Brewmaster feedback

[Deleted]

Edit 4 may, path 15657

I update brewmaster feedback with the evoution of patches.

Overall: The evolution seems goods considering the fun. New mecanism (automatic stagger for exmple) open new form and fun form of tanking and various thing seems testes to see how it goes (increase parry for example.) When you play the fun increase and you get more and more the feeling to tank (because the passive mitigation has been modified). However some questions remain and some thing seems to not work properly (stagger stacking)

I will not describe the spell, there is a sticky that resume them better than i could do. If you discover the class and with some spell description you can go to read it before. I will just resume some thing and debate about some ask that i have about.

-chi generation have three forms:


-keg smash
-jab
-expel Harm

With a 30% buff in energy regen in new patch you really feel different, and chi generation becomes easiest, so the 1s brewmaster GCD is really used

Still the question with expel harm allowing chi generation outside fight. I think something that will allow brewmaster to refill chi outside fight directly like chi brew could be best.

Waiting 1mn to cast four expel harm can be annoying for the same

-abilities

-Stagger: Now you automaticly stagger. Baiscly with some mastery in my premade 85 monk, the brewmaster stagger 36% of the damage and take so 64% directly.

Since you get lower armor, you take basicly same amount directly than another tank with better armor.

For a short comparaison:
100k on a paladin will make 85k with the -15% passive of sanctuary, and 34k taken with a 60% armor mitigation
100K on the brewmaster will result in 80k with the -20% stance effect, than 56k by the 30% armor. Stagger effect will than be something like 36k directly take and 20k delayed

The idea is that the automatic stagger negate spike damage possibility.

Also you feel now really that you stagger some damage. I will write more about stagger after seeing some othe abilities

-Black out Kick

Now add very powerfullbuff: add 20% to the stagger part (so becoming 56%) for 6s, and 30% parry chance;

- Tiger palm, elusive brew, purifying brews, guards doesn’t change (but guards is no more in mastery)


New stagger mecanism is nice but currently you feel that it can’t stack so much. (Didn’t get any feedback that some have get the experience of a medium or high level of stagger)

They are obviously several reasons:

-With parry BOK buff, you go over 50% passive avoidance so you are hit less often

-You can even usive 50% dodge bonus for 10s with elusive brew and so are immune to physical hit with the added BOK bonus. And since stagger last for 10s, you clear it.

-Purifying brew is on 6s CD and also chi generation are much better, and you can use it more often without get the impress to sacrifice some other part of the defense

-Stagger is a 10s timer, so it’s quite short


-some debate about stagger

Lets take some hypothese for the brewmaster (that could be wrong of course)

-better stamina bonus
-a better passive avoidance (certainly too high in the current test but it look the good direction)
-but when you are hit you seems supposed to take potentialy more (direct+stagger DOT)
->the passive stagger effect seems here so the Brewmaster would not take more than another tank in a short time (spike damage, particulary in long fight raid)
->also it take some more damage form a stagger dot that the brewmaster is suppose to manage (three level, gree, yellow, red)


I think it can’t works properly because stagger timer is too short

If one of the brewmaster concept is to manage with its stagger dot, we can suppose that during the lenght of the fight stagger should increase.

several thing can be made

-increase timer (30s for example will alow multiplr stack more easely)

-Make a mecanism to dissociate the DOT tick and the stagger purge: i mean in my limited english, you take 100 stagger damage frome the tick but stagger overall damage decrease only 50 , next tick you will take 95 (and not 90)
It can be a not good idea, it just an idea

Than brewmaster could have some tool to manage it:

-guards: with stagger concept, guards will peharps fit more with the brewmaster with something like sacred shield concept: a 30s duration but with an absorb amount by 6s (can be 4s, 8s, just to get an idea)

-Intent to let stagger in the green level
There can be a sinergy in the guards scaling for example that will make brewmaster interest to keep stagger in the green level because it will buff more the guards than the stagger damage during the 30s for example.

