 Chi every 1.5min on top of that + any downtime when off tanking. I just use per ER ratings as they are easier to compare together.

Guard right before it, use one of your cooldowns, or get an external. It's a good idea to save a chi to purify right after it hits too and you should be fine. I had issues with this as well at first, but there are plenty of ways to deal with it.

Basically this. Guard + Dampen Harm or Fort Brew, you should have one of those two up or call for an external like Pain Suppression. Make sure the other tank is taunting off you the 2nd you take the second stack and clear Stagger, then your healers have time to top you back off.

[Deleted]

I agree with kaiadam here. Sure, tanking's my offspec and I don't have duplicate gear sets so most of it consists of crit reforges and agility gems, but I'd prefer having the EHP for almost all progression fights, so the few pieces that I have specific for tanking are reforged to mastery and gemmed for mastery/stamina. You're not dying because you took too X damage over the course of the fight, and the healers are healing you anyways with their Healing Waves, Heal, Holy Light, etc etc most of the time, and during high raid damage, there's gonna be raid cooldowns and likely a cooldown of your own, so while the healers are focusing others you're not gonna need that much attention anyways. Pretty much every single time I've died on my monk has been because of taking too much damage in a short time-frame (1-5 seconds pretty much), and not because I slowly got killed in a 15 second period while being healed.

I do agree that haste and crit are definitely more attractive when it comes to normal modes, but as I'm raiding heroics I prefer the aforementioned priority, besides, for normal modes I just use my DPS gear anyways too speed it up a bit.

You will do well without any haste, sure I have about 5.5k haste in my gear (because I can't get it lower with DPS gear), but I definitely feel that I would have no problem with 2-3k or even less (which I've been down to when I reforged fully into mastery for an extended period when I was tanking).

[The Madgod]

I'd like to look at logs of brewmasters who say that mastery is actually better and that extremely low levels of haste are just fine.

[SurrealNight]

I'd like to look at logs of brewmasters who say that mastery is actually better and that extremely low levels of haste are just fine.

I can't imagine getting by with only 2-3k haste either even (especially?) if you are going with a mastery heavy build. That is only like 12 EpS w/o Ascension (this build would use Chi Brew or Power Strikes for sure imo) which leaves only 27 Chi to fuel all buffs + PB (in a build meant to direct more to Stagger) and L30 talents?

Outside of maybe Sha/Empress HC (Gara depending on group?) I'd have trouble believing this is needed as well without some logs to show it performing well. Finally getting into Heroic's myself so will see how things go.

I agree with kaiadam here. Sure, tanking's my offspec and I don't have duplicate gear sets so most of it consists of crit reforges and agility gems, but I'd prefer having the EHP for almost all progression fights, so the few pieces that I have specific for tanking are reforged to mastery and gemmed for mastery/stamina.

My tank deaths are always based around an execution or error on my or someones part. So far I've never thought to myself "gee I wish I had more stam/master" after a wipe. Most likely I'm one of the last to die not the 1st.

[kaiadam]

I'd like to look at logs of brewmasters who say that mastery is actually better and that extremely low levels of haste are just fine.

One of our main tanks (Brotherbrian) is a monk and he stacks mastery with sub 1k haste.

http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/15105/

[Caeth]

You're not looking at it from the healer's point of view either. You might not die from mitigation, but your healers might not be yelling OOM so quickly.

[kaiadam]

You're not looking at it from the healer's point of view either. You might not die from mitigation, but your healers might not be yelling OOM so quickly.

I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like an elitist asshole, but healers don't go oom when you're using a reasonable number of them on a fight. Furthermore, if indeed they -are- oom, there are enough secondary cooldowns available to keep their mana up (shadow priest hymn, feral innervate, etc.) And finally, if all else fails, the primary area you should be looking at decreasing is raid damage. Tank damage is way, WAY, down the list of changeable things that actually cause the healers to go oom.

[Deleted]

I can't imagine getting by with only 2-3k haste either even (especially?) if you are going with a mastery heavy build. That is only like 12 EpS w/o Ascension (this build would use Chi Brew or Power Strikes for sure imo) which leaves only 27 Chi to fuel all buffs + PB (in a build meant to direct more to Stagger) and L30 talents?

