Brewmaster: does it get better?

[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.

At the moment druid is arguably the best tank, and they took an adjustment with 7.1 in 4 % less damage reduction from thick hide (6% with legendary) as well as rage generation from moonfire.

Where Brewmasters got a stagger buff a few weeks back and now around a 4% dmg reduction buff plus making brewstache quite usefeul.

So all else equal we have definitely closed the gap on druids quite a bit. The other tanks remained largely the same save for a few things like DKs getting icebound fortitude again, pallies charges on shorter cooldown etc.

All in all I am happy with the changes, especially Brewstache, considering you use a brew probably around every ~8/9secs this is basically 10% more dodge around 50% of the time.

[nerf shaman]

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.

Imagine if Celestial Fortune was "every tick of stagger has a chance equal to your crit chance to heal you instead of damage you."

That would be sick, but probably op. I also think it is really lame that purifying brew only purifies half of your stagger, while sharing charges with ironskin. It just makes the entire stagger mechanic feel weak and awful to play.

The biggest issue with brew though is that in this expac they gave every other tank in the game reliable tools to self sustain, and they took brew's tools to do the same away. It just doesn't make any sense

[Deleted]

Imagine if Celestial Fortune was "every tick of stagger has a chance equal to your crit chance to heal you instead of damage you."

That would be sick, but probably op. I also think it is really lame that purifying brew only purifies half of your stagger, while sharing charges with ironskin. It just makes the entire stagger mechanic feel weak and awful to play.

The biggest issue with brew though is that in this expac they gave every other tank in the game reliable tools to self sustain, and they took brew's tools to do the same away. It just doesn't make any sense

I like the idea and opness could be mitigate by going with a "every tick of Stagger has a chance to heal you for 50% of the damage value instead of damaging you" this would also give the ability a knob that they can turn to tune it properly if it proves too powerful

[nerf shaman]

I like the idea and opness could be mitigate by going with a "every tick of Stagger has a chance to heal you for 50% of the damage value instead of damaging you" this would also give the ability a knob that they can turn to tune it properly if it proves too powerful

On second thought I'm not sure if I really like my idea. It interacts negatively with purifying brew, and both ironskin brew and purifying brew should feel really impactful when you press them. I really do think celestial fortune needs to be reworked to be a self healing tool though.

Also the more I think about the armor and brewstache buffs the less I like them. Brewstache just cuts into ironskin/purifying brew's power budget, while providing an effect that doesn't inherently feel powerful. Armor also cuts into brm's power budget as a whole while not providing anything active or fun. I would rather they make stronger active effects than give brm's small little armor/dodge buffs. If they could free up the power budget by getting rid of lame little things like brewstache and armor % to make purifying brew 100% purify again, or make mastery a dodge chance that doesn't reset every time you successfully dodge, it would make these things feel better to have/use.

[Dakiri]

I think thematically, our mastery should have still interacted with stagger - maybe it could have increased the power of purifying brew? Obviously that would have had to be done very carefully or you run into some crazy diminishing returns situations or a point where BrM becomes a god.

Or mastery could have interacted with Expel Harm/Orbs. Every orb also provides 10% of its value as an shield, increased by mastery. We get to keep a taste of Guard without it being the only important part of the kit like in WoD. Of course they added in the live Expel Harm too late to change around the whole spec like that.

Our current mastery could have been based on crit instead, turning it into a critical dodge kind of thing. Celestial Fortune should have just been a non-random passive - it's weird that the whole BrM spec is based on taking smooth consistent damage and then there's a talent that means we can take wildly different amounts of healing.

[Prostatus]

On second thought I'm not sure if I really like my idea. It interacts negatively with purifying brew, and both ironskin brew and purifying brew should feel really impactful when you press them. I really do think celestial fortune needs to be reworked to be a self healing tool though.

You could get around the negative interaction by changing it to "every tick of stagger has an X% chance to spawn a healing orb". This would just piggyback off existing mechanics and give them a tuning knob as well as potentially tying it into something affected by mastery.

[nerf shaman]

I think thematically, our mastery should have still interacted with stagger - maybe it could have increased the power of purifying brew?

I could see that being decent, but I could see finding a sweet spot for it being a nightmare. I also think it would be kinda strange for an entire mastery to be based around the effectiveness of a single button that shares charges with another button.

Thematically blizzard struck gold with brewmaster and its mastery last expac. Dodge/parry tanks in every game always struggle to find balance because they are either taking 0 damage or fat damage. The stagger % as a mastery idea was a brilliant way to counter the downside of an evasion based tank. As a tier progresses and enemies get harder, you stack more mastery on your gear to counter the bigger and bigger hits. It was a great system. Unfortunately they had ridiculous utility, self absorbs, and mitigation, and blizzard overnerfed them.

