AM Tanking with the other classes

I am pretty well versed on paladin related topics but haven't really dug in to other tanking classes yet. Still, I want to post some general stuff up for my guildies who are trying out tanking so they understand how Active Mitigation works. My only problem is my lack of familiarity with warriors/druids/monks/dks abilities this expansion. I was hoping for some quick fill in information. I can't look it up from here due to certain website restrictions, so I thought I would ask about the finishers here. I'm not looking for how active mitigation works for them in general (I can handle that), but just what the abilities are and what the choices are between.

Warrior: Sbarrier and Sblock - SBar magic only or everything? Sblock is phys only (blockable)

Monk: No clue what the finishers are here except I remember stagger for some reason. What are the finishers and are they magic/phys/both/healing/absorb? What are the resources for them: chi or something else?

Druid: Frenzied regen and SD. FR is healing, so that is self explanatory, but is SD only physical? I think so, but need to check.

DK: For some reason, I think they only have 1 finisher, but need to check what it is and if it is magic/phys/both/healing/absorb. Also is the resource for the finisher runes or runic power?

I know these are noobish questions but I can't really look them up from here, so I thought I would just ask and see.

Thanks!

Monk:
- Blackout Kick, 2 Chi, increases the amount of damage they Stagger for x? seconds.
- Guard, 2 Chi, an absorb.

DK:
- Death Strike, not sure on Rune cost (think they changed in 5.0, was Frost/Unholy), heals for 20% of damage taken in last 5? seconds and provides absorb equal to mastery% of heal. IIRC.

Absorbs for all the classes work on all types of damage, as far as I know.

Is the monk's blackout kick only for physical damage I assume?

From my lvl 90 brewmaster knowledge...
You also gain the blackout kick effect (20% more stagger, 20% more parry) from Rushing Jade Wind. You gain the effect even if the attack misses / parry / dodge and waste the Chi as well (kinda like ShoR and Death Strike).
Guard is a (very weak) absorb costing 2 Chi. Several people (including me) prefer using glyphed Guard, which turns the absorb into magic only, allowing you to keep the 30% heal bonus longer.
You also can gain a significant heal by using Chi Wave (again, 2 Chi).

The main deal of playing monk is using Blackout Kick/RJW as often as possible to keep up the buff (stacks like the ShoR buff). The alternative is using Chi Wave/Sphere for healing, Guard for the absorb and the +30% heal buff, or Flame Breath for AoE dps.

Kinda an interesting playstyle, though imo Energy tank is kinda wrong anyway.

Is there any benefit to timing BK/RJW with big hits (similar to ShoR) or is it more beneficial to spam it? I'm asking because of your statement:

The main deal of playing monk is using Blackout Kick/RJW as often as possible to keep up the buff

My assumption so far is that most tanks play with the similar ideal that you can either spam your defensive abilities to have great TDR or to time them with a more control focused style with some spamming in the lul periods (I like to call this MDR or managed damage reduction). It could very well be a bad assumption on my part.

Don't forget with Monks they also need to use chi on Purifying Brew (1 chi, no cooldown - Instantly purifies all of your staggered damage). Otherwise they're taking the same amount of damage as a rogue, just with some of it delayed.

DK - death strike is the only finisher, heal+shield costs UH/F runes
iirc overheals from this help build the shield up, which lasts 9 sec
so you can either used DS to build a shield and absorb a big hit, or take a big hit and use it to heal

The deal is, you want to keep the buff up all the time, so if you take a big hit and have to remove Stagger with Purifying Brew, you don't let the buff drop off.

My playstyle right now is to remove Stagger when it gets to the yellow quantity (more than 10k dps), not sure what a *real* monk raid tank would do in this regards.

I've only tanked heroics on my monk, but over on EJ raid tanking monks say that 100% shuffle uptime isn't optimal (you won't purify enough). In heroics stagger damage will never stack very high, so 100% shuffle (it's still 20% parry) is perfectly valid. In raids you'll have to purify more often.

Oh, and get a mod that shows the total damage in your stagger bar, not just the tick value. Sometimes I see yellow stagger (medium tick) with only 50k damage in it, and other times I see green stagger with over 100k damage (low tick). More efficient to time PBrew after total damage removed rather than stagger color. Of course, red should be purified asap anyway. I'm using Tao for the stagger bar (and MonkTimers for chi, energy and such)

Priority:
1) Keg Smash on CD. Always - big damage, 2 chi (and Weakened Blows). Single target and aoe.
2) Maintain desired Shuffle uptime with Blackout Kick
3) Avoid getting energy capped with 1) Expel Harm 2) Jab. If you have Power Strikes remember to time jabs so that you get as much extra chi as you can (I prefer Chi Brew personally)
4) I'm hitting Guard on cooldown, mostly. It's decent mitigation in heroics, in raids I'd probably glyph it
5) Tiger Palm as filler. Enjoy hitting a button every second. (Warrior with 1.5gcd is so calming after playing a lot of Brewmaster and The Secret World which also has a 1 sec gcd for some reason)

NaN) Purify when the time is right (off gcd)

Breath of Fire is cool, but hard to use as it costs chi without proccing shuffle. You can sometimes get an extra interrupt if it's glyphed (to incapacitate).

Paxen wrote:100% shuffle uptime isn't optimal (you won't purify enough)

I realize you're just adding a dot that can only be removed as often as Purifying Brew is up, but doesn't that still help smooth out the damage intake?

Skye1013 wrote:

Paxen wrote:100% shuffle uptime isn't optimal (you won't purify enough)

I realize you're just adding a dot that can only be removed as often as Purifying Brew is up, but doesn't that still help smooth out the damage intake?

This is pure theory for me, in 5-mans with haste gear I got enough chi to keep shuffle up 100% and still purify as much as I need.

That aside, the idea seems to be that in raids your stagger dot will go up a lot faster than in 5-mans, so you want to purify more. PBrew and Shuffle (BoK) both costs Chi, so you need to balance them - even though more shuffle uptime is always good, sometimes more PBrew is better.

Yes, the dot will increase faster, but I'm still not sure why you wouldn't want to strive for 100% uptime whenever possible. I don't remember the cd on Purifying Brew, but that really should matter. You'd want to keep your damage staggered as much as possible to smooth it out. If you're expecting a damage spike (from a boss ability or some such)... use Fortifying Brew (or another damage reduction cd) like you would normally, and just use PB when it's up (and you aren't green staggered.)

Reason for which I think it's important to keep Shuffle up is due to the 20% bonus staggered amount.
Shaving 50% off every attack is more or less the key to monktanking.

PBrew has a 1 sec cooldown (at one point it had 9 sec, and before that it had no cd, but now it's at 1 sec).

In my gear (stacking haste, a bit over 7k haste rating) I get enough energy to hit 19 chi builders every minute. 7.5 of those are Keg Smash, so say 27 chi/minute. 100% shuffle uptime would require 20 of those chi, letting me PBrew 8 times per minute, a bit less than once every 10 seconds. With Chi Brew or Power Strikes we can add a bit under 3 PBrew more per minute. I'm not hard capped on exp, and I'd focus more on stam for raid tanking, so I don't think you can count on much more chi.

I'm just saying that EJ and other raid tanks claim that that isn't enough, and that it's worth dropping shuffle a bit to get more PBrew.

Quick perusal of EJ let me know that the minor Glyph of Jab is bugged for 2H tanking - if you have the glyph, your weapon counts as a 1H for Elusive Brew stack generation, nerfing it significantly.