[Archived] Brewmaster Monk 5.4

[Guest Zak]

Under "Statistics Priority and Reforging" the Agility section mentions "It increases your chance to dodge, your attack power (which affects Guard), and your and it also increases your Critical Strike chance (which benefits Elusive Brew)." After the second "your" is there somthing else that is supposed to be there?

[Guest Lifer4700]

I love your site! It is a great resource of information.

I just wanted to bring up a common wording that I see on many sites. This is really nothing more than a pet peeve of mine.

For Touch of Death, it is common to see text similar to:

"... kills the target if the target's health is lower than yours..."

This statement is somewhat vague and/or incorrect.

What I've experienced as Windwalker, Mistweaver, and Brewmaster is that it will kill the target when the target's current health is lower than my maximum health.

I have used Touch of Death to successfully finish off mobs when I have had very little health left (50k-100k) as soon as the mob dropped below 400k (my max hp at the time).

[finnmaccool 5]

https://www.icy-veins.com/brewmaster-monk-wow-pve-tank-gems-enchants-consumables

I am confused between the enchants, and summing up professions perks, as in enchants section most of the stuff is Stam, yet in the professions perks, it is Agi ?

[Guest Phoenix]

http://www.icy-veins...nts-consumables

I am confused between the enchants, and summing up professions perks, as in enchants section most of the stuff is Stam, yet in the professions perks, it is Agi ?

http://www.icy-veins...nts-consumables

I am confused between the enchants, and summing up professions perks, as in enchants section most of the stuff is Stam, yet in the professions perks, it is Agi ?

I noticed this a few times on the guide:

Stamina (until you have enough, see below)

Also, you need to have a decent amount of health, in order to give yourself the chance to be healed before a subsequent attack kills you. As such, you need a minimum amount of Stamina.

So if we are comfortable should we disgard:

1. Expertise capped? Forceful Wild Jade

2. Back

• Enchant Cloak - Greater Protection

Chest Enchant Chest - Superior Stamina

3.

You should always eat food that gives you Stamina. You will be granted:

• 450 Stamina by Chun Tian Spring Rolls;

4.

3.2. Flask You should always use a Flask of the Earth.

[Guest Ramorous]

I don't specifically understand why you list haste as the least attractive stat in the Stat Priority section, but in the gemming section seem to list haste as the next best thing to expertise?

[Guest Akato]

I don´t really understand why you recommend mastery as the best stat and even state, that the debate is between mastery and haste, excluding crit, when most Monk tanks at the moment (especially due to the T15 2pc) fully go for crit. Even without T15 the amount of uptime you get from elusive brew is fantastic and works great with many boss mechanics to give your healers a chance to heal you up again after a bosses special such as Ji-Kuns Talon Rake, Durumus DoT thingy (can´t remember the name) or Horridon's Triple Puncture. If a boss would be constantly autoattacking for high amounts of damage mastery would be great, but most critical situations for tanks in bossfights usually result from specials bosses use, making many smaller cooldowns much more viable in my opinion. Having that said, here´s how I handle my BM atm:

Stamina untill comfortable (usually just shoulder-, legenchant + food and flask)

Expertise (15% or 7.5%, the only real difference is predictablity and whether you´d use Jab or Tiger Palm more often)

Hit (7.5%)

Haste (untill comfortable, I usually have around 5,5k)

Crit

Mastery

Additonally: Use DD trinkets in most fights for extra agility (if possible). There are some fights where it´s a good idea to have stamina trinkets ready, just because some boss abilities hit too hard such as Ji-Kuns Talon Rake on Heroic difficulty. However you can time your CDs at the right moments to avoid a lot of its damage.

[Vlad 411]

I don´t really understand why you recommend mastery as the best stat and even state, that the debate is between mastery and haste, excluding crit, when most Monk tanks at the moment (especially due to the T15 2pc) fully go for crit. Even without T15 the amount of uptime you get from elusive brew is fantastic and works great with many boss mechanics to give your healers a chance to heal you up again after a bosses special such as Ji-Kuns Talon Rake, Durumus DoT thingy (can´t remember the name) or Horridon's Triple Puncture. If a boss would be constantly autoattacking for high amounts of damage mastery would be great, but most critical situations for tanks in bossfights usually result from specials bosses use, making many smaller cooldowns much more viable in my opinion. Having that said, here´s how I handle my BM atm:

Stamina untill comfortable (usually just shoulder-, legenchant + food and flask)

Expertise (15% or 7.5%, the only real difference is predictablity and whether you´d use Jab or Tiger Palm more often)

Hit (7.5%)

Haste (untill comfortable, I usually have around 5,5k)

Crit

Mastery

Additonally: Use DD trinkets in most fights for extra agility (if possible). There are some fights where it´s a good idea to have stamina trinkets ready, just because some boss abilities hit too hard such as Ji-Kuns Talon Rake on Heroic difficulty. However you can time your CDs at the right moments to avoid a lot of its damage.

