The Brewmaster Tanking Guide [5.4]

[Gallahadd]

Well wasting resources is never a good idea.

As for zen sphere, I haven't been that bad without it. It puts a hit in our self healing though.

True true, any resource wasted is T/H/Dps that could have been, but we seem to have alot of things we can push and only really Guard with a CD, so surely there's very little chance of wasting any Chi/Energy?

I'm sorta hoping in the next patch when they lower our damage (to counteract the energy buff) they also increase ZS's healing a little, it does seem rather lackluster now. It's good to know we're okay without it, but as I plan to spend alot of time soloing stuff on my monk, I'd like to have as much healing as possible is ZS still the best choice on that tier btw?

[The Madgod]

True true, any resource wasted is T/H/Dps that could have been, but we seem to have alot of things we can push and only really Guard with a CD, so surely there's very little chance of wasting any Chi/Energy?

I'm sorta hoping in the next patch when they lower our damage (to counteract the energy buff) they also increase ZS's healing a little, it does seem rather lackluster now. It's good to know we're okay without it, but as I plan to spend alot of time soloing stuff on my monk, I'd like to have as much healing as possible is ZS still the best choice on that tier btw?

Well, no, unless you're not doing well in terms of resource management, but it never hurts to be careful!

I'd personally say that ZS is, at least for self healing. You can technically self heal via Chi Burst, but despite the cast time not rendering us a bit more vulnerable, it doesn't sit well with me as a tank who was taught and taught others in turn that if you stand around healing yourself with flash heal, you're a sitting duck, unless you outgear content enough so that your heal would get you more health than the damage you took from being unable to block, dodge, or parry.

[Radux]

My one problem with Chi Burst is just, despite how minor the cast time is, that you have the small window of losing an auto-attack Crit - thus losing out on potential Elusive Brew stacks. That's really the only thing that doesn't sit well with me (and that's a really minor complaint, I suppose).

[Hijiri]

Update on the front page may give some direction on where stats may be going.

Druid (Forums) / Monk (Forums)
To provide an update on tanking mechanics, I want to comment on Mastery for Guardians and Brewmasters. This is somewhat of an over-generalization, but tanks typically care about 4 things when gearing in decreasing order of importance:

1. Survive the maximum burst damage of the encounter (aka Effective Health)
2. Minimize healing needed (aka Damage Reduction + Self Healing)
3. Hold aggro on whatever you’re needed to hold aggro on (aka TPS)
4. Maximize damage dealt (aka DPS)
#4 is generally much less important than #1-3, and overlaps with #3 heavily when considering gear. And #3 is relatively easy these days anyway. So, usually it just comes down to #1 and #2.

Stamina primarily helps with #1. Dodge primarily helps with #2. Most other stats help with resource generation, which typically translate into #2. Mastery for Guardians and Brewmasters is in the somewhat unusual place of helping with both #1 and #2 significantly.

If you compare Mastery to Dodge for a Brewmaster, as a few theorycrafters here have done, you can see that, purely in terms of how much they reduce your damage taken, Dodge wins by a considerable margin. We balanced it that way, because we give value to how much it helps with #1 as well. Obviously, helping with #1 has some value, because you care about Stamina. We see Mastery for Guardians and Brewmasters as sort of a hybrid between Stamina and Avoidance, in terms of how it helps improve your character.

It’s easy to objectively compare the value of two stats in terms of how much they help with #1, or how much they help with #2. But comparing some amount of help with #1 to some amount of help with #2 is much more complex and subjective. It’s an interesting choice that tanks have to make all the time, and one of the most successful choices in gearing that the game provides (Stamina vs. Avoidance being the primary way that choice is expressed). So, that means balancing a stat that provides a mix of both can be complex and subjective as well. After much deliberation, we’re going to try valuing the effective health benefits of Mastery for Brewmasters and Guardians significantly lower than the damage reduction benefits, and adjusting the Mastery conversion rates to reflect that.

Hopefully this provides a bit of background and perspective about the complexities underlying even the simplest of changes: In the next build, you’ll find Mastery for Guardians providing 1.25% Armor per Mastery (up from 0.65%), and for Brewmasters providing 0.5% Stagger per Mastery (up from 0.3%).

[Gallahadd]

You can technically self heal via Chi Burst, but despite the cast time not rendering us a bit more vulnerable, it doesn't sit well with me as a tank who was taught and taught others in turn that if you stand around healing yourself with flash heal, you're a sitting duck

Oh the amount of times I've had to tell people that, and of course been totally ignored.... the worst is when you see Tanks casting Exo... I mean.... really? Exo?

