Are Brewmasters Really This Underplayed?

[ScharfAsATack]

One thing to note as well, Monk is not as popular class because it's so Asian. People who like Asian themes usually play Asian MMOs.

I genuinely can't tell if you're joking.

[classic username]

Constructive my man, very constructive yes we need some tweaks, I love the class right now and its simply changes like increasing PB removal of stagger which doesn't change the class that much. Overall i'm happy with the design.

I never said im going to be constructive its just my honest opinion... they can tweak the hell out of them. They are simply NOT FUN to Play Rotation wise

[ambident]

The salt here is funny. Brew is complex and requires you to not skrew up or it will punish you 10+ seconds later.

You don't die because Brew doesn't offer the mitigation, you die because yuo dun goofed a bit before. Be honest and run /combatlog so you know why you are bad.

It's not complex to play HT/ED+BoB and maintain 100% ISB, it's just as easy (probably easier) as playing the other tanks, and this setup has cleared 7/7 mythic.

[Deleted]

It's not complex to play HT/ED+BoB and maintain 100% ISB, it's just as easy (probably easier) as playing the other tanks, and this setup has cleared 7/7 mythic.

Yes its easier running HT on all bosses alone, and who doesn't run BoB to be fair. I for first kills have been using HT and just Ursoc in general but gonna lean back to BoC this week as i'm confident as i've always been on MMO forums, that it'll do well once played right and I have the rotation down to a tee.

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I think Brewmaster is unplayably awful right now which is why I switched away from it, but I agree that they could do some very small things to make Brewmaster a LOT more enjoyable than it is now:

1) Reduce the base cooldown of Keg Smash to 6 seconds and have the cooldown of breath of fire scale with haste. Right now you have a rotation with an 8 second base cooldown, a 3 second base cooldown, a 6 second base cooldown, and a 15 second cooldown with no haste scaling and the rotation is rife with cooldown collisions. This is doubly true using Blackout Combo and this simple fix would make things flow a lot better, and also bring up BrM AoE output slightly which is needed.

2) Put purifying brew back to a full purify or have it reduce stagger to light or clear a light stagger. Very frustrating to hit purify and still be in heavy stagger, doesn't feel like it has done anything.

3) Make a spell that interacts positively with mastery on a mediumish cooldown. E.g. prevents elusive brawler from resetting when you dodge for 6 seconds on a 60 second CD or a 2 minute CD recharged with brews.

1) I'd tend to agree, there is times where the rotation can feel clunky but you'll always lean back on the priority spells to recharge your brews. I prefer playing BoC and yes it is a tad intense and rotation sensitive but its what makes the class fun in my eyes.

2) Couldn't agree more, I've only ever stated wanting more stagger purification was the biggest demand of mine, specifically come Mythic raiding, going from red to red is like...fml.

3) I love the thought process, something like this or (blue sky!) would be the stagger pause from BoC being a stronger cd for longer or similar. "Pauses stagger and reversed the intensity of stagger by x amount over 5 seconds"

N.B - Yes my suggestion is a tad blue sky suggestion but you get the idea!

[Xiaojin]

Something that just occured to me, that is really strange, is our scaling with equipment.

The more health we get, the less healing we do, since gift of the ox spawns an orb when you've taken 100% of your health in damage (before stagger). I don't think its base health before equipment for that formula, right?

To some degree this is true. However, as your gear gets better, your Agi/AP also increases. The ratio of AP to Stamina (I think only your health from Stamina counts towards GotO, direct health increases like the artifact trait do not) stays nearly constant at different itemlevels (assuming necks, rings and trinkets do have wildly different itemlevels than the rest of your gear or you switch a Mastery trinket for a Stamina one). This means your HPS won't decrease with better gear, you'll just pick up fewer orbs to do the same amount of healing. I'd say gaming OD, which I honestly advise against in almost all group content, even becomes easier with better gear.

[Puri]

No idea about survivability, but the main reason I stopped leveling my brewmaster at 101 is that pretty much your entire damage is concentrated in keg smash with an incredibly long CD. Very annoying when your mob is at 10% health and you cannot finish it off until keg smash is up again, only to notice when moving to the next mob group that it still is on CD, same (or even more) for flame breath.

[Ratyrel]

I mained BrM throughout WoD and MoP and rerolled to druid once the Legion prepatch came; the class lost everything that made it fun and felt slow, boring, and ineffective. It was quite shocking really and I'm not at all surprised by the data. Monks were already the least popular and they're even more so now.

