From a ~ 3200 healer perspective on hpal and mistweaver, regarding tank utility:
Brewmaster has zero, there is nothing, that I notice as a healer, that brew contributes to the group
I don’t remember what druids have, been so long since I’ve played with them. Don’t they have something that helps heal other people? I suppose Mark of the wild is nice
warriors have intercept and battle shout (the health increase, maybe I got the name wrong)
We have After the Wildfire that heals allies within 12 yards for 600% of AP when we spend 300 Rage. So it its lackluster =/
It was once upon a time really good (more range + more heals, etc) then Blizz like usual when somethings good - were quick to nerf it and gut it but hey at least I guess it didnt get the Mark of Ursol treatment and just removed entirely. >.<
Yep, 3% vers is one of the best class buffs in the game, and will always give druid a leg up on being the meta with one of its specs. Same with priests and fort/PI.
I can’t think of much beyond that for guardian. They’re supposed to be huge health bar beasts and be able to take a beating, but I don’t think that describes them right now.
Yeah, they got rid of that huge health bar niche a long time ago when they balanced out tank health and made every tanks health basically the same and got rid of our niche. I dont remember when they did this but its been years.
I’m still salty over this when they harp on the reasons why they dont give specs/tanks the same playing field for interrupts/utility : But we dont want to make everyone the saaaaame.
Riiiight. Then give me the big ol bear meat shield back
Once again, the fix for this is easy. Update stagger so that it blocks a fixed amount of damage. Tie the amount to agility or mastery or whatever, and keep it small enough that it doesn’t affect raid. The rest of the hit gets staggered as usual.
Since it’s a small fixed amount, brewmasters can handle bigger pulls in mythic plus without making them obscenely strong in raid.
So literally useless in higher levels where the fixed amount is a lower percentage of overall damage and overpowered in lower levels where the fixed amount might just cover an entire damage event. Trying to balance that across all difficulties and levels is nowhere near an “easy fix”.
I had this conversation about Blood DK, as they have a similar (if not the exact same) problem to BrM, in that as the key level scales up, their defensive mechanic hits a wall where it doesn’t scale as well.
Blood DK, its their self healing that makes them so powerful for encounters that cannot oneshot them, BrM it is Stagger, making it so tough to oneshot them.
Looking at the choice node Blizzard created for druids (exclusively aimed at Resto Druids, but affecting us all because they don’t care about the rest) that gives you either a massive buff to physical or magical damage. I wonder if this idea could be used to provide a way to customize your BDK or BrM in a way that is more friendly for M+.
Thinking of BrM, and forgive the numbers because I’m just throwing stuff out here, but if you nerfed Stagger by 20%, then gave Brewmasters a choice node that said:
Increase the percentage that you Stagger by 20.
or
Brewmaster’s Balance additional reduces the physical and magical damage you take by 20%.
Now, obviously the numbers are not accurate, but could providing an option for an always on mitigation at the expense of a good portion of your Stagger mechanic allow for BrM to feel more stable in a M+ environment?
Stagger feels so bad in mythic+. I feel they could also prune a bit of the brewmaster buttons. Make ox statue worth pressing. Remove the energy cost on crackling Jade lightning. Reduce the energy cost of vivify heals. Also make Niu Zao powerful
Shield block, and block in general, doesn’t stop a fixed amount of damage and hasn’t done so since cata. How much damage block stops is a scaling % based on the block value of your shield, very similar to armor, which is also very similar to stagger.
Edit: heres the math for you on how armor, block, and stagger all work. K in these formulas is a scaling integer that is based on the difficulty level of your target. At a base in TWW, k is 100,000. Targets will have a higher K value in higher content difficulties. In pvp, K is based on the ilvl of your target.
Damage reduction = Armor / (Armor+K)
Armor, Block(Block value), and Stagger(Agility) all use this same exact formula.
i mean that would fix the majority of issues with brew rn. the skill floor isnt low enough for good performance. now do i think they should do that? probs not. atleast not in the way your describing. yes they should make some buttons (angry dave) do more, but they should focus on the amount of apm for blackout kick which is getting to unreasonable levels in this season due to the tierset pushing up to 17 casts per minute while shuffling with tiger pal due to black out combo.
people like to talk about the issues with brew but they dont really tackle the actual issues with it that the guide writer often hits on the head with each brew article.
stagger is insane good in m+, again it just alot of other things that hold brew back that the average player cant do compared to a more season brew vet in keys.
You almost never hit even 14 cpm of BoK in keys even at the highest caliber. Theres just too many other things you need to do and take precedence.
Like, ensuring BoF is on every mob, using Ring of Peace/Leg Sweep for stops, popping celestial brew (which is on the GCD T_T) grabbing aggro on a pack, dropping ox statue for AOE taunt because your DPS is blasting.
On a good key, I get about 11 cpm of BoK.
With regards to the tier set, its actually somewhat annoying during Weapons of Order because you can absolutely drop WoO stacks if you’re not paying attention
in ptr, new tier sets can still make it possible to hit 17 casts of blackout kick per minute. granted these arm sims but the skill ceiling is still there. the fact this is the limit and the average player cant muster up 10 per minute just shows the disconnect between the floor and the average player.
again just like i said, alot of brews issues can be resolve by simplifying the actual issues of brew and its demanding rotation. then after that they need to be meta for a season or two to shake off the community perception of brew being bad.
when in reality is that brew isnt bad, its just one of the hardest if not the hardest tank spec to play with a demanding skill floor and a high skill ceiling. even the most seasoned brew player can do it, but its just really really reallly hard and the new tier sets pushes that kick count even higher
Originally guardians got the extra HP because bears can’t block or parry, the only options were mitigate, avoid or compensate with extra self heal.
With the tank nerfs from TWW S1 guardians lost the extra HP and self heal, which crippled their self sustain, now guardian feels less tanky than in DF.
brewmaster doesn’t’ need a damage buff. it needs a complete overhaul on how it’s defensive kit works, and an improvement on it’s snap AoE threat.
Making Rushing Jade Wind a core talent again, and giving it a noticeable threat modifier would go a long ways on the agro side of things (not needing to land keg smash or have minimal threat opens up a lot of avenues when pulling). leaving it’s alternative to be a good raid talent if it’s higher ST damage.
Defensively - it just needs a complete overhaul. i’m so extremely reliant on my healer on BRM. with how overloaded healers are on jobs already right now, that’s just not a place you can be in. and the defensive/sustain tools BrM has to manage some of the same scenarios with less healer attention is very minimal. You can delay damage and avoid big spikes, and purify off a lot of it but not sustain/mitigate it enough.
i don’t know what they’re going to do to brew. but they need to do something or it’s going to just be dead. WW and MW are now becoming strong enough in their own right, that BrM isn’t as mandatory a raid tank spot for mystic touch. The tank is just going to completely disappear if something isn’t done.
again just like i said, alot of brews issues can be resolve by simplifying the actual issues of brew and its demanding rotation. then after that they need to be meta for a season or two to shake off the community perception of brew being bad.