[GUIDE] Drunken Savagery: Brewmaster Tanking in [6.2]

[Killface1]

How do the conversations at blizzard even work...

My mind is boggling.

"Hey guys, we see a lot of guilds are switching to monks, whats going on?"

"Well, it looks like they're really fun to play right now. They seem to have a very versatile toolkit that lets them handle a large range of situations really well. People are really enjoying their monks."

"Hmm, so monks are better then other tanks right now?"

"Sure, that's one way of looking at it, but its more complex then that. Players like to feel like they have a strong control over their class, and have a wide array of tools to respond to any situation. Monks tick all the boxes, and its why you see so few players playing classes like druids. Nobody likes feeling like they only have a few abilities to use for mitigation that work inconsistently."

"Hm, we'll we don't want to see classes be imbalanced, how can we make monks more like druids?"

"What? No, that's not what I'm getting at, the point is we need to give the other tanks better tools for accomplishing the goals we set out to challenge them with for tanking."

"We don't want to have one tank be imbalanced, and its easier to just make the good ones really shitty to play like the bad ones. We want people to hate all tanks equally."

"Uhh....I guess we can get rid of active mitigation and put everything into their armor, it really goes against the lore and background that we had designed for monks and.."

"Perfect! do that!"

[dcc626]

They just want us to spike down with every melee hit so we can use their fancy new 2 piece bonus and basically spam expel harm the entire fight. Sounds like great gameplay for the next tier of raiding, I may pass.

highly doubt the tier bonuses are actual tier bonuses and not just placeholders right now....

[Tech614]

highly doubt the tier bonuses are actual tier bonuses and not just placeholders right now....

The 4 piece obviously is. The 2 piece is clearly something similar to what they have in mind. If they wanted just place holders they would have copy pasted old bonuses into those fields.

[Totaltotemic]

I'll do some math on the armor buff vs Stagger loss in my current stats once I'm done raiding. Keep calm and don't reroll.

[dcc626]

I'll do some math on the armor buff vs Stagger loss in my current stats once I'm done raiding. Keep calm and don't reroll.

on the ptr i lost 30% stagger asnd the armor buff gained me about 4-5% damage reduction from armor. your milage may vary.

not thinking of rerolling. we will be viable, its just the massive swing in philosophy thats making my head spin.

i could see us being somewhere halfway between where we are and where we were when all this is done, but you can see that they realize that stagger is just an all or nothing type of thing to balance.

[Trendy-Ideology]

I'll do some math on the armor buff vs Stagger loss in my current stats once I'm done raiding. Keep calm and don't reroll.

Please make this into a poster.

Edit: Ok nevermind I made one.

Edit2: image now smaller, fullsize link below picture.



http://i.imgur.com/a5ZIKzl.png

[Nekusar]

i could see us being somewhere halfway between where we are and where we were when all this is done, but you can see that they realize that stagger is just an all or nothing type of thing to balance.

I feel there are a few more steps to try before completely gutting it, especially as nearly every encounter in BRF seemed to be designed with Stagger in mind, they could even bring down the amount of passive Stagger we get natively but at least leave Shuffle as it was, even if monks are still viable they're going to be boring to play.

[Primalthirst]

I really wish they would just nerf numbers without nerfing fun.

Lower guard scaling, lower mastery scaling, possibly touch our passive stagger, maybe drop Serenity down to 8 or even 7s.

But please don't completely change how my spec plays.

[dcc626]

I really wish they would just nerf numbers without nerfing fun.

Lower guard scaling, lower mastery scaling, possibly touch our passive stagger, maybe drop Serenity down to 8 or even 7s.

But please don't completely change how my spec plays.

this is it exactly. make me less effective, sure. make me boring and unfun to play? blah.

[Totaltotemic]

on the ptr i lost 30% stagger asnd the armor buff gained me about 4-5% damage reduction from armor. your milage may vary.

not thinking of rerolling. we will be viable, its just the massive swing in philosophy thats making my head spin.

i could see us being somewhere halfway between where we are and where we were when all this is done, but you can see that they realize that stagger is just an all or nothing type of thing to balance.

The number on the character sheet for armor is a lie. Raid bosses use a different number.

[dcc626]

The number on the character sheet for armor is a lie. Raid bosses use a different number.

ah, i didnt realize that. ill look forward to your numbers total

[Rockets]

Note it's also a 35-45% nerf to the value of mastery on your gear, and is a bigger nerf the more you have. On live the first 110 mastery (after stance, shuffle, base mastery and raid buff) is worth 1.2% DR; on PTR it's worth only 0.76%. If you're running 2200 mastery, on live going up another 110 is worth 1.59% DR; on PTR it'd be only 0.90%.

