Brewmaster Changes Don't Go Far Enough - Needs Rework

Classes Monk
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I have a been a Brew main since before Shadowlands and regularly do high keys but most definitely not a .1%er. While I am glad Brew is finally seeing some love I think this is very light and falls extremely short of what the class actually needs in order to have its time in the sun. Just looking at this from a mythic plus perspective, the thing that really hurt Brew coming into TWW was the change to how stops and interrupts work. In DF leg sweep was just as valuable as an interrupt but now its just like any other hard stop in the game. The difference between brew and say pally, warr, VDH and optionally DK is that they all have some form of AOE silence. Similarly, the tanks the tend to be Meta usually do not require a healer to babysit them throughout a pull. If a tank is rotating through their mitigation properly they can usually survive enough without a healer so they can focus on healing DPS or themselves. At some point brew just gets overwhelmed and the healing from spheres or vivify is just not enough to self sustain without a healer. This may have originally been the intent but obviously other tanks have skirted around this issue while brew is still affected by it. Finally, changing the modifiers to everything so that its more straight forward and clear, like tiger palm, makes a lot of sense. That said, what sense does it make that in AoE situations we are still prioritizing tiger palm over things like spinning crane kick. Its just very frustrating. Further, the capstones are so bad that in a lot of cases we aren’t playing any capstone talents because its so unimpactful. That’s a major issue in both trees.

I love Brew, its hands down my favorite tank but its sort of been in the dumps since the end of shadowlands. It just needs a straight up rework. There is no reason why hunters, priest and pally are on their 3rd or 4th variation of a rework and brew is still not up to par.

Here are few of my suggestions:

  1. Make Ring of Peace a choice node between it makes enemies bounce or it pacifies/silences enemies in the circle (its literally in the name).
  2. Make SCK part of the aoe rotation and bring back the Torghast ability where SCK can pull enemies in (that’s fun and cool)
  3. Rework exploding keg, its a horrible and boring CD but imagine throwing down and actual keg that when it takes enough damage it explodes
  4. Rework fortifying brew, it is one of the WORST defensives on such a long CD. Why not just make it prevent all stagger on a shorter duration…
  5. Rework Weapons of Order and PTA… weapons of order is one of the only tank CD where you have to build up stacks to 4 in order to get maximum value from it… people just want to click a button and things go boom.
  6. Rework defensives, things like dampen harm and diffuse magic are decent but if a DK can AMS or a Warr can spell reflect then let diffuse magic or dampen harm be just as impactful.
  7. Chi burst and Chi wave are sort of meh… i mean chi burst is great for Master of Harmony but wouldn’t it be cool and fun if you stored up damage and released it through these abilities.

In short, there’s so much potential and opportunity to lean into existing talents and just make them more impactful and fun. As it stands a large bulk of the tree is just modifiers to stagger and shuffle which is fine but its not something players can really see. As you grow in player power talent choices should feel impactful and right now its mostly modifiers which feels sad. We should feel excited about capstones and not be avoiding them. Unlike other tanks there isn’t really distinct playstyles per se (ie Druid moon bear vs bleeds or VDH spirit bomb vs sigils). The changes to Niuzao has been fun but it feels like it should really be a capstone type playstyle which is great but rework the tree and lean into it.

How I would change capstones and portions of the tree:

  1. Move the Niuzao talents to the right side and make them capstone
  2. Move breath of fire stuff to the middle and make them capstones, make exploding keg a capstone but make it an actual exploding keg that actually explodes.
  3. Keep Weapons of order rework it so you get the 4 stack benefit right away and just remove press the advantage.
  4. Combine and move the ox stance to the middle of the tree and run healing modifier talents parallel to them.
  5. Just review the stagger, elusive brawler and shuffle talents, reduce the amount of modifiers and combine some… no need for that many

Brew is such a unique tank spec and has so much potential we just need the TLC that other classes have received. Obviously this is all my opinion but I think the spec just a stronger identity outside of just staggering damage and mobility. The changes that have been made are good but since its later in the season and we now have the stats behind us, we are going to perform well but what about the beginning of midnight when we are back to square one? These changes need to be evergreen enough that it feels like it has its own identity that is more tunable than it currently is. In raid Brew is fine as it is but really mythic plus is really the end game for a lot of people so the class should be more adaptable to that type of gameplay.

