Mists of Pandaria Cinematic

Edit:  I upgraded to a full domain (www.elusivebrawler.com) so update bookmarks and links.
Old links will still redirect to the new URL though.

That's for all the haters out there.

Ok, now seriously: I really enjoyed the cinematic. Shows exactly what will happen when you start questing and exploring Pandaria (spoilers inc). To everyone saying "where's the war?", I can only facepalm. They just landed on Pandaria and just band together to beat the OP Chen Stormstout who's easily kicking their ass. Don't worry, Theramore and patch 5.1 will bring a lot of the horde vs alliance everyone wants to see. Heck, the first quests you do in Jade Forest are all about the war.

This will not be some cute expansion with fluffy bears, farmville, pokemon battles and kung fu panda ripoffs. It will be about exporing a new unknown continent, where evil awakens because we bring our war to it. It will be about pandaren choosing sides with us, fighting off the evil and establishing a foothold on the continent. Don't forget the expansion begins with Theramore being blown up and ends with Garrosh being removed from power, so theres tons of  opportunity to create an awesome faction war in between. My only worry is Thrall a.k.a. baby Jesus returning, uniting everyone and continueing like nothing happened.

Ok so that's my rant for all the ppl interested in my opinion ;).
Besides, I'm pretty sure everyone agrees it's looking awesome, even if they hate the story.

Vengeance, Avert Harm and Recruit a Friend

It's time for another post, with some exciting (but expected) RAF news as well.

First of all, I doubt you missed it, but MoP will release on the 25th of September.

Vengeance
But I wanna talk about the changes to Vengeance which Ghostcrawler announced (link to original blue):

Currently, Vengeance increases your AP by 5% of the damage taken, stacking up to the cap, which happens quickly. We are changing Vengeance to increase AP equal to 5% of the damage you take for 20 sec. This buff will "roll" so that as it gets refreshed the unused part is added to the new buff, similar to how Ignite or Stagger work. The net result will be that Vengeance stacks by the amount of DPS being thrown at you over 20 sec. There is no cap.

So, vengeance was intended to make threat less of an issue (because DPS numbers went up with better gear, but threat scaled a lot slower). The change above is meant to make all active mitigation buttons balanced. It's also meant to make a tank do more DPS in 25-man (bosses hit harder than in 10 man) so that their dps matters as much as it does in 10-man.
Another positive (?) effect is that 5-man tanks won't top DPS in every dungeon (though they shouldn't be topping anyway if the dpsers were competent but thats another discussion).
Full list below.

Additional nuances:

• Avoidance will not count against you. Avoiding an attack will extend the current Vengeance stack back to 20 sec (as if you were hit again for the same DPS).
• Blocks, absorbs, Stagger and Shield of the Righteous will also not count against you. The damage before these effects is used for the Vengeance calculation.
• To reduce ramp up time, we bump you up to halfway to whatever your average Vengeance level would be based on each individual hit. Essentially, we skip the first 10 sec of ramping.
• Tank damage in 5-player groups will decrease. We think this is a good chance because it is weird and demoralizing when tanks consistently top damage meters in dungeons.
• Tank damage in 25-player groups will increase. We think this is a good change because it makes tank DPS as relevant in 25-player raids as it is in 10-player raids.
• With this change, Brewmaster damage will be extremely overpowered. We will fix it, but you may get a build where they are ludicrously good.

Avert Harm
This cooldown has been reworked:

Avert Harm - You cause 30% of all damage party and raid members within 10 yards take to be re-directed to you. Lasts for 6 sec. The damage received through Avert Harm can be Staggered.
3 min cooldown.

This new version seems like a decent raid cooldown, but it still cancels when you reach 10% of your HP. The fact that it can be staggered makes it a lot better though, especially with shuffle up (which it should be most of the time), because if you're fast you can use Purifying Brew to remove a lot of damage. This version can also be used to help another tank.

Recruit a Friend
So today a blue confirmed that the RAF service will be available for monks and they can still earn the server first achievement as well. This means you can actually link your account to a new account (a friends or your own) right now and start leveling 2 characters on the new account. Each character will have 40 grantable levels* when they reach level 80, which will remain available for 90 days. When MoP releases, you make a Monk on your old account and grant the 2x40 levels from the new account. This way you will start at lvl 80 in the first week of MoP, and will easily be lvl 90 before the first raid unlocks.
Ofcourse the old account will also get a mount and 30 days free gametime if the new account buys 60 days gametime.

*I'm not 100% sure you can make 2 chars on the same account for 2x40 levels, it might be capped at 40 levels/account. In that case you just level your monk to level 40, and then grant the 40 levels. Leave a comment if you know for sure.

