Yes, a missed BK does give you Shuffle. But as i've looked into my program to double check this, i've discovered a bug : Blackout Kick dealt damage even when it missed or was parried/dodged. Here is the debugged spreadsheet :

http://www.filedropper.com/brewmastergearcopy

The impact is very small, since it only influences DPS/statue ; but it makes hit/exp even better than before for the statue. I think this bug dates back to when a missed BK didn't consume the Chi : i just considered it was cast anyway, it only increased the number of gcd spent on applying Shuffle via BK, which decreased the gcd left for Tiger Palm. That mechanism was changed rather recently right ? Anyway, i must have beed only half aware of it (i haven't played my Monk on the beta regularly these days), and i didn't update the calculations. A similar bug should be present in the Windwalker spreadsheets i've uploaded. I'll correct them tomorrow.

Hopefully this spreadsheet will be completely clear of bugs soon. I'm regularly checking it, i've had issues like block chances on Keg Smash and Swift Reflexes, but i didn't expect to find such a bug as BK always dealing damage ; it's a minor survival decrease, but still, that's quite an obvious bug. And it's a big one for Windwalkers.

Edit : in this spreadsheet, base Stagger is at 25% like mentionned in the blue post describing the recent changes, but unlike the new tooltip which is at 20% ; i didn't test which is correct on the beta.

Sigh... a missed BoK is not as bad as a missed KS... because of the CD on KS and loss of 8 seconds of Weakened Blows. I would have been much happier with unparryable KS, and still softcap hit/exp.. then a BoK that cant miss/parry/dodge.. since mine wont anyways with hard capped stats

OK, since there's talk about unparryable Keg Smash on a couple of forums, here is what it would give :

http://www.filedropper.com/brewmastergearksnoparrycopy

Expertise would lose most of its value after 2550 dodge cap, it would fall at the level of Mastery. Maybe someone with a US account could mention that in the famous "Beta Class Balance Analysis".

Posted as a reply

Beta Class Balance Analysis Pt. II - Forums - World of Warcraft

I don't think these changes have been reflected on the beta client yet, but the tank changes (energy regen, Shuffle percentage) are being reverted in favor of Warrior/Druid buffs:
Beta Class Balance Analysis Pt. II - Forums - World of Warcraft

Current Tooltip (7th September 2012)

Stance of the Sturdy Ox:

Reduces damage taken by 25%, increases Energy regeneration by 10%, reduces the chance to be critically hit by 6%, increases your Stamina by 20% and allows you to Stagger damage.

Stagger - You shrug off physical attacks, causing 80% of the damage to happen instantly and the remaining 20% to be divided over 10 sec.

I think that this means that they won't further nerf Brewmasters/DKs.

Hello fellow brewmasters.

First of all, huge thanks to Venyasure for your epic spreadsheet, it's highly appreciated! Secondly, can someone with US beta forum access report that Glyph of Guard bugs our Ox statue? It stops generating shields on our party members entirely. We can still see charge going from statue to our teammates regurarly, but it does not apply shield on them. It also would be nice if devs could clarify if all the boosts we have for Guard apply to Ox statue guards as well.

From what I saw in game our AP affect Ox statue guards, but 15% buff from Tiger Palms does not. Now I wonder if Glyph of Guard should also change Ox statue Guards to magic dmg only and buff them by 10%, and if our T14 4p bonus will affect them too. If that was explained by devs somewhere already then I apologise, but I track Beta Class Balance Analysys and other BrM threads there and didn't see that mentioned anywhere.

Question is, does that make a difference?

Is the spreadsheet/other theorycraft currently assuming that a "missed" Keg Smash is basically a loss of 2 chi + 40 energy, or is it already assuming that was a bug, and it's a loss of 1 chi + 1 GCD by replacing it with a Jab?

If it's the later, then Expertise is still our #1 mitigation stat, it just means it's not quite as heavy a price to pay if you're not quite capped yet. If the former, this could be a big difference.

As far as I know is Venyasure calculating a missed KS as being a total loss of 40 energy and not generating Chi.

