What is Stagger

Classes Monk
1

I’m new to brewmaster monk and I’ve only gotten mine to level 38 but I don’t understand stagger.

I’ve tried looking it up to try and get a better idea of what it is but I still don’t understand it. Could someone who does understand it explain it to me?

2

Stagger is where you mitigate a certain amount of damage by drinking brew. So any physical or magic burst damage you take gets slowed down by being turned into damage over time. As you learn to stagger you’ll get good at always trying to keep it activated. That means like taking a swig every 8 seconds. Your second brew which shares the same sracks will just flat negate any damage you’ve staggered. It’s for this reason most Brewmasters choose to talent an extra stack for a total of 4. Or at least I did.
You can go even tankier later if you want by selecting a talent that flat stops like 10 thousand damage before it’s even applied.
I chose a different route personally because I tank well enough, so my last 2 options I chose dps to speed questing.

3

A more simple explanation is instead of taking damage outright you stagger damage over time instead. You can increase your stagger time with talents and you increase increase your stagger ability thru your brews. You can also negate part of that damage that is staggered thru your purify brew

4

I’ll just use quick maths from what I understand.

Mob hits you for 100, you will still get hit for 100, but only take 70 at first, and the other 30 comes as a dot.

You can choose to clear the dot with Purify brew if the dot becomes too heavy. In the case of above you would just take 70 and the 30 never comes.

Just to be clear the ratio of numbers I used were an example and doesn’t mean you constantly have 30% stagger.

5

Stagger is the baseline damage mitigation effect for Brewmasters that happens passively and can be enhanced with talents and managed with your brews.

It will take a percentage of the damage from each attack made against you and deposits that damage into an ever expanding pool. The more damage you take, or the higher your stagger %, the larger the pool gets and over time this damage is delt back to you.


Shrike Wrote a really good analogy (much better than the one I would have written) for what stagger is and how it works on the PeakofSerenity. You can read that at your own pace if your interested. There are pictures and everything!

Think of damage like a stream of water. Sometimes it flows faster, and sometimes slower. Stagger is like a bucket, but it’s a really leaky bucket and there are holes all over the sides, so 10% of what’s in the bucket leaks out every second. One thing the bucket does naturally is to help make the flow of water relatively constant, so if there’s a big flood of damage (a big tank ability) followed by some little stuff (melee hits, raid damage) for a while, you catch part of the flood in the bucket and then every second for ten seconds afterward, 10% of the damage that went into the bucket leaks out, plus some extra from the little stuff. Delaying damage by putting it into the bucket can help protect you from being one-shot and gives healers more time to react and heal you.

2 Likes
6

So I can’t link websites, but peakofserenity dot com has all your monk questions answered. That being said, it can be quite overwhelming.

Your base stagger is somewhere between 40-50%, meaning any physical hit you take 50% up front and then 50% over 10 seconds. When you pop ironskin brew, depending on your gear and the mob you’re fighting, it goes up, let’s say to 75%. That means you take 1/4 of the damage up front, and 3/4 as a damage over time.

But why? What’s the point? Well for raiding and high M+ content it makes you super easy to heal because your health won’t spike. Instead you will gradually tick down which gives healers tons of time to react.

As others have stated though, you can also purify some of that off. Purifying removes 50% of whatever is in your stagger pool. Ironskin brew you want up 100% of the time, and you purify when you feel you need to. At low level you’ll rarely need to.

Regarding the last talent row, Valora is talking about the talent Guard. It’s bad. Don’t take it. Ever. Always take high tolerance and you’ll be good. It’s complicated to explain, just take my word for it.

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Also, remember to watch out for magic damage. Stagger is less effective against magic, so if you aggro too many magic users you can die.