When stagger grow too much (yellow level or higher) that will indicate that stagger increase but don’t buff anymore the guards capacity, overall the buff granted still better than the stagger reached (because there will be a cap limit, a % of the brewmaster health for example )
Stagger will become red when another critic limit of the stagger DOT is reached. (the dot bypass the bonus granted, it means that is time to clear it)

Guards will absorb of course another source of damage but it will atenuate them to compensate the stagger mecanism.

Than purifying brew would be used. Could be used early also but that will not be to the monk advantage.


Just some idea

For the rest, spinning crane Kick costing only energy is fine. Also with the energy regen you can use them without pause, i don’t know if it is the final intent or not.

[Brewjin]

You pretty much sum'd it up, Brewmaster is definitely a fun spec, just hoping it won't change dramatically from this point, I like the monk class and was thinking of going WW come live but Brewmaster is starting to really grow on me!

[Feelsgood]

I fully agree with TS. It would be nice to chi slowly recovered out of combat, to begin fight with boss or trash, less expensive on energy and more safety for monk as tank.

-Breath of Fire: as for me it must be cone AoE, because now it ignites all enemies in front of you but it seems not affect some targets for me...

And chi regeneration must be more faster with some spells.

[coocoo]

At lvl 21, I currently have one issue with Dizzying Haze + Breath of Fire --> the bosses in the low level instances seem to be immune to the slowing effect of Dizzying Haze, which means they don't get the fire dot from Breath of Fire... feels weird.
And Keg Smash definitely has it's issues, both with range, and in certain cases I can't hit with it at all unless target is stunned (the big undead in sfk courtyard come to mind). Get weird errors like "target is friendly" when trying to use it if I'm not in range of target.

[Deleted]

Peharps breath of fire could be an area effect with the brewmaster as a center, turning like a drunken man. It will fit better with dizzing haze. For now there you applies dizzing haze in a circle area but it is difficult for the breath of fire to affect all target in this area. Something has to be made to harmonize the two i think.

[Feelsgood]

I have some thoughts what Blizz could do to compensate too expensive spells:

1. Make staggered hits to stack some stacking buffs that will decrease energy cost of next Expel Harm by 10 energy per stack. (or give it 100% chance to generate additional 1 chi)
2. Everytime you Jab you have X% chance to reset cooldown of your Keg Smash to zero. (or just make stacks for this effect) So it will increases chi generation.

In additional to all, make Guard cost 1 chi...

Hm, something like that.

[Yorgl]

There are two things that, in my opinion, should be changed from the current state :

• Mastery should reduce the initial damage by Stagger, as in the current state Mastery and Purifying brew are very counter-productive. I think that almost will agree on that one.
• My other concern, and for this one I understand why people would (and probably will) disagree, is that I think that Shuffle should be a individual skill, not proc while using an damage abilty (as it's the case now with BOK). Imo, you should have the instant skill, costing 2 Chi, that just places the buff on you. I like having "DPS" rotation a bit different from survival rotation, and as the warrior may chose between HS and Shield Block, I think it would be cool cool that we chose between TP/BOK and Shuffle.

[Nikkaszal]

[*]My other concern, and for this one I understand why people would (and probably will) disagree, is that I think that Shuffle should be a individual skill, not proc while using an damage abilty (as it's the case now with BOK). Imo, you should have the instant skill, costing 2 Chi, that just places the buff on you. I like having "DPS" rotation a bit different from survival rotation, and as the warrior may chose between HS and Shield Block, I think it would be cool cool that we chose between TP/BOK and Shuffle. [/LIST]

Well... that's essentially what BoK is. Costs 2 Chi for 3 Staggered attacks. It also deals damage, which makes it a little more fun.