Zen Sphere, Meditation and Sturdy Ox

Builds 15851 and 15882 were released recently and it seems no major changes are being made to monks at the moment. Pet Battles went 'live' also.

Stance of the Sturdy Ox now increases Stamina by 20% instead of health.

Zen Sphere (and chi burst / chi wave) were nerfed pretty drastically. Sphere was way too strong ofcourse, doing 40-60% of a tanks damage in a fight easily. We'll have to see how they are now.

Zen Meditation was also nerfed, or maybe fixed, I'm not sure. Since it was reportedly not working at all, maybe this new version (90% and only 5 spells, instead of 99% and all spells) was intended all along.

Invoke Xuen can now taunt, making it a lot more useful than before. Pop it before the next bosshit will kill you sure sounds nice. The question is how fast the taunt and how intelligent the pet is.

Rushing Jade Wind, the other lvl 90 talent, now also provides the shuffle buff for tanks in addition to the increased damage taken from Spinning Crane Kick.

D3 geeking over, new beta builds soon

Ok, after geeking Diablo III's monk, the inferno farming is getting pretty boring. So it's time to pick up the news on this blog.I've been watching raid streams and been playing beta recently, so expect updates regularly again from now on.

I will slowly update the brewmaster guide when I feel that the spec is close to finished.
There will be some new builds in the next week as well.

I might also add a mistweaver section, because I'm enjoying the spec alot. I pretty much played every spec from every class on live, so why stop now :p?

Oh, and addons were enabled some time ago, and some amazing helpful addons were made:

RenewingMistWatcher - shows the remaining time of the shortest Renewing Mist spell on the raid. It also shows the remaining bounces and the total number of Renewing Mists on the raid.

pic from wowinterface

Brewmaster Tao - Very informative addon showing the amount of dmg Stagger is doing and the power strikes cooldown.

pic from wowinterface

More info on their respective wowinterface pages.

Build 15689: Desperate Measures, Ox Statue and Spinning Crane Kick

Blizzard seems to be on a roll lately, another beta build.
A lot of QQ incoming about the Black Market auction house being implemented, I guarantee you :p.

But let's focus on the Monk changes.
We're getting another new ability: Desperate Measures.
I personally love this idea, it gives us an emergency spell every time we drop low. It will give us a lot of Chi at the same time, which allows us to use more Guards and Purifying Brews, or get Shuffle up quickly.

The new Black Ox statue is a good change. Although having 10 extra Guard charges was nice, it just wasn't a compelling mechanic (Lightwell 2.0, which can be changes with a glyph now as well). I already thought of having to tell the raid not to click the statue and not to use up MY Guards. This was just wrong, because it is intended to be a raid buff. The new Ox Statue will put up a shield on an injured raid or group member after you (the brewmaster) did 50% of your HP as damage. Interesting IMO, synergy between classes and specs for the win.

Spinning Crane Kick will be generating Chi from now on. Also a good change, we've had way too many abilities using Chi and not enough Chi to actually use them (other then spamming Blackout Kick for shuffle).

Purifying Brew with a cooldown was needed because we could be spamming that button and not know if it actually was used.


Baseline:

• Spinning Crane Kick - now generates 1 Chi.

Talents:

• Tiger's Lust - now has a 20 yard range.

Brewmaster:

• Desperate Measures *New* - While at or below 35% health, your Expel Harm has no cooldown.
• Purifying Brew - now has a 1 second cooldown.
• Summon Black Ox Statue - now has a passive effect instead of being clickable 

Glyphs:
- Major

• Leer of the Ox - teaches you Leer of the Ox (same as before afaik)
• Path of Blossoms - increases the number of blossoms by 1, down from 10

- Minor

• Spinning Fire Blossom - now a minor glyph
• Gliding Serpent Kick -  Flying Serpent Kick now automatically ends when you fly into an enemy, triggering the area of effect damage and snare.

Build 15677: Zen Flight, Glyphs and tier 14

The servers just went down for another small build. For monks there aren't many changes, there are a lot of new glyphs though. They also released a preview of the pvp gear for monks.
Full list of all changes can be found on MMO-champion and Wowheadnews as usual.

We got another interesting new ability for all monks:

Zen Flight *New* - You fly through the air at a quick speed on a meditative cloud for 30 seconds. Taught by a minor glyph (see below).

Let's hope it looks like Dragonball's Nimbus. Please?

Changes:
Grapple Weapon - lasts 10 seconds, tooltip update.

