Brewmaster: a rediscovered love

[bofferding]

Hi all,

First off as an introduction, I was maining a monk through MoP. I was doing some progress raiding as brewmaster and was our main tank for the first 3 tiers. We were quite OP to be honest, i was often in top 3 healers, top 3 dps and was very hard to kill. I was in the top20 monks EU for over 3 months on wowprogress. And I had both illidan glaives on second reset after MOP on my monk ;-)

I stopped playing a long time, came back to WoD with other classes and now with Legion I started with a rogue up to 845 first week, then prot paladin up to 851 in a week and now 5 days ago I leveled my brew up to 110.

I leveled my monk (Brewmaster Bofferding - Gilneas (EU)) as brewmaster and hit level 110 with ilvl 803, bought some gear to 807 and then tanked my first mythic. Not even a heroic. Only one wipe but wasnt my fault, I died last.

Continued doing only mythics the whole time, gear went up fast due to people not needing stuff I could need and some lucky 865+ rolls. I tanked maw+3 with ilvl 817 and blackrook+3 with 819. Both successful.

5 days later I now have ilvl 848 with a 830 artefact weapon (no third slot no good relics).

I feel like brewmaster is not half as bad as people say. Sure we need some fine tuning but we can already do a lot of stuff.

Healers told me I was easy to heal compared to others (and that was with ilvl 819).

Our biggest issues are:

- stagger remaining even after combat, making us constantly drop low in between fights

- our HP should be a bit higher like DK's as we have low base armor

- keg smash requires a target in front of you, trying to collect adds from every where while tanking boss is hard and can get you some back hits while doing do.. and if you have cooldown on keg smash and breath of fire you are out of luck. I now use the statue for mythics to collect adds

Our dps compared to other tanks is also a bit low I believe but well thats not the biggest issue.

I really do believe we only need some small adjustments to be in a really sweet spot.

I would love to hear your feedback on my gear. I am now sitting at 23%haste unbuffed. Feeling real good. My second trinket is a healer trinket with a ton of haste. But it replaces a shitty ilvl 820 agility one. (Haste > agility). And funny enough that healer trinket gets stacks with my monk heals and I can use its on use effect. With full stacks it gives me 80-90k aoe heal per second for 6 seconds which can really save my ass sometimes. (20 sec cooldown)

My gear is far from optimal as only 5 days old...

Would love your opinions on brewmaster! I changed my main back to monk now. Paladin tank is good but its rotation feels so boring now after going back to brew.


http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ferding/simple

Cheers

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Btw that Impenetrable Nerubian Husk trinket is so fucking good. I am pretty sure it is close to best in slot if titanforged.... haste on it, which is our best stat and armor procc which stacks up to -25% dmg reduction. As we haveow armor, bonus armor has a huge effect. It doubles our % dmg reduction.

[Apokavkos]

It's not that we aren't viable. It's that we are the hardest to play to a comparable level as other tanks.

[Muddler]

It's not that we aren't viable. It's that we are the hardest to play to a comparable level as other tanks.

And played optimally the sense of reward really isn't there. Twice the effort for underwhelming effect. We're "fine". We're "viable". That doesn't mean we don't have issues or concerns that need to be addressed.

[CParker1987]

I like the concept of the BrM now. Drink a lot of brews... kinda like the drunken monkey style kung fu. I will say though... the way yall hold your staff is friggin awesome

[Gorlab]

I think one of the big problems with Brewmasters at the moment is the truly staggering (no pun intended) amount of misinformation! Even people playing the class don't understand it in many cases and perpetuate myths.

[bofferding]

I think one of the big problems with Brewmasters at the moment is the truly staggering (no pun intended) amount of misinformation! Even people playing the class don't understand it in many cases and perpetuate myths.

Even if this is partiaĺly true, it doesnt explain why no top progress guilds are using bm...

Yes it is hard to play well but still like said above its still underwhelming at best performance wise

[Xahz]

It's not that we aren't viable. It's that we are the hardest to play to a comparable level as other tanks.

