Digging these 4/26 changes to BrM (and WW to lesser extent)

[Saverem]

The BrMs changes looking real good.

They buffed all of our level 100 talents. I love that they made BoC also reduce BoS CD by 1s, coupled with the revert to 3s CD BoS it now means BoS has a 2s (pre-haste) CD with BoC. Awesome! On top of that the other 2 talents got a nice boost to keep up with BoC. I still think BoC is the go-to talent tho, especially with the BoS buff.

They reverted BoF back to 15s CD and made Spitfire replace our useless pet talent instead of Chi Burst. Great change over all.

I hope they keep these changes, the 13s CD BoS was just dumb.

WW also got a nice change with the Hit Combo nerf down to 6 stacks, but they buffed all of our damage by 5% to compensate. I like this change. It nerfs it a bit, makes it so messing it up isn't as big an issue to get stacks back up while overall keeping the damage about the same. Don't know why they nerfed our Xuen tho, that was lame. If their reasoning for the HC nerf was to get us to use the other 2 talents more, then why nerf one of the other 2 as well?

[Feesh]

I think the blackout combo change is a pretty great improvement, but the fact that spitfire is going to make our breath of fire relic trait weaker makes it seem like it'd be a damage loss over not even taking a talent which seems like a pretty glaring issue.

As for windwalker, going to try ignoring the numbers for now and assume they're just trying to balance out that tier, seemed reasonably balanced to me right now though, not quite sure what warranted the overhaul.

[stross01]

The BrMs changes looking real good.

They buffed all of our level 100 talents. I love that they made BoC also reduce BoS CD by 1s, coupled with the revert to 3s CD BoS it now means BoS has a 2s (pre-haste) CD with BoC. Awesome! On top of that the other 2 talents got a nice boost to keep up with BoC. I still think BoC is the go-to talent tho, especially with the BoS buff.

They reverted BoF back to 15s CD and made Spitfire replace our useless pet talent instead of Chi Burst. Great change over all.

I hope they keep these changes, the 13s CD BoS was just dumb.

Driving the value of the chest from its already absurd place to mountain-top relic status.

[Syphonfilter64]

Driving the value of the chest from its already absurd place to mountain-top relic status.

Sucks for the people who don't already have the legendary chestpiece, I already have it so I won't be touching spitfire anyway.
Otherwise looks like overall just null changes for good players, buffs for newer/lesser experienced players....

Gone are the days of finishing a heroic Nighthold clear with 20+ minutes of Ironskin Brew up though... uh well was fun while it lasted

[Tech614]

I fail to comprehend how anyone things getting rid of Niuzau for spitfire is good.

If anything Niuzau needs some love shown to him to be competitive so we can actually have on demand offensive burst in situations it will help. Replacing him with a half baked talent that is worthless with the optimal legendary setup is hilariously bad.

Replacing things that can be cool with a shitty ass passive is never a good thing. Ever. There is already enough lifeless passives in the tree. Let alone when you consider by time the patch comes out the amount of brewmasters with legendary chest are going to be higher then ever as they're dropping like rain.

[Grobovshik]

I think the blackout combo change is a pretty great improvement, but the fact that spitfire is going to make our breath of fire relic trait weaker makes it seem like it'd be a damage loss over not even taking a talent which seems like a pretty glaring issue.

Face palm relics is M+ only still, not even one in ToS.

[Mokuna]

Niuzao was competitive, the best talent in average in some situations (with killtimes close to 3:45 and 6:45 kills on ST), it wasn't played at all because of the dumb take it and repeat stuff going on forums and discords, and more generally because this raid was almost all cleave (no M fight is pure ST), and because people like to gamble on their luck for high parses, but it was definitely a solid choice in most situations and probably an improvement if you played suboptimally and didn't have an ideal brew gen

Spitfire replacing Chi wave would have been a great choice, it replacing niuzao just puts it in competition with a buffed rjw or special delivery, so it's straight up a damage loss, and on top of that not making it work with hot blooded just pushes the defensive benefit close to zero, even more accurately a defensive loss if you were to hold on your breath to have hot blooded when it's relevant

