The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[gynshon]

isn't kinda bad for monks to stack full mastery? as i think they will be purifying like mad, one of my mates told me mastery is better than haste/crit build but i think that is not correct to be honest, any ideas about the mastery build ?

Raid size is also a determining factor. 25 - Full Mastery is most likely better, whereas 10 a good Haste/Crit build shines. However, I am changing my tune on Council in 10m and a full mastery build I think is better there as well for 95% of the fight. The other 5% the Crit build is better for avoiding the Frigid Assault stacks.

[Sunnydee]

so for a 10man tank nothing really changed this patch? just that we can downscale haste abit when getting 4set, ?
im really confused cuz some ppl say go mastery, some say full critt. some say we even should go stamina( the last one i just fully ignore imao)
so yeah... 10man casual + 25man lfr. whats the deal for em now

[Kisho]

so for a 10man tank nothing really changed this patch? just that we can downscale haste abit when getting 4set, ?
im really confused cuz some ppl say go mastery, some say full critt. some say we even should go stamina( the last one i just fully ignore imao)
so yeah... 10man casual + 25man lfr. whats the deal for em now

If you're casual, then you won't need mastery. Haste/crit will do you just fine. By the time you get to heroic modes, you'll be in a lot better gear than the people currently stacking mastery, so won't need to stack mastery like they did.

In theory, anyway.

[Deleted]

I love my Monk, I find the active tanking style really fun after an expac and a half of playing a Prot Paladin, but I feel like Monks just lack in several areas, such as handling spike damage, and magic damage. I know the class, I play the class well overall (Maintaining shuffle, proper CD usage, purifying so my stagger doesn't get outta control, yada yada) But the lack of armor and HP, on top of the dependency on avoidance RNG is really bad when it comes to progressing it feels like. I know Monks are unique and bring new utility to a raid, but while they are really strong in some areas, I feel like they lack too much in others. As where my Paladin would be good in several scenarios.

I think you really underestimating how good stagger is. Spike damage is what will kill a tank usually, and we're quite good at that. Our armor is indeed low, I'm currently at 28% reduction at 500 ilvl, but even when reforging completely out of stagger, we still stagger 50% of all damage which is awesome. On top of that, stagger works vs a number of mechanics where armor gets ignored. I'm not sure why you'd say we're spikey, I don't feel that at all. Our avoidance with elusive brew is through the roof, it's just something that healers may need to pick up on (aka we take no damage for 10+ seconds they shouldn't forget we're still tanking something). Worst case if you feel squishy for some odd reason, go with a heavy mastery build.
Problems with handling magic damage, what? Sounds like you're playing a different class. Diffuse magic is amazing, so is glyphed guard and zen meditiation, on top of our selfhealing with expel harm, gift of the ox orbs, level 30 talents and healing spheres. What exactly is it that your paladin can do better here? Divine protection on a 1 minute cd and some selfheals too, that's about it afaik?

[lebowski]

Low armor is a bonus, it makes armor pots unbelievably OP.

[Sunnydee]

If you're casual, then you won't need mastery. Haste/crit will do you just fine. By the time you get to heroic modes, you'll be in a lot better gear than the people currently stacking mastery, so won't need to stack mastery like they did.

In theory, anyway.

thanks for replay. but i got a followup question on this

would i actually become a bad tank if i went mastery for my type of casual playing? cuz i love monk tanking, i just hate the fact that stacking dps stats as tank is "best". would i become a manasponge if id go mastery i guess is the real question

[Kisho]

thanks for replay. but i got a followup question on this

would i actually become a bad tank if i went mastery for my type of casual playing? cuz i love monk tanking, i just hate the fact that stacking dps stats as tank is "best". would i become a manasponge if id go mastery i guess is the real question

Mastery stacking makes you take more damage, but at the benefit of causing that damage to be more smoothed out. In 25 mans, this is more ideal, as you have more healers (and probably dedicated tank healers) so they can afford to spend the extra mana on keeping you up. Also, damage in-take is that little bit higher, so there's that little bit more burst damage to deal with.

In 10 mans, your healers need to conserve their mana much more than in 25 mans, as they need to watch the entire raid as well as just you (and there's less healers). Damage on the tanks is lower, there's not as much spike damage in 10s, so mastery stacking isn't as beneficial there.

That said, stacking mastery in your environment won't make you a bad tank. You'd still do just fine. The only things that would make you a bad tank are ignorance of encounter mechanics, forgetting your active mitigation, and low situational awareness. Which stats you stack don't really help or hinder you there.

