Brewmaster problems

So I made a Brewmaster after being frustrated with how my Warrior and Paladin at 50 felt. First 20 levels, felt great! The flow of using Blackout kick, 2 Tiger Palms, Blackout Kick for single target was great. The AoE of just Spinning Crane Kick with the Sweeping Stun felt good. I had a situational heal, interrupt, ranged spell for pulls, and Blackout Kick keeping my stagger doubled with Expel Harm being used when I needed healing, and to top it off I had a Finisher move with Touch of Death. I enjoyed watching my Dodge stacks increase until my Panda did a flip. This, to me, was enough. It was perfect.

Then… I got some new abilities. Keg Smash, Purifying Brew, Dragons Breath and Celestial Brew. So, now I have to mix in Keg Smash on an odd 7.3 Cooldown and Dragons breath on an odd 13.7 second cooldown. My Keg Smash and Tiger Punch both lower my Brews by 3 and 1 second each. Okay… so now suddenly my rotation has no flow. Its broken up into pieces of chaos where in place of flow and cohesion, im instead left with chaos and mashing buttons. Im constantly having to look down at my bar to see whats off cooldown because my Brews are all constantly changing.

After giving this a go for about 5 hours I just cant get the hang out of it. I mean, I know what to do, it just feels terrible and that previous flow has me now looking at my Bars for cooldowns over just…playing the game. Instead of focusing on boss fights and positioning im staring at action bars. Over time this just feels awful imo and I can’t find a way to make it feel good.

Anyone else having this problem? Is it just me or does it feel a bit chaotic to anyone else?

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If you’re having difficulty with that you might just wanna re-roll. I’m not trying to be mean about it, but the rotation really isn’t that difficult on BrM. They’ve actually made it even easier now I’d say than in BfA

If at first you don’t succeed, give up?

It’s a different rotation, and trust me I’m still adjusting to the changes myself. However like any spec in the game, with some practice you will find a rhythm and then playing spec become second nature.

TLDR; keep at it, you’ll get the hang of it!

Definitely not give up, just maybe take some time away and come at it fresh. I ended up downloading an addon for Weakauras that basically tracks everything right in front of my face, but its still a bit much. Just the fact I need an aura tracker with 12 different things lighting up is kind of distracting from the game itself.

I suppose I just haven’t played this game in a long time and when I actually think about it, when I played during Wrath/Cata my Paladin basically had one defensive called Holy Shield, it wasn’t complex. I had no real rotation to speak of, I placed consecration, hit holy shield, and sort of relaxed doing a very basic seal/judgement system. Same with my Druid, but every Tank now feels like it has this massive RNG proc system on top of more procs and abilities that lower the cooldown or interact with this other ability and do the thing with the ability on top of the ability and BZZTT RNNNNR WOOOOOAH RNG happened press the ABILITY and WOOOOAH it proc’d the ABILITY FROM THE ABILITY WOOOHAAA!!! POGGERS!!

Idk, maybe im just not into the new Class directions at all.

Have you tried a Druid bear?

You don’t realistically need to track anything all that carefully. I feel like you are trying to make it more complicated than it really is.

Use Keg Smash, Blackout Kick and Breath of Fire on Cooldown (in that order of priority). That alone will guarantee 100% uptime on Shuffle and give you basic brew generation.

After that, Tiger Palm (single target/brew generation) or Spinning Crane Kick (AoE) to prevent capping energy. Don’t spam them between the previously mentioned cooldowns above, just prevent capping your energy generation with them so you always have energy for Keg Smash.

That’s literally the rotation. You can add talents for other cooldowns to use but most of them are passive.

For defensives, use one charge of Purifying Brew on cooldown to generate a stronger Celestial Brew. Keep the second charge in your pocket. Yes that purify on cooldown is going to be weak and often used in light stagger. That’s perfectly fine. They recharge insanely fast and its really to build up that big Celestial Brew over time. The other charge is for heavy stagger (or moderate if you know there’s no more big damage incoming).

Celestial Brew is for those big hits that are almost always telegraphed or if you’re running low on health and need to give your healer some breathing room. With Light Brewing talent, this is available about every 35 to 40 seconds so don’t be afraid to use it often, but ideally save it for the big stuff that you know is about to happen.

