[LEGION] Brewmaster Discussion

[Xiaojin]

Why not? It's not damage reduction unless you purify

I assume we will be balanced around X purifies per minute, like how Death Knights were balanced around X Death Strikes per minute

Well, that would only work if you add something like a "recently purified" buff that flags as us having AM and removing the AM flag from IsB. I don't think that would feel good in the game or be intuitive enough for the not so good players.

Maybe their goal, considering the removal of passive damage reduction and the armor bonus, is that we will have to purify so much that we simply can not keep up IsB all the time. A bit like the gameplay with 10sec Serenity, which allowed us to purify after basically every hit.

[JimSolo]

Just out of curiosity, since I don't feel like scrolling through 23 pages and this is the first time I've checked this thread, is there anyone (raider/decent player, not new people/people who don't play monk) that is even remotely happy with BrM being homogenized like all other tanks?

[The Madgod]

Just out of curiosity, since I don't feel like scrolling through 23 pages and this is the first time I've checked this thread, is there anyone (raider/decent player, not new people/people who don't play monk) that is even remotely happy with BrM being homogenized like all other tanks?

I'm not really seeing the homogenization.

EDIT: Seriously. We don't even have passive mitigation anymore. I'm not seeing it.

[Aracs]

... Face Palm and 4-set make a difference...

A HUGE difference.

(for those unaware, those tables show how many more charges you get across 10 minutes if you go from 0% haste to 10% haste)

You also can check with 20% haste. If everything is right, number of additional brews should double (between 10% and 20%).

I would be interested. Even without the artifact.

I found it in your Vods, Towelliee plays Brewmaster legion Alpha


Dungeon starts around 3:18:00. Go back to 2:20:00 to see him discuss talents/abilities.

Thanks a lot. Check Stagger bar under energy. There is maximum amount of staggered damage equal to 100% of max hp. If you check further dungeon video you will see that it shows total damage in stagger (not 1 tick). I thinks stagger works exactly the same now, it means maximum amount of staggered damage = 100% of your hp

[Deleted]

Just out of curiosity, since I don't feel like scrolling through 23 pages and this is the first time I've checked this thread, is there anyone (raider/decent player, not new people/people who don't play monk) that is even remotely happy with BrM being homogenized like all other tanks?

I don't see any homogeneisation. You may want to explain your case however.

The changes have good and bad. Being one of thoses who like healing orbs, I mostly like the changes, but I fear they make the BrM so different it's impossible to balance.

[Leblue]

Just out of curiosity, since I don't feel like scrolling through 23 pages and this is the first time I've checked this thread, is there anyone (raider/decent player, not new people/people who don't play monk) that is even remotely happy with BrM being homogenized like all other tanks?

I've actually got a pretty large post covering a lot of what's changing in Legion and what not if you don't want to scroll through over 20 pages of stuff and want to kind of see for yourself and get a rough idea of what's going on. From what I see we're pretty different from other tanks as it stands in how our mastery works, our mitigation style, and even how we speed up generation of our brews. I'd be curious to see what you find so homogenized outside of the fact I guess us not having baseline passive DR put into our stance technically makes us more like all the dps specs?

[Evolved]

Being one of thoses who like healing orbs

Away foul beast, away!

[JimSolo]

In general the loss of Chi. Bare in mind I personally play BrM semi casually so my opinion on it carries less weight than anyone elses. But losing a secondary resource is in line with the general direction of all tanks/the entire game since late MoP. We all generate, we all spend, same number of cds doing the same things, at the same time. Previously guard and chi gave more variation on what to use and when in order to avoid certain types of damages (glyphed guard for instance, even in a heavy physical damage fight).

The same goes for Prot Paladins loss of holy power. The rotation is baked in now, for both monk and paladin, any possible variation that a skilled player could use to work with or against mechanics in a fight is gone. You push the same rotation as me, and use the same cds to the same effect at the same point in the fight as I do. There's doesn't seem to be any room for anything intelligent.

None of the changes in Legion are directly obvious of such a point, you have to watch how the game has slowly morphed since Cata to grasp it fully, but it doesn't take Einstein to see how each class is becoming more like the next. DPS and Heal classes are not immune to this either, just check the recent changes to enhance shaman.

