Is there a Brewmaster Gear Gap?

[Mackeyser]

I've raid tanked on a Pally and DK and instance tanked on a Druid prior to my Brewmaster becoming my main.

I am really taking all of the good info to heart as I try to build my Brewmaster.

So I like the active mitigation. I find that I actually mitigate MORE than I would as a better geared Pally or Druid or DK and am only second to a well played DK in Healing Required due to the self-heal abilities and active mitigation. I have limits as a clicker (have to be due to hand tremors, Service Connected Disabled Vet) which puts me in a bind on fights like Will of the Emperor (sometimes a finger will twitch and start me in the wrong direction which if you've tanked that fight, you know that starting in the wrong direction can really bork you for the entire sequence), but overall, I've enjoyed the class very much. As a former Network Engineer, I enjoy that I have to play well to see results.

That said, I think that while gearing, that the margins are too close. An undergeared DK doesn't have the razor thin margins at the same gear levels that I've experienced on this Monk. I know that once I get better gear that I'll be able to balance stats better.

Still, I'm sitting below 12 energy/sec, hit capped, just below 7.5 exp and 4.4k haste about 2.5k each crit and mastery. I've got 3 blues. I'm looking into getting the 496 gloves crafted as I write this. The gloves don't fix it, though.

I've seen some fine rotation/priority lists that really only work for 14 energy/sec and theorycrafting that works IF you can reforge to 15 expertise. However, even if I reforge everything, I'm still below 12% exp and my energy would completely go into the tank.

I guess I'm more asking about how to balance BEFORE I get the gear that allows for the balancing or various tanking philosophies discussed.

Also, in these various rotations, I don't see any room for expel harm or the 2nd Tier talent usage (Chi Wave, Zen Sphere, Chi Burst) and those do a fairly decent job at reducing the Healing Required which I track using Skada.

I guess I'm just feel that I'm at that tweener stage where I can't utilize the fully raid geared raid tank philosophies/priorities/rotations and I'm beyond "leveling", so 6 bosses into the normal raid, I find that I'm stuck on a hard hitting boss doing fine until I make a slight mistake and then I'm done, punched hard in the face. As I posted in another thread, I think I understand now why THAT is. I won't go into that here.

Having played Ele since TBC and Prot Pally since 2.1 when we had to balance Defense as a stat and use spell power weps as a tank to keep threat, I'm used to specs that require tinkering to get right. I'm okay with doing that.

I just am seeing a gap. I don't think it is a skill gap as I empirically am mitigating in raw dmg numbers as well as net required healing numbers better than other better geared tanks around me on most fights. Could certainly be a skill gap. But seeing as I can't even get to 15% expertise no matter what I do even if I wanted to embrace the max EB uptime philosophy, I'm thinking it's a gearing issue. If that's the case, am I just stuck or is there a way to bridge? Am I just missing something?\

edit: That's my Brewmaster, btw. I realized I didn't have a parse. Looking for one now. Our officer who logs parses has been out, so not sure if I have a parse. If I do, I'll add it.

http://www.wow-heroes.com/character/...an/Dachengshi/

[Kisho]

It seems to me you may be operating on incorrect information. For example:

But seeing as I can't even get to 15% expertise no matter what I do even if I wanted to embrace the max EB uptime philosophy, I'm thinking it's a gearing issue.

Expertise (and hit by extension) do nothing to increase EB uptime. Those stats allow you to hit more, but they won't allow you to crit more (it's not a case of 'more hits means more chance to crit', we're on a one-roll system), so hit/exp only really increase your DPS, make your resource income more reliable, and generate more Gift of the Ox orbs. Nice benefits certainly, but not really enough to warrant 15% expertise so early in the gearing stage.

You're also prioritising stamina a bit too much, according to your armory. Stamina is useful only for surviving burst damage and smoothing it out, allowing your healers more time to heal you up after some burst damage. It's a stat you get 'enough' of, not something you stack. You'd be better off gemming for something like crit, or haste.