Thanks for your post. I'll try to explain our line of thinking a bit.

Firstly, you correctly state that we should be including a discussion of Crit in addition to the one about Haste. You're also right that Crit gets better with the 2-part bonus.

That said, the reason why we chose to advise Mastery is because we try to consider the most deadly scenario, or, in any case, scenarios where your survival as a tank is in question. And it is our opinion that in those situations, Mastery will prevent you from dying more than Crit (or Haste) will. The reason for this is, quite simply, that tanks seldom die from damage over time effects (including the DoT from Stagger), and often die from great spikes of damage. Mastery greatly reduces these spikes, and even if you can't purify off the Stagger DoT, it's still healable. On the other hand, if you are relying on Elusive Brew, you know full well that avoidance can fail and leave you naked.

So for this reason, we think that Mastery is the best and most reliable survival stat in serious, progression raiding. If you doing farm content, easy normal modes or if you just really out-gear the fight, then you can reduce the damage you take overall with Crit better than you can with Mastery. But then, again, situations where you are not likely to die are not the main concern.

I hope that explains it a bit. I'll edit the guide's discussion of stats to include the benefits of Crit more clearly. Let me know what you think!

[Guest SJO]

I'm curious why Precise Serpent's Eye (JC) / Fractured Serpent's Eye (JC) are recommended instead of agility JC gems. The secondary stats would only give you a bonus of 320 exp/mastery which I thought was less valuable than 320 agility... am I missing something?

[Guest Cloudfist]

I would say that the minor glyph Glyph of Zen Flight is not merely cosmetic. It permits a flight mode that while slow, can be triggered while falling (like a druids flight form). It does permit some actions, notably, mounting a faster flight mount. Now, while this won't save you during an indoor raid, it can save you from death by falling in many places, which is more than simply cosmetic.

[Guest Brewbud]

You contradict yourself on the chi burst in the cool down section. You say it should only be used when the raid is stacked together for the healing aspect of it I assume, but chi wave always heals the monk. And in the rushing jade wind you mention the healing aspect and say that healing raid will never really be a concern to you. If healing the raid isn't a priority you should be using chi burst on cd for the simple self heal and dps boost if you choose to use it

[Raow 0]

"Glyph of Guard increases the amount of damage absorbed by Guard by 10%, but causes it to only absorb magic damage. This glyph is useful in fights that have a lot of magic damage, but it is even more useful in fights without any magic damage."

Yes you can have the selfhealing buff up permanently but you will almost never gain an amount of bonus healing equal to the absorb you give up. Here some maths numbers taken from my Monk(528 ilv weapon, 510 average item level):

Skill ~avg. healing per cast / healing per 30 seconds // 30% bonus healing gained from Guard over 30 sec

Guard ~77k

Expel Harm ~40k / 80k // 24k

Zen Sphere hps ~3300 / 100k // 30k

Zen Sphere Detonate ~7800 / 23.4k // 7k

Chi Wave 4x ~15k = 60k / 120k // 36k

Chi burst ~33k / 33k // 9.9k

The best case would be Zen sphere with 100% uptime and a detonation every 10 seconds lining up with the cooldown perfectly. For this case to be true we would need to drop below 30% hp every ten seconds which would reset the cooldown for Expel harm resulting in 4 uses of the skill.

Expel Harm 48k +37k = 85k

To compare the ap scaling some numbers tanken from an actual raid encounter:

Guard ~300k

Expel Harm ~105k

This means in the most optimal case we yould gain abount 8k more selfhealing than the shield would absorb. However in the listet case we would have to drop dangerously low 3 times in 30 seconds and have no overhealing whatsoever. Additionally you will always gain some benefit from the bonus healing if you use Expel Harm Diractly after using Guard. Becaus of this you shouldn't glyph guard unless you have magic damage to avoid.

[Vlad 411]

I'm curious why Precise Serpent's Eye (JC) / Fractured Serpent's Eye (JC) are recommended instead of agility JC gems. The secondary stats would only give you a bonus of 320 exp/mastery which I thought was less valuable than 320 agility... am I missing something?