[MasterOfNone]

I seriously mean this when I say "no offense" to anyone playing brew, but it seems to me that it's kinda expected. Think of it this way. Brew is the only tanking class that penalizies you for using active mitigation. It's absolutely retarded. Now I'm assuming it's still the same in legion with stagger. In dungeons that are mythic + where tanks need to take the least amount of damage as possible to help the speed of the run, they are taking even more for using mitigation. Blizzards logic when making this spec was equivalent to cheech and Chong calculating quantum physics.

[Juliansfist]

I think BrM also needs to move away from receiving bigger bonuses from clearing higher stagger grades. It makes ED/HT far less appealing when solo or once you've out geared content.

Some talent tiers need proper adjusting (often the same tiers for all monk specs). Ox statue should be baseline as that is essentially the BrM iconic utility.

Invoke Niuzao needs to be more rewarding - I would rather see a shorter duration/shorter CD or his damage just needs a big increase. As that talent currently stands only MW have a competitive celestial.

Regarding ISB/PB they can't be unlinked as they are our 3rd resource in place of chi. I think chi was the better system and would rather return to it. Chi flowed smoother and offered more diversity ie. Spending it offensively or defensively. Not going to happen though sadly. The main change we could see is improving PB at lower stagger amounts but this would create a tier within the light stagger tier and I doubt Blizzard would go for that.

Perhaps any light stagger purified makes PB only trigger half the CD?

[PizzaSHARK]

The salt here is funny. Brew is complex and requires you to not skrew up or it will punish you 10+ seconds later.

You don't die because Brew doesn't offer the mitigation, you die because yuo dun goofed a bit before. Be honest and run /combatlog so you know why you are bad.

That's kind of the point, though. Brews have to work twice as hard to achieve the same results every other tank gets. So why in the world would you EVER play a Brewmaster?

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I think BrM also needs to move away from receiving bigger bonuses from clearing higher stagger grades. It makes ED/HT far less appealing when solo or once you've out geared content.

Some talent tiers need proper adjusting (often the same tiers for all monk specs). Ox statue should be baseline as that is essentially the BrM iconic utility.

Invoke Niuzao needs to be more rewarding - I would rather see a shorter duration/shorter CD or his damage just needs a big increase. As that talent currently stands only MW have a competitive celestial.

Regarding ISB/PB they can't be unlinked as they are our 3rd resource in place of chi. I think chi was the better system and would rather return to it. Chi flowed smoother and offered more diversity ie. Spending it offensively or defensively. Not going to happen though sadly. The main change we could see is improving PB at lower stagger amounts but this would create a tier within the light stagger tier and I doubt Blizzard would go for that.

Perhaps any light stagger purified makes PB only trigger half the CD?

Something I noticed while doing Blackrock Foundry last night with a friend (first time either of us had ever been there) for transmog stuff is that Brews take a LOT of damage from content that they outgear. Like, an absolutely fucking ridiculous amount of damage.

It takes 3-4 charges' worth of ISB to develop enough Stagger to be worth purifying, which just means you run out of brew charges quickly. And, hell, Effuse isn't worth shit as an emergency heal, if you find yourself in a bad position, where you're taking damage too quickly (quite likely due to how rapidly ISB charges will run out and you have shit armor) to abuse OD not having a cooldown.

Like... tanking normal raid content 10 levels below me is far harder than tanking heroic dungeon content. That's beyond fucked up.

There are so many fucking problems with this spec.

[Quotey]

That's kind of the point, though. Brews have to work twice as hard to achieve the same results every other tank gets. So why in the world would you EVER play a Brewmaster?

because it's fun jesus christ mate

im fine with brewmasters being 1% representation if it doesnt get turned into some warrior clone

[Sandrox]

Would be nice if they would add a small absorb when you drink a brew, say 10% of total health. Play like Chen in HOTS.

[Saverem]

Would be nice if they would add a small absorb when you drink a brew, say 10% of total health. Play like Chen in HOTS.

Or better yet, do away with that entire system. Make BrMs naturally stagger ~65% (increase or decrease for balance) make Purify clear 100% like before on a CD that is reduced by using KS/TP and make ISB a spell CD (for X seconds you stagger 100% of spell damage).

Boom. Done.

Edit: Also fix Zen Med because it is literally worthless without the Legendary right now.

