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I would seriously consider backing out of the expertise hard cap and throwing 1200 towards your haste and crit and get out of those expertise gems. Could also use reforgelite or something to get that wasted rating out of your hit.

Sure with some posted logs several people here could identify what you are doing wrong on the fights you claim are hard to be healed in (if it's Sha make sure to log it yourself due to platforms). Happy to offer suggestions but I just can't believe you are that much of a struggle to heal without something being wrong, if anything based on my own personal results of moving through 10m and 25m normal & heroic fights.

I'm not sure about lowering my expertise... when it was lower I felt like I was generating less chi and shuffle was harder to keep up.

Maybe I'll switch to claws to try to proc more EB stacks.

03/01/2013 02:19 PMPosted by Wanglo

The healer and I are the ones grabbing most of the orbs, so I often won't proc an EB as I run back and forth and smack the panda every now and then to keep up threat.

You should still be able to run by and at least get your Keg Smash off for the threat/Chi and also don't forget you can use Expel Harm when not in melee range (I glyph it so I don't have to be by the mob when I use to do dmg). That should give you the Chi you need to get off Guard and Chi Wave's for healing, then just Zen Med through Death Blossom.

EH also loses it's CD if you are < 35% so you can spam that button endlessly if you are low life and fire off Chi Wave and Guard with all the Chi that results.

03/01/2013 02:48 PMPosted by Wanglo

I'm not sure about lowering my expertise... when it was lower I felt like I was generating less chi and shuffle was harder to keep up.

Missing a Keg Smash only costs you 1 Chi, 8 energy, and 1 GCD and BoK still applies shuffle when it misses. The extra Chi from haste will give you more breathing room to keep up shuffle while using PB and Guard (and Chi Wave) more often. The extra Crit will result in more EB stacks which sounds like a point of frustration to begin with.

I run with 6500 haste for H Wind Lord but you can get away with less that is just a very intense fight since you are popping up to high stagger amounts very frequently.

DW provides a much more steady stream of EB stacks, I have 2x Claws and Goa Rei and much prefer DW'ing over the staff.

"Negate" is a strong word. As high as it may be (up to 100%), avoidance is still just a chance at not taking damage.

He is talking about normal mode and doesn't look like any heroic attempts are coming up soon. With EB up the chance of all 3 atk's hitting is < 1% which should be fine for normal mode and you can use Guard / Fort Brew to fill in instances where you don't have stacks.

I always come in from the platform with 15 stacks which covers the 1st two Thrash's and by then you should have plenty to use on the 3rd.

Ok I'll try lowering my exp to 7.5% and putting it into crit. Or should I put it to haste? Or both?

Haste up to at least 4k unless you plan on never using Chi Wave (i.e. bad freakin' idea since it can heal for bricks)

I'm pretty happy at just above 6k, threshold drops a bit more in 5.2 since the T30 talents don't cost anything

03/01/2013 04:27 PMPosted by Kangamooster

Haste up to at least 4k unless you plan on never using Chi Wave (i.e. bad freakin' idea since it can heal for bricks)

I'd agree at least probably 4500 or so Haste, from there you can play around with how much you can funnel into crit after that.

As mentioned right now I run with 6500 haste but that is mostly for the most intense fights. With L30 going free and eventually picking up our super sexy 4P bonus in 5.2 haste values will be dropping back down again eventually.

The 5.2 2P further encourages crit, once you get to ~4X% Crit (depends on your haste) you should be able to have EB or the 2P bonus up near 100% of the fight.

I dropped down off the Expertise hardcap and it made a MASSIVE difference in my survivability. Healers were wondering how it seemed like I had gone up 20 ilvls overnight. More haste will make up for some of the deficiencies of being under the hard cap. Not entirely, but it's not as bad as it seems.

A couple of Sha-specific tips:
- It's not the Brewmaster's best fight. Guard and Dampen Harm aren't up every time, so you have to rely on EB. RNG is RNG and even with a ton of dodge and parry, you still might take all three hits. I usually try to make sure I have enough Chi in reserve for Chi Wave and a Purify after the Thrash, following up with Expel Harm if necessary. It's hard to see if you have any Gift orbs down because of the stupid glowy thing, so just wiggle around afterwards.

- As far as the add goes: Xuen CAN tank him and is ready or just-about-ready almost everytime I get ported. I summon him as soon as I get there, Keg Smash, BoK and then focus on collecting orbs so the others in my group can stick to the DPS, Keg Smash when its ready, BoK, and back on orbs.

- Glyph into Zen Meditation and you can move around collecting orbs during the Death Blossom if there are a lot of them still up. It won't break on damage from the ability.

03/01/2013 03:11 PMPosted by Wanglo

Ok I'll try lowering my exp to 7.5% and putting it into crit. Or should I put it to haste? Or both?

you wouldn't need to pull 1 rating from exp if you had geared properly in the 1st place.

- there's WAY to much mastery in your gear, even reforging out of mastery you still have 2500 on it. There's a lot of gearing options for agi leather .. you should aim at those with least mastery as possible for now.

