Brewmaster/MW

[nsgid]

So I'm about to hit 90 on my monk and i absolutely love this class. However, I do plan on raiding so my question to all you Monk raiders/players is this. Is Brew or MW easier to learn/master? for tanks, ive played a druid which is quite simple as well as a pally. For healing i've played a loldisc priest and an lolresto shaman which are also really easy. So how would you say Brm and MW match the difficulty of those classes? Also, any tips for Brm and MW would be awesome! thanks all. any input would be great and i'd be very appreciative. happy new years!

[Totaltotemic]

In terms of learning what the spec does and how to perfect it, BrM is an easier spec. There simply aren't very many buttons to hit, resource management is almost nonexistent, and it's always very obvious what button you should press in any given situation. MW is very difficult to understand right now because the spec is so broken in so many different ways, but it's set to receive some major work in WoD anyways so I wouldn't try too hard to figure it out at this point.

[tachycardias]

Resource management non-existent? That's when I knew you were trolling. BM has more resource management than any other class. Energy, chi, EB stacks, GOx orbs, shuffle; it's kinda crazy.

[paqua17]

To an extent chi management does become a heck of a lot easier as BrM once your haste is stacked high enough. That said coming from a player that has also played a druid, warrior and DK tank the BrM tank has the most buttons to press by a large margin. I have also raided in early MoP on a rshammy. Depending on the encounter I have used KS, BoK, Jab, Expel Harm, TP, SCC (on AoE), Detox (if cleansing), provoke, SHS, EB, PB (if necessary), SHS, etc at one point or another. Overall there is much more micromanaging and buttons to push as a BrM monk than any other class I have played thus far.

If running LFR it's easier to get into regardless of whether BrM or MW. For Flex or guild raiding pick the one you want to concentrate on and go out to find a group.

[Ailylia]

Especially at low levels, Brewmaster isn't very forgiving. You do the wrong thing, you'll run out of chi, drop shuffle, and get plastered. But once you master it its very rewarding.

[Totaltotemic]

Don't kid yourselves, 90% of the time as BrM the only thing you're doing is KSing on CD and using BoK. Shuffle isn't something to manage, BoK is just the button you press when Guard is on CD and you don't need to purify. It's not forgiving, so if you happen to momentarily stop pressing buttons or start using BoF or SCK for no reason you're probably going to die, but that'd be like letting a crucial dot fall off or go OOM as a healer in terms of how easy it is to avoid.

[BuddhaBear]

MW (MS) / Brew here:
I also have disc priest + holy pally + resto druid + resto sham + prot warr. Also tank on druid and pally though their gear is aweful.

My opition they are both harder to learn than any other class. The flat 1 sec GCD makes them both very fast paced and they are both very unforgiving. Once you've played enough it will all be second nature, but to get there may take some time. I'm MW MS because heals is my MS on all my toons. I would go with "Do you want to tank or heal more?". Sorry it doesn't help you choose. Hope you have just as much fun as I do playing Monk.

[tachycardias]

Don't kid yourselves, 90% of the time as BrM the only thing you're doing is KSing on CD and using BoK. Shuffle isn't something to manage, BoK is just the button you press when Guard is on CD and you don't need to purify. It's not forgiving, so if you happen to momentarily stop pressing buttons or start using BoF or SCK for no reason you're probably going to die, but that'd be like letting a crucial dot fall off or go OOM as a healer in terms of how easy it is to avoid.

It's easy to boil any class down to"just press buttons" but that doesn't make it accurate. I certainly know playing my BM certainly involves a lot more than that and a lot more than my DK or warrior tanks.

I'd also argue that you could play MW in as simple of a manner as "spam channel heal, ReM on Cd, use uplift when chi available" if I wanted to make my spec of choice sound all high and mighty.

[olzenkhaw]

you don't need to purify

If u really do it in raiding, u wipe the raid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Totaltotemic]

It's easy to boil any class down to"just press buttons" but that doesn't make it accurate. I certainly know playing my BM certainly involves a lot more than that and a lot more than my DK or warrior tanks.

I'd also argue that you could play MW in as simple of a manner as "spam channel heal, ReM on Cd, use uplift when chi available" if I wanted to make my spec of choice sound all high and mighty.