From what I can tell you could use a bit more haste: this'll allow you to generate more Chi, thus use more Blackout Kicks, so you can stack up a decent amount of Shuffle. This will give you more leeway to use other Chi spenders, such as the T30 healing talents, Purifying Brew, and Breath of Fire for a bit of extra DPS on AoE (not single target). This may help with the feeling you have of being on a fine balance?

As for Expel Harm, feel free to use it instead of Jab if you need the heal. It's not something you include in a rotation: you just use it to replace Jab if you need to heal. Simple as that. Same as with the T30 healing talents, you use them if you need the heal (and Shuffle isn't in danger of dropping off, as I stated in my previous paragraph).

I'm confused about these rotations that can only work with 14 ER... At absolute base, no gear or talents, you have enough energy regen to keep Shuffle up 100% of the time and use Guard on cooldown. Those are the two things a rotation would need to keep up... You then get more haste to make the rotation easier, and give you leeway for other Chi Spenders beyond Blackout Kick and Guard. But those extra Chi Spenders aren't in a rotation, so I'm just confused as to what you're reading really.

Similarly, theorycrafting that requires 15% expertise... That could be outdated, as during the beta it was widely believed that you needed 15% expertise ASAP. But it turns out that was judged on faulty math, and it turned from a necessity into something nice if you can afford it, but not required at all.

Some logs would be lovely if you can find them. Otherwise, if you have further questions, feel free to ask. Also check out the guide stickied at the top of this forum, it should help out a fair bit.

[Shinchib]

You can easily find his logs if you know how to look. I don't believe I'm allowed to post them so I will briefly discuss your 01/14 Will kill. Huge warning bells go off when I see this stat for Shuffle. It's 30%; no bueno. Your stagger never reached high and you didn't use PB; good, however if you had more uptime on Shuffle, you could have easily redirected 20% more initial damage into more stagger damage to get that moderate stagger into a heavy stagger and PBd it.

Tiger power was at +90% which is great since the first minute of the fight you can afk on.

You ate 22 devastating arcs and 14 stomps as well; now I know you've explained your reasoning behind this so I won't say anything here. 70% uptime on that debuff. Just to put things into perspective, your tank counterpart got hit for 3 arcs and 6 stomps.

Zen med used once, avert harm used once, fort brew used once.

[Chuupag]

I'm gonna agree with Shin, active mitigation means alot more than just pushing the correct buttons, timing of those pushes and the timing of boss mechanics plays a much larger roll for BrM than just about every other tank (save maybe DKs with timing Death Strike) especially with the Will fight. I believe that debuff is an armor debuff...which makes it even worse for BrM as our armor pool is already exceedingly small.

[Mackeyser]

You can easily find his logs if you know how to look. I don't believe I'm allowed to post them so I will briefly discuss your 01/14 Will kill. Huge warning bells go off when I see this stat for Shuffle. It's 30%; no bueno. Your stagger never reached high and you didn't use PB; good, however if you had more uptime on Shuffle, you could have easily redirected 20% more initial damage into more stagger damage to get that moderate stagger into a heavy stagger and PBd it.

Tiger power was at +90% which is great since the first minute of the fight you can afk on.

You ate 22 devastating arcs and 14 stomps as well; now I know you've explained your reasoning behind this so I won't say anything here. 70% uptime on that debuff. Just to put things into perspective, your tank counterpart got hit for 3 arcs and 6 stomps.

Zen med used once, avert harm used once, fort brew used once.

Yeah, I think I had a just dumb misunderstanding of what I was reading from Brewmaster Tao. I kept thinking that the Stagger dmg was PER SECOND. I dunno why I thought that. /facepalm So I'd see 90k and Purifying Brew it off thinking "oh crap, I can't have a 90k per second dot on me!" I reread the addon description and it's the Total Stagger dmg waiting to be taken, which means I should have more Chi during certain phases that I've been purifying like mad when I didn't need to or shouldn't have been. Just a silly mistake on my part.

