Originally Posted by
Nikkaszal
I think we take less damage overall than other tanks when we play at a high skill level. What I mean by this is that a lot of damage intake for a monk isn't just about throwing up active mitigation when it's available and rolling with everything else, but also about proper management of the Stagger mechanic.
For example, you can sort of compare Shuffle/Guard to, say, a warrior's Shield Block or a DK's Blood Shield. Active mitigation that you want to use effectively and keep premium uptime on. But then after all that, we're slapped with Stagger which we manage entirely separately to "active mitigation". With Stagger, we've already theoretically taken the damage, it's just queued up, and it's up to us to decide when to cut it off and wipe the stack.
That's when it comes down to intuition, skill and practise. Sure, you can Purify a lot of your Light Stagger stack and keeping up a heavy, heavy usage of PB will keep your Stagger damage intake low. But that comes at the expense of lower uptime on Shuffle/Guard/etc, resulting probably in a greater overall intake coupled with increased risk of spike damage deaths. On the other hand, letting your Stagger ramp up too much means you'll be a mana sponge for your healers dealing with you taking more than one source of damage (Stagger DoT + melee attacks/specials etc). Thus, the onus is on the monk to find that particular sweet spot of Purification, depending on not only the status of his/her personal mitigation buffs but also the fight mechanics (eg when tanking Vizier in HoF, I hit moderate Stagger always when soaking Exhale and/or Force and Verve without Guard active, but I'll wait until right as the cast ends to clear it because I'm taking very predictable damage that's not difficult to heal, with zero risk of spike death).
On a related note, all of our healers have remarked that I'm the favourite when it comes to dealing with fight-mechanic tank-gibbers like Bladelord's strike and Elegon's breath, because we are custom built to reliably absorb predictable spike damage through smart use of short CD's like Guard and DH coupled with the Stagger mechanic. Especially on Bladelord, where the second strike is the one that frightens the pants off other tanks and their healers, I just throw up Guard and/or DH right before it hits and my HP barely wobbles. My UI immediately screams at me with a sudden immense Stagger stack, but then I laugh in its face and PB and feel like a complete boss.