[BRM] Level 100 talents are mostly terrible.

[Viradiance]

As if you didn't already know, Level 100 Talents for Monks are preeeeeeetty terrible, and this is why.

First off, before going into the individual talents, they're not even on the same par. One is a survivability increase and two are damage increases (with marginal survival benefits).

Vital Connections (Soul Dance)
Passive
You are able to shrug off even spells, such that 30% of your normal Stagger amount works against Magic Damage


This is one I actually like. No complaints. Solid, if situational, defensive boost. It could maybe be a bit higher, but being able to stagger more than 20% of magic damage miiiight break the game a bit.



Chi Explosion
Consumes up to 4 Chi to cause the target to explode with Chi energy, causing additional effects based on Chi consumed

1+ Chi: Deals 2500 Nature damage to an enemy
2+ Chi: You also gain Shuffle for 6 sec.
3+ Chi: Also purifies all of your staggered damage.
4+ Chi: The damage also hits all enemies within 8 yards of the target.

Basically, this bills as a replacement for Blackout Kick (Doing more damage and gaining the same Shuffle duration for the same cost). The problem is that part of the skill of playing a Brewmaster is banking chi properly, and this talent eliminates the ability to always have 1 chi leftover to purify a sudden stagger spike. Furthermore, the 4 chi is practically useless as Monks have more than enough AOE threat and damage. Using it at 4 chi is basically like using a Breath of Fire on top of a Blackout Kick-- basically pointless.

Suggestions: Reduce damage to be identical to a blackout kick, add an additional defensive perk (5% Avoidance increase to rival the return of Holy Shield for Paladins?)) and make it a flat 2 Chi, replace blackout kick, deals X% of initial damage in an area or generates 3 seconds of Shuffle per chi used (4 chi = 12 seconds) to compensate for the fact that two blackout kicks is always better than a Blackout Kick and a Breath of Fire.



Serene Mists (Chi Serenity)
Instant / 1.5 Min Cooldown
You enter a state of mental and physical serenity for 10 sec. While in this state, all Chi consumptions are instantly refilled.

The major problem with this is that shuffle is easy to maintain. There's never a reason you need 10 seconds worth of blackout kicks (60 seconds!) of shuffle at once. The second problem is that, the only time this is possibly necessary is at the beginning of the fight-- But it doesn't make abilities free. It makes them refund chi cost. Which means that you can't open with 6 seconds of Shuffle, you still have to Keg Smash -> Blackout Kick. At that point, why not use your actual rotation since the amount of Shuffle this generates is frankly asanine. The only situation I could think of where this might be useful is solo-tanking Malkorok's Blood Rage, since you'd be able to purify after every swing. Except that you can already do that if you have a responsible amount of Shuffle built up before Blood Rage starts (and bank 5 chi).

Suggestions: Remove. Replace with a defensive cooldown. Monks are lacking major cooldowns compared to other classes. An idea: "Your mental and physical focus is so great that you may channel Zen Meditation while being attacked, but reduces the damage reduction of Zen Meditation to 50%). Ta~daa, physical Shield Wall.

[Wishblade]

Probably better to suggest stuff on the official forums. Can only hope the talents change to something you'd like, suggest and believe.

[Viradiance]

Probably better to suggest stuff on the official forums. Can only hope the talents change to something you'd like, suggest and believe.

Was mostly interested in other people's thoughts on the matter, but I did post this to the official forums as well.

[Babylonius]

Vital Connections (Soul Dance)
Passive
You are able to shrug off even spells, such that 30% of your normal Stagger amount works against Magic Damage

This is one I actually like. No complaints. Solid, if situational, defensive boost. It could maybe be a bit higher, but being able to stagger more than 20% of magic damage miiiight break the game a bit.

This seems fine, its kinda bland though. Passives this late into the talent tree seem out of place when everything else is active. It fills a niche but its boring.

