Thoughts and Issues with the New Brewmaster Changes

Classes Monk
1

I was going to post this last week, but after seeing the new “changes this week,” I feel like I should put this out there.

Face Palm
I like the “Face Palm” change, where it now deals more consistent damage for Tiger Palm. Takes out some aspects of our damage being so RNG-based.

Zen State
Zen State is currently difficult to test, but it seems like a good change. I’m sad to see Zen Med go; it had a lot of potential to become a core ability.

Vivify Instant Heal after RSK (Vivacious Vivifaction)
This was an unnecessary nerf and feels like it was added to give RSK more meaning. The only benefit is that if you have some haste (which feels bad to have), you can get more RSKs off, meaning more instant vivifies.

Invoke Niuzao, Walk With the Ox, Improved Invoke Niuzao
The changes to the Invoke Niuzao ROW are very lackluster. I still don’t think we should be talenting into these talents, as there are many better defensive and offensive options in our tree. Additionally, I don’t think many brew players enjoy using Niuzao. I’m somewhat sad to see how much effort was put into reworking Niuzao when most people fundamentally hate the idea.

Niuzao’s Resolve
Niuzao’s Resolve makes Expel Harm feel bad to press due to the lack of feedback, IMO. We are accustomed to hitting it at low HP and recovering a nice chunk of HP, but now, when we hit it, it puts a 10-second HoT on us, and we remain at low HP.

Disclaimer for Next Thought (PTR bug)
Niuzao’s Resolve is only counting one healing sphere for its total healing, but the next issue still occurs and will only become more egregious when this is patched.

THE BIGGEST ISSUE, this talent is fundamentally flawed due to it giving a 10-second HoT on a 5-second CD. This means you can sometimes override a better HoT heal. For example, the HoT could heal you for 300k over 10 seconds, but if you hit Expel Harm again with fewer healing orbs, you now receive less healing. This leads to degenerate gameplay, requiring you to avoid a button in your healing rotation to maximize a max healing HoT. Additionally, you want to avoid picking up orbs manually because it will also lower your HoT healing after using Expel Harm to pick up two or more orbs.

What I would like to see

  • A small damage buff
  • Utility
  • Improved self-healing with less emphasis on stagger, since balancing stagger has been an issue since day 1
  • Shorter CD on Fort Brew
  • Make Niuzao’s Resolve per-healing orb stacking instead of overriding
  • Might be op, but it would be cool to dodge spells and have a spell reflect
  • Buff Clash for Brew

These are some ideas I’m throwing out there.

2 Likes
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Have you tested these with RJW? Niuzao does quite good damage on his own, and with RJW in AoE the WWtO procs seem to go pretty crazy. Granted, this was just soloing the first pull of a dungeon on heroic because I didn’t have much time, but damage is damage all the same. I’d be surprised to see Niuzao-less builds, personally. I think the main disparity in builds will wind up being whether you just go baseline Niuzao with BoF/Salsa/ChP or if you move the BoF-related talents into WWtO and a defensive node.

Also, I agree with most of your “like to see,” but I really don’t see why everyone believes stagger is the problem with Brewmaster. Our problem prior to this mild rework was lack of universally applicable defensives, not balancing stagger. At least in M+, which frankly is the only tuning that should matter for tank survivability.

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walk with the ox causes blackout kick and keg smash to reduce the cooldown of invoke by 1 minute, so its hard to judge the actual power of that talent right now when you can continuously have 4 niuzaos invoked at any given time.

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I would agree with you. With RJW and in an AoE situation, it can do pretty good damage. I was mainly testing on a single target and small AoE situation. I can maybe see people picking it more now in high AoE situations, and since they made it easier to get to. Before we had to path through “One with the Wind” or “August Blessing,” which felt bad. They also buffed WWtO to reduce the CD on Invoke Niuzao. I did most of this testing last week, and I feel like bliz knew not many people would take the new “Invoke Niuzao ROW,” which is why they buffed WWtO and made it easier to path too.