If anything having the chest is now way less relevant using combo with a 2 seconds cd blackout strike, you'll spend a tinier proportion of your combos on breath of fire, it's still relevant with high tolerance but if you're using high tolerance you're likely going defensive and the chest isn't the best defensive legendary in every situation (for example on botanist bracers/belt or bracers/ring is a more solid combo)

Another thing to note is this unlocks the possibility of a blackout strikes/tiger palm/keg smash only rotation (which obviously is only optimal for dps and brew gen), from quick shenanigans on a spreadsheet it would require around 34% haste to have that rotation on lock without holes on an average rng(that's without t19 4p and with 7/7fp relics)
That said i don't think this is worth it since breath of fire does a lot of damage and going to 34% haste is a big sacrifice(not to mention having a higher brew gen becomes less relevant when you can't stack it)

[Saverem]

Wait, Spitfire won't trigger Hot Blooded? Where did you hear this?

[Gorsameth]

Wait, Spitfire won't trigger Hot Blooded? Where did you hear this?

It still works, but Hot Blooded is only half as effective if you spec Spitfire (see PTR notes)

[Deleted]

These are some good changes. I just hope that they don't play too much with the fragile balance on brewmaster. It only takes a couple small errors in tweaking/changes to make us bottom tier for tanking. Likewise, if they go the opposite direction, its easy to make us OP. I'd not like to be the next Guardian Druid. (RIP Mark of Ursol, thank god Guardians are the default tank now).

[Saverem]

It still works, but Hot Blooded is only half as effective if you spec Spitfire (see PTR notes)

That's lame... Wellp, guess it's back to Special Delivery.

[Tech614]

Niuzao was competitive, the best talent in average in some situations (with killtimes close to 3:45 and 6:45 kills on ST),

That's not competitive. That's "good in very rare and specific situations". Niuzao should be the best talent for both AoE and single target burst. It should not be the best talent for sustained damage. Niuzao should be the go to talent when on demand burst dps is needed, but he wasn't.

But yea blizzard taking away an actual cool ability that plays into our class fantasy to give us a trap talent that makes one of your traits half as effective. Guess all those resources that went into making the model for him where well spent FailFish.

Edit: Looks like they realized how stupid this was and are scrapping spitfire and buffing Niuzao.

[Saverem]

WELLLLLLP: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...ge=21#post-408

To those of you who liked Niuzao, rejoice! Looks like they are scrapping Spitfire as a whole and going back to the Ox pet and buffing its damage.

They are also reverting the 2s BoS from BoC (BOOOO!) and cutting the overall effectiveness of Hot Blooded by half while increasing the DoT duration to twice as long. So basically, you can have the DoT up 100% of the time now, but it'll only reduce the damage you take by a maximum of 7% instead of the current 14%. This is an indirect nerf to the leggo chest.

[shade3891]

QUOTING CELESTION:

Spitfire - It's a fun playstyle option for people, but having both defensive (even without it being an increase to Hot Blooded, it's still more Elusive Brawler stacks) and offensive value (more Breath of Fires for damage), it's hard to fit it anywhere in the talent tree, and it complicates artifact trait values. We're going to just cut if for now (may return at some point in the future when it fits in better). Niuzao will return, and will simply deal more damage to make him competitive with the row.

Blackout Combo - Yeah, the 2sec rotation is problematic. Some people like the frantic gameplay, but we think other talent combinations deliver on that better anyway. The main problems with it are that it invalidates a ton of other talent choices, actually *reduces* rotational choice because you just combo everything instead of having to choose what you combo, causes energy capping issues, is a massive buff to the talent potentially upsetting talent balance, and is too fast-paced without any other contribution. We're going to return it to 3sec, where you can pair it with other GCD-filling talents to create the frantic playstyle if you prefer, without causing the above issues.

