Brewmaster in need of tuning

[Malciks-stormrage]

I really like brew and monk generally, but it’s not the tuning that keeps me from playing it. It’s the 1s GCD that makes brew always act like it has 30%+ haste and no actual resource issues that stops me. There’s no opt out option either as with other haste talents in game.

[Vòryn-area-52]

Buff Brewmaster

[Locke-echo-isles]

A few improvements are possible. Some ideas:

1. Staggering Strikes - Passive (Updated, swap positions with “Quick Sip”)
   Blackout Kick reduces your Stagger by up to 3% of your maximum health, adding that amount to the damage of Blackout Kick.

2. Sunrise Sip - Passive (Replaces “Quick Sip”, swapped into Staggering Strike’s spot)
   Purifying Brew resets the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick and increases its damage by an amount equal to the Stagger cleared.

3. Rushing Jade Wind - Passive (Updated)
   Spinning Crane Kick summons a whirling tornado around you, causing Physical damage over 6 seconds to all enemies within 8 yards. Deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets. Stacks.

4. Fortified Reserves - Passive (NEW, choice node competing with Zen Meditation)
   Fortifying Brew gains an additional charge.

5. Conduit of Niuzao, the Black Ox - Active (NEW, choice node with Invoke Niuzao)
   Niuzao empowers you for 25 seconds, converting your auto attacks into powerful stomps which deal additional Physical damage to nearby enemies based on the amount of Stagger you have recently purified. While Conduit of Niuzao is active, you automatically purify 40% of all incoming Stagger.

6. Scalding Brew - Passive (Updated)
   Replaces Breath of Fire. Keg Smash afflicts targets with Breath of Fire, and the damage and radius of Keg Smash is increased by 30%.

7. Bob and Weave - Passive (Updated)
   Shuffle also increases the duration of Stagger, and Shuffle increases the damage of Tiger Palm, Blackout Kick, and Rising Sun Kick by 1% for every second of Shuffle you have.

8. Black Ox Brew - Active (Moved)
   (Moved onto a choice node with Fortifying Brew: Determination)

9. Counterstrike - Passive (Updated)
   Being struck by nearby enemies causes you to immediately retaliate with an auto attack. The frequency at which you may Counterstrike each target is based on your auto attack speed, reduced by up to 50% based on your Stagger level.

10. Jade Wind Strikes - Passive (Replaces Face Palm)
    Replaces Crackling Jade Lightning. Counterstrike now retaliates against all enemies dealing non-periodic damage to you within 40 yards. Dodging also increases the damage of Counterstrike by 33% as Nature damage for 3 seconds.

[Vòryn-area-52]

LOCKE GO WORK FOR BLIZZARD! Some of those are great ideas.

[Dirusalso-aegwynn]

@Equinox-zuljin

peoples issue comes with his design, they can buff this to literally prevent 100% of stagger and you wont like it cause that nukes your self healing. less stagger you take means you also get no purified chi stacks so no big celestial brews. it’s counter intuitive to how brew plays. it just needs a full scale rework

To add to this Mistweavers celestials increase their healing with talents changing things up a bit.

Windwalker is the same deal only Xuen increases damage.

In both cases the celestials are a major part of the specs. You want to use them and using them correctly is important.

Then we have Brewmasters Ox that only adds a little damage even with all talents loaded into him. Isn’t helpful in AoE. Doesn’t help with threat. Doesn’t help Healing only very slightly helps with tanking but in the situation he is used (raid single target) brew doesn’t need more tanking ability.

Honestly Shamans rock elemental is more useful.

They could easily rework the Ox to be something we want. Like drastically increase his damage and provide a DR of some kind that isn’t stagger. They could add a massive bonus from haste similar to what WW got for FoF and RSK. We get very little out of haste so an extra bonus somewhere would help being forced to use haste tier not feel bad.

They could even remove the summon and make it a self buff that makes Brew bigger and stronger… there are so many options other than leaving him as a Meh talent with a bunch of points that make him only slightly less Meh.

[Soill-illidan]

I feel like there has been times where brews Survivability and Damage has been fine. Brew’s damage is far lower than what it needs to be for its downsides of being a spikey tank. It’s snap threat is also pretty bad where I’m wondering why DPS just think they can pop off at 14Mil DPS immediately on pull and that’s okay. However, even with the right tuning around damage intake and damage done, we’ve seen in previous patches BrM be an undesirable tank because of the small utility it provides, which frankly doesn’t even help many melee specs that much.

Blizzard should be tuning the two Hero Talent trees around M+ and raid. For tanks that might mean I either take a lot of small hits regularly or irregular large hits. Master of Harmony or Shado-Pan should be a M+ oriented spec, so they need not fight raid tuning.

Either way class tuning is likely soon, though I’m honestly expecting no changes as per usual.

[Brewa-hyjal]

@Vòryn-area-52

I always find it amusing to see people who play other classes defend the terrible design/state of ours.

Especially this repeating loop:

1. Brewmasters: “Brewmaster needs buffs.”
2. Non-Brewmaster: “Brewmasters can do any content in the game and be viable.”
3. Brewmasters: “Okay. Nerf all the other tanks down to Brewmaster level then, and we can all be ‘viable’ together.”
4. The same non-Brewmaster from #2: “Why do you always have to ask for nerfs. Why don’t you ask for buffs to Brewmaster, instead?”

