Would you just tweak some of the numbers, add new gameplay options, or make fundamental shifts in its base design?
I like the Drunken Master fighting style, so I wouldn’t change the fundamentals or gameplay. Here are some of my changes
- Make Celestial Brew talent just give Breath of Fire the extra 5% damage reduction.
- Give Parry chance to Crit stats, like the other tanks get.
- Give Mastery stat a base Dodge %
- Or Give Mastery stat increases Stagger amount
Edit - Make Counterstrike just do damage when you dodge or parry attacks. More for fantasy but not necessary
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I’m okay with the BoF change you listed, but everything else would instantly break BrM and make them the best tank
Crit giving extra healing and parry would be way too strong
Mastery is already great at preventing melee damage, so adding more physical defense to it would be OP. The main issue with mastery is it doesn’t help with spell damage
Our agility already increases stagger amount - doubling down on that with mastery would be OP
I think a 5% armor buff and a small buff to CB would be fine, but even that would be enough to make BrM too strong in raid
Mastery is bad. We need to make mastery better. Cook on that. My suggestion is for mastery to increase the amount of absorb celestial brew provides and/or damage reduction breath of fire gives.
Mastery is supposed to be a specialization specific benefit. Solely increasing just dodge is not that. Lets take a look at the mastery for other tank specs for better comparison:
- Vengeance DH: Increases armor by X% of your agility. Armor bonus is doubled while Demon Spikes is active.
- Blood DK: Each time you heal yourself with Death Strike, you gain X% of the amount healed as a physical damage absorption shield.
- Protection Warrior: Increases your change to block by X% and your chance to critical block (blocking twice the amount) by X%.
- Protection Paladin: Increases your chance to block melee attacks by X%. While inside your consecration, your damage taken is reduced by X% and you have a chance equal to your block chance to reduce your damage taken from harmful periodic effects.
- Guardian Druid: Increases your maximum health and healing received by X%.
Please tell me how Brewmaster Monk mastery is better than ANY of the above.
tbf the only tank that wants mastery is prot pally
Mastery: Increases Dodge chance and Decreases magic damage taken by Half of your Mastery%
BoF - I liked the DF tier where BoF fire damage healed you for 50% of damage done. I really think this would help Brews in pug groups and provide a nice bonus for Brews as a whole.
Big Keg (forget what its called) - Increased Threat generation.
Zen Meditation - 20% Damage Reduction and reduces cooldown of Fort Brew and Dampen harm by up to 15 seconds on a 3 second channel
Personally I would buff ox stance to add significant stagger so you could massively stagger things the lower HP you got.
I’d change blackout kick combo to have the stagger freeze on something else again, I forgot what it used to be but it’s very anti synergistic on purifying brew.
Then add more ways to do dmg with maintaining higher stagger OR purifying stagger (choose a play style)
The stagger manipulation and cockroachability of brew is what makes it so fun to me. I’d want to have things like Dragonfire brew dmg bonus be based on the amount we purify, either with a high cap or diminishing return or something. Stuff like that. Harmony can gain vitality based on the raw amount purified plus a flat base.
It reminds me of the paladin tank in Allods Online I played millennia ago which had this 3 bubble system where the 3 biggest hits of DMG would be captured in a bubble and not hit you, then it would delay that hit for like 10 seconds. If they were full and a bit bigger than the existing 3 happened it would replace the first one or the smallest or something and deal the other to you instead.
Then they just had a ton of ways to manipulate it like stagger. Reduce all by half, completely nullify the biggest one with a CD. Pop one and send it back to enemies. Delay them further, swap their orders and rotate them etc
That’s what I want with brew
give brewmaster additional stance lets say drunken stance
in this drunken stance, brewmaster throw kegs without CD, and most of his offensive abilities burn with fiery effects and damage
give some kind of negative tradeoff like losing its stagger mechanic
Breath of fire has a chance to spawn a healing orb per target struck. Can only happen once per target with some cd, lets say 5-15 seconds. This should help our orbs in m+ without being a big deal in raids.
Expel harm needs a higher healing floor. Just make it 1mil base. The fact it heals ~100k without an orb is stupid. And is a big part of why brew players starting out struggle when their healer isnt so good.
Mastery should reduce spell damage by a percent or give us a chance to normal stagger spells. Either way brew needs some help with spell dmg intake and this would address it.
SCK needs some hefty damage buffs.
Celestial Brew needs to be stronger. I dont know what numbers it needs but i feel double wouldnt even be enough. I’d also consider a talent like anvil and stave increasing it for each dodge, which again should buff it more in m+ than raid. Maybe for each target hit by BoF again…
Dave needs a rework at this point. Probably make him baseline so at least brewmaster monks are using their celestial. But if i was trying to buff him I’d go big and make it so you get all brews on a rapidfire cd while Dave is alive. Think Apotheosis from Hpriest.
