Why no Brewmaster changes?

In Development Undermine(d) PTR Discussion
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I expected very little, but quite literally 0 changes is staggering, no pun intended.

Brewmaster doesn’t necessarily need a complete rework in how it functions, but it’s talent tree is horrible, with many choices that are just dead in the water, and it lacks utility unique to the spec to incentivize bringing it to a M+ group over any other monk spec.

Some specific suggestions:

Remove Staggering Strikes. Replace this with something more impactful, perhaps like the free/no energy Keg Smash resets from current 4pc. It’s only use is in extremely, extremely low content and even then it’s just ok and you’re better off just taking a damage talent instead.

Merge One With the Wind and Strike At Dawn. Both are relatively weak individually and frankly there was no reason to separate them from their tier iteration.

Do something about Celestial Flames. It’s just not great.

Merge Niuzao into 1 point. It’s relatively weak. Personally I’d rather have it reworked into more of a defensive option or more of a damage option than the hybrid it is so it feels more impactful, but it is what it is. Add a connecting node from Elixir of Determination too so we don’t have to waste a point just to get it.

Remove Fluidity of Motion or make it a significant damage increase for single target. Currently it’s -1s to BoK CD and -10% damage. Yes, 10% reduced damage. If it also had a damage increase it may be worth considering for ST raid encounters, but currently it’s just awful. BoK is already such a short CD that the CDR isn’t really beneficial, and SBT offers both increased damage and cleave, making BoK one of our best buttons. Pair this with the 4pc buffing BoK and there’s even less of a choice than there was before (which was none).

Separate Bob and Weave/Black Ox Brew and Training of Niuzao/Light Brewing choice nodes. They feel rather arbitrary. The other choice nodes on the Brewmaster tree make sense, barring tuning. RJW vs SD is a choice of active or passive AoE, Salsa vs SB changes BoF in a meaningful way, DFB and ChP is a choice of whether BoF does more damage on its own or if it buffs other damage sources. What is the choice between these two? It’s completely arbitrary.

Add AoE scaling for Brewmaster. Firestone Walkers, Boiling Brew and the HFC 4pc (when paired with Boiling Brew) all existed in the game and would add much needed AoE scaling without breaking our boss tanking potential. Brewmaster is quite literally the only tank in the game with no AoE scaling.

Merge the capstone upgrades (Black Ox Adept, Heightened Guard, Call to Arms, Chi Surge) into their respective capstones. The sub-capstone design is rather unintuitive and none of them are impactful enough on their own that they are really worth the point besides maybe Chi Surge and CTA in purely offensive oriented builds, but even then their impact is relatively minor.

Reduce point cost of HT and A&S. I doubt this one will happen as it will leave Brewmaster with 0 2pt nodes, but 2pt nodes are bad design in general.

Add the legion version of Fundamental Observation. ZM is such an awkward and niche defensive that it feels bad to take sometimes, but the alternatives to be able to path to essential talents are just overall worse. Make ZM baseline and add Fundamental Observation (the legion version) in its place to make the ability more useful. You already trade being able to do damage for a 60% DR with ZM, you shouldn’t also be trading niche circumstances of being able to use it, movement, and an extremely long CD as well. Prot Paladin gets a full immunity on a significantly shorter CD with CDR compared to this.

Add Keg of the Heavens, minus the damage modifier. This was an extremely popular tier set and, though I never got to use it, it would be an extremely interesting one. It also has the added benefit of unique interactions with each hero spec. The max HP increase would increase how much vitality could be stored with MoH, whereas the max HP scaling off KS damage would allow that to scale higher for SP.

We also need some form of actually unique utility. Currently we only bring Monk utility, which while not bad, is nowhere near great and an often be brought by a MW or WW instead for M+. Adding Avert Harm or Guided Meditation (in lieu of Legion Fundamental Observation) to our pool would add a significant amount of utility. Adding a RSK replacement similar to what MW gets with Rushing Wind Kick, calling it “Charging Ox Kick” or some such and reusing the RWK visual while sending out the Charging Ox Wave visual that was removed in Legion, allowing it to do a knockup or something (even if limited to during Niuzao, which would make that button meaningful again) would be cool, albeit a stretch. Frankly, we should have been the ones to get what is now Lightbearer for Paladins, which would turn our increased healing via CF into party utility, but I’m not one to advocate taking away utility from other classes. Just something.

