Brewmaster : General guide + Tips, tricks and personal experience. (Raids and CM's)

[PR0j3cTc4RRY]

Hey guys.

I've been playing my monk since MoP release and i have a total of 6 monks. As a tanking class, we are THE top dps and we provide ALOT of raid utility.
In this guide i'll teach you how to keep your raid alive, minimise your damage taken and maximise your dps.

BUILD

1st tier: Doesn't really matter. It's personal choice. I prefer Momentum
2nd tier: Chi wave is your BEST bet. I'll explain my choice later on.
3rd tier: Ascension is the way to go. The 15% energy regeneration is just too good.
4th tier: Leg sweep, best stun in game.
5th tier: Dampen Harm or Diffuse magic. Fight dependent (Usually i stick with Dampen Harm for raids and Diffuse magic for Challenge modes)
6th tier: Tiger or rushing jade wind. For raids i always stick with the tiger (It'll be explained) And rushing jade wind is my favorite for Challenge modes.

REFORGES

Raids :
-Hit to 7.5%
-Expertise to 15%
-Haste
-Crit

Hit cap and Expertise hard cap are your best friends in raids. I have tested 7.5% hit and expertise and i had too many parries. You loose alot of dps AND hps if you dont get that 100% chi generation.
Haste is really good for energy regen. I found out that at 6.5-7k haste your energy regen is optimal. You will always have chi available and will not be energy starved at any point.
Crit is awesome for Gift of the ox generation and you get more elusive brew stacks per minute. (Those abilities will be explained later on)
Mastery is not viable untill 5.2.
Ignore dodge / parry.

Challenge modes:
-Hit to 7.5%
-Expertise to 7.5%-10%
-Haste = Crit.

In challenge modes you don't have to have expertise cap. Your main goal in challenge modes: High dps on trash (I'll explain it later on)
Why haste=crit? It's due to your gift of the ox generation on trash. When you use spinning craning kick on 6+ mobs you will have ALOT of orbs spawning. You will just have to take a step by the side and you can go from 10% health to 100%.

ROTATION

Single target:
-Keg smash on cooldown is your goal. You HAVE to use it on cooldown. The damage is just too good. Save energy if you see 1-2 seconds cooldown remaining on keg smash.
-Keep your shuffle up. Use blackout kick or rushing jade wind.
-Expel harm If you are low or just to help your healers.
-Jab is your main chi generator along with keg smash. Use it as much as you can.
-Chi wave if you need to spend Chi. (If you are low or there is alot of raid damage going out) I've seen 300k heal crits with vengeance. So it's a pretty good spell to maintain urself and your raid alive.
-Spam Tiger Palm if you dont have energy or chi. You should always keep that buff up.

AOE
-Keg smash on cooldown
-Keep shuffle up
-Keep your fire breath debuff.
-Keep tiger palm's buff up
-Spin to win (Spinning crane kick)

Cooldown management

Being a monk is fun, we have alot of ways to avoid our death.

-Fortifying Brew: This ability should always be glyphed. It's basicly our strongest and MAIN cooldown to reduce Damage taken.
-Elusive brew: You got a chance to get a stack of this buff when you crit with a melee atack. It's a really usefull cooldown. Try to save stacks untill you get an *OH SHIT* moment.
-Guard: Costs 2 chi. Averages to about 200k absorb shield (Scales up with vengeance). 30 second only cooldown. Try to save it for the moments when you are about to get hit really hard.
-Avert harm. Redirects 20% of the raid damage to you. A useful raid ability.
-Gift of the ox: It's not a cooldown. BUT If you can stand still on a boss fight, you will generate those over time (Same mechanic as elusive brew) and you can always take a step to the side whenever you feel in danger.
-Chi wave: Strong healing ability. Only 8 seconds cooldown. But you should use it as often as possible.
-Dampen Harm: Reduce the the next 3 hits by 50% (If they hit you for more than 10% of your life) It's another useful cooldown to keep in mind for hard hitting bosses.