- many reforges you are reducing haste instead of crit. And you should never do that. Haste > crit.

- there's still some gems all over the place. If you are struggling to meet the caps:
green = hit/haste
red = exp
yellow = haste
metagem should be agi + crit dmg%

only use stamina if your gear allows you to confortably reach those caps.

- your trinkets are better of being agi trinkets (or rating trinkets with agi procs) .. you have way too much stamina for the content you are doing. Stamina is only usefull for heavy magic dmg fights or for when the boss hits too hard for your hp pool ... and none of the bosses you are doing will do that.

- before dropping exp .. fix those other areas and see if you can get ~5000k or so haste.

- Ideally your gear should have this priority: hit/exp cap > haste > crit > mastery.

you have more crit, more stam and more mastery than me (even considering that my gear has 503 ilvl) and having "spike dmg" issues. Also, even with a 2h it's very rare for me to have issues with EB procs .. remember that more haste also means more white attacks.

Another things you have to keep in mind is:
- dont use expel harm on cooldown. The dmg increase is minimal .. Especially if you are having spike issues, you are better of saving EH for when you need the heal.

- get better at collecting Gift of the ox orbs ... don't dance around to pick them up ... wait for 3-6 to pool on your side, if you get around 50-75% hp, strafe a little, collect them and get back to the original position.

- timing Elusive brew with mechanics or lining it up with how much dmg you are taking makes a lot of difference. Use it with few stacks, or whenever you know high dmg may come. Don't save 10-15 stacks. That's one thing that causes dmg rollercoaster .. because you avoid too many attacks for 10-15s, then all of the sudden you start taking dmg again. The perception healers get from that is that you are inconstant.

- Don't try to use guard on cd. You know the "1 min cd" that you asked? We have a 30 sec one. Guard can be extremelly powerfull if used before or after a huge dmg. If it's a timed mechanic (a dragon's breath, a big attack etc), you can use it before and guard alone will soak a LOT of dmg. If the boss doesn't have such mechanic, you can use guard as a "panic button". After you take a lot of dmg, your vengeance usually skyrocket, so you can make a very big guard (talking about 350-500k shields).

An example of how you can quickly react to dire situations.
- You got bursted down to 10-35% to a boss mechanic.
- Use guard to completely stop dmg taken.
- If that costs your shuffle uptime, use EB as well to "cover" the avoidance loss from shuffle. Even if you still have shuffle up, use EB with 2-4 stacks to lower the chance taking the next attack even further.
- Use expel harm and with this chi generate, instantly clear your stagger (that will likely be yellow or red).

Considering that all of those things are off GCD, in 1 sec (if you have fast fingers =p) .. You made a shield that will stop the next 350k or more dmg, kept your avoidance high so that is very unlikely that you get hit from the next 1-2 attacks from the boss. Cleared the stagger dmg, and with Expel harm, likely got your hp back to 40-50% or so on your own.

This gives you a good 3-5 sec of breathing room for the healers to keep you up. You have my word that you'll survive (if the healers do their job as well, obviously).

A lot of people advocate that you should use your defensive toolkit on cooldown ... well. That's stupid. Not dying, not being spiky is much more important than using things on the fly, without appropriately lining them up with the moments that the fight is more dangerous.

Your job as a tank is to be reliable, to plan ahead and react fast when things go out of hand. No play a "rotation" and hope things go as planned.

I know it sounds arrogant, and whatnot, but trust me when I say, outside Heroic Sha thrash, BRM just don't die if they react correctly. I honestly don't remember the last time I died while tanking (except wipes, of course).

03/01/2013 05:27 PMPosted by Leeflow

(if the healers do their job as well, obviously)

At least for LFR and LFD, I find this to be the biggest hurdle to success as a Brewmaster.

- before dropping exp .. fix those other areas and see if you can get ~5000k or so haste.

- Ideally your gear should have this priority: hit/exp cap > haste > crit > mastery.

I re-geared and reforged to try to meet that criteria. I guess I'll find out if I notice the difference next time we raid.

you forgot your boot enchant, but yeh, it's looking much better now.

a couple more things:

- your metagem should be Agile Primal Diamond
- chi wave is a better choice than zen sphere. It's healing is more "bursty".
- Dampen harm is a cooldown akin to bone shield from DKs. So it's really usefull to have. Fort Brew is our "shield wall". DH is usefull to prevent spike dmg. You use it before as an extra layer of coverage, so any big attack that could be a spike dmg, is reduced.
- Diffuse Magic is also an extremelly powerfull magic cd.

Healing elixirs is the weakest of the 3. There are very few situations where it's heal is usefull.

I'm leveling a new brewmaster as soon as my friend can think up a name!!!

*squee* I'm so excited.

decided to join the fun side of the force?

go for BrewBarrimore =o

decided to join the fun side of the force?

go for BrewBarrimore =o

Naw. I already have a monk on proudmoore, but none on doomhammer. And my friend has one on doomhammer, but it's heal/dps, so he's going heal I'm going tank and we're going to pull ALL THE THINGS.