Simply because those secondary stats are better than Agility is. Capping Expertise is super important, and once that's done Mastery (or Crit, should you choose to gear for it) is essentially preferable.

I would say that the minor glyph Glyph of Zen Flight is not merely cosmetic. It permits a flight mode that while slow, can be triggered while falling (like a druids flight form). It does permit some actions, notably, mounting a faster flight mount. Now, while this won't save you during an indoor raid, it can save you from death by falling in many places, which is more than simply cosmetic.

While I am not going to go out of my way to mention the Glyph of Zen Flight (since it doesn't really pertain to raiding), I did add a mention that the Minor Glyphs are all cosmetic or otherwise not useful for raiders :)

Thank you!

You contradict yourself on the chi burst in the cool down section. You say it should only be used when the raid is stacked together for the healing aspect of it I assume, but chi wave always heals the monk. And in the rushing jade wind you mention the healing aspect and say that healing raid will never really be a concern to you. If healing the raid isn't a priority you should be using chi burst on cd for the simple self heal and dps boost if you choose to use it

I don't really know that it is a contradiction. The idea is more than Chi Burst is really only useful for its raid healing, so it's better to wait until you can use it efficiently that way, whereas Rushing Jade Wind provides other benefits for you. I'll see if I can improve it a bit though :) Thank you!

"Glyph of Guard increases the amount of damage absorbed by Guard by 10%, but causes it to only absorb magic damage. This glyph is useful in fights that have a lot of magic damage, but it is even more useful in fights without any magic damage."

Yes you can have the selfhealing buff up permanently but you will almost never gain an amount of bonus healing equal to the absorb you give up. Here some maths numbers taken from my Monk(528 ilv weapon, 510 average item level):

Skill ~avg. healing per cast / healing per 30 seconds // 30% bonus healing gained from Guard over 30 sec

Guard ~77k

Expel Harm ~40k / 80k // 24k

Zen Sphere hps ~3300 / 100k // 30k

Zen Sphere Detonate ~7800 / 23.4k // 7k

Chi Wave 4x ~15k = 60k / 120k // 36k

Chi burst ~33k / 33k // 9.9k

The best case would be Zen sphere with 100% uptime and a detonation every 10 seconds lining up with the cooldown perfectly. For this case to be true we would need to drop below 30% hp every ten seconds which would reset the cooldown for Expel harm resulting in 4 uses of the skill.

Expel Harm 48k +37k = 85k

To compare the ap scaling some numbers tanken from an actual raid encounter:

Guard ~300k

Expel Harm ~105k

This means in the most optimal case we yould gain abount 8k more selfhealing than the shield would absorb. However in the listet case we would have to drop dangerously low 3 times in 30 seconds and have no overhealing whatsoever. Additionally you will always gain some benefit from the bonus healing if you use Expel Harm Diractly after using Guard. Becaus of this you shouldn't glyph guard unless you have magic damage to avoid.

Yeah, I agree with you, and the guide states as much in the rotation section when discussing Guard. It's basically saying that if the physical damage in the fight is at all an issue (and it's going to be an issue in almost any fight except maybe something like Lei Shi if you aren't tanking adds), you shouldn't be using the glyph.

Thanks!

[Guest Guest]

I wonder why you skipped Glyph of Enduring Healing Sphere

It affects our gift of the ox spheres, making them last 3,5 minutes instead of 30 seconds and since there's no cap on their amount, the fight arena is really flooded with them, getting you healed over and over again through the couse of fight.

[Guest Tautology]

Curious why 480 STA from alchemy or enchanting is good, but 480 STA from mining is not good...

[Tarazet 144]

Curious why 480 STA from alchemy or enchanting is good, but 480 STA from mining is not good...

IV seem to be adamant that you don't use gathering professions for raiding, never mind that the numbers don't support it. 480 Crit from Skinning is also valuable for Monk and Druid tanks, but they refuse to list it as an alternative.

[TankaBelle 1]

So. I love the monk like so many others here. So much that my poor maim has spent enough time at the bank he has lost his working callouses but here is my question.

While I leveled her as brewmaster I now play her Misty as my tanking seems to be too fragile. Can some post a stats progression guide starting around i470. There is so much discussion about stats but very little regarding how to progress in real numerical terms. Caps and priorities are nice but not empirically helpful.

Thanks all

Tankabelke garrosh us

[Guest Phandi]

The Brewmaster Taunt Macro is a really good Idea, I did however add modify it to make it a bit more helpful if used in a fight.

