Feeling a Little Squishy [BrM]

[Fuzzykins]

We'll start out with my armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...%ADnz/advanced

I've basically never played tank before, but have raid leading/hardcore raiding experience.

Math I've read on this has been SO in-concise upon the 4 resources I'm using:
Noxxic, Elitist Jerks, MMO-C, and Icy-Veins.

Obviously everything isn't gemmed or enchanted, but I didn't want to spend a boatload of money on gear I'm quickly upgrading.

In any case, logs from tonight's raid:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-9rpgnwxtrh4h0b3d/

My questions:

1. My health pool seems desperatley low, but we're low HP tanks. Should I not even concern myself with stamina?
2. I'm stacking MASSIVE Shuffle uptime. Sometimes in excess of 25 seconds left on the buff. Am I not burning Chi properly?
3. I think I was in Heavy Stagger three times throughout the raid. I feel like I should be staggering a lot more. should I look into Mastery?

[Kisho]

I'm surprised. Normally whenever someone comes in saying they feel squishy as a BrM, I can look at Shuffle uptime and say 'yep, that's where you need to improve'. That isn't the case here. Interesting!

I'll start off with answering your questions, then go from there.

1. Our HP is always going to be lower than the other tanks. It's not due to our scaling, but simply because we don't use the traditional tank enchants, trinkets, gems, etc... Instead opting for agility, as it reduces our damage taken by a lot more. That said, there are some fights where a higher stamina set would be beneficial (anything with high burst damage springs to mind, or with heavy magic damage such as Lei Shi), so I'd suggest making a second set of gear with high stamina. It doesn't need to be anything too excessive though: swap in stam trinkets, use a helm with the stam meta, a couple of items gemmed/enchanted for stamina... That sort of thing. Not switching all your gear.

2. Sounds like you're doing it right. Well done on getting that much Shuffle with 2.5k haste as well. Although, that does suggest you could purify stagger a bit more... Basically there's 4 places to spend Chi: Blackout Kick, Purifying Brew, Breath of Fire, and the T30 healing talents.

Purifying Brew should only be used when necessary: as in, you're hitting Heavy Stagger, or it's a fight where you can get away with purifying Moderate stagger. This should be decided on a fight by fight basis and adapted to your personal playstyle. Only experience will tell you how many PBs you'll need.

Breath of Fire is an AoE DPS tool, nothing more. It shouldn't be used on single target and even in AoE, since it does nothing for our survivability, it may not be used. If you can squeeze it in without sacrificing Shuffle uptime (and you don't need to spend the Chi elsewhere), then go for it. Otherwise, don't bother.

T30 healing talents are useful, and if you don't need extra Shuffle then it's worth spending some Chi here. Chi Wave is the best one for tanks. But again, Shuffle uptime is the most important thing.

So yeah, if you don't need to spend it on any of the above 3... Then stacking extra Shuffle is a good idea. Then you'll have the leeway to spend extra Chi on Chi Wave or PB if needed, without sacrificing Shuffle uptime.

3. Stagger isn't something you want to aim to get! I mean, you certainly want to keep your Shuffle uptime high so you stagger more, but the simple fact is some bosses don't hit hard enough to give you that heavy stagger, especially on normal modes. If anything, if you're hitting heavy stagger on the fights you did in that WoL report, I'd say you need to Purify more.

Besides, it takes a lot of Mastery to actually see a noticeable difference. You'll sacrifice a lot of haste and crit to get there, which will overall mean you take a lot more damage. Mastery's use is in reducing burst damage taken, not damage taken overall, and on the fights in that WoL report neither of them are particular bursty. So I wouldn't worry about it.

Next up, let's look at the WoL report. I'm going to look at your Spirit Kings kill, since Gara'jal bugs WoL reports.

Shuffle uptime is great, no issues there. Guard, however... You used it 9 times in an almost 10 minute fight. Since it's on a 30 second cooldown, I'd expect double the number there (10 minutes = 600 seconds, 600/30 = 20 chances to use it, or well 18-19 since it's not actually a 10 min fight). That's an area to significantly improve on.

You also gained 96 stacks of Elusive Brew... But only have 45 seconds of uptime on the actual dodge buff. You need to use this more. You don't need to wait for 15 stacks, you can use it around the 7-10 mark and it'll work fine too (since EB has a cooldown of 9 seconds). Focus on using this a lot more and you'll find your damage taken reduce a lot, along with using Guard more.

