The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Zonex]

Not to be crass, but I'm quite sure you guys should be pulling much higher numbers.

You (Vasilissa) actually have a higher Ilvl than me.. i have 557, you have 559. Yet i do more than double your dps on your mixed alt/main run garrosh kills. What's goin on man?

I run it with a alt tank, but its geared enough for me to not hog vengeance. I used RJW on our first 2 kills, and it ended up somewhere around 320k dps. Mostly because my raiders like to whore on p1 as much as i like to, so no one gets anything. This week i did garrosh with Xuen and pulled 365k.. i dont know what to tell you, its rly not hard as BrM.

Unless you have to purify like crazy, the damage should indeed be there. Use Xuen the first time when you pull the boss (if you really want to pump out numbers, do it when you have mobs up + Rally from the boss + boss on you + FB/CDs). Just use Xuen on CD unless youre going to a intermission realm soon. If you can have him up for the final phase even better.

Other than that, there is nothing in the fight that will detriment your dps a whole load. If you dont take RJW, take SCK Glyph, so you can Nitro Boost + SCK in some of the intermissions (it builds good aggro/damage and doesnt slow them). Save your Zen Med for Intermission phases, so once your vengeance drops low, you can sit in a smash with Zen Med to go back to 250k vengeance. Hell, if you have the buff that reduces dmg, you can do the same with a Guard and it wont kill you. Save your DM for Whirling Corruptions. Even if you dont have a DM, the whirl wont kill you, save up a bit of energy so once you get to 35% you can top up in 2 GCDs. Tank the boss to 4 stacks otherwise youll hit DRs (if you want to really go at it, you can make it so one tank takes 4 the other takes 3, your call, both methods dont incur the DR). As for mini adds, you want to kill the stuff that spawns at your feet instantly, because rest assured, more will come towards you. When you make a tank switch, make sure you put a statue on your cotank, taunt everything off him, and then he cant taunt garrosh.

Quite a simple fight, just high on numbers, but that shouldnt be an issue with your Ilvl.

[Kroni]

I would not take Garrosh as an example for DPS, most trys are so different from eachother. The more DPS you do in the first Phase, the better your parse will be and even if you dont play good you can be above other monks with ease.

Most of the time my co-tank DK is above me too if im not really trying to cheese out numbers, its nothing that unusual and he gains 0 through riposte (full dps haste gear, its his normal tank gear).

The most obvious reasons for low DPS are too few keg smashes, bad RJW uptime on AOE fights and vengeance drops because you offtank too much or tank in bad phases (e.g. not on the pull)

[Wreckage827]

(e.g. not on the pull)

Even if you are tanking adds you should pull first to gain the vengeance for the adds when they get to you. You should easily pull 800k at the start like that. IF you are tanking garrosh after the add tank preforms the initial pull you will still do crazy numbers because "lol brewmaster". Either way about it the first 30 seconds or more you should be doing crazy number like that.

[Bryce]

After reading the last few posts, it seems a lot of you play way more aggressively in my opinion. I'm more of I just want to get the fight over with and not risk wiping because of me doing something I normally probably wouldn't do. Is it me playing a lot less aggressive due to a lack of confidence or what, but neither me or my co-tanks have ever actually played like that.

It's also gotten me to thinking I need to just man up and start playing aggressively more and stop worrying too much. Sound accurate to ya'll?

[Leblue]

Depends a lot on your group to be quite honest, and I would suspect how "aggressive" your tank healers are. If your priest is disc and leaning a bit heavier on atonement while your other healer, say a holy pally, is doing a lot more raid healing you're probably going to want to gear more defensively and play more defensively vs having a Resto druid and Hpally with the Resto druid covering raid healing and the Hpally bombing tanks.

You can say "well make your priest play better" or something along those lines, but its the situations we have to deal with and ,as tanks, adapt to.

[Bryce]

ALL my healers like to raid heal over tank heal, so guess that makes me not play as aggressively. Our rdruid and rshammy heal tanks more in my raids, at least myself -_-.

[Vasilisa]

Not to be crass, but I'm quite sure you guys should be pulling much higher numbers.

You (Vasilissa) actually have a higher Ilvl than me.. i have 557, you have 559. Yet i do more than double your dps on your mixed alt/main run garrosh kills. What's goin on man?

I run it with a alt tank, but its geared enough for me to not hog vengeance. I used RJW on our first 2 kills, and it ended up somewhere around 320k dps. Mostly because my raiders like to whore on p1 as much as i like to, so no one gets anything. This week i did garrosh with Xuen and pulled 365k.. i dont know what to tell you, its rly not hard as BrM.