At least that's how I see it. I'd love to be proved wrong, and that there is some underlying plan to bring back tank individuality, but I'm not holding my breath. It's more a complaint about the entire game then BrM specifically, but I still would like to know the general consensus on where BrM stands, given how much versatility and how many class mechanics have been removed.

[The Madgod]

In general the loss of Chi. Bare in mind I personally play BrM semi casually so my opinion on it carries less weight than anyone elses. But losing a secondary resource is in line with the general direction of all tanks/the entire game since late MoP. We all generate, we all spend, same number of cds doing the same things, at the same time. Previously guard and chi gave more variation on what to use and when in order to avoid certain types of damages (glyphed guard for instance, even in a heavy physical damage fight).

The same goes for Prot Paladins loss of holy power. The rotation is baked in now, for both monk and paladin, any possible variation that a skilled player could use to work with or against mechanics in a fight is gone. You push the same rotation as me, and use the same cds to the same effect at the same point in the fight as I do. There's doesn't seem to be any room for anything intelligent.

At least that's how I see it. I'd love to be proved wrong, and that there is some underlying plan to bring back tank individuality, but I'm not holding my breath.

I think if you look at the specs purely with the eye of "they have cooldowns instead of unique resources" that you're missing the perspective which makes those tanks unique.

It's like ice cream, gelato, and frozen yogurt. While there is a unique textural and flavoral experience that is there with each due to the underlying ingredients that make up each frozen dessert, the primary difference between them is what is used as a flavoring. But really, it's the flavoring which makes the biggest difference between them. If we as Brewmasters are now becoming ice cream like paladins, we're still a mint chocolate chip to their Superman. We still have that difference.

And that's not even that great of an analogy because the difference between Legion Brewmaster and current Brewmaster is that right now, it's energy --> chi --> AM and in legion it's energy --> CDR for AM --> AM. The core underlying mechanics of how we function have changed but what we do and what we get out of it really hasn't. The only difference is that it's now more important to manage and use energy spending abilities effectively, as there's a bit of a feedback loop there as you continue to reduce the CD of our AM with multiple energy using abilities, rather than directly translating to chi, which directly translates to AM, which while it does have that feedback loop there too, it's much smaller and much less significant.

And honestly I don't think there was that much variation on how Chi worked... Not compared to what's here now. You have a shared resource (Chi / Brew charges) which can be used for different kinds of AM (Shuffle / Purify / Guard, ISB / Purify). The difference is what I just mentioned... we're just losing guard as an AM ability in Legion. The core mechanic loop of Chi and Brew CDR are effectively the same. it's just the weighting and potential frequency of how that resource is applied is the difference. And if anything making purifies more scarce could make tactical decisions more important. More or less, we still have "chi." It's just in a different, more roundabout format as a means of making a stronger choice between stagger and purifies as well as bring us mechanically closer to the fantasy of the spec. It really wouldn't be that different if they changed it so that purifying and shuffle both cost the same amount of chi and increased how much our chi cap was.

[towelliee]

Brewmaster Game play for Legion.

Disclaimer: obviously amateur, I'm talking to my chat as you watch, vaping, might burp, sneeze, eat, or something cringe. Haven't tanked on BrM since MOP HoF/Sha. Love beer identity.



I am not advertising this I am merely putting this up as informational material for the other BrM here. If I have broken a rule let me know I will take this down and maybe someone else can post it.

[The Madgod]

Alright, for those who wanted to see a more... accurate, updated look at haste: Take a peek over here

http://brewingmastery.blogspot.com/2...-and-brew.html

http://brewingmastery.blogspot.com/2...artifacts.html

The TL;DR is that haste's been improved a good bit by the artifacts, but is still pretty bad (1377 rating per 1 charge per minute with 3 ranks in Face Palm and 4-set) without haste actively scaling down our brew CD's. Despite that though, we're getting shittons of charges over 10 minutes (140+).

[Evolved]

I fail to see how it's "mechanically" closer to the "fantasy" of the spec, considering the current fantasy has been largely in place for the entirety of the specs existence. Taking Guard, Expel Harm, removing Chi, etc. doesn't bring me any closer to that "fantasy".