The new mastery, dodge that disappears every time you dodge, on a tank that is supposed to constantly dodge just feels terrible. I don't have access to the ptr, but I can't see that mastery scaling very well into the expac either. They need to bring back a strong, scaling mastery, and make celestial fortune a solid, meaningful self heal/absorb. This would give back the identity of a dodge/parry based evasion tank, and allow them to scale properly into the tier.

You could get around the negative interaction by changing it to "every tick of stagger has an X% chance to spawn a healing orb". This would just piggyback off existing mechanics and give them a tuning knob as well as potentially tying it into something affected by mastery.

This works nicely with the current purifying brew because the size of the stagger ticks don't matter. Much better than my original idea.

[Saverem]

I think Brew-stache just became BrM's best golden trait with it's 7.1 buff. 4.5s 10% dodge translates to it being up about half of the time now.

[Deleted]

You could get around the negative interaction by changing it to "every tick of stagger has an X% chance to spawn a healing orb". This would just piggyback off existing mechanics and give them a tuning knob as well as potentially tying it into something affected by mastery.

You could also base the rate of orbs spawning based on stagger level, green lower chance and red higher rate of orbs spawning.

This could provide interesting game mechanics in which you can loosely better prepare your orbs by allowing the stagger to build up before a large hit and clense just before the hit and heal back up.

Which si what expel harm is suppose to do and fails at severly.

[Deleted]

Played my monk to almost all traits (missing 3-4 - don't remember) and 865ilvl. Tanked M+ up to 7 with my guildies - they raid, I don't.
Leveled my DK, then drood, then pala - all in tank specs - meanwhile. Mained BDK in WoD. Played prot pala and bear as alt tanks.

My monk can tank all I need it to. It has a reliable 45sec aoe stun and 2 interrupts for thrash, one of which can be used as good cc.
My monk tank is crap in self heal but it's superb in movement. When I played other tanks, I missed the roll-out-of-stuff possibility on demand. Especially as DK.
My monk is missing a deathgrip from DK and a ticking aoe dot from DK/drood/pala. Makes thrash management harder.
My monk is most fun to play out of them all at the same time being more squishy than the others.
After helping myself to some artifact traits which give dmg reduction, it's very smooth to tank regular dmg. It's crap at enduring a heavy regular beating (IGNORE PAIN!) or healing myself up when above 30-40%hp (BDK!). Expel Harm with 5 spheres is great, but no healer wants to go into that hell

Tbh if my DK had the gear my monk has + some external movement CDs (i.e. someone's Tiger's Lust) it would be easier to play it more than 5 seconds into a fight (to get Boneshield charges). BDK suffers from the lack of good defensive CDs that are not part of regular rotation (brew management + leg sweep + artifact ability for BM), but is still easier to play for the content I am interested in.
If my Pala had the same gear he would be much easier to play, even having the almost same ability (but different name and visuals) to get out of stuff quickly. Add on top the incredible array of defensive CDs a prot pala has + how many interrupts he brings + utility the BM simply does NOT have. No matter talent choice.
If my bear had the same gear ... I actually ran a few ENs and M+ with a similarily geared bear and warrior from my guild. Bear has half the abilities to manage, to achieve the same results as monk + can spec into talents with way more utility and thrash management.

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The reason I stick to my monk is that it's most fun and challenging to play really. To go into challenging content and hear over TS that it's been a good run. To combine Leg Sweep with a DHs aoe stun with shammies aoe stuns etc. to manage everything without issues. To zoomzoom across instances with Chi Torpedo

Then again ... I can do just the same as WW, achieve good results and have less of a challenge. If I could create my own most favourite class, I would merge resto druid with WW monk and prot pala, so I would have all I want. Fun, results and possibilities. For now playing a BM monk means to be VERY careful about rotation, choices, not screwing resources and CDs ...
It's a little like playing a boomkin for many expansions before (and now as well, I hear?). You CAN achieve results, it's just not as forgiving and easy as it is for others (hunters' dmg with 4-5 abilities mashing anyone?).

Sry for doublepost, but I had proxy issues with posting a bigger note.

[Tellof]

I dropped my Brew completely and just stick to running WW with friends in Mythic+. Whenever I want to tank I stick to Warrior or Druid now, and I feel like both have much better on-demand mitigation and self sustainability. Overall I just feel so much more durable and healers generally need to do less to keep me topped off.