[Brewa-hyjal]

@Soill-illidan

Blizzard should be tuning the two Hero Talent trees around M+ and raid

They just didn’t have anything for Brewmaster Hero talents. It was the last batch to be released in beta and is uninspired. “You store invisible points to occasionally do a little more damage.”

[Floweret-stormreaver]

@Contracted-illidan

Today’s the day.

Hopefully!

[Debbyfrowner-thrall]

@Brewa-hyjal

• Brewmasters: “Brewmaster needs buffs.”
• Non-Brewmaster: “Brewmasters can do any content in the game and be viable.”
• Brewmasters: “Okay. Nerf all the other tanks down to Brewmaster level then, and we can all be ‘viable’ together.”
• The same non-Brewmaster from #2: “Why do you always have to ask for nerfs. Why don’t you ask for buffs to Brewmaster, instead?”

I’ve been asking for brewmaster fixes forever now. Usually it’s pushed aside because there’ll be some brewmasters doing the hardest content in the game so everyone else needs to play better.

Kind of like OP doing 14’s. Apparently if brewmasters are doing 14’s then they are fine. Not to mention the DH has over 10x the rep at that level

[Pankration-altar-of-storms]

@Brewa-hyjal

Especially this repeating loop:

1. Brewmasters: “Brewmaster needs buffs.”
2. Non-Brewmaster: “Brewmasters can do any content in the game and be viable.”
3. Brewmasters: “Okay. Nerf all the other tanks down to Brewmaster level then, and we can all be ‘viable’ together.”
4. The same non-Brewmaster from #2: “Why do you always have to ask for nerfs. Why don’t you ask for buffs to Brewmaster, instead?”

This!
It irks me beyond words how other tanks react to brewmaster being viable and on the same playing field. Blizzard needs to grow a pair, buff brewmasters up to the same level as other tanks every xpac and patch and stand their ground.

[Riyyah-whisperwind]

@Debbyfrowner-thrall

Kind of like OP doing 14’s. Apparently if brewmasters are doing 14’s then they are fine. Not to mention the DH has over 10x the rep at that level

Or that the OP is literally one of the best brewmasters in the game and hes still 2-3 key levels behind Johnny VDH FOTM rerollers

[Bleish-kiljaeden]

@Duffle-frostmourne

The whole tree likely needs overhauling.

Yes but I believe the purpose of this thread was to discuss tuning that should be done to quickly bring Brew closer to the other tanks (not wait months for a rework).

@Duffle-frostmourne

@Bleish-kiljaeden

Well in a vacuum if you’re picking between black ox brew and niuzao you pick black ox brew, but in reality there is no reason to directly compare them

Why can’t you? I’m currently using black ox brew because for 1 talent it’s amazing. I’m not currently taking Niz which is also 1 talent. If Niz was super strong I could shift a point from elsewhere.

You basically proved my point. You’re not comparing how strong Niz is to Black Ox Brew, you’re comparing him to whatever talent you’d give up to get him. But technically the talent tree makes it more complicated and you are (or should be) comparing 2 complete talent builds.

@Duffle-frostmourne

I could be wrong, so confirm with equinox; I’m guessing if Niz diverts dmg to himself, bypassing you, it might slow down healy orb generation?

That or makes your Gai Plin weaker (heal for 25% of your purified stagger)

@Equinox-zuljin

less stagger = less damage taken = less healing (gai plins healing based off stagger, orbs etc are based off damage taken). he does not prevent enough damage for it to ever be worth it over just your natural healing.

peoples issue comes with his design, they can buff this to literally prevent 100% of stagger and you wont like it cause that nukes your self healing. less stagger you take means you also get no purified chi stacks so no big celestial brews. it’s counter intuitive to how brew plays. it just needs a full scale rework

I was curious to how he works so I did some testing on the tanking dummy.

I had originally assumed (based on the tooltip) that whenever you take a hit, you get 60% as much stagger as normal and Niuzao gets his own stagger for 40%. A big negative would be that purifying yourself would possibly not purify him so he’d die really fast. The positive would be that he could essentially absorb a lot more damage than his life bar if he died with a lot of stagger remaining.

But based on my testing (test for yourself), he does not get his own stagger debuff. Instead, you get all the stagger, but on every stagger damage tick, you take 60% and Niz takes 40%. Because of this, there should be no effect on Gai Plin’s or any mechanic based on your stagger amount.

I don’t know how Gift of the Ox (healing orbs from damage taken) currently works. A 2016 comment on the wowhead page says it’s from how much damage damage the initial hit is, before absorbs or stagger. This implies that stagger damage ticks never generate orbs, but I haven’t tried to test it.

If you’ve got any more/different information on this, let me know.

[Contracted-illidan]

Any guesses on the tuning we see?

[Floweret-stormreaver]

Soon would be great!

[Brewa-hyjal]

@Contracted-illidan

Any guesses on the tuning we see?

“Spinning Crane Kick contributes 5% more vitalilty for Master of Harmony.”

[Weathervane-windrunner (Weathervane)]

y’all remember BrM in WoD? man, now that was fun. nearly changed mains i was loving the spec so much.

[Jaenerys-moon-guard]

Can we please just make Keg of the Heavens a capstone talent?

[Chuglife-demon-soul]

Nailed it.

[Duffle-frostmourne]

@Kaivax

Brewmaster

• 3% increase to all ability damage.
• Undermine set bonus now increases damage of your next 2 casts of Blackout Kick by 250% (was 150%).

Rejoice, we were on the list this time!