[xChurch]

I feel like BrM is one of the few specs they've legit butchered, nearly all the things that made BrM fun and unique have been watered down or removed. No more Keg Toss, no more clash, no more expel harm. It seems like so much has been taken out especially considering it's on of the newest classes.

[Saverem]

Yep. This is what I touched on about why I don't even use Brewmaster to do WQ's and such (when I use the tank spec of all my other characters to do them). They're just not "naturally durable" and some incoming damage profiles just don't produce enough stagger to bother purifying but you're still just taking all that unmitigated damage anyway.

Of course, in relevant group content this isn't really a big issue in the same way. But I never ever feel "tough" on my BrM, even when doing content that's way, way below his level/gear. I never feel like I can just run in and grab a ton of everything and just be durable and take it the way I can on all my other tanks.

I disagree with that. Although I do think BrMs are the weakest of all the tanks, I do find WQs to be a non issue with them. I do 99% of my WQs as WW though because it's just WAAAAAY faster, but I still find myself switching to BrMs on those that are too challenging for my WW like those elites in Suramar WQs. My WW has to para one and take out the other, heal up, and wait for CDs to take out the others (talking about the 8m HP collabs) where as I can just jump in on my BrM and kill them both at the same time with no problems. Same with the kill quests from the Wardens, some times my WW can't handle the boss so I switch to BrM to solo it.

[Juliansfist]

If the damage is really low you shouldn't be using ISB at least not alone because ISB offers 0 damage reduction. Either use PB or alternate ISB and PB (best option).

Even then because our damage off setting comes in so late we don't look as good as other tanks.

We are also missing out on a lot of cf when soloing (eye of the Tiger can help there). I think it's a shame we have cf because it's a very close rip off of a former guardian ability. All in all the tank redesign has been the weakest aspect of Legion and many design goals have failed.

[Hobbs]

So my comments are less balance and more fun/QoL issues. I've tanked all of heroic so far and while I do think we may slightly be undertuned, it's not by much. And we're really not nearly as hard to play as people are making it out to be unless you take Blackout Combo. Now, onto the real stuff.

1. PB only clearing 50% of stagger is really unsatisfying. Yes it removes a ton of damage but like other people have mentioned, going from red to red just is a huge letdown. To the people campaigning for 100% of stagger removal, THAT CAN'T HAPPEN. We would be horribly, ridiculously overpowered if they made that change. They'd need to significantly reduce our stagger amount, which may be a reasonable change. Up our base tankiness a bit, cut stagger by a significant amount, and change PB to clear all stagger (but this would mess up our niche of smoothing damage). Other people have argued for other QoL changes which I think would be good like making it clear minimum 10% health or 50% of total stagger, whichever's higher. Just look around and check this and the BrM thread. I won't drone on, and I don't have a great solution to fix this problem.

2. Our rotation feels clunky. Other people have commented on this as well, so I'll just summarize. Lots of times you have cd's not lining up neatly so it just feels really awkward when all our combos don't fit nicely into a package one after another.

3. Zen Med is a complete failure of a spell. I'm not sure why a channeled 60% DR for magic damage and 1 melee still exists. This one really gets to me because I love the animation. Some have suggested making the legendary effect baseline. That'd certainly help, but I'm not sure how they'd work out all the logistics and handle the items for the people who have already gotten that legendary.

4. We lack fun buttons. This one is probably the most subjective and least rational point. But it's a video game, so here we go. The monk just lacks really impactful, fun buttons to press. Roar on my druid feels great when I see my whole raid sprint from elerethe's assault. Rage of the sleeper + lunar beam together looks great and feels awesome seeing so much damage go out and my health bar fill up for the duration. A footnote on this point is our artifact ability is super underwhelming. It's defensive use is so niche that it's really frustrating. It's damage is good burst but isn't that impressive compared to some other tank abilities and combos. It looks cool and could be an easy area for improvement, but the impact from the spell really just isn't doing it for me. I also really miss guard. And not the op guard everyone fusses about, didn't play in WoD (maybe it was still a little op in MoP). I don't care if they made it something different than an absorb or w/e. The beautiful animation taunts me in my class hall everyday. Probably the most fun button for me right now is transcendence when I need to move a mob (i.e. dragons or xavius horror). Don't get me wrong I love this spell, but I don't want it to be the spell that I feel coolest pressing. I want a couple cool, tanky/utility buttons.