Looking at Stagger uptimes, you hit Heavy stagger 4 times during the Spirit Kings kill, but it had an uptime of 21 seconds. Especially on normal mode, you have no excuse for letting that Heavy stagger stay. It should've been purified immediately, not left up for an average of 5 seconds per application. Use PB more!

So in short... Shuffle is great. Other methods of Active Mitigation? Not so much. Really need to improve there.

Offensive abilities... Keg Smash is on an 8 second cooldown, and you gained 114 Chi from it. 114 Chi means 57 uses of it. Over a 9:40 fight, I'd expect a maximum of 72 uses of it (580 seconds, 580/8 = 72.5, rounded down). You should be able to squeeze out a few more keg smashes here if possible. I wouldn't expect 72, but maybe 65+. Essentially just make sure you're using Keg Smash as soon as it comes off CD.

As for your armory... While there are arguments for hard capping expertise, I honestly don't suggest it whilst you're relatively undergeared. You're spending a lot of stats on getting it hard capped for relatively low benefit compared to putting those stats into, say, haste or crit. Getting 7.5% hit and 7.5% expertise? Fair enough, that works well. But 15% expertise? Eh, a bit much. Get more haste and more gear in general before you worry about hard capping expertise.

Ok! That's enough rambling from me, and I'm sure that's enough to be going on with. Any further questions, feel free to come back to this thread and ask.

[Nikkaszal]

One point re: Keg Smash usage on Spirit Kings - you do NOT want to use it while Maddening Shout is out.

Putting the damage dealt redux on the whole raid is what we call a Bad Idea XD

[DemoBytom]

don't hard cap expertise with such low gear. You're sacrificing too much haste/energy/chi for that minor gain at this point. Drop down to +-7.5 expertise and put as much as you can into haste. I also changed to ascension at it greatly improved my quality of life during tanking, reduced squishyness etc.
With higher haste you'll be able to purify much more, on normals I try to puryify when I hit moderate (yellow) stagger, sometimes at high end of light stagger (use some addon like weak aura to check how much DPS the stagger does to you - I try to purify above 10-14k DPS), no reason to hit heavy stagger on most normal fights (for sure you shouldn't sit on it for longer than few secs).
Don't change into stamina for most of the fights (except for like Lei Shi etc), you need to work out on elusive brew usage.
I've briefly looked through your logs and I support most what Kisho said - work out on your micromanagement.
Gar'jal is a good "training dummy" it's the closest to the patchwerk style fight you can get. On this fight you should always have some sort of CD rolling on you during your tanking turn - be it guard or elusive brew. Don't wait till 15 stacks, use it at 7+ and try to cover as much time as possible, with higher haste those stacks do stack quick. Use your eng gloves enchant together with elusive brew for even greater avoidance. This is also pretty dmg intensive fight so don't forget to purify a lot.
You shouldn't stack shuffle too much on this fight - just few extra secs, spend the rest of the chi on healing tier talents.

And last thing - you're low geared ATM so you are squishy, just because of that. Brewmasters scale pretty good with higher gear and you;ll see a big difference in +-480 ilv compared to your 467..

also, don't gem expertise. Gem haste, haste/agi etc. 7.5% is enough ATM. Hardcap is fun and I love it, and I'll aim for it in later tiers most likely, but ATM the gain from it is far worse than the gain you'd get from high haste and crit.

[konaman]

I just wanted to note I've only tanked LFR so far so I could be way off with these suggestions. Looking at the spirit kings log you only used elusive brew 3 times and you were capped at 15 stacks for well over 50% of the fight. I realize you want to save it for when it's needed but at a certain point you're losing too much avoidance by not using it when it gets capped. In some cases Elusive brew even fell off at 15 stacks without being used and that point it's a complete waste. It's more or less the same with guard on that fight, you used it 9 times but with the fight taking 9:40 you have the possibility of using it 19 times. I don't think using it on CD is good but you probably could of squeezed out a few more. Finally you used Keg smash 57 times in that fight out of a possible 72 so Keg smash usage could be better, which would equate to more chi meaning more purifies or whatever else you want to use it on. Again I could be way off on all these points so if someone wants to correct this feel free to.