LET'S PARSE

In this section i'll give you some tricks on how to do insane burst and damage as BM.
You will have to pull the boss. Your goal is to get hit as hard as possible in the first 10 seconds of the figtht. So what you should do: Generate 5 chi, Dont use blackout kick yet. If you have 40k+ vengeance, your trinket procs, agility potion up, it's the right time to use your tiger. He will be there for about 45 seconds and your burst can go up to 200k (Mine was 215k with perfect rng).
After you summoned your vengeance buffed tiger (Tiger is affected by vengeance) just follow normal single target rotation. Make sure to use ur pet on cooldown and always use it when ever you have high vengeance to maximise your damage.
Make sure to get hit by any stupid mechanic in the game to keep your vengeance as high as possible (If the content is on farm). To do that, you will have to make sure that your chi wave, expel harm and guard are ready to use to prevent your death.
I enjoyed being top dps for most of the fights as a tank.
I will probably discribe every encounter later on if some body will be interested. (Have 10 rank one atm, but my ilvl is only 490 and i quit raiding 3 weeks ago so it's pretty old)

Challenge modes

You will need a really good disc priest to use my strategy.
Basicly for challenge modes you need to pull as much as possible rotating your cooldowns (Pain sup, Barrier, your cds). Then do the aoe rotation mentioned before. I cannot release all the secrets sadly, but if you have any specific questions, i am always glad to help you.

GEAR/ 2hVS1h

I know for a fact it's still a question for people which weapons to pick.
I prefer Dual wield for Raid bosses (More single target dmg)
And 2h weapons for Challenge modes. You get WAY more gift of the ox generation in AoE situation with a 2h-er weapon.

I'll make BIS list tonight.


Hope you enjoyed. I will try to add more stuff later on.

/PR0j3cTc4RRY

[googlebee]

Really nice guide man - Thanks for sharing this.

Have +5 Rep

-GB

[VoTuUS]

Nice guide man +4

[Agapyr]

Quite a good read. Nothing really new, but +rep for the effort.

Some corrections / additions:

-Dampen Harm: Reduce the the next 3 hits by 50% (If they hit you for more than 10% of your life) It's another useful cooldown to keep in mind for hard hitting bosses

Was changed to 20% of Monk's HP

Hit cap and Expertise hard cap are your best friends in raids. I have tested 7.5% hit and expertise and i had too many parries. You loose alot of dps AND hps if you dont get that 100% chi generation.

Haste does in fact generate more Chi than Expertise. Let me show you why. Let's say that you are exp-hardcapped with 6000 hasterating = 14.11% haste + specced into Ascension

Energy-Reg = 10 x 1.1 x 1.15 x 1.1411 = 14.43

Chi/Min = ((14.43 x 60) - (8 x 40)) / 40 + (8 x 2) = 29.65

Pretty straight forward. Now we are going to reforge 2550 exp-rating to hasterating = 8550 hasterating in total = 20.11% haste

Energy-Reg = 10 x 1.1 x 1.15 x 1.2011 = 15.19

We get 8 x 2 x 0,925 = 14,8 Chi through KS. Energy-consumption is no longer 320 but (8 x 0,925 x 40) + (8 x 0,075 x 8 ) = 300,8.
Jabs = ((15.19 x 60) - 300,8 ) / (40 + 8 x 0,075) = 15.04 Chi through Jab

That are 14.8 + 15.04 = 29.84 (not even considering that using EH on CD would increase this as Chi is granted on the heal not the dmg from this ability. That would be 29.9 )

Considering a 10 min fight and flawless execution that would be 1.9 (2.5 when caculation with EH) more Chi.

Pros for exp-hardcap
- more DPS
- no Chi-starvation after a KS-parry

Pros for haste-stacking
- scales with Ascension
- more energy to be able to use EH in a low health situation

Being a monk is fun, we have alot of ways to avoid our death

Unfortunately only if the Encounter favors our CDs. After the change to 20% dampen harm is quite useless in a lot of fights. Lei Shi is great as you can tank the boss to about 20+ stacks if needed. EB is really great for *whateverwasthenameofthetripleattack* in the Sha encounter.

