The Tigereye Brew issue and solution

[Moozhe]

When Blizzard implements new abilities they try not to just use a standard formula for how they should work. Different is fun and interesting. It is for that reason that we have DPS cooldowns like Invoke Xuen and Tigereye Brew. They are not just a boring "x% damage increased for y seconds on a z minute cooldown". They're unique.

In the case of Tigereye Brew there a couple major flaws in the design. The first is the fact that we start at 0 stacks so our damage is generally poorer in shorter fights and better in longer fights. The second flaw is the fact that we never build stacks if we aren't actively spending chi.

1. Starting at 0 stacks.

In PVE it is possible to workaround this by building stacks before the pull and using Tigereye Brew with your prepot. This is a hellish and annoying thing to do and is not intended. Assuming they fix this at some point that still leaves a disparity between our class where we have about 1 minute of "dead space" where we don't benefit from this cooldown.

In a 2 minute long fight we only get about 1 minute worth of our buff. But in a 10 minute fight we get about 9 minutes worth of our buff. So in the longest encounters Tigereye Brew can up to double the overall uptime compared to the shortest encounters. We are lucky this tier that there aren't many short encounters, but that's not something we can always expect in the future.

The other area this is a problem is in PVP. Most arena matches are determined in the first minute or so when both teams pop all their cooldowns and someone gets gibbed. We are useless in this area since we won't be able to pop our CD for the first minute at a reasonable stack count.

2. Relying on spending chi to build stacks.

Most DPS buffs work on a fixed cooldown. You can use them every x number of seconds no matter what.

This means in PVP it doesn't matter how much you get CC'd, kited, or whether you yourself need to kite to survive. Your cooldown will be up at the same time. In PVE this means that if there are times where you have to stop DPS, movement phases, etc., your cooldowns continue to count down while you are indisposed.

Tigereye Brew requires that we be actively generating and spending chi in order to use it. Any time we have downtime it hurts us.

Solution?

I am not against this mechanic. It's fun. But I also think there should be some practical adjustment. I am not against keeping the 2nd flaw of Tigereye Brew, the part about requiring uptime on your target to build stacks. This will lead to strategy in PVP ("rotate CCs on the monk so he can't build stacks") and most PVE doesn't really have downtime anyway.

To fix the 1st flaw, my idea is to have a 5-min cooldown which automatically grants us stacks on demand. This would need to accompany a fix to correctly clear both the Tigereye Brew stacks and the actual buff when pulling a raid boss, otherwise people would continue to build stacks before a pull and would simply use this ability after the first Tigereye Brew wears off to chain them back to back.

The Perfect Brew
Instant
5 Minute Cooldown
Concoct a batch of your finest brew instantly.

Windwalker
Gain 10 stacks of Tigereye Brew.

Brewmaster
Gain 15 stacks of Elusive Brew.

Mistweaver
Gain 10 stacks of Mana Tea.

This could also be used in arena to perform burst damage right out of the gate. And it would remove our penalty for short fights in PVP.

The only balancing issue I can see with it is that it could be used to stack 4 Tigereye Brews back to back. Currently it is intended that we can stack 2 Tigereye Brews back to back, and by the time they finish we have at least 5-7 stacks (depending on haste) toward another 10-stack. Already this is kind of extreme, so being able to add an extra 10-stack would lead to some issues. Perhaps make it so that using Tigereye Brew puts a "shared cooldown" on this ability so that you can't use The Perfect Brew within 1 minute of using Tigereye Brew. Similar to how on-use trinkets have a shared cooldown so you can't pop them at the same time but you can still pop them on cooldown, you just have to stagger them and alternate.

I think Blizzard already recognizes this as a problem which is probably why they tried having Tigereye Brew gain a stack from only 2 chi. This lets us pop it sooner in arena (instead of not at all in some cases), but as we saw it led to horrible uptime issues especially in PVE. You can't have your burst ability with a >50% uptime. I think this is a better solution.

[Romeo300]

Good idea, I still like the idea of gaining stacks out of combat like a locks soul shards.

[Deleted]

Good idea, I still like the idea of gaining stacks out of combat like a locks soul shards.