EDIT same deal for Dampen harm 15 out of a possible 38.
I also just realized I basically repeated everything Kisho said

[Lumiair]

I'd just have to add in - Get on Askmrrobot (Though I'm not entirely a fan of it) and see the easiet way to get your 7.5% exp/hit rating so you can gem accordingly and reforge as little as possible so you're not spending ubiquitous amounts of gold on the AH. Other than that, keep up the good shuffle practice and work on the Elusive brew, keg smash, and most importantly guard like Kisho mentioned. And don't forget, glyph of guard is your friend on high magic fights such as elegon (Even though we aren't talking about that log.)

[Alucin]

Meh, you use dampen harm when you need it, not on rotation. I often use guard in a similar way. Know the abilities in the fight and save cooldowns appropriately. If there isn't an ability that hits every 30-50s you can use guard more often (ie spirit kings).

While I do put some expertise in over dodge cap, it is good to get a bit of haste there. I'd suggest no ascension though. Especially at lower gear/haste levels, chi generation you get from power strikes is important. So put some effort into haste until you feel chi generation is good. (personal thing)
Shuffle having 25s, is fine, if you're clearing stagger, at least heavy stagger. I'd suggest a mod like brewmaster tao that shows stagger amount. Clearing a higher moderate damage is often an option, but it's good to just have a visual cue for your damage intake.

Is there any reason you say you feel squishy? What did your healers say? Generally shuffle uptime and appropriate cooldown use are the main factors that impact squishiness. A lot of the rest comes from experience.

[konaman]

Could I hijack this thread to ask a quick question regarding guard, in Fuzzykins case guard was used 9 out of a possible 19 times. My question is how do you find the balance between saving guard for heavy damage moments but not saving it so much so that you're in a position such as Fuzzykins where you didn't use guard enough?

[Lumiair]

Could I hijack this thread to ask a quick question regarding guard, in Fuzzykins case guard was used 9 out of a possible 19 times. My question is how do you find the balance between saving guard for heavy damage moments but not saving it so much so that you're in a position such as Fuzzykins where you didn't use guard enough?

I go by DBM timers personally, though I know it can be off for a few fights. Like Lei Shi for example where you know the breath is going to hit you it's worth saving. But if you have to put it off more than 10-15 seconds I'd think it's probably not worth it.

[Alucin]

Could I hijack this thread to ask a quick question regarding guard, in Fuzzykins case guard was used 9 out of a possible 19 times. My question is how do you find the balance between saving guard for heavy damage moments but not saving it so much so that you're in a position such as Fuzzykins where you didn't use guard enough?

Check out the boss timers on the fight. I mean, on blade lord I always save guard for overwhelming assault and don't use it for anything else. Bosses with breath attacks is easy, save guard for that. sha, I save it for thrash but only use when elusive brew isn't ready - so ideally I won't use it at all. For say spirit kings heroic you'd want it to be up for a boss transition, but that doesn't mean you can't use it in between also. Others have no particular mechanic you need to save it for so use whenever. Maybe keep an ear out for when healers use regeneration abilities.

At the same time, the main thing is handling spike damage, I'd consider that much more important than trying to keep it on cooldown.

[Kisho]

Guard usage is honestly determined on a 'per boss' basis. That said, I doubt you meant it this way Alucin but Guard certainly isn't ideally not used at all :P

Guard isn't just for saving yourself from big attacks: it's also very useful for saving healer mana. These days healer mana is a really precious resource, so anything you can do to minimise the amount they spend is really useful.

So yeah, on a per boss basis figure out the best way to use it. Sometimes you'll want to save it for a big attack. Sometimes you'll want to use it on CD. Every time, you'll want to use it as often as possible.

[Alucin]

Guard usage is honestly determined on a 'per boss' basis. That said, I doubt you meant it this way Alucin but Guard certainly isn't ideally not used at all :P

Guard isn't just for saving yourself from big attacks: it's also very useful for saving healer mana. These days healer mana is a really precious resource, so anything you can do to minimise the amount they spend is really useful.

So yeah, on a per boss basis figure out the best way to use it. Sometimes you'll want to save it for a big attack. Sometimes you'll want to use it on CD. Every time, you'll want to use it as often as possible.

phhh mana. Regen faster! They are clearly just slacking off

My point was get the important bit sorted first, the abilities that would kill you or take you really low, then work on mana conservation.

As a brewmaster getting started there is so much to work out, you need to prioritise, and as you get it down, then you can work on perfecting the other bits of your game. Certainly keep in mind as you analyse your logs later though.