ICD could be the solution. Making Guard so that it won't be cast on a target that is already guarded so none of the Guards will be wasted and the ICD would prevent it from becoming overpowered in those Fights with dmg-multipliers or AoE-heavy fights.

Is it worth that we try and submit this as a bug or at least a suggestion to not reapply guard to a target with guard on it already.

It has been mentioned then we can almost be another disc priest on fights like Windlord, but that is the exception of a fight, where we do 8 times about our normal raid encounter dps so to speak.

As things stand now with the statue, the heal feels clumpy, almost like a bot healing. It works great on fight with constant AOE dmg (Will, Tsulong, etc), but some fights we get 80% overhealing done based on WOL from guard, where there is some source of raid dmg as well, so it just being applied not in any "smartheal" manner.

It would feel like a better tool to have (because as you read the description, with the tier bonuses and vengeance, it is a very nice abilitiy), but if they feel this is intended (surely hope not), rather nerf it (which is already 16x dmg in 5.2, although that was apparently intended and the 8x times our AP was a mistake, point is, it will loose 50% value of how it stands now) and just make it apply in a smart manner.

I will compose a summary and submit this soon.

Whether a bug or no, the chain guarding on a single target seems, to me, like an unintended consequence, and I definitely think it deserves further review from the developers. They are certainly capable of improving this, and I think that the ICD solution posited by Neara is a pretty effective way to deal with an otherwise-"fixed" Black Ox's ability to ruin a fight like Wind Lord Mel'jarak by utterly demolishing the need for raid healing.

@ Pisshands
That would be highly appreciated. But you need to be very precise and careful what to propose.

After some calculations I am going to stick with my initial thought of a 10 sec ICD. That way there would never be more than 3 guards at the same time. Blizz would need to make sure that the 16xAP damage starts to sum up after a guard is being applied and not after the ICD. In a fight like Mel'jarak you would get guards on CD but it would only be 6 guards per minute.

Furthermore I studied some logs. The needed AP for guards seem to be dynamically calculated with current AP. At least I could not verify my first idea of being a snapshot of the AP at the time the last guard was applied. The differences were not huge but significant enough to show I was wrong. Finding out the calculation behind guard it might be able to predict the next guard...

BTW, I had an idea why Blizz might have designed it to prioritize the lowest total HP target and not the member with the lowest % of health. If it was based on % of health many guards would be applied to the second tank. That might be a problem for them.

I see a distinct possibility that this could create an issue in a raid using two Brewmasters.

I'm not exactly sure what the ICD should be on Black Ox, if one should indeed exist, because I do not know how much shielding they expect out of Black Ox. The only thing I am confident on is that I do not think it should be chain casting on whatever player in the raid has the least total health in low raid damage encounters.

That said, since we are monsters on AoE fights and our output is supposed to translate into raid shielding, I do in fact think that we are supposed to be machine gunning shields on AoE fights. I think increasing the value at which shields are kicked out, as is planned for 5.2, and making the Black Ox properly smart cast on a priority is probably the right way to handle the situation.

All I really hope for is a more thorough explanation of their design intent, and if the ability is rebalanced, awesome.

Like paladins with battle healer aren't OP on say windlord (this + sacred shield and you can basically do this fight without a healer)


Regarding statue - well they could fix it as it behaves like this from day 1.

My proposition is following priority:
1. % of health
2. Effective health (calculated as current HP + all absorbs on target)

this way if all players had 100% hp it would put guards on every single target.

so if we had 3 players at 100% HP and guard would apply 200k absorb.

player 1 with 500k HP
player 2 with 505k HP
player 3 with 695k HP

after 1st guard:

player 1 with 500k HP (+200k absorb). Effective 700k HP
player 2 with 505k HP. Effective 505k HP
player 3 with 695k HP. Effective 695k HP

after 2nd guard:

player 1 with 500k HP (+200k absorb). Effective 700k HP
player 2 with 505k HP (+200k absorb). Effective 705k HP
player 3 with 695k HP. Effective 695k HP

after 3rd guard:

player 1 with 500k HP (+200k absorb). Effective 700k HP
player 2 with 505k HP (+200k absorb). Effective 705k HP
player 3 with 695k HP (+200k absorb). Effective 895k HP

next guard would reapply it on player 1 since it has lowest effective HP


Another one is that they could finally fix chi wave. On certain bosses it disappears... not to mention when you target someone who is at max range - it uses cooldown but it disappears instantly


Another one is Expel Harm cooldown still not being reset while DoT is taking you below 35%

Another one is Elusive Brew disappearing when you use it and your autoattack crit procs another stacks at the same time
For example I have 15stacks of Elusive Brew. I use it for 15sec dodge buff. Instantly after I use Elusive Brew my autoattack crit give me another stacks. My 15sec dodge buff disappears and I have 3 stacks of elusive brew and a 9sec cooldown ...


Another one ... Spinning crane kick makes you dodge less:
I was eager to test it after Wind lord and Shek'zeer because I was sure that something is broken while you spinning crane kick

The one way to test it is to have shuffle + elusive brew up and have 100% avoidance vs mob and use spinning crane kick

I was trying to test it with 90lvl vs 85lvl toon but something is wrong as from my calculations I should have 102% avoidance vs 85lvl and still i was beeing hit.
I don't know if this has something to do with high crit chance of said 85lvl (it had 0hit and 0 expertise) but I was getting white hits anyway. I calculated that each level difference is 1.5% gain to miss, dodge, parry. So for 5 levels difference I gain 7.5% miss, dodge, parry.
But this might not be true since I was getting hit anyway without spinning crane kick.
Need to find low enough NPC that doesn't die and I'd be sure to have 100% avoidance against it

@Pisshands, thanks for the compilation then for a bug or proposed implementation to our Ox Guard.

