BM Tank Advice (General and Brackenspore)

[Brownclaw]

Hey Guys,

I've been trying to find a lot of this information on the internet, but its buried pretty deep. Hopefully someone is willing to help me out.

1) Why isn't soul dance viable on Brackenspore? The best I can figure is that getting a high shuffle stack with Serenity would free you up to purify more stagger later. Still, there's a good bit of magic damage going out in that fight (rot).

2) What's the deal with healing elixirs? I see people using it occasionally, but I don't understand its role.

3) Is my dps abnormally low? Should I be gearing into crit?

4) Is a 2h really better? The tectus staff has such poor stat distribution, and then I lose out on a second enchant proc.

5) How do I calculate what percentage of my stagger I'm purifying using Warcraft Logs. I suspect I'm doing a shit job at that.

Here is my armory:

us.battle.net/wow/en/character/hyjal/Brownclaw/simple

Here is a link to logs from Brackenspore last night:

warcraftlogs.com/reports/r9vP4fqLGnY6wJB3#fight=28

I want you guys to eviscerate me. Be brutal. Tell me why I suck (and maybe tell me how I can be better along the way)! It was my first night of attempts, but I think I've cleaned up most of the obvious "stand in fire" stuff. I really want to optimize my performance in terms of mitigation/dps/etc.

Thanks in advance!!!

[Rockets]

This would be better in the Simple Questions, Simple Answers sticky, but:

1) It's just that the magic damage isn't the dangerous part of the fight, really. You're going to be taking a lot more physical damage, which Serenity is better at handling, and if you're not in danger from the physical either then you may as well just run chex and get him dead faster.

2) It's a large amount of passive healing. You should use it as the default option unless there are things that are actually dangerous and either hit hard enough to trigger DH or are pure magic damage so can be blocked with DM.

3) Don't worry about your dps until you're completely happy with your survivability. Start swapping out mastery pieces for crit once you feel safe, not before.

4) Yes. Just holding a 2h is worth ~10% haste as far as auto-proccing abilities like EB and GotO are concerned. Haste is bad, but 900 haste rating from one piece of gear is hard to argue with.

5) I answered this last week.

5b) We're doing all log analysis work over in the Fix My Monk sticky.

[Brownclaw]

Thanks for your reply. I didn't really think of healing elixirs as the default, but it makes sense. Also, the haste numbers put that argument in perspective. Sorry about posting in the wrong place!

[Mollify]

Some extra tips:

- Your Tiger Power uptime is only 89% - fix that.
- 38/60 possible Keg Smashes. That's a LOT of Chi missing (44, to be precise)
- 73% Shuffle uptime is pretty bad, and is a result of missing all that Chi

[Deleted]

The amount of Chi missing would only be 22, not 44. Keg Smash is only 1 bonus Chi, you get the other from Jab or whatever anyway.

What can even be said? You somehow miss Tiger Power, 6 Elusive Brew casts in total, same amount of purifying brews that a bad Brewmaster might have in a Butcher fight, too few Blackout kicks as well, half the Guards you should... Where is your Chi going? Do you not have enough energy for it? But how does your Tiger Power keep falling off? Missed half the Expel Harms and Chi Waves.

33 Tiger Palms in total in a 8 minute fight? Do you go AFK for 30 second streaks or something? Comparing to the current top log, he has 147 Tiger Palms in a 5min fight. So you need to do like 700% more tiger palms.

I don't think you are in any position to be worrying about gear. Learn the basics of your class. Pro tip: Jab is the lowest priority ever.

[Brownclaw]

So looking over logs from tonight when I was in my "comfort zone" on heroic Butcher, my Tiger Power uptime was 96% (still probably too low). Shuffle was 98% (acceptable?). I purified 49% of my stagger (borderline unacceptable as Chi Explosion?).

My DPS was only 20.6k (too much jab). I hit 22/25 possible keg smashes. I only cast 11/16 chi waves and 7/16 expel harms. I used elusive brew 6 times, and guard twice. I also didn't use fortifying brew, but I'll assume that my lack of defensive cool down usage was due to never really feeling threatened.

Basically my takeaway is that I go from "average-bad" to "bad-bad" when I'm under stress or moving a lot. Being that it was my first night on mythic Brackenspore, I think I spent far too much of my concentration on breaths/waves/finding mushrooms/tank swaps/etc.

Seriously though, thanks for illustrating to me a way to analyze my own logs. All of your advice/answers were extremely illuminating. At least I know what to work on now.

1. More effectively fill dead time with tiger's palm.
2. Use Chi Wave/Expel Harm/Keg Smash pretty much on cooldown. Expel harm only if HP is missing though?
3. Purify a lot lot lot lot more.
4. Stop using soul dance on Brackenspore/stop using soul dance at all until I can keep decent shuffle up-time with it.
5. Get gud.

[Mollify]

1. Yep. Bind it to a comfy hot-key.
2. I usually Expel Harm only when below 90%.
3. Yeah. Don't go crazy though. The exact amount depends on the fight, phase and your healers. I usually Purify at 20% when dealing with average healers.
4. Correct.

Look at using Guard more as well. On a heavy damage fight like Butcher you should aim to Guard to help smooth out healing on you.