Only if you use the redundant apologist's definition of "viable". No one is arguing that Brewmasters literally cannot tank content; the argument against viability is that there is currently no reason to play a Brewmaster over any other tank. By your definition, there's hasn't been a class that isn't viable since Burning Crusade.

[Tenant]

Personally, the fact that they are "challenging" is part of their appeal. I enjoy playing some of the more challenging specs from time to time for the very reason that there is always room to keep improving: I'm picking up Feral Druid on an alt for that very reason. Saying that they have to put more effort just to be par with other tanks...well, shouldn't that be par the course for these "challenging" specs?

But that's not to say BrM doesn't have weaknesses or is performing less than others; that's looking to be the case. There are ways they can buff them while still preserving the "challenging" playstyle.

And regardless of all that...I don't even think they're that terribly hard to play; all of the tanks are way more simple to play now since 7.0. BrM actually may have gotten harder since they don't have the overbearing Guard anymore and now actually have to pay attention to stagger, but it's nothing anyone can't understand.

[jthrod]

So i have a question, i'm a ww monk and i want to start tanking because i wanna give it a try, what advice do you give me as a newbie?

[anon5123]

It's not that we aren't viable. It's that we are the hardest to play to a comparable level as other tanks.

Pretty much, yeah. Brewmaster is really complex compared to Warrior; you've got all these abilities and cooldowns to keep track of, various buffs and interactions between abilities....and a Warrior just has to mash Ignore Pain to get the same result.

[PizzaSHARK]

And played optimally the sense of reward really isn't there. Twice the effort for underwhelming effect. We're "fine". We're "viable". That doesn't mean we don't have issues or concerns that need to be addressed.

Agreed. Most of our issues are QoL stuff, though. I've thought about making a Twitter account just so I can periodically prod the Blizzard/WoW Twitter about it since that seems to be the only way they'll ever pay attention to anything that's said to them.

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Pretty much, yeah. Brewmaster is really complex compared to Warrior; you've got all these abilities and cooldowns to keep track of, various buffs and interactions between abilities....and a Warrior just has to mash Ignore Pain to get the same result.

That's actually the main reason I stopped playing Warrior after 12+ years of it; I've been playing Warrior since the original closed beta

I find it amusing that they took Guard away from BM (a good thing, Guard was boring) and then turned around and gave it to Warriors. They'll talk about wanting to avoid homogeneity up and down, yet I don't think shuffling abilities between classes of a given spec is any better

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So i have a question, i'm a ww monk and i want to start tanking because i wanna give it a try, what advice do you give me as a newbie?

Don't take Blackout Combo as a newbie. It's pretty awesome, but it requires a lot of activity on the player's part, so Elusive Dance or High Tolerance are better choices for a newbie... or someone who doesn't want to have to pay close attention while playing

You usually want to use two Ironskin Brew for every set of three charges you have on your brews, saving the last brew to purify Stagger when it starts getting high (always purify red stagger, consider purifying high yellow, never purify green or low yellow.) If you take Black Ox Brew (probably the best of those talents but adds another button and cooldown for you to track; newbies might want to take Light Brewing instead), a popular thing to do when expecting lots of incoming damage is to pop all three charges on Ironskin Brew (the durations all stack), pop Black Ox Brew, and then pop another Ironskin Brew and then save the last two charges for Purifying Brew since your Stagger is going to skyrocket when you're shifting so much damage to Stagger.

Always make sure you have enough Energy for Keg Smash when it comes off cooldown. Use Tiger Palm when everything else is on cooldown and Energy allows. With zero downtime you can usually squeeze two Tiger Palms in between every use of Keg Smash and Blackout Strike, but you'll eventually end up low on Energy when Keg Smash is available. Efficient rotations of Tiger Palm and Keg Smash is key to ensuring you always have brew charges available when you need them.

I always take Healing Elixirs since I don't find the other two choices on that tier particularly compelling. Diffuse Magic might be useful for specific encounters and has some useful utility for PvP. Dampen Harm is purely for tanking heroic/mythic raid bosses or mythic+ dungeon bosses, I don't think other sources will deal enough damage in one burst for it to activate (maybe PvP since burst is so high?)

I think we have a Brewmaster guide already stickied. Read it!