If you actually read through this… thanks for listening!

3 Likes
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Okay so I’m not opposed to a rework, but just pointing out that specifically for brew, you do reset its cd passively.

This is just an irrelevant thing, because if you rework the abilities into something else, the ability then will be complained about and want reworking. It’s just a cd you press, that lets you have higher burst windows when you do. The fundamental won’t change.

Defensives are only an issue, imo, because of the lack of self sustain. Being a squishy tank and not being able to heal similarily to how a BDK can is pretty rough. Having something like guard returned would be nice.

And this is a general thing for like… every spec in the game. You have to remember that with talent trees you don’t get access to everything, so you have to give and take where you can. Parts of your trees will be more heavily focused on damage, while the others will be focused more into defensive/passives. You kinda just gotta balance it out.

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Guard is literally just celestial brew with a longer duration.

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Yeah but I also just like pressing guard :slight_smile:

Even playing brew on mop beta just has a fluid identity in it. Retail brew still has it, but it’s just not a unified thing imo.

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The cooldown is passively reduced and isn’t reset and while some of the changes have made the ability less bad its still one of the worse tank defensives.

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I don’t think its one of the worst by much.

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Its not about having access to everything its more about having a defined playstyle. Right now its doesn’t really have an rotational theme as compared to other tanks. This isn’t a brew exclusive issue. At the moment you don’t really spec into the left side of the tree. The large majority of talents are modifiers to stagger, elusive brawler and shuffle. Which is fine if its a talent here or there but its like 7 or 8 talents just to modify what you are passively doing baseline. There is a reason monk hasn’t been considered a high tier tank for a couple of expansions. The lack of self healing compounded with the way stagger works. I agree the self healing changes that were made after season 4 of shadowlands really kneecapped the spec. Its not to say that it cant be played at a high level ofc it can and I do but it falls behind what other tanks can do. I am merely proposing that blizzard can use less modifiers and add more fun or interesting design to a spec tree that is rather lack luster in comparison to others.

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I do not think Brew needs a rework. I do think that it needs better tools.

Hard agree here. They could make the node on main monk tree a tri-pick node between area denial rop, mop rop, and song of chi-ji (for those that like it)

Also hard agree. This could be implemented by ripping DoCJ from the spec trees and putting it on the class tree so BrM has access to it.

Maybe not a complete rework. Perhaps just add things that improve it or give it more interactions. Say maybe let using it proc DoCJ and then give it CDR through TP/Keg Smash.

BrM can handle big dam pretty decently with its defensives, but you’re comparing big cds to short cds from other specs. Rather than reworking stuff that works fine to suit another purpose, why not change things with BrM’s shorter CDs? I’m still a proponent of fully un-nerfing Purifying Brew to let it clear ALL stagger per use. This helps BrM delete a lot of damage, and it gives it better self healing through Gai-Plin’s.

While this is true, it cannot be stated enough that Monk’s talent trees are horribly unoptimized/mismanaged. I get the feeling that this is likely the case for several other trees as well, but monk’s trees feel extra bad.

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Just a word of advice from someone whom has tried to post here for awhile, the class forums are ignored. Post in general if you want suggestions to be seen.

As for brew it has lost it’s Niche. It used to be the “4th dps” tank which it no longer is, it brings no utility outside of phys comp, and now the mystic touch changes will only nerf physical damage classes from raid tuning.

Mystic touch needs to do something fundamentally different. Shachi had suggested a main stat buff, I’d agree with something like this, useful to comps other than the few phys classes left.

