First on DW vs. 2-handed...

While normally our considerations are solely on the result of using DW over 2-hand or the other way around in a world of "limitless" stats, I find that DW for Brewmasters will always be behind 2-hand simply due to the amount of Hit needed to cap DW.

The amount of stats needed to cap all the Hit needed for DW will net a lower overall amount of Haste, Crit, Expertise and Mastery, that the overall mitigation/avoidance/EH of a DW Brewer will be lower than a 2-handed one.


On the RPPM/Enchant/Windsong

I don't want to dabble on the math right now, but consider that they could very well be using an incremental algorithm, with something more or less like this happening:

(for easy of numbers eg)

Base chance to proc: 10% - P
Incremental chance due elapsed time: (Time since last chance to proc)*(Coef to normalize the formula) - T*C

So the formula would (in a much "simpler" world then ours) be something like:

Windsong proc chance = (P+(T*C))

So that the more haste you had, the more rolls you'd have to get a proc and also the longer it took the enchant to proc, the higher your chance would be, possibly until you get a 100% chance.

They could make the coef in the formula such that you'd reach intervals of 100% proc chance, in the worst case scenario, around 30sec mark, which would be a real 2 ppm.

So is it viable or recommended to use Colossus + Windsong as DW, or would it be better to just go 2x Windsong/ 2x Colossus?

Or is Colossus just overall terrible?

No, on both cases.

You don't go for hardcapping white hit with DW; yellow hit cap is the same for DW and 2H.

They already gave the full details of how RPPM works, and it's not at all what you describe.

One thing I found out while doing Gara'jal heroic.

After you get banished and get back out to normal realm, you can go inside spirit realm with a totem. Once inside, heal yourself with 2x expel harm (you go in with 30% so no cooldown) + chi wave + healthstone and you should be pretty much full. Time it so you can leave the realm just before the other tank gets banished and you can tank for 30 seconds with extra 22% haste/crit/mastery/dmg. Just remember to taunt once you come out.

Felt lot more useful than hitting the boss without vengeance. Not terrible at killing adds inside shadow realm either.

There were several hofixes this week, here is the updated spreadsheet :

http://www.filedropper.com/brewmasterspreadsheetcopy_3

New features

- I've added Neara's modification, now the spreadsheet might work with Open Office.

- New options for Weakened Armor and 4% physical damage raid debuffs.

New enchant procs

The Windsong enchant now uses the Real PPM proc system. Unlike Windwalkers, it didn't change many things for Brewmasters.

Glyph of Guard

The glyph is now fixed in game, you can use the "Glyphed Guard" cell more safely. I've also modified the program so that you gain Vengeance from the "Magical unmitigated damage taken per second" cell.

Vengeance Nerf

This is the most important one. Yesterday (or the day before), Vengeance was nerfed by 33%*. This has huge implications for our Statue, for Guard and for Expel Harm. EH heals less, but anyway it's better that Jab. Guard absorbs less, but according to the spreadsheet it's still worth using.

And since we deal less damage and have less AP from Vengeance, the Statue is less efficient. Remember that hit/exp really are statue stats, and they used to be so high partly because of the Statue, not only because of Chi generation and pure damage reduction. Nerfing Vengeance is nerfing the Statue, which is nerfing hit/exp. You'll notice on the spreadsheet that those two can hardly be superior to crit/haste now. You shouldn't stack them on you gear any more, unless you do want to increase your dps (they obviously remain the best dps stats, as you can see in the dps section of the spreadsheet).

Yet hit/exp have hidden diminishing returns which i will not explain here. You might see on the spreadsheet that at low levels of hit/exp, their stat weight can be superior to haste/crit. But that's clearly for low values, possibly the base hit/exp you get on your gear. So, in order to maximise your survival, you'll want a bit of both, but not too much. Even 7.5% seems too much.

***

* Here is how i proceeded to deduce the numbers involved in this nerf (i had to conduct some tests since we have been given no information about it) :

On my Monk i have 25% damage reduction from the Ox Stance, 24.27% from Stagger, and 26.06% armor. Therefore, if H is the damage i take when i am hit, to calculate U, the unmitigated damage of the hit, i use the following formula :
U = H / (0.75*(1-0.2427)*(1-0.2606))
or
U = 2.381175105 * H

The initial Vengeance you get from the firs time you're hit in a fight used to be determined by this formula :
V = 0.5 * 20*0.02*U / 1.5

Nerfing Vengeance means nerfing the "0.02" value i've underlined (unless they modified the way we gain Vengeance, but i doubt it). Therefore i went to see some mobs in Pandaria, i got hit by them, noted the amount of Vengeance the first hit gave me, together with the amount of damage the hit did to me, and i used the formulas to know how the 0.02 was modified.

I made tests agains several mobs, and i got a quite constant result of 0.0133 (instead of the former 0.02). Therefore Vengeance now scales with 1.33% of damage taken, rather than 2% of damage taken.

I've received a message, and i've done some more tests, and it seems that only the first hit giving you initial Vengeance (being also the minimum Vengeance you have after you're hit) was nerfed by 33%. The average Vengeance was only nerfed by 10%. Here is the modified spreadsheet :

http://www.filedropper.com/brewmasterspreadsheetcopy_4

I'd love a real patch note...

Daxxarri just posted a clarification on the two recent Vengeance changes here.

Venyasure, have you toyed with the idea of representing optimal Purifying Brew usage in a different way? Optimal uptime is a fairly abstract concept and not something that you can really use to make decisions or even assess your own performance in between tries (since the sample size is too small).

Is there a different metric that we can use in a more direct way? I'm thinking something in the lines of min/max stagger stack sizes vs time.

I only watch the colors. Green is fine, yellow is "well, well where is my brew button" and red is "click, click, click, click, click, click"

Does it really matters how much dmg your stagger debuff is?

I would recommend "Brewmaster Tao" if you want to see the overall amount. "Weakauras" would also be an option.

Brewmaster Tao from wowinterface.com does a great job of showing the total amount of stagger left in the dot so you can 'smart-purify' and drink based on total amount to be applied. if the stagger amount is 15k / tick, clearing at 1 tick doesn't mean anything. I clear when total amount hits ~150k