As for shuffle, yeah. I really spent a lot of time this weekend looking at my rotation and priority list and just this week on Windlord during LFR on adds, by keeping BoK up even purifying too often (hadn't discovered THAT mistake, yet), I was easy to heal and I mitigated well. I dunno when I forgot BoK, but it's firmly back in the rotation and at the top of my Needtoknow bars so I can track it.

I've been practicing on Will of the Emperor and discovered two problems. 1 was practice. That was my first attempt at it that you saw and I hadn't seen a video that really explained what the boss mechanic looked like as well as I relied on the DBM arrows which hose you if you aren't oriented on the boss. So, yeah, I totally borked that attempt. Subsequently, I've gone through getting the extra action button more often than not. I dunno if I'll ever go the whole fight 'arc-free', because that first move sometimes my fingers just have a mind of their own, but I'm getting better at recovering and knowing where to be. Second was position. I was tanking him FAR too close to the stairs and I ran into camera problems where I'd be blocked from seeing the next graphic after avoiding one arc and by the time I'd repositioned the camera, it'd be the second swipe and even rolling, there wouldn't be enough time to avoid taking dmg.

I will admit that in the context of Monk tanking, I really don't understand how best to use Zen Med and Avert Harm. I understand the Pally and DK CDs very well, but short of Dampen Harm/Diffuse Magic and Fort Brew, I'm still learning.

Also, thx for the assistance. It's greatly appreciated.

[Nikkaszal]

Two things that will help you on that fight (and these are totally not gear related so it's somewhat off-topic) are the Celerity talent and zooming your camera waaaay out. I'm looking at all this on my slow-arse smartphone so I haven't actually booted up your armory or logs, so if anything I say is redundant just ignore it =)

Celerity is just so damn useful for that fight because the increased charges on Roll WILL save your arse if you have difficulty doing the dodge. I don't understand personally what hand tremors entail, but having more accessible Rolls will allow you to take an extra moment to work out where you want to go, or let you escape if you accidentally move the wrong way initially.

Likewise, zooming the camera so far out that you can still see the entirety of your construct's body close to the middle of your screen will help so much with the dance. When I tank this, Jan-xi (he and I have a thing, I flat-out refuse to take the right side XD) just looks like a slightly oversized mogu with a small Night Elf spec darting around him; I don't need to look at anything around me except the Arc and Stomp warnings, and not being able to clearly see the blue streaks will destroy you.

Additionally, what's your EB usage like there? Are you able to keep attacking your construct while doing the dance? It helps tremendously for two reasons:
1) You keep stacking EB if you run just far enough away to remain hitting the boss constantly
2) You keep your Shuffle buff high, letting you blow lots of Chi on PB and Chi Wave in the short spikes you're actually getting melee'd.
What you should find the majority of the time is that you'll have decent stacks of EB as well as lots of Shuffle every time the combo ends. The constructs generate 1 energy over sec and use Combo at 20 energy, which means you easily work out how to maximise your EFFECTIVE EB uptime (ie having EB up while the boss is combo'ing is a waste). Got 10 stacks? Use it when the boss is on 9-10 energy. Got a full 15? Use it when he's on 5 energy and laugh as you take zero damage. I usually have enough Shuffle built and take few enough actual melee swings that I can Purify almost EVERY swing that actually lands on me, and at the end of the fight my damage taken is laughably low.

[Mackeyser]

Yeah, I have celerity. I find it very useful.

I already have my camera max zoomed. The issue I ran into was tanking Will (I do take right side)is that I was far too close to the stairs and nullifying that advantage. I'd get stuck in that corner just off the stairs staring at the bosses...er...belt buckle...ahem...and couldn't see his next arc graphic until I swung the camera around and by then even when rolling, it'd be too late. I can't, of course, just roll in any direction because exceed 15 yds and I get tethered and a guaranteed hit. As well, the tether pull usually messes with my orientation so I'm pointing in some funky direction. Anyway, we're gonna fix that by moving the tanking pivots farther out by about 20 yds. Much closer to where most vids show the bosses being tanked and I should be able to do the dance. I've gotten to the point that I get the extra action button more than half the time and if I miss, it's usually only getting hit once.