These i think would be some changes in the right direction without breaking the spec, and should provide some levers to balance m+ brew without massively buffing raid brew.
Its a wall of text, but this is what I would do in the current moment without rushing headfirst into rework territory., mostly numbers tuning and slight talent adjustments.
General
Threat Generation
- Increased by 20% for all spells
Brewmaster’s Balance
- Armor gained increased from 45% to 140%
(~10% physical damage reduction increase)
Celestial Fortune
Tooltip updated to show hidden information
- Absorb Shields are also increased by 70% of your critical strike chance.
Mastery: Elusive Brawler
- Elusive Brawler chance to dodge increased by 12% (tank sustain nerf reverted)
- (moved down from 700 mastery per percent to 600 mastery per percent)
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Talents
Keg Smash
- Damage increased by 20%
Stagger
- Magic stagger effectiveness increased from 58% to 72%
(~10% magical damage stagger increase)
Hit Scheme
- Removed and replaced by Stormstout’s Last Keg
Celestial Flames
- Rising Sun Kick now also has a 30% chance to activate Celestial Flames
Celestial Brew
- Removed from the global cooldown
(still retains 1 second cd between charges of Celestial Brew) - Purified Chi scaling increased from ‘up to 200%’ to ‘up to 1000%’
- Duration increased from 8 seconds to 10 seconds.
August Blessing
Replaces Celestial Fortune
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You have a chance equal to your critical strike chance to be healed for an additional 80% of the amount healed over 8 seconds.
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Absorb Shields are also increased by 70% of your critical strike chance
Zen Meditation
- Cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes.
- No longer breaks upon receiving a melee attack.
- Damage reduction reduced from 60% to 40%
Strike at Dawn
Removed and replaced by Elusive Footwork
Elusive Footwork
- Rising Sun Kick now also grants 1 stack of Elusive Brawler; and Blackout Kick and Rising Sun Kick critical strikes grant an additional 1 stack of Elusive Brawler.
Fluidity of Motion
- No longer reduces the damage of Blackout Kick by 10%.
Pretense of Instability
Moved to Heightened Guard talent slot, replaced with Avert Harm
NEW/OLD - Avert Harm
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1.5 minute cooldown
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Guard 4 nearby allies within 15 yards of you for 10 seconds, allowing you to stagger 20% of damage they take. Effect ends early if your health drops below 20%.
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This effect also occurs while Zen Meditation is active but will not incur the cooldown of Avert Harm.
Breath of Fire
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Breath of Fire now hits 5 targets before being reduced up from 1 target before being reduced
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Breath of Fire damage over time damage increased from 33.3% of attack power to 105% of attack power
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Breath of fire damage over time and damage reduction separated into 2 different debuffs. Breath of Fire and Singe.
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Singe now reduces the target’s damage dealt by 4% this effect overlaps up to 3 times.
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Any ability that would apply Breath of Fire will also apply a stack of Singe.
Charred Passions
- Damage bonus increased from 50% to 75%
Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox
- Added - If Niuzao is already active, increase its duration by 25 seconds.
Walk with the Ox
- Talent points reduced from 2 to 1
- Every point of energy spent reduces the cooldown of Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox by 0.1 seconds and increases the duration of your active Niuzao by 0.05 seconds.
Improved Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox
- While Niuzao is active, Purifying brew increases the damage of Niuzao’s stomp, by 2.5% of purified damage; and heals for 25% of purified damage. This effect stacks and persists until Niuzao is dismissed.
Blackout Combo
- Moved up 1 talent spot to old Elusive Footwork Position
Weapons of Order
- Mastery bonus increased from 9% to 10%
Call to Arms
- Added - If Niuzao is already active, increase its current duration by 12 seconds.
Ox Stance
- Health threshold to activate reduced from 60% to 40%
Black Ox Adept
- Rising Sun Kick and Blackout Kick now generate 1 charge of Ox Stance
Heightened Guard
Replaced with Pretense of Instability
- Activating Celestial Brew, Purifying Brew, or Ox Stance grants you 10% dodge for 5 seconds.
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PVP
Avert Harm talent changed
Now reduces the cooldown of Avert Harm talent by 50%
2 Likes
Sure I will cook but first… what are we actually solving?
Brew is good in raids, weaker in M+. Why?
Lets look at Prot warrior.
- They generate a lot more rage on trash than single target.
- Increased rage = greater uptime on shield block and more casts of ignore pain.
- Increased spending of rage = faster cd of important cooldowns like Shield Wall and Avatar. Cooldowns are accessible more frequently from pull to pull.