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Personally I was going solely off the actual stomp procs, not the CDR aspect. Though in the few pulls I did, I treated Niuzao as a 2m and only cast it once.

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Also forgot to add on a quick note that imo stagger is hard to balance because of how strong it is with taking 1 huge hit vs a bunch of smaller hits. This means stagger can be OP in raid scenarios but weak in M+. Stagger is also weak to Dot damage and other small consistent damage. The reason why we feel the need to have more defensive in M+ is because stagger alone does not cut it. However in raid situations I can say that brew doesn’t need to use all of its defensive CDs.

When looking at all the other tanks their main way of mitigating damage does not such a polarizing weakness. For example bear durid’s main way of mitigating damage is to have a lot of stam/hp. This way of mitigation has little to no weaknesses unlike stagger.

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Stagger delays just as much damage from 1 hit dealing 1 million damage and 10000 hits dealing 100 damage. So it’s more of an difference with purifying brew and not stagger.

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i dont see how the new vivacious vivifacation is a nerf. considering your not supposed to press vivify all to much anyways? i dont think ive pressed that talent more than 7 times in keys. also considering the fact you should be pressing sunkick on cd in keys, this should result in a net positive amount of vivifies in general. i like how this change also kinda removes the vivify weakaura since its more predictable.

angry dave talents are also very good rn i feel like you havent tested it out in actual combat. while it is bugged rightnow to result in a whole herd of angry davids, but frankly even without he bug i would be surprised to see if we dont take niuzao again. they made it into a pretty solid talent and since its considered the “main cd” of brew like meta is for vdh, i will be very glad to see it used now

idk i feel like stagger is a great skill ceiling, it just needs a little bit more shoring up and it would be fine. stagger lets you cheese alot of mechanics and lets brew to be a very formidable tank. i would hate to see it swapped to yet another sustain self healing tank even tho its kinda already is with expel harm and orbs

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Yes, you are correct, I grouped the two into our mitigation because purifying brew is our main way of clearing stagger, but the issue still stands that we have a harder time with a bunch of small attacks rather than one large attack. Mostly because of the number of times we use purifying brew in an encounter.

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Stagger isn’t “OP” in raid, though. Other tanks can live the same raid mechanics if they press a button, stagger just allows us slightly more leeway on which buttons we use. There is counterplay for those other tanks in raid, Brewmaster gets trucked by white hits in M+ because we lack meaningful active mitigation (Stagger is mathematically worse than armor buffs like SotR in M+) while also lacking the universally applicable defensive toolkit to rotate through pulls. Niuzao being decent defensively and worth taking slightly helps with this, as we’ll have some of our stagger taken by the ox instead, but it’s also harmed by the fact that Niuzao is a potent DPS cooldown, so we’ll be using it on CD rather than necessarily saving it for pulls we need it. I think many of the stagger problems in M+ would be solved entirely if Blizzard cleaned up some of the redundant/mandatory points and split the BNW/BOB and ToN/Light Brewing choice nodes, which made no sense to begin with. If we were able to take two of Bob and Weave, Light Brewing and Quick Sip without sacrificing anything major we’d have considerable stagger clearing. Alternatively A&S being reduced to one point or reworked into actual AoE scaling (it is standardized between ST and AoE presently) would also help.

For self-sustain the VV change is virtually meaningless unless potentially Niuzao’s Resolve becomes worth using, in which case we lack a significant burst heal option outside of VV. Doubt the change even matters there.

My main qualm with it is that in the upper middle level (what I would have considered 14-15ish a couple of months ago before I took a break, not sure the current equivalent) it was significantly useful as a group utility. Some fights, one example this season being Candle King, I press it nearly off CD. It may not be ideal gameplay, but at that level, while performing considerably “better” than the average player, the group as a whole aren’t playing at the level of coordination or skill where perfection an be the expectation. It’s a slight nerf in these scenarios as RSK is quite low on the priority list, even in ST. Admittedly, it will be less of a problem than I initially thought though, as we’re losing a lot of random GCDs currently from tier set BoKs.

