Firstly, I love the spec and will play it regardless of performance. I swapped off maining VDH for ~4 years back to Brew (which had been my “main alt” anyways) because I just found it too fun. I’m running keys in the 13-14 range right now, so I’d like to think I’m pretty decent at the spec. Posting this from my formerly-main-now-alt because Blizz counts my monk as a “new account” for some reason, limiting the links I can post and I cannot be bothered to edit it and remove them.
It just flat out needs some help, specifically for M+. Blizzard has been told this relentlessly and has yet to listen, so I’m sure this post will fall on deaf ears, but I’ll do it anyways.
The Flaws
As far as I can see, Brewmaster’s biggest flaws are:
- A lack of universal defensives. CB was nerfed, Fort Brew, while good, is far from great. Diffuse is magic only and Zen Med requires perfect timing in trash pulls or is a one-off for boss tank busters. Dampen is the only big noteworthy universal defensive Brewmaster has, and it’s a great button, but not enough.
- A lack of damage. In the past, Brew was a “fourth DPS that holds aggro,” but is currently outclassed in that department by the tank that brings the most utility and a dozen additional interrupts.
- More group utility. Currently all we offer for the group are a poison/disease dispel and some off healing via instant vivify procs and Chi Burst.
Numbers Changes
Here are things I could realistically see happening going into season 2 that would still help.
-Buff Celestial Brew. What is supposed to be a mini-CD feels tremendously underwhelming currently. A fully charged CB does around ~3m for me if my math is right (I’ve admittedly never looked at the tooltip when I’m taking enough damage to get a 10 stack CB) and gets eaten immediately in a high key. It’s definitely useful, but could be way better.
-Revert the Mastery nerf. This will both incentivize stacking a bit more mastery, which will help with dodgeable attacks, but also give more attack power, which in turn gives us bigger CB casts.
-Revert the healing sphere spawnrate nerfs to SotO.
-Revert the Elixir of Determination nerf slightly. It doesn’t need to be as busted as it initially was, but it’s currently the weakest pseudo-cheat in the game, and is especially pitiful compared to Gift of the Golden Valk’yr, which procs a 50% DR and gives massive DR on Ppal’s biggest defensive. Something like 50% recent purify or a minimum of 12-15% max health would be fine, or revert it to the initial 100%/20% and increase the CD slightly to compensate.
-Reduce Fort Brew CD for Brewmasters. Fort Brew being slightly over a 2.5m CD accounting for Brew CDR after Expeditious Fortification is insanity. It is one of two universal defensives we have access to, it should be our bread and butter button, and it kind of is, but its currently weak enough that it needs some help. I see no reason it’s effective CD should be more than ~1.5-2m max. Lowering the baseline CD would make Ironshell Brew a more competitive option as well, which would help tremendously with how the button feels to press.
-Allow ALL spell reflectable DoTs to be Diffuse reflected. It’s crazy to me how much Prot Warriors can reflect that Brewmasters just have to deal with when Diffuse is, in concept, supposed to provide the same effect after the DoT goes out. Being able to diffuse an anima slash (or even a set of them) off would be amazing, and frankly completely balanced considering its 1.5m CD compared to the ~20s of Spell Reflect.
-Flat damage buffs. Obviously boring, but we’re supposed to be a DPS tank and, as already mentioned, we’re being outclassed in that department by the tank who also provides the most utility. (I am not salty Prot Paladin is good, for what it’s worth. I like pretty much every tank and have been enjoying alting my Ppal, but their current balance is unhealthy for tank balance overall)
Talent and Tree Changes
Here are changes I think would help that would require actual reworks and are, frankly, unlikely to happen. Starting top down on the talent tree, then mentioning returning tiers/legendaries/etc.
-Make more of the mandatory talents baseline. Things like KS, Purifying Brew, Shuffle, Celestial Brew, BoF. These are never not going to be taken. They are mandatory for Brewmaster to function. I get having some as talent options, but it’s a bit much, especially with how far down in the tree BoF and CB are.
-Remove Staggering Strikes. It’s an extremely underwhelming talent that just has no purpose outside of lower end content, where it offers a minor survivability increase. Replacing it with something else would help the first gate feel better.
-Merge One with the Wind and Strike At Dawn. Previously, if I remember the tier correctly, they were part of the same tier set and it was a pretty solid set. Having them separated, especially with the pathing we have, just feels horrible as their main purpose is some passive survivability to path around Zen Med. Speaking of…
-Make Zen Med baseline and replace it with the Legion version of Fundamental Observation, bringing it down to 2.5m and allowing us to receive melee attacks and move while in the defensive. Being unable to attack at all while channeling the defensive is already a massive tradeoff. Every other tank in the game has a 40-50% DR on a similar or lesser CD without that tradeoff, why is Brew’s on a 5m?