Soul shard are regenerated out of combat. We could have a similar mechanic by allowing us to regen tigereye brew stacks while not in combat.
OT: I really like your idea. I think you should post it on the official forums.

[PlatedPriest]

omg that sounds amazing.

[Callimonk]

Adding a CD that'll instantly give stacks has been discussed before (just not in as well-laid out of a topic as this) - and honestly? Seems necessary. You can tell the damage disparity when a monk is given the time to build stacks vs. when he (or she) isn't given enough time to build stacks - it shows.

And, yah - I figured the faster stacking (though it's up to 3 stacks now) was an attempt to "fix" the mechanic, which means yah we can use it right off the bat. But then you look at warriors - I can get instagibbed vs. a warrior and any other class with a stun because they can stunlock me long enough to kill me (or at least get me to very low health).

And I agree, too, that this sucks in PvE. Unless you're popping it at 5-6 stacks, which can be a waste for most encounters (if I recall, my Patchwerk data shows that using it at around 6 or more stacks isn't as much of a loss as saving 10 stacks or using it when another CD is up), you're really going to hurt.

Very well-worded, and succinct post.

[Schaden]

You can tell the damage disparity when a monk is given the time to build stacks vs. when he (or she) isn't given enough time to build stacks - it shows.

And when you're competing for a raid spot and your raid lead sees everyone hitting 100k+ dps at the pull with all CDs and lust blazing and you're still building up stacks, it leaves a bad impression. And the shorter and shorter fights get with better gear, the less and less time we have to make up the disparity. While being the Mighty Glacier of the dps classes is fun and unique (and its satisfying to watch yourself creep up the dps ranks over the duration of the fight), its unwieldy in short term fights, or fights with phases that require you to pool your TeB stacks for burst, thus costing you dps over all. Blizzard is also fond of the "ramp up" mechanic and doesn't seem to be willing to give us an insta-10 stack button because that would make the ramp up pointless.

[Deleted]

To fix the 1st flaw, my idea is to have a 5-min cooldown which automatically grants us stacks on demand. This would need to accompany a fix to correctly clear both the Tigereye Brew stacks and the actual buff when pulling a raid boss, otherwise people would continue to build stacks before a pull and would simply use this ability after the first Tigereye Brew wears off to chain them back to back.

good idea

the worst part of stacking right before the fight begins - my f*cking weaponenchants always proc!!! and because of this, they wont proc at the time we pull the boss, wastes 3300agi during first burstphase.

[Deleted]

Post this on the Blizzard forums. This is VERY good idea.

[keithioapc]

I play PvE, and I agree building stacks and "prepotting" tigereye is a pain in the arse. The easy fix would be to make it so that we lose the buff on combat, but that wouldn't address the issue of our lack of opening burst.

I don't think your solution really solves the problem though. I see myself wiping, and using it to gain 10 stacks. I still have to build 10 more stacks (max is 20 in 5.2), plus now I'll be all like "Oh gee guys, wait 5 more minutes for this CD I use prepull to be back up again" to maximize my dps.

The solution is to:

1) Raise it to granting 20 stacks
2) Make it a long cast time. Say 10 seconds. Or, make it unusable in combat. That way it doesn't matter that you blew it prepull, since you won't be using it in combat.

But I think simply having the stacks regen at a rate of say 1 every 2 seconds while out of combat is the better solution.

[Moozhe]

I play PvE, and I agree building stacks and "prepotting" tigereye is a pain in the arse. The easy fix would be to make it so that we lose the buff on combat, but that wouldn't address the issue of our lack of opening burst.

I don't think your solution really solves the problem though. I see myself wiping, and using it to gain 10 stacks. I still have to build 10 more stacks (max is 20 in 5.2), plus now I'll be all like "Oh gee guys, wait 5 more minutes for this CD I use prepull to be back up again" to maximize my dps.

The solution is to:

1) Raise it to granting 20 stacks
2) Make it a long cast time. Say 10 seconds. Or, make it unusable in combat. That way it doesn't matter that you blew it prepull, since you won't be using it in combat.

But I think simply having the stacks regen at a rate of say 1 every 2 seconds while out of combat is the better solution.

In raids now most DPS CDs reset when you wipe on a boss. It's to reduce downtime between pulls.