[Targom]

My monk can tank all I need it to. It has a reliable 45sec aoe stun and 2 interrupts for thrash, one of which can be used as good cc.
My monk tank is crap in self heal but it's superb in movement. When I played other tanks, I missed the roll-out-of-stuff possibility on demand. Especially as DK.

Tbh if my DK had the gear my monk has + some external movement CDs (i.e. someone's Tiger's Lust) it would be easier to play it more than 5 seconds into a fight (to get Boneshield charges).

I think this pretty much is the reason I prefer to WW for M+, as BRM I don't have the utility of other tanks and can't really be provided it by someone else. As WW I can enable other tanks by giving them a lot of the same utilities that BRMs have such as Tiger's Lust/Leg Sweep. Additionally in my experience pug dps are not going to pull numbers close to what I do as WW. So if I go as BRM I have less utility, the pug dps that is taking my WW spot is probably going to do 50-100k less dps over the entire run, and I have to put a large amount of effort into tanking since WW is largely muscle memory for me from raiding. The only thing I like about being BRM in M+ is I'm in control of the pace and can push the pace. If I was willing to level/gear my paladin I think I would enjoy tanking M+ more because then I could control the pace and have more utility. But at this point it'd take months for my Paladin to catch up compared to if I just keep going on my monk.

[Shangxi]

I think a little alteration to our mastery making it give x% of dodge depending our current stagger level might make for a more interesting interaction between mastery and... well... everything else in our kit.

[spiritsurge]

From a healer point of view I hate Brewmaster Monks. For whatever reason every Brewmaster i've had this xpac for heroic and reg mythic dungeons has just wanted to pull everything super hard non stop as if purposely trying to get themselves killed so they can try blame me as a Disc priest for "being a shitty healing spec."

Overall I'd say i'm not thrilled when I get grouped with one.

[Deleted]

From a healer point of view I hate Brewmaster Monks. For whatever reason every Brewmaster i've had this xpac for heroic and reg mythic dungeons has just wanted to pull everything super hard non stop as if purposely trying to get themselves killed so they can try blame me as a Disc priest for "being a shitty healing spec."

Overall I'd say i'm not thrilled when I get grouped with one.

I made the opposite experience as BRM tank. I main heal with WW as second spec and then I thought to myself "i want to try BRM". So I pushed my artifact a bit and then went in with a healer friend into mythics+karazhan. His feedback to my question how hard it is to heal me was something like this: "90% of my heals go into keeping dps alive. You get almost no damage at all."

Well, to be fair, he's a druid heal and his hots are perfect to counterheal stagger damage.

[Detroit11294]

From a healer point of view I hate Brewmaster Monks. For whatever reason every Brewmaster i've had this xpac for heroic and reg mythic dungeons has just wanted to pull everything super hard non stop as if purposely trying to get themselves killed so they can try blame me as a Disc priest for "being a shitty healing spec."

Overall I'd say i'm not thrilled when I get grouped with one.

I play mistweaver and brewmaster...leaning more towards brewmaster these days. I find that you are making a pretty bold claim. I, for one, have been told numerous times by healers that I was incredibly easy to heal, I pace myself well, and they would be glad to heal me again. On the other token, seeing as how I healed for the first month or so of the expansion, I find tanks, regardless of class,do the same things you just detailed. They are either shitty players who don't know their own limits or they are impatient and expect groups with an average ilvl of 840-860 to actually do their job and keep up with them. To make a statement such as "They blame me for being a shitty healing spec" could perhaps relate to your performance. I have tanked for disc priests and we did just fine. The hardest part of healing isn't keeping the tank alive, imo. It is generally making up for the poor positioning/performance of group members taking avoidable damage.

Who knows. All I know is, the handful of brewmasters that I have had tank for me were great. The spec is really in short supply...and I tend to find brewmasters who actually do mythic+ tend to know what they are doing.

[BeardedMagician]

From a healer point of view I hate Brewmaster Monks. For whatever reason every Brewmaster i've had this xpac for heroic and reg mythic dungeons has just wanted to pull everything super hard non stop as if purposely trying to get themselves killed so they can try blame me as a Disc priest for "being a shitty healing spec."

Overall I'd say i'm not thrilled when I get grouped with one.

flames brewmaster because of some bad apples.... As a disc player you should probably not spread bad karma around about the "underdog" specs. I prove myself to groups I join by doing a good job. I ask you please not group us together.

[Zene]

flames brewmaster because of some bad apples.... As a disc player you should probably not spread bad karma around about the "underdog" specs. I prove myself to groups I join by doing a good job. I ask you please not group us together.

