Should I macro Elusive Brew into other abilities?

[Grubjuice]

Would it be appropriate to macro Elusive Brew into any of my abilities to increase uptime and reduce the amount of mental effort devoted to actively monitoring it?

Currently i have Weak Auras set to sparkle and jump and ping whenever i have >9 stacks of Elusive Brew, and the ability itself is bound to action button 5 together with purifying brew in a [mod] x; y macro:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod] Purifying Brew; Elusive Brew

But i was thinking that if i macro'd Elusive Brew into Keg Smash or Chi Wave, it would get pressed more often since as i feel that i am not really using it often enough (it's hard for me to remember to press it when i am at <9 stacks).

I was thinking of rewriting either my button 2 macro (Chi Wave and Tiger Palm) to this:

#showtooltip
/targetenemy [noexist][dead][help]
/startattack
/cast [mod, @player] Chi Wave; Tiger Palm
/cast [combat, mod] Elusive Brew

or my button 4 macro (KS and BoF) to this:

#showtooltip
/targetenemy [noexist][dead][help]
/startattack
/castsequence [nomod] reset=6 Keg Smash, Breath of Fire; Breath of Fire
/cast [combat] Elusive Brew

[Deleted]

Generally speaking, macroing key abilities to others is always a bad idea and to be brutally honest it's just lazy. Will your uptime be improved on the logs if you do it, yes ofc, but uptime when you are not tanking is uptime completely wasted. There are plenty of fights that have tank switches or periods of no damage, being able to pool elusive brew to 15 stacks in preparation for when you pick a mob up can lead periods of 20+ seconds under EB which is massive, you wont get this happening if you surrender control to a macro.

One of the key things that seperates a good Brewmaster from a poor one is the ability to micro manage your cooldowns to reduce the times you are left exposed to big spikes, you simply cannot do that if you macro things like EB and Guard even if over all uptime goes up.

Ultimately it's up to you, if you are tanking normal modes in a relatively relaxed guild that isn't really pushing hard progression, then you will probably get away with it, but if you want to really push your char and get the most out of it then you need to just get used to using it well (I suspect you are the later as having gone to the effort to track EB stacks in the first place, would be pointless if you macro it).

[arisoh]

Flexibility and adaptability are key to being a good tank imo. Macroing stuff together takes that out.

Only time I'd macro abilities together is when I'm on my dps toon.

[Grubjuice]

thanks for the feedback.

[SurrealNight]

While you "can" macro it in I wouldn't recommend it. Using it at 1-3 stacks is kind of a waste if it isn't going to cover at least 2 boss swings. I like to build up at least 6+ stacks before using it as I treat EB as sort of a short term CD. That way I have extra coverage during high tank damage phases (Feng w/ Draw Flames as example).

I have a WA setup to warn me if it gets to 9+ stacks just so I'm not wasting stacks by letting it cap.

[The Madgod]

The only thing I have macroed to anything else is my on haste trinket, since haste is a terrible stat for "Oh shit!" cooldowns.

Keep it unmacroed... Simplicity is not necessarily better.

For example, if you had it macroed to something on Will of the Emperor, where there's times when the boss doesn't actually do damage you can dodge (talking stat-wise here, not spatial-wise, which you CAN dodge), then you're going to end up taking much more damage than someone who saves his EB till right after the dance when the boss resumes normal attacks.