Again, these are just some suggestions. It is extremely unlikely I reroll from Brewmaster as BrM is by far the most fun I’ve had with any spec, but it’s issues are glaring and frankly, easily fixed,and I’m unsure why Blizzard has yet to do literally anything. Literally zero changes in a major patch is insanity.

9 Likes
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preach buddy, ive never felt so ignored in my life

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I’m fairly sure Blizzard thinks we’re golden. We were in for the world first kill of the current raid… but the fact is: Raid tanking survival has always been easy, we are a good spot to bring the 5% physical damage, and we aren’t that great in M+. We’re the tank that requires good play by far compared to other tanks who have a lot more passive damage reduction.

Blizzard also thinks we’re the smoothest damage taken tank, their TWW patchnotes litearlly say this and that they make us take more damage to compensate… but there are other smoother, less damage taken tanks out there like prot warrior. If anything, I find my monk way spikier/drops to dangerously low hp at 635 ilevel than my 615-620 ilevel warrior. Part of it is because we’re heavy on self healing, but we straight up take the same damage pre-stagger than a warrior does post-non crit block… But then we take stagger damage.

IMO:

Buff Brewmaster’s balance. A selfheal tank should have more HP to react better, and more passive damage reduction is great for a class that is almsot entirely reliant on it’s active mitigation. Buff it so either we’re good, or if you want, make us truly take the least damage out of all tanks on the initial hit. I’d be willing to trade purifying brew clearing % for more passive DR. Gotta help the weaker players out there.

Remove shuffle, make it a straight up passive. Everyone has 99.9% uptime and that one time you get meleed without it being up because you reached mobs before your kegsmash landed is awful.

Maybe make spinning crane kick relevant… I like the current rotation, but SCK feels stupid compared to tiger palm.

Celestia brew being stronger without purified chi would go such a long way… it’s a wet noodle spell without purified chi stacks. Being off GCD would feel awesome too… Same with instant vivify.

Haste is such a bad stat for brew. I’m fine with having a weaker stat, but we’re talking significantly worse here. I wish we could get some boost from haste. Windwalker has that more damage to Fists of Fury based on haste, why not something similar with keg smash?

Threat wise… you guys said 22% extra threat should help in regards to stealing threat from other tanks, but i can’t see why. Make taunt just straight up give 200% threat, not 100%. Slowing down your dps isn’t fun gameplay TBH.

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Ngl I like the current tiger palm heavy rotation of Brewmaster. Adds a large amount of prio damage which always feels great. I would like SCK to be made relevant for BrM though. I feel like it wouldn’t hurt to add Dance of Chi-Ji to brewmaster, since both of the other specs have it now, and maybe make it grant double the shuffle duration. As you already said, shuffle is up 99% of the time in a dungeon anyways, but this would allow Dance of Chi-Ji procs to add additional defensive value via Quick Sip stagger reduction.

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Really like the idea of dance of chi-ji, one of my favorite procs as WW. Really feel like Shuffle should go away though. It’s not even a thought in your rotation, it’s almsot already a passive and is a massive new player trap if you somehow mess it up.

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Brewmaster from EU here, leveled a guy to lvl 10 so I just can complain. I feel like we’re completely forgotten. As u said, brew doesn’t need too much, but it doesnt make sense to have 4-5 talents completely uselesss.
- Black Ox Adept: Useless
- Heightened Ward: Useless
- Fortyfing Brew: Determination (Rework to add instead a flat 20% increase to magic
stagger, a 15% increase effectivenes considering the way it multiplies feels useless.
- Zen Meditation: Useless in its actual state. Or even just niche situation. If dont want to take ZM but want to take for ex. Counterstrike it is forcing you into taking another useless talent, Strike at Dawn.
- Staggering Strikes: Useless
- Celestial Flames: Useless? Niche? Very underperforming compared to any other options.