Just did some fast calcs. This change seems to lower the value of Hit/exp to being just a little bit better than mastery. If this is verified with some in depth calcs we might not even need to aim at 7.5% of each. But converting 4000 Hit/exp into other stats nets me a gain below 1% in total damage reduction. Therefore I think that softcapping will be prefered for smooth gameplay.

Indeed. I’ve modified my spreadsheets, I’ll link them later in this message. First, I think it’s time to launch a discussion (a debate I hope) about Hit/Expertise.

Keg Smash now refunds energy

What a missed Keg Smash used to be ? A loss of 40 Energy, 2 Chi, of a chance to proc an enchant or GotOx, and a loss of damage. What is it now ? A loss of 8 energy (I assume it will be the case, just like a missed Jab refunds only 32 energy, not 40), more than 1 Chi, of a chance to proc an enchant or GotOx, and a loss of damage. It is indeed a loss of more than 1 Chi, because you want to replace your missed KS by a Jab, but you already lost 8 energy, and you can still lose more if you miss your Jab ; remember that if you miss it twice, it’s like if the third successful one had costed 56 energy, and that’s taken into account in the program. Since energy = Chi, you are not refunded a full Chi when you replace a missed KS by a Jab.

Therefore now when you miss your KS, you spend 48+ energy and gain 1 Chi, instead of spending 40 energy to gain 2 Chi. You still lose proc chances and damage (yes, you can still have a proc on the Jab, but that’s a gcd loss, you could have used it on Tiger Palm).

Let’s use very approximate numbers (I don’t like it, but…). Let’s say KS is responsible for 40% of Chi generation. When you miss it, you lose more than half of that now. It’s a bit like if you lost more than 20% of your Chi generation for 8 seconds. It’s still quite a big loss, but the bug fix is clearly going to make hit/expxpertise not as useful concerning Chi generation. Yet hit/exp used to have a pretty high value compared to haste.

But this is only one part of the problem.

Gift of the Ox

Let’s have a look at this technique : the yellow attacks have a 10% chance (i'd love a confirmation on this number) and the auto attacks have a chance (depending on Weapon Speed and DW/1H) to create a healing sphere that heals you for 4926 plus 50.25% of AP. This number, 50.25%, is huge. I remember GC expecting a warrior to gain 60k+ AP in raids. Let’s imagine that, adding Vengeance and AP from agi, a Monk will be healed for more than 40k (possibly 50). This is an exceptional survival gain given such a high proc chance. I personally think it’s one of the reasons why people have calculated that the Brewmasters were not as efficient as other tanks : in what I’ve read of these comparisons, I didn’t see GotOx. In my opinion, GotOx cannot be neglected ; it’s not a detail at all, and I can’t emphasize this enough.

You might argue that against a boss which does not give you much Vengeance, GotOx will be less useful because it will heal less. But that’s the case for avoidance/PB/Shuffle too ; you’ll dodge and stagger a smaller amount of damage.

But some people might not be satisfied with GotOx being part of the Brewmaster survival kit. They might prefer to focus on avoidance and mitigation. This is why I’ve introduced options on the second sheet of the Excel file to adapt the results to the way you want your monk to avoid damage. Healing back an attack is not the same as dodging it, some might prefer to put the stress on mitigation rather than self healing.

Here is the beginning most recent bit of discussion I’ve read on us forums about GotOx :
State of the Brewmaster - Forums - World of Warcraft
Basically, some consider it’s not reliable, while others find it’s practical to stand in a mass of bubbles and expect them to do the healers’ job instantly. It’s up to you to modify the option of the second sheet depending on what you think the critical tanking moments will be like.

The thing is that GotOx relies heavily on hit/exp. Your attacks need to land ; yellow attacks that miss are a loss of a 10% chance to gain a big healing bubble. Just try and not count GotOx in the calculation (again, that’s on sheet 2) : you’ll see how hit/exp become poor compared to haste and other stats. Do try it. Me too I’m very surprised to see how changing the results are.