Hand tremors are just shaking hands. I have a seizure disorder that's controlled now, but years of the meds have left me with slight tremors. I'm good to drive a car now (just got cleared), but I get "finger twitches" that have me wearing out my backspace key. When a finger twitches, sometimes it ends up pressing a key I don't want pressed. That can be a problem if I accidentally go left initially into the Arc instead of right. There's not a lot of time to recover. And it really only becomes a problem during movement phases or extreme phases of any kind where I have to hit a series of buttons exactly right. Doesn't matter what the buttons are. Let's just say I'm not the guy you want entering the code to disarm the bomb with only seconds left. Probably TMI, but there you have it.

I've just reforged and regemmed, so we'll see how I do going forward. I replaced Relic of Xuen with Niuzao so that I'd have the stam and additional tanking cd to then reforge and gem expertise and haste. I actually got to 15% exp while keeping my energy at 11.74 energy/sec. Not great, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I'm hoping this new setup gets me more regular EB stacks. I noticed before I'd go extended periods without any EB stacks at all. Like 20+ seconds with no EB stacks. Hopefully now I get more regular EB stack generation.

I also have to remember that I've seen the boss all of 4 times. Three times on normal and only one actual time on LFR. So, I have to give myself time to learn the fights and get accustomed to the raid mechanics. I tend to be overly hard on myself and expect that I'll perform close to peak performance right away and that just doesn't always work out.

[Asmalya]

I've just reforged and regemmed, so we'll see how I do going forward. I replaced Relic of Xuen with Niuzao so that I'd have the stam and additional tanking cd to then reforge and gem expertise and haste. I actually got to 15% exp while keeping my energy at 11.74 energy/sec. Not great, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I'm hoping this new setup gets me more regular EB stacks. I noticed before I'd go extended periods without any EB stacks at all. Like 20+ seconds with no EB stacks. Hopefully now I get more regular EB stack generation.

It seems you might think that with more Exp you actually would crit more. (it was already explained above)
Thats not the case. You either hit, or crit or not do damage to the target at all. Its one roll.
Having more expertise doesnt mean you crit more because you get less parried.

So no reforging for Expertise wont buff your EB Stacks. A bit more haste will help a bit but not as much as going for crit obv.
Depending on how much haste you won you wont notice it much.
In my opinion and many others 15% expertise is not needed.
I would take those 2550 rating and put them either into haste or, if you like your energy regen how it is, into crit.
But its a personal preference. I can live with the occasional parry every now and then and it never fucked me up.

[Nikkaszal]

Also do note that seeing those no-EB-stack gluts are sometimes just a case of pure shit luck rather than your gearing and reforging.

Example - I play with a full haste/crit build, 7.5% expertise, no stam trinket, agi food... you get the idea, basically just like a Windwalker who hasn't changed gear. My EB generation is usually very smooth, usually with a full 15-stack at the end of each Combo on Will, and almost always a few stacks to use EB on every single Thrash on Sha Of Fear (which is totally badass, by the way =D)

And yet tonight, while on Sha, during one boss-tanking stint all the dice rolled against me. I didn't get a SINGLE stack the whole time I was on the boss. Not one. And let me tell you, it hurt like hell.

[Mackeyser]

It seems you might think that with more Exp you actually would crit more. (it was already explained above)
Thats not the case. You either hit, or crit or not do damage to the target at all. Its one roll.
Having more expertise doesnt mean you crit more because you get less parried.

So no reforging for Expertise wont buff your EB Stacks. A bit more haste will help a bit but not as much as going for crit obv.
Depending on how much haste you won you wont notice it much.
In my opinion and many others 15% expertise is not needed.
I would take those 2550 rating and put them either into haste or, if you like your energy regen how it is, into crit.
But its a personal preference. I can live with the occasional parry every now and then and it never fucked me up.

Well, yes and no.