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i mean even in the 14-15 bracket you shouldnt be using vivfy at all? you can look at other brews in this key bracket in logs and you dont see much vivify usage if any at all.

i dont see how it is again, you’ll are acting like you dont press rsk at all when you should have like 80-90 casts of it in general in your overal. brew again is high apm and has alot of buttons to press thats why people have trouble with rsk usage in general cause it can eaisly snowball out of control if your not actively on your rotation while also juggling your defensive capabilities. but with the current changes, it also reduces globals by a bit so you have more space to press rsk without punishment.

people tend to look at reworks in the same vein as they view prerework. you have to really look at it with a new perspective as if your going into an ew expansion. its not going to be the same as it was pre rework. hence why theres some confusion everytime a spec gets a rework.

heck it was like that for vdh

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Shoulds and should nots of offhealing are kind of moot to argue. I press it to help my team and have many times been told in VC that it saved someones life, or at least allowed enough of a cushion for the healer to save their life. Whether it ‘should be’ done or not is moot. It’s not a range where perfect play is a realistic expectation and frankly is the only real use-case for VV and whether people choose to use it for that purpose or not, or whether they use it at all, isn’t really relevant. If VV isn’t to be used at all, why is it taken in every talent build for Brewmaster, both by TCers, top players and everyone in between?

i dont see how it is again, you’ll are acting like you dont press rsk at all when you should have like 80-90 casts of it in general in your overal.
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Look at a priority list, it’s considerably low even in ST. Sure, it should be getting pressed, however it is low in the priority list, especially with RNG BoK procs. I’m not sure what isn’t understood about that. As already stated, this will become less of an issue after this tier set is shed, but it’s still a slight issue.

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The only way this is a net positive is if you have haste (which we don’t want). Otherwise, RSK is 10 sec, which means you get the same value as before, but you need to hit RSK now. I consider this a slight nerf.

I also do PvP as Brew, and having to stay on a target to get instant healing feels bad. I’m used to being able to kite, not be touched, and have instant healing.

I do like how we don’t need a weak aura anymore, although I’m sure I might still get one to track the 20 sec buff, and other brews will probably do the same.

Back in Shadowlands, we had Dave doing damage based on purifying brew, and people hated it due to wasting defensive abilities for damage. (wasting purifying brew and Dave)

I also don’t enjoy relying on a pet to be a large source of damage and defense. It doesn’t fit the Brewmaster fantasy, and it has never been a huge thing for Brewmasters to turn into a pseudo-pet class.

Additionally, landing the knock-up on a ranged-casting mob in a dungeon is a hassle, and we will probably have to create several macros to control Dave more effectively to maximize its knock-up ability.

You are 100% right about this, and I think your solution is better. Stagger makes Brewmaster unique, and it is something I enjoy, as do many Brewmasters. However, I feel like it needs some kind of buff. Maybe more minor hits stay on your stagger bar for longer, giving you more time to drink more Prufiy Brews?

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Niuzao’s Resolve needs to be accumlative with additonal adding to the healing effect. The heal should also be frontloaded with the heal doing 60-75% of the total healing in the first four seconds and it gradually getting lower. As others have pointed out the healing provided from using expel harm or walking over healing spheres is used for burst healing to offset sudden damage. If Niuzao’s Resolve is designed to help offset high stagger damage with an equally effective hot then it doesn’t help vs moments of taking high damage where the current meta is if you end up dying before the hot provided by Niuzao’s Resolve does anything.

Healing orbs in general should also be automatically picked up if you drop below 20% as a saving grace if its impossible to run over orbs due to positioning, expel harm being on cooldown, or VV healing being on cd.

