Brewmaster: does it get better?

[Tallens]

This is where the brewmaster to me seem to be doing well (I'm a ~853 iLevel Brewmaster currently clearing out Emerald Nightmare on Heroic):
- Solo Leveling : Perfect
- Solo Elites: No problem
- Solo Elite rares : you die if you havn't got more people with you, just die, you don't have enough dps/cooldowns to keep yourself alive.
- Normal Dungeons : Perfect
- Heroic Dungeons : Great
- Mythic Dungeons : Somewhat ok, we have good speed
- Mythic+ Dungeons : Most of the dungeons fights are about movement and placement and you're good at that, those few sledgehammers that can delete you are few, and you're still somewhat good here, though you're still subpar to the other tanks.
- LFR EN: haha... I wont even comment this is so easy a dead parrot could tank this.
- Normal EN: You're doing okey, some fights you take a beating
- Heroic EN: The bosses with a lot of movement are good, but once you meet the freightrains (Ursoc, Cenarios), you're F'ed you take so much damage no matter what you do, how you do it, and you just get absolutely deleted in a panic situation.
- Mythic EN: I don't know if any Monk tanks are even considered for this,

At some point you'll realize that every other tank is better than you, even at soloing content (you'll find that even the new flavor of the month - the DH is better at taking elite rare mobs - alone), when that realization hits you, you feel like you are failing the team, that you can't do more to perform better, except hope for better gear - and here's the kicker, it doesn't really matter with better gear... - what you say? no.. because you're the most binary of all the tanks, and the result is always "you still take the damage" and that damage still needs to be healed - unlike the DH you can't heal it back yourself and help the healers, unlike the DK you can't just heal yourself, unlike the Druid you don't have Massives of cooldowns and HP, and unlike the Warrior and Paladin (which is so boring btw) you can't just mitigate the hell out of it.

This is of course all my own personal experience and feeling about the class - I really really love my monk, I love that I'm the only monk in town (guild), but I'm also aware that I'm the _only_ monk player I know who plays both Mistweaver and Brewmaster (I hate DPS I'm told that the DPS monk is on top of his game in this expansion, i wish all 3 specs had the same epic feel).

I'm very curious as what the developers think is the "right way" of playing the Brewmaster, I might personally be stuck in the past with some abilities, but that doesn't change the fact that - either it's the other tanks that needs to be re-balanced to be as stressful as the monk, or the monk that needs to be re-balanced to be less stressful is still to be seen.

The monk is stressful to tank, and stressful to heal, stick to dungeons and all will be good, and you'll enjoy the class fully.

//Tallens'out

[Prawnapple]

Disappointed cause I was up to the 6000 artifact power level.

6k AP is nothing, friend. I need 85k for my next level and i'm already 1 bar in

[Tallens]

6k AP is nothing, friend. I need 85k for my next level and i'm already 1 bar in

The AP-Game is real!

Grind a day keeps the raid leader happy!

/(/Tallens'out

[Snackwiches]

6k AP is nothing, friend. I need 85k for my next level and i'm already 1 bar in

I need 105k, I hate this shit

[Helander]

I doubt you're tanking it "no problem". unless you're what playing with people who are all 870 gear, 8+ the damage is very spiky, even at a 7+ I was seeing a brm dying alot.

I mean the group was ok I guess, top dps was only doing 212k on bosses, trash different story. It honestly wasn't that bad, the healer never bitched and his mana was at reasonable levels the whole time. We just barely missed the timer too, but wtvs well get it next time. All I'm sayin is BM is not as bad as everyone thinks, yes we are behind the other tanks but we can still hold our own on anything that isn't mythic EN at current average iLvls.

[mrboh]

To follow up on my initial experience, I think healer level had a lot to do with how badly things went first time around, possibly due to instance scaling? My first run was with a 105 resto druid who just couldn't keep me up. I went a second round, this time with a 108 holy paladin, and things were much smoother (well, we finished the instance without wiping at least). I still felt like I took a lot of damage and I found the lack of control over damage intake difficult to handle - I managed to keep nearly 100% uptime for ISB but that just meant staring at a health bar that kept on going down at a steady rate and hoping that the healer got their heals off in time. I really enjoyed BrM back in MoP but this current incarnation doesn't feel anywhere near as pleasant to play.

Total stagger damage taken on boss fights was around 65-75% - is that a reasonable figure?

