My ILVL is 426, and I’ve been playing as a Brewmaster for a short time (since Friday, last week). I can handle relatively high keys, like a +16 and +17. However, when I attempt higher keys or try to pull two large groups of mobs, I end up using all my defensives. I don’t know where Im going wrong. I would appreciate it if you could help me figure it out.
I usually start by pulling a group of mobs using ‘Rushing Jade Wind’ and ‘Blackout Kick,’ then move to another group and use the same two abilities. I combine the two groups of mobs and I use ‘Keg Smash’ along with ‘Breath of Fire,’ along with other abilities like ‘Blackout Kick’ (again) and ‘Rising Sun Kick.’ During this, I take a lot of damage, and I start using ‘Celestial Brew’ and depending on the damage Im still receiving, I also use ‘Purifying Brew’ (I try to use this ability only when it’s red, but not exclusively when it’s red… when I’m taking a lot of damage!). When I start taking too much damage, I use ‘Purifying Brew,’ and then I use the other charge only after about 8, 9, or 10 seconds (Sometimes when Its harder I use after 4, 5 seconds again). Even then, I’m still taking a lot of damage! Then I start using all my other major defensives like ‘Fortifying Brew’, ‘Diffuse Magic’, etc.
Of course, I also use other abilities like ‘Invoke Niuzao,’ etc., but I didnt mention here because I use them when I feel Im taking damage and need to mitigate it and when I also need to attack and use them offensively.
I have about 25% versatility, 20% critical strike, 15% mastery and 15% haste. Something like that. I cant remember well
Where is the problem? What am I doing wrong? Ive seen various guides and also watched some POVs. I try to replicate what I see in the POVs and sometimes it works, but other times I take a lot of damage and need to spend all my high cooldowns on pulls. I dont struggle with bosses; I struggle with pulls.
I’m a tank main but not a brew expert. I tried brew as an alt for a bit.
I found I was popping like a balloon. But then once I got a high ilevel weapon it all seemed to fix itself… You should put heavy focus on your weapon(s). It/They give a disproportional amount of agility and attack power, therefore improving your stagger and healing.
As for defensive: yes, you’re doing it right. Your defensive are there to be used. Don’t wander the desert with a full water bottle and die of thirst.
I also found that while celestial brew is up, you actually WANT damage taken per second. You obviously want the biggest shield imaginable when you decide to pop celestial brew, but if the shield runs out of time before it pops you wasted mitigation. And each point of damage taken into your celestial brew shield is valuable, because it spawns ox orbs. If you can’t fully use the shield, don’t aim for max stacks - there’s a sweet spot for your damage taken at that time.
Like I said, I’m not an expert at the class. So someone else can give better advice. But I found these points helped me.
Don’t know your build but the cookie cutters by equinox are gold and you should try them out.
However I wouldn’t recommend newcomers to use RJW, change that for SD when you’re still new to the spec, RJW requires over ~95% uptime to deal ideal damage compaired to SD.
Use BoF pre pull since you should be spec’d in to ChP and SalS, KS on pull then BoK into BoF, SCK when moving into next pull should hold threat till you gather them up.
For tanking groups of mobs you should SCK more and only use RSK when low on energy and KS is about to come off CD, and / or targeting a high priority mob since it’s only single target and doesn’t help sucking in orbs.
Other things to note are don’t purify out of panic, stagger can and will often at higher keys be constantly be in high stagger, consider to purify when the stagger damage is ticking for more than the healer can handle.
You should also be using SCK quite a lot when tanking M+, it greatly helps with staying alive since the more damage you take the more often orbs will spawn.
And don’t forget to back peddle, especially after using leg sweep since their melee swing time will likely be syncd after the sweep.
BrM is going to struggle with trash most times, because of how the damage goes out and lack of short defensives or armor buffs like other tanks have.
BoK into Celestial Brew talented gives you a hefty shield, BoK into Keg Smash for the CD reset is great and brings up CB quite often.
Paired with the two other defensives for DR, it can still be dicy but you’ll get the hang of it, Leg Sweep to give yourself a couple seconds for CDs if you can.
And if you get defensive trinkets, those help a ton.
Sounds like you’re just not using brews enough. You should be popping your brews like crazy. My fingers dance on the brew buttons
The whole concept of the class centers around using Keg Smash and Tiger Palm to reduce the cooldown of your brews (Purifying, Ironskin, Black Ox, and Bonedut all benefit from CDR) so you can use more of them
The point is not to use purifying brew at red stagger (you’ll annoy your healer) — it’s to use it immediately after the largest damage source in any given ~12 second window. You’ll mitigate more total damage. Also never let them cap unless you know of a tank buster in the next 3 seconds (as with Special Delivery it does damage even if you don’t need the stagger reduction)
Change up from Rushing Jade wind to Special delivery until you get better because it’s just 1 more button to manage and you can’t manage defensives well yet
Also you should take Blackout Combo and Black Ox Brew
Make sure you weave black out kick before any primary ability but never spend the Blackout Combo on Tiger Palm, when you need to fill the global use Spinning Crane kick to store the charge while waiting
You’ll want to use Blackout Kick into Breath of Fire to reduce the damage enemies deal to you.
You’ll alwYs want to use blackout kick before Celestial Brew because this pauses stagger for 3 seconds (huge)
You’ll always want to use blackout kick before any keg smash for the extra cooldown reduction on brews (if you don’t, you’ll lack enough brews to feel comfortable)
Make a macro with castsequence reset=20 Celestial Brew into Black Ox Brew so you can decide whether to Black Ox after a celestial in case you need a double celestial for your mentioned double trash pulls. You’ll almost always want to reset Celestial Brew with Black Ox Brew immediately, unless it’s a big trash pull as mentioned. Having 4 guaranteed Purifying Brews and 2 Celestial brews can basically solo a tough pack with no other defensives once every 1.2min or so.