Honestly. It's empirical and anecdotal evidence. Your results may vary. BUT one of the points of these forums are to open up people to the larger population of generally better players than the average pugs and randos you find in LFR. ie. the hero puller tanks who think they are godly because the last group had some super well geared dps classes that did great aoe, but this time they don't. But guess what this group is different and they need to understand whats doable and whats not with the CURRENT group.

Do players who play multiple specs, dps melee, dps range, healers, tank perform better? Yes. Is it a requirement? No. But they have seen fights from multiple angles so they understand things like:
-Should I mark a Skull on the healer NPC in the group as a priority kill target?
-Should I say i'm going to interrupt the dude who aoe fears on the left so everyone else can interrupt the one on the right?
-Does the healer need time to drink before the next pull? He's at 20% mana that might be low, he's at 70% mana thats probably enough to keep going.
-Should I line of sight so the mobs are grouped up.
-Can pull the next 2 packs together and aoe them down because we have aoe stuns in the group.
Just to name a few.

This reminds me of the Preach gaming video about "standing out - be the man" here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=710PW1thQkc). The concept that "things go smoother/better with you there". You're not doing anything to stand out. But hey everytime we run together, things are just naturally smoother.

A tank has the most potential to influence how successful a run will be. They set the pace, the tone. If they know what to pull to hit that 100% more effectively in a M+, how fast to pull and when to chain pull vs when not to, when to pull mobs back because someone inevitably aggros the patrol, etc. all these things contribute to a much better run. Thats why it sucks when you can't trust rando tanks and end up tanking in BrM eventhough you feel like you bring so much more to that table as WW /end rant

[spiritsurge]

flames brewmaster because of some bad apples.... As a disc player you should probably not spread bad karma around about the "underdog" specs. I prove myself to groups I join by doing a good job. I ask you please not group us together.

I was just giving my point of view from the bad experiences i've had so far, I never said brewmaster was bad or all brewmasters are bad, simply that I haven't had a good time with one yet. And when I have a hard time from what they've done the first thing said is "why are you playing disc? It's not even viable"

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I play mistweaver and brewmaster...leaning more towards brewmaster these days. I find that you are making a pretty bold claim. I, for one, have been told numerous times by healers that I was incredibly easy to heal, I pace myself well, and they would be glad to heal me again. On the other token, seeing as how I healed for the first month or so of the expansion, I find tanks, regardless of class,do the same things you just detailed. They are either shitty players who don't know their own limits or they are impatient and expect groups with an average ilvl of 840-860 to actually do their job and keep up with them. To make a statement such as "They blame me for being a shitty healing spec" could perhaps relate to your performance. I have tanked for disc priests and we did just fine. The hardest part of healing isn't keeping the tank alive, imo. It is generally making up for the poor positioning/performance of group members taking avoidable damage.

Who knows. All I know is, the handful of brewmasters that I have had tank for me were great. The spec is really in short supply...and I tend to find brewmasters who actually do mythic+ tend to know what they are doing.

Well I did say this was my personal point of view from what i've experienced so far. If you actually read what I said you'll see that I also mentioned how the Brewmaster's i've had pulled extremely hard and as fast as possible which is likely why they give me trouble, and I wouldn't have even mentioned the "why are you even playing disc?" thing if I hadn't heard it every time they get way ahead of me and die before I can even cast.

Idk why everyone seems to think i'm saying "It's a fact Brewmaster is bad no matter what" when from the very beginning I specified that it was going to be from my personal point of view.

[AetherMcLoud]

I play mistweaver and brewmaster...leaning more towards brewmaster these days. I find that you are making a pretty bold claim. I, for one, have been told numerous times by healers that I was incredibly easy to heal, I pace myself well, and they would be glad to heal me again. On the other token, seeing as how I healed for the first month or so of the expansion, I find tanks, regardless of class,do the same things you just detailed. They are either shitty players who don't know their own limits or they are impatient and expect groups with an average ilvl of 840-860 to actually do their job and keep up with them. To make a statement such as "They blame me for being a shitty healing spec" could perhaps relate to your performance. I have tanked for disc priests and we did just fine. The hardest part of healing isn't keeping the tank alive, imo. It is generally making up for the poor positioning/performance of group members taking avoidable damage.

Who knows. All I know is, the handful of brewmasters that I have had tank for me were great. The spec is really in short supply...and I tend to find brewmasters who actually do mythic+ tend to know what they are doing.

This. Every single pugged healer in mythic and m+ dungeons told me that I was great to heal, and easier to heal than other tank classes too since my damage intake was regular and predictable. Most healers prefer predictable damage intake while maybe taking a bit more damage overall, over a bit less damage taken but extremely spikey damage. Mana isn't really a problem for healers so far either.