The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[The Madgod]

You are most definitely correct on me being conservative, I like to keep my stuff for when I get down to my low HP beep(~20%HP) and then pop a guard so my healers can heal me up w/o using CD's. I need to learn to be more proactive in that regard I suppose. We'll be running a cleanup run for ToT tonight, so I'll get another WoL going to see if I do any better with this new information.

As for using Guard, should I be using it on CD, like EB, or slack back and use it for the big hits or whenever low HP?

Also switched back to a crit build. My wallet hurts...

Guard should be used ROUGHLY on cooldown, at least in my books. It's nice for helping out with medium-to-large hits so if you know a predictable spike is coming but you don't need a large cooldown for it, you can save Guard for it but overall I'd try and use it fairly liberally just to make life slightly easier.

And as Derpette said, cooldowns in general are best used for large predicable spikes. If you're getting down to dangerous levels of health when you aren't supposed to be taking high damage then there's something fundamentally wrong.

[Yohassakura]

I've killed H Tortos as the main kiter. I tried many variations of spec and found the following to be the best.

For my raid I found that Celerity, Zen Sphere, Ascension, Charging Ox Wave, Healing Elixirs and RJW was the best (with a paladin MT) I made a video about it.

[Ampere]

I've killed H Tortos as the main kiter. I tried many variations of spec and found the following to be the best.
Tiger's Lust - to get out of sticky situations or to get away fast after a stun.
Zen Sphere - Keep heals up 100% and keeps your 'bubble' topped off
Charging Ox Wave - Stuns the current group of bats as the new bats drop.
Dampen Harm - For 'Oh Sh*t' moment if you have to get through a group and bats get a hit off. TBH though you can't take a hit after 2 spawns of bats - no vengence = dead.
Chi Torpedo - It moves you further and has the added advantage of healing you as you move through the raid.

Then if you have a priest they can drop feathers along the side which you can use in a pinch. Also a warlock can stun the whole pack in a worst case scenario, but I found my COW was up for every wave

Good call on Zen Sphere to keep the shield topped off, I didn't think about that. And if I'm kiting and not doing any damage Chi Torpedo would make sense over RJW or Xuen (he'd probably leap into the bats and die instantly lol).

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 04:27 PM ----------

For my raid I found that Celerity, Zen Sphere, Ascension, Charging Ox Wave, Healing Elixirs and RJW was the best (with a paladin MT) I made a video about it.

For RJW just using it to get additional threat? Doesn't seem necessary if you're throwing Dizzying Haze (edit: I guess you said Paladin MT, perhaps their healing aggro is that ridiculous)

[Yohassakura]

Good call on Zen Sphere to keep the shield topped off, I didn't think about that. And if I'm kiting and not doing any damage Chi Torpedo would make sense over RJW or Xuen (he'd probably leap into the bats and die instantly lol).

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 04:27 PM ----------



For RJW just using it to get additional threat? Doesn't seem necessary if you're throwing Dizzying Haze

Yes, additional threat (MDs not always reliable with our hunters mainly doing the kicking, and pally's threat seemed to be quite absurd).

[SirReal]

A lot of people find my rankings noteworthy. I care about them. They make me happy.

u can care...but they shouldnt. normal mode rankings are pretty irrelevant considering you now completely over gear it 7 weeks in PLUS the fact that you openly state that you are playing solely for rankings....i feel bad for your healers.

[Deleted]

20% haste? That is a bit overboard I am currently running with 0.12 in the haste soft cap slot. Your iLevel is good so going to assume you have the 2P + 4P so really don't need that much even without them.

Atm only have 2P of tier 15, and i try 1 month whit 0.12 cap haste and i think that is slowly regeneration chi, i cant get always all abilitys in CD, for this i try like more haste

[SurrealNight]

Try like 15-18% then you really don't need 20%. I floated with ~6k for most of the tier and have been bleeding it back a lot. Every 2500 haste is ~1/chi a minute so it's pretty negligible it's more that it "feels" slower more so than it actually is.

[Rockets]

I'm kind of hoping they add a chi cost back to the T30 talents for 5.4, or at least give us some other way to spend chi. At this point in the stat budget, we're capped on hit, soft/hardcapped on exp (to taste), and chi-capped on haste (in that beyond a certain point all you can use chi to do is purify green stagger). Pick up mastery/stam until you can survive the content you're doing, then stack crit.

I dunno, it seems kind of.... limited. There are all these great stats, but they're easily cappable. I was a blood DK in cata and even though that boiled down to "stack mastery", it's not like the other stats were bad, they just weren't as good as the best stat. A dodge/parry item wasn't as good as a dodge/mastery one, but I could still use it and it might be better than what I had if it was higher ilvl. With BrM I feel like I could see a 522 haste/hit item drop and it might not be an upgrade over the 496 I already have. If the 496 is crit/mastery and I can't get rid of any more haste or hit from reforging, gems or enchants, welp, that's a bunch of useless stats all of a sudden.

