Context: I don’t tank any serious content, but I have been playing Brewmaster for a hot minute (like back to end of MoP) I don’t ever sit on purifying charges, I keep those rolling for cbrew. I also never really got the whole button bloat thing back in DF, it was a lot of keybinds but manageable, and I didn’t feel I was juggling more stuff than compared to Legion brewm, so for me, keeping RJW going 100% uptime isn’t a real dealbreaker or an issue.
Going into 11.2, every talent loadout suggests special delivery, and in reading the tooltips, it really seems, and what I’m trying to clarify, is the advantage really damage at 6+ targets? I don’t hate SD, I can procc it quite consistently considering I don’t sit on purifies, and I am comfy with the spec enough to talent into black ox brew. My issue with SD is that talenting off RJW just makes the ‘rotation’ feel empty, that’s it, muscle memory issues.
Are there any upsides to SD beyond the large pull damage component, or does it pull ahead on st/smaller pulls too?
TIA
Biggest thing is one you actively have to keep up and maintain and the other is a passive.
I prefer RJW because I like pressing more buttons
They’re both about the same overall damage, SD is just “easier” so it’s suggested. It also snares.
1 Like
All the new builds are based on niuzao. You take woo to help max his uptime. You take shadow pan again to Max his uptime via the efficient training talent. The efficient training talent reduces woo cd based on energy spent. Any ability not spending or generating energy would be avoided. So rjw would be avoided. This is way a lot are dropping breath of fire as well which feels very weird.
1 Like
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but Im just getting into BM this season. Does this logic still apply to MoH or only Shado because of the talents offered to extend Niuzao? Im running that currently for better survivability but still questioned SD over RJW.
1 Like
Understatement of the week. It feels extremely wrong. I need to set stuff on fire, what the hell? No RJW and no BoF breaks the flow IMO.
if memory serves, if you look at the raid defensive build, it plays with MoH and still picks up Breath of Fire. (it also skips High Tolerance, but I haven’t been paying attention, maybe it’s been skipping HT all expansion?
Yeah, I’m not into meta cookie cutter builds. I’m using RJW and BoF because I like using them. Don’t care if it’s at a cost of -1.87% efficiency. If I die to a boss or fail a key, it’s not because I BoF’d.
1 Like
Yeah actually insane they “fix” our spec by making us talent out of an ability that should be baseline and talents that should make it worth taking
3 Likes
Brew has a bunch of choices between active spells vs passive spells. And you want to have enough active spells that don’t cost energy so that you do not become energy starved because you have nothing to press except tiger palm.
Special delivery vs rushing jade wind is one of those choices. One upside to special delivery is it is passive so you can have an extra GCD to hit tiger palm which is useful if you’re frequently capping energy.
Yes it is just for shado. If you play moh you probably should play bof. In moh its really up to you on sd. It’s pretty similar to rjw in my experience dps wise. If you like pressing it take it, if not don’t.
Also just to put it out there the niuzao builds aren’t really required by any means. I’ve been trying multiple builds and I really only notice the niuzao builds pulling ahead in huge pulls (like 10 mobs) but even then only by a few 100k dps which is really nothing in the scheme of things unless you are pushing the bleeding edge of keys.
Niuzao should be more tanky in big pulls but tbh I don’t really feel that either. The most tanky feeling for me seems to be moh + bof + press the advantage+ the new orb hot ability. Sck makes you have a 100% uptime huge hot 
. Idk maybe in higher end stuff the niuzao will feel more tanky.
Brewmaster really doesn’t have the energy regen to completely avoid pressing abilities that don’t cost energy.
You are correct but with the current shado build you have pretty much no empty button time even specing out of bof and rjw. Mainly because infusion, niuzao, woo and EK are all on GCD. The only non niuzao related button you got is rsk and ek and you can probably make an argument to drop ek for HT…
Not really sure how you can simultaneously have insufficient energy to execute a pure energy based rotation and have no empty gcds to fit in anything except 1 minute cooldowns
I didn’t list all the abilities obviously. I’m not really sure what your point is? My point is that with just those cds and standard rotation you have no downtime even without bof and rjw
my point is that those cds and blackout kick aren’t enough to have no rotational downtime because energy gain is simply unsufficient
There’s a reason to skip breath of fire, because you’re filling gcds isn’t it (because you’re not).