Unless you have to purify like crazy, the damage should indeed be there. Use Xuen the first time when you pull the boss (if you really want to pump out numbers, do it when you have mobs up + Rally from the boss + boss on you + FB/CDs). Just use Xuen on CD unless youre going to a intermission realm soon. If you can have him up for the final phase even better.

Other than that, there is nothing in the fight that will detriment your dps a whole load. If you dont take RJW, take SCK Glyph, so you can Nitro Boost + SCK in some of the intermissions (it builds good aggro/damage and doesnt slow them). Save your Zen Med for Intermission phases, so once your vengeance drops low, you can sit in a smash with Zen Med to go back to 250k vengeance. Hell, if you have the buff that reduces dmg, you can do the same with a Guard and it wont kill you. Save your DM for Whirling Corruptions. Even if you dont have a DM, the whirl wont kill you, save up a bit of energy so once you get to 35% you can top up in 2 GCDs. Tank the boss to 4 stacks otherwise youll hit DRs (if you want to really go at it, you can make it so one tank takes 4 the other takes 3, your call, both methods dont incur the DR). As for mini adds, you want to kill the stuff that spawns at your feet instantly, because rest assured, more will come towards you. When you make a tank switch, make sure you put a statue on your cotank, taunt everything off him, and then he cant taunt garrosh.

Quite a simple fight, just high on numbers, but that shouldnt be an issue with your Ilvl.

The what's going is my question here I might be purifying too much but I don't think that'd save the whole 'problem'. I'm pretty sure that RJW would pump up the numbers in total, but what I need is to pull more on Garrosh, not neccessary on adds in p1 :P Well, I'll try to play more agressively.

[Zonex]

In 10mans, you cant expect any healer to majorly favor a tank/ tanks. Yes you might have it so one focuses more on tank and one more on raid, but mostly, a tank prio is not that much higher than a raider's.

Just as the best healers learn tank mechanic timers and prepare heals accordingly, so should tanks aiming for max efficiency/optimization. There are often times where you just cant be.. "its not my fault, i played fine, i didnt get a heal..". Those come quite often when healers are stretched thin, but as tanks, you HAVE to know every raid CD availability and use them accordingly. In my raid group i have a MW and a Holy Pala and a Prot Pala cotank. I use more vengeance than my cotank, so as such i use the majority of CDs, when shit gets rough, he uses them as they see fit. My point? Well, i'll start a new paragraph for my point cuz im weird.

You have to see when your healers are strentched. Garrosh for example, when desecrate is about to happen and the raid proceeds to spread to bait it, that means you effectively have very little heals on you other than HoTs and holy shocks, you either pop a minor CD (EB/ EH pool/ Guard) or you call for an early tank switch. Many cooldowns are used very liberally, I've gotten to the point that the only CD used with knee jerk reaction is a LC, and more often than not, its about at the same time i pop Guard (my MW puts up cocoon, i put up a 500k + guard, and im a god for a few seconds). Everything else really isnt used unless called for, because rest assured I will call for them. If you have a Holy Pala, you have the huge advantage of having the awesome ability that is called Illuminated Healing by your side. This makes pala overhealing, increase your Effective Health. When I know I'm about to come into my damage, and i dont have decent CDs for it but not enough to warrant external CDs, I just ask my Holy Pala to spam Divine Lights on for for a few seconds. This not only takes care of spikes, it also increases your effective HP by a lot. When I call for this, the other healers know to focus a bit more on raid healing (i.e. the MW can SM -> Surging Mist a target without worry that he'll waste a holy shock coming to it a fraction of a second later). On 3 heal fights we use Disc, and I must tell you, a Disc is the god amongst tank healers. As any tank will tell you, overall damage isnt what kills you, its spikes in damage, and a disc can increase your effective health by about 15% on demand. For fights like Iron Juggernaut, the spike from flame vents means nothing in the face of properly using a Disc priest, spikes from bombs can then be handled by a plethora of CDs. One last thing, as a Holy Pala, they will most often take Clemency or Unbreakable Spirit, do NOT underestimate Hand of Purity, its often very powerful on fights where you will take huge chunks of damage with how your stagger works. Instead of just a 10% reduction, it also reduces 70% of a few stagger ticks that follow it. This is especially great when you are tanking fast and heavy hitting stuff. Since you are given more time for Purifier to kick in and thus not expend chi. Its both a defensive and an offensive CD all in one. Use it as you like.

What Im trying to say is, yes you have to get used to your healers, but the aggressiveness of your play should not be hindered nearly as much as some people are thinking. Sometimes you have to nudge your healers in the right direction.

[Deleted]

I played a bit differently on Thursday at least in my talent choices. I took diffuse magic for whirls and used xuen instead of RJW.

I like Xuen because I didn't want to be feeling like I'm whoring DPS phase 1 and because we push hate the small sha add phase and we push Garrosh to phase 3 with only 1 empowered whirling corruption.