Outside of maybe Sha/Empress HC (Gara depending on group?) I'd have trouble believing this is needed as well without some logs to show it performing well. Finally getting into Heroic's myself so will see how things go.

My tank deaths are always based around an execution or error on my or someones part. So far I've never thought to myself "gee I wish I had more stam/master" after a wipe. Most likely I'm one of the last to die not the 1st.

I can definitely agree with you when it comes to normal modes. Let's take Heroic Will for example though. Without dodging or parrying any attacks I died in about 4 seconds last run with DPS reforges on the majority of gear. That is without heals obviously, and one of those deaths that only has to do with EHP. I don't recall if I had EB up or not, but regardless, it's bad RNG and it killed me. Sure, it doesn't happen frequently, but it does happen. With mastery/stamina I could probably bump that number up to surviving maybe 5 seconds (surviving at least an extra swing due to the increased health pool). Reforging mastery doesn't really focus on using the L30 talents for the most part. I do use them from time to time, but only when I have really high vengeance and at really low health (Chi Wave almost exclusively).

Regardless mastery/stamina is pretty much only usable for heroic modes, and only for some fights. Sure, logs will say you take more damage doing this, which is true - you do, but the damage intake is much more controlled and the chances of you getting insta-killed is lower, and that is where tank deaths are coming from, not extended durations where avoidance comes into play, keep in mind that gearing for the worst possible scenario is all it comes down to when pushing heroic content in less than optimal gear, and while my gear is not bad in any way for the content we're doing at the moment, I still feel way more comfortable with it, and that's mostly what matters. It's more about your raid than anything else - basically, how does your raid deal with long, sustained damage versus burst damage and gear accordingly.

[SurrealNight]

One of our main tanks (Brotherbrian) is a monk and he stacks mastery with sub 1k haste.

http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/15105/

http://raidbots.com/comparebot/50c79...9#damage-taken

- 5 Mil more dmg taken (This is relative due to Stagger but reflected by the following)
- 5 Mil less melee dmg done. (melee dmg not DPS/Total).
- 10 Mil less healing done. Huge variance in Guard dmg despite very high uptime.
- More healing taken (despite doing significantly less personal healing)
- To be expected but also lowest # of jabs.
- No Chi Wave, supported by lesser healing done and probably a lack of Chi.
- 4.4% Less Elusive Brew uptime
- 2.6 to 15.7 times more uptime on Heavy Stagger.

Wouldn't mind a difficult single tank fight to use as an example but couldn't find one so that will have to do plus the extra boss strikes jack up DPS but they were all pretty close on that. This isn't an atk on Brotherbrian as his Guard/Shuffle uptimes were solid, just wanted to point out the "opportunity cost" all of that stamina/mastery is resulting in.

Feel free to fire back with any #'s supporting why that method is better.

Let's take Heroic Will for example though. Without dodging or parrying any attacks I died in about 4 seconds last run with DPS reforges on the majority of gear. That is without heals obviously, and one of those deaths that only has to do with EHP.

Funny I just picked that for a compareboth =P One thing I'd suggest are logs posting "EHP" related deaths. There is always a line between getting enough EHP to reliably clear the content, getting mad cause RNG F's you, and how much EHP you can reliably obtain without sacrificing core mitigation.

If your always getting ~20k overkills constantly you could easily look up how much > 20k Stam HP, Shuffle %, and/or self healing you could have generated over those periods by switching around gear (or potentially fixing playstyle issues).

Did the same thing for my DK in Cata and ended up with a "weird" mix of stats that ended up working really well very heavy incoming damage. I don't plan to start dumping stam/mastery blindly into gear just cause I start running into EHP issues.

[kaiadam]

http://raidbots.com/comparebot/50c79...9#damage-taken

- 5 Mil more dmg taken (This is relative due to Stagger but reflected by the following)
- 5 Mil less melee dmg done. (melee dmg not DPS/Total).
- 10 Mil less healing done. Huge variance in Guard dmg despite very high uptime.
- More healing taken (despite doing significantly less personal healing)
- To be expected but also lowest # of jabs.
- No Chi Wave, supported by lesser healing done and probably a lack of Chi.
- 4.4% Less Elusive Brew uptime
- 2.6 to 15.7 times more uptime on Heavy Stagger.

