Special Delivery Brew discussion

Classes Monk
1

I’m average joe-smoe, been playing wow since BC, took a break end of WoD just came back towards the end of 8.3 BFA. Have always played heal/tank/support.

Was previously healing but just got back into tanking on Monk because it’s so damned fun, I tried it from MW and couldn’t stop.

Highest keys I’ve done is 11-12 but I’m having a lot of fun and wanted to discuss alternative talents that the guides talk down about. Mainly Special Delivery and Blackout Combo and the synergy together.

So about Special Delivery. I know it’s competing with Jade Wind, which immediately puts it at a disadvantage, however, does anybody else find it exceptionally suited to the current “blast damage then kite” meta?

I also be using it with Blackout Combo and have found it is easy to nearly always use it for the Brew cooldown. It’s also not too much effort to get the BoC effect on the reduced CD on Breath of Fire as well. Occasionally I also use it to pause stagger for 3 seconds, especially if it’s really high, which is unbelievably powerful.

The guides all say that Blackout Combo makes the rotation too clunky but I disagree, I feel, in some ways, like it makes the spec flow better.

Anyways, what I wanted to point out was how good these two talents are with helping to solidify aggro and damage during the often short times your facetanking while utilizing the Slow effect to then turn around and kite. Especially on things like Necrotic or just exceptionally large or dangerous trash pulls.

Special Delivery combined with Leg Sweep and Ring of Peace is really great at working together to kite it out. I mean in unison with Monks amazing mobility of course.

Anyways just wanted to see what other folks thought as the guides all seem to say Special Delivery and Blackout Combo are basically inferior and kinds talk the talents down like they aren’t even options…

I mean, they do involve a little bit more work but together there is some strong synergy.

Has any other Brews been taking advantage of this playstyle?

Thanks. Discuss.

1 Like
2

Could be an interesting addition to that Maldraxxus Shaohao build that has you purifying like every 3 seconds. The only real downside to SD is the fly time, and I haven’t played with it enough to know if it snapshots or not.

E-keg is awesome set-and-forget for kiting because of its huge range and snapshotting ability. The animation is slow as all heck, but so long as you get all those mobs in the green circle when you click, the barrel can be 10 miles away and they all get hit.

Ekeg should really be 45-30 seconds for slightly less damage, Or it should be a brew and have rotation reduction, which gives faster recharge in PvE but higher burst in pvp. Heck it, yeah, Ekeg needs to be a brew.

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What about a brew that only has its CD reduced by using other brews? Like, it’s the “swill” of the brews you drink on your journey, which you mix together into an Explosive Keg?

BTW I was experimenting with exactly this stuff today, and RJW still comes out ahead even with the Necro Shaohao setup, but Special Delivery has the slow debuff and comes out in chunks. I didn’t test snapshotting though… Anyway I was getting frustrated with necrotic, and like off-meta stuff, so I’ll probably continue giving this Special Delivery hit-and-run stuff a go.

edit: Just tested, does not snapshot :[
Also, Bonedust Brew doesn’t proc an air barrel :[
I actually hadn’t even considered E-Keg for hit-and-run tanking. Seems really good to me, in theory. Do you just lose too much damage for it to be worth? CD slightly too long to be practical on a per-pull basis?

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Sangriastallido

For ekeg, the benefit is massive crit threat. You can pull mobs from 40 yards away and if it crits for 11k, they are on you permanently even if you dont do anything else.

Pulls like the outer packs of DoS come to mind, or the patrol gauntlet of HoA. Ekeg actually reaches farther than our taunt or lightning.

It’s less dps than the papercuts of rjw, but folks need to remember that Patchwerk sims are not real action. They imply that you will be in melee range all the time, which, you won’t. Not all the time.

Rjw is for when you can face tank comfortably, ekeg is for when you need to gtfo. And it’s baller in pvp :B

Ekeg has another benefit in that it gains the most bang for your buck from weapons of order. Get four stacks of that baby rolling and watch yourself massive crit +34% dmg wheeooo

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I used to used Special Delivery and then one day it broke my cc and I dropped it.

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special delivery works against itself is the real issue.

If you’re kiting, then you’re not getting hit and don’t need to drink brews so you’re not proc’ing SD. If you are drinking a brew and then bailing to kite, the next issue is the delay travel time of the SD keg cause the mobs will move and won’t get hit by SD.

Maybe if SD shot out from you towards the mobs you were fighting rather than shooting up into the air and landing on them it would make a lot more sense.

2 Likes
7

Pretty much this. It’s the same thing that makes celestial flames garbage. If you’re drinking a brew, it means you’re already taking damage. Which means you have a CHANCE to proc your damage mitigation, which is all kinds of nonsense. How are you supposed to predict a pull if your main source of damage reduction is an unreliable proc that maybe comes AFTER you’re taking damage?

Our kiting and damage reduction should not come after-the-fact, but whomever is designing brewmaster doesnt seem to understand this.

#iwilldiemadaboutcelestialflames

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Yeah, I’ve been playing with Ekeg a lot lately too. It feels like the cooldown is a bit long on it tho. Like maybe it should be 45 seconds.

Or make Breath of Fire reduce Ekegs cooldown by 5 seconds baseline.

Buts of the class mechanics do feel like they work against each other, well, as far as talents but I still have a blast playing.

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Something that would reduce the CD of ekeg would make it fill a good niche for us. Bof would be a good idea. 1 min is too little damage to be a “cooldown” but too long to be an integrated rotation ability.

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I always wanted special delivery to work and have been just using it since it sounded nice. I keep hearing that other things are better to work with but I’m glad to read this and see there is hope for it.

11

It’s a super cool talent but there are very much things wrong with it.

  1. You gotta run a diff leggo then double kegs and that feels bad
  2. Its uncontrollable damage and that is not good in dungeons
  3. You are running boc which means you don’t run the stagger talent and that is a big loss
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Honestly in this meta with such tight stagger and frequent purification, high tolerance is kinda falling away from only-choice-best. Dont get me wrong, celestial flames is flaming trash, but boc provides real defensive and offensive value.

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There’s not an internal cooldown on the CD reduction from BoC reducing cooldown on your Brews after Kegsmash, so it’s actually ideal to run the Dbl Keg leggo with this.

As to the second point, it is uncontrollable damage but it Special Del kegs catuallt have a good AoE range and rarely miss.

I’ll often be in situations where I’m facetanking then I’ll Purify and as the SD keg hits I’ll use the slow to behind kiting.

Lastly, granted I’m not convinced that High Tolerance is the end all be all. Especially since I’m Night Far and get the 5% additional stagger anyways.

I mean, all fair points, I just feel Brew has the luxury of having different playstyles w talents that support them.