And in essence, it IS choosing between damage and survivability, because Blackout Kick is not something you hit for the damage it does as a Brewmaster. Breath of Fire also costs 2 Chi and deals much much more overall damage, and if BoF is already present then you can spend 2 Chi on 2 Tiger Palms which boost up your Guard or Zen Sphere for hefty pulsing damage and a nice self-heal.

There's already a LOT of choice when it comes to playing a Brewmaster.

[Yorgl]

Fair point, I didn't think of BoF in single target rotation.

[Deleted]

There are two things that, in my opinion, should be changed from the current state :

• Mastery should reduce the initial damage by Stagger, as in the current state Mastery and Purifying brew are very counter-productive. I think that almost will agree on that one.
• My other concern, and for this one I understand why people would (and probably will) disagree, is that I think that Shuffle should be a individual skill, not proc while using an damage abilty (as it's the case now with BOK). Imo, you should have the instant skill, costing 2 Chi, that just places the buff on you. I like having "DPS" rotation a bit different from survival rotation, and as the warrior may chose between HS and Shield Block, I think it would be cool cool that we chose between TP/BOK and Shuffle.

I'm agree for the mastery but i think brewmaster gameplay will have many change before to be able to fix really mastery effect. For now, stagger effect occurs only from time to time, and can be provoked a bit more with shuffle. But, in my opinion, the current mecanism of stagger effect, shuffle and elusive brew is not good and will change (i can of course be wrong). Particulary, the lack of armor of the brewmaster and so the class miss for now a mecanism of basic physical damage reduction (the classic one is armor) , and it's not clear for me, if the designer will juste buff armor accordingly when they will be happy of the stagger gameplay effect or if one of their possibility is to make the stagger effect an automatic brewmaster tanking aspect. Shuffle woud be than (if its remain) , something that make more damage to stagger (for now it is 50%-50% damage take/stagger but that can be 75%-25% for example basicly-just an example, and will you use shuffle to make the stagger damage at 100% , or, another design concept possibility,, make shuffle progressivly incresase the staggering damage). For the canalized part of the initial shuffle spell that , if i remember correctly, designer liked as a brewmaster specificity, peharps it could be transfered to the elusive brew spell; i think it will male sense since its a time where the brewmaster purge himself to the dot, and that can be a canalized spell that diminish stagger damage by xx% / second for y second canalized. COuld result at 100% at the end of the spell , less if it is interupted before. Just an idea. That will solve the trouble of passive damage reduction of the brewmaster by equilibrate basic stagger effect, effect of suffle and periodicity of the elusive brew, so to make the brewmaster not too weak; (taking too much initial damage possibilty, or with an increase of the stagger dot too fast) or make it too strong ; (taking less damage than the other tank by very low stagger dot or too much possibility of use of elusive brew)

[Schaden]

Right now, after the most recent patch that nerfed energy regen due to Windwalker dps, I'm having a bit of a time as Brewmaster. The spec needs an energy regen buff much like Blood Death Knights get for their rune regeneration.

Right now, between having to keep up three stacks of Guard buff and keep up Shuffle, tracking my ELEVEN short term cooldowns (Guard, Elusive Brew, Fortifying Brew, Purifying Brew, Avert Harm, Expel Harm, Dampen Harm, Black Ox Statue, Zen Meditation, Zen Sphere, and Leg Sweep) of which seven have a chi cost, I find myself scrambling to not only track everything's duration and cooldown (and dear god a lack of add ons does not help this), but to even have the resources to use them. This is a spec that is HEAVILY CD dependent, and with the nerf to energy regen, its becoming even harder to have all the resources available to do what I must do with any sort of reasonable ease. Right now, there is no breathing room for the spec.

Now I'm not saying that all of these should be implemented, but some fixes that may address this issue:

- Passive energy regen baked into Sturdy Ox stance
- Jab returns two Chi ala Windwalkers
- Remove the chi cost from all but the central cool downs of the spec (Guard, Purifying Brew, Expel Harm and the talented abilities.)
- Take off the cool down of Guard and Stagger stacks (I can build up my three stacks of Guard right after using it and have them fall off before Guard is off cooldown)
- Roll some cool downs into each other.