- Every target hit by Thunder Clap reduces cd on Demoralizing Shout up to 4.5 seconds per Thunder Clap cast.
These add up to make Warrior quite a bit more tanky on trash. Other tanks have similar things going on, Brewmaster does not! Because of this Brewmaster has typically been either strong in raids and weak in m+ or decent in M+ and overpowered in raids.
How do we resolve this.
Brewmaster spec needs to be brought up with the times and have some trash related levers that will allow it to be tuned where necessary for m+ without effecting raid performance.
Here are some ideas on how this could work.
- Staff and Anvil should use sub-linear scaling for improved but balanced trash performance. Should also consider increased cd effect for Fortifying Brew.
- Incoming damage formula of Gift of the Ox should include mob scaling. Example: 4% per mob in proximity, capped at 5, 20% more healing orbs on trash.
- Better passive stagger reduction from BoK (Staggering Strikes). Example: 4% per target hit would equal 4% on single target and up to 12% on trash. Should be modified to work with Gai Plin healing.
- I would also suggest swapping the position Zen Med with Elixir of Determination for more meaningful choice in upper tree.
With these changes brew would have more stagger removal, more self heals, greater brew cd reduction and more frequent access to Fortifying Brew largely isolated to M+. Most importantly they can be independently tuned.
Additional Thoughts
More broad possibilities to improve our performance in M+.
Celestial Brew
Celestial Brew is not up to the task of being our defense against tank busters on trash. In addition to a sizeable buff I would consider modifying Pretense of Instability increasing the dodge bonus for Celestial Brew from 10% to 30%.
Mastery
Mastery is under performing and is also defensively very one dimensional. Fire damage to healing conversion was popular in Dragonflight. Perhaps it could also provide this.
Niuzao
An under performing cd with even worse support talents. Change the support talents to provide some m+ focused defensive elements and reduce Walk with the Ox to a single talent point. Possible m+ focused defensive elements…
- reduced enemy attack speed for non bosses.
- chance to proc additional elusive brawler stacks.
- spawn a healing orb ever few second.
- when healed from orb heals 2 allies for % of their health.
- etc.
Ox Stance
Talent itself is ok but support talents are lackluster.
Exploding Keg
Add support talents.
- Reduce cd by 50%, reduced damage by 30%
- After using Exploding Keg you maintain minimum 1 stack of Elusive Brawler for 8 seconds.
Clash
Have Clash interact with Black Ox Statue. Mobs are drawn 50% towards statue.
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Mastery boosting armor would be a good change. Doesnt need to be much for it to be powerful. Dodge could work but armor has no rng.
Haste needs a big bonus of some kind. Much faster brews? Chance to reset PB/CB? Even a talent that boosts dodge based on haste would be better than the current sistuation.
Also massive boost to Brew threat. No idea what is going on but brew threat is so screwy right now.
- raid buff: Change mystic touch to a crit raid buff
- gameplay: bigger radius for keg smash
- utility: overhealing is distributed to a party/raid member.
Personally, I’d like to see the following:
Mastery: Elusive Brawler - Passive (reworked mastery)
The amount of damage staggered increases by up to X% based on your missing stagger, and up to an additional X% based on your missing health.Your Attack Power is also increased by Y%.
Mystic Hangover - Passive (new talent)
The amount of magical damage you are able to stagger increases to 80%.
Finding Your Center - Passive (new talent)
50% of excess healing received now reduces your stagger.
Shuffle - Passive (reworked talent)
Your chance to dodge is increased by up to 30% based on your stagger, and dodging reduces your stagger by X.
what if brewmaster had SEF
SEF?
I must be behind on my acronyms.
Storm earth and fire
I have been thinking about this some more and have more possible changes
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Celestial Flames talent rework to just making Breath of Fire damage heal (like Dragonflight set bonus)
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Black Ox Brew Reworked to being a 10-20% damage reduction, shorter cooldown like Purifying Brew and shared charges (like our old defensive brew)
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Niuzao could also increase the amount staggered while he is out. (Magic damage included)
As a Brewmaster Monk (Drunken Master fighting style) I feel like I should be Dodging and Parrying attacks more. Why don’t we have any stats to increase our parry or base dodge. Like Crit increases Parry, Haste increases Dodge, and Mastery reworked to either increasing stagger or damage reduction for X seconds after drinking a brew.
Like so many people pointed out that Brewmaster is good single target but not so good at fighting groups. I don’t know what would fix that without making them to good at single target.
Blows my mind they didn’t from the start x.x
Yeah, the original pandaren brewmaster had it. Would add more damage and could make it so clones stagger some damage like niuzao does and could make the mimicked casts reduce brew cooldowns as well