[Xahz]

Don't take Blackout Combo as a newbie. It's pretty awesome, but it requires a lot of activity on the player's part, so Elusive Dance or High Tolerance are better choices for a newbie... or someone who doesn't want to have to pay close attention while playing

What crap; HT and ED both have benefits over BoC depending on the situation. Not everyone who elects to use the passive talents is oblivious or new to the class.

[PizzaSHARK]

What crap; HT and ED both have benefits over BoC depending on the situation. Not everyone who elects to use the passive talents is oblivious or new to the class.

Where did I say that?

[risingforce]

Our biggest issues are:

- stagger remaining even after combat, making us constantly drop low in between fights

- our HP should be a bit higher like DK's as we have low base armor

- keg smash requires a target in front of you, trying to collect adds from every where while tanking boss is hard and can get you some back hits while doing do.. and if you have cooldown on keg smash and breath of fire you are out of luck. I now use the statue for mythics to collect adds

Our dps compared to other tanks is also a bit low I believe but well thats not the biggest issue.

I really do believe we only need some small adjustments to be in a really sweet spot.

I would love to hear your feedback on my gear. I am now sitting at 23%haste unbuffed. Feeling real good. My second trinket is a healer trinket with a ton of haste. But it replaces a shitty ilvl 820 agility one. (Haste > agility). And funny enough that healer trinket gets stacks with my monk heals and I can use its on use effect. With full stacks it gives me 80-90k aoe heal per second for 6 seconds which can really save my ass sometimes. (20 sec cooldown)

My gear is far from optimal as only 5 days old...

Would love your opinions on brewmaster! I changed my main back to monk now. Paladin tank is good but its rotation feels so boring now after going back to brew.


http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ferding/simple

Hi mate!

A lot of struggling against the tide of bullshit out there on the Internet and how that affects our reputation as a Spec, so very happy to see you coming back and enjoying it! I too was struggling against the tide, but everytime I jumped on my Prot Paladin and Warrior the rotations felt so boring. With my brewmaster I am hitting keys positively frantic trying to keep up with how flexible our rotation (with Blackout Combo) can be.

Secondly, wow you've done extremely well with gear -that Impenetrable Nerubian Husk is amazing and clever of you to use the 'healer' trinket rather than dismissing it -that Haste and HPS (as you said) can certainly make a difference.

I'll just add a few things:

-Keg Smash gets a lot better when you increase its range by 10 yds.
-Leg Sweep (in my experience) trumps Dave @M+ for interrupt rotations.
-on DPS I can beat a lot of tanks with ST and wreck in AOE -Special Delivery spam and 'Combo rotation ftw.

Keep up the good work!

PS, I was tanking Heroic Ursoc last night... and our DH tank was getting savaged. It was brutal. Meanwhile I'm Purifying massive Staggers like it was nothing. If we do get buffed in future patches it will be icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned!

#brewmasterclass for life <3

Cheers

[Tinary]

Brewmaster was and has been my alt to go to when we are missing tanks in raids or dungeons and i pretty much mained him at wod, since both our tanks ditched us. I always found brewmaster awsome and unlike warrior tank we were not that healer dependable and could keep ourselves alive til healers got ressed or dps took down the boss. Nowadays i dont exactly mind playing brewmaster but i am dissapointed about the state we are left. If you do not have a healer your pretty much dead. OS trait helps but that is not enough, big trash pulls seem to be a problem dps wise also as single target. I am not saying we should be at par with paladins but blizzard once said that dks are doing more damage than other tanks cause they use a 2hander instead of a shield but atm shield guys are owning in dps. You can say that dps doesnt matter but it does as tank. Our control at bossfights lack also, as well as a way to deal with constant big hits tho we lacked that in wod also. Adjusting some numbers would make brewmaster top tier tank again but i doubt blizzard wants that since its dh is too similar to brewmasters and having people leave from dh's are unacceptable apparently.

[bofferding]

Hi mate!

