Why I think BM is bad. (edited)

Classes Monk
1

BM tank has no active burst mitigation for big pulls. They have stagger, shuffle, some minor heals that are bad the 5% damage mitigation from using fire breath and their absorb on a 48 second cool down. If you’re 48 second defensive is on cd you’re just F’ed. You can use tiger fist to lower the cd fast but it doesn’t help that much.

Prot Paladins have massive heals, Huge defensive cool downs that negate pretty much all damage, normal defensive mitigation that gives them a ton of armor on top of their heals. Guardian Druid plays pretty much the same way as guardian with normal armor mititagion abilities, big heals, and big defensive cds for spikes.

Prot Warriors have ignore pain, big defensive cds which is superior to the stone brew for BM monks and on a shorter cd compared to BM. Blood DK’s have their bone shield, tons of health leach and some ok defensive cd’s.

Vengeance DH got a lot of self healing, decent defense mitigation, and if talented some really good absorbs. Also none of these tanks are squishy with or without active defensive mitigation due to their baseline tank passives and big health pools.

BM has the lowest health pool amongst tanks, their passive baselines on a leather user isn’t even good either compared to guardian druids bear form and its passives. BM doesn’t have a shield or plate either. BM healing is either their cast which does almost nothing, little minor orbs that spawn from getting hit that aren’t even gaurnteed, i never get more than 1-2 per big pull. They have that little insta heal that could go for a good buff / rework making it close to prot paladin heal.

TBH the only thing BM feels great at is aoe, just constant big aoe spams. To fix this spec I feel like Celestial brew needs its cd from 48 seconds to 30. Gift of the Ox removed, Expel Life buffed based on stagger amount, higher stagger = bigger heal. Brewmasters Balance buffed from 10% damage reduction to 20%, armor increased from 25% to 40%, Stamina increased from 30% to 60%. Lastly their mastery needs completely redone and I have two ideas from just buffing it to reworking it.

(Buffed Version) Mastery: Elusive brawler: Each time you are hit by a melee attack, or hit with blackout kick, you gain stacking ??% increased dodge chance until your next successful dodge. (buffed part) Every time you hit with blackout kick or dodge an attack successfully heal up for 3% of your max health, up to 9% on max stagger. Also increases your attack power by ??%

(Reworked Version) Mastery: Drunk Brawler: Stagger now takes in ??% more damage and increases your max stagger amount by ??% . Does not affect magic damage taken. Also increases your attack power by ??%

After looking through all this, if every change was implanted it would make Brewmasters superior to any other tank so… 1-2 of any of these changes would be great. Idk why the mastery is so bad or the baseline “brewmastery’s balance” is so low on a leather user.

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Wanted to also post the baseline damage mitigation passives from other classes showing why Brewmasters is inferior to all else.

Guardian passives: Ursine Adept: All damage reduced by 10%, Lightning Reflex: You gain dodge equal to 100% of critical strike from gear, Mastery: increase max health and healing recieved by ??%, and then the bearform itself: Increase armor value by 220% and stamina by 45% while being immune to polymorph effects.

DH: Demonic Tattoo’s: Reduce all damage taken by 20%, Mastery: Fel Blood: increases armor bonus of demonic spikes by ??% of your agility. The big tank passive itself Thick Skin: Increases stamina by 65% and armor by 100%

Prot Paladin: Riposte: You gain parry equal to 100% of your crit strike from gear, Mastery Divine Bulwark: increases your chance to block melee attacks by ??% reduces all damage by ??% while in concentration, Aegis of light: Stamina increased by 45% armor increased by 15% all damage reduced by 10%. This is a plate class with a shield (can block cause shield) and has a better passive baseline.

Protection Warrior: Riposte: You gain parry equal to 100% of your crit strike from gear. Mastery: Critical Block: Increases chance to block by ??% and increases your chance to critically block (twice the amount) by ??%. and for the big passive itself Vanguard: All damage taken reduced by 15% Your stamina is increased by 45% and your armor is increased by 100% of your strength.