[Bryce]

So does RoR not take the stats away now or does it still do that? Got RoR tonight off the boss and wondering if I should try it out next week or just use it for my WW spec.

[Kaneli]

So does RoR not take the stats away now or does it still do that? Got RoR tonight off the boss and wondering if I should try it out next week or just use it for my WW spec.

It takes away the stats. Don't use for brewmaster.

[Kisho]

It takes away the stats. Don't use for brewmaster.

Just flatly saying 'don't use it as a BrM' isn't really doing the trinket justice. First off, passive agility on a trinket is very nice, and there's only two trinkets with passive agility on them in this tier.

Secondly, chances are your crit is going to be your highest stat, which means you'll lose all your haste and mastery. Losing all your haste isn't a big deal, since you'll probably have Shuffle uptime banked; losing all your mastery could be problematic, depending on how much you had in the first place. If you're geared like me and minimise mastery entirely then it won't make much of a difference, so the increased crit will be very helpful in boosting DPS and EB uptime.

If you keep a fairly high level of mastery then it could make you take a bit of extra spike damage, which could be a problem. But y'know, it's up to you to decide how to use it.

The other option is if your mastery is highest (if, say, you're in a 25 man heroic guild), then the trinket could give you 100% stagger. I haven't done the maths myself, but it seems plausible... And 100% Stagger basically means you take no burst damage whatsoever, just a DoT which is easy to purify/heal through. That'd make you a very easy tank to heal during those 10 seconds.

So in short: outright saying 'don't use it as BrM' is just silly. It definitely has its uses as a BrM tank if you're careful with it.

[Kaneli]

Just flatly saying 'don't use it as a BrM' isn't really doing the trinket justice. First off, passive agility on a trinket is very nice, and there's only two trinkets with passive agility on them in this tier.

Secondly, chances are your crit is going to be your highest stat, which means you'll lose all your haste and mastery. Losing all your haste isn't a big deal, since you'll probably have Shuffle uptime banked; losing all your mastery could be problematic, depending on how much you had in the first place. If you're geared like me and minimise mastery entirely then it won't make much of a difference, so the increased crit will be very helpful in boosting DPS and EB uptime.

If you keep a fairly high level of mastery then it could make you take a bit of extra spike damage, which could be a problem. But y'know, it's up to you to decide how to use it.

The other option is if your mastery is highest (if, say, you're in a 25 man heroic guild), then the trinket could give you 100% stagger. I haven't done the maths myself, but it seems plausible... And 100% Stagger basically means you take no burst damage whatsoever, just a DoT which is easy to purify/heal through. That'd make you a very easy tank to heal during those 10 seconds.

So in short: outright saying 'don't use it as BrM' is just silly. It definitely has its uses as a BrM tank if you're careful with it.

Well it kinda depends when it procs. If it procs within first seconds of the fight and you have to cancel it because 0 haste and that pretty much means no shuffle.

[Deix-EU]

Yes, additional threat (MDs not always reliable with our hunters mainly doing the kicking, and pally's threat seemed to be quite absurd).

Yeah, have the same problem. When I'm at the entrance of the cave (so the furthest location of Tortos) and Quake is coming (no, not winter ;p), I have difficulties to catch up bats that go above my pal mate 's head ... absurd aggro. We only did 1 try, we wanted to focus on Ji Kun first. Next week is Tortos and we will try :

1) Pal solo tanking, me Windwalker
2) If Pal doesn't succeed, me on Boss, pal on bats
3) If none, kite strat again

Why kite strat avoided ? Well, I'm doing 100k DPS on Tortos mono ...I actually was impressed on Ji Kun down doing 200k peak (without bloodlust but Xuen) 20 sec into the pull so maybe more DPS since I'm a little bit more geared. Don't you think it's better to save the kite slot for more DPS on boss ? 100K lost while kiting seems huge.

[Shamanberry]

Why kite strat avoided ? Well, I'm doing 100k DPS on Tortos mono ...I actually was impressed on Ji Kun down doing 200k peak (without bloodlust but Xuen) 20 sec into the pull so maybe more DPS since I'm a little bit more geared. Don't you think it's better to save the kite slot for more DPS on boss ? 100K lost while kiting seems huge.

You lose your personal DPS on the boss, but gain all the DPS that everyone else would have to put into the bats in order to kill them.

I also did the kiting strat with a paladin tank on the boss. The trick is for the paladin to not actually do damage to the bats once they get on his head. He should just continue doing single target. As long as the melee don't DPS the bats, his passive aggro from seal/self-healing will keep the bats on him. If he attacks them, though, he has a ton of vengeance and you have close to none - so pulling them off becomes tricky.

If you have a hunter, that shouldn't be necessary - a misdirect is enough to get the bats to me reliably every time. If you need extra, bring a second hunter, have a moonkin symbiosis a hunter and do a misdirect starfall, or have a rogue use Tricks on you and toss out a few AoE abilities if the bats ever go in to melee. If that doesn't get you threat, something has gone horribly wrong.