A lot of struggling against the tide of bullshit out there on the Internet and how that affects our reputation as a Spec, so very happy to see you coming back and enjoying it! I too was struggling against the tide, but everytime I jumped on my Prot Paladin and Warrior the rotations felt so boring. With my brewmaster I am hitting keys positively frantic trying to keep up with how flexible our rotation (with Blackout Combo) can be.

Secondly, wow you've done extremely well with gear -that Impenetrable Nerubian Husk is amazing and clever of you to use the 'healer' trinket rather than dismissing it -that Haste and HPS (as you said) can certainly make a difference.

I'll just add a few things:

-Keg Smash gets a lot better when you increase its range by 10 yds.
-Leg Sweep (in my experience) trumps Dave @M+ for interrupt rotations.
-on DPS I can beat a lot of tanks with ST and wreck in AOE -Special Delivery spam and 'Combo rotation ftw.

Keep up the good work!

PS, I was tanking Heroic Ursoc last night... and our DH tank was getting savaged. It was brutal. Meanwhile I'm Purifying massive Staggers like it was nothing. If we do get buffed in future patches it will be icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned!

#brewmasterclass for life <3

Cheers

cheers man will get that 10yd range on keg smash next point ;-) am sure it will be nice.

i know leg sweep should be better for most mythic+ though I took the statue for now to have some change and fun )

see you

[Runefeather]

What crap; HT and ED both have benefits over BoC depending on the situation. Not everyone who elects to use the passive talents is oblivious or new to the class.

Very defensive reply. He is saying "don't take boc if you are new as it is more difficult" not "anyone who uses other talents is oblivious to the class".

[Deleted]

- stagger remaining even after combat, making us constantly drop low in between fights

It blows my mind that they still haven't changed this when out of combat...annoys the poop out of me.

- keg smash requires a target in front of you, trying to collect adds from every where while tanking boss is hard and can get you some back hits while doing do.. and if you have cooldown on keg smash and breath of fire you are out of luck. I now use the statue for mythics to collect adds

I did a similar thing with Dave when I first hit 110 and it took a while for it to sink it in wasn't a baseline skill anymore. Once you pick up the trait for the extra range on Keg Smash it gets much easier - especially if you have a mouse over macro. For Mythic+ Leg Sweep is usually the better choice.

If you're running with the same healer I'd recommend testing all 3 of your T7 talents and see which one you think works best. You'll see a lot of arguing on the forums about these - which in my opinion means blizzard a probably doing something right. (I tend to use HT for raids, ED/HT for M+ and BoC for anything else)

[Shawry]

Tanking Maw+3 at 817 iLevel? You must have had damn good heals and DPS...
I tank it all now at 850 and my DPS friends just suck, so it all really hurts no matter how well I play.

First change I'd like to see is simple....Purify cleanses ALL stagger when out of combat. That way we still need to use resources if we choose, thus going into the next fight 1 brew down, but we arent a drain on healers. And the fact that doing WQ's you have to do nothing for 10 secs before collecting a quest item, or riding water strider

[jayphil]

I agree with u bofferding, and everyone else.

I think brewmaster tanks are in a very unique position and gives us a more fun approach to our role. Ive watched a few high end commentators on youtube and try to follow the progression boards to see where brewmasters are.

Blizzard has us where they want us and i believe if two expansions are anything to go by, we'll be in a better position later.

Ive limited myself of mythic dungeontanking for now and feel fine. I run with gusts of mists, sd, boc and have fun... perhaps playing abit conservatively while learning the dungeons.

I recently specced into special delivery to train myself to properly picking up adds with bof and keg smash and have a ball when i see sd proc. Im current i843 and running at 30% haste with no trouble keeping 100% isb uptime on difficult trash packs and bosses in mythic dungeons while keeping 1 charge ready to pb.

Theres lot of smack talk about brewmasters having a high skill cap with minimal rewards, but i feel the gameplay is quite rewarding overall.

If we're in for a potential overhaul in the future, id love to see our artifact power worked into our rotation, like a brew being effected by our cdr abilities.

Id love to see an end game raiding brewmaster in the latter but until ignore pain gets toned down or we potentially get more damge reduction qol improvements, we'll always be seen to be at the bottom statistically.

We're a misunderstood tank with so much potential if the community gave us a chance to show them