Brewmaster Monk Ability Concept:

I feel like Brewmaster could really benefit from an ability where you channel to continuously drink from a Keg, like Chen in Heroes of the Storm.

Continuing to channel should give you an Absorb shield that gets stronger as you drink, sort of like Fleshcraft, but intended to be used in combat while being hit. The monk should still be able to Stagger, and dodge passively while channeling the Keg.

This would have an obvious Risk and Reward to the brewmaster. A Significant increase to your durability at the cost of Standing still for few seconds. Perhaps you could even get additional buffs for finishing the entire channel and not canceling it early.

As an aside: I like Brewmaster, I main one. But It currently struggles from being far too passive and uninteractive. Shuffle maintains your passive mitigation without any thought or nuance, and you’re expected to use Keg Smash and Tiger palm to drink as many purifies as possible to keep your Stagger as low as possible. It’s simple, but not incredibly interesting. I like getting big shields from Celestial Brew, so this ability concept is meant to enhance that fantasy, while sticking with the class theme.

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I’d be fine with them just taking celestial brew off the GCD. Why the h*ll is that ability on the GCD?

Celestial brew as a whole, feels like a bandaid.
Clearly blizzard wanted to get rid of brews sharing charges with eachother. And blizzard wanted to make stagger into something completely automatic.

Then, they realized the class basically plays itself, so we got Celestial Brew.
It’s…… fine. It’s just guard.

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I didn’t really see what the problem was with Iron Skin Brew. Their apparent justification was that you can just have it up 100% of the time? Yeah, I mean that’s the same with Shield Block (in BFA) and Bone Shield.

Either way, there are countless personal defensives in the game that they took off the GCD. It seems completely arbitrary that CB is on it.

To be fair, Fleshcraft is intended to be used while being hit. It provides a 20(?)% damage reduction while channeling it. Perhaps if instead of being a cooldown, it’s an ability you can hit any time, but it consumes a second of Shuffle per second channeled. You couldn’t use it all the time, and channeling to long or often would get you hurt big time.

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Their problem with Ironskin Brew was:

  1. Players found it too complicated that ISB shared charges with Purify.

  2. Many players made Macros to automatically use Ironskin Brew. So they didn’t have to think about it, and could just focus on purifying.

Now, the entire is gone. It’s just automatic.

You get 99% of your “Tankiness” just from using Keg Smash, Breath of Fire.

From that point you use drink Purifies to keep stagger low, and use Celestial Brew when you need it.

It’s SUPER simple and SUPER boring.

This would be great! Any interaction with Shuffle would be great.
It sucks that shuffle is just, a buff you always have that you never have to think about.

Anything to make Stagger or Shuffle a more active think you play around.

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A chugging brew channel sounds thematically awesome.

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I think my issue with BRM right now is that it’s super simple after you get your 4piece and legendary. Some specs in the game are totally fine and complete without those things, like resto shaman. Some definitely are stronger with 4 piece, like WW, but are just fine without it.

BRM is actually a broken spec without the tier and legendary. It just feels like crap to play. They should probably realize this when designing the talent tree in 10.0, or it’s going to be a bad spec for at least the first patch.

Brewmaster certainly needs something more “Active”
Keep keg smash on cooldown & Purify your stagger leads to a dull playstyle.

Brewmaster has lost SO MUCH over the last 3 expansions that I have really high hopes for the Talent Trees.
Brew-Stache, and Obstinate determination from Legion could make a return.
So could ‘Straight, No Chaser’ from BFA.

And I hope to see Ironskin Brew return, even as an entirely different ability.

Just slamming down Purifies gets boring fast.

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Brewmaster was broken in 9.0 and 9.1 because it didn’t have tier?

The rotation was definitely bad without the keg smash legendary.

The only reason people are rating it highly right now is because it’s a janky blood DK when you get tier set. Keg smash plays like death-strike with the heal.

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Better still. This feeds into making the spec even more mindless and dull

Keg smash Heals you, gives you 100% uptime on Shuffle, which mitigates most incoming physical damage, and lowers the cooldown of Purify to cleanse your stagger.

The set bonus is genuinely really good. But it contributes to making an already simple spec into feeling like an Idle game.

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I feel the set bonus is too good.

One of the only “weaknesses” of brewmaster was needing more healing as a trade off for being almost immune to spike damage.

And the set bonus like you said turns Keg Smash into deathstrike.

And makes the active mitigation portion of the spec very boring and non-interactive.

2 charges on some spells always feels better.

I’ve argued lava burst needs 2 charges baseline for elemental for a while. It just feels better.

Keg smash of course feels better with 2 charges from the legendary.

The damage is whatever, it’s a tuning knob that doesn’t really impact the way it plays.

The 4p is stupidly strong for a borrowed power.

It BAFFLES me that 2 Charges of Lava Burst isn’t baseline.
And Enhance should be able to get 2 charges of Lava Lash and Storm Strike.

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Is it the best tier bonus in the game? After they nerfed bear, it seems like BDK and BRM have the best tier sets.

Don’t get me started on riptide. It’s completely idiotic that I need to talent into 2 charges.

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I don’t know, probably not the best.

I’m more talking about brewmasters though and how massive of a power gain the 4p is.

There are probably others that are too strong for borrowed power as well.

Fire Mage, and Enhancement Shaman win for “cool design” for their Tier sets in my opinions.

The Brewmaster one is absurd tho.

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