Part of what made Chi interesting was the balancing act of chi/energy/goals. More DPS/purify/guard/ etc. From the afternoon I spent playing it on alpha, BrM lost some of what made it entertaining for me to play, and thus the tank I chose to 13/13M with. (Paladin alt has made it 11/13M) Enjoy timing Expels and monitoring energy to heal after a big boss ability/swing? Sorry. Enjoy the interaction of keeping shuffle up while still balancing that energy/chi to have a Guard to save your life? Sorry. There wasn't much in the way of trying to min/max, and there was very little you could do to make it more interesting/entertaining for yourself. JimSolo isn't wrong, it was largely a "smash rotation, wait for charges" kind of gameplay. Frankly, it was quite a bit more boring than it currently is on live, which is unfortunate considering that in Blizzards quest to make healing less boring, tanking will inevitably become more so.

In my opinion, purifying will never be compelling/interesting gameplay.

[The Madgod]

I fail to see how it's "mechanically" closer to the "fantasy" of the spec, considering the current fantasy has been largely in place for the entirety of the specs existence. Taking Guard, Expel Harm, removing Chi, etc. doesn't bring me any closer to that "fantasy".

Chi is a fancy word for the power of the Spirit of the Wilds. Which is more or less condensed life magic. Life magic isn't exactly synonymous with drinking and brews. I'm not even talking about Guard and Expel Harm here. I just said that chi as a mechanical representation of lore is further away than faster brew-drinking in regards to the lore-based fantasy of Brewmasters.

And ultimately chi in of itself is just a face for the underlying gameplay loop. The things you say are missing really don't have anything to do with chi. it has everything to do with the systems that were a part of chi and the gameplay loop that chi represented. Guard, Expel Harm, these are both things that could be pretty easily worked into the current system, because the current system still maintains the same gameplay loop, just with different specifics of how it functions. Again, there would be zero gameplay difference if you took ISB and PB, made them both cost the same amount of chi, and gave us a higher chi cap.

[JimSolo]

Evolved explained better than I can what I mean. This isn't just held back to BrM though, Blood DK has similar issues with such drastic changes in gameplay mechanics. I do believe BDK got hit harder than BrM though from a purely rotational PoV.

What you're saying does make sense though @Tha Madgod, I like the icecream analogy, but that is exactly my point. In Legion, it's ice cream, gelato, and frozen yogurt. In Cata and MoP to some degree, it was Ice cream, spicy tacos, and potato chips. They're all food, they all do the same thing, but one is sweet, one is hot, and one is salty. Catering to a different pallete of player. They all functionally did the same thing, but instead of being forced into a specific genre.

In my opinion, when an expansion comes out, something should be added to a spec, not taken away (see shadow priest changes). For example the modular way brews now work. Should become part of the spec on top of what was previously there from MoP. By all means have talents that are able to take away such things for people that wish to play in a simple manner, but don't punish those of us that are are, and have been willing, to bust our ass to be the best of the best for 10 years plus. But again, this is an issue with the entire game. Something that started in MoP and has got worse with each patch until the abomination that was warlords ability prune.

I will have a read of those posts you linked soon.

EDIT: I think it's important to stress I don't mean adding several new mechanics every xpac, else by Legion time we actually WOULD need a prune. But I think the ratio of removal to addition has been too low for too long, and it's turning every class and every spec stale.

[Ampere]

Well, that would only work if you add something like a "recently purified" buff that flags as us having AM and removing the AM flag from IsB. I don't think that would feel good in the game or be intuitive enough for the not so good players.

Maybe their goal, considering the removal of passive damage reduction and the armor bonus, is that we will have to purify so much that we simply can not keep up IsB all the time. A bit like the gameplay with 10sec Serenity, which allowed us to purify after basically every hit.

You mean for binary AM checks? Those are awful design, honestly wouldn't worry about it much

Thanks a lot. Check Stagger bar under energy. There is maximum amount of staggered damage equal to 100% of max hp. If you check further dungeon video you will see that it shows total damage in stagger (not 1 tick). I thinks stagger works exactly the same now, it means maximum amount of staggered damage = 100% of your hp

There's no maximum stagger, the default UI bar is just bad. You can be staggering 100 billion damage, but once you get to the point where you take your entire hp every tick of stagger, more wouldn't matter.