I’m not the most experienced brewmaster, but what I have highlighted has carried me all the way through heroic raiding and up to +15 keys. By the time you get that far, you’ll understand how to weave in the other defensive CD’s with practice.

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Keep in mind you won’t really need brews rotationally more situationally. so your rotation is mostly your damage attacks on priority list and brews when needed.

Are you saying it has no flow or it has dead time? Because there is definitely a flow.

Not dead time, I would prefer some dead time where you make decisions. It feels too busy imo, and chaotic. I think I just I am just not cut out for how Classes are designed now is all.

Im a more old school player who came back and having Keg Smash work with Breath Fire and apply 200% stagger, having to mix in Blackout Kick is fine, but it feels odd as then im mixing in Tiger Punches and our self Heal, and then watching Stagger to Purify, but then Keg Smash is back up and I need to hit it, and then Blackout kick and then my minds taken off of my defensives, then I die.

I wont lie, Retail while systems seem to mean less its gameplay is actually pretty difficult. I can admit that. For me its just too busy and im sure this sounds ridiculous and super simple to you guys, but for me its not comfortable always needing to hit something. I would 100% prefer being a fairly basic tank just hitting Shield Block or Holy Shield every now and then with 1 AoE button with most of my attention focused on defensives and awareness of the fight. I like my defense to come from Items more over rotation I guess. My Paladin, the same thing, you have a 3.5 second (up from like 2.5 I think?) defensive that you kind of just mash out for every fight constantly. It feels like its unnecessarily busy without adding anything besides something to just press all the time.

Just not really my style I guess.

You have good advice, its kind of what ive figured out. Its just it feels to busy and apparently this is the super simple form of the tank. I kind of highlighted why above.

Maybe I am making it too complex but right now im dying a lot and losing threat constantly on fights. I really like the base idea of just Punch and Blackout Kick with a heal just in case, and Spinning Crane Kick. I dont like how Keg Smash feels as a new player. Its not specific to AoE or Single Target its kind of all the things and means you cant really specialize in one type of dmg and it feels awkward in the rotation for me.

If it was just Blackout Kick/Punch and Spinning Crane Kick, with lots of situational concepts to watch for in fights id love it. I like simple, but needing awareness on defensives. Overly business offensive rotation (at least too busy to me) while also hitting Purify near constantly with 2 Brews up now just feels like im pressing buttons all the time but its like im not thinking or I dont feel like im making or need to make smart decisions and it feels like its too busy for that mostly anyways.

Yeah idk im a boomer man. RIP

Edit: To add. I think if you asked me what I would like, just in case you do, it would be just 2 specialized often used defensive moves. Like instead of Purify spam, I hit a button that increases my dodge chance that lasts like 10-15 seconds. Nothing I need to baby sit or watch constantly thats good for Melee or an Ability that increases Dodge that makes you drunk, and you become more sober each time you are hit reducing your Dodge chance. This ability has no set time frame, but a set number you could be hit before losing the dodge, and would scale with Dodge/Parry making it very obvious when you got stronger as it would stay up longer the more Dodge/Parry you have making a very fulfilling Tank progression aspect. Then have Celestial Brew be a base absorb thats clearly good for magic. 2 seperate situational concepts. With Purify boosting celestial Brew it makes both concepts feel like you need to use them all the time generally. This would feel less like spam vs very specific situational concepts. The idea of taking 60% less dmg from a single hit is a PERFECT concept that I like a lot and your “oh Crap” button that gives you 15% hp. Id remove Keg Smash from the rotation and breath fire and buff the heck out of Spinning Crane Kick and that would be my basic, super chill preferred type of Tank, or just make Keg Smash good in AoE to chain into Crane Kick, and buff Blackout Kick to be larger dmg on single target. That way everything is basic, has situational use, but also a skill cap that requires specific use of every ability.

Thats just me and this was a long rant. Sorry.

Prioritize Keg Smash. Fill in the rest.

That is all. Ok not really, but don’t think so much about “working in” Keg Smash. Use it on CD

Also, the reason the cool down times look “odd” is because, as with most specs, haste reduces the cool down of frequent rotational abilities to improve flow

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