Brewmaster: a few questions

[SurrealNight]

At earlier levels of gear you might find the resources spent in Expertise for the hard cap hurt your energy regen to much. I've tried both and personal found I'd rather have the extra resources/chi that Haste provides and just deal with the "bumps" when the come occasional from the misses.

Even as I gear up I'm thinking I'd rather put extra rating into Crit for more EB uptime than expertise. As others have said ultimately it depends on which approach makes downing bosses easier so your free to give both a shot.

[Disgruntler]

I don't trust this 7.5 stuff.

Not because 'haste gives you more changes to get chi' doesn't make sense, but because 7.5 is completely arbitrary.

Monks have absolutely no chi-generators that are dodgeable and not parryable, which means that The benefit from 7.0->7.5 is exactly the same as 7.5 -> 8.0.

That means that calling out the arbitrary soft cap is pointless--particularily as it's NOT a soft-cap for monks--it's just a number.

[SurrealNight]

That means that calling out the arbitrary soft cap is pointless--particularily as it's NOT a soft-cap for monks--it's just a number.

Yes your correct in going from any given value of hit (up to cap) and expertise (up to hard cap) provides the same relative benefit as the previous points but you have to consider a couple things.
1) Expertise > 7.5% only benefits you while actively tanking. Single tank fights this is 100% but tank swaps only about 50% since you can atk from the side and be free of parries for that time. So getting to the soft caps provides you with periods of no misses and a 7.5% parry rate the rest of the time.
2) The opportunity cost of less haste/crit/mastery vs the benefits of 15% expertise.

Both arguments on paper for the soft vs hard caps are compelling enough that I couldn't say either is the "right" way to do it. I personally hated the loss to haste when forging for the expertise hard cap but it's working for others so more power to them.

[Iracor]

I'm gonna end this entire debate one way or another right here.

With the Ascension Talent

You have 12.65 energy/sec with 0 haste.
To gain 1 energy /sec you need 3365.517 haste rating.
To gain 1% expertise you need 340.194 expertise rating.

The difference between the hard and soft expertise cap is 2551.455 expertise rating.

Let's assume an ideal situation where all of that expertise rating can instead be spent on haste rating:

You will gain 0.758 energy/sec by foregoing the hard cap and only hitting the soft-cap.
As a result, you will have 7.5% of your jabs/keg smashes parried.

A parried jab is simple to model, you simply lose out on 8 energy.

In a 6 minute fight w/ baseline regen

You will gain 4554 energy over the entire fight.
If you have perfect usage of keg smash on cooldown, then you will use keg smash 45 times.
If none of these are misses/dodges/parries, you will have enough energy to use 68(.85) jabs.

7.5% of those 68 jabs is 5.1. So 5.1 jabs will miss resulting in a net loss of 40.8 energy over a 6 minute fight.

Now, keg smash is a bit more difficult to model. Let's look at how a keg smash works. It is essentially a jab with a free chi generated.

So a parried keg smash results in a net loss of 1 chi and 8 energy.

So if keg smash is used 45 times, 3.375 of them will be parried. So 27 energy will be lost as well as 3.375 chi.
To gain that chi back, you will need to jab which means that each chi is essentially worth 40 energy.
Which means the normalized loss of energy from keg smash is 162.

This means that in a 6 minute fight with only the soft expertise cap, you will lose out on 202.8 energy from parried attacks.

But, with the extra energy regen from haste you will gain 272.88 energy.

In a 6 minute fight w/ 3000 haste rating

Bonus energy regen = 0.8913
Total energy = 4874.9

You would still have 45 keg smashes. (1800 energy)
This leaves you with enough energy for 76.8725 jabs.

Energy lost from jabs = 46.1235
Energy lost from keg smashes = 162

Total energy lost = 208.1235

Now, there does exist a haste value at which hitting the hard expertise cap will be more beneficial.

