As far as I can tell, how much stagger you clear has no effect on Improved Celestial Brew. Clearing 20 stagger or 10,000 with a Purifying Brew is giving 1 stack of a 20% buff to the next Celestial Brew, which is called Purified Chi. Nowhere in the talent tree does it tell you this. So, it’s very confusing that Blackout Combo says it gives you up to 3 stacks of Purified Chi. It isn’t referenced anywhere else, so how are you supposed to know what that is? Blackout Combo also doesn’t even give the Purified Chi stacks unless you also have Improved Celestial Brew, and there’s no way looking at the talent tree to have any clue why those 2 things are related.
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Yes this was confusing. I did manage to take enough damage that a purifying brew gave 2 stacks so they fixed that part or you weren’t taking enough damage (it’s still annoying that this happens at some unknown breakpoint instead of being more granular).
Unfortunately there are extra problems with blackout combo:
(with improved celestial brew talent)
The 3 purified chi stacks from blackout combo celestial brew do not apply to that celestial brew; you get no use out of them unless you use purifying brew pretty much on cooldown to refresh the duration of the purified chi buff until you can use them on your NEXT celestial brew.
without improved celestial brew talent, celestial brew still consumes blackout combo even though it doesn’t get any benefit
purifying brew is supposed to consume blackout combo to pause stagger damage for 3 seconds; this does not happen
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Wow, this is really embarrassing. They need to address this. The Celestial Brew benefit from Blackout Combo is NEVER REALIZED. Your Celestial Brew cooldown is 48 seconds with Light Brewing, and yet your purified chi buff only lasts 14 seconds. You will NEVER get the chance to consume the benefit. The only way to actually experience the buff is to take Black Ox Brew and waste an entire Celestial Brew cooldown just to reapply it with the buff. THAT’S TERRIBLE!!!
And oh boy, is it ever laughable that you do not even get the pointless stacks of chi if you do not spend a point in Improved Celestial Brew but still have Blackout Combo consumed anyways. EPIC FAIL!!!
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well like I mentioned, purifying brew will refresh the duration of purified chi buff so you can keep it going to the next celestial brew, but yes it is terrible
Yeah, I forgot about refreshing. It is still not an ideal choice to spec around.
Yeah, they need to fix Blackout Combo.
Have Celestial Brew be applied with an additional 3 stacks of Purified Chi up to a new maximum of 13 stacks.
That would be much better.
I don’t think purified chi should even stack that high; it buffs celestial brew to the point that improved celestial brew becomes a mandatory talent (in content where you take enough damage to get good value out of it).
The stacks of 20% also isn’t granular enough; you get 1 stack for using purifying brew at tiny amounts of stagger, up to some magical breakpoint (don’t know how much) at which you get 2 stacks. Not that smaller stacks is necessarily the best solution; they could do something like 50% of purified stagger damage is added to your next celestial brew’s absorption, up to some cap (I think 25% on Gai Plin’s Imperial Brew is too weak).
Currently blackout combo is disproportionately powerful with improved celestial brew, forcing you to always blackout kick before celestial brew because it is too much value not to; it should be like 1 stack of purified chi, or just not affect celestial brew at all. I’d rather see it do things for rising sun kick and/or spinning crane kick.
Also, I don’t like the current functionality of improved celestial brew because celestial brew only lasts like 8 seconds; to get value out of extra celestial brew absorption, you have to be taking a ton of damage during that time, which is not always predictable. It should at least increase the duration of celestial brew as well, or work completely differently such as decreasing celestial brew’s cooldown instead.
Purified Chi stacks are based on what your stagger is at when you use Purifying Brew.
Green stagger = 1 stack
Yellow stagger = 2 stacks
Red stagger = 3 stacks
Gai Plin’s Imperial Brew talent is weak. The Legion legendary its based on was 50% but they made the talent 25%. I guess they figured at 50% it would be too much healing. You know, because Monks have too much self healing already.
But, the other talent in that node is super weak. All of the stagger based talents are very weak. Quick Sip is bad, Tranquil Spirit is bad, Staggering Strikes is bad.
Maybe the huge buff that Brewmaster needs is just having a lot of their talents not suck.
I have to question how Quick Sip is bad, the average usage of Keg Smash and Blackout Kick makes that talent add up quickly.
Technically using blackout kick with the talent where it hits 2 extra targets should give 3 stacks of the keg smash improve buff also.
I tried a quick spreadsheet simulation of how much Quick Sip does
- take 10000 damage per second
- 80% staggered
- 2% stagger removed from quick sip every 3 seconds for blackout kick and every 6 seconds for keg smash (not at the same time because GCD)
over the course of 30 seconds
- 300000 incoming damage
- 60000 non-staggered damage taken immediately
- 160415 staggered damage taken, 64107 stagger remaining at the end of simulation
- 15478 total quick sip stagger removed (~5% of total incoming damage; the amount each time ramps up with your stagger amount)
The main problem with Quick Sip is that Purifying Brew every ~10 seconds is not included (yet) in this simulation; when you clear half your stagger with Purifying Brew, that’s a lot less stagger reduction value from Quick Sips.
I like Staggering Strikes because it’s more consistent stagger damage reduction and definitely better in more casual situations.
With the number of purifying brews you cast now and the interaction with purified chi/celestial I’m fairly certain that staggering strikes and sip both are not just useless but likely detrimental to your tankyness. I would avoid both. You actually want more stagger to purify…
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Which is actually the dumbest thing ever
This reads as trying to minmax a mechanic to your detriment. I don’t have the experience to say how often purifying brew comes off cooldown but with all the complaints about brewmaster tankiness I don’t think the spec has the luxury of throwing everything onto the purifying brew/celestial brew interaction.
My point is that the current interaction makes sip/stagger strikes highly undesirable. You would likely be overall losing out on mitigation even without trying to optimise just by taking them. I agree with the other poster “it’s the dumbest thing ever” however it is the reality of Brew monk right now. If blizz suddenly buffs stagger to stagger 100% of damage or something ridiculous then it would be a different story.