5. We lack neat talent choices. This one ties into #4. Our statue was taken and put up against one of our best abilities for tanking dungeons. One of our coolest talents imo, invoke niuzao is tuned to where it stinks, and it's put up against RJW which is hard to give up for convenience. Diffuse magic and dampen harm used to be awesome buttons to push during mop. Soaking a dragon breath with diffuse or some massive melee strike with DH felt amazing. Now they're both underwhelming and we're stuck with a 15% heal every 30 seconds (yeah yeah yeah it can crit and stuff, whoopee).

I find the class frustrating atm. The monk is by far my favorite class theme that can tank, and I adore the mobility. The rotation is just a bit underwhelming and clunky. Overall, the spec is just very unsatisfying to play. I'm hoping for some significant QoL and talent changes in 7.1 but am not holding my breath.

Side note: who thought we needed 5% more stagger a while back with that hotfix? That was the oddest place to buff us. We didn't need more burst protection, we need to take a little less overall damage. Also, BoB can die. I have always had a vendetta against cd's that refill resources.

[PizzaSHARK]

because it's fun jesus christ mate

im fine with brewmasters being 1% representation if it doesnt get turned into some warrior clone

How the fuck is it fun taking more damage than every other tank in the game while having to work twice as hard to achieve identical results? How is it fun playing with a toolkit that's maybe 2/3 the size of every other tank's? I couldn't even finish gold proving grounds because the spec is so retardedly underpowered. How the fuck does a spec even go live if they can't complete proving grounds with it?

[Xar226]

It is hard to convince healers that I may spike down to 35% or so, but I am alot harder to kill once i hit the 35% threshold.

Speaking as a healer, it doesn't matter if you "convince" me or not. You hit 35% and I'm shitting my pants, especially if I don't have some big heals at the ready. That's what makes it such a horrible design to begin with. Blizz is throwing away a reality we've known for as long as we've been playing the game and it's damn near impossible to get over that.

On topic: I've only seen two brewmasters. Monk in general is pretty low on he played list. I didn't find them particularly hard to heal though I was overgearing the content by that time.

[PizzaSHARK]

So my comments are less balance and more fun/QoL issues. I've tanked all of heroic so far and while I do think we may slightly be undertuned, it's not by much. And we're really not nearly as hard to play as people are making it out to be unless you take Blackout Combo. Now, onto the real stuff.

1. PB only clearing 50% of stagger is really unsatisfying. Yes it removes a ton of damage but like other people have mentioned, going from red to red just is a huge letdown. To the people campaigning for 100% of stagger removal, THAT CAN'T HAPPEN. We would be horribly, ridiculously overpowered if they made that change. They'd need to significantly reduce our stagger amount, which may be a reasonable change. Up our base tankiness a bit, cut stagger by a significant amount, and change PB to clear all stagger (but this would mess up our niche of smoothing damage). Other people have argued for other QoL changes which I think would be good like making it clear minimum 10% health or 50% of total stagger, whichever's higher. Just look around and check this and the BrM thread. I won't drone on, and I don't have a great solution to fix this problem.

2. Our rotation feels clunky. Other people have commented on this as well, so I'll just summarize. Lots of times you have cd's not lining up neatly so it just feels really awkward when all our combos don't fit nicely into a package one after another.

3. Zen Med is a complete failure of a spell. I'm not sure why a channeled 60% DR for magic damage and 1 melee still exists. This one really gets to me because I love the animation. Some have suggested making the legendary effect baseline. That'd certainly help, but I'm not sure how they'd work out all the logistics and handle the items for the people who have already gotten that legendary.

4. We lack fun buttons. This one is probably the most subjective and least rational point. But it's a video game, so here we go. The monk just lacks really impactful, fun buttons to press. Roar on my druid feels great when I see my whole raid sprint from elerethe's assault. Rage of the sleeper + lunar beam together looks great and feels awesome seeing so much damage go out and my health bar fill up for the duration. A footnote on this point is our artifact ability is super underwhelming. It's defensive use is so niche that it's really frustrating. It's damage is good burst but isn't that impressive compared to some other tank abilities and combos. It looks cool and could be an easy area for improvement, but the impact from the spell really just isn't doing it for me. I also really miss guard. And not the op guard everyone fusses about, didn't play in WoD (maybe it was still a little op in MoP). I don't care if they made it something different than an absorb or w/e. The beautiful animation taunts me in my class hall everyday. Probably the most fun button for me right now is transcendence when I need to move a mob (i.e. dragons or xavius horror). Don't get me wrong I love this spell, but I don't want it to be the spell that I feel coolest pressing. I want a couple cool, tanky/utility buttons.

