I’m quite new to monk tanking, having moved over from a very comfortable Blood DK
I can tank hc and some mythic dungeons fine but there’s a problem.
I have been removed from several groups lately for taking to much damage, on a boss like blightbone on Necrotic wake, I find the healer is really struggling to heal me and I’m really not sure why.
I use my keg, fire and kick on cd and my stagger is on light stagger, I’m still a bit Confused with the stagger system.
can anyone offer advice as to what I’m doing wrong? , it’s kind of killing the fun right now but monk is more fun and don’t want to have to reroll.
Might be a dumb question, but are you using Celestial Brew enough? It’s a 48 sec cooldown, reduced by 1 sec per tiger palm, so often more like 40.
Assuming you’re using Purifying Brew regularly, this is a decent chunk of shield, which you can try to use for big hits if you know the damage pattern, or just use it whenever it would benefit from at least one Purifying Brew buff as “better than nothing”.
Stagger itself is just a % of damage that happens is turned into a dot instead of taken up front. Usually healers like it because it smooths out our health, especially vs something like a blood DK - which as a healer main, I really hate having to heal
Bear in mind that I main MW, so take this thought with a good dollop of your own judgement and please forgive me if I turn out to be wrong
As I understand it, when you drink Purifying Brew, you gain a stack of Purified Chi. Cooldowns are such that you can have a max of 2 stacks. Each stack increases the shield amount of your next Celestial Brew, and the more Stagger you had when you drank it also contributes.
A really good brewmaster would anticipate upcoming damage spikes, and possibly halve their Stagger before it happens, and then again right after. That’s then a great time to drink Celestial Brew, with maximum shielding while the healer catches up.
For me, who only tanks now and then; I don’t know enough about dungeon mechanics to anticipate spikes, so I’d try to keep 1 charge in reserve as a reactionary measure. My personal feeling is to use PB whenever I:
have stagger at all
and am likely to stay in combat for at least another 10 seconds
and have 2 charges of PB
As to when I’d use Celestial Brew; I’d try to feel out the healer. If I’m always upwards of 80% then great, they don’t need the support and I can keep it to be used reactively. If they’re having a hard time, if I’m feeling low on health, that might be a good time to double PB and throw that shield up at full strength and give the healer a chance to recover.
Remember that chugging Purifying Brew will increase the Celestial Brew absorb for 20% (stacking 10 times, up to 200%). So when I’m tanking I’m always keeping Purifying Brew on CD to get as many stacks as possible for Celestial Brew.
And if you reach red stagger, you can always touch of death a mob to reset it back to 0. I also prefer playing with the touch of death legendary instead of the extra keg smash legendary. Having a 1 minute one shot CD that also clears staggers is pretty cool.
Remember you get the soul ash from all layers below the one you’re doing. If you jump into L6 as the first of the week, you’ll walk out with 485 ash for about 40 minutes commitment. Do it twice, plus the weekly 50, and now you have over a thousand per week for not an awful amount of effort.
For gold concerns… hard to help there ^^; But I would say; you shouldn’t be poor in WoW if you’re playing the game and not wasting it. Don’t buy anything except a legendary off the AH. Make sure you do your daily calling for ~2000g worth of grey items every time. It stacks up fast, if you’re not blowing it on stuff you don’t need
, it’s kind of killing the fun right now but monk is more fun and don’t want to have to reroll.
