Brewmaster suggestions

I am a Brew main. I get CE in raids, and I am regularly in the top 50 of Brew tanks on raider. io (seldom top 10). There are some things I would like for Brew to be changed, which is why I write this post. In my opinion, there are some things Brew lacks fundamentally to compete with other tanks in M+ specifically and some that would make the feel of brew way better.

Scaling in M+ (mainly self-healing)

Since Brew receives more damage by design, we also need more attention from healers, which reduces their dmg contribution (more GCDs are used for healing us that could be damage). This is inherently a negative impact when picking a Brew when forming a party. I don’t think that we should do more dmg to compensate for this, since that would make us do more dmg than other tanks in raid. This is why I think increasing our self-healing specifically in M+ content is the right move. I know that Blizzard wants to reduce this for all tanks, but they missed the mark on several specs, and somehow, Brew remains the most Healer reliant.

  • One way would be to increase our self-healing in AOE. Talents like boiling brew existed before. It should only be an “M+” talent, perhaps instead of AS, because I think we don’t need a buff in raids. The idea here is to substitute missing healers from a raid setting with additional self-healing in M+. This would also be a good tuning knob between raid and M+ self reliance.

  • give us a buff to maintain that gives us leech. something like: RSK buffs us x% leech for 20 seconds. It automatically scales with AOE (more M+ orientated) because we do more AOE dmg thus more self healing.

  • something that lets us stack a hot on us. RSK (or any other button) buffs a hot for the dmg taken from the last x seconds for the next Y seconds. It would overlap (ironfur style) and be something of a maintenance hot instead of timing it right like a death strike etc.

Both of those last suggstions are meant to be a maintenance buff that increases our healing. You could also just increase orb generation in M+, but a maintenance buff combined with RSK would make RSK feel more integrated into the kit.

QUALITY OF LIFE changes

Some points that would greatly increase the feel of Brew (in any content) and make it more consistent.

  • VV 1s gcd. Brew has 1s gcds, and every ability that has more feels clunky cause the whole rhythm is interrupted.

  • bigger AOE radius for KS. Most aggro issues in M+ stem from not hitting everything. This is the complaint I read the most about in Discord etc., and it would make it a lot easier especially for new Brewmasters. I specifically mean the radius, not the range of KS.

  • Chi Burst has no cast time increase when getting hit (or make it instant). It just doesn’t feel good when you press it and see the cast bar increasing all the time…

  • spear hand needle - throw a needle interrupting the ki flow of your target (ranged kick. With the reinforced importance of kicks in TWW it is very punishing not being in melee. Let us execute the interrupt mechanics, but don’t punish us in ways where we have to move (or mobs move out) of range). This would help us in grouping and also while kiting!

The main reason why we lack behind in M+ content is our UTILITY. Some points where I think we could get some help are in grouping a pull, CC as well as helping the group survive mechanics.

  • ring of peace knockback silences enemies for x seconds instead of “peace and prosperity”. you need the knockback for the silence to trigger.

  • Clash makes them charge to you (not the yanky meet in the middle stuff), for a quasi grip. Again it would be to help us group.

  • Para makes skips possible (reduce aggro range like other CC effects). maybe increase the range by 5 yards. and something additional like Para INTERRUPT (like avengers shield). This would also make sense with the Para cd reduction talents.

  • VV has a longer CD, but the healing is increased. Giving us more impact per button press but less overall GCDs spent. especially in combination with the 1.5s hasted GCD.

  • EK increases the cast time of XX% for enemies affected for Y seconds (choice node with the DR it does now)

  • Avert Harm. Or something along those lines is always good for M+.

REWORK
Here are some ideas for a rework/ refresh of our kit. Some are more drastic than others but I just like the thought of “what could be”. This shouldn’t be in this post, but last time I posted something similar you actually used 70-80% of the stuff I had in mind, which felt great :slight_smile: .

  • Make the spec more combo centric. Make BoC the bread and butter spell and extend how it works. It should however only work with spells on the GCD. Which means: remove BoK PB interaction.

  • no SCK. We have many buttons and the decision between SCK and TP is often not interesting. Consider removing SCK or bake it into TP

  • Nizao. The most uninteresting button. We seldom use it and if we do, then it is due to no other viable option. He is neither really offensive nor really defensive, since he can die.

  • WoO. ramping dmg on enemy mobs instead of us makes it harder when it comes to aggro or short burst windows like dmg amps or spawning new enemies.

  • no CB, but “increase stagger tremendously for the next X seconds” where x are the stacks. avoids CB overhealing etc… short term buffs that are meant for tank busters. OR make CB 50% damage reduction until the shield cap is reached. make it INSTANT off GCD. Generally I like stagger and wish we could interact with it more actively. but no Ironskin brew pls :slight_smile:

  • something more useful instead of zen meditation. The button just feels clunky. Can’t dodge/ parry during your def CD, which makes it very specific and unintuitive to use. moving? forget about that.

  • defensive cds on brew feel often underwhelming because we receive no immediate response due to stagger. if they would heal/ shield/ purify us, we would have instant feedback. Even though they are strong we still receive ticking stagger dmg which was applied before the mitigation.

2 Likes

Purifying stagger is effective healing future damage so I’d rather see changes made so we can purify more rather than heal ourselves more.

Increasing the amount we stagger, the duration of stagger and the amount purified would achieve this goal.

In fact, I’d rather power of healing spheres be transferred to the above.

I agree with this. I’d ask for the radius and the range be increased. Compare keg smashes pull potential to avengers shield. It should pull everything but often misses mobs in a small group.

This is cool! People have also asked for a grip ability like dk’s have that’s a rope and spear/dagger. Like scorpion from Mortal Kombat.

I’d make the knock back and silence a choice talent. And give the silence choose a increased radius.