Looks like I'll be rocking ZS even after the nerfs, but it does seem to have slipped down a fair few spots in the priority list, from right at the top by a clear margin to somewhere in the middle .

I think they heard you Radux! iirc they changed Chi Burst a few patches back, and you now continue to auto attack while casting. Of course I'm not in the beta, so it may have been changed since

Am I the only one that doesn't have a frakkin clue what the latest blue post was going on about? Basically they're saying because BM and Bear Masteries effect both EH and DR, they're harder to balance... so they're buffing them, just to see what happens? I mean I don't mind, a buff is a buff.... This one is a little wierd though.

[Redfern]

My one problem with Chi Burst is just, despite how minor the cast time is, that you have the small window of losing an auto-attack Crit - thus losing out on potential Elusive Brew stacks. That's really the only thing that doesn't sit well with me (and that's a really minor complaint, I suppose).

I believe you keep on auto attacking whilst you're casting Chi Burst, aswell as Dodge and Parry:

http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=123986

[Radux]

I believe you keep on auto attacking whilst you're casting Chi Burst, aswell as Dodge and Parry

Hmmm seems like you're correct. The last time that I really looked closely at it, it didn't have auto-attack added to the tooltip.
Ignore my previous statement then.

It could definitely add some good healing on large groups of adds, then.

Am I the only one that doesn't have a frakkin clue what the latest blue post was going on about? Basically they're saying because BM and Bear Masteries effect both EH and DR, they're harder to balance... so they're buffing them, just to see what happens? I mean I don't mind, a buff is a buff.... This one is a little wierd though.

Basically Guardian Druids and BM Monks were caring way too much about #2 (reducing the amount of healing needed via Avoidance and Self Healing) compared to other tanks.

Essentially things like Block, Armor, Stagger, etc, all contribute to raising your EH - as does Avoidance/Self-Healing. The difference being that 'Block' tanks have a much smaller margin of value between EH (which includes block/stagger/stam) and Avoidance/Self Healing.

They designed Bears and BM Monks to rely much more on Avoidance and Self Healing compared to the other tanks on purpose. And because of that, they run the risk of becoming mana sponges when they have a bad avoidance streak or with low amounts of gear. The idea behind the buff is to minimize the gap between #1 (EH) and #2 (avoidance/self healing).

Rambling aside, here's my thoughts in minor chart form on how it is compared to what they're trying to do. I'm going to be making up random numbers to assign value kind of like how you'd find normalized dps values for secondary stats:

'Block' Tanks:
#1 - 1.00
#2 - 0.85

or

#1 - 0.85
#2 - 1.00

Avoidance Tanks:
#1 - 0.65
#2 - 1.00


With the first set (block tanks), I think they see that once you have a certain amount of #2 (which directly improves #1), you can either go for more avoidance/self healing, or more block/stagger/stam to further improve EH.

With the second set (avoidance tanks), you basically go for pure improvement towards avoidance/self healing because the improvement you get from stacking mastery (stagger/armor) or stam just really sucks for your survival compared to more avoidance.


Again, sorry for the rambling, but based on the 'buffs' to mastery, I see them just wanting to minimize the gap between #1 and #2, while maximizing the choice of which a player prefers to gear (subjective).

[Hijiri]

A blue post today
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...aining-issues/

•We've been doing a slight rework of some of the Brewmaster's mechanics. In an upcoming build all attacks done to the Brewmaster will be staggered, and we're adding UI to show you the "level" of your stagger (high, medium or low), so that you can know when you should use Purifying Brew. This design will give you the choice of clearing your stagger stack with Purifying Brew, or continue to push damage into your Stagger stack using Blackout Kick.
•We're going to attach the Brewmaster to Parry more. Parry will passively cause a counterattack effect causing damage, and using Blackout Kick will now cause your Stagger % (as in, the amount of damage being staggered) and Parry % to increase.
•We still need to give the Brewmaster better defense against magic. This will either be a passive damage reduction or some rework of an ability.
•We're going to make defensive cooldowns all "Chi-free", including the talents.
•We're going to change Spinning Crane Kick to not cost Chi, but Energy/Mana over time.
•We will do a polish pass on the interrupt (Spear hand strike) and snare (Disable). That said, Disable is a bit superfluous for the Brewmaster because of Dizzying Haze

edit: The blue post was on the front page in error, as others will point out it's old.