Also, I'm noticing that while stunned (such as during Ook-Ook in SB), I get absolutely hammered (hurr hurr, triple entendre!) because the spec is so dependent on active mitigation and offers almost nothing in the way of passive. This might be a balancing issue, but I feel like it hits this spec really hard.

[The Madgod]

Right now, after the most recent patch that nerfed energy regen due to Windwalker dps, I'm having a bit of a time as Brewmaster. The spec needs an energy regen buff much like Blood Death Knights get for their rune regeneration.

Right now, between having to keep up three stacks of Guard buff and keep up Shuffle, tracking my ELEVEN short term cooldowns (Guard, Elusive Brew, Fortifying Brew, Purifying Brew, Avert Harm, Expel Harm, Dampen Harm, Black Ox Statue, Zen Meditation, Zen Sphere, and Leg Sweep) of which seven have a chi cost, I find myself scrambling to not only track everything's duration and cooldown (and dear god a lack of add ons does not help this), but to even have the resources to use them. This is a spec that is HEAVILY CD dependent, and with the nerf to energy regen, its becoming even harder to have all the resources available to do what I must do with any sort of reasonable ease. Right now, there is no breathing room for the spec.

Now I'm not saying that all of these should be implemented, but some fixes that may address this issue:

- Passive energy regen baked into Sturdy Ox stance
- Jab returns two Chi ala Windwalkers
- Remove the chi cost from all but the central cool downs of the spec (Guard, Purifying Brew, Expel Harm and the talented abilities.)
- Take off the cool down of Guard and Stagger stacks (I can build up my three stacks of Guard right after using it and have them fall off before Guard is off cooldown)
- Roll some cool downs into each other.


Also, I'm noticing that while stunned (such as during Ook-Ook in SB), I get absolutely hammered (hurr hurr, triple entendre!) because the spec is so dependent on active mitigation and offers almost nothing in the way of passive. This might be a balancing issue, but I feel like it hits this spec really hard.

There's an ability that you get at around... I want to say 56-58 that gives you 5 energy whenever you dodge, so unless you're using one of those 85 premades, wait for then. If not, then they should buff us some more, I imagine. I've been focused soley on leveling my brewmaster right now (she's at 50), and I've only used a premade to look at some of the later talents and abilities that I did not yet have access to on my lower level monk, so I don't have the ability to say for sure whether we need more energy or not.

As for some of those fixes, I think that the energy regen boost baked into our stance would be the best option of them all. Jab returning extra chi might not be bad either, but I think that the specs shouldn't necessarily share that. We should have our own fix.

Removing the chi cost from everything but the dire essentials would take a lot of the challenge out of the spec and dumb it down to a point where resources just become pooled for extended periods of time for until you need them, which is the opposite of every class and spec in the game. Resources are meant to be used.

Having a cooldown on Guard actually makes things easier to manage. Think about it, without that cooldown, it would be used a lot more often. But, everything else would be used at the same rate they are now, meaning you have MORE buttons to push and MORE chi to spend in a given timeframe which makes your job harder. As for your stacks of Guard's buff falling off, that's more of user error than a design flaw, to be rather blunt about it.

And I agree; if we don't have Guard up and we're CC'd (feared, stunned, etc), we take a crapton of damage, which really worries me. We do need more base mitigation.

[Schaden]

Having a cooldown on Guard actually makes things easier to manage. Think about it, without that cooldown, it would be used a lot more often. But, everything else would be used at the same rate they are now, meaning you have MORE buttons to push and MORE chi to spend in a given timeframe which makes your job harder. As for your stacks of Guard's buff falling off, that's more of user error than a design flaw, to be rather blunt about it.

