Brewmaster - About Guard

[Hungh 0]

Hey guys. I've been working on a Brewmaster set and finally got every piece above 528, so I'm working on doing flex raids at the moment.

 

I'm wondering about Guard right now. It feels like a kind of strange cooldown to me. Yes, it can help mitigate some damage, but I don't really feel that I'm using it more than once or twice per boss fight. It just never really feels... necessary? Purifying moderate staggers is usually my top priority, and between healing/self-healing, keeping shuffle up, and my other damage reduction cooldowns, I don't ever really feel like I have much of a place to use Guard.

 

Is it the sort of cooldown that you use on cooldown whenever you're tanking the boss, or just something you use periodically as a chi dump? A pretty good Brewmaster, Sloot, seems to use it very rarely as well. Here's his kill of Garrosh and I didn't see him use it a single time:

 

 

What are your thoughts on it?

[Dainjah 0]

Keep in mind a few things... esp for this particular fight in the video.

 

1. The guard he is using is glyphed for magic damage reduction which makes using guard only useful in certain parts of the fight

 

2. He's geared and has competent healers

 

3. Overall he's a great player and using tons of "cd's" all the time... had he not been glyphed I'm sure he would be using guard more.

 

 

Guard is especially good. Typically in LFR, it's easy and laughable and guard may not feel important. The amount of + self healing is a nice benefit to keep in mind. Personally, I like to use it when I know big physical hits are coming. Reduces damage and makes my heals better reducing some stress off healers. Again though... LFR is pretty easy.

 

Flex might be a different story. More damage = more mitigation desired. Alot depends on your heals in group and how well you manage EB / Stagger / Purify. It's a nice O Sh!t button and pre mitigation button.

 

Personally, I like to keep up if there's no predictable damage coming for the extra heals. I tend to keep about 20-30 secs of stagger up so I get alot of play time with other chi spenders. Hopefully I helped some.

[Brewmonksta 157]

Hi there,

 

I have my guard unglyphed and used it almost on cooldown when tanking 25H garry.

 

Guard is best used when vengeance is high and a large amount of damage is going to happen soon.

 

EG after taunt swapping and you have takend a few hits is can smooth out the melle hitss from garrosh meaning that the magical damage is all that you will be taking.

It is also helpful when you are soaking the anhiliates in the transition phases, once you have enough vengeance it can allow you to soak 1 or 2 smashes after zen med and diffuse magic are already used.

 

Guard should not be used on cd so if you outgear content and your healers are "pro" disc priest absorb machines then you probably dont need to worry about playing optimally with guards etc.

 

The problems with lfr and flex is that the bosses dont hit hard enough for you to really get the vengeance to make guard really shine. It does however help to smooth that dmaage and when you get a guard up followed by the expel harm with the buff from guard you can go from almost dead to full hp very fast.

 

TL;DR

Sloot overgears the content, use guard its good.