Blood DK: Riposte: You gain parry equal to 100% of your crit strike from gear. Veteran of the third war: Increase stamina by 30%, all damage taken reduced by 10%, Mastery: Each time healing with death strike you gain a ??% from healing as an physical absorb shield. Boneshield: increases armor by 70% (effected by strength)

Seeing this in comparison with Brewmaster, you have a lot of control and abilities to take very efficently compared to that of Brewmaster. I didn’t contribute active abilities as it would make this thread doubled in length but outside BM clearing half stagger and absorb shield BM doesn’t have anything to compare anyways.

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I dont think BM is bad. When I brew, i usually require less external healing than co-tanks, and always very little from my healer in m+.

Even if it is bad, BM (and blood) deserve to be weaker in overall mitigation and healing because they can wait and see how bad the damage is before using mitigation. A good brewmaster isn’t ripping purify on every swing, or even every spike: you watch your group health and healer situation to decide as late as possible IF the damage needs to be mitigated to avoid taking healer focus from more important healing. But if nothing is going on, let that stagger tick and receive a big efficient heal.
It’s very hard to compare this benefit to group survival to a percentage of armor, but it does exist.
I’m not sure what content you’re using to evaluate the specs, but for mythic raids and 15-18 keys, brewmaster is fine. Going much higher in m+ is going to very heavily accentuate minor differences and it’s not worth rebalancing based on those situations.

4 Likes
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ah my effort of comparison was taking as little damage as possible at all times was the only way to tank. Being this armored jaggernaut in a way where every attack does such minor damage where the healer barely ever has to focus on you with the exception of big spike damage. Stagger is great and I enjoy it i’m just frustrated that I feel like i’m not negating a lot of damage outside purifying so i just feel squishy in general and it makes me feel like a bad tank.

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After testing some, though without m+ it is hard to really get a true feel what damage will feel like at a high level, but Brews biggest strength is the the ability to be able to smooth out damage where as other tanks your damage is quite spikey. One hit will take you from 100 to 20% where as brew 1 hit will take you from 100 to maybe 60-80%

I think it could be possible to make builds where you can purify a lot or alittle depending on your comfort. Even on live in keys you can easily get to 300-400% stagger and not feel in danger, granted Keg of the heavens helps with this, and while i do agree Brew could use a small stamina buff i thik the rest feels decent until we can run m+ on beta.

Also in regards to self healing. There are some talents and builds where you can get some insane expel harm heals i was able to easily get 150K healing. While i dont think youll be able to sit there and live forever like current BDKS which i think is bad design for the game in general, youll be able to take alot more punishment overall

We also gain Diffuse magic which is huge, also you have ability to use healing elixers which before was a dead talent as the other talents on that row were objectively better in difficult content.

And since nothing on beta can even make your stagger go above high green low stagger. Will be interesting to see how the purify heal does. could easily see 100k heals and if it feeds and celestial fortune heals basically a purify could turn into essentially a 165k heal

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Ah my rant was purely on current / live (shadowlands) BM. The healing looks a lot better in the DF Talent Calculator. Which will defiantly help so i’m looking foward that. Though the stamina seems to be lacking still.

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4pc helps alot for live. Basically a mini death strike esp if you pull big.

1 Like
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Celestial brew does get CD reduction from keg smash.

I’ve played Guardian Druid, prot paladin, Veng DH and most recently took up brewmaster monk this season.

Compared to the other tanks I play, I feel that I can always pull big with my brewmaster and I very rarely even use big CDs like fortifying brew.

Between celestial brew, keg smash heals, expel harm and using monk mobility to kite, I think brewmaster is currently one of the strongest tanks.

(I don’t play blood dk though, never liked blood much)

2 Likes
11

I agree that Brewmaster needs a LOT more of it’s defense pushed to taking less damage in the first place. DF talents are a lot more healing, but the incoming damage isn’t getting any lower. With so much of the sustain being linked to self healing, once spamming 50% self heal on a 5 sec cooldown isn’t enough, what the heck is a healer supposed to do? They don’t have a heal that strong. The “smooth damage” tank, will in fact be the spikiest, and hardest to heal.

Prot war, even after being nerfed, is still making massive gains in mitigation, to the point that it feels like what a brewmaster would be if all the stagger damage just disappeared and never needed to be healed. It self sustains far better by taking less damage, and when the small amount of healing it’s generating is overcome, the burden to the healer is drastically less.