[Brewmaster]

I'm levelling a Monk in Brewmaster atm, and couldn't find an existing thread for it so thought I'd start one.

Really I just have one thing to ask atm, since I'm still low level:
I have the talent Power Strikes, which grants an additional Chi from Jab every 20 seconds. But when I'm fighting mobs out in the world, every now and then I gain 2 Chi from a Jab while I know Power Strikes is on cooldown. I've had it happen with 2 Jabs in a row, with Jabs that were 5 seconds apart, and just generally all over the cooldown duration.

Power Strikes seems to work for the most part (ie, when I know it's off cooldown, it procs as expected), but these extra procs of Chi I can't predict at all. I can't find any other spells or effects that would cause 2 Chi to be generated by Jab. What is going on?

Possibly a chi sphere generated by power strikes.

I'm not overcapping as far as I know, and it's not happening when I move - it's happening when I Jab, exclusively.

Then probably the buff "popping" right when you hit jab, so istantly being consumed.

I've been tanking on my monk for quite a while and never noticed anything like that! :O

Okay, I finally put a PowA tracking Power Strikes buff being up right next to my Chi bar, and directly witnessed the buff refreshing instantly after being consumed. Only happened once so far, though.

Edit: No more back-to-backs but it's still refreshing oddly. Pops up before it should. Seen it reappear after 12 secs, after 15, after 8...

I'm making sure now to watch the timer carefully, because these early procs keep throwing it off. When I make sure I start with a proc and timer reset, I still see the buff appear at as little as 5 seconds in.

The buff refreshes 20 seconds after you gained it. When you spend it in that 20-second window doesn't influence when you get the buff back. So if you gained the buff 19.5 seconds ago and you Jab, you'll lose it and then get it right back.

Thank you. If that's the case, then the Brewmaster Tao addon's timer for Power Strikes is 100% useless (I already considered it mostly useless; it counts 20 seconds from the first Jab you do when the timer is not already running).

Elitist Jerks finally put up a proper Brewmaster guide.

I'm torn about it - the author certainly has more experience than me at tanking with Brewmaster, but the advice was a mix of confirmation of stuff that's been said before (hit, exp, haste is good), good advice I'd overlooked (aggressively use Elusive Brew), pieces that went directly against earlier advice I've seen on EJ (maintain 100% Shuffle uptime) and at least one plain wha...? bit ("Brewmasters shouldn't stack stamina").

But it's very comprehensive

http://elitistjerks.com/f99/t131791-lik ... 2_23_12_a/

Yeah, I've been reading that. Not sure on the Stamina thing - I get his point, the Brewmaster can reduce damage taken with other stats, and low modifiers mean Stamina doesn't scale as well as it does for other tanks, but I'd still think you need a certain amount of health to survive.

What do you mean about 100% uptime on Shuffle being against other advice? I would have thought that'd be a basic tenet of BM tanking, since it'd keep your damage intake from spiking.

KysenMurrin wrote:What do you mean about 100% uptime on Shuffle being against other advice? I would have thought that'd be a basic tenet of BM tanking, since it'd keep your damage intake from spiking.

Early discussion on EJ had a spreadsheet that showed that optimal for TDR was to keep shuffle uptime at less than 100% to be able to purify more. That was also an early design tenet for Brewmasters by Blizzard (let shuffle drop off when damage is low, shuffle + purify when damage is high).

Probably invalidated because it's simply easier to keep shuffle up and damage is probably smoother as well.