After you summoned your vengeance buffed tiger (Tiger is affected by vengeance)

While this is correct, Xuen always uses your acutal numbers as he is being updated during his uptime. He does not work like the shamans Fire Elemental that could be super-charged and kept those values for it's entire duration.

[PR0j3cTc4RRY]

Thank you for your comment good sir.

Being expertise capped is a personal choice. Really depends on the player i guess.

And thank you for adding the information on Xuen. I wasn't aware of that. (I did not raid for about 4 weeks now)

+rep

[PR0j3cTc4RRY]

Unfortunately only if the Encounter favors our CDs. After the change to 20% dampen harm is quite useless in a lot of fights. Lei Shi is great as you can tank the boss to about 20+ stacks if needed. EB is really great for *whateverwasthenameofthetripleattack* in the Sha encounter.
.

As a monk i feel pretty squishy all the times. But good comunication with your healer will always save you. Can't wait for 5.2. We will be gods.

[Agapyr]

Monks need to have something up ALL the time. Doesn't matter if it is shuffle or elusive brew or some other CD. Base damage-reduction simply is too low. A Brewmaster has to use about 30-40 abilities per minute to achieve a dmg-reduction that other tanks get baseline. Btw. stuns are hurting monks really hard.

5.2 will be really great for survival if it goes live with the change to mastery and lvl45 talents. "Gods" seems a bit...tooo much, but Brewmasters will become more viable.

[PR0j3cTc4RRY]

No, gods is the right word. Right now i can pull up to 90k sustained dps on a single target (+35-40k hps). And i can go up to 800-1000k dps on trash in Challenge modes. Our damage taken is abit high though. But they fixed it! Plus chi wave buff... It heals for 100-200k now, imagine with no chi cost and healing increased by 100%?

[blake990]

How does crit rating help with Gift of the Ox generation? I was under the impression it was totally RNG from all attacks, and that crit didn't affect it?

[Agapyr]

GotO is not random. The orbs proc from crits.

- 10% chance for crits from styles to generate an orb
- 3.7 x weaponspeed chance for whitehit crits when dual-wielding (ie. 2.6 speed = 3.7 x 2.6 = 9.62% for each whitehit crit from this weapon)
- 6 x weaponspeed chance for whitehit crits when using a 2h (ie. 3.6 speed = 6 x 3.6 = 21.6% for each whitehit crit)

If you want to have more GotO-orbs you need to get more critrating. Hasterating also increases the procs as the % is being calculated with the original speed of the weapon. Don't believe anyone who wants to tell you that you need hit or exp for GotO. As long as you do not hit the critcap hit/exp are completely irrelevant, as whitehits are on a one-roll.

[TehVoyager]

thanks for the guide, but i'll keep following Sunnier's brewmaster guide at Brewmaster Guide - Sunnier's Art of War

Before MOP she was one of the top bear tanks. Now shes one of the best Monk tanks.

[Agapyr]

thanks for the guide, but i'll keep following Sunnier's brewmaster guide at Brewmaster Guide - Sunnier's Art of War

Before MOP she was one of the top bear tanks. Now shes one of the best Monk tanks.

quoted for truth

Her guide is way better than those crappy guides on manaflask or mmo-champion. What I am missing in most guides is an information how valuable each of the secondary stats really is. As of today there are various valid ways what secondary stats to take.

[mistadabolina]

nice guide, what i dont understand is this:

After you summoned your vengeance buffed tiger (Tiger is affected by vengeance) just follow normal single target rotation. Make sure to use ur pet on cooldown and always use it when ever you have high vengeance to maximise your damage.

tiger, pet? what is that?

[TehVoyager]

nice guide, what i dont understand is this:



tiger, pet? what is that?

Um, Xuen?

(10charsblarg)

[mistadabolina]

Um, Xuen?

(10charsblarg)

ah the statue?