To find this value, we take the total energy you gain from the bonus haste that wasn't spent on hitting the hard expertise cap (272.88) and subtract the energy loss from keg smashes as that value is independent of haste as well as the number of jabs total (J) times 0.075 (the amount of them that will be parried) time 8 (the amount of energy lost) and set that equal to zero (the breakpoint at which expertise becomes more useful than additional haste)

272.88 - 162 - 0.075*8*J = 0
110.88 = 0.6*J
J = 184.8

You need to perform 184.8 jabs in a 6 minute fight. This will cost 7392 energy. Add on to that the 1800 energy for keg smashes and you get 9192.

To obtain this much energy in a 6 minute fight you would need 9192/360 = 25.533 energy/sec.

To obtain that much energy regen, you would need 43359.077 haste rating.

As this value is not reasonable anytime soon, not going for the hard cap will be more beneficial than wasting stats on expertise.

It's also worth noting, that as hit behaves the same way as expertise past the soft cap in that 1% less misses is equivalent to 1% less parries, haste is also more beneficial than hit.

I might come back and work out whether haste is better than expertise up to the soft cap as well, but just from and quick glance I'd assume expertise will come out ahead simply because the values of energy lost were fairly close (~200 vs ~270) and expertise is worth twice as much under the soft-cap.

TL;DR

Haste is better than the hard expertise cap as well as hit.

[The Madgod]

TL;DR

Haste is better than the hard expertise cap as well as hit.

You do realize that you simply mathed out what I've been saying all this time, right? And even then your math doesn't outright mean that expertise past 7.5% is wasted.

I might come back and work out whether haste is better than expertise up to the soft cap as well, but just from and quick glance I'd assume expertise will come out ahead simply because the values of energy lost were fairly close (~200 vs ~270) and expertise is worth twice as much under the soft-cap.

Expertise carries the same value before and after the soft cap now, since parry is no longer reduced until you hit 7.5% expertise. Arguably it has slightly higher value, but the reason why isn't a factor when looking at energy. In terms of energy, it's basically a linear progression until 15%.

[Tharax]

That was a very logical and well-written post, Iracor - thank you.

A lot of Brewmaster debate is centered on haste vs. expertise, but I feel like that question is relatively settled of late. A more pressing question for me is, what is the value of agility compared to haste? Basically, should we gem for agi instead of haste?

[The Madgod]

That was a very logical and well-written post, Iracor - thank you.

A lot of Brewmaster debate is centered on haste vs. expertise, but I feel like that question is relatively settled of late. A more pressing question for me is, what is the value of agility compared to haste? Basically, should we gem for agi instead of haste?

Now THAT question is even more settled :P

According to basically every spreadsheet on the internet, agility is worth more than haste, but it is not worth DOUBLE that of haste, which means you should mainly be gemming for secondary stats and only going into agi if it's a non-yellow socket with a very nice (60+ agi) socket bonus, and even then, only with hybrid gems, not pure agi.

[Ivalen]

Now, keg smash is a bit more difficult to model. Let's look at how a keg smash works. It is essentially a jab with a free chi generated.

So a parried keg smash results in a net loss of 1 chi and 8 energy.

That's where the argument breaks - trying to normalize abilities, such as KS, to Jab. KS is more than a jab with a free chi. We lose more: the debuff, plus it goes on cooldown.

So on paper you can rationalize all you want, but as an active tank facing a raid boss, the last thing you want is the RNG in control of your mitigation.

Get your 7.5% expertise, and your other caps, then continue on to 15%. Simple.

Too much math and you'll talk yourself out of anything.

[Herschel]

That's where the argument breaks - trying to normalize abilities, such as KS, to Jab. KS is more than a jab with a free chi. We lose more: the debuff, plus it goes on cooldown.

The debuff lasts thirty seconds. That is a lot of parried keg smashes in a row!

RNG doesn't really "control" the rotation at 7.5% expertise. Keg smash parries are rare, and streaks of keg smash parries are even more rare, on the order of winning the lottery or getting hit by lightning. In practice you get the occasional parried keg smash or jab, resulting in a minor loss of chi or energy. That's not great, but since you were being a smart Brewmaster and weren't spending all of your chi, you should have a couple chi in the "bank" as it were, and the parry really shouldn't pose a problem. It's not like a parry here and there should result in you letting shuffle drop off. Should it? Especially since putting that extra 2550 stat points into haste rather than expertise will give you more chi overall, therefore, more chi to keep in the bank in case bad stuff happens.

