The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Shafer]

I appreciate the guide and hope to overcome my tanking fear ...

[kaiadam]

Isn't the crackling stalker the guy who has a chain lighting-esque hit? Like the diffusion adds on Lei Shen. Nothing bad happens when there's no one in melee, he just runs towards his highest aggro target. We usually just have someone grip him in, then chain stuns on him and typhoon him out when he gets low.

[Deleted]

I like the guide. I understand that it's supposed to be an introduction and should mostly cover the basics, so I won't make any suggestions to add more stuff. Instead I want to point out a few things that seem a bit unclear:

-In the talents section you discuss the benefits of Ascension vs Power Strikes. In the frequently discussed issues section you say that using ascension provides less chi than power strikes for most haste levels (depending on fight length I think they are equivalent at about 7k haste), but in the talents sections you say that using ascension allows you to reforge more haste into crit. Since ascension scales directly with haste (and all our energy spenders are chi related with the exception of desperate measures EH spam) that seems a bit counter-intuitive. Also I think you should put more emphasis on the fact that ascension facilitates chi pooling, a very good habit for all brewmasters.

-You mention that alchemy is the best profession because of the extra armor from the elixir in the profession section (very possible, engineering and BS are also very high contenders), but you don't clarify that the elixir combo is superior for progression fights than the agility flask.

-You also describe Jewelcrafting as a strong contender. While it isn't a lot worse than the other crafting professions (well, it's strictly worse than blacksmithing), maybe you should mention the pitfall with secondary JC stat gems not giving double the benefit of the primary stat ones.

Well, that's all I can find for now :P Thanks for the good guide, it's nice seeing people contributing to the community.

[Brian23]

So I was reading the "Brewmaster's are hard" topic and had this question pop into my mind, but thought it'd work better here.

When do you Guard? When I first started my Brewmaster I thought of it as something similar to Sacred Shield or ShotR, something that I basically did on Cooldown and only delayed if I knew a big hit was coming but as I've played the class more and more I've evolved it into an "Oh shit" button where a big hits taking a good chunk of my health away and I want to give my healers a big helping hand in getting me back up (or for something like anything past the first talon rake) but I'm curious if I should be using it more as this has lead me to using Guard much less than I feel I should be using them during a fight.

Now, I'm obviously not dying with the way I'm currently using it and I know the Monk is a very unique tank in that it can be played in a lot of ways depending upon your raid make up, but currently Guard usage and purifying are two things I"m wondering if I'm doing correctly. (I merely purify on red or high yellows and let Green kinda go unless I've got extra chi and a large pool of shuffle).

[Deleted]

When do you Guard? When I first started my Brewmaster I thought of it as something similar to Sacred Shield or ShotR, something that I basically did on Cooldown and only delayed if I knew a big hit was coming but as I've played the class more and more I've evolved it into an "Oh shit" button where a big hits taking a good chunk of my health away and I want to give my healers a big helping hand in getting me back up (or for something like anything past the first talon rake) but I'm curious if I should be using it more as this has lead me to using Guard much less than I feel I should be using them during a fight.

At the beginning it's acceptable to guard on cd. As a rule of thumb I would say it's better to guard on cd than to let more than 45sec pass between guards simply you were waiting for big hits.

Then you start delaying it for big hits. Not by much, mind you, but if you know that a big hit will be incoming soon you can delay it up to maybe 15 seconds.

The 3rd step is learning the encounters correctly and timing guard with important boss abilities. Megaera's breaths, Horridon's Triple punctures, Ji Kun's Talon rake etc. can all be made much easier by knowing that you can guard every one/every second one of them (I think for example Ji Kun is ideal because talon rake has 30sec cd). If you know before the encounter what abilities you will use guard for, you can time the rest of the abilities to coincide with other minor or major cooldowns, like chi wave, expel harm, elusive brew/T152pc etc.

And if you really are a perfectionist, the last min-maxing option I can think of is to not guard at entirely full hp but at little less. That way ticking HoTs/AoE healing from your healers will not overheal. Step 3 obviously takes precedence at that, you don't want to guard after the big hit because it might make your healers panic and use mana inefficient heals.

And that's all I can think of about the usage of guard.

Now concerning purifying brew, I wouldn't worry about purifying green staggers unless your 4pc proc will get wasted. If you have excess chi just spend it on blackout kick and try to justify our damage nerfs in the upcoming patch

[siccora]

can somebody explain the nuke taktic on dark animus on 10 hc? i have to tank animus and 2 adds, the other tank got 3 adds.

[Deleted]

Hello lads.

I've literally JUST dinged 90 on my Monk and I need to be geared by Thursday for our raid. (They asked me to reroll from Protadin to Brewmaster due to a RL mate coming back.)

We have some pretty good PvPers in our guild and they've offered to boost me in 2s/3s to get full Tyrannical for tanking.

