Why are there no brewmasters in the top guilds right now o.o

[Bryce]

I was looking at a few top guilds and none of them are using brewmasters. I'm just curious about that. Were they wanting to stick with tank classes that were well theorycrafted for the race or did they just not think brewmasters were where they need to be for this type of race? Just a curious question, that's all.

[dokilar]

kind of reminds me of the old saying "if it aint broke, dont fix it"

im sure there were theorycrafters and later on in the expansion youll see some brewmasters pop up, but if a hardcore progression type guild wants a shot at world first id assume that all of their players are playing whatever toon they 1) feel the most comfortable/knowledgeable with 2) have the best gear set up and 3) just overall give them the best oppurtunity to succeed.

just my opinion however. back in BC when we were raiding (although we didnt have a new class so it was a tad different) if we were raiding current content we normally didnt bring along alts, we brought whatever gave us the best shot at killing the bosses. i would theorize that if we were still playing this would be the case still today. we always had a dedicated tank/healer set up. we had played together since vanilla WoW so to tweak with that synergy we had by throwing in a new class would be somewhat undesirable

tldr - wait for people to get comfortable with the class and i think youll start seeing more of them

[Harmzuay]

I was trying to remember if Ensidia (then called TwentyfifthNovember) used any DK's when they cleared Naxx and Malygos. I don't think they did. Stands to reason that you'd wanna go with what you know for the first tier, especially since you don't have to level as much and can spend more time grinding for gear.

[Freia]

I was trying to remember if Ensidia (then called TwentyfifthNovember) used any DK's when they cleared Naxx and Malygos. I don't think they did. Stands to reason that you'd wanna go with what you know for the first tier, especially since you don't have to level as much and can spend more time grinding for gear.

That isn't really a factor this tier. Blizzard made leveling monks easy as hell with RaF and the XP bonus quests. Did you not notice that there are monk healers in the guilds racing for world firsts?

[Gurushock]

Midwinter is the top US alliance guild, also top 14 world. They use a Monk tank for every fight, and they don't have it any other way! :P

[Deleted]

That isn't really a factor this tier. Blizzard made leveling monks easy as hell with RaF and the XP bonus quests. Did you not notice that there are monk healers in the guilds racing for world firsts?

Getting used to healing AS a monk isn't the same as having all your healers used to the damage pattern a new style of tank takes.

[Harmzuay]

That isn't really a factor this tier. Blizzard made leveling monks easy as hell with RaF and the XP bonus quests. Did you not notice that there are monk healers in the guilds racing for world firsts?

Getting used to healing AS a monk isn't the same as having all your healers used to the damage pattern a new style of tank takes.

Yeah, I noticed. It's still not an apt comparison as Yakobo points out. Lack of Brewmasters in the world first race isn't necessarily a commentary on their performance. A lot of guys who tank at that level already have 4 tanks in their stable anyway, so going through the trouble to add one more on top of preparing for world firsts just seems counterproductive to me.

[Deleted]

When you're undergeared bringing an avoidance based tank to the fray isn't such a brilliant idea either.

[initialt]

Midwinter is the top US alliance guild, also top 14 world. They use a Monk tank for every fight, and they don't have it any other way! :P

Yea, Brotherbrian of Midwinter. I've been following him for quite so time. The most interesting thing is that he appears to disagree somewhat with the generally accepted stat priority for brewmasters. He gears for mastery.

A quote from him on wow forums: "I'm not sure why you totally discount mastery; as far as I'm concerned it is the most effective way at both mitigating damage and increasing your worst case time to death. I consider it the most potent stat for progression tanking."

If you armory him, you'll notice he gems quite a few 320 mastery gems.

[Gallahadd]

Ini that's because while Mastery decreases... we'll call it your 'gib chance' and is therefore great for progression, especially while undergeared, if I'm not terribly mistaken Haste/Crit WILL give you less damage taken overall, in the longrun.

It was the same at the start of Cata, when everyone was trying to get their CTC as high as possible, the 'world first' racers, were all stacking Stamina. This is because although they knew that getting full CTC would result in less damage taken overall, Stamina provided a better buffed for attempting those tricky Hard Modes.

[Obamatheone]

Ini that's because while Mastery decreases... we'll call it your 'gib chance' and is therefore great for progression, especially while undergeared, if I'm not terribly mistaken Haste/Crit WILL give you less damage taken overall, in the longrun.

This is exactly right and this is why you won't see any brewmasters there.

Brewmasters stack mastery to give EH, but our best means to mitigate is through dps stats.
Its like trying to use a car to haul manure. It will work, but it won't be ideal.

PS: To the people saying its due to playtime or gearing or something...That is absurd. The beta was out for months and most if not all the end game guilds were there testing things out. You don't see any BrM, because there was no benefit to use them for progression raiding. You can be damn certain that if there were, see mistweavers for an example, then they would have made them and used them.

[Deleted]

Stamina and mastery fill a very similar role for Brewmasters, although stamina affects magic and bleeds as well. You want enough of them to be comfortable with the content you're doing, but after that other stats are more useful. It just happens to be that the comfortable level is much higher for some content than others.

