Builds for bosses pt 2 - Feature focus; The spoils of Pandaria - Brew your way to victory!!

So for this weeks main blog I shall be continuing with the builds that I find useful for more bosses in SoO, with a more in-depth look at the Spoils of Pandaria. So sit back, relax, grab a brew, and lets get down to it....

Galakras.

For this Boss we monks have such an awesome way of handling lots of adds it is silly for us to go up in the towers, so I send my paladin co-tank up there and I stay on the floor the whole time. Building for this fight is quite easy, I basically go all out dps, I use the dps cloak, and stack up on the crit, most of the time I will also use my polearm, simply because I can reach the hit cap on that and I wont miss out on dps as much as my DW build does. Talents for this fight are quite easy to chose for me, the Rushing Jade Wind is an excellent choice for this, simply because it is spammable, and does a LOT of damage. I keep guard unglyphed (though if you struggle with the dot that Galakras places on you, you can glyph for this fight) and I also take dampen harm for the phases where one of my healers is up in the tower.

The Iron Juggabug (Juggernaut, but Juggabug sounds WAY better)

I used to find the dot a bit hefty on this fight, and at first tried glyphing the guard, however, the bombs deal massive amounts of physical damage so I leave the guard unglyphed, and take dampen harm for dealing with the mines. Depending on how good your healers are, particularly if one of them is a priest, you CAN glyph the guard and use dampen harm/fortifying brew for bomb disposal, and let your healers help you out. I also find Tigers Lust to be a handy little tool for mobility, particularly if you do get caught by a shock pulse and sent flying off to Africa by mistake.


The Dark Shamans. 

This fight is relatively easy for Brewmasters, we have mastery to cope with Haromm and if you feel you need to, you can Glyph guard for Kadris, however I generally leave it unglyphed, take dampen harm, tigers lust and I dont find that I take much damage at all as long as I avoid standing in bad. I also find Xuen to be an awesome selection for this fight, especially if you pop him out right on the pull as he is amazing for helping take down the dogs with his cleave. You can also use him again later in the fight for the Blood lust phase where the extra dps is needed :)


Feature Focus - The Spoils of Pandaria - Brew your way to victory!! 

I am aware that I have skipped on ahead a few bosses - I will cover the next few in a later post. But for now, this is how I manage the Spoils of Pandaria, which is pretty much every Brewmasters dream fight, no boss, just a big bunch of adds for you to play with, and if there's one thing we Brewmasters excel at, it's add control!!

Boxes, boxes and...MOAR boxes!! 
For me, this fight should be tank controlled, whatever class you play. Now, there are a few different ways you can approach this fight, you can have a reliable raid member open boxes for you, or, you can open them yourself. I recommend the latter of these two options, as it's YOU that's taking the damage, and you know how much you can handle and when to stop. 
Ok, so what boxes do I open? Well, as much as it is awfully tempting to run into the room like a kid at Christmas, it is advisable not to just open everything at once, as this will flatten your raid. First things first, Panda Boxes.....this fight is quite unique in that you can obtain Two out of Three available buffs before you even start dealing with the adds. The options are; The Claw of Burning Anger (Dps Buff) The Staff of Resonating Water (Healer Buff) and the one that we are really interested in, The Blade of the Hundred Steps (Tank Buff) now, before I go on I will mention something important, it's easy to get blinded into thinking that a certain combo of these is the only way to win the fight, I don't think there is a "best combo", all Three of the buffs have their uses and any of the two will be fine. I will normally open one of the panda crates myself, and send whichever of my team has a speed boost (Kitty form/ghost wolf/burst of speed etc) to go open the other box for me, Important: use keg smash and jab/tiger palm on the box that you open to gain aggro on that panda, then you can save your single target taunt for the other one. You can open these boxes one at a time and deal with the two pandas separately if you wish, but as long as your raid stands well back, you can deal with any two pandas at once no problem. 
Massive crates: Open either one of these next, once you have your buffs, I will usually two or three little crates as well, the reason we can get away with this where other tanks may not be able to is we bring a talent to the table that is in my opinion "op" for this fight. Xuen. Yes, that loveable shiny tiger, is the best thing for this fight, not only does he cleave like hell but he will also happily tank mobs for you, he is a fantastic tool for this and I would recommend using him and switching his taunt on. 
After the first mob from the massive crate is dead move to the second massive crate and repeat the process, obviously Xuen may well have disappeared by now so you might want to open less small boxes, however if you're feeling "ballsy" and have your dampen harm ready, go for it, we have CD's to deal with extra damage so feel free to open another 3 small crates.
Something I would NOT recommend: opening a medium crate with a massive crate, why? Because the medium sized mobs (particularly the golems in the mogu room) have certain abilities that can be harder to deal with when you are tanking one of the larger mobs.
Medium crates: Now that both of your massive crates are dealt with you can start opening mediums, the golems can be a little tricky, so just make sure you get aggro on them straight away and get ready to move them if they start casting crimson reconstruction, the last thing you want is them healing up on you!
Little baby crates: you can open a good few of these while opening your mediums, I usually go for the ones either side of the medium, a few things to note on one or two of the mobs: In the mogu room some of the crates spawn urns, you can help dps these down so be sure to tank the other mobs on top of them and spam keg smash like its running out. In the mantid room  there are some small mobs called Kor'thik Warcallers which have an enrage ability, causing them to deal extra damage and apply an armor reduction debuff to you. Since you have no idea what is in the crates, once you get one of these out, if you're NOT a monk, you should probably kill it before opening another little baby box....however, as we are brewmasters, we have a few tricks up our sleeves to deal with these little beggars. Firstly the armor reduction, we have no real use for armor and most of us run round with a pitiful amount as it is, so this is not an issue for us, the extra damage? Well we have fortifying brew and dampen harm to counteract this so it's best to have one of these available for these mobs, especially if like me you get a bit gung ho on crate opening ;) You can also once again call on Xuen to bail you out if you're feeling a little squishy and haven't collected all your gear yet, he is a very helpful little chap and these mobs will happily place the debuff on him instead of you!

For each room to be completed you need to earn 50 energy from your crates, each massive crate will give you 14 energy, mediums will award 3, and little crates award 1. 
So if you open crates in this order:
1x Massive and 3 x little = 17 energy
1x Massive and 2 x little = 16 energy
2 x medium = 6 energy
1 x medium and 4 x little = 10 energy
1 x little 1 energy.
This will give you your 50 energy needed, I recommend doing them in this order, as when you go into your first room, you have all your pre pots and opening dps to get the massive mobs down, and when you move to the second room, you can pop a timewarp/bloodlust to deal with the massive mobs for that room.

Finally: Where to tank the mobs?
Mogu room - Keep the two big mobs where they are, as far into the corner as you can get away with, so that your raid has room to move away from the stone guards that come with them. The golems, try to keep them close to the wall when they spawn, then move them toward the middle via a backwards roll when they attempt to heal. keep all the rest of the mobs on top of any urns that spawn so that you can help cleave them down. Your raid should stay central to the room wile you have the outer edge to hold your mobs.
Mantid room - Where possible, take the larger of the mobs to the far end of the room and give your raid some room to place the bombs they get put on them, this way you can safely tank away to your hearts content without the fear of being blown up. As with the urns, tank all the little mobs ontop of any amber encased kuchongs that spawn, stay out of the yellow bad that they put on people and help dps them down asap.

I will be making a video to accompany this post very soon, so that you can see exactly what I mean. Hopefully this may help a person or two, and you will learn to love the spoils fight as much as I do!! Happy box opening folks!!