[Sunnydee]

ok cuz at is is right now. im normally maintanking every fight since our other tank is a druid(who has wicked boomkin dps when i can 1man tank)
but our healers (resto shaman+ pala "and a druid if needed for some heroics") says sometimes they can ignore healing me for ages. then i take a plum to the floor, they ask if i can change something so i take overall smoother damage so they can either 1, dps but know when they gotta heal, or 2, have a easier flow so they can hot up etc then dps/reg or w/e in between

not sure if i explained well. but ask for more info if i didnt. i guess the point is, if my healers are bored half the fight but i can take a REALLY big dmg dump completly random (yes boss mecanichs can be involved but then they are aware) if mastery would help them.

[Zonex]

There are two ways you can deal with it, both involve taking more damage in the long run. The reason you take no damage for a long time, and then spike and suddenly the healers are left scurrying through their expensive heals is because of EB, Guard, and EH.

It's a bit harder to micro manage, but if you want smoother damage intake, never use EB on top of Guard, never use EH above 70% Hp, and only Guard when you dip low because of a string of rng hits.

The above.. is pretty terrible advice, but it works in some scenarios, you have to take it with a grain of salt. A lot of times you have to delay Guard for abilities, but times you dont you want to use your Guard after you reach about 50% hp, and your EB fails and you still get a string of hits. Secondaly, you're going to want to chain EB -> Guard, not stack them (stacking isn't a problem, but for smoothing intake, its better to chain), and finally you have to abuse EH and GotO at opportune moments. I know there is a big urge to pop an EH and GotO when you see your health at 80%, but most of the time, you'll want it in your Boss ability rotation, or you want to save it for when EB gives you a bad string again. To work around it you can take small side steps (strafes) to the left or right when you dip to 70% to eat up the GotOrbs.

Finally the last thing that makes you spike resistant is energy pooling. A LOT of BrM's do not pool their energy at about 70-75 values. You don't lose anything if you don't let your energy cap, however if you are taken below 35% you have an immediate strong heal (if a hit takes you that low from a relatively high hp perc, its gonna give a load of vengeance). Chances are the bastard boss will hit you again to dip you below 35% again, and youll have another EH ready. This is mainly a playstyle difference that people who stack crit deal with (and forego haste) but it's a real lifesaver.

Just tell your healers, not to have a heart attack when you bounce to 35% hp, tell them being at 35% is one of your strong suits, and they just see it as you needing normal healing. In a perfect world a BrM could stay at 50% to constantly proc Desperate Measures and forego jabbing and EH till the end of time, but thats a risk vs reward game, and I don't advise it unless youre REALLY confident in your playstyle.


The other way to do it, is to plainly stack mastery, you'll do less dps, and take marginally more damage, but you'll survive against things a bit more (the difference isn't big)

[Rixarius]

I think you really underestimating how good stagger is. Spike damage is what will kill a tank usually, and we're quite good at that. Our armor is indeed low, I'm currently at 28% reduction at 500 ilvl, but even when reforging completely out of stagger, we still stagger 50% of all damage which is awesome. On top of that, stagger works vs a number of mechanics where armor gets ignored. I'm not sure why you'd say we're spikey, I don't feel that at all. Our avoidance with elusive brew is through the roof, it's just something that healers may need to pick up on (aka we take no damage for 10+ seconds they shouldn't forget we're still tanking something). Worst case if you feel squishy for some odd reason, go with a heavy mastery build.
Problems with handling magic damage, what? Sounds like you're playing a different class. Diffuse magic is amazing, so is glyphed guard and zen meditiation, on top of our selfhealing with expel harm, gift of the ox orbs, level 30 talents and healing spheres. What exactly is it that your paladin can do better here? Divine protection on a 1 minute cd and some selfheals too, that's about it afaik?

Magic Damage, when expected and in short bursts, yeah. We can handle that. But bosses that just spam a bunch of Magic Damage all fight, (Megaera) aren't great for Monks. One of my biggest complaints is lack of a real, heavy CD aside from Fort Brew. Like I said earlier, more HP and a Shield Wall just so we can handle magic damage better and I'd be content.

[kaiadam]

Why do we need more hp? Our active mitigation and passives aren't weaker than any other tank by any perceptible value and our hp scaling is the same as all of them except DKs who have naturally weaker defenses to compensate. Leather gear does not have lesser stamina than plate either. If you want more hp, feel free to gem stamina, like every other tank that wants hp.