Can I get an insight on how/good/bad/awful it is for tanking? General tips are always welcome too.

[Deleted]

I was under similar kind of pressure to collect an alt's gear. I didn't have the option of PvP gear, but if you can it's pretty decent and certainly good at least for normals. Here is the gearing strategy I developed:
-If you can afford the haunting spirits, crafted LW ilvl 522 helm+boots are pretty great.
-The War is coming questline has a side-quest (the old seer) that rewards you with ilvl502 boots
-If you can afford the crafted ilvl 496 chest+gloves, blood spirits are fairly cheap on most servers. I think it might be very slightly superior to the equivalent tyrannical gear (because of the socket bonuses).
-If you can afford the DMF trinket (I got multiple trinkets on my server for 3-5k gold), the agility version is great and pretty close in power level to ToT LFR trinkets.
-Fill as much as you can with tyrannical gear
-The War is coming questline ends with a weekly quest that gives you access to ilvl489 gear. Mediocre, but better than nothing.

Obviously fill in with as much as you can with LFRs, world bosses, hc scenarios as soon as they become available to you (you could ignore non-ToT LFR if you use tyrannical gear as a baseline, but if you're in for the long run might as well start working on your legendary questline).

As for brewmaster resources I found this guide extremely useful when I started tanking: http://sunniersartofwar.com/brewmaster-guide/
The EJ guide is also pretty in-depth including some good (but optional) mathematical analysis, the mmo-champion and icy veins guides are slightly more simplistic, but still good if you just want to know what you should do (as opposed to why you should do it :P)

[Deleted]

Anyone that has tanked lei-shen hc 10m can check my gear (in sig) and see if they'd would change a lot? Killed it first time this reset, but next week our warrior tank won't be able to make it so I'll swap from my ele shaman to monk tank. Done the same couple of weeks ago, and didn't feel squishy at all on any boss (bar council), but I'm thinking lei-shen hc is something else. Should I get some more mastery? With that in mind keep RoR on or not (other options would be valor trinket or soul barrier, don't have a bad juju)? Maybe different meta-gem?
Any other lei shen 10m hc tips for brewmasters? Specific talents, things to watch out for, etc. are very welcome.

[Brian23]

Currently have the 502 Hand of the Dark Animus and the Immaculate Pandaren Mace of the WindFlurry which is 516. Curious if those 2 is better than having Gao Rei with the Sha touched Gem.

[Protozoa7]

Currently have the 502 Hand of the Dark Animus and the Immaculate Pandaren Mace of the WindFlurry which is 516. Curious if those 2 is better than having Gao Rei with the Sha touched Gem.

Add the ilvls of your 2 1h's together. Divide by 2. If that # is bigger than the ilvl of your 2h then go with DW.

[Wreckage827]

Anyone that has tanked lei-shen hc 10m can check my gear (in sig) and see if they'd would change a lot? Killed it first time this reset, but next week our warrior tank won't be able to make it so I'll swap from my ele shaman to monk tank. Done the same couple of weeks ago, and didn't feel squishy at all on any boss (bar council), but I'm thinking lei-shen hc is something else. Should I get some more mastery? With that in mind keep RoR on or not (other options would be valor trinket or soul barrier, don't have a bad juju)? Maybe different meta-gem?
Any other lei shen 10m hc tips for brewmasters? Specific talents, things to watch out for, etc. are very welcome.

Will you be tanking after you take each decapitate? Will you be taking all of the decapitates? If yes to both I don't necessarily recommend RoR unless your healers watch you. If you want to use RoR make sure to use the elusive brew macro when it procs to be able to manage without the extra mastery. Your meta is fine. Dampen Harm, Xuen, your preference for movement speed increases just make sure you get the boss to the poles as quick as you can to avoid excess debuffs. Your mastery is fine as well. Just know the fight and you should be fine.

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can somebody explain the nuke taktic on dark animus on 10 hc? i have to tank animus and 2 adds, the other tank got 3 adds.

There really isn't anything particularly special about this strategy. You pick up 2 adds and grab animus pull to the middle and burn. You will have to watch the other tanks threat he will probably pull off of you due to him having twice as much vengeance as you, unless you are soaking rings and even then he might still pull. You don't kill any of the small adds because you will just do it through AoE damage from kegsmash. I personally am not allowed to use Xuen to tank one of my adds because my GM gets pissed when he taunts his adds as well.

If you feel it necessary use Xuen on one of your small adds so you aren't getting smacked for tons of damage.

Only real tip I have for you is: Just don't die. You and the other tank should be the top damage (if you aren't you might not make the enrage timer), unless you have one badass warlock.

