These are my initial thoughts on most of the Shado-Pan Hero Talents from a BrM perspective:
Overwhelming Flurry:
- Useful in AoE situations where you can do lots of damage quickly as BrM
- Almost completely useless in Single Target situations, where you see a double whammy in that you do far less damage than WW and have a much larger HP pool to build up a charge of Flurry Strike
Suggestions:
- Make it 50% of BrM Health pool to allow it to proc more
- Adjust the One vs Many talent further down the tree to count as 4x for primary target and regular damage for targets hit by the AoE (instead of double). This would allow it to be more useful in ST fights.
Controlled Instincts:
- From a BrM perspective hitting a single target 5x in 2 seconds is quite difficult unless you shorten global cooldowns significantly. The only way I could see this working would be with Rushing Jade Wind hitting the target passively while you also hit with active attacks.
Suggestions:
- Reduce this to 3x (or even 4x) for BrM so that it’s possible (WW can do it with Fists of Fury so they could stay at 5x but would still be very challenging outside of FoF.)
Protect and Serve / Lead from the Front :
- Vivify isn’t a spell we have in our rotation usually, this would be pretty niche, maybe slightly useful for spiky damage or PvP.
- Chi Burst and Chi Wave would need to be significantly buffed for this talent to be worth it. Expel harm leech wouldn’t generally be worth much based on the damage you’d do from it.
Suggestion:
- Change Protect and Serve to also include Expel Harm and reduce the amount healed by both to say 20%. (we are going to hit Expel Harm way more than Vivify)
- Change Lead from the Front by buffing the heck out of Chi Burst, Chi Wave AND increase the amount healed by like 50% of the damage done.
Whirling Steel / Predictive Training:
- Both of these are actually pretty good for BrM as they would trigger pretty frequently and give a lot of extra mitigation. I think outside of PvP and solo questing these are next to useless for WW though.
Against All Odds:
- Basically without fixing BrM to get Flurry Strikes easier it’ll rarely even proc. The only fix here is allow BrM to generate Flurry Strikes at the same level a WW Monk can.
Efficient Training:
- Nice to have a minor damage boost but the secondary effect really only works for WW as it affects 3 abilities instead of just 1 for BrM
Suggestion:
- Have it also effect Nizao and Exploding Keg (if talented)
Vigilant Watch:
- A minor Damage boost for Blackout Kick, but not enough to trigger Flurry Strikes more unless adjustments were made as mentioned above.
- I am also curious if the damage bonus to Flurry Strikes stacks or just stays at 10%. I assume it doesn’t stack or it would say so.
Suggestion:
- Have the damage bonus to Flurry Strikes stack multiple times so when you finally (eventually) get a Flurry Strike it is worth it.
Wisdom of the Wall:
- Seems extremely strong, only if you could actually get 10 Flurry Strikes within a reasonable time as BrM.
Again these are my initial musings, I do feel its a bit underwhelming, especially for BrM. Definitely will need some tweaking!