Hi guys,
So, as the title questions: when it’s the best moment to use the brew to clear the stagger?
I don’t really get that form of tanking, I’m used to more conventional classes like warrior and paladin, I feel like ideally I should wait for when the stagger goes red and the brew icon starts flashing, it is when I feel it actually makes a difference, however usually waiting for it to get to that point means that either everything dies and I end up not really needing it (making it useless) or I take a crapton of damage that makes the healer uses a ton of mana to keep my health topped while the stagger is just yellow or sometimes green.
Keep in mind I’m a new monk, I made one and it’s currently at level 35 but because I don’t really grasp the way it works, I feel like it’s a lot harder to tank even these low level dungeons as a Brewmaster than it was on pretty much every other tank spec character I have (which is all of them except monk lol).
Also, is it really normal for the Brewmaster to be so dependent on the healer?
On my other tanks, especially the ones with more self healing like my guardian druid or my blood dk, it’s usually not a problem to fight on my own when the healer dies or is stunned or feared etc, but as a monk if I have a large pack on me and the healer stops healing for a moment I get wrecked.
I imagine it’s all due to me being dumb and not understanding very well the monk tanking concept given how different it is, so I figured i’d ask it here.
Thanks in advance!
While you are leveling just use off CD. It cuts your dot in half every time you use it. Then immediately use Celestial Brew to get a big shield. Tiger Palm and Keg Smash give your brews a cd reduction, which means you can use more Purifying and Celestial Brews more often.
The game does a horrible job at displaying your stagger so you really should be using an addon meter or Weakaura to make it easier to track
BM does have pretty bad self-sustain, but we can make up with it with ring of peace, leg sweep, and paralyze if you need a bit more breathing room.
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At level 35, you don’t have a second charge of Purifying Brew, do you? Because while you can obviously clear more when it’s red, you also don’t want to be sitting on full charges or you aren’t getting any value out of it. Try and use it right before Celestial too to increase the absorb.
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yeah at that level it’s just one charge, which is why i keep trying to save it for when it’s needed but its the poor healers who suffer with it lol
It is comparable to death strike in functionality although more nuanced. Until endgame, don’t worry about the nuances so much, just use it as often as possible after receiving a spike of big damage.
In mathematical terms, the goal of brewmaster is to minimize the integral of stagger dot damage with respect to time. The result is that purifying brew is best used on the points of inflection of the damage taken per second curve, corresponding to when the rate of change of stagger goes from positive to negative. However, you only have a limited number of Purifying brews, so you can’t use it on every spike.
Eventually you’ll figure out what your effective purifying brew cool down is (depends on talent choice and legendary) call this time tau, and then every tau seconds you want to use one purifying brew on the point of inflection corresponding to the rate of change of stagger with the largest positive magnitude (aka biggest damage spike).
In simpler terms:
1)You want to use one at least every 14 seconds or so immediately after the the biggest damage taken per second spike in that 14 second window.
2)Dont delay purifying brew unless your stagger will increase by a factor of 4 within the next 10 seconds
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I just made another monk for horde side. Using it on CD didnt cause any issues leveling to 60. If you feel youre taking a lot of damage torpedo/roll back and forth to help the healer. One time a mage accidentally pulled the whole area and i just kited in a big circle.
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I only off tank these days, but I use two rules to purify
- “That was a lot of dmg, I should have had a cooldown going” = Purify
- “Everyone in group is damaged, healer should focus on everyone else” = Purify, (and expel harm, healing elixir, celestial brew, health stone, or health pot)
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A simple starting point.
If you use DBM or other way to track boss events, there’s usually certain moments during the fight where you need to use a defensive. These moments usually don’t need a big defensive, but one of the typical short cooldown tank defensives for active mitigation.
While other tanks usually need to use theirs right before the damage happens (we also have Celestial Brew for that, but we’re talking about Purifying Brew), Brewmaster needs to time Purifying Brew right after the damage happens. Ideally, without any delay.
Apart from that, it’s recommended to try to keep one charge in cooldown, and one available for use for most of the fight. Of course, this is not set in stone, it’s the optimal situation.
In summary, you try to keep them in cycle, using one for big damage spikes, and keeping the other available. When you feel one of the conditions Fogfolder mentioned apply, you can use that second charge.
Remember that PB is a special kind of mitigation. Try to never panic and use both one right after the other, and to never use them before a big damage event.
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Last note: you can get a weakaura or mod or something that showed the timer on your pure brew stacks.
Sometimes when you’re running to the next pack, you can pre-pop a brew just to get your stacks started / keep them maintained.