[Deleted]

that's what i don't get: since when does spinning crane kick cost chi?

[Gallahadd]

Yeah that's actually a post from 3 months ago :P they've just only put it on the blue tracker now, if you go to the post it's tracking it was posted on 1/5/2012, it's not 1/8/2012.

[Yorgl]

Do you know at which health percents do the moderate and heavy stagger are displayed, please ?

[Nobleshield]

So I've been practicing doing some 85 dungeons on the premade Monk. I'm really enjoying it, but I don't seem to have enough "time" in the priority system to keep up everything I need to. For example keeping up Power Guard (buff from Tiger Palm). There are gaps where I won't have Shuffle up because I need to hit Tiger Palm to add a stack or refresh Power Guard for an upcoming Guard.

Is the intention that I should stagger (pun intended) the priority so for instance I only use Tiger Palm once after BoK so I have the buff still, instead of doing it 3 times in a row? Kind of hard to explain what I mean I guess, I mean a rotation where you weave in extra abilities (e.g. Tiger Palm, the keg attack that applies Weakened Blows) only in the GCD while you still have Shuffle up, or is Shuffle not that huge a deal to keep close 100% uptime on?

Also what are the guidelines for using Guard and Elusive Brew? Elusive at 15 stacks? Guard off cooldown or as needed (e.g. save it if you know a big hit is coming)? How about Purifying; use it only on Moderate or Heavy Stagger or if you're in danger of dying from any Stagger?

[Deleted]

Does anyone know if the Guard effect created buy Black Ox Statue interacts the same as the ability when using the glyph?

I'm not raiding on beta so it's kind of hard for me to test it without proper logs.

[Gallahadd]

I think the Guard created by Black Ox is a seperate spell that the Guard we use on ourselves.
The bubble from the statue is 'Sanctuary of the Ox' and has a totally different spell ID to Guard, so I'm guessing that they glyph, as it doesn't specifically mention Sanctuary of the Ox wont effect it.

[Deleted]

Purifying Brew is a nice one. It removes your stagger debuff. This shouldn't really be spammed, as if you do, you lose out on the Brewmaster Training enhanced Blackout Kick, which gives you a hefty 30% parry. So yeah, if you spam this, you won't take as much stagger damage, but you're going to take a good amount of initial damage due to it not being avoided. This means that you are going to have to wait till stagger damage starts to become a problem for you and your healers to remove it. With no cooldown, this is going to be very easily avaliable for you, so there's not much to worry about in terms of "oh crap, I'm taking too much damage from stagger, WHENS MY BLOODY COOLDOWN GOING TO END??" Remember though that if you are expecting a big damage spike, you would be smart to wait until it's right about to happen to drop your staggers, so you aren't taking a DoT as well as the spike.

Not sure if I am not understanding what is being said here, or whether it's just a case of OP not being updated. Are you implying that there is some kind of mechanic that removes Shuffle or is it simply making the point that if you use ALL your chi on Purifying Brew, you can't Blackout Kick to keep Shuffle up (which ofc would be pretty foolish)? I'm just concerned I may have missed something important and not trying to be pedantic

[Deleted]

nvm I screwed myself. Yes, he's saying something like that, against some argument like "spamming Purifying brew increases survivality"

[Deleted]

One further thing I noticed whilst doing some dummy testing was the random nature of how Shuffle duration seems to be applying. I was running a dps rotation which involved using only Blackout Kicks to dump Chi and noticed sometimes shuffle was stacking and sometimes it was not registering at all. I managed to get shuffle as high as 11 secs. I've spent some time testing and it seems to be, if you Blackout Kick with a shuffle duration of less than 6 seconds, it will stack, if you Blackout Kick with 6 seconds or more left on shuffle it does not stack. I had my char page up and made sure that throughout I had the extra 20% parry and that it dropped off in line with the shuffle duration, to eliminate the chance this was a ui bug. Rushing Jade Wind also reacts in the same way, so it appears to be a way in which Shuffle is applied/refreshed and not Blackout Kick.

I know this is kind of an extreme rotation and may not be something that is recreated in a raid situation. Here's my question:

Firstly has anyone else experienced this inconsistent behavior?

Secondly is this ever likely to effect us in a raid situation, how likely is it that we will ever use 3 Blackout Kicks close enough that this will cause an over all loss of Blackout Kick usage to Shuffle up time ratio?