There are a few dungeons where there are archers that are a pain to group but they’re a pain for everyone but dk’s.

I like BoK being a high priority but I’m not a fan of BoC. If they removed BoC I’d be fine with that.

I don’t think that a popular opinion though.

If they made overwhelming force baseline, buffed it’s damage and area of effect that would be great! Right now I mostly use sck as a way to get threat because our other abilities are lacking imo.

Imo, it shouldn’t be a pet and we should get an amp when infused with the celestials. Bonus points of it changed tiger palm to a box head butt and keg smash into a stomp for the duration.

I don’t think anyone like weapons of order…

I like celestial brew but I also like your idea. Either way it needs to be off the gcd.

Thank you for writing this up. It was a good read.

What are your thoughts on haste for brewmaster? Right now it’s very low value for both offensive and defense. Blizzard made great changes for haste to ww and I’d like to see the same for brewmaster as well.

Hey, thanks for the kind words. :slight_smile: Some points you adressed I can live with perfectly fine. Increasing stagger etc. would be nice, but I fear it would be too strong in raid content again, like it has been in the past. That’s why I was coming from the healing angle. the value of additional purifies also diminishes the more you purify.

Regarding the grip and ring of peace suggestion. My goal was to not homogenize different classes. Ofc a grip and AOE perma silence would be nice, but it would take away from other classes identity. My goal was to not interfere too much. Also the RoP knockback is one of our best defensive tools.

Haste is the worst stat, but not per se bad. One stat hast to be the worst. I am perfectly fine with haste fullfilling that role. Imho it is better than forcing multipliers like they did with fists of fury (just flat haste% as dmg%). on other tanks haste helps surviving because you generate more ressources due to faster gcds. They kinda need haste in order to feel good to play. Brew doeesn’t have that issue and if hast being a worse stat as a tradeoff then that is a deal I would take any day.

If they had to change it then haste could influence orb spawn, stagger tick rate, purify amount or stagger amount. offense: easiest solution would be a flat% amount linked with haste%, but like I mentioned before. not a fan of such a solution.

This is a price I’m willing to pay haha

Haste can continue to be the worst stat but when you look at its value for damage it just hurts to see it being ~one third the value of the other stats.

I’m not sure about the details of haste’s defensive value though.

Haste can be a bad stat but a borderline dead stat when our current tier set is riddled with it?

Please no.

We need higher Stagger % specially for magic dmg! There’s just too many magic damage source out there! Back in the day only a few rare trash enemy were doing magic AoE or ground effect but now it’s almost every single trash and there mothers who must cast fire on the ground, AoE, aura or whatever!

I’d love for them to buff stagger

Pro Brewmaster tip. Bind roll to every button. Press them all at once to unlock the super secret re-roll tech. From there you just pick the FOTM tank and faceroll to victory.

As someone just dipping toes into tanking I have to agree with you on a lot of your points. I think a way to increase our self healing in aoe to help with the massive white hits we take that hold brew back in higher up keys would be mitigated a bit by a bit more self healing and more stagger. I don’t exactly think we need any more def cds, though I think karma for brew would be really cool.

I think it’s a touch lame that a hybrid class like a monk does less healing than a dh lol but that’s just me.

Hot trub baseline would fix most aggro and DPS problems since you could effectively turn damage taken into damage dealt. They could add some kind of thorns aspect to harmony or shadopan. Blizzard got literally the world to work with and constantly short us.

1 Like

Haste is not a dead stat. we just get a bunch of haste baseline, which is an additional reason why it seems bad. It is only a bit behind. Not as much as people think. Could it be better? sure, especially defensively, but it is decent offensively already. There is a bigger discrepancy in stat value on other classes.

Like I said before. Buffing Stagger is nice, but I guess it would be too OP pretty fast. Buffing magic stagger alone could be good though. There is a fine line where stagger is good but not too strong.

That would be bad imho. we already have many things that scale with taking dmg (Mastery + haste in red stagger, dodges for counterstrike, nizao (undertuned though)). It also wouldn’t fix aggro problems because you have to take dmg first for it to do dmg which means it would came later than needed. It would be hard to balance between raid and M+ content.
The biggest issue is that it would promote the most degenerate playstyle again. taking extra dmg in order to hot trub more. Just like we did in shadowlands with Nizao. It was a lot of dmg, but it was just a bad playstyle. You should want to reduce dmg taken as a tank and not the other way around. I remember solo tanking Anduin intermission or taking more stacks than necessary on other bosses just to parse better.
It was a lot of dmg, but it was bad. Just like Keg of the heavens which a lot of people wish back was strong but once you dropped your stacks you could die because you lost the additional health (and the many issues with target capping and reducing effectiveness if there where too many mobs etc.). Strong but not that good gameplay-wise.

I think that widening our keg smash and breath would be a good start … I forgot about hot trub, that would be nice to have back as as a bonus, not as the solution. It’d be good for keeping aggro, but yeah … we either need a larger keg smash or something else to help with our opener.

I have seen Strategies like popping down black ox statue, rolling in, and doing breath of fire before keg smash but … feels a little awkward.

I think it’d be cool if blackout kick had some kinda special effect upon the first strike after entering combat to give us some snap aggro or something

I’m no expert here though …

I honestly love this idea. It’s the reason I fell in love with monk. I started with windwalker and I loved the feeling that it was like I was playing street fight but it was wow …

It’d be pretty cool if they sort of split out little mini BoC talents. Things like … (random example of what I mean and by no means a great and balanced idea) “after casting rising sun kick your next breath of fire reduces damage by an additional %5” and take that from boK. Then maybe add one other effect so that blackout kick and rising sun kick have only two options to remember for each … so the choices are easier to grasp, and also makes it possible to stack some of these effects in interesting ways.