[siccora]

Will you be tanking after you take each decapitate? Will you be taking all of the decapitates? If yes to both I don't necessarily recommend RoR unless your healers watch you. If you want to use RoR make sure to use the elusive brew macro when it procs to be able to manage without the extra mastery. Your meta is fine. Dampen Harm, Xuen, your preference for movement speed increases just make sure you get the boss to the poles as quick as you can to avoid excess debuffs. Your mastery is fine as well. Just know the fight and you should be fine.

- - - Updated - - -



There really isn't anything particularly special about this strategy. You pick up 2 adds and grab animus pull to the middle and burn. You will have to watch the other tanks threat he will probably pull off of you due to him having twice as much vengeance as you, unless you are soaking rings and even then he might still pull. You don't kill any of the small adds because you will just do it through AoE damage from kegsmash. I personally am not allowed to use Xuen to tank one of my adds because my GM gets pissed when he taunts his adds as well.

If you feel it necessary use Xuen on one of your small adds so you aren't getting smacked for tons of damage.

Only real tip I have for you is: Just don't die. You and the other tank should be the top damage (if you aren't you might not make the enrage timer), unless you have one badass warlock.

well thank you. but we couldn't do this strat. our healers are bad. i only got 2 adds an dark animus and they let me die. i pull with FB and still geht smashed. so we changed to a 3 tank strat -.- i take animus and 1 add. the other add is tanked by xuen. the other 2 tanks are filling the massiv anima. when one tank is done i taunt the massiv one and he take the dark animus. after his debuff expires we switch back. i very pissed we have to go for that strat.

[SurrealNight]

i very pissed we have to go for that strat.

Welcome to 25m with 15 less people to fail at the beginning and start the pain train of death half your pulls =P I like the fight personally though get to beat down Animus full time (occasionally taunting a massive) + look cool teleporting around.

[Bryce]

well thank you. but we couldn't do this strat. our healers are bad. i only got 2 adds an dark animus and they let me die. i pull with FB and still geht smashed. so we changed to a 3 tank strat -.- i take animus and 1 add. the other add is tanked by xuen. the other 2 tanks are filling the massiv anima. when one tank is done i taunt the massiv one and he take the dark animus. after his debuff expires we switch back. i very pissed we have to go for that strat.

Were you actually linking the golems? I know most of you like to pump your damage up by linking them, but it's your first kill. Just don't link the golems and you'll be fine. There's a certain way you can stand even with 3 adds that will not get them linked. Just can't move ever until 1 of the adds is dead. Sucks for anima ring, but meh.

[CptnKrunch]

I really appreciate this guide it was a good guideline to use.

[Chuupag]

I like the guide. I understand that it's supposed to be an introduction and should mostly cover the basics, so I won't make any suggestions to add more stuff. Instead I want to point out a few things that seem a bit unclear:

-In the talents section you discuss the benefits of Ascension vs Power Strikes. In the frequently discussed issues section you say that using ascension provides less chi than power strikes for most haste levels (depending on fight length I think they are equivalent at about 7k haste), but in the talents sections you say that using ascension allows you to reforge more haste into crit. Since ascension scales directly with haste (and all our energy spenders are chi related with the exception of desperate measures EH spam) that seems a bit counter-intuitive. Also I think you should put more emphasis on the fact that ascension facilitates chi pooling, a very good habit for all brewmasters.

-You mention that alchemy is the best profession because of the extra armor from the elixir in the profession section (very possible, engineering and BS are also very high contenders), but you don't clarify that the elixir combo is superior for progression fights than the agility flask.

-You also describe Jewelcrafting as a strong contender. While it isn't a lot worse than the other crafting professions (well, it's strictly worse than blacksmithing), maybe you should mention the pitfall with secondary JC stat gems not giving double the benefit of the primary stat ones.

Well, that's all I can find for now :P Thanks for the good guide, it's nice seeing people contributing to the community.

Wanted to touch on this b/c no one else seemed to pick it up.

Ascension gives imaginary haste basically. The reason that you can reforge more haste into crit with ascension is because you need less haste to have the same energy per second. So your "rotation" can play exactly the same with X haste and Power Strikes vs X-Y haste + Y crit with Ascension

The elixirs I use are crit and armor. This works best for me in 10-man. In 25-man I could see people using mastery instead of crit though. I don't really see a reason to use the haste elixirs.

Not sure about the JC question. My JC is just a profession mule who I barely touch.

[Lil]

How much stagger do I actually have?
My mastery (about 5k) says: 5%+5.1%=10.1%

I guess it's like this:
20% base
10.1% from mastery
20% with shuffle up

=50.1% stagger... (70.1% with Fortifying Brew up), right?

[Deleted]

How much stagger do I actually have?
My mastery (about 5k) says: 5%+5.1%=10.1%

I guess it's like this:
20% base
10.1% from mastery
20% with shuffle up

=50.1% stagger... (70.1% with Fortifying Brew up), right?