Wouldn't mind a difficult single tank fight to use as an example but couldn't find one so that will have to do plus the extra boss strikes jack up DPS but they were all pretty close on that. This isn't an atk on Brotherbrian as his Guard/Shuffle uptimes were solid, just wanted to point out the "opportunity cost" all of that stamina/mastery is resulting in.

Feel free to fire back with any #'s supporting why that method is better.

Brotherbrian's Heroic Will of the Emperors achievement: October 16th.
Zenkyu's Heroic Will of the Emperors achievement: December 2nd.
Kimberhart's Heroic Will of the Emperors achievement: Nov 15th.

That's all the stats that matter.

----

Higher damage taken - so what? Why else do healers exist?
Lower damage done - um, yeah, our kill was a minute shorter.
Less healing done - again, healers.
More healing taken - as a byproduct of more damage taken, yes.

There was over 290 mil worth of damage healed on the fight, 15 mil more or less is a drop in the bucket.

All of the stats you're bringing up are almost irrelevant in the view of a progression kill. There are two things a tank brings to a fight: not dying + dps. Everything else is fluff, numbers padding, etc.

Edit: Upon further reading, this sounded really defensive. I assure you it's not. I just find it silly that anyone actually worries about these stats. Damage taken as a tank is about as useful of a stat as ... well, I'm actually drawing a blank coming up with a less useful stat. Maybe overhealing? /shrug

[SurrealNight]

That's all the stats that matter.

So how about instead of linking to a general guild page with a random collection of 10/25m runs (Some of which Brian seems to DPS in BrM) you actually direct us to a fight with details or craft your own raid compare? I'm not taking a guild logs page to NASA for a details fight/gear/time/patch analysis =P Brian's log is from Dec 1st with Zenky's from Dec 6th. Please clarify how when he got the cheevo mattered?

Higher damage taken - so what?: Why else do healers exist? Last I checked, taking damage and having my health go to zero has been the cause of all my deaths. To blindly dismiss damage taken is silly without putting it in some kind of useful context.
Lower damage done - um, yeah, our kill was a minute shorter.: What link are you looking at? 9:42, 10:16, 10:08. I think I was quite fair in keeping relative fight times close.
Less healing done - again, healers.: Self healing can improve your EHP depending on it's availability. Requiring more mana from healers, less Guard's on DPS standing in stupid. Your telling me all wipes/deaths were due to tanks and they wouldn't have benefited or not died by receiving healing or lowering the amount of attention healers needed to spend on the tank?
More healing taken - as a byproduct of more damage taken, yes.: And less time/HPS spent on the raid in a tier which has favored raid damage more than single tank damage in general.

How about posting a set of logs that compares using DPS stats and getting ganked constantly to downing bosses after going stam/master. Did you forget this is a thread centered around a gear optimizer that is looking for numbers/calculations/formulas/solid theory's? Might want to use more details if your going to bother arguing the cause either way.

Programmers aren't going to look at a guilds log page and suddenly smack there head and go "dur how did we not see it before!".

There was over 290 mil worth of damage healed on the fight, 15 mil more or less is a drop in the bucket.

Considering most of that is either healing you didn't do to yourself or extra damage you take yourself it matters. Not like it's just 15mil to the raid.

Healing to self: Brian(7.6%), Zenkyu (37.8%), Kimber(23.4%)
Now take a guess at who was probably timing Guar'ds, Expel Harms, gobbling up GotO, and casting Chi Waves at points when healers were trying to bring up their low health tank.

[Alucin]

Worth pointing to venyasure's spreadsheet at EJ? Everyone is making the right arguments I think, but that has actually been modelled hasn't it? Math probably more useful than reasoning here. I only sound unsure because I haven't managed to use it myself.

I think the stam/mastery stacking was always relevant for if you and your raid are undergeared. It's not optimal for your performance but if you're pushing things, it may be what your raid needs. however, while a valid approach, it seems the exception rather than the rule imo...

(not having done heroics myself)

[kaiadam]

Madgod wanted a link to logs for a tank that stacked mastery, I provided one. Not that it matters, because you can't tell how effective a tank is via logs.

The primary goal in WoW is to kill bosses. Not to kill bosses while looking good on the meters. Therefore, the only metric of how "successful" you are is basically how long it took to kill a boss, and why I mentioned the date of actually killing those bosses as the only metric that matters.