[cyqu]

Yea, Brotherbrian of Midwinter. I've been following him for quite so time. The most interesting thing is that he appears to disagree somewhat with the generally accepted stat priority for brewmasters. He gears for mastery.

A quote from him on wow forums: "I'm not sure why you totally discount mastery; as far as I'm concerned it is the most effective way at both mitigating damage and increasing your worst case time to death. I consider it the most potent stat for progression tanking."

If you armory him, you'll notice he gems quite a few 320 mastery gems.

as do almost all top end brewmasters, i switch out between haste/mastery builds per fight. like in MSV progression i would gear mastery for heroic will, and haste for like heroic feng
those are just some examples but, im sure if you asked any other brewmaster in a top 100 guild most of them would say the same. as the posters above said its just about getting the EH in hopes of not getting gibbed as easy.

[Obamatheone]

If it is any consolation, there is a "No rogues in the World First soandso kill". So you are not the only one neglected. I believe stacking and min / maxing just happens the most at the top level and that is that.

Yah, but it is often a good indicator that something is off when your spec is never picked.
Just because it happens to other specs, doesn't really mean anything other than that they might have issues as well.

[Schaden]

Ive spoken to the healing leads and main tanks of Exodus and Vodka before, and the verdict is that Brewmasters lack the extensive toolkits that the other tanking classes do, i.e. they have very few personal cooldowns and are too reliant upon healer CDs. Also, they feel that stagger is a poor mechanic for mitigation and the fact that Brewmasters damage themselves during tanking makes them the weakest tank class by far.

Also, Mistweavers are OP and why have a crappy tank when you can have an OP healer?

[Felade]

Yah, but it is often a good indicator that something is off when your spec is never picked.

No, actually its a terrible indication. Often, at the level of top end raiders, very tiny things that only really matter when you're severely undergeared (by definition, top end guilds are clearing most of their content undergeared) tend to be brought out so you see a bit more class stacking. But for the average guild (by which, I mean world 1000-5000, maybe even 500-1000) your class just doesn't matter as much. Top end raiding is a completely different game than what the rest of us are playing.

One thing I think you'll see a lot of in top end guilds is DK tanks, thanks to their self-healing. It isn't overpowered, per se, but it does take a bit of pressure off of healers, so they can bring fewer healers overall. Fewer healers = boss kills when you're undergeared and your DPS are so far beyond skill capped it isn't even funny.

For progression, I see a lot of high end brewmasters picking up Mastery/Stam builds. You need to be able to survive big hits on progression fights. The Haste/Crit build is more about theory than reality. You need the EH to live; avoidance tanking doesn't really work for progression.

[Obamatheone]

No, actually its a terrible indication. Often, at the level of top end raiders, very tiny things that only really matter when you're severely undergeared (by definition, top end guilds are clearing most of their content undergeared) tend to be brought out so you see a bit more class stacking. But for the average guild (by which, I mean world 1000-5000, maybe even 500-1000) your class just doesn't matter as much. Top end raiding is a completely different game than what the rest of us are playing.

One thing I think you'll see a lot of in top end guilds is DK tanks, thanks to their self-healing. It isn't overpowered, per se, but it does take a bit of pressure off of healers, so they can bring fewer healers overall. Fewer healers = boss kills when you're undergeared and your DPS are so far beyond skill capped it isn't even funny.

For progression, I see a lot of high end brewmasters picking up Mastery/Stam builds. You need to be able to survive big hits on progression fights. The Haste/Crit build is more about theory than reality. You need the EH to live; avoidance tanking doesn't really work for progression.

XYZ classes are not taking into progression because they are not optimal for that encounter. Now unless there is some kind of niche on that fight, that usually means the spec in general performs less than optimally.

BrM is a good example of this. We are often very squishy, and not ideal for progression. A
And every guild progresses at their own rate, not just high end guilds are involved in progression.


I have seen this happen all the time.
A spec is completely excluded from end game progression and then performs subpar for the rest of the xpac.
However, I don't think BrM fall into this category. Its just a trend, not an absolute.

[Secrecy]

Even if we assume that Monks are as good as every other tank spec, there are only two or three tank spots in a guild, the chance of one of those deciding to reroll a Monk compared to a DPS or healer is far lower.

[Obamatheone]

Even if we assume that Monks are as good as every other tank spec, there are only two or three tank spots in a guild, the chance of one of those deciding to reroll a Monk compared to a DPS or healer is far lower.

Like I said before, if there was an edge to be had these people would do it. That's why they are called min/max'ers.

If it was just probability like you say, then there would be some out there.
There are not, for the reasons stated above. They are just not good progression tanks.

[Aleksej89]

Since both Monk's taunt and spell interrupt can miss (or be parried/dodged), i definitely don't blame the guilds for not taking monks as tanks.

This taunt/spell interrupt missing or getting parried/dodged/blocked needs to be fixed N0W........