Glyphs:
- Major:

• Afterlife - Increases the chance to summon a Healing Sphere when you kill an enemy that gives xp/honor by 25%.
• Crackling Jade Lightning - now knocks the target back further, after being knocked back increased damage taking from your Crackling Jade Lightning by 25% for 8 seconds.
• Fists of Fury - when channeling you parry all attacks.
• Sparring - while Sparring you also have a 5% chance to deflect spells from attackers in front of you, stacking up to 3 times.
• Touch of Karma - now has a 20 yards range.
• Uplift - no longer increases the duration of your Renewing Mists on targets, but heals for 50% more.

- Minor:

• Crackling Tiger Lightning - color changed to that of the White Tiger.
• Honor - you bow after every succesful Touch of Death.
• Jab - you will always attack with hands and fist with Jab, even with non-fist weapons equipped.
• Transcendence - your spirit now appears in a fighting pose when using Transcendance.
• Water Roll - you can Roll over water.
• Zen Flight - Teaches you the spell Zen Flight.

Tier 14 and PvP arena sets for monks:
I didn't post the tier 14 preview added in previous builds so here it is now ;-).

Tier 14:
Click for fullscreen pics. Source: wowhead modelviewer.

PvP gear:

 

Build 15668: Path of Blossoms, nerfs and new glyphs

Another patch, another zone (Townlong Steppes) and a new skill: Path of Blossoms.
I love how they try to make monks feel different from everything else, spells like these don't do much on itsself, but bring alot of flavor to the class.

They also nerfed  Elusive Brew, which was needed in my opinion. We were basically immune every 45 seconds if we kept shuffle up. Elusive Brew now increases dodge by 10%, down from 50%. Now you have a different problem though: is it worth it to keep it on your bars, considering we already have a pretty large toolset. I'm guessing the exact number for this and other spells (like 30% parry from shuffle) will change quite a lot in the next builds, until they get it right.

Speaking about Shuffle, no changes were made here. So we can still keep it up 100% of the time if we want to, which makes it a maintenance spell instead of Active Mitigation. I really hope they find a way to switch it up a bit, so we can decide where we want to spend Chi on. Because right now, Blackout Kick is a no-brainer: it is just too good compared to everything else.

Fortifying Brew was nerfed as well. Not sure about this change, but the 100% HP increase was a bit much, especially as a baseline ability for every Monk spec. Touch of Death's interaction is probably one of the reasons for this nerf.
Might be nerfed too much for us Brewmasters though. It does increase our Stagger amount by an additional 20% now, through the new  Brewmaster Training. So it might be worth it.

Our interrupt is still worse than every other tank, hoping for a glyph that will bring it in line with other tanks (at reduced power ofcourse).


Baseline changes:

• Path of Blossoms *New* - Costs 30 energy, lasts 10 secs. Leaves Fire Blossoms at your feet every second, dealing X damage when walked over.
• Disable - First application slows target by 50% (up from 25%), second application roots. If target stays near you, the slow will be automatically refreshed to its full duration.
• Resuscitate - No longer has a shorter casttime in melee range. Cost increased for mistweavers.
• Spear Hand Strike - 25 second cooldown, down from 30 seconds.
• Fortifying Brew - Nerfed: Increases your HP by 20%, down from 100%.
• Tiger Palm - No longer does more damage above 50% HP. Instead each time you use Palm you get Tiger Power, causing 5% of their armor to be ignored for 15 seconds, stacks 3 times.

Brewmaster changes:

• Brewmaster Training - Fortifying Brew now causes 20% additional Stagger while active. (so to summarize: 30% baseline + 20% from shuffle + 20% while Brew is active)
• Elusive Brew - Nerfed: Increases dodge chance by 10% for 8 seconds, down from 50% for 10 seconds.

Talent changes:

• Celerity - In addition to reducing the cooldown of Roll, you also get one more charge, giving you 3 charges total.
• Charging Ox Wave - Changed to stun everything in it's path in front of the caster, instead of stunning everything when it reaches its target.
• Chi Torpedo - Formula update.
• Chi Wave - Can be used in any stance, as intended.
• Rushing Jade Wind - Movement speed increase down to 100%, from 200%.
• Zen Sphere - Damage increased on explosion, probably fixed the error where you were not auto-attacking when Zen Sphere was active, explaining the 'Attack Speed' addition.

Glyphs:
- Major

• Retreat - all threat is reduced for 10 seconds after you Roll or Chi Torpedo.
• Stoneskin - when using Fortifying Brew, all bleed damage is reduced by 20%.
• Fortifying Brew - another 5% damage reduction, but 10% less increased health.
• Life Cocoon - can be cast while stunned.
• Enduring Healing Sphere - duration of Healing Sphere increased by 3 minutes.

- Minor

• Rising Tiger Kick - visual altered to the color of the White Tiger.
• Spirit Roll - you can cast Roll while dead as a spirit.