Yes, taking damage and hp falling to 0 is the cause of death. However, taking lots of damage without hp falling to 0 has no meaning. If progression guilds could use a tank that had 5 mil hp and took double damage from boss attacks, they'd use him in a heartbeat. This is why I stress total damage taken is pointlessly irrelevant. As an example: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-no...s=9613&e=10236 As a bear I take about 70% as much melee damage as a paladin, or any other tank class for that matter. Doesn't change the fact that bears are still one of the worst progression tank classes, because all our active mitigation depends on luck or is reactionary (well, not now with tooth and claw, but there's still a lot of luck involved with that.)

As I said earlier, there needs to be a division for AMR when optimizing tanks. If you're doing content that you're overgeared for, then survival doesn't really matter because it's really hard to die as a tank these days. So it should reforge you to haste or agility or crit or whatever it is that's mathematically superior for either damage taken or damage done. But you have to realize, that mathematically superior over a long period of time does not equal best in a worst case scenario, which is exactly what progression raiding is about, which is what the other option would be: to maximize mastery/stamina so you are able to survive hits that would have killed you otherwise.

[The Madgod]

Brotherbrian's Heroic Will of the Emperors achievement: October 16th.
Zenkyu's Heroic Will of the Emperors achievement: December 2nd.
Kimberhart's Heroic Will of the Emperors achievement: Nov 15th.

That's all the stats that matter.

Uhhhhh... huh...

Because tanks are the entire reason you got those achievements, not because of anything else, like say your healers and your DPS.

Rather droll sarcasm, but you have to admit that this is just silly, mate. When you got the kill is due to so many different factors. Your tank is only one of them, and I'm willing to bet that the wipes weren't all because of them getting gibbed by the boss.

Madgod wanted a link to logs for a tank that stacked mastery, I provided one. Not that it matters, because you can't tell how effective a tank is via logs.

Why?

Worth pointing to venyasure's spreadsheet at EJ? Everyone is making the right arguments I think, but that has actually been modelled hasn't it? Math probably more useful than reasoning here. I only sound unsure because I haven't managed to use it myself.

I think the stam/mastery stacking was always relevant for if you and your raid are undergeared. It's not optimal for your performance but if you're pushing things, it may be what your raid needs. however, while a valid approach, it seems the exception rather than the rule imo...

(not having done heroics myself)

That spreadsheet's a basis for the math that concludes DPS stats are more useful. I'd say it's been looked over by most of the theorycrafters here.

And you're correct in that assumption. I've been pushing into heroic content and it has hardly been necessary, but that's because my guild isn't bleeding edge progression, and has been a bit slower than other guilds, so it's not as necessary for my survival.

[kaiadam]

Why?

Well, let me rephrase. You can a lot of how -bad- a tank is by his logs, but it's really hard to tell if one played very well. Positioning, proper cooldown useage that resolved into not dying, good communication, etc. are all a lot of the intangibles that are significantly more important than mathematical differences. About the only important thing that tanks do and is easily discerned from a log is dps.

Which segues into my achievement date list as the valid comparable stat. Obviously the kill was the result of the work of 25 people and not just a tank, but seeing as how the other statistics are almost meaningless, this one that has little meaning is better than none.

[The Madgod]

Well, let me rephrase. You can a lot of how -bad- a tank is by his logs, but it's really hard to tell if one played very well. Positioning, proper cooldown useage that resolved into not dying, good communication, etc. are all a lot of the intangibles that are significantly more important than mathematical differences. About the only important thing that tanks do and is easily discerned from a log is dps.

You can still make some judgements based on the math, you can see spikes, you can see a lot of stuff. If your raid is taking an inordinate amount of damage, and you notice your tank is soaking up a lot of healer mana with his build comparable to another, it could benefit progression for him to go to a more mana-efficient build, as long as he can manage the burst he takes (with that proper cooldown usage and communication).

Which segues into my achievement date list as the valid comparable stat. Obviously the kill was the result of the work of 25 people and not just a tank, but seeing as how the other statistics are almost meaningless, this one that has little meaning is better than none.

Unless you can prove that the kill was achieved shortly after the tanks got their stuff together, then when you got the kill is meaningless when contrasting the skill level and / or efficiency of the tanks. If both sets of tanks are doing their job, and the kill doesn't really depend on them, then you can't compare kill dates.

