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New Transmog Pages

When Nighthold came out and I realized I was missing several pieces that only dropped in Emerald Nightmare, I decided to compile a list of where I can get all the monk and dh tier 19 models so that I know exactly what to spend my bonus roll tokens on.

Also, with the new Armor 2.0 models that don’t always display well on Wowhead (with all the cool knickknacks on the boots and gloves), I wanted to take my own pictures to remind me how pretty they are.

There’s also going to be the new Transmog Sets UI coming in 7.2, so I wanted to get ahead of the game and track them before Blizzard does.

So I wrote up some pages on the class guides with Tier 19 models. Eventually I’ll expand it to include all transmog this expansion, including lookalikes and questing gear.

Monk

Demon Hunter

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New Nighthold Tanking Guide!

The tanking guide is up for normal and heroic Nighthold. As always, I’ll be updating over the next few weeks as I learn these fights, simplifying where I can, correcting what I got wrong, and filling in the “notes” tabs with talent builds and class-specific tips.

Nighthold Tanking Guide

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Vengeance 7.1.5 Survival Guide

Overview

  • 10% physical damage reduction was moved from Demon Spikes to passive, making us more sturdy when Demon Spikes isn’t active. We also got a stamina buff to help manage burst.
  • Metamorphosis was greatly buffed, and now offers an armor increase and guaranteed Soul Fragments from Shear.
  • Many talents got rebalanced. Expect to re-evaluate most talent tiers, especially tier 7 (Last Resort, Demonic Infusion, Soul Barrier).
  • Item level should be more important in deciding whether items, especially rings and necklaces, are an upgrade.
  • Many lackluster legendaries got buffed.

Continue reading “Vengeance 7.1.5 Survival Guide”

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Brewmaster 7.1.5 Survival Guide

Overview

Continue reading “Brewmaster 7.1.5 Survival Guide”

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Vengeance and Brewmaster in Emerald Nightmare

I’ve cleared all of this raid on both vengeance and brewmaster, enough offer a decent comparison of the two specs I main. Both are roughly the same ilevel, with experience on the same bosses.

For Emerald Nightmare, I started bosses on my DH and took my brewmaster on farm. Originally this was because I am far more comfortable on my monk and I wanted to force myself to learn my demon hunter. It ended up being handy because the way a DH times their AM can more easily apply to the way a monk applies AM than the other way around. I can learn to time my Demon Spikes around an event, and that maps to Ironskin Brew pretty well. In contrast, a brewmaster is much more flexible, and can potentially use Ironskin much more often than a DH could do with Demon Spikes.

Continue reading “Vengeance and Brewmaster in Emerald Nightmare”

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Brewmaster 7.1.5 Talent Changes

Throughout Mists and Warlords, our level 75 defensive talents have been exemplary. The choice between the three talents was always compelling and varied; the universally useful (but minor) Healing Elixirs, the strong damage reduction (but restricted uptime) of Dampen Harm, and the impressive magical damage reduction (but situational use) of Diffuse Magic.

But when the tanking paradigm changed in Legion, these talents suffered. In a world where big defensive cooldowns were neutered, and active mitigation was molded to fill that role, Diffuse Magic and Dampen Harm fell into disuse. Compared to Ironskin Brew, both abilities were ineffective. Diffuse Magic could reduce magic damage pretty well, but why waste a talent on it when Ironskin Brew is nearly as good, and most boss burst magic were designed to be countered by frequently usable active mitigation anyway. Dampen Harm could be used to reduce those giant physical attacks, but if it was used at the same time as Ironskin it was unlikely to even trigger. These two talents were built in a time when infrequent defensive cooldowns were necessary, and clung to that ideology even when tanks changed to value frequent defensives much more.

But, in 7.1.5, that’s all going to change!

Continue reading “Brewmaster 7.1.5 Talent Changes”

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New WeakAuras for Brewmaster and Vengeance

I’ve been iterating on my auras for both my characters to be more useful to me. The old auras are still available if you look at the WeakAuras.online change log, I just won’t be updating them.

Brewmaster WeakAuras


Vengeance WeakAuras


The biggest changes you might see if you import these are:

  • Health and reactive mitigation:
    • Soul Cleave prediction is now a bar that displays your estimated Soul Cleave compared to your max health. It’s designed to sit on top of the health bar so you can easily compare the two.
    • Stagger is still a bar, but it’s no longer color coded (since you typically don’t decide when to Purify based on color in Legion). It’s designed to sit on top of the health bar so you can easily compare the two.
    • I made these changes because in my experimentation, I found it incredibly useful to see the abilities whose relative importance depends on my current or max health displayed in the same way.
  • Proactive mitigation:
    • Ironskin (& Purifying) Brews are now displayed as “pills”, one icon per charge.
    • Demon Spikes, Empower Wards, and Soul Barrier are now grouped and displayed as “pills”, with Demon Spikes getting one icon per charge.
    • I made these changes to emphasize when I am full on charges of active mitigation, or when I am about to run out completely. Charges having their own icons emphasizes the psuedo-resource state of these abilities.
  • Item cooldowns have been moved to their own group (trinkets, artifact spells). I did this because the main defensive cooldown group was getting too busy, especially on the demon hunter. Also, since this group is made up of mostly trinkets, I can easily share it between my tanks.
  • Changes in style and position.
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Legion Brewmaster Retrospective (so far)

So brewmasters aren’t so popular anymore, but they’re still as powerful as ever. How can this be? Why am I still playing one? Why does the community at large think they’re terrible? What can be done to fix it?

I’ve said before that if I were making choices solely based on progression, and not my irrational need to experiment with new things, I would be favoring my brewmaster in raids. And truth be told, I’m getting closer and closer to my ideal of playing my monk and demon hunter equally. The deeper we get into the expansion, the more my love of brewmasters grows, and it becomes ever more frustrating to see that not only do people fail to appreciate them the same way I do, but they think their strengths are actually weaknesses!

Maybe I need to do a better job of professing my love for this specialization, and so here it is: a whole lot of words about what keeps me playing a brewmaster and what could make playing one better.

Continue reading “Legion Brewmaster Retrospective (so far)”