Chi Explosion
Consumes up to 4 Chi to cause the target to explode with Chi energy, causing additional effects based on Chi consumed

1+ Chi: Deals 2500 Nature damage to an enemy
2+ Chi: You also gain Shuffle for 6 sec.
3+ Chi: Also purifies all of your staggered damage.
4+ Chi: The damage also hits all enemies within 8 yards of the target.

Basically, this bills as a replacement for Blackout Kick (Doing more damage and gaining the same Shuffle duration for the same cost). The problem is that part of the skill of playing a Brewmaster is banking chi properly, and this talent eliminates the ability to always have 1 chi leftover to purify a sudden stagger spike. Furthermore, the 4 chi is practically useless as Monks have more than enough AOE threat and damage. Using it at 4 chi is basically like using a Breath of Fire on top of a Blackout Kick-- basically pointless.

Suggestions: Reduce damage to be identical to a blackout kick, add an additional defensive perk (5% Avoidance increase to rival the return of Holy Shield for Paladins?)) and make it a flat 2 Chi, replace blackout kick, deals X% of initial damage in an area or generates 3 seconds of Shuffle per chi used (4 chi = 12 seconds) to compensate for the fact that two blackout kicks is always better than a Blackout Kick and a Breath of Fire.

This talent seems awesome. It lets you do a lot more AOE damage if you choose, while purifying any stagger, while gaining shuffle. If you want to use it to replace BoK and it just does more damage then that's boring, but add a chi and it does more damage, gains shuffle and purifies? Hell yeah.

This talent is a great flavor talent that will make you really have to think ahead and manage your Chi. You can spam it with 1 chi to do more damage, spam it with 2 chi to mimic BoK, save up for 3 chi if you have the extra energy and need to purify, or save for 4 chi to do more AOE damage. Fun micromanaging IMO.

Serene Mists (Chi Serenity)
Instant / 1.5 Min Cooldown
You enter a state of mental and physical serenity for 10 sec. While in this state, all Chi consumptions are instantly refilled.

The major problem with this is that shuffle is easy to maintain. There's never a reason you need 10 seconds worth of blackout kicks (60 seconds!) of shuffle at once. The second problem is that, the only time this is possibly necessary is at the beginning of the fight-- But it doesn't make abilities free. It makes them refund chi cost. Which means that you can't open with 6 seconds of Shuffle, you still have to Keg Smash -> Blackout Kick. At that point, why not use your actual rotation since the amount of Shuffle this generates is frankly asanine. The only situation I could think of where this might be useful is solo-tanking Malkorok's Blood Rage, since you'd be able to purify after every swing. Except that you can already do that if you have a responsible amount of Shuffle built up before Blood Rage starts (and bank 5 chi).

Suggestions: Remove. Replace with a defensive cooldown. Monks are lacking major cooldowns compared to other classes. An idea: "Your mental and physical focus is so great that you may channel Zen Meditation while being attacked, but reduces the damage reduction of Zen Meditation to 50%). Ta~daa, physical Shield Wall.

Shuffle may be more difficult to maintain in the future, or if its not then dont' take this ability. This seems like a good DPS cooldown even while tanking. 10s seems a little long because your energy will cap during that making it kinda silly. The only way I can see this being used appropriately is to nearly deplete your energy with BoK and Jab/KS, then use BoK to drop down to 2 chi, hit this and spam till your energy caps, hit Jab/KS to stop from capping and go up to 4 chi, then keep spamming till its over. You could also use this for AOE to spam BoF while keeping shuffle up. Its a small use ability, not as useful as the other 2, but for WW or MW this may be the best.

[LookingGlass]

I think they're all pretty great.

Vital Connections:

Looks like the go-to raid talent. In it's current form it will be HUGE against certain bosses.

Chi-Explosion:

This looks like a talent meant to simplify the BrM rotation. All you would have to do is take Ascension and stack haste until energy capped, then spam this at 3-4 chi. You'd have constant Shuffle, constant Purify, constant AoE and plenty of extra time/chi for everything else.