I'm not belittling BrMs at all, I play and enjoy the spec as well. You really are just making things up though if you deny that most of the time you KS --> BoK --> Jab --> Jab --> BoK --> Jab --> KS --> BoK --> Jab --> Jab --> BoK --> TP --> KS --> BoK etc. There's no choice, no proc, no different tools for different situations. AoE threat and single target threat are generated exactly the same way. There are no raid utility tools like Paladin Hands or Warrior banners/Vigilance to use efficiently and intelligently. Literally the only thing that breaks up the monotony of pressing the exact same buttons is deciding if you need to spend chi on Guard or Purifying Brew or checking if Chi Wave/Expel Harm are off CD and substituting them for one of the Jabs listed above. Ele Shaman is one of the simplest specs in the game and even it has a more variable rotation than BrM does.

What makes playing as BrM somewhat difficult is a factor of being a tank, not a factor of the spec. Positioning, keeping yourself alive, taunting, picking up adds, those are the hard parts of playing a tank. The OP says he already plays a tank and therefore knows all of that, so if it took him more than 5 minutes of looking at the BrM spellbook to know exactly what's going on there he'd probably be a pretty poor player. To contrast, MW is such a broken spec right now that many of the abilities don't even make sense with each other. The single target heal is actually the best way to raid heal, the best way to spam single target healing isn't even one of the main 3 single target spells (lol Healing Sphere), and a stat that all healers are supposed to want is totally useless (Spirit).

Switching from any other tank to BrM should feel easier, not harder. Switching from any other healer to MW is like "wtf is this spec even supposed to do?" Once you get over the fact that Shuffle is a thing and that if you're not pressing BoK every 6 seconds you're doing it horribly wrong, BrM is a very simple spec to play. Mistweaver is so screwed up that practically the entire spec is getting reworked.

[Astraios]

Well, SCK is far superior to SoM if you're stacked, I'd be willing to bet...but if you're spread it's the best way to raid heal, sure...with every other spell on CD.
But other than that exaggeration, I'd agree that MW are pretty bass ackwards at the moment lolz.

[Deleted]

I'm not belittling BrMs at all, I play and enjoy the spec as well. You really are just making things up though if you deny that most of the time you KS --> BoK --> Jab --> Jab --> BoK --> Jab --> KS --> BoK --> Jab --> Jab --> BoK --> TP --> KS --> BoK etc.

I think every tanking spec has its own core rotation and if this is all you see of BMs then you're missing out on some of the subtleties of the specs. In raids there's lot of usage for disarm, ring of peace, avert harm + zen med, charging ox waves, all of the tier 30 talents depending on encounter. Purifying brew comes into it's element during blood rage on Malkorok hc and BM kiting with keg toss is something other tanks can't equal.

All of the tanking classes have niche abilities and flavour and BMs are no different. They're easy to play at an average level but difficult to master.

[Promdates]

KS --> BoK --> Jab --> Jab --> BoK --> Jab --> KS --> BoK --> Jab --> Jab --> BoK --> TP --> KS --> BoK etc

This is 100% fucking wrong. If you follow this, you're going to be energy starved and you're going to be playing poorly. To be honest you shouldn't ever drop below 40 energy, meaning you should at any given point be between 40-80 energy so that you can actually use expel harm in the case that you need to use it and not wait a second or two for you to regen energy. Not only that, but you should be CONSTANTLY hitting Tiger Palm. KS on cooldown, between 40-80 energy, L30 talent on CD, ample time left on shuffle? Spam fucking Tiger Palm. It's free and does more damage than Jab. You don't just hit TP once for the buff to Guard and the armor reduction, you hit that repeatedly to do more damage and to fill GCD's while waiting for energy to regen. You also mention in your blog that good brewmasters will have 80% gcd's used on KS/Jab/BoK, when normally It's probably closer to 50-55%. (Compared my logs and Daught's logs for KS+Jab+Bok casts/total GCDs, both were between 50-55%)

What makes playing as BrM somewhat difficult is a factor of being a tank, not a factor of the spec. Positioning, keeping yourself alive, taunting, picking up adds, those are the hard parts of playing a tank.

Those are basic tank responsibilities though. Anyone who's tanking on any character should already know those things. Not everyone is familiar with energy based tanks as we've never had one before. As pointed out just a few lines above regarding energy issues while tanking, that's one of the first things people will have issues with. The number one issue that newer monks come to the forums to ask about is "why am I taking so much damage?" The three main answers are always "Your shuffle uptime is terrible, you're not using Elusive Brew enough, and you're not using cooldowns properly."