That said, the kill strategy works fine too if you prefer it - it's just a little more taxing on the healers, and a little more demanding on the DPS to beat the enrage timer (but if you've been clearing the instance for several weeks now, gear is probably not an issue).

[Kisho]

Well it kinda depends when it procs. If it procs within first seconds of the fight and you have to cancel it because 0 haste and that pretty much means no shuffle.

Then just unequip/re-equip at the start and that problem is solved. Not a reason to dismiss the trinket entirely. You also still have a base 11 ER without talents or gear, which is actually enough to keep Shufle up 100% of the time and use Guard on CD. This of course assumes you don't use any PBs, never cap energy, never delay KS, etc... but it's not like we're dealing with that situation for very long. It'll be fine.

0 haste doesn't mean 0 ER.

[Yohassakura]

Yeah, have the same problem. When I'm at the entrance of the cave (so the furthest location of Tortos) and Quake is coming (no, not winter ;p), I have difficulties to catch up bats that go above my pal mate 's head ... absurd aggro. We only did 1 try, we wanted to focus on Ji Kun first. Next week is Tortos and we will try :

1) Pal solo tanking, me Windwalker
2) If Pal doesn't succeed, me on Boss, pal on bats
3) If none, kite strat again

Why kite strat avoided ? Well, I'm doing 100k DPS on Tortos mono ...I actually was impressed on Ji Kun down doing 200k peak (without bloodlust but Xuen) 20 sec into the pull so maybe more DPS since I'm a little bit more geared. Don't you think it's better to save the kite slot for more DPS on boss ? 100K lost while kiting seems huge.

If you take the bats right around the outer edge of the room, (running clockwise) you can line it up so the bats reach the bosses right hand side (left as you look into the room) stun them there, either roll past tortos or ascendance to the other side, and the new bats should be coming down.

In terms of killing the boss the quickest, it'd probably be best if you solo-tanked the encounter > Kited bats > 2 tanked (obviously depends what classes you bring).
The vengeanced tank will be doing shit loads of damage if you solo it, but if there's 2 tanks you have to focus away from the boss which seems counter productive to me. We did it in just under 8mins with the kite strategy so it's not as if we were lacking DPS to kill them, but then it depends on the tank/healer setup, and what's easiest for your group if you can still kill the encounter.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/9...?s=4503&e=4975

We only raid 12 hours a week and will be going 9 hours for the next week or 2, so we have half the time of most other guilds - so it's nice to take some RNG factors out or heavily relying upon one or two people to get it exactly right (we'd most likely use our pally to solo tank it, as seem as he's the GM/Raid Leader, doesn't have decent offspec gear and is suited a little better with more health).

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I'll be trying out RoR a little bit, since our hunter didn't want it (the other one was preparing to go to Japan for work reasons, and our feral's in China for work reasons too.)

Would be awesome if I managed to get some more offspec gear and go full mastery for WW

[Archdrood]

Yes, additional threat (MDs not always reliable with our hunters mainly doing the kicking, and pally's threat seemed to be quite absurd).

We also use a Protadin tanking Tortos, but I call out bats inc, so he stops all AOE as they land. Afetr the 1st round of bats they always come to him, so I just start spamming DH on top of him after 2-3 I have aggro and he never pulls it back after that.
Unfortunately if he drops conc aura on the ground and they land on him...GG

[Wreckage827]

Well it kinda depends when it procs. If it procs within first seconds of the fight and you have to cancel it because 0 haste and that pretty much means no shuffle.

You cannot cancel it. It still saves your stats the way they were until the duration is up, unless they hotfixed it. The problem with RoR is that you have to gem and reforge for the specific stat you want it to proc on a given boss fight. I did it for a couple of weeks just to try it out, got my crit and mastery to around the same levels so all I had to do was swap one gem and it would give me one or the other. It is a pretty meh trinket, and you will probably gain more from other trinkets as brewmaster sadly. I really liked the idea of how RoR worked, but it just doesn't feel practical for a tank.

[Bryce]

Going to give it a shot on the first one at least to see how it does. I'm not worried about not having that much haste, I already try to reduce the amount of haste/mastery I have since I'm in a 10m.

If I could just get HT Renkais or w/e that stupid trinket off Jin'rokh is .

[NRL1515]

I tried poking around the BM topics/forum to see if there was any consensus on this matter, but I couldn't find anything substantial.

Is there a legendary meta gem that is our 'Go to' gem? My understanding is that the capacitive one is nice, but doesn't improve our crit as much as it should (or as much as we'd like it to), and that the agile regular one is better. I took the damage reduction once last night (stuck with a 496 helm, /sadpanda) but I wonder if people are going to grab both and switch in and out depending on the fight. Is there anyone that could shed some light on this or provide some direction?

Thanks.