Also, remember that if you do take Ascension you have 5 total chi, not 4, which could always leave 1 chi left for emergency use.

Lastly, it you gives you the option of better DPS than Blackout Kick if you don't care about shuffle like in PvP, questing or farming.

I think this talent is REALLY strong and really versatile. Might be OP.

Serene Mists:

This is the most lackluster of the three. I can see value in stacking shuffle up front. I can see the value as a burst DPS cooldown. But I'm not sure either of those are enough to help this talent stand up to the other 2.

What I'd like to see added, at least for Brewmaster, would be "In addition, your abilities with a cooldown 30 seconds or less will not trigger their cooldown for the duration of Serene Mists".

You could max out a Guard shield, CC all the things, stack a really mean Rushing Jade Wind for burst AoE, do some crazy but pointless Transcendence stuff or stack shuffle still.

I think that change would make it much more versatile and thus more useful in more situations.



So yea, that's my 2 cents. The first two are solid but I can't see Serene Mists being better as is.

[Rainbowdash]

As if you didn't already know, Level 100 Talents for Monks are preeeeeeetty terrible, and this is why.

First off, before going into the individual talents, they're not even on the same par. One is a survivability increase and two are damage increases (with marginal survival benefits).

Chi Explosion
...
Basically, this bills as a replacement for Blackout Kick (Doing more damage and gaining the same Shuffle duration for the same cost). The problem is that part of the skill of playing a Brewmaster is banking chi properly, and this talent eliminates the ability to always have 1 chi leftover to purify a sudden stagger spike. Furthermore, the 4 chi is practically useless as Monks have more than enough AOE threat and damage. Using it at 4 chi is basically like using a Breath of Fire on top of a Blackout Kick-- basically pointless.

Suggestions: Reduce damage to be identical to a blackout kick, add an additional defensive perk (5% Avoidance increase to rival the return of Holy Shield for Paladins?)) and make it a flat 2 Chi, replace blackout kick, deals X% of initial damage in an area or generates 3 seconds of Shuffle per chi used (4 chi = 12 seconds) to compensate for the fact that two blackout kicks is always better than a Blackout Kick and a Breath of Fire.

Agree. The 3-chi usage doesn't add anything to our toolkit, since we can already spend 3 chi to BOK+Purify within a GCD.
The 1 and 4-chi uses would work if they gave Shuffle. Without that, it works against our efficiency, and asks us to trade survival resources for damage. They don't typically give tanks that choice, not in any significant way. And .... the 4-chi usage doesn't make a lot of sense to begin with; if I'm dumping Chi on extra damage, it's because I'm not in any danger, and the Purify is pointless. If I Purify, I'll probably need that extra Chi for something soon.

3 seconds of Shuffle per Chi spent would make it a very, very good talent that actually increases our efficiency (getting both Shuffle and a Purifying Brew from that third chi).

Serene Mists (Chi Serenity)
Instant / 1.5 Min Cooldown
You enter a state of mental and physical serenity for 10 sec. While in this state, all Chi consumptions are instantly refilled.

The major problem with this is that shuffle is easy to maintain. There's never a reason you need 10 seconds worth of blackout kicks (60 seconds!) of shuffle at once. The second problem is that, the only time this is possibly necessary is at the beginning of the fight-- But it doesn't make abilities free. It makes them refund chi cost. Which means that you can't open with 6 seconds of Shuffle, you still have to Keg Smash -> Blackout Kick. At that point, why not use your actual rotation since the amount of Shuffle this generates is frankly asanine. The only situation I could think of where this might be useful is solo-tanking Malkorok's Blood Rage, since you'd be able to purify after every swing. Except that you can already do that if you have a responsible amount of Shuffle built up before Blood Rage starts (and bank 5 chi).

100% disagree.
For one, I want a burst DPS cooldown. I want a burst DPS cooldown that's tied to me, and not to Sparkle Kitty with its AI and pet bar. Actually I want that DPS cooldown to be baseline, not a talent, so it can be reduced by Readiness. (Siegecrafter Blackfuse and his Automated Shredder is just one example of Xuen being problematic, until they fixed it.)