Separating Bob and Weave and Black Ox Brew will help a bit with the spiky damage we taking on M+, so having both talents would be so nice (one under the other one for ex.) and Niuzao seriously requieres a completely work, I like the hybrid option, but if at least worked properly. Merge all Niuzao talents into 1 single ability point.

Move StormStout last keg into Improved niuzao position and change that one for Keg of the Heavens (best tier by far brewmaster has ever had) and that will solve 90% of our actual issues.

To end we should get some AoE Scaling, and the idea with Anvil & Stave is fine. Good idea, bad execution. Turn it into a 1 point ability a reduce a bit diminishing return it have.

Finally, PLEASE, IT DOESN´T MAKE SENSE THAT ONLY IT’S WORTH TO USE SPINNING CRANE KICK WHEN 6+ TARGETS, COMPLETELY NO SENSE. It should be worth over Tiger Palm from minimum 3 targets, not 6. Fix tunning on SCK (damage xd) and on Charred Passions (talent that adds xtra damage to SCK through fire% of initial damage)

Shuffle → Passive. No sense to have my hp down from 100 to 20% just because my keg hit after the Mob/Boss attack.

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Tbh I hate the current rotation, dont like to use TP on a non-ST environment. We should have a strong kit for AoE to let us do big AoE damage, with Rising Sun Kick on the proper target on CD + ToD on time u can have nice prio damage. Even rn using combo with Mad Queens Mandate trinket + ToD

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The 2-piece tier bonus is just another poke in the eye.

It activates the tank’s defensive cd… which I guess assumes that all the tank cd’s are equivalent, which they’re not. Brewmaster CD’s suck.

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I think main problems of Fortyfing Brew is its CD, I know its 6 min but effectively is like 3 min. Still seems too much for me, even more when Pallys got masive CDR on all their defensives for example (Cheat death 1 min, and having CDR on it) same with impo, bubble etc. Imo te best way to solve that is by giving us the 2 min reduction as spec baseline (So base CD will be 4,5 min) and allowing us to take Ironshell Brew without losing 2 min cd reduction.

Even better, Hold IronShell Brew as it is and Change Expeditious Fortificacion for something like (Cooldown Reduction your Fortyfing Brew gets from Keg Smash and Tiger Palm is doubled) So effective CD will be in the end like 2 min. Which seems to be in par with other tanks at least.

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im going to laugh my butt off when they continue to ignore the bug causing keg smash’s aggro thing not to work and i see my buddy rip aggro and die in keys

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It’s the weakest of all the tank cds the 2-piece will pop. Paladins get 50% dr, Warriors 40%, hell even Druid tanks get 50%. Monks get 20%… maybe a whopping 30 if the talent counts? :roll_eyes:

DO PROT PALADINS SERIOUSLY NEED A BIGGER BOOST FROM THE 2-PIECE THAN BREWMASTERS?

Come on, Blizzard. You’ve gone way past stoopid, at this point.

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For sure if you’re talented into the 30% DR it will gonna count for the proc. Don’t forget that it also gives us 30% Max HP, but the thing to point out is “Can it proc with stagger damage?”. And in addition, why don’t we just have a Buff on Brewmaster Balance?

Buff the armor% from 45 to 60, will help us to handle stagger MUCH better, what’s the issue? Current dungeon and raid design is based on lots of magic damage so… ? Yeah stagger is physical damage but come on, just look how spiky is our hp when we suposed to be "Smooth income damage tank :stuck_out_tongue: "

As said, Buff Brewmaster Balance Armor% too from 45to 60-65 and Stamina buff from 45% to at least 55% even 60.

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Guys, give some attention lets make some noise at least, is the only thing we can do atm

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This is not a thing

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i saw it happen more than twice to my friend (another reason not to play fury warrior i guess lol)