I can't really think of a time that we would be "forced" to spam Blackout Kicks whilst tanking anything, so i'm not sure this is ever likely to have a huge effect on us, but wanted to throw it out there in case other people have a different perspective.

[Felade]

One further thing I noticed whilst doing some dummy testing was the random nature of how Shuffle duration seems to be applying. I was running a dps rotation which involved using only Blackout Kicks to dump Chi and noticed sometimes shuffle was stacking and sometimes it was not registering at all. I managed to get shuffle as high as 11 secs. I've spent some time testing and it seems to be, if you Blackout Kick with a shuffle duration of less than 6 seconds, it will stack, if you Blackout Kick with 6 seconds or more left on shuffle it does not stack. I had my char page up and made sure that throughout I had the extra 20% parry and that it dropped off in line with the shuffle duration, to eliminate the chance this was a ui bug. Rushing Jade Wind also reacts in the same way, so it appears to be a way in which Shuffle is applied/refreshed and not Blackout Kick.

There was a recent change made, that prevents stacking if you have 6 or more secs left. That prevents you from ever getting higher than 12 seconds. Why? They don't want the parry buff from blackout kick to be up 100% of the time, or for Blackout kick to be the only thing you ever spend Chi on (and everyone coming on the forums complaining they can't use Purifying Brew). At the same time, allowing it to go over 6 seconds on duration means that you don't have to wait until it falls off to refresh it for fear of wasting Chi.

[Deleted]

Been putting some thought into Glyph of Guard. On the surface it's primary use is obvious, increase the amount you can absorb on magic heavy fights.
I've been considering weather or not it would be a good glyph on fights where the majority of damage is physical, the reason being that our self healing is increase by 30% whilst Guard is active, by glyphing it where there is little to no magic damage, you are ensuring more uptime and there for increase your self heals. For it to be worth it, the 30% increase to heals would need to out weigh the loss of Guard shields throughout the course of a fight. I'm not sure how to calculate this without the use of logs. If anyone with logs is able to post or give the following values it would make calculating it alot easier:

- Guard uptime without glyph
- Amount absorbed by Guard
- Healing from self heals (Expel Harm, Zen sphere, healing spheres (proc ones not cast ones)
- If possible Guard up time with glyph, although not essential as it can just be calculated in the form of required uptime of guard to make the glyph worthwhile

The alternative would be some napkin math based on some recount/skada token values from a raid if anyone has them, if it turns out not to be close then the logs will not be needed. I suspect it will be marginal at best but it's worth checking just in case

[The Madgod]

Not sure if I am not understanding what is being said here, or whether it's just a case of OP not being updated. Are you implying that there is some kind of mechanic that removes Shuffle or is it simply making the point that if you use ALL your chi on Purifying Brew, you can't Blackout Kick to keep Shuffle up (which ofc would be pretty foolish)? I'm just concerned I may have missed something important and not trying to be pedantic

I did notice a typo in that quote, so I'll need to jump in someday and do a thorough check, but yes, the latter of your assumptions is correct... I'm saying there should be a balance between BoK and PB, instead of just spamming one or the other.

Been putting some thought into Glyph of Guard. On the surface it's primary use is obvious, increase the amount you can absorb on magic heavy fights.
I've been considering weather or not it would be a good glyph on fights where the majority of damage is physical, the reason being that our self healing is increase by 30% whilst Guard is active, by glyphing it where there is little to no magic damage, you are ensuring more uptime and there for increase your self heals. For it to be worth it, the 30% increase to heals would need to out weigh the loss of Guard shields throughout the course of a fight. I'm not sure how to calculate this without the use of logs. If anyone with logs is able to post or give the following values it would make calculating it alot easier:

- Guard uptime without glyph
- Amount absorbed by Guard
- Healing from self heals (Expel Harm, Zen sphere, healing spheres (proc ones not cast ones)
- If possible Guard up time with glyph, although not essential as it can just be calculated in the form of required uptime of guard to make the glyph worthwhile

The alternative would be some napkin math based on some recount/skada token values from a raid if anyone has them, if it turns out not to be close then the logs will not be needed. I suspect it will be marginal at best but it's worth checking just in case

Just looking at tooltips on an 85 premade, if you used EH and ZS on cooldown, you'd do more healing (not including the 30% bonus from Guard) than Guard provides shielding for, even with the 15% bonus from tiger palm.

This doesn't take into account stagger, however, since Guard would normally provide some defense to that. Nor does it take into account healers, and therefore overhealing. Neither does it account for ability scaling past 85 and with Vengeance / higher ilevel gear.