For two, I disagree about Shuffle upkeep. Fights that aren't stand-still like Malkorok do stress my resources and challenge me to manage them better, if I spend any time off-target, or if I have to throw Dizzying Haze around, for example. Right now I simply stack more haste to handle that. Without reforging or gemming, we don't know if that will be possible in WOD. I definitely see a place for this ability -- actually I see it having the same use as Energizing Brew. It bolsters your resources at low gear levels, or low haste levels, and becomes less useful as you get more haste.

That might mean it's weak for a talent, but i WANT this ability.

For three I have no idea what you're talking about when you say we don't have enough defensive cooldowns. Like, what. what.

....
Remember that these talents are going to be heavily modified in beta, which isn't open yet. These are essentially "brainstorming" or teaser ideas.

[LookingGlass]

Agree. The 3-chi usage doesn't add anything to our toolkit, since we can already spend 3 chi to BOK+Purify within a GCD.
The 1 and 4-chi uses would work if they gave Shuffle. Without that, it works against our efficiency, and asks us to trade survival resources for damage. They don't typically give tanks that choice, not in any significant way. And .... the 4-chi usage doesn't make a lot of sense to begin with; if I'm dumping Chi on extra damage, it's because I'm not in any danger, and the Purify is pointless. If I Purify, I'll probably need that extra Chi for something soon.

3 seconds of Shuffle per Chi spent would make it a very, very good talent that actually increases our efficiency (getting both Shuffle and a Purifying Brew from that third chi).

Keep in mind that tank damage is getting changed significantly with WoD in the form of a straight forward nerf.

Chi Explosion will basically offer a 1 Chi BOK when you want it. Sometimes it's easy to get way ahead on Shuffle and Chi Explosion can fill that wasted overhead with a lot of damage. Probably twice the damage of BOK for the same Chi cost.

The talent as is has a lot of potential, but it really only comes into view once you look at WoD as a whole.

[Totaltotemic]

Magic Stagger - it's unknown how powerful this will be because Stagger is most likely getting a numbers overhaul considering the exponentially scaling nature of mastery and the very bad things that implies for the game (especially if we can stack mastery + Amp for more mastery). I would not expect the passive 46% (66% with FB) Stagger in WoD that BrM currently enjoys right now.

Chi Explosion - the idea is sound, something useful to spent chi on that isn't BoK or PB, which feel kind of pointless if you are not taking damage and have significant Shuffle uptime at the moment. The execution is terrible because the ability is kind of a mess, but that's true for all 3 specs. If they keep the idea, expect it to do something completely different from what was shown at Blizzcon.

Serene Mists - Oh hey another BrM CD, one that doesn't suck. Chain Purify and basically guaranteed Shuffle uptime is pretty good, the only problem is that it takes the spot of talents that either make Purifying Brew more important or something to spent chi on other than Shuffle.

Most likely scenario is probably Chi Explosion getting fixed to make sense and Serene Mists being changed to something else entirely, but still in the vein of a 1.5 minute CD.

[Naft]

Celestalon said that there are planned changes for Chi Explosion here, so I think that one is a wild card at this point. I am kind of a big fan of the passive talent for magic staggering, we'll see how that goes in WoD when the first tier won't be so focused on hit & exp capping as previously and wasting a lot of stat allocation.

[Quotey]

Vital Connections is (possibly) crazy good, Serene Mists will be excellent if bosses actually make you purify more next expansion. I'm not a fan of Chi Explosion's idea at all.

[Yxiomel]

Just had to post this, having seen the phrase written so many times on one page... the talents is actually called "Vital Convictions", not connections. The wowhead talent calculator for that particular entry is wrong, but here is an image of what the talent actually says:
http://i.imgur.com/5dr9RXu.jpg

Amusingly, the type "not" instead of "now" is correct

[I Change My Name]

All I can say is that Chi Explosion looks just simply silly. A BK and purifiy in a single spell sounds fun? But in reality why wouldn't you take another talent since both use 3 chi to get the same results?