That's correct. You also get the mastery raid buff (if you didn't factor that in). Also, the T15 2pc gives you 12% additional stagger.

As it happens I personally tested the the values using WoL today (I wanted to confirm that 2pc is additive) and I was taking 46% of the expected damage (34% with 2pc).

Also, on a funny side-note, I haven't tested this myself, but I hear you can't die for stagger damage (anyone can confirm/deny it?). So by aligning some trinket procs (RoRo or Vial of the Sanguinaire with a lot of adds) with fortifying brew you could in theory get 100% stagger and 20seconds of invincibility against physical damage.

- - - Updated - - -

Wanted to touch on this b/c no one else seemed to pick it up.

Ascension gives imaginary haste basically. The reason that you can reforge more haste into crit with ascension is because you need less haste to have the same energy per second. So your "rotation" can play exactly the same with X haste and Power Strikes vs X-Y haste + Y crit with Ascension

The elixirs I use are crit and armor. This works best for me in 10-man. In 25-man I could see people using mastery instead of crit though. I don't really see a reason to use the haste elixirs.

Not sure about the JC question. My JC is just a profession mule who I barely touch.

1. While I agree you can have the same energy regeneration by using X haste and power strikes vs X-Y haste +Y crit with Ascension, your "rotation" will not be the same because of the extra chi you get every 20seconds with power strikes (not to mention the extra chi you can pool with Ascension). I fully agree that Ascension is worth taking even at low haste levels because of the flexibility it offers with the 5th chi saying that you can reforge haste into crit when you take it is miss-leading.

Imagine this hypothetical and simplified scenario:

Someone has realised that with his particular play-style using power strikes he needs 4500 haste to maintain a comfortable rotation with 100% shuffle uptime, guard and purify. Then he comes here and sees that by switching to ascension you can reforge 500 haste into crit (as recommended in talents section). But because ascension gives lower chi generation at that haste level he goes into the boss fight and realises that he can no longer maintain his 100% shuffle uptime while doing the same amount of guarding and purifying.

So in short ascension does indeed give the same energy per second, but lower chi per second. The only case where energy per second is more relevant than chi per second (or per minute as it's a better metric) is when we're spamming EH, SCK or healing spheres. That's why I should believe this section should be changed/clarified in the guide if possible.


2. All 3 elixirs are equally viable depending on what you want to do, because you can just reforge excess stats on your gear to be where you want to be. I personally use haste elixir and just reforge to a lower level of haste (That way I know I'll have enough haste for hc progression, but on farm content where I know my rotation will be perfect and I won't need to purify as much I can use agility flask and go for higher damage). However that's not very relevant, my point is, even though alchemy is proposed as the best profession in the guide (obviously because the writer is assuming the use of elixir combo), in the consumables section there is no mention that elixirs are superior to flasks.


3. Lastly, JC is proposed as a "strong contender" in the professions section. The problem is that a JC only gem gives 320agility, but only 480 of any given secondary stat (so by using 2 JC gems we can get 320 agility or 480 of any secondary stat, let's say crit). If you value 1agi>1.5 crit you're forced to use the agility gems, thus socketing pure agi gems in two sockets (as opposed to our preferred secondary stat gems). So we do get the same 320 agi bonus as with other professions, but we have to make a sacrifice by using two sockets for pure agility gems. That's strictly inferior to blacksmithing, that allows the use of two prismatic sockets for a total of 640 secondary stats. I'm not suggesting that the guide should go into so much detail, I'm just saying that's it's wrong to describe JC as a "strong contender"

EDIT: To clarify, blue gems give either 160agi or 320crit. A JC gem give 320agi or 480crit (instead of the expected 640).

[Rockets]

So in short ascension does indeed give the same energy per second, but lower chi per second. The only case where energy per second is more relevant than chi per second (or per minute as it's a better metric) is when we're spamming EH, SCK or healing spheres.

But the only thing that adding more chi/time actually lets you do is to purify more. It's possible to keep up shuffle and guard twice a minute at 0 haste rating with no talents, so if shuffle uptime is low it's because you're purifying more than is supported by your chi generation. (Or because there's some fight mechanic that prevents you from landing KS on time, but probably nothing's hitting you during that time either so it doesn't matter).

imo, the way to look at it is that PS gives you a free purify every 20s and makes chi pooling more annoying because sometimes you'll Jab at 3 chi and then you have to pick up the chi sphere to reclaim it. It's one more thing to pay attention to. Whereas Ascension lets you replace one of your TPs with Jab every (made up number) 30s, lets you store an extra chi right in your UI instead of on the ground, and it also slightly improves EH, SCK and sphere spam.

Especially in a world with the T15 4pc, having more chi for purify just isn't very useful. Raw energy is useful in some circumstances, and extending the chi bar to 5 is much more useful than dropping a chi ball on the ground.