Im on an 87 monk with all questing blues/greens right now, so I do have that talent. I find myself still starved for energy/chi which creates points where I'm either just standing there waiting for my yellow bar to tick back up or in a frenzy to pop CDs to stay alive.

My idea with keeping guard stacks from falling off has to do with my earlier point that there's a lot for this spec to manage already. Plus, it becomes useful for pre-stacking before a boss pull, allowing you to pop a fully buffed Guard to give you a buffer to drag the boss into position.

[The Madgod]

Im on an 87 monk with all questing blues/greens right now, so I do have that talent. I find myself still starved for energy/chi which creates points where I'm either just standing there waiting for my yellow bar to tick back up or in a frenzy to pop CDs to stay alive.

My idea with keeping guard stacks from falling off has to do with my earlier point that there's a lot for this spec to manage already. Plus, it becomes useful for pre-stacking before a boss pull, allowing you to pop a fully buffed Guard to give you a buffer to drag the boss into position.

Fair enough on the energy bit.

It certainly adds to the complexity of the brewmaster but I don't think that it's really that big a deal. I mean, you're going to use it anyway, just have a split second every now and then to look at your buff bar. I'm positive that when we start to get addons, things will become a lot easier. Maybe its because I'm only 50, but I haven't had any trouble with keeping track of everything. Two or three more things won't hurt that.

[Deleted]

All the defensive cooldowns, stuns, healing and mobility tools are looking quite scary to me, if not a little bit OP.

I mean, yeah, things are subject to change (and I really hope they do) but heck. I'm not going to list everything, but here's a few of them;

-A cooldown that doubles your health AND reduces damage for 20 sec ? (I mean wow. The only other defensive CDs that last 20 sec I can think of are last stand and frenzied generation, and they only give 30% health. If tanks are meant to get about 800k hp at the end of the expansion, you can double that and one shot 1.6m hp mobs with touch of death.)
-A +50% dodge chance CD. (What... ?)
-2 (yeah, two. Some tanks have none) cooldowns made for helping the raid. You can redirect damage directly to you, which is kind of fantastic if you ask me. Basically, you can fully ignore an intense magic phase for a short period of time with Zen meditation.
-Even the tanking presence is a little bit too much. I mean, +30% health ? That's not even stamina, that's pure health. They completely removed this concept back in Wotlk because the scaling was too good. (And even if it were changed to stamina, they'd get more health than druids, which sounds pretty weird to me. They always were the big health tank thingy. After all, they can't parry and only rely on armor and health... so yeah.)
-While tanking you can stagger, which reduces the initial blows and leaves a dot. That's nice for healers. But as far as I get it, you can remove the dots every 6 secs. If you're lucky, you can avoid strikes and remove almost all of the dots. This is freakin' great ! And by this, I mean way too great !
-They can even get a buffed anti-magic shell that reflects damage. :l

And SO much healing ! It's pretty insane, you can directly heal yourself, get heals from your damage and even put spheres on your way so you can heal while moving. There's a ton of CC and mobility options. You can run faster, roll, charge, stun several times, incapacitate, heck, you can even teleport like a freakin' warlock. I mean, wow. That's very nice and all, but they need to slow down a little bit. Those are awesome concept, but put together, they're gonna lead to some kind of Armageddon.

I'm scared. I deeply believe Blizzard are really good when it comes to developing games, but they failed so many times to listen before, that I can't help but think that things aren't going to change until MoP is out. I'm afraid we'll have to see all this OPness in action before they understand what's going on...

I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

/end of QQ. Sorry.

[The Madgod]

You forget that right now, we're reliant on those cooldowns and our powerful stance to make up for the fact that we're losing about 20% damage reduction due to unbuffed armor. You're looking at a part of the picture, but not the picture in its entirety.