[tachycardias]

Magic shuffle. Ok.

Chi explosion. Pretty poor. One fundamental aspect of monk play is utilizing chi wisely especially as bm. This talent disallows that. Blizz has said they realize this flaw and are heavily changing this one.

Serene mists. This actually seems to be the most interesting to me but it does have flaws. One concept blizz seems to be toying with is talents that allow a rotation change (seen with priest, rogue, warlock talents) I think this talent could fit this role for bm. Currently, shuffle maintenance is an overwhelming portion of our gcds. Think of a world where it isn't. This could be possible with this talent, but what do we put in place of the former shuffle building time? Technically healing sphere could be used more, but that doesn't seem ideal. BoF is another possibility but damage alone isn't too intriguing. I think there should be another ability that could impact tankiness which wouldn't be utilized much if you don't have this talent, but would be used more if you did.
For example. Make breath of fire reduce the cooldown of guard by one or two seconds when used. This gives breath of fire a use and also gives you something to do with extra chi that you will get from using the talent. It also provides a benefit to using a high haste build when not using the talent.

[Xade]

If chi explosion gets through like this I only see myself using it at 4 chi. An AoE shuffle builder? Yes please.

[zurm]

The thing is, the first post is making many assumptions, many of which seem silly to me.

The first and biggest, especially from reading the Chi Explosion synopsis, is the "monk aoe threat is already high". This implies we won't see any major changes here, which I find silly. Tank threat is all over the place right now. I tank with a DK offtank, and my incidental splash threat is so high I pull off him for a single target rotation. Blizzard already said vengeance is going away (and btw, our insane damage, survivability and threat is due to how well we scale with vengeance, we are weaker than a lot of other tanks at 0 vengeance), to be replaced with a static threat and damage boost to tanks relative to now (so a tank might do 60-80% of the dps of an actual dps-spec player, at all times, rather than beating them horribly on certain fights due to high vengeance).

Same with Serene Mists. You don't know what maintaining shuffle will be like in WoD.

And aside from the talents, BrM's weakness with frequent, bursty magic damage relative to other tanks and tiny HP pool is a current issue. WoD gearing may fix a lot of this (with the addition of armor and Vital Connections, we may end up going for more armor/mastery pieces). I wouldn't be surprised if ALL tanks get ability mechanics based on max HP, making stam important as well.

Again, we don't know what we don't know. Assuming the talents are updating but nothing else is just plain silly, especially for a coming expansion. Put down the pitch forks and torches, and stop panicking.

[tachycardias]

Per blizz, vengeance will remain but it won't affect damage. It will still affect stuff like our heals. Otherwise they'd have to rebalance everything.

[Rockets]

Why are we talking about this again? We covered all this territory three months ago when the talents were previewed at Blizzcon.

[Deleted]

If chi explosion gets through like this I only see myself using it at 4 chi. An AoE shuffle builder? Yes please.

Yes, but why do an ability which is so unflexible. An easy aoe-ability to build shuffle would feel better. Perhaps improved bof which generates shuffle? Could have beneficials effects for ww/mw, like granting RSK-debuff for ww and 10%hp-buff for mw(healshaman-equivalent)

[Kaeth]

If chi explosion gets through like this I only see myself using it at 4 chi. An AoE shuffle builder? Yes please.

An AoE shuffle builder that costs twice as much as Blackout Kick, offering no advantage over alternating BoK and Breath of Fire other than saving you one global cooldown. Considering BrM is limited by energy and not GCD capped, you're not really gaining anything from this talent in an AoE situation. Spec Serene Mists instead and charge up a ton of Shuffle so you can spam BoF for the rest of the pull.

Chi Burst does nothing for BrM but conserve GCDs for a non-GCD-locked spec. Well, unless you feel it necessary to Purify every 3 to 4 seconds while AoEing.