Another really important macro is castsequence reset=3 Expel Harm into Vivify Vivify Vivify. You should be using Expel Harm on cooldown whenever you are missing health.
Likewise you should be using 1 of 2 charges of Healing Elixir on cooldown when missing health, but banking 1 charge always for emergency.
Next, you should be using Vivify when needed when it’s instant cast.
You always want to have drained your purifying brews and celestial brew before Black Ox Brew but always cast black ox brew after celestial brew if available to maximize brews (as BoB has CDR from keg smash too)
You should be preemptively celestial brewing any tank buster or immediately responding to a tank buster with purifying
Brew. For most bosses you’ll basically just rotate 1 defensive for each of the tank busters, never overlap.
Consider Celestial Brew, Purifying Brew, Black Ox Brew, Niuzao, Roll, and Transcendence as “soft defensives” meaning you can press them without worrying too much about the consequences. Whereas, Ironskin Brew, Dampen Harm, Zen Meditation, and Ring of Peace are “hard defensives” because they are super strong and you need to use them wisely.
Niuzao should always be your first soft defensive because you’ll have the most Purifying Brews at the start of any encounter and it does damage so you’ll want to use it as much as possible. Next soft cooldown to use is celestial brew, often, don’t let this sit on CD but try to uS it pre emptively for tank busters during trash. Immediately reset it with Black ox brew for most brews.
NEVER OVERLAP DEFENSIVES — or you’ll die. Brewmaster is about staggering your defensives so that you are constantly rotating.
Use Ironskin Brew as your first hard defensive but only when your celestial brew is on CD, as you want to be benefiting from CDR on Ironskin as much as possible. Next, use dampen harm for “oh crap” moments where you are taking lots of damage but don’t have celestial brew. Use this time to get Cdr With keg smash!
Without the Zen Med talent, you can use Zen Med to reduce 1 tank buster if it’s the only next melee swing, with the talent, it’s just another strong defensive but you’ll not be doing damage so you have to have aggro
For kiting defensives, just roll through the mobs in a strafing pattern and kite in a line back and forth like tower defense game. Put transcendence down first, roll away, transfer back. You should only note the mobs so that they stay inside of ground effects like flame patch and no further.
Use Ring of Peace on top of yourself where you are at the edge so the mobs stay roughly in the same spot but they cannot melee you.
Use Leg Sweep often.
When you have nothing else, just kite. Too many tanks just face tank the damage but if you start running your group will help you out by rooting and slowing etc but try to stay close enough that you can still spinning crane kick the mobs and do dps but not take damage
Yea basically be more liberal with your brews because you’re supposed to be recharging them quickly with Blackout Kick Keg Smash and ESPEXIALLY into bone Dust Brews whenever possible. If you are really pressed, weave in tiger palms but like I said don’t use your Blackout Combo on tiger palm
I strongly disagree with this.
To me BrM feels super tanky on trash or bosses
Health definitely doesn’t yo-yo as much as Blood Dk
You have plenty of pre emptive defensives and reactive defensives and self healing to handle basically every damage profile
This just isn’t true. You should not be sitting at high stagger often except if you have poorly managed CDS and pulls.
Don’t do this.
Also don’t do this
You want the DR from breath of fire more than the damage in high keys. Sure in low
Keys focus more on dmg
Your opener is almost always going to be Blackout Kick into Spinning Crane Kick into Breath of Fire (when you can hit all the mobs in your pull) into Keg Smash (you’ll have all your brews up so you don’t need the CDR from blackout combo on this specific keg smash and this way it benefits from scalding Brew, followed by SCK for aggro) then normal rotation
General rule of thumb I keep, keep your celestial brew off of cd as much as possible.
I’ve found that this makes the most difference in terms of how durable you are …
Always use purifying brew immediately followed by a celestial brew for a bigger shield, and wait until you’ve taken a little bit of damage first then pop them in sequence. In between celestial brews keep your purifying brew from stacking to 2, and save that additional one for heavy damage.
Also keep up breath of fire on the pack as much as you can to reduce incoming damage. Don’t forget to cash in on all that damage with expel harm (your ox spheres) when you need it.
Edited: had the order of purifying brew and celestial brew wrong. I bind them to 1&2 respectively so I just pop those two keys when I start taking some damage entering
I’ve been playing with his advice the last two days and basically living like a pandaren god
Only difference. I do keep face palm and counter strike and use them strategically because I just love the giant slaps I do wish that they’d have kept the old blackout combo though for TP. Used to be 200% in legion.
Yeah I honestly … never payed attention to stacks of purified chi before …
But if you actually keep an eye on them you can strategically use an empowered celestial brew pretty effectively.
So I guess I am kind of using a hybrid of psychi’s ability priority with peak’s
I usually use my first empowered ability on breath of fire to immediately reduce incoming damage. Use empowered keg smash to and sip purifying brews. And then that’s on cd tiger palm. Then when I’m at like at least 3 stacks of purified chi I let the huge shield shine.
It’d be cool if they allowed you to overcap on purified chi with BoCo (so it’d go up to 13 instead of capping at 10) …
Yea dude like Black Ox Brew and Blackout Combo make you so tanky — really makes me happy to hear you’re feeling it too
I think it’s a fair skill-capped tankiness not just absolutely tanky
If you don’t use the stuff right (especially as the key goes up) you’ll still die even with BoB /BoCo But still definitely an improvement over some other builds.
I made a more detailed post with some corrections to the errors in the one on this thread. Check it out here:
I do wish that they’d have kept the old blackout combo though for TP. Used to be 200% in legion.