[keqe]

Thanks a lot. Check Stagger bar under energy. There is maximum amount of staggered damage equal to 100% of max hp. If you check further dungeon video you will see that it shows total damage in stagger (not 1 tick). I thinks stagger works exactly the same now, it means maximum amount of staggered damage = 100% of your hp

The same bar is on live and it has the problem of not showing stagger past 100% stagger (10% per second), as that is the point the bar is filled. It doesn't mean you can't get more stagger though, as 200%+ stagger isn't unheard of, at least in MoP it wasn't.

[The Madgod]

Evolved explained better than I can what I mean. This isn't just held back to BrM though, Blood DK has similar issues with such drastic changes in gameplay mechanics. I do believe BDK got hit harder than BrM though from a purely rotational PoV.

What you're saying does make sense though @Tha Madgod, I like the icecream analogy, but that is exactly my point. In Legion, it's ice cream, gelato, and frozen yogurt. In Cata and MoP to some degree, it was Ice cream, spicy tacos, and potato chips. They're all food, they all do the same thing, but one is sweet, one is hot, and one is salty. Catering to a different pallete of player. They all functionally did the same thing, but instead of being forced into a specific genre.

But no it's not...

I mean, for one thing, the analogy is mainly that all tanking is some sort of icy dessert treat. The differences in texture are underlying mechanics and the gameplay loop for the different specs, and the flavors are things like class fantasy, actual abilities, and unique methods of handling damage. The idea being that even if we become more like paladins (CD-based instead of Chi-based), we still have a lot of things that make us feel unique, namely how we handle damage, our mobility, passive mitigation, etc.

And again I still don't think it's that accurate because the core gameplay loop of prot paladins is maintaining SotR uptime, which critting with Judgment gives you a charge of but otherwise you have to use them and wait for them to come back. And then using other CD's to maintain your defenses. Brewmaster is about actively reducing the CD's of your abilities constantly with your energy-spenders while still using other CD's. For Brewmasters, AM is also a split resource, while I'm not seeing any of such with prot paladins.

What is such a difference between spending your primary resource, gaining a secondary resource, and spending that secondary resource to fuel AM? There's no real difference in how the spec's gameplay loop functions. The only difference is that instead of gaining chi, you're reducing the cooldown on your abilities, but the end result is the same thing: The more primary resource you spend, the more secondary resource you get, the more you can use your AM. The difference is purely perceptual. Which you know, I understand. Chi as a visual representation for that secondary resource was clean and looked unique. But that uniqueness is only skin deep.

And the other thing is that it seems like there's a mix-up between removing certain more nuanced choices within the gameplay loop and an altering of the loop as a core concept. Yes, there's no EH, yes there's no Guard, but both abilities would work perfectly fine in this loop. EH provides CDR as well as healing, but has a CD like KS does. Guard's baseline CD is increased and is dropped by energy-spenders, but when you use it, you lose a Brew charge. That already has more or less integrated the two in the direction that was suggested. You have the opportunity cost of using Guard or your brews, you have EH there for when you need it. Again, the core gameplay loop hasn't changed with the removal of chi. It's been simplified, yes, but the gameplay loop is still there. And if what you're missing is the complexity, that's an extremely fair thing to feel. I completely understand and I completely sympathize with that. I just don't think that it's homogenization.

[keqe]

But, in the end we humans are very simple beings.

When we use jab and get that ball of chi, we feel good. When we TP to move Brew CD by 0.7 degrees, it doesn't really feel like anything. While the end result is the same, it is psychologically much more pleasing to get that chi there. At least that is how I see it.

It is kind of like you got a coin for a small service, and then used that "hard earned" coin for something you like.

Now you just get something directly for that service.

And we people love dem coins. While it is all illusion, that illusion is important.

[Deleted]

Chi have not been removed in practice. It have been renamed "charge of brew", and changed with a different passive and active component (tiger palm count less in producing it).

[The Madgod]

But, in the end we humans are very simple beings.

When we use jab and get that ball of chi, we feel good. When we TP to move Brew CD by 0.7 degrees, it doesn't really feel like anything. While the end result is the same, it is psychologically much more pleasing to get that chi there. At least that is how I see it.

I mean you're not wrong and that's the thing. Like I said, I 100% get why these feelings exist, I really do. But it's not really a gameplay difference, it's a perception difference. And that does need to be taken into account for testing, that is a valid thing to think about. But I still wouldn't call it homogenization, nor a true change to how the spec functions on a mechanical level.