/Target [mod:shift] Black Ox Statue

/cast [mod:shift] Provoke

/targetlasttarget

This would allow you to re=target the boss after you used provoke to pick up ads.

[DonRobbie 0]

 

 

Therefore, if you are gearing with survival in mind, then we believe that Mastery is the better choice. Even if it means that, over the entire course of the fight, you will take more damage than someone gearing from Critical Strike, it still means that your spike damage (the most lethal kind of tank damage there is) is reduced. In other words, Critical Strike may cause you to take more damage overall, but Mastery will be more effective in actually preventing you from dying.

 

I think in the last sentence you mean "In other words, Critical Strake may cause you to take LESS damage overall, but Mastery will be more effective in actually preventing you from dying." Just basing this on context, not any theorycrafting expertise. 

[Pusikas 0]

Brewmaster "2. Multiple Target Rotation" (implicitly) and "8.5.1. Stagger" (explicitly) state that Rushing Jade Wind gives you Shuffle. This is no longer true as of 5.4. RJW simply replaces SCK.

Edited September 14, 2013 by Pusikas

[Vlad 411]

Brewmaster "2. Multiple Target Rotation" (implicitly) and "8.5.1. Stagger" (explicitly) state that Rushing Jade Wind gives you Shuffle. This is no longer true as of 5.4. RJW simply replaces SCK.

Thanks! I'm updating the guide.

[Guest Ted]

So. I love the monk like so many others here. So much that my poor maim has spent enough time at the bank he has lost his working callouses but here is my question. While I leveled her as brewmaster I now play her Misty as my tanking seems to be too fragile. Can some post a stats progression guide starting around i470.

 

AskMrRobot can help you with stats, they have a couple options for BrM reforging/gemming that should prove helpful.  BrM tanks are only really vulnerable when they don't have shuffle up.  You will smooth out most of your damage and stay alive as long as you keep shuffle up.  Everytime you blackout kick you add 6 seconds to shuffle and it stacks.  The highest I have ever gotten it (just to see how high I could get it) was 1 minute of shuffle.  Some have said they have gotten it up to 2 minutes but that is a total waste of time really.  If you can keep shuffle up on a ticker between 20 and 30 seconds, I'd think you'd have no problems staying alive and you will still be able to deal decent damage.

[Zvon 0]

Hi, first of all, thank you for the guide, it's really helpful!

 

I have some questions about crit/mastery build, even thought u have stated very clearly reasons in guide and some posts.

 

I just went from Mastery to Crit. My mastery dropped from 19% to 14%. The reason here for me is, I don't have enough chi regeneration to keep both Blackout kick and purified brew all the time. I usually choose Blackout kick to keep up my shuffle, the let my stagger just fall off by itself. I think the 5% mastery is not making too much difference at this point. 

 

Right now I am going Crit > Mastery > Haste.

But there is one thing didn't change, my stagger damage is always the my 2nd dmg taken. I wonder is that normal? Also, should I go haste more to increasing my chi regeneration? And is 15% mastery fine enough if I play my monk it right way?

 

This is my armory link:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/malganis/Monkery/advanced

 

Again, thank you for the work and any help would be appreciate!

Edited October 27, 2013 by Zvon

[Guest Rondo]

I've been playing my monk as a Windwalker for the last six months or so, and I have some newbie Brewmaster questions:

 

1. Is Dodge at all valuable to a Brewmaster?  It seems that most tanking and/or Stamina trinkets have Dodge procs.
2. Do monks have a threat-increasing aura like the paladin's Righteous Fury?  I don't see it as one of the benefits of Ox stance, either here or on Wowhead.

Also, in your section about Tier 2 (level 30) talents, you say:

 

Your choice of talent depends on the type of healing that you need, but Chi Wave should be the default choice for most situations. It is especially suited for healing targets that are somewhat spread out.

 

Do I care about healing other people?  Why not take Chi Sphere for greater single-target (self) heals?

[Guest Krystal]

Is thee Brewmaster BiS getting an update anytime soon? I've been hoping for an update since I started tanking raids with me monk...am wanting to know what tier bonus to get, which one is not worth it, etc etc.

 

P.S.  I know you guys say to ask Mr Robot, but my guild says not to use it for tank stuff cuz it's not accurate for tanks

[Stoove 347]

P.S.  I know you guys say to ask Mr Robot, but my guild says not to use it for tank stuff cuz it's not accurate for tanks

 

It's only inaccurate when using default stat weights. If you know how to use the custom settings, it's the best out there. If you want to know more about this, try this thread.