My not so perfect shuffle uptime (like 85% on our longest try) is because mainly during visions (shirines) I'm focusing on dps / aoe instead of survival.

I understand you, started tanking in 5.3 and I had similar shuffle uptimes on primordius hc. I felt that it was too hard to build a nice shuffle lead with all the movement and while trying to AoE adds and get buffs while tanking the big add at the same time. I gave myself the excuse that it wouldn't matter if I let shuffle drop after killing the add and before picking up boss. But the truth is someone called me out on it and with a lot of practice I realised that if you do your rotation correctly there is no case in which shuffle will ever drop (unless you're using BoF, but you probably shouldn't). Because BoK is also our most damaging move, the fact that you don't have 100% shuffle also tells me that that you're not using it enough. Maybe because you don't Keg Smash exactly on CD, or maybe you're not always attacking something (even in intermission phases you should always attack something - just don't keg smash the lots of small adds in that temple because you don't want to slow them while running to the end). Or maybe you're purifying just a little too much, or you waste energy while energy capped, or you wasted some Chi while Chi capped etc. I think it's somewhat of a combination of the above. The good news is that from in your last try you had higher shuffle (85%) while using SCK which makes it harder, so you're definitely improving.

As for Xuen, mine did like 6 mln less then yours. Could you tell me at what moment you use yours?

I started on boss to get the high vengeance (I agreed with my co-tank that it's better this way). When adds come we both kind of pick them up and then he taunts boss of me, that's when I use Xuen for the first time (adds will end up on me anyway). Besides that I use him on CD as long as I know he's damage won't get wasted and I will have high vengeance.

I've noticed that with RJW we do shirines faster then when I had xuen talented. Not sure though if the difference is huge enough to make it worth as xuen take a nice chunk of Garrosh hp.

I barely have time to dps in shrines, I may use RJW 3 times in total in each shrine before all adds are dead. But maybe we just have better AoE dps.

Good luck on your next raid, hopefully you'll get the kill.

And by the way, are you maybe Greek?

- - - Updated - - -

Not to be crass, but I'm quite sure you guys should be pulling much higher numbers.

You are right. I blame my old weapon and lack of trinkets. It's so bad I had to use the terrible Juggernaut trinket /ashamed
But I am definitely striving for higher numbers this week.

Save your Zen Med for Intermission phases, so once your vengeance drops low, you can sit in a smash with Zen Med to go back to 250k vengeance. Hell, if you have the buff that reduces dmg, you can do the same with a Guard and it wont kill you.

Didn't they say that they'll reduce the vengeance tanks gain from standing in avoidable AoE effects in 5.4? Now I know it works I'm definitely doing it, but just curious.

[Vasilisa]

I'll try to use the cds on smashes to get more vengeance. And as said - I'll try more agressive playstyle. Guess I'm just too centered about my survival and not enough about my dps.

And I'm not Greek But I really like this name

[siccora]

funny fact. i tank adds, not pulling garrosh. aggro the adds via statue taunt and flying beer. pulling them to me, garrosh tank (dk) gets the add aggro. i'm taking over garrosh. in that time my dps is 80-90? after a few seconds the next add wave arrives, i aggro them, dk takes the boss, i take adds away to the weel. next add wave tanking by me. my vengeance is very very low the complete phase 1. so no dps. at the end phase 3, i'm kiting the adds while dk is tanking garrosh. again, no vengeance, no dps.

it is all a matter of strat and raid comp how you are pulling the numbers.

[Deleted]

funny fact. i tank adds, not pulling garrosh. aggro the adds via statue taunt and flying beer. pulling them to me, garrosh tank (dk) gets the add aggro. i'm taking over garrosh. in that time my dps is 80-90? after a few seconds the next add wave arrives, i aggro them, dk takes the boss, i take adds away to the weel. next add wave tanking by me. my vengeance is very very low the complete phase 1. so no dps. at the end phase 3, i'm kiting the adds while dk is tanking garrosh. again, no vengeance, no dps.

it is all a matter of strat and raid comp how you are pulling the numbers.

Totally agree on that one ... As long as your raid (10man) is not hitting enrage timers its the tanks job to minize his dmg taken. (at least in my opinion) This includes: Taking tank gem+tank cloak..

Stop overrating these logs too much ... especially because the stagger dmg you take is still counted as your dmg done !

if i compare my numbers with other high rank monks most off them are full crit, dps cloak and have more then double dmg from stagger then i do.

Also sometimes moderate stagger uptimes of about 40% ... i normally dont reach 10% even.