Furthermore, brewmasters are easily the best tank on Megaera. Between guard, diffuse magic, fort brew, and zen med, the highest damage a breath ever does to us is through our shieldwall. On our heroic kill, I both took about 25% less damage and spiked 50% less (highest spike for me was ~85k hps vs ~120k hps) than our exceptionally talented prot paladin, despite me tanking both the nether worms and the poison head more (we never kill it so +120% attack speed by the end).

Other people here have basically covered mastery vs crit/haste, but I'll remark that the initial damage reduction is not negligible between mastery spec and non-mastery. In a raid, between fort brew, 2p, and base mastery I average somewhere around 68% stagger. A non-mastery oriented tank will probably be around 58%. Taking 32% of incoming damage vs 42% - I'm taking almost a third less damage on each initial hit than the non-mastery guy. And while this definitely took a toll on my dps, my numbers speak for themselves. (For those who don't want to watch videos - Jinrokh - 182 (died, whoops), Horridon: 260k, Council: 228k, Tortos: 372k, Megaera: 172k, Ji-Kun: 163k)

[Ampere]

I'm sure this has been brought up before but the new stagger display on the default UI is so cool! Really glad they added it.

[thedr8993]

Incredibly random question but what addons are you using Kaiadam? Just watched one of your vids and really like the layout.

[siccora]

Hey Guys i'm now stuck between two weapon setups.

i have the 2H staff jalak's maelstrom staff
http://www.wowhead.com/item=94740

and now the hand of the dark animus
http://www.wowhead.com/item=94954

my offhand option is the heroic version of the fist of the spiritbinder 2/2 upgrate
http://www.wowhead.com/item=87032

or the shek'zeer
http://www.wowhead.com/item=86226 with sha gem and primatic gem 2/2 upgrate

what setup would you take? is the 500 agi gem + the 2nd stat gem better than the weapondmg from the heroic fist?

[Alucin]

@Zonex - yeah i'm pretty much rotating in a similar way - except (glyphed) guard usually covers it completely - might get a bit of damage off last tick - i save EH for after each breath.

1 - Guard
2 - Diffuse
3 - Guard up again
4 (if required) - Fort brew (pick up gift orbs) or Zen Med.

between that, gift orbs, EB for melee - popped as breath finishes, i'm keeping dmg as low as i can on me. I did have chi burst for raid heals - (from reading sunnier's post) but might switch to chi wave and just keep myself up if that's fixed now.
i'm putting xuen on the flame head too - pretty much up for each one with 4 heals... - to try to drop it quicker and therefore less debuffs on the pally tank.

i'm not sure that 4 heals was the best way - but RL (who is also one of our main healers) did say we wouldn't be surviving without it.

Didn't change anything on my side, did it comfortably last night. 3 heals. I don't think mastery helped much for this fight, might keep it cos we had issues on council last week. Ji-kun was a pleasant change. Nice easy tank fight.

[Deleted]

Just tanked magaera, awesome toolkit for all the breaths. Does glyph of guard also work on guards from statue btw?

[gynshon]

Didn't change anything on my side, did it comfortably last night. 3 heals. I don't think mastery helped much for this fight, might keep it cos we had issues on council last week. Ji-kun was a pleasant change. Nice easy tank fight.

You must be talking about normals?

[kaiadam]

Incredibly random question but what addons are you using Kaiadam? Just watched one of your vids and really like the layout.

Unit frames - pitbull
Buttons - dominos
Important buttons in middle - tellmewhen
Buff bars on player - needtoknow
debuff bars on target/cast bar - quartz
Raid cds - hermes
Enemy plates - tidyplates

[Ahsakura]

So I've been tanking the bats on Tortos and I honestly need someone to give me some advice here. Do I just need to pop everything to keep living through these things? I feel like I can't keep shuffle up and hold threat.

Just read through the ToT thread on the first page and got a much better idea of what to do and how to handle the bats. I'll leave the question here, but managed to answer it myself.

[djtravitrav]

So I've been tanking the bats on Tortos and I honestly need someone to give me some advice here. Do I just need to pop everything to keep living through these things? I feel like I can't keep shuffle up and hold threat.

Just read through the ToT thread on the first page and got a much better idea of what to do and how to handle the bats. I'll leave the question here, but managed to answer it myself.

Take charging ox wave and rushing jade wind for this fight. Ox wave is up for every single wave of bats, where leg sweep isn't. You should also have a full 15 sec of Elusive available from hitting tortos the entire time in between bat waves.

Hit elusive brew, Keg smash, Rushing Jade wind, BoK, bank 12 sec of stagger, Stun them for 3 sec, then Breath of fire/ SPK to finish them off. You essentially solo them without any outside assistance.