More expertise gives a better chance to "hit" on the one hit roll. I get that. On attacks that get parried, I can't know if those had hit if they'd have been hits or crits, thus having 15% expertise allows me to crit more in that my white hits are going to "hit" on the roll. The only question at that point is does the white attack hit or crit? 15% expertise removes "Parry" from the equation. Is it a LOT of missed crits? In raw numbers, I doubt it. But I've noticed since tanking in the beginning of BC that low percentage stuff happens when one can least afford for it to happen.

I may go back to 7.5% exp if I don't see a difference, but my personal experience was that I saw irregular EB generation with it. If an attack is parried, it can't crit and thus can't generate EB stacks. In that, I see the synergy between hit/exp and crit and how crit becomes a pretty nice stat once exp is hard capped. Still not above haste, but really nice.

[Asmalya]

Well, yes and no.

More expertise gives a better chance to "hit" on the one hit roll. I get that. On attacks that get parried, I can't know if those had hit if they'd have been hits or crits, thus having 15% expertise allows me to crit more in that my white hits are going to "hit" on the roll. The only question at that point is does the white attack hit or crit? 15% expertise removes "Parry" from the equation. Is it a LOT of missed crits? In raw numbers, I doubt it. But I've noticed since tanking in the beginning of BC that low percentage stuff happens when one can least afford for it to happen.

I may go back to 7.5% exp if I don't see a difference, but my personal experience was that I saw irregular EB generation with it. If an attack is parried, it can't crit and thus can't generate EB stacks. In that, I see the synergy between hit/exp and crit and how crit becomes a pretty nice stat once exp is hard capped. Still not above haste, but really nice.

No thats not how the Combat Table works for white hits.
Lets keep it very simply. Lets say you have a table from 1 to 100.
Now we fill that table with 1-30 crit, 31-93 hit, everything rest is parry (keep in mind thats a very simple model just to try to keep you understanding).
Now if you go into more expertise your table will look like: 1-30 crit, 31-100 hit.
You dont magically crit more because you dont get parried.
Now there are extreme values were this gets true tho, but you need extreme amount of stats to get there. Nothing you have to worry about.
If your dice rolls a parry it would NEVER EVER be a crit in the first place. Because it simply cant be. Those are different events on a single roll.

Now if we had a 2 roll system then yes. Then it would first check on hit and then if that hit would be a crit. In that scenario a parried hit could be a crit but as i said. Thats not how the wow combat table for white hits work.

[SurrealNight]

At lower levels of gear you are probably going to be pretty haste starved. I had to get quite a bit of purple gear before I felt like I had enough to be comfortable personally (and this was before the Ascension change). I still keep a solid 6K haste mostly for the more intense fights like H Wind Lord.

The benefit of getting the 15% expertise cap is really not worth it especially at lower gear levels where that 2500 rating is basically all coming out of haste. Getting the occasional parry is nothing, not having enough Chi (haste) and letting shuffle drop or unable to timely purify heavy stagger is going to get you killed. Even later on that is 2500 crit you could have instead and as pointed out capping expertise isn't improving the # of crits you get towards your EB stacks anyways.

[Rockets]

Yeah, personally I wouldn't worry about trying to get 15% expertise at lower gear levels. Make sure you have 7.5% at least, and then stack haste/crit for a while. Having Keg Smash get parried feels painful, but assuming you replace it with Jab/ExH, all you're losing is the GCD, 1 chi and 8 energy. It's not the end of the world.

That said, it's definitely worth pushing towards 15% once you have the ilvl to support it. Reclaiming those lost 7.5% GCDs means you can just push buttons and have them work. It's one less thing to keep track of, which means you can spend more of your mental energy on staying out of fires, keeping Shuffle and EB up, etc.

[Shinchib]

I didn't know how white hits worked either. Thanks for explaining it.

Formula one: Crit or no crit
Formula two: if no crit, hit or parry

[Deleted]

That said, it's definitely worth pushing towards 15% once you have the ilvl to support it. Reclaiming those lost 7.5% GCDs means you can just push buttons and have them work. It's one less thing to keep track of, which means you can spend more of your mental energy on staying out of fires, keeping Shuffle and EB up, etc.