Ring of Peace needs one of its older forms, written as:

Patch 5.3.0 (2013-05-21): Redesigned. The ability forms an 8-yard sanctuary around a friendly target for 8 seconds, instantly disarming and silencing enemies within the area-of-effect for 3 seconds. Enemies that use abilities other than auto-attacks or cast spells on allies within the Ring of Peace will be disarmed and silenced for 3 seconds. Disarm and silence effects are subject to diminishing returns.

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This has been suggested for so long now that I don’t understand why they aren’t doing it. Just bring back the older RoP that had a silence/disarm and was centered on a friendly target then give it a 1.5m CD.

As nice as the grouping would be, I feel like this could have potentially awful consequences, such as accidentally pulling mobs into backstab range just by doing an AoE rotation. SCK definitely needs a buff and IMO should be changed from granting shuffle (which we naturally accrue 100% uptime on without SCK) to giving minor brew CDR roughly equivalent to TP.

Honestly, I’m fine with current EK. There’s something like this in the game currently as an Int trinket from Cinderbrew and it is awful to play around. It would end up requiring a target macro to play around optimally and just be awkward. EK is indirectly going to perform better next season anyways if we end up playing WWTO and RJW anyways.

Fortifying Brew is deceptive in how strong it is and it’s CD is roughly half what is displayed on the tooltip due to brew CDR. I would like if they made it’s baseline CD shorter however, so Ironshell actually had potential play after the current tier set goes away, as well as maybe making Determination a baseline effect for Brew. 20% DR and 20% max HP for such a relatively long duration go a long way.

WoO either needs to be a flat damage+mastery buff or at the very least stack on the monk rather than targets. The debuff is just awkward. If you pull other mobs during the duration you completely lose the buff and start from scratch. PTA needs completely redesigned, frankly. You lose far too much by losing access to TP. I’d almost rather it just be a weaker but passive damage+mastery buff like WoO without the TP replacement and RSK/KS interaction, personally. Not sure how they’d make that work with Chi Surge and CTA, though.

Both of those defensives are outstanding. The biggest problem with Diffuse is that it can’t reflect half as much as Spell Reflect, which feels niche to begin with. This needs to be adjusted, especially if our “reflect” comes at the cost of using the DR after the hit and on a 1.5m CD to boot.

The biggest general problem with our defensives is that we lacked meaningful universally applicable defensives. This should at least partially be addressed with Niuzao actually being good and Celestial Infusion being introduced, as it will give us more buttons to rotate in big pulls in dungeons. Niuzao is somewhat weak, iirc averaging out to something equivalent to like 14% DR, but it’s better than nothing and should make enough of a difference with the long duration of the buff to be noteworthy.

IMO they should remove Xuen’s Ferocity and move Lighter Than Air in it’s place, then make a new capstone which interacts with Chi Burst/Chi Wave. I saw months ago someone suggest something similar wherein the CD of Chi Wave was reduced and it shot out 2-3 additional waves which seems good, though Chi Wave would need a buff as well, at least for BrM. Their suggestion for the Chi Burst interaction I believe was making it an empowered spell, increasing the size of the projectile with charge, but that seems useless to me. I’d rather it just have its CD reduced and made an instant cast, maybe give it a Halo-type effect where it boomerangs back at the monk for additional damage/healing, though likely at reduced efficacy since that would just make it 100% outclass Chi Wave again.

Not replying to most of the suggestions as they’re reworking/adjusting a decent amount of the Brew tree in 11.2, which this does not seem to factor, however:

  1. Combine and move the ox stance to the middle of the tree and run healing modifier talents parallel to them.

Ox Stance needs redesigned entirely. As it stands it is very infrequently procced and only worth even considering at extremely high key levels where specific tank busters may one shot, and even then it’s hardly worth it. A talent only worth even considering for the top 0.1% of players frankly shouldn’t exist. Its sub-capstones are even worse. Eating a second point just to get HG so that it procs when you wouldn’t really need it is a waste and Black Ox Adept giving you more charges when you already have more than you can spend is even worse. I’d almost rather they bring Bonedust Brew back personally at this rate.