The hardest part of playing a tank class is knowing how all of their spells and abilities go together. It's almost as if people have flocked to playing a brewmaster because they're in it for the damage (IT'S BECAUSE WE'RE GETTING 70%+ CRIT WITH HUGE VENGEANCE. I MUST ALWAYS BE #1 ON THE METER!!!!!) so they do the wrong shit, and then come here asking for help and then receive the wrong information.

@Mistweaver: It's a very middle of the pack healing spec that's dumb and slightly broken (both good and bad). Half the time we don't even bring our mistweaver except for 1-2 fights now.

[Orion Antares]

I'm not belittling BrMs at all, I play and enjoy the spec as well. You really are just making things up though if you deny that most of the time you KS --> BoK --> Jab --> Jab --> BoK --> Jab --> KS --> BoK --> Jab --> Jab --> BoK --> TP --> KS --> BoK etc.

This is how people end up with 2 minutes of left over shuffle time at the end of the fight...

[Totaltotemic]

The number one issue that newer monks come to the forums to ask about is "why am I taking so much damage?" The three main answers are always "Your shuffle uptime is terrible, you're not using Elusive Brew enough, and you're not using cooldowns properly."

You realize you literally just said that I have too many Jabs and BoKs listed there and then said people aren't keeping Shuffle up and are "receiving the wrong information" right? You can be an expert and hold 40 energy so that you can Expel on demand and press TP more instead of using the energy you have. Woo, you'll do 5% more damage and will die very slightly less often. 80% of the GCDs you need to press ARE KS/Jab/BoK, TP is the other 20% because Guard, Provoke, and Purifying Brew do not take a GCD. If you're just dividing by total time in a fight you're doing it wrong and misinterpreting what I said just to pick a fight.

I also find it ironic that you insist people are doing the wrong thing in an effort to do more damage, yet whine about not putting it TP spam all over the place, which provides no benefit except damage. The fact is the "don't die" part of playing BrM is stupidly easy, just very unforgiving if you don't realize that Shuffle is life. Maximizing DPS is an entirely separate bag, and one that I hope dies a swift death going into WoD because people complaining about THATS NOT HOW YOU MAXIMIZE DPS RAWWRRR get very annoying and it would be nice to talk about the staying alive part of tanking without everyone going crazy about doing damage.

[Solial]

No, he's kinda right... BrM is a joke to play.
My monk has a bit under 15 energy a second unbuffed, so let us just assume I had 15.
KS is an 8 second cooldown. Every single energy ability costs 40 energy. It takes me exactly 8 seconds to generate 120 energy. So I can fit 2 jabs in between every keg smash. The rotation is KS -> BoK -> Jab x2 -> BoK -> Repeat. Use tiger palm when no energy or no chi. Assuming it's a 1 second gcg, we can fit 3 tiger palms in every 8 second window, chi wave would replace 1 tiger palm, if we are using spinning crane kick, we lower the amount of tiger palms. This will generate 12 seconds of shuffle over 8 seconds, so we have 4 seconds left over. Correct me if I'm wrong, this is napkin math.

Now comes the other abilities. Expel harm replaces jab, try to keep energy around 30-70 so it can always be used in emergency. Using purify means we use .5-1 more tiger palms. Guard replaces 1 BoK, meaning we lose 6 seconds of shuffle, but how we generate 4 extra seconds every 8 seconds, which is a little under 12 over 30 seconds, we still come out ahead on shuffle and we can purify twice every 30 seconds without any risk of losing shuffle. We also start at 100 energy so we get 9 extra seconds worth of shuffle right there.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong?

[-Zo-]

To the OP, you should choose what you like better and everything else will fall into place. Every class is easy to learn but hard to play well, especially in raids where you have to succeed at the mechanics of the fight and work as a team. Both MW and BrM are pretty unforgiving if you mess up. MW in particular, you have to plan ahead and that means knowing the fight well enough to do so. Fistweaving adds a extra dimension to the spec and because you're up in melee range, that makes for a unique experience. It feels good to do decent healing while being a big part of making enrage or shortening phases -- but it can also be challenging and frustrating to try to pull off too.