I’m not sure about how and when GotOx does overhealing. What is probable is that the spreadsheets are over evaluating GotOx. The calculation is correct though. But it simply does not represent the reality of a fight very accurately. When you need to move the boss, when you forget about a couple of healing spheres too far away, or when they do overhealing, you can’t benefit from it fully. I recommend being extra careful with what you put in the GotOx cell on page 2, it has a lot of influence on the results. From the WoL I’ve seen, they seem to do quite a bit of overhealing. But remember a stack of bubbles is a great asset when you know you’re going to keep still and be hit hard enough for them not to do overhealing.

I have also included an option on the second sheet to determine whether or not you want to take the crit chance of GotOx into account. The default value is 0.5, which means that you consider 25% of a critical GotOx will be overhealing (50% from base non-crit healing, plus 25% being half (default at 0.5) the crit healing bonus).

Statue and DPS

Obviously, expertise and hit are extraordinary for dps increase. Remember that I’ve added a DPS section to the spreadsheet, but you might not see it, you need to scroll down the first sheet to see the “DPS” button and the DPS stat weights. It’s clear that hit/exp are good for the Statue, what is less clear is why haste is so low compared to a Windwalker, especially for a tank-orientated rotation.

This is mainly because a great part of the damage comes from Keg Smash, which is nearly not affected by haste (actually the only reason I can think of and that’s implemented in the spreadsheet is that haste increases the uptime of Dancing Steel if you use this enchant). Besides, haste increases Chi generation, but part of this Chi is spent on Purifying Brew, so only part of haste increases dps via Blackout Kick. In addition, Brewmasters don’t have Tiger Strikes. And for a Windwalker, haste increases a Chi generation that is doubled by the Stance of the Tiger, that’s twice better for haste.

On the contrary, crit is still great for DPS. What is nice when you include the Statue in the calculation is that in a way you include a dps orientation to you survival stat weights. And some tanks like helping the dps of their raid group.

Spreadsheet

http://www.filedropper.com/brewmastergearksenergycopy

Bug fixes

- None. I think I’m quite close to a completely bug-free spreadsheet.

Remarks

The conclusions are simple : hit/exp are still a priority. They were pretty high, now they are lower, but still excellent. It’s not like the spreadsheet where KS could not be parried ; guaranteeing all the benefits of this attack is not at all like refunding less than one Chi when it misses.

BUT

This is highly dependent on Gift of the Ox and other options. Actually it seems that stat priority depends much more on options than on gear. If you use every ability at its FULL power (remember, be careful with GotOx), you get something like :

Agi > hit > exp > haste > crit > parry > armor > dodge > AP > mastery

With Armor, parry and dodge very close, making Armor not fixed between the two oters. Remember that hit is better than exp, because the Colossus enchant can proc on dodges/parries. Crit can actually become better that haste (but that’s when you enable crits on GotOx, which is already, I think, over evaluated, although correctly calculated).

You might want to focus on BK/PB, and forget a bit about GotOx, Statue, Expel Harm, and so on. Exp will then be less useful to you. But you might be less effective than a Brewmaster who uses all his tools. I think this has to be determined by your play style and the boss you’re fighting.

Certainties and Uncertainties

Those spreadsheets are creating much confusion around hit/exp when you modify the options. It’s honestly difficult to get a very clear idea. But we can still notice there are some constants, that are true most of the time, or even demonstrated. Here are examples :

- 2H provides about 1% more Elusive Brew stacks. But some people argue that DW is more reliable ; meaning a 2H will be less constant, you might have a lot of stacks, and then nothing for a while (this is exaggerated of course). I don’t think the choice between 2H and DW should be based on EB.
- 2H is better for GotOx. DW was buffed by the devs, but not enough to rival with 2H.
- DW deals more damage than 2H.
- agi > all. But usually agi is not twice better than other secondary stats, so gemming secondary stats seems better.
- parry > dodge ; haste > parry ; crit > parry
- spending Chi on Guard is a survival increase
- it seems that Colossus > Dancing Steel > Windsong > River Song

I’ll conclude this message by saying that I’m not trying to encourage people to stack hit/exp. I’m encouraging them to use the spreadsheet, its options and its results in the way that fits them best.

Would you explain that please? Obviously Agi increases your dmg and therefore your statue but is that enough for it to be > all?
Statue doesn't give me any survivability and agility no longer grants armor if I remember correctly? Am I missing something?