5. We lack neat talent choices. This one ties into #4. Our statue was taken and put up against one of our best abilities for tanking dungeons. One of our coolest talents imo, invoke niuzao is tuned to where it stinks, and it's put up against RJW which is hard to give up for convenience. Diffuse magic and dampen harm used to be awesome buttons to push during mop. Soaking a dragon breath with diffuse or some massive melee strike with DH felt amazing. Now they're both underwhelming and we're stuck with a 15% heal every 30 seconds (yeah yeah yeah it can crit and stuff, whoopee).

I find the class frustrating atm. The monk is by far my favorite class theme that can tank, and I adore the mobility. The rotation is just a bit underwhelming and clunky. Overall, the spec is just very unsatisfying to play. I'm hoping for some significant QoL and talent changes in 7.1 but am not holding my breath.

Side note: who thought we needed 5% more stagger a while back with that hotfix? That was the oddest place to buff us. We didn't need more burst protection, we need to take a little less overall damage. Also, BoB can die. I have always had a vendetta against cd's that refill resources.

1 - Yup. A lot of the time, I feel like PB does almost nothing if you're already taking tons of damage (mythic bosses, etc.) You hit it, it goes from maxed to low red and then it's maxed again before the cooldown cycles. Mathematically it might be achieving something, but from just raw feel, pressing that button does fuck all. Pressing ISB feels good because you see your stagger bar filling up rapidly while your HP bar doesn't move as much. I definitely agree that they should retune Stagger. I definitely think Brewmasters need more armor, more baseline defense, because we also have a ton of issues doing content that we outgear, we take as much damage as a Rogue does while dealing way less DPS. I've actually been doing old raids etc as a Mistweaver because Brewmaster is just so unsafe against a lot of mechanics.

2 - Fuckin absolutely. I like Blackout Combo but it's also very frustrating and basically requires me to have my eyes glued to my hotbar (or WA, if I used those things I guess) the entire time just to make sure nothing fucks up. Feels like Blizzard didn't run the math before setting base cooldowns. When Keg Smash and Breathe Fire come off cooldown at the same time, it's very annoying because I either have to pick between DPS or longer brew cooldowns. I guess Tiger Palm is intended to compensate for this? Still feels very clunky compared to Paladin.

3 - Yup. Zen Med at the very least shouldn't be a 5 min cd. Maybe it could be our super awkward spell defense cooldown on a 60 sec timer or something.

4 - I can agree with this. Keg Smash is tons of fun that's kind of it. Special Delivery is also really fun, I always chuckle when that barrel goes flying into the air, but you basically have to take RJW if you want to have the same toolkit other tanks have. I definitely wish Niuzao was better, it's a great "fun button" but it does fuck all. Honestly I think all of the celestials should be core abilities - they practically define Monks! I definitely agree with utility buttons. I just gave up and boosted my old Paladin because they're really the only class that has utility buttons for all of their specs beyond what their spec "needs" to have to function.

5 - Every class suffers from this, so at least we aren't alone. I do think that celestial-related things (statues, summons) should be core abilities. I think invoking Xuen should be a Windwalker base skill and Storm, Earth, and Fire should be a WW/BM talent (after all, Chen had that ability as an ultimate in WC3 and he's a Brewmaster!) Brews should get Dave baseline, and Mists should get... Steve? baseline. (What's the serpent statue's name?) This can also tie into the above desire for utility buttons. I feel like WW's should get a Xuen statue but I can't think of what Xuen would do that isn't already covered by the spec's base abilities. Maybe just attach the WW's move speed buff (and increase to like 15-20%?) to the statue instead of making it part of the Monk? 20yd AOE, 10 sec cd, seems like it'd be a useful tool to have for raiding if nothing else.


I want to find the class fun, and DO find Mistweaver and Windwalker fun, but I've given up on Brewmaster. Celestalon said some worrying things, apparently, after a bit of Googling and apparently players had to fight tooth and nail to get them to admit that we needed something like Expel Harm... and even then, it's on the fucking GCD.

I've just shelved by Monk for the time being and boosted a Paladin instead. Sure, I'll be just one of a billion other Paladins... but there's a fucking reason there are so many. If devs really do play favorites, Paladin is definitely someone's favorite.