And if you truly are afraid of those dreaded four keg smash parries in a row, well, the odds of that are 0.075^4, which is about 0.003%, which is 1 in 31605. So I guess it can happen...?

Sure, 15% expertise makes the rotation more consistent, technically, but let's not overstate how much that consistency gives you. There is at least one other good thing about hard cap expertise, which is that it does great things for tank damage, which is actually somewhat important these days (especially in 10 man). But the need for that depends on your raid... so it isn't something that should be blanket recommended to everyone, in my opinion. It really depends.

[kaiadam]

Iracor, I find it mind-boggling that the entire premise of your argument is that more chi = better brewmaster.

There are 2 overall components to being a good tank:
1.) Surviving - more specifically, surviving the worst possible situation on any given fight, and/or any actions to increase the survivability of the raid.
2.) DPS - both your personal dps and the raid's.

1.) Surviving a boss fight isn't about running up a sim and making sure you took the overall lowest damage over the course of the fight. In fact, that has incredibly little to do with how well you survive. Let me give you an easy example: Tank with 100 hp and 0 avoidance, vs mob that hits for 20 damage each swing on a 2 sec timer = takes 10 dps. Tank with 40 hp and 50% avoidance vs the same mob = takes 5 dps. In any significant progression fight, you'll always take the first tank instead of the second despite taking double his damage over the same period of time.

Currently, tank survival is almost guaranteed if your strategy is viable and cooldowns are well planned - there isn't a single occurrence I can think of where I thought to myself "damn, I died because I just took too much damage in the last minute and healers ran oom." It's always because "stupid, used my cd too early/late", or "where was my ps/ib/sac/etc.?" or "yeah, healers were dead," or "I pulled threat by accident and healers weren't prepared to heal me" or some other variant of human error. I have tanking experience up to and including heroic sha of fear, who with his thrash/dread thrash mechanic, is probably the best tank killer we've seen in the past four tiers. I mean, it just simply doesn't happen anymore where your tank falls over and you can only conclude he took too much damage over a long period of time and there were no cooldowns remaining or could have been planned out better.

Furthermore, you don't even want more chi for tanking spikes. Extra chi at that point is only used for purifying brew, and while reducing the stagger dot on you helps, dot damage is incredibly easy to heal - let me give you an example: in phase 2, sha debuffs and stuns ~7 people (some of who could be healers) and deals 1.1 million damage to these people over 9 seconds. And your 4-5 healers are expected to heal through this, along with tank damage, at the same time with no guaranteed cooldowns. And you know what? It's healable. Not easy, but it's healable. I try to purify when I hit 45k/sec stagger and that's basically *half* of what these 7 people are taking damage for, on top of the tank, and it's all within the capabilities of 2 healers to top them off.

If you are dying, it's because you took multiple unavoided melee swings to the face. The only stat brewmasters have to help with that is mastery, which I don't recommend stacking unless you're pushing significantly challenging heroic content without sufficient gear, but is honestly the best survivability stat. Anyway, TLDR: more chi does not really help you survive worst case scenarios. Might make you take a bit less damage over time by a slight amount, but again, that's a statistic that's more or less irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

2.) Damage is the other main part of tanking. Tanks in their current iteration do a hugely significant part of the raid's dps. You simply deal less damage with more misses and more chi, end of story.

[Caeth]

I find 7.5% hit/exp works well for me....I won't reiterate what others have said, but a different factor to consider is that 7.5% hit/exp is what WW monks aim for. With that model as a tank, it's really easy to switch out to DPS spec when your raid needs you. You'll be at those caps already.

I won't break out numbers, but the sense that I get for BrM tanking is: haste/crit until a good level, then get mastery. They are all intertwined. You at first need haste to get your chi generation up and to get more attacks in for EB. You'll hit a point though where you're getting EB consistently (not sure when, but I'm doing pretty good with 25-30% crit and stacking haste).