I do believe ICD is probably the best compromise to actually have a smart heal but where we are not a must have. An example will be like at Heroic Empress, if you use 2x Brewmasters there, while tanking 5 Windmobs, I pop 1.1 million guards on myself, thus having 1million shields on the raid from 2 players would trivialize most healing on this phase, same principle as ppl mentioned can be applied on Wind Lord for Blade Storm.

So in short, if it works with a proper smart heal, it would be just too good not to have a Brewmaster as tank for 10mans especially. Another suggestion could be to almost pop a shield on someone via a smart heal algorithm every 10secs for x% of dmg you did in that 10secs, this allows us to not try and time shielding for aoe explosions and it might happen you put large shields on certain raid members, but apart from the other tank, it would be vary rare that the person would actually need to use all of it before it expires, the raid will be long dead before that.

Maybe try the mobs in Blased lands, they are somewhere in the 50s and without doing the quest, they cannot die (Been a while since I need to use them, so hope they still exists)

That...is actually quite a reasonable and good suggestion. Instead of having a passive statue throwing out shields randomly as raid utility (being useless in some cases and hilariously overpowered in some), could have the "tank version of spirit shell" on a 3 minute cooldown, comparable to warrior/paladin cooldowns. Could remove Avert Harm to compensate if really needed, doubt many people would miss it.

Putting an ICD on Statue Guards completely eliminates the issue of raid blanketing. It is also potentially a huge nerf, depending on the length of the ICD.
The issue is how much raid healing they actually want out of the Statue.
I still think they want it to scale upward substantially on AoE fights. There needs to be a limiting factor other than Monk dps, but I'm not quite sure of the best route to take.

Because of the taunt interactions, I don't think they would have any interest in turning Black Ox into a cooldown. I think the taunt interactions are marginally useful fluff, but Blizzard doesn't, so in they stay.

Hi Pisshands! First, let me say thank you for taking the time to create and maintain this guide - lots of great information in there.

I'm coming today with a question/statement/whatever. I think your stat weight for Agility may be incorrect because it doesn't appear to take Vengeance into account. Agility provides us with three primary benefits (well, actually 4, but obliquely): AP, dodge, crit (and the 4th, the dodge from EB through this). The only one of those 3 stats that it actually provides well, though, is AP. Dodge rating and Crit rating respectively are more valuable on their own, especially considering that their gems give double the amount of rating as Agi. That leaves us with Agi primarily giving us AP - which is obviously very useful in that it buffs our Guard, our self-heals, and our overall damage output (which has numerous benefits).

Vengeance complicates the matter. If you're a BM who does, for example, 5 mans primarily, or maybe 10 man normal modes, you'll get around 50-80k Veng tops, maybe a little more - admittedly I don't know that much about 10 mans but bear with me. If you're in a 25 heroic guild, though, you're looking at 120k+ Veng minimum, with much much more in some cases. I have a WeakAura that tracks my Veng constantly, so I have a good idea of what I'm getting, and sometimes it's nuts - I hit 400k last night on Empress. I'd say I average around 150k.

When you have that much Vengeance, shouldn't the marginal value of Agi go way down? My guards last night on Empress were absorbing like 1.4 million damage. When you're getting that much extra AP, the Agi you get through gems and enchants is pretty minimal. I have been following some general rules weighing Agi above other stats, so I have +2.4k Agi from gems and enchants. At 2 AP per point, we'll call that 5k AP for simplicity. At 150k Vengeance, 5k AP is a 3.3% increase. At 200k Vengeance, it's 2.5%. At 400k Vengeance, it's 1.75%. Admittedly I'm not a math guy, but I understand the concept of diminishing returns and I can see that as you get more Vengeance, the marginal value of Agility falls.

Secondary stats, on the other hand, provide benefits which scale with your AP or are not otherwise affected by more AP. Haste always gives you energy regen and causes you to hit the boss more, Crit always gives you a chance to do double damage, etc. You get the point.

So bottom line, Agi gets worse with higher Vengeance, while secondary stats become more attractive or remain the same, which makes them more attractive since the value of Agi is falling. In my opinion, this should affect the stat weight of Agi as stated in the guide. If you can guarantee, like I can, that you will always have high Vengeance, Agi isn't going to be as good for you as secondary stats.

So what would this mean? Probably not terribly much - enchants, consumables, and the meta gem generally offer the choice between Agi and Stam, so Agi will still probably win out (if you're fine on Stam overal). I would simply contend that gemming for Agi and going for Agi bonuses is not the best choice, and that secondary stats should prevail.

Again - I'm not a math guy. Maybe I can follow along with your calculations, Pisshands, but I don't think I can figure out how to do them myself. I could very well be wrong, but I wanted to post this here and get some feedback on the idea before I actually put it into action.

Well, not necessarily. My chest has Red + Yellow sockets with a 120 Agi bonus. I'm at the levels of Hit/Exp I prefer, the yellow socket's getting Haste or Crit, so the question is what do I put in the Red socket? Based on the stat weights of Agi and Haste, the answer would be a Deft (Agi/Haste) gem. That's the situation I'm referring to, and I'm thinking the Agi isn't really worth it.