As for your concerns, Fortifying Brew seems to be the Monk's version of Guardian of Ancient Kings and other such powerful cooldowns. It makes up for the extra damage taken by having a larger health pool. We need that 50% dodge CD due to the fact that we really are squishy. If we're caught without Guard and we're CC'd (stunned, feared, etc), we're in hot water.

Like I said, you need to look at the big picture to understand why these are needed.

[coocoo]

One funny (...) side effect of Stagger is... first boss in sfk. At low level I have nothing to save myself when he does the Asphyxiate attack and always got killed instantly after from Stagger ticking me to 0. /sigh.
Not having played higher level monk, it made me wonder how it would affect a fight like Baleroc.

[Deleted]

Madgod write:

"And I agree; if we don't have Guard up and we're CC'd (feared, stunned, etc), we take a crapton of damage, which really worries me. We do need more base mitigation. "



Base physical mitigation can have two forms i believe:

1-an armor buff (the more sample)

2-100 % stagger mecanism ,peharps not 50% damage staggered, certainly less basicly (the more brewmaster specific)


I prefer the second one personnaly, with active mitigation to increase the staggered part of damage (by shuffle) and elusive brew as a canalised spell to remove it. I think it would be a nice gameplay.

[Nikkaszal]

I would really, really like to see Purifying Brew have a longer cooldown. At the moment, there's just TOO much going on with Brewmasters in terms of "active mitigation".

There's Guard, on a 30sec cooldown, which costs Chi.
There's BoK, with no cooldown, which keeps up the highly important Stagger buff, which costs Chi.
There's Tiger Palm, with no cooldown, which boosts up your next guard, which costs Chi.
There's Zen Sphere, with no cooldown (but really should be kept up because it's so damn good when buffed with Vengeance and Guard, so needs to be hit once every 16sec), which costs Chi.
There's Elusive Brew, with a 45 sec cooldown, which costs Chi.
There's Purifying Brew, with a 6sec cooldown, which costs Chi.

Juggling ALL of these can get quite hectic especially when you're getting hit hard and fast - you really want to keep up the BoK buff, you really want to hit Guard on cooldown, you really wanna make sure you cast Zen Sphere when the Guard buff is still present, you wanna Tiger Palm at least 3 times each 30sec to buff your Guard and you ALSO wanna hit Purifying Brew a lot to clear your Stagger stacks. In addition, you also need to have some Chi in reserve to use your cooldowns like Elusive Brew and Dampen Harm.

A change I'd like to see is Purifying Brew being moved to a 30sec CD but removing the Chi cost (meaning it'd be an ability you'd use when your avoidance fails for a few hits in a row and your Stagger damage ramps up, rather than every single time you get ANY Stagger damage). In addition, Elusive Ale is far too powerful for a 45sec cooldown. It should be bumped up to 2mins with no Chi cost, to make it a proper "big tank damage coming now" cooldown in line with the other classes.


EDIT: And yes - Brewmasters are far too reliant on Stagger and avoidance to make up for low armour, as such that when stunned they take monstrous amounts of damage. An armour boost and a BoK Stagger nerf would be a welcome addition (say, two charges of Stagger per BoK).

[The Madgod]

Madgod write:

"And I agree; if we don't have Guard up and we're CC'd (feared, stunned, etc), we take a crapton of damage, which really worries me. We do need more base mitigation. "



Base physical mitigation can have two forms i believe:

1-an armor buff (the more sample)

2-100 % stagger mecanism ,peharps not 50% damage staggered, certainly less basicly (the more brewmaster specific)


I prefer the second one personnaly, with active mitigation to increase the staggered part of damage (by shuffle) and elusive brew as a canalised spell to remove it. I think it would be a nice gameplay.

That doesn't solve the problem of when we're CC'd though. Perhaps I'm wrong but we can't dodge/parry/stagger while feared or stunned. That means we would still have to deal with the hit being umitigated. That's the problem. We need that armor for that exact reason. Stagger can't help if we can't use it, but armor mitigation is always avaliable.