It’s that time again: another week bringing another beta build. Unlike last week, Brewmaster’s adjustments are back to being small tuning tweaks rather than sweeping changes
What’s Changed:
- Guard has had its scaling coefficient buffed from 5 to 7.5.
- Threat modifiers for all tanks have been changed to +350% (up from +300%).
- Vivify has had its buff from last week reverted (back to 105% ap from 120%).
- Azerite traits were shuffled around on gear and some previously datamined traits (like Sweep the Leg) are now available to be chosen.
An ilvl 325 piece of Azerite gear that now has Sweep the Leg (and two other generic traits not available until today)
What Does It Mean? Feelycraft
This build’s changes look like they may be the start of Blizzard focusing more on tuning. More or less every tank specialization received some numbers tweaks to mitigation and self healing in this update. To that end, it’s good to see Guard receiving a fairly substantial 50% buff, though early math still suggests that it will need an even greater one just to match High Tolerance in effective damage reduction (even if the two spells are meant to fill different niches). On the other hand, Guard will be scaling up incredibly fast, which we can currently see through clever use of azerite traits and trinket procs. Properly applied, Guard‘s shield size can already jump from roughly 34% of a player’s max hp to over 55%! While the odds of lining up enough trinket procs, azerite traits and buffs to actually get shields that relatively large are low, the fact that it’s possible highlights just how potent Guard can and likely will become as Battle for Azeroth continues barring additional tuning.
Outside of ability tuning, the threat modifier for all tanks was brought back to the level it was a few beta builds ago. While this change doesn’t impact Brewmaster as much as the other tanks–Dave works wonders for holding threat for us, after all–it will be more relevant if you find yourself tanking content with a dps player that substantially outgears you. As for Azerite traits, it’s good to see a bit more variety being brought in, though some of the traits remain as questionable as ever (which we’ll discuss as launch approaches).
Long story short: it’s good to see Guard getting some much-needed attention; now to keep our fingers crossed for a change to Spitfire.
If you like this and the other content provided here on PeakofSerenity by myself and other Monks, consider supporting us through Patreon or Paypal. If you have any questions, leave a comment below or join us on the Monk discord channel, PeakofSerenity.
“Guard against future attacks, causing the next [(Attack power * [5]7.5) * (1 + Versatility)] damage [you would] delayed by Stagger to instead be prevented.”
Isn’t it a change in Guard’s mechanic? Before, we absorbed damage, that we WOULD normally stagger, resulting in lower stagger per tick, after absorbing a portion of the amount before staggering it. It also had no Effect on currently active Stagger.
Now it seems, that we can ONLY absorb damage, that is already staggered.
Quickmath: we get 100dmg with 75% stagger and 20guard
Before:
25dmg straight, 75 in stagger, reduced by 20 with guard, so we have 55 dmg as value to stagger – 55/10 = 5.5per second.
Now (as i got it):
25dmg straight, 75 in stagger, 75/10 = 7.5per second, the first 20 dmg instead absorbed (the first 2.6 ticks).
Or did i just get confused by tooltipp changes?
LG Mako
You may be confused on what it currently means by “damage delayed by Stagger to instead be prevented”.
Your “Before” example would be correct in how it works (though guard would never be so low unless it was the last 20 damage it possibly had to absorb), in that of the 75 damage staggered, 20 of it’s immediately ignored and spent on your guard shield–consuming it in the process–and leaving you with 55 left of that hit still going into stagger.
More realistically, guard is so large for most of its shield life that your 100 damage hit just became a 25 damage hit with no stagger at all, as if you had managed to purify all of that in advance!
So in other words, nothing has functionally changed with the wording of the tooltip.
I had a lot of concerns tanking BrM in M+ specifically with the loss of shoulders, but I feel like spitfire is really fills the gap decently well since we lost the legendary shoulder effect, It massively helps us hold threat on AoE heavy content, especially when you couple it with RJW. Cheers for the overview.