[LordAmbrosia]

I'm hopeful that Blizz will fix the spec some time before the expansion ends. I remember beginning of WoD BrMs were pretty shit and by the 2nd raid tier they were one of the best tanks. But that is mostly because of the encounters and how they favored tank mobility and Guard... So we'll see.

Brew was awesome in Highmaul, arguably the strongest tank. I had a lot of fun playing it. I don't like what Blizz did with brew in Legion, guard was fun and I loved Stagger as a mastery that you could stack high. Disappointing.

[Thelxi]

Your experience really depends on the healer, unlike the other tanks that can to some extent manage themselves.

[Dakiri]

Your experience really depends on the healer, unlike the other tanks that can to some extent manage themselves.

Even more than that, I think you need to build a relationship with your healer. Consistently running with the same healer and getting good synergy with them is very important for BrM, in a way that doesn't really need to exist for other tanks. I'm lucky in that I have a very stable 5 man group to do all of our mythic + runs with, and my holy priest has gotten way better at understanding how I work. We both know the limits the other has, and so we can handle dungeons a lot easier. It kind of sucks if you don't have a healer friend, but it does feel really good to work together like that.

Our group is all in the 850s and we've tackled up to +7 with little tank healing related problems. I haven't raided as BrM so I can't speak to that, but our kit in 5 mans is solid enough - we have great tools to deal with big trash pulls between stun/artifact weapon/fortifying brew. It'd be nice to be able to mitigate more damage, but I like the spec enough that hopefully they continue with just numbers tweaking/QoL and no overhauls.

[danieltang34]

Mythic7~9 isn't a good benchmark imo
These contents are already being farmed in the group finder
No one would bring a brm to push 10+ or even 13+ and that's the problem
Being able to tank through something that's already being farmed by dungeon finder pugs doesn't prove brm is in a fair spot
Let's be honest who would bring a brm if u wanna push your mythic+ limit?
I'm 870+ and I get invites for most mythic+ below 9 no problem, but no one wants me when i wanna push further and that alone is a huge problem

[Saverem]

Brew was awesome in Highmaul, arguably the strongest tank. I had a lot of fun playing it. I don't like what Blizz did with brew in Legion, guard was fun and I loved Stagger as a mastery that you could stack high. Disappointing.

I just find it weird that they removed Guard from Monk because it was too good and then went ahead and buffed it and gave it to Warriors...

- - - Updated - - -

This is where the brewmaster to me seem to be doing well (I'm a ~853 iLevel Brewmaster currently clearing out Emerald Nightmare on Heroic):
- Solo Leveling : Perfect
- Solo Elites: No problem
- Solo Elite rares : you die if you havn't got more people with you, just die, you don't have enough dps/cooldowns to keep yourself alive.
- Normal Dungeons : Perfect
- Heroic Dungeons : Great
- Mythic Dungeons : Somewhat ok, we have good speed
- Mythic+ Dungeons : Most of the dungeons fights are about movement and placement and you're good at that, those few sledgehammers that can delete you are few, and you're still somewhat good here, though you're still subpar to the other tanks.
- LFR EN: haha... I wont even comment this is so easy a dead parrot could tank this.
- Normal EN: You're doing okey, some fights you take a beating
- Heroic EN: The bosses with a lot of movement are good, but once you meet the freightrains (Ursoc, Cenarios), you're F'ed you take so much damage no matter what you do, how you do it, and you just get absolutely deleted in a panic situation.
- Mythic EN: I don't know if any Monk tanks are even considered for this,

Could have just said that the more challenging the content becomes, the shittier BrMs become in comparison with the other tanks.

I'm guessing right now, 99% of the BrMs MTing heroic EN are the ones that are close friends or long established members/officers of a guild. And that guild's focus is less advancement and more about having fun with buddies because I just don't see how ANY guild trying to advance through H/M EN right now would actively recruit a BrM over any other tank in the game.


Hell, it's hard to see guilds actively recruiting WWs/MWs right now too because they don't bring anything any other DPS/healer brings. They can be recruited under the banner of "guild LF melee DPS/healer" but I have yet to see them being asked for specifically by a raiding guild "Guild LF WW/MW". There just isn't a reason to bring a Monk at all to any raids, where as there is a reason to bring a Druid, Pally, or Shaman.

[LordAmbrosia]

There just isn't a reason to bring a Monk at all to any raids, where as there is a reason to bring a Druid, Pally, or Shaman.

Having one windwalker for the move speed is pretty nice. I would go out of my way to recruit one with the legendary ring, especially. 25% passive MS is crazy good.