I have both a MW spec (my main spec) and BrM, but only use BrM if I need to cover tanking for farm content. I'm not that good, and don't practice that much. To me, it's hard, but it's about familiarity with the role more than anything else.

So IMO pick what you like better and play/learn both (or all 3) over time, and just enjoy.

[Promdates]

You realize you literally just said that I have too many Jabs and BoKs listed there and then said people aren't keeping Shuffle up and are "receiving the wrong information" right? You can be an expert and hold 40 energy so that you can Expel on demand and press TP more instead of using the energy you have. Woo, you'll do 5% more damage and will die very slightly less often. 80% of the GCDs you need to press ARE KS/Jab/BoK, TP is the other 20% because Guard, Provoke, and Purifying Brew do not take a GCD. If you're just dividing by total time in a fight you're doing it wrong and misinterpreting what I said just to pick a fight.

I also find it ironic that you insist people are doing the wrong thing in an effort to do more damage, yet whine about not putting it TP spam all over the place, which provides no benefit except damage. The fact is the "don't die" part of playing BrM is stupidly easy, just very unforgiving if you don't realize that Shuffle is life. Maximizing DPS is an entirely separate bag, and one that I hope dies a swift death going into WoD because people complaining about THATS NOT HOW YOU MAXIMIZE DPS RAWWRRR get very annoying and it would be nice to talk about the staying alive part of tanking without everyone going crazy about doing damage.

First, I'm not saying you have too many Jabs and Boks. What I was saying, was that you shouldn't spend ALL of your energy spamming the fucking shit out of them. Yes, shuffle is very important to have up. Yes, better brewmasters will be able to manage their energy better and keep a reserve so that they're not without energy for oh shit moments. Better brewmasters will also be able to use Tiger Palm more, because it's fucking free and you're only using 1/3-1/2 of your GCD's for shuffle uptime. I honestly have no fucking clue, where you get this magical 80% GCD's used for KS/Jab/BoK. Show me logs when you're spending all of this time (4-5 seconds every 6 seconds are being spent on those 3), and then maybe I'll admit I'm wrong.

If you're already doing your job, on the already stupid fucking easy brewmaster. Then you're not going to die right, because you already have shuffle up and you're already using your cooldowns properly to survive. What else is there to do once you've reached that point, try to survive more? At that point, you start trying to maximize your damage output while staying as survivable as you possibly can, meaning you don't fucking sacrifice survivability for damage. Perhaps if you're a mediocre or new tank you don't worry about damage and only focus on surviving, but for people who are actually doing everything they should be doing they're going to start pushing damage. I can't think of any tank who hasn't ever started trying to do more damage once they reached the survivable point. Will that ever go away? No.

We're in the 4th month of the last tier of content. You want to talk about staying alive, but yet it's already been discussed repeatedly for a year. Once you figure it out, there isn't anything else to discuss about it other than maybe a fight by fight basis, which has already been discussed! At this point, we're trying to maximize damage done because we've already reached the point of being able to survive the bad shit. Survive the fight, do more damage so the fight goes shorter. The best defense is a good offense.

fake edit: Did dummy testing, even with only hitting KS/Jab/BoK/TP/Chi Wave for 2.5 minutes gave me 60% of my gcd's used on KS/Jab/BoK.

[Totaltotemic]

Yes, better brewmasters will be able to manage their energy better and keep a reserve so that they're not without energy for oh shit moments. Better brewmasters will also be able to use Tiger Palm more, because it's fucking free and you're only using 1/3-1/2 of your GCD's for shuffle uptime.

Incorrect. Keeping 40 energy pooled for emergencies is a one-time reduction in number of Jabs done. If you never need that emergency Expel Harm, you will end the fight with the exact same number of KS/Jab/BoK/TP... minus 1 Jab. It doesn't matter if you wait until 80 energy to Jab again or until 40, you'll still end up with the same number in the end. The only time you'd end up with more TPs than just doing the standard rotation is if you sit at 100 energy pressing TP for no reason other than your Shuffle is already over 30 seconds, and that would just be stupid because Jab Jab BoK is more damage than TP/TP/TP. There is no magical level of skill that it takes to hold 40 energy in reserve and do damage, it's all in your head.

[Zhaine]

BrM is the tank that requries the highest skill to play effectively, Mistweaver healing is nothing like other healers.

If you're interested in Tanking, http://sunniersartofwar.com/ is a great guide.