Brewmaster: What Would You Adjust?

The leech I have on gear heals more than expel harm. I could leave it off my bar and preform the same. Celestial Brew in my opinion needs adjustment as well.

I saw the blue post stating they wanted tanks to have less self sustain healing but it seems like this only applied to monks and pallys. I’m playing around with a protection warrior and I keep pulling more and more just to see what it takes to budge the HP bar. Warriors are in a great spot.

I feel like Blizzard is scared to adjust us because we do have the potential to be completely oped if they are the wrong adjustments. With that being said we do need adjustments.

What do you think?

2 Likes
  • Increase the percent bonus to Celestial Brew absorb from using Purifying Brew. I like little interactions like this, though I think CB could use a base value buff as well, just to help distribute things. It also helps keep it under control, so to speak.
  • I never really liked having burst heals on monk. It feels at odds with the rest of their kit (or at least, just Stagger, since CB used to be kinda bursty). We’re (imo) intended to be the smooth-damage-intake tank with layered defenses around Stagger. Seeing my health go ZWOOP from a big Expel Harm back when Expel Harm did more than 10% of my HP was nice, but doesn’t vibe well with me. I’d be fine with a smaller up front heal if I got a stronger HoT afterwards.
  • Vivify feels kinda out of place. I like having an instant heal that I can use on other people in the group, but I feel it impinges too much on other tank spec territory - I don’t know if it’s a recommended pick, though, but still. Not 100% sure what to do here tbh, it can’t really be removed since it’s in the class tree.
  • Invoke Niuzao is no longer a summon, but more of a visual imbuement on your character that turns Purifying Brew into a ‘stomp’ skill (with a cool visual? Pull from those over the top stomp-cracks-the-ground anime visuals or something), dealing damage based on stagger in addition to base effects. Improved Invoke baseline, Walk with The Ox 1 point for 0.50 sec CDR.

Capstones: BrM is the only spec I know of that doesn’t immediately gobble up as many capstone nodes as it can possibly reach in every situation I’m sure they’re good somewhere, but they’re both boring, it’s really unclear how effective they are to the more casual player (me! :D), and I keep seeing builds that don’t take them.

They should be amazing nodes, but here we are - Chi Surge is bad. Call to Arms would be better if Niuzao was better and more interesting, so I’ll give it a bit of a pass for now, but currently it feels lackluster. Heightened Guard and Black Ox Adept are…Well. I don’t have the math skills to really know if they’re good. I assume they are, but they don’t have that ‘woo!’ factor capstone nodes should have, imo. Redesigns? Squish the branches on both sides together? Idk.

Oh, and Zen Meditation is kinda off. I’d say flip it around (you can’t attack, can take melee hits, but you can cast utility skills - just no damage), but that sounds like a bit much. Not entirely sure what niche it’s supposed to fill in the kit, but I wish it was more interesting.

4 Likes

Zen Med as a group absorption would be nice. Especially for mythic+. I wish the tiger lust talent that hits two others would be a roar type effect.

Edit: CB seems very weak too.

2 Likes

I don’t fully understand the math behind our mitigation really but I’d like Brewmaster’s Balance and Expel Harm buffed. I think we need more health and armor, and EH critting at 100% effectiveness for 200k is lame.

Larger scale maybe consolidate/move some of our talent tree tankiness to the base kit to allow a bit more build freedom. Take a look at Press the Advantage (and other dead/boring talents); I don’t think we have the bloat to justify PTA anymore, plus it sucks.

Edit: Maybe move some power out of Tiger Palm and put it into our other core dps abilities.

1 Like

They need to just bring back Legion brewmaster but toned down slightly…

1 Like

Celestial Brew and Expel Harm need serious buffing, they do nothing.

They should also consider making Stoneskin elixir have the same 2 minute cd Windwalker has instead of a whopping 6 minute cd for brewmaster.

And Chi Burst/Wave do too little healing. They still feel like throwaway spells.

1 Like

self heals are really hurting in PvP

1 Like

Keg Smash AOE Size

  • Idk if it was just the layouts of dungeons before, but getting aggro on spread out mobs feels bad.

Celestial Brew

  • Buff the shield by 3x

Expel Harm

  • Buff by 3x

“Current” health/stagger talents

  • These all suck and should be changed, clearing 5% of your current stagger is insanely bad, ends up being less than a single tick of stagger most of the time.

Clash, this skill is just too inconsistent and bad.

  • Replace it with “Ox Charge” or something similar to Heroic Leap.
2 Likes

Just some wild takes i would do…
Staggering Strikes (Talent)

  • Increased attack power from 90% to 125%

Zen meditation (Talent) [Reworked]

  • 45 second cooldown

  • 5 second channel

  • While meditating increase the effectiveness of stagger against Physical and Magical attacks to 100% for 5 seconds, while meditating stagger is also paused. Taking another action will cancel this effect.

Tranquil Spirit (Talent)

  • OLD: No longer reduces stagger by 5% of current stagger level when a chi orb is consumed.
  • NEW: Purifying Stagger now grants 1 Chi Orb based on the amount of stagger purified.
    [Green = 1, Yellow = 2, Red = 3]

Fluidity of Motion (Talent)

  • No longer decreases the damage of Blackout kick by 10%

Invoke Niuzao (Talent)

  • Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes

Walk with the Ox (Talent)

  • Now reduces the cooldown of Invoke Niuzao by 0.1 seconds and increases the duration of an active Niuzao by 0.05 seconds per point of energy spent.
  • Talent reduced to 1 point

Improved Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox (Talent)

  • Increase stomp damage by 10% and increase stomp damage further by 10% based on the level of stagger purified. This effect stacks and persists until Niuzao is dismissed.