[Saverem]

I would go out of my way to recruit one with the legendary ring.

Something is majorly wrong when your class' worth depends on you being super lucky with an item drop...

[Deleted]

Having one windwalker for the move speed is pretty nice. I would go out of my way to recruit one with the legendary ring, especially. 25% passive MS is crazy good.

10 yards range

the effect of that ring is really overstated and very situational.

[racenutz]

- Solo Leveling : Perfect
- Solo Elites: No problem
- Solo Elite rares : you die if you havn't got more people with you, just die, you don't have enough dps/cooldowns to keep yourself alive.
- Normal Dungeons : Perfect
- Heroic Dungeons : Great

I've returned to the game after several years off. I did heroic raiding in ICC and have no interest in doing it again. This expansion I'm playing with my girlfriend who is new to the game but is shaping up into an excellent player. She is a resto Druid. So far this is the content we play. After she learned that it's fine for me to be ~35% health we clear everything with no issues & have a ton of fun playing. That is what this (and all) games are about, having fun.

- Mythic Dungeons : Somewhat ok, we have good speed
- Mythic+ Dungeons : Most of the dungeons fights are about movement and placement and you're good at that, those few sledgehammers that can delete you are few, and you're still somewhat good here, though you're still subpar to the other tanks.
- LFR EN: haha... I wont even comment this is so easy a dead parrot could tank this.
- Normal EN: You're doing okey, some fights you take a beating
- Heroic EN: The bosses with a lot of movement are good, but once you meet the freightrains (Ursoc, Cenarios), you're F'ed you take so much damage no matter what you do, how you do it, and you just get absolutely deleted in a panic situation.
- Mythic EN: I don't know if any Monk tanks are even considered for this,

I've done one Darkheart Thicket on Mythic. I don't know if that place is especially tough but for sure my monk was really taking a beating. We made it though but the difficulty level definitely went way up. I could see BrM falling behind the curve as content gets higher. My experience is of course anecdotal but we don't have any desires to play higher level content than we are now.

[Tellof]

10 yards range

the effect of that ring is really overstated and very situational.

It's really not. Yes, it's a 10 yard range, but it also leaves a 10 sec buff on anyone that leaves that range. It's really useful for shaving off time between packs in Mythic+, it's awesome for getting melee and tanks out of ground damage, and it lets melee DPS stick to moving targets easier. All of those things are valuable.

Source: I have the ring.

---------------------------------
Back to the OP topic:
I just started playing Brew last night as something to do when I'm playing without my friends as opposed to playing an alt, and I have to say that as fun as Brew is to play rotation-wise, I feel very weak in the mitigation and self-healing dept. Sure, I can peel off large chunks of stagger damage, but that damage represents previous damage that was taken to the face already... other classes get front-loaded mitigation, absorption, or self heal, and we have to just eat stuff and hope that we have stacks to strip it off. I don't feel like gift of the ox comes out frequently enough on bosses to be reliable self heal, and healing elixir doesn't feel like a low enough cooldown to really matter for sustained healing. Am I missing something here? Feels like we take a lot of damage even though we're "viable".

[Reji]

Brewmaster is by far my favorite tank to play...but it is so lacking in love that it makes me sad. I am sure the blizzard will buff it soon.

[Tellof]

Brewmaster is by far my favorite tank to play...but it is so lacking in love that it makes me sad. I am sure the blizzard will buff it soon.

I think it would be cool if they did something which would passively mitigate some of the stagger damage... like allow stagger ticks to be dodged or have a small chance to instead heal you. I don't like that if you have really high stagger you're basically looking at a death sentence if the healer can't keep up and there's a large boss hit coming. It also feels real bad if you don't have any stacks.

[Deleted]

Reading 7.1 patchnotes we masters of the brews get a + 15% armor buff & Brew-stache buffed from 1.5 sec to 4.5 sec dodge.

Will this be enough to get us up there with the rest? I guess it's a step in the right direction and we might already be there.

[Extremities]

Reading 7.1 patchnotes we masters of the brews get a + 15% armor buff & Brew-stache buffed from 1.5 sec to 4.5 sec dodge.

Will this be enough to get us up there with the rest? I guess it's a step in the right direction and we might already be there.

I am wondering the same thing. Is a 15% armor buff really all that much? It doesn't sound like much and the Brew-stache buff, well I don't know about that one either. What's everyones thoughts on these two buffs?