3 Likes
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I hope a dev sees this lol. 100% on point. I was going to make a whole separate post talking about the issues of Niuzao’s Resolve, and you hit the nail on the head.

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I’m by no means some great pushing Brew, but I got a sub 100 of 12’s +100’s more of lower and last season. So my experience is capped at +13, as I’ve never pushed my Brew past 3k.

It’s a nerf in the sense that now it requires an extra GCD to be used.
RSK has very little value under Shadopan. It’s a great ST filler when low on Energy, but it happens rather rarely. Under MoH, however, it triggers a frontal, so it has far more value.

Unlike top brews, who run with equally top players, it’s not a fair comparison to a random Ragnaros holy paladin of 2.8 IO trying to get to 3k.

If I’m in a good group with a good healer, I press Vivify maybe 10-20 times per key and it’s really when I drop low or right after some hits/tank busters.
But if I’m in a group with a crappy healer, as a Brewmaster, who requires the most healing out of all tanks, I do my best to self sustain - and this includes Vivifys.

Yes, it’s a DPS loss. I’ve estimated it roughly adds up to 100k overall DPS, as while it consumes a GCD, it has roughly 10 energy Cost or so, which is not noticeable. In keys where a healer might struggling, I cast Vivify about 100 times/key, which adds up to roughly of 10-15% of my self sustain. (cast I mean instant procs, not hard casts ofc)

imho it’s very silly to compare top players to an average Joe.
Earlier today I ran a Brew12 with a guild group with all 3.5+ IO. We were 10 seconds away from +++12 and healer’s HPS (evoker) was 700k. In a 12 key. 700k. Can you imagine that? We were all 5mil overall DPS with VHD being 2.7 iirc.

It’s not a big nerf, but it’s an extra hurdle for quite literally no reason. It’d be fair for Blizzard to compensate for that somehow, but either removing a GCD from Vivify or buffing it for self use further

(this is all from BrM standpoint btw)

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All of this is very spot on and I agree with 100%. This is gonna the case of running away from ur own orbs if they keep it like this and dont improve it

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i mean its also subjective to say that as well. if you use vivify to help your team then this still kinda makes it more predictable and usable to help your team. raising sun kick, now you have a big vivify on demand instead of doing what it used to do before.

i feel like were just making a mountain out of a mole hill. cause the “off heal” argument is also extremely subjective af. i was never in a situation where i needed to offheal someone that my healer didnt already had cover.

personally i dont think it is, but if yall feel that strongly than more power to you. even with sk low priority, it still should be pressed about 80+ times in any level of dungeon thus you have 80+ big vivifies

but like i was tell our friend above you, your still pressing rsk by a large amount if playing brew well. even subparly. so its still somewhat of a net gain. looking over logs from really good brews including tcer brews, theyre all pressing rsk more than 80+ times in a dungeon which means like more than 80+ vivifies

personally i dont pvp so i cant comment, pvping as a tank is crazy to me and frankly sounds like aids

maybe, again its just strange cause its hard to place what brew needs specifically cause it was somewhat rotationally bloated for a long time, and it punished you harshly if you failed that rotation. hence probably why theres alot of players tend to rely on this vivify thing i guess.

from the changes im seeing so far i feel like its slowly going to a spot wher eit has a solid skill floor while also having a good skill ceiling

im gonna be real with you friend, i honestly dont think we should design large parts of the spec for people who cant push it as far as it could. heck people barely even push specs to the bare minimum of 70 percentile.

that sounds WAY to high im sorry. are you even pressing expel harm or managing your orbs? if your casting 100+ vivify’s for self sustain then thats frankly a huge skill issue you probably have to get checked on.

im not trying to sound mean btw, it just such a wild waste of gcds on this

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Actually, I rescind what I said. I finally actually looked at it on the PTR and the VV buff after RSK lasts 20s, which is around double the CD of RSK. For some reason I assumed it would be much lower. This change is really a non-issue and I had overreacted based on an assumption that proved incorrect.

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