This is also likely an indirect nerf to multistrike, since the flat healing from GotO is worth a smaller fraction of our DTPS when we're taking more damage. And it's definitely a nerf to haste (not that anyone cares) because PB will be so much weaker.

I guess that's one way to make us want our attuned stat!

[Deleted]

Bye guys

Paladin is calling

[Taven]

Bye guys

Paladin is calling

My thoughts exactly

[Totaltotemic]

Okay so I have 3021 armor in my gear which is 36.6% damage reduction against raid bosses (63.4% damage taken).

Bonus armor does not get multiplied by SotSO so I'll take that off and my raw armor is 2048. x * 1.75 = 2048, so raw armor is 1170, that * new 125% modifier = 2633. Adding in my bonus armor again it's 3606 for the new value.

3606 = 40.8% damage reduction (59.2% damage taken) with the 6.2 value. This is effectively a 6.6% damage reduction, and for that we lose 30% Stagger.

The armor buff is a joke. It's a placebo, nothing more.

Honestly I don't understand how they think removing 30% Stagger is supposed to work. I could see 10%. I could even see 15%. 20% would be ridiculous. 30% makes BrM basically not viable. Going from 60% Stagger to 30% (I have 20% Mastery) is literally a 75% damage taken increase. That's just absurd and would never work. I mean, it's so bad that it can't possibly go live or BrM would be literally unable to tank Mythic raids. It would be like taking how much worse Druids are than Monks and then making Monks that much worse than Druids and the other tanks.

Don't even get me started on how stupid a 5 second Serenity is. I've been saying since beta that CE needed to be buffed in Shuffle uptime, and instead they nerf Serenity to be totally useless and to never be taken by any player ever. Like why not just increase the cooldown? Ugh.

[Rieth]

Okay so I have 3021 armor in my gear which is 36.6% damage reduction against raid bosses (63.4% damage taken).

Bonus armor does not get multiplied by SotSO so I'll take that off and my raw armor is 2048. x * 1.75 = 2048, so raw armor is 1170, that * new 125% modifier = 2633. Adding in my bonus armor again it's 3606 for the new value.

3606 = 40.8% damage reduction (59.2% damage taken) with the 6.2 value. This is effectively a 6.6% damage reduction, and for that we lose 30% Stagger.

The armor buff is a joke. It's a placebo, nothing more.

Honestly I don't understand how they think removing 30% Stagger is supposed to work. I could see 10%. I could even see 15%. 20% would be ridiculous. 30% makes BrM basically not viable. Going from 60% Stagger to 30% (I have 20% Mastery) is literally a 75% damage taken increase. That's just absurd and would never work. I mean, it's so bad that it can't possibly go live or BrM would be literally unable to tank Mythic raids. It would be like taking how much worse Druids are than Monks and then making Monks that much worse than Druids and the other tanks.

Don't even get me started on how stupid a 5 second Serenity is. I've been saying since beta that CE needed to be buffed in Shuffle uptime, and instead they nerf Serenity to be totally useless and to never be taken by any player ever. Like why not just increase the cooldown? Ugh.

You heard it here first folks

Time to panic

I repeat, REROLL IS GO

[Taven]

You heard it here first folks

Time to panic

I repeat, REROLL IS GO

Red Alert! Reroll DK!

[Totaltotemic]

You heard it here first folks

Time to panic

I repeat, REROLL IS GO

No, panic would be if it was a 20% nerf to Stagger. 30% is so ridiculously outside the realm of sanity that it couldn't possibly go live like that and has to change. The only thing to take from this is "wtf are they smoking?" or "do they have 5 year olds doing the math on how much to nerf things by?", not that BrM will actually be horribly destroyed.

[Primalthirst]

obviously the Serenity nerf is intended to make us value Chi more highly, since we currently have so much excess. But they've shot themselves in the foot by gutting the value of both Shuffle and Purifying Brew (because there's so much less Stagger to purify)

Seems a poorly considered set of changes. It's like they're doing surgery with a mallet and hacksaw.

[Shamanberry]

Bye guys

Paladin is calling

Who's the cat that won't cop out when there's danger all about?

No nerf to BoS yet. If monk changes stay, may actually happen. I'd probably play Paladin too, but my guild's other tank is already one.

I'm also kinda thinking about gearing up my Druid. With their changes, they may actually end up being really good. CDs still kinda suck, though.