-Merge all of the Niuzao talents and add pathing connecting to Elixir of Determination. Currently Niuzao, even with the absurd 4 points required to invest into him to get full power, is a mediocre button. He offers relatively little damage and little defensive power. We’re the only monk spec who only really runs our Celestial in raid because it does an alright amount of damage for the button press. Reducing the CD to 1m or 2m, or giving us something similar to Mistweaver’s Gift of the Celestials on a choice node with a dramatically improved and single-point Walk with the Ox would be acceptable. I feel Niuzao needs a bit of a buff as well, and I’d prefer that buff to be in the defensive aspect. Giving him some minor DR or Spirit Link-esque effect would be, in the long run, fairly big.
-Split the Bob and Weave and Black Ox Brew choice node. This choice node feels pretty arbitrary and long-term this shouldn’t be balance breaking, at least in M+.
-Split the Light Brewing and Training of Niuzao choice nodes. All in all, ToN is just a better talent as it offers both extra damage and survivability. It gives us more dodge, more attack power and, because CB scales with AP, it should give us bigger CBs as well. Splitting these shouldn’t terribly break balance, doubly so with current CB tuning.
-Buff or rework Fluidity of Motion. Shadowboxing Treads is just better in every aspect and frankly at this point I feel as though it should just be a baseline feature for all 3 specs or something available in the class tree (perhaps replacing bloat talents like Ferocity of Xuen)
-Reduce HT and A&S to 1 point each. Perhaps this is a bit of a reach, but 2pt nodes are just awful design in WoW. They should be removed for every spec.
-Make Fort Brew: Determination a baseline effect for Brewmaster or buff its effect. Even tacking on a “you take x% increased healing while Fortifying Brew is active” effect or the azerite trait version of Strength of Spirit would add more incentive to spend a point on this. It’s alright, but not great.
-Fold the sub-capstones (Black Ox Adept, Heightened Guard, Call to Arms, Chi Surge) into their respective capstones. The sub-capstone design is an odd choice; they are designed to be optional upgrades that you can take if you need, leave if you don’t, but in reality they’re all either undertuned, unnecessary or just underwhelming. Chi Surge is arguably the best, but it’s not really worth the point unless you’re specifically Shado-Pan.
I’ve been looking at past removed talents, legendaries, azerite traits, etc and feel some of these could either be iterated on or simply returned and would be great options.
Boiling Brew returning, possibly as a choice node with Celestial Flames, would be great, especially if SotO orb spawn rate goes untouched. Gives us a bit more self sustain and a bit more damage. Possibly replacing CF with one of the old tier sets that gave CDR to Fort Brew based on targets hit with BoF would be great as well, especially if you tacked the same minor damage increase onto it. A choice between more sustained healing vs more frequent DR would work, I think.
Some adaptation of Straight, No Chaser and Mighty Pour would be good, especially if it’s reworked from an armor buff to a flat DR (even if it’s something incredibly small like 5-10%).
The return of the SL tier set, Keg of the Heavens, has been highly requested and would go a long way, even with the damage modifier lessened or removed. It would add a tremendous amount of survivability and self sustain and would have unique interactions with both hero talents. The max HP increase would allow MoH players to store more vitality, and the modifiers to keg smash for Shado-Pan would allow for larger healing/max health. It would be an amazing talent.
Alternatively, the more recent Charred Dreams would fill a similar niche of affording more self sustain to Brewmasters.
While technically not removed as it remains a PvP talent, adding Avert Harm to an accessible node in the Brewmaster Tree would be massive. It would afford us a group defensive, which would tremendously raise the value we bring to M+. Personally, I do not think the 45s CD of the current PvP iteration would be balance breaking. the 15yd radius is very small and, while it’s a 20% DR, it’s 20% more stagger you’re taking, so you’d need to be able to take that damage, which sometimes you can’t always afford. Alternatively, something similar to the beta/initial version of Black Ox Statue, where it gave allies an absorb, would be great. It could have some fun/interesting interaction with CB, where the group absorb is based on the value of your absorb.
Charging Ox Wave was an ability removed in Legion that, in my opinion, has a great visual effect. While the original version doesn’t necessarily need to return, repurposing that visual would add a lot of flare. Perhaps something like RSK becomes Charging Ox Kick, with some utility attached to it? The first that comes to mind is interrupting, which at a glance would seem broken until you realize it’s less effective interrupts than Prot Paladin just off hastened Avenger’s Shield + resets, before factoring in Divine Toll. An alternative would be a knockup/knockdown effect. It could even be part of a Niuzao rework, only allowing casts of the would-be Charging Ox Kick while Niuzao is active.
I’m sure some of this is probably cooked, and some of the returning stuff is assuming it is tuned correctly, but all-in-all I just want to see Brewmasters core problems adjusted. If you have any ideas, feel free to post them. Maybe Blizz will see this thread and finally do something going into S2 =)