Hot Blooded and Dragonfire Brew - Baseline, Hot Blooded is very strong. 1% DR per bronze trait is already on the extremely strong side. The Legendary chest was created with Hot Blooded in mind as its defensive benefit. But that gets a little out of hand when we added 4th points to Bronzes, and you min/max relics, increasing it to the massively-OP level of 7% DR for a legendary. Then the 7.2.5 changes also add more Elusive Brawler stacks to that. We're going to adjust these two traits in order to better balance trait and legendary values: Dragonfire Brew will also increase the duration of Breath of Fire's DoT by 100%, giving it defensive value. Hot Blooded will now be active the whole time, instead of ~half the time without the Chest, and so is changing to 1% DR per point to compensate.

Overall Tuning - As always, overall tuning happens late in the process. Don't worry about overall power level of Brewmasters when giving feedback on these changes.

Why do they value Elusive Brawler stacks so much? Anyone knows? I am not even paying attention to it in game. I even do dare say: i can survive without them..

[stross01]

Why do they value Elusive Brawler stacks so much? Anyone knows? I am not even paying attention to it in game. I even do dare say: i can survive without them..

This is a joke, right?

It's not whether you're paying attention to it or not, but avoiding every other to every third melee attack is pretty huge.

[Syphonfilter64]

This is a joke, right?

It's not whether you're paying attention to it or not, but avoiding every other to every third melee attack is pretty huge.

No one is saying Elusive Dance isn't good, its just EVERYONE is saying the other 2 are better hands down. That is the problem.

Edit - Also the buff to Elusive Dance and High Tolerance just makes High Tolerance even BETTER than Elusive Dance... still

[sharteel]

You're confusing our mastery with the level 100 talent, man...
Anyway, windwalkers will still suck, brewmasters are getting raped because blizzard feels like changing things...why do I play this game?

[Deleted]

I think the Hot-blooded nerf is warranted. Considering that Thrash always felt quite OP as 100% uptime baked into the kit; I think 7% permanent uptime is good. I am unsure as to why they created Spitfire if they felt the Chest needed a nerf however. It'd be better to create a different talent around a different skill to function that way.

[Will]

You're confusing our mastery with the level 100 talent, man...
Anyway, windwalkers will still suck, brewmasters are getting raped because blizzard feels like changing things...why do I play this game?

Are you mad? Brewmasters are not getting raped at all. The other two 100 talents are getting buffed, armor and health is getting buffed, stagger is getting nerfed a bit, staggering around trait is getting buffed. Honestly, overall we're going to be stronger.

Also, on topic, if they are changing BoF like this, I hope the legendary chest gets changed to double the effectiveness of Hot Blooded. I mean, if you can achieve pretty much 100% BoF uptime without the chest then the chest loses its purpose. Being able to reset BoF quickly can be useful in dynamic situations where you've got adds coming in sporadically as it helps not only pick them up, but get the DR applied quickly, but for the bulk of content this seriously weakens the tunic to the point where I'm happy to use the stagger ring or transcendence helm. Or maybe the soothing sash. ATM on live I run wrists/chest almost exclusively, only time you don't need wrist in nighthold is on augur or krosus really.

[Deleted]

Are you mad? Brewmasters are not getting raped at all. The other two 100 talents are getting buffed, armor and health is getting buffed, stagger is getting nerfed a bit, staggering around trait is getting buffed. Honestly, overall we're going to be stronger.

Also, on topic, if they are changing BoF like this, I hope the legendary chest gets changed to double the effectiveness of Hot Blooded. I mean, if you can achieve pretty much 100% BoF uptime without the chest then the chest loses its purpose. Being able to reset BoF quickly can be useful in dynamic situations where you've got adds coming in sporadically as it helps not only pick them up, but get the DR applied quickly, but for the bulk of content this seriously weakens the tunic to the point where I'm happy to use the stagger ring or transcendence helm. Or maybe the soothing sash. ATM on live I run wrists/chest almost exclusively, only time you don't need wrist in nighthold is on augur or krosus really.

Well the issue there, is that the chest will still be a dps gain with the cd reduction. If you want something more defensive you can use additional leggos. I still am chasing the chest dream even with these changes and that's purely cause i'm a scumbag dps