I think its clearly a matter of opinion but i like it the oldstyle way :P Tank --> avoid as much dmg as you possibly can

[Deleted]

Totally agree on that one ... As long as your raid (10man) is not hitting enrage timers its the tanks job to minize his dmg taken. (at least in my opinion) This includes: Taking tank gem+tank cloak..

Stop overrating these logs too much ... especially because the stagger dmg you take is still counted as your dmg done !

if i compare my numbers with other high rank monks most off them are full crit, dps cloak and have more then double dmg from stagger then i do.

Also sometimes moderate stagger uptimes of about 40% ... i normally dont reach 10% even.

I think its clearly a matter of opinion but i like it the oldstyle way :P Tank --> avoid as much dmg as you possibly can

Wrong. It shows up but does not count towards you total damage done.

And Tank damage done defintely matters outside of enrage, especially if you have mechanics which makes the fight harder if you don't beat them in time (adds on Garrosh, Shrine bosses etc). Especially if you damage scales with healing.

Taking little damage and doing a lot of damage are not mutually exclusive by any means, not taking damage is really not hard and you shouldn't be doing the one or the other. Especially as monk you won't be sacrificing survivability for dps a lot of the time so why even bother splitting up the two areas when it only really matters when discussing stat weights?.

[Deleted]

Totally agree on that one ... As long as your raid (10man) is not hitting enrage timers its the tanks job to minize his dmg taken. (at least in my opinion) This includes: Taking tank gem+tank cloak..

Stop overrating these logs too much ... especially because the stagger dmg you take is still counted as your dmg done !

if i compare my numbers with other high rank monks most off them are full crit, dps cloak and have more then double dmg from stagger then i do.

Also sometimes moderate stagger uptimes of about 40% ... i normally dont reach 10% even.

I think its clearly a matter of opinion but i like it the oldstyle way :P Tank --> avoid as much dmg as you possibly can

More DPS = killing the boss faster = boss deals less damage (to the whole raid) + smaller chance of someone screwing up

Even more important for killing adds (especially stuff like Norushen trial)

So more DPS is also a way of mitigating damage taken even if you don't hit the enrage timer, it's not as clear cut as you present it.

[Deleted]

Glyph of guard is worth on Juggernaut HM ?

[Alethebeer]

Hi i am a casual normal/flex raider. This is my armory LINK. I'm running with a full crit build (personal cap of haste around 5000, hit 2550, exp 5100). I don't know what to do with my chest, gloves and weapons. Should have i to gem them with 320 crit gems and lose the socket bonus? Thanks in advance.

[Deleted]

Hi i am a casual normal/flex raider. This is my armory LINK. I'm running with a full crit build (personal cap of haste around 5000, hit 2550, exp 5100). I don't know what to do with my chest, gloves and weapons. Should have i to gem them with 320 crit gems and lose the socket bonus? Thanks in advance.

Ideally you'd want to fill red sockets with expertise+crit gems, as long as you can reforge away from expertise on your gear. I'm not 100% sure because I don't speak spanish, but I think you can do that at least for some gems.

If you want to be fully optimized, askmrrobot is a nice option. Here are the stat weights I use (note that they're not fully theorycrafted, I just experimented a bit until the results made sense):
Agility: 1.2
Expertise/Hit (to cap): 0.85
Haste (to 5500): 0.8
Crit: 0.7
Mastery: 0.69
Armor: 0.65
Haste (after 5500): 0.51
Stamina: 0.5
Parry: 0.47
Dodge: 0.46
Attack Power: 0.3

Essentially I just took the default crit build and mostly tweaked the priorities without paying too much attention to actual numbers. Dodge, Parry and Haste after soft cap could be much lower, attack power could be a bit higher.

[Wreckage827]

Glyph of guard is worth on Juggernaut HM ?

No, most of the damage is physical so it would be useless.

[Zonex]

Higher DPS on Garrosh means reaching p3 with only 2 intermissions instead of 1, or 1 instead of 2. DPS means lesser waves of adds in the first phase. More DPS in the intermission means more time on the boss. More DPS = more room to strategize around timers. It's much easier to tell a raid to hold back dps so something happens, than to tell them to push their numbers like crazy hoping it doesnt.

[Radio]

In regards to garrosh DPS, I definitely feel like using Xuen next week, I used RJW for our first kill but looking back at our logs I only used it for P1 and ToES/Jade intermission phases. I believe that our primary weakness on that fight is single target DPS rather than AoE DPS so I'm probably going to use it as such:

- P1 as soon as I pick up the adds (I don't tank Garrosh directly and our officers are being stubborn about not letting me use taunt swaps for vengeance).
- As soon as I get taunt in first P2 following intermission 1.
- Either save for p3 or use after 2nd intermission depending on speed of kill, if I will not be able to use it fully in P3 then I won't be using the 2nd one in p2.