HOW TO PLAY BRAWLER

Ok, I try to break it down for you a bit.

Basically, what you want to reach with your crit factor is for it to be so high that Haymaker crits at a nearly 100% rate (without using the glyph for it). Beyond this point, crit is 30% less effective than getting the regarding stats in power.

The value to aim at is 331 crit (fully buffed). If you got a myst in your static, you don't need so much crit on your gear and if you have to decide for either a crit roll or a power roll on your necklace, you should check your crit stat first.

So, for your gear, try to reach 331 crit (if you are running with a mystic you want to go power ring + earring and crit necklace, ring and earring) and then roll everything else on power.

Normally, with good to perfect stats, you run with mixed jewelery, Quatrefoil Brooch (6/3), Belt (6/3), Necklace (4 Power), Double Energetic Etchings for Weapon and Gloves and Circlet (this is a nice item to switch stats on, either 8 crit or 4 power, depending on your crit value at this point).

Hope that brought a little bit of insight.

For your second question, power does NOT help to keep the rage. You should glyph rage generation on certain skills in your glyph setup which helps you to keep the rage. Otherwise, try to gain perfect blocks and chain your attacks well with attack animation cancelling.
Only stats which help to maintain a nice rage level are cooldown and in combination with that, attack speed.

If you got any more questions feel free to ask, I am going to try to explain as well as my english skills allow to

There are literally 2 playstyles for Brawler.

1. The "Lazy" One aka don't want to block manually

For this one, you just gotta hold this Growing Fury active. Perfect Blocks do not matter (the glyph for more damage right after a perfect block doesn't trigger if you block perfect with a skill while in GF) in this style. Nevertheless, the use of the spacebar (chain skills) is an insult to nearly every class (exceptions for chaining e.g. 2 skills like priest buffs). Especially while tanking, you should keep an eye on the boss and upcoming mechanics and learn how to chain your skills in the best way for this particular boss. My suggestion is to not use the spacebar.

2. The "Moongourd" One

For this one you do basically the same as in the first one, but if it fits the boss patterns, you throw in a manual block from time to time, for damage increase. Make sure that it fits in well into your rotation, because otherwise you'd lose more dmg than you gain.

Especially when you are a beginner, you shouldn't focus too much on perfect blocks and things like that. Not even on damage. Concentrate on safety, aggro, nice movement as well as boss patterns. Once you learned all those things and are able to fulfill them while halfway asleep, you can work on your damage

For your second question:

You should find out yourself, this is the fun part of tanking! If you get hit by an attack, you will surely remember it the next time!

Please don't spread wrong information.

Perfect block deals 40% additional skill damage on every successful block. So it is critical to always time perfect block on all of your hard hitting skills (HM and GP) and especially right before the boss is gonna hit you with quick multiple hit attacks.
For example, if the boss hits your for 10 hits in 0.5 second (like Meldita trample) and you perfect block that with Haymaker, you will deal an extra 400% damage of HM, effectively hitting 5 Haymakers instead of one.

This mechanic definitely matters and is much more important than trying to proc the 50% damage glyph with manual block, which generally benefits little in the long run.

Brawler has so few skills, you shouldn't ever need to use spacebar. And in VSNM you can block everything as long as you have proper gear (perfectly rolled Misery for example).

I for myself never really tried to get perfect blocks but still get a ton of them. Also I'm the first kind of player Vi spoke of.
Also I do use the combokey but only when I want to use Counterpunch.

@Kapt The real skill of the brawler is to do both of them. So perfect block and maunal block glyph. I can't do it and since the brawler is only a twink of mine I probably will never be able to do it.

The glyph only has 30% chance to proc so it's not really effective. Definitely not a priority for brawlers to worry much about.

Played brawler during 3 VM patches, literally never heard of the 40% more dmg on perfect blocks lol, like where does it even say so?

Just go to GG and haymaker the moment the boss hits you. Never wondered why there are 2 numbers displayed instead of one? *facepalm*

Quote from Noyn

Just go to GG and haymaker the moment the boss hits you. Never wondered why there are 2 numbers displayed instead of one? *facepalm*

That's because I never seen a second number displayed, infact I just tried, over 4 runs, did not see a second number nor an increase in damage while doing perfect block HM.

edit : Actually I had a dmg increase, 2.54m first hit (no perfect block), 2.62m second hit (perfect block), no double dmg, no 40% increase dmg either

Well I am not surprised that most of the brawlers are not aware of this mechanic. It could be hard to see the additional number.

But you really never meet an instance where the IoD bam dies even before your HM connects? That is because of the perfect block reflect.

Try to look up Bernkastel's brawler guide. It will give you an idea how to play brawler properly.

Unless the numbers are hidden, I don't see it on my screen nor in my combat log, took a shadowplay of it, sadly my upload is trash so it'd take forever to upload.

Don't get me wrong, I see it on guides and whatnot, I just don't see the numbers on my logs/screen, oh well never had issue doing top dps as a brawler, so I guess I was already doing it anyway.

edit : watched my own video again, both hit do about 7-8% to the boss, so no hidden damage either, I mean 40% on a 2.5m hit doesn't go unnoticed..

You can see clearly here :

and here :

The extra damage was dealt as soon as the boss hits me during HM animation. There are numbers on screen and in combat log. The extra damage usually ranges from 35%-40% of the HM itself.

Indeed, noticed it inrandom dungeon, I somehow don't have the extra damage in GG tho. Guess I never really noticed it since I removed the displayed damage long before brawler even came out.

To clarify this, my statement was not about the perfect block reflect, this should be well known, the reflect is based on the base dmg of the certain skill you are using. This should proc if you block in the first 0.5 seconds of the attack and should deal 50% of the skill damage to all enemies in 8m range afaik.

What I was talking about is the rune for skill dmg increase over the next few seconds if you hit a perfect block MANUALLY. And this one is pretty huge if you are able to chain this manual block perfectly into your rotation. I thought I made it clear when I named this "Moongourd"

If you strive for perfect this is definitely something to take care of.

Get to know the boss and his patterns thoroughly. And get to know the brawler perfectly. With this knowledge, you predict the attack of the boss, you know exactly which rotation skills you are about to use, how long they will take and then you can chain a perfect manual block without wasting time to wait for the boss to hit you.

Since a guildie wants to play brawler and another brawler were talking about the crit rate. Now I want your opinion.
I say around 330 fully buffed is good and my friend brawler said you need +311 crit so that haymaker is critting without glyph to 100%. Who do you guys say is right?