You'll also hit a point where your shuffle is just up all the time. You don't need a 30 second shuffle...that extra chi can either go into something like chi wave/zen sphere for extra heals or purifying brew. Without mastery, your stagger DOT won't ever be that high enough to really warrant use of PB....NOW is when mastery becomes effective. You CAN lose that damage AND keep shuffle up while still throwing out heals if the team needs.

But I'm not at that gear level yet lol.

[Shootz]

You will never need more than 7.5% hit/expertise. NEVER. Anyone who tells you otherwise is bad.

`

[bkw]

thanks everyone, really detailed explanation by all of you guys, going haste then.

btw another 2 stupid question i couldnt figure out, with 5.1, do i have to do 3x tiger palm to get the maximum ammount of guard possible or just once?
and the other one, what talent should i take in the lvl 30 tier? should i even use those? im not haste softcapped yet

[Wreckage827]

You only need to Tiger Palm once, but you will be using Tiger Palm as filler anyways.

[Noviskers]

thanks everyone, really detailed explanation by all of you guys, going haste then.

btw another 2 stupid question i couldnt figure out, with 5.1, do i have to do 3x tiger palm to get the maximum ammount of guard possible or just once?
and the other one, what talent should i take in the lvl 30 tier? should i even use those? im not haste softcapped yet

You don't need to 3x tiger palm with 5.1 but you should use tiger palm for any open GCDs you have.

for the lvl 30 talent it is completely up to you and how you want to use it. Chi wave will give you the best single target healing but the target it chooses may not be the target you want/need it to, zen sphere doesn't provide as much single target healing as chi wave but you can control who gets all the healing from it which can be a huge plus, chi wave is for AoEs. I would recommend either chi wave or zen sphere for a tank, personally I use zen sphere since I'd rather know where my heals are going to.

Whether or not you should use them depends on the encounter. On fights with tank swaps I will throw put it up every often (especially if I have a dot left over), but on fights where I am tanking constantly (like guardians in mogu'shan) I don't use it unless the heal would be more beneficial than a shuffle reapply or purifying brew.

[The Madgod]

thanks everyone, really detailed explanation by all of you guys, going haste then.

btw another 2 stupid question i couldnt figure out, with 5.1, do i have to do 3x tiger palm to get the maximum ammount of guard possible or just once?
and the other one, what talent should i take in the lvl 30 tier? should i even use those? im not haste softcapped yet

Just one TP is needed now.

And most people go for Chi Wave for the level 30 tier.

[Deleted]

You don't need to 3x tiger palm with 5.1 but you should use tiger palm for any open GCDs you have.

for the lvl 30 talent it is completely up to you and how you want to use it. Chi wave will give you the best single target healing but the target it chooses may not be the target you want/need it to, zen sphere doesn't provide as much single target healing as chi wave but you can control who gets all the healing from it which can be a huge plus, chi wave is for AoEs. I would recommend either chi wave or zen sphere for a tank, personally I use zen sphere since I'd rather know where my heals are going to.

Whether or not you should use them depends on the encounter. On fights with tank swaps I will throw put it up every often (especially if I have a dot left over), but on fights where I am tanking constantly (like guardians in mogu'shan) I don't use it unless the heal would be more beneficial than a shuffle reapply or purifying brew.

With 5.1 they fixed chi wave to jump properly and seek out the one with lowest health, so I say definitely go with chi wave.

To simple some things down regarding the stats:

If you are unable to keep shuffle up 100% of the time and also use chi to purify stagger = get more haste.
If you are using a 2-hander you get 2 stacks of brew per crit and if you feel that they're stacking too slowly : get crit because those 30% dodge is a greater benefit than maybe 5% stagger.
If you feel that you are in a good place with both of the above = get mastery because all of these things put together makes for an awesome monk tank.

Lots of math and walls of text, while its good to back up your arguments and all... it can get very confusing for a newbie.

That's really the baseline, rest you'll learn to understand with some experience, try whatever feels right and adjust accordingly.