[SurrealNight]

Madgod wanted a link to logs for a tank that stacked mastery, I provided one. Not that it matters, because you can't tell how effective a tank is via logs.

So why respond at all? Or let Madgod or someone else who does think they mattered respond. I clearly stated it wasn't a directed attack and simple analysis of what I thought the "cons" were compared to DPS stacking BRM in the same fight, over the same time frame, with similar gear levels, within 1-2 weeks of eachother.

The primary goal in WoW is to kill bosses. Not to kill bosses while looking good on the meters. Therefore, the only metric of how "successful" you are is basically how long it took to kill a boss, and why I mentioned the date of actually killing those bosses as the only metric that matters.

Again, this is a thread about a gear optimizer and I provided a comparison between a stam/master tank and DPS stacking tanks over a similar fight length.

BrM aren't as much reactionary as we are active. Once you insure Shuffle uptime and proper Guard usage you can keep Expel Harm (only saw 3 uses), piles of GotO orbs, and banking Chi for L30 talents. So unless you are taking hits that instantly kill you (Sha Thrash?) you are very much a team mate with your healers in keeping yourself alive. Since you 'can' reach near 100% uptime of our defensive buff it's silly to neglect our dynamic self healing and raid healing.

As I said earlier, there needs to be a division for AMR when optimizing tanks. If you're doing content that you're overgeared for, then survival doesn't really matter because it's really hard to die as a tank these days.

And that was the original request. No one has really dug into both sides properly outside of anecdotal accounts. People have stated both sides of the fence but there are a lot of factors involved here.

Going Stam/Mastery is a drop in overall mitigation and increases fight length (more so in 10m) due to DPS losses haste/crit provide. Just increasing the fight length by shifting away from DPS technically gives the boss more chances to flatten you.

Sure AMR could probably create a Haste/Crit and a Stam/Mastery load out but how much of each? Is there a min haste before going into Crit or Mastery, do they differ if you are going Stam/Mastery vs Crit?

I already pointed out that the Stam/Mastery spec spent 15.7 times longer at Heavy stagger, is this ok? Should you build in more haste to clear more often? Does having more stamina make it trivial for the healers to heal through the higher stagger ticks? If so, how much stamina should you allot to covering stagger before it starts to lose value to even more mastery?

Even stacking EHP has about 20 questions associated with it when your trying to build a logical system around it.

Well, let me rephrase. You can a lot of how -bad- a tank is by his logs, but it's really hard to tell if one played very well. Positioning, proper cooldown useage that resolved into not dying, good communication, etc. are all a lot of the intangibles that are significantly more important than mathematical differences. About the only important thing that tanks do and is easily discerned from a log is dps.

Positioning - Usually how often they stand in bad/avoidable stuff is a pretty good hint. Only 1 dance fail total on that Will comparison between all 3 players.
Proper CD usage - This can easily be tracked through WoL to a very exacting degree but usually it just gets reflected in higher damage taken than a tank that uses them more/better or you can look through death events.
Good communication - So you stick to kill logs when needed, doubtful most groups down progression content with a tank that isn't performing at least average here.

[Alucin]

That spreadsheet's a basis for the math that concludes DPS stats are more useful. I'd say it's been looked over by most of the theorycrafters here.

And you're correct in that assumption. I've been pushing into heroic content and it has hardly been necessary, but that's because my guild isn't bleeding edge progression, and has been a bit slower than other guilds, so it's not as necessary for my survival.

Urgh this is fun trying to post on my phone...

Anyway while I'm sure that most here have seen the spreadsheet, however it seems to answer the questions the amr guys are asking. Assumptions not stated may be the cause of lots of unnecessary argument.

[The Madgod]

Urgh this is fun trying to post on my phone...

Anyway while I'm sure that most here have seen the spreadsheet, however it seems to answer the questions the amr guys are asking. Assumptions not stated may be the cause of lots of unnecessary argument.

Not really, they're basically saying the spreadsheet's irrelevant because it focuses on lowering damage taken, not lowering burst.

[Caeth]

This whole thread is just making me sit on VP. I'm so confused and we're only up to Queen in normal mode.

It doesn't help that now I have to choose between upgrading and buying new shit. Grr I love monks but damn Blizz made it really difficult to figure out how to gear appropriately.