That is one option. Personally I haven't been hard capped for a long time, maybe 3 weeks into raiding and switched, and I find it fine. Yes you get the odd nasty rng moment but in general I find it few and far between and it also means I can switch directly to Windwalker with no reforges and still be competative. There are plenty of top level BrM monks that don't cap and I think the math is there to support that from a puristic point of view, but ultimately it comes down to preferance. Just thought I would make sure that it's clear that neither way is "the right way" unless you are talking about bleeding edge progression which most people are not.

[Rockets]

There are plenty of top level BrM monks that don't cap and I think the math is there to support that from a puristic point of view, but ultimately it comes down to preferance. Just thought I would make sure that it's clear that neither way is "the right way" unless you are talking about bleeding edge progression which most people are not.

Well, I'd argue that; at least on EJ the math is pretty clearly showing that hit and exp are the best secondaries, right up to the hard caps. From a purist standpoint, there is a right way, and it's to suck it up and hardcap your expertise. Yes I know it feels bad because you can't hit buttons as often, but it's objectively the best use of your stat budget.

However.

Haste and crit are only slightly behind hit/exp; all four stats are within 10% or so of each other, on paper. So you're not losing that much if you just take exp to the softcap. You at least won't miss any spells that way. (Like the time I wasn't even softcapped and missed a Touch of Death on my add on Gara'jal, ouch.) And frankly, a lot of the reason why hit/exp are rated so highly is Ox Statue's guard, which is just raid healing and doesn't benefit you at all (and is currently getting a nice 50% nerf in 5.2).

So like I said, you're probably fine just to take expertise to 7.5%, especially when undergeared. Personally I tried hardcapping early on, and it sucked. Then I got better gear, and tried it again recently, and this time it felt like it was actually helping me rather than hurting.

But look, this "there is no right way" thing doesn't fly. There is a right/best way, but it feels kinda bad to do it, and so you can choose to sacrifice a little bit of performance to make your life easier. That's a reasonable choice to make! But I think it's a mistake to pretend that both options are just as good as each other when it comes to the raw numbers.

[Chuupag]

Well, I'd argue that; at least on EJ the math is pretty clearly showing that hit and exp are the best secondaries, right up to the hard caps. From a purist standpoint, there is a right way, and it's to suck it up and hardcap your expertise. Yes I know it feels bad because you can't hit buttons as often, but it's objectively the best use of your stat budget.

No. Just plain no. Uncheck your GotO box and you'll see those numbers plummet. Haste gives more chi per point than hit or exp. The only real reason people stick with 7.5/7.5 is easy dps switching. There is no need to take any hit/exp at all as a BrM other than just a question of smoothing out your rotation.

And you're right that the "there is no right way" doesn't fly. There is a mathematically superior way, and that it 0 hit and 0 exp, but no one wants to see 23% misses on stuff even if you would technically get more chi. So convenience wins out.

[Rockets]

No. Just plain no. Uncheck your GotO box and you'll see those numbers plummet.

I see, I see. As long as I'm not using abilities, should I also uncheck the "Use Elusive Brew" box? That seems to affect the value of crit a lot.

[Chuupag]

I see, I see. As long as I'm not using abilities, should I also uncheck the "Use Elusive Brew" box? That seems to affect the value of crit a lot.

You are missing the point entirely. You don't understand why hit and exp are valued highly on the EJ math but you still hold to it.

Haste gives more chi then hit/exp even accounting for misses/dodges/parries not giving chi on chi generating abilities. The difference isn't that big, but it is around 1 chi every 7 mins for every 340 points(1% hit/exp). If you care about mitigation you should be trying to get as little hit and exp as you can and putting those points into haste. No one really wants to see alot of misses, or should I say memorable misses, so some hit and exp is desirable. Orbs are such a small part of our survivability that trying to maximize them at the expense of chi just doesn't make sense.

[Divineknight13]

looking at the OP

dear god man why did u reforge so much out of mastery lol? 7.5% hit and exp is fine dude you really dont need more

power strikes in old use ascension its nicer i find

and your using 450 pvp belt ... replace these with heroic pieces there easy to farm as a tank