Stagger never killed you. It can only drop you to 1hp. No changes there

That looks more like a lag-related death then stagger-related. For starters, if you had just healed yourself for 100k with EH, there is literally no way that a 24k stagger tick killed you. Given the 600k+ dmg that was recorded in the 2 seconds prior to your death (and you were fighting Sha), I think you can pretty safely chalk that one up to latency issues.

It's just an example, I'm quite positive it's happened before but then again it could always be put down as "lag related" just wondering if anyone else has seen similiar.

i have been reading and i have been finding that some people stack mastery instead of hit/exp/haste. i was wondering if this is something that should be done when harder content is hit? or is it just a style of play?

It's high time to update the spreadsheet. It's mostly about the RPPM changes.

http://www.filedropper.com/brewmasterspreadsheetcopy_3

Changes :

- All the enchants are on the RPPM system

- Power Guard increases Guard by 5% instead of 15% ; currently it's bugged in game (even if the tooltip mentions 15%), i'll keep it like that in the spreadsheet untill it's fixed by the devs

- I've increased the default stats on the spreadsheet, they now correspond to a 480-ish ilvl

Remarks :

- It seems that we now have :
for a single-tank boss : Dancing Steel > Colossus > Windsong > the rest
for tank switching situations : Dancing Steel > Windsong > Colossus > the rest

- Remember that the results given by the spreadsheet depend on its settings, particularly the Statue cell, and to a lesser extent, GotOx cell. And of course, the single-tank/off-tank modes have a huge influence.

Uncertainties :

Since the arrival of RPPM, i've never been able to find information about whether a missed/dodged/parried attack counts as a "last chance to proc". In the current version of the spreadsheet, it doesn't, therefore hit/exp do not increase the uptime of enchants. I've chosen to make it work thus because they should proc on "damaging events", which makes me think that a miss isn't taken into account in the "last chance to proc" idea (and because it's slightly easier to implement in the spreadsheet, i can skip two variables ^^). I'll modify that should the contrary be written in a blue post i haven't read.

Hum, sorry, i didn't upload the right version of the speradsheet, the one with the 25% nerf on the t30 healing talents. Here is the good one :

http://www.filedropper.com/brewmasterspreadsheetcopy_4

Pretty much right after you posted that, they put in a hotfix:

Mr. Robot's answer would be Zen Alchemist Stone, and I would agree.
Rather than just give an answer with no support, let me be a pal and show my math.

Zen Alchemist Stone:
809 Mastery
4561 Agi proc on heal or damage, 15s, 45s ICD, 35% proc chance

Searing Words
847 Crit
3386 Agi proc on crit, 25s, 75s ICD, 45% proc chance

Basic assumption: Procced trinkets have a maximum uptime of 1/3 of active time.

4561 Agi * 1/3 = 1520 Agi
3386 Agi * 1/3 = 1128 Agi

Is the 809 Mastery on Zen Alchemist Stone worth less than the the 847 Crit on Searing Words? Yes. Is 392 Agi worth more than the difference of a post-reforge 490 Mastery vs. 500 crit? Yes, it is.
Factor in that the proc of Searing Words will only occur on a crit and you have less uptime on Searing Words than you do on Zen Alchemist Stone.

Use the Zen Alchemist Stone, but get a Bottle of Infinite Stars as quickly as you can.

Set Black Ox Statue for every pull in any group situation.

Use Keg Smash as soon as it finishes cooldown. Always.

Fill free global cooldowns with Tiger Palm.

Stagger uptime should be as close to 100% as humanly possible.

Purify whenever you reach High Stagger. Purify when you have Medium Stagger, Chi to spare and will not lose Shuffle uptime as a result.

Expel Harm instead of Jab when you are below 35% health. Do not overheal with Expel Harm unless you need to generate Chi and cannot melee.

Always use Elusive Brew on avoidable sources of predictable spike damage - Shadowy Attacks, Thrash. Use Elusive Brew when you have over 9 stacks. Use Elusive Brew before you will take a sudden spike of unavoidable damage - if you dodge multiple attacks leading into an Overwhelming Assault, you will be at full health for the hit.

Guard is useful in the same scenarios as Elusive Brew. It fits the same niche but works on unavoidable attacks and spells. Guard gets roughly 200% of our AP, so don't use it if you don't have high Vengeance. Do not underestimate the power of the Guard self-healing increase; a low-health Guard-Expel Harm can save your life. For the love of God, do not overestimate it, either - never glyph Guard for physical-only fights.

Gift of the Ox will save your life if you remember to use it. Get used to wiggling when your health takes an unexpected dip.

Dampen Harm is useful for mitigating huge damage spikes, and Fortifying Brew is more useful for lessening high sustained physical damage (e.g., enrages). Monks would have absolutely destroyed Heroic Madness of Deathwing.

Diffuse Magic will cut bursts of magic damage to nothing. Use it on Lei Shi, Elegon and Tsulong at the very least.

Chi Wave is extremely underrated, and will keep a low-health Monk alive. I get 160k+ single jump crit heals with regularity. Even after the nerf, do not underestimate the healing power of Chi Wave. I did 3M healing with Chi Wave on Heroic Feng this week and 31k HPS on the fight. For a tank, not bad.
This macro:
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt,@mouseover,help,nodead] Chi Wave; [mod:alt,@player] Chi Wave
will cast Chi Wave on a friendly mouseover target or yourself. Starting the spell with a heal ensures you will get 4 heals out of each cast.

Lastly: Use Tiger's Lust. Quit being lazy with your Roll talents.
TL is arguably the strongest sprint that has ever been put into this game. 6 seconds, 70% movement speed, castable on allies within 20 yards, removes all movement impairments and is on a 30 sec cd. It is useful on many, many fights.

Guard has a horrible base value (14,232) and phenomenal scaling (1.971 * AP). Casting Guard before you have gotten a fair amount of vengeance is the definition of poor cooldown useage. You should be filling all your free globals with Tiger Palm anyhow, so this should be a non-issue for you.

Anyone else frustrated with post 5.1 Dampen Harm?
For me the buff usually runs out before all stacks are consumed, because most attacks don't do enough damage. Even on 10man Shek'zeer heroic only the explosion from the zones and sometimes the frontal AoE from the Reavers did more damage than 20% of my hp.
Also I went for the haste/crit approach instead of focusing on mastery/stamina, so with just under 600k hp I think I'm below most other tanks with similar progression.
A part of the problem is that the alternatives aren't really viable for most encounters.

I'm thinking about using agility flasks or swapping out my Relic of Niuzao (for Hawkmaster's Talon, because I don't have a decent mastery trinket yet), but I'm not sure that's the right approach.