Elusive Footwork (Talent)

  • Critical hits with Rising Sun Kick also grant 2 stacks of Elusive Brawler if Strike at Dawn talent is taken.

Ox Stance

  • Now activated when an attack deals over 40% of your current health
  • Rising Sun Kick now also grants 1 stack baseline

Heightened Guard

  • Moved original talent function to Black Ox Adept
  • NEW
  • 1.5 minute cooldown
  • Consume 4 Ox Stance charges to guard 4 nearby players within 15 yards for 10 seconds, allowing you to stagger 20% of damage they take.

Black Ox Adept

  • Now activates Ox Stance when damage exceeds 30% of your current health and provides 1 stack of Purified Chi when consumed.
    (Purified Chi is the buff that increases celestial brew absorption shield)

Call to Arms (Talent)

  • Added additional functions on top of talent.
  • Duration increased from 12 seconds to 15
  • If Niuzao is already summoned instead of summoning a second Niuzao, increase the duration of your active Niuzao by 15 seconds.

Mantra of Purity (Master of Harmony Hero Talent)

  • Increase stagger absorb by 500%

Clarity of Purpose (Master of Harmony Hero Talent)

  • Increase vitality gained by 250%

(haven’t really done anything with shado-pan)

And honestly there are still talents i don’t like for being boring
Hit scheme, celestial flames, fort brew determination, high tolerance etc…
And there are some cool ideas other people had like clashing your black ox statue as aoe an grip

3 Likes
  1. We need to proc WAY more healing orbs than we currently do
  2. Expel Harm needs to be WAY buffed
  3. Stagger needs a better agility scaling, at least in the first tier of expansions. Brewmaster feels super undertuned EVERY new expansion for this reason. We’re a very scaling tank, which feels like an oxymoron.
  4. Celestial Brew is a garbage ability. It has a cool idea but an awful execution. It needs to be completely redone.
  5. I feel like Flame Breath needs to do initial damage (it doesn’t currently) and it also needs to stack a burn for every application while it’s still up. Maybe three times? Idk.
  6. Shuffle needs to be reworked. For a dodge-based, “evasion” tank, I don’t feel very evade-y. Our mastery should increase our dodge chance instead of our attack power.
3 Likes

Rework CB into something close to Chen’s Fortifying Brew from HotS, it would make the ability actually useful and fits way more with the flavor and class fantasy of the spec.

Literally quadruple the spawn rate of orbs. That is not hyperbole, which is sad.

Rework Zen Med into a raidwide damage soak, there’s a lot of potential here to make something really cool and very unique and useful.

Let me zen flight in combat and tank while doing it.

I’d increase the vers/mastery/armor scaling then make crit scale better to dodge. We scale like garbage compared to some other tanks.

My self sustain feels pathetic.

I know it’s supposed to be nerfed but Celestial Brew and EH does nothing to my health pool now. The vivacious vivification talent heals for more than those two main tank buttons.

2 Likes

Brew is fine for raids but feels bad for solo/dungeons and it’s healing is noticeable poor outside raids.

For healing issues
healing spheres and Celestial Brew could use a buff. The talent ‘Spirit of the Ox’ could use a buff, it is supposed to provide us a baseline healing for lighter content but is under performing.

For m+
ideally we would get a solution targeting the specific problem of our performance on trash, one that can be tuned independently without effecting our raid performance which is fine.

Various tanks have these types of talents, i would suggest turning Niuzao in to an Incarnation type ability giving Brew windows where it is strong against trash balanced against periods outside where it needs more support.

Having brew generate additional healing orbs and maintain a minimum one stack Elusive brawler while Niuzao is active would give brew two compelling buttons to press (Niuzao and WoO spawning mini Niuzao) giving us around 40 seconds of strong performance out of 3 mins. It would be unlikely to effect raids where tank busters are typically not dodgeable and the talents would be better spent elsewhere.

Additionally or alternatively we could use a small buff to armor during trash. Dodge feeding in to armor would be an obvious mechanic that could be worked in to the tree easily. Even a small 10% buff here would be felt! This would work synergistic with the above Niuzao idea.

M+ Utility
basically we lack. Various ideas have been floating around. I would love to see clash and Ox Statue interaction with mobs being pulled 50% towards statue.

Summary
Based on our experiences in dragon flight I don’t expect any impactful changes but putting this out there in the hope not necessarily that the above is implemented but that it gives ideas as to what our issues are and how they could be resolved.

1 Like

Self sustain atm is in the harmony spec not shadow pan and it is gear dependant I have 2 set atm once I get 4 set it will be best for mythic + imo

1 Like

Personally, I’d like to see Zen Meditation turned into a raid wide stagger - temporarily giving allies…Idk, 10, 20% stagger for a few seconds? I don’t know what a good number would be that wouldn’t be super OP in higher end content.

I think that’d be a unique thing for monk and be a little more palatable for balance, since it wouldn’t make the damage just go poof like typical % mitigation skills and would still have to be healed.

1 Like

Brewmaster isn’t on the devs’ radar and hasn’t been for a long time. They just like to pretend the spec doesn’t exist.

So I would adjust the composition of the dev team.

3 Likes

I feel your pain.