Ion on brewmasters

[GammaQ]

Let's take M+10 Oakheart in DHT as an example. The grip he does needs a cool down to live. It's cast every 30 seconds. I can fort brew the first one. Healer can CD the second and 3rd. Better bring a battle rezzer, he can serve as the 4th CD. A warrior can save rage and Ignore Pain each grip. Bears can save rage and do their mitigation and frenzied regen each one. DH's can meta and die. DK's can save the runes and use Death Strike while gripped. Monk's have to rely on a battle rez as a CD.

I don't usually post on the forums, but you're mixing your inability to play the class on that fight with the class being unable to handle the fight. Obviously, you don't play brewmaster much, because you didn't consider chaining Purifying Brew as a cooldown, didn't mention BoB and ZenMed.

You don't need any cds for first grip, just use basic brews with BoB. You can Zen Med and Fort Brew the 2nd and 3rd grip. BoB is back for the 4th one. You can also use a trinket like Nightwell Residue if needed (which is not). I did pretty much that in +13 (with tyrannical) this week without any issues at all.

[Drunkenskunk]

From that Ion quote:
-Brewmaster is very strong right now
-Not dying is what tanking is all about
-good cooldowns
-can survive things that no other tank can survive

These are the things that I have a problem with. And no, not accepting the current state, wanting the class to improve is not whining, however hard you try to label it so.

[Flurryfang]

I have a guildmate, who has large succes with running mythic+ 10+ dungeons and he is rocking tanking heroic raids. So i would agree with Ion, that monks are doing quite well and is a good tanking spec when it comes to numbers and control.

What i don't know is if the spec is actually feeling smooth. I fee like that if you don't have major healing or shield, your tanking spec just feels wierd. I would love if they could push some healing or absorb into the tanking spec, because it really hurts, when you can't press a button and give your healers a break. You will always take dmg as a Brewmaser no matter what and that is the big problem in my mind.

[smokii]

honestly, after taking 6-8 months out of the game during WoD and coming back to legion, i looked at brewmaster and went, wtf?

without having ample amounts of time to dedicate to brewmastery, sinking any amount of artifact power into the brew-stick seemed like a waste to me, it'd gotten super complicated with all the cooldowns and cycling of cooldowns and stagger management. tbh, it seemed like some addons and UI customisations were required to play the class at a base level.

unfortunately, that doesn't lend itself well to the WoW community. whilst you might come across a brewmaster tank who actually knows what they are doing and have perfected their rotation, they're as rare as rocking horse shit. monk representation is low as it is, but brewmasters got the shitty end of the playability stick this expansion - they may be powerful, but if they're not easy to pick up and play, they won't be loved.

most classes are easy to play, hard to master. brewmaster isn't one of them imo, they're hard to play, harder to master.

[Lightwysh]

I've switched from Pally to BrM tank, and honestly I think BrM feels a world better.

Some changes I'd like to see -and I know people might not agree:

Bake ironskin brew into our base stagger, put more emphasis on purifying damage.
Offset our damage intake via the BoF debuff from the artifact and make it so we can/should be maintaining it at 100% uptime.
Give us a better on-demand aoe pickup tool.

It would smooth out gameplay and make it feel more rewarding/important to purify stagger.

[WindigoEJ]

While it's purely a "feel" issue, I'd rather tank something even as quick and simple as a random heroic when there's a tank satchel on my paladin that's 25 ilvls and 7 artifact traits lower than my brewmaster. I feel like I have more "answers" to events happening around me, I pull larger groups of trash without feeling like I'm running out of cooldowns, I do more damage, and I require less babysitting. Doing boss-type world quests are also easier on my paladin. If I get below 35% with no way to get back above it for more obstinate determination procs, I can try to roll/tiger's lust away, transcendence away, etc, but often I just watch my health drop the rest of the way feeling helpless. I don't have that on my paladin.

[Herogamer555]

I think you hit the nail on the head here. Since others have no way to purify, a group stagger CD would provide zero mitigation, however it would add some great smoothness to a big hit or a short time for AE. We need to fast track this to Blizz

Edit: Could bring back Avert harm as a 20% group stagger, instead of the old way of adding that stagger onto yourself. That was fundamentally broken back then because of the ease at which it could be purified away.

Should be called "Keg Party" though.

[jearle]

I couldn't disagree more.

Stagger is currently a very poorly designed mechanic, it's completely overtuned but its entire purpose is ineffective.

Yes, the primary goal of a tank is to not die, but a secondary goal is to be gentle to your healers. Brewmaster Monks won't beat up their healers, but they'll slap them every day, tell them mean things and spit in their drinks just because it makes them feel good.

Monks struggle to actually prevent a significant portion of the damage they take and their resources are a complete fucking joke, making for the learning curve comment bullshit.

Energy does nothing.

Energy's learning curve is capped at having enough to keg smash on cooldown which isn't difficult by any stretch.

Since your brews are off the GCD, all you have to worry about is pressing tiger palm and keg smash often enough to keep iron skin up with a charge left for purify.

Other than that, you drink your drink and hope your healer doesn't mind your stagger draining their mana.

You don't have to look further than the basic abilities the spec has to see how poorly designed it is, YOU HAVE TO TALENT TO GET A DECENT AOE THREAT ABILITY.

Brewmasters never compete with resources. You always do the exact same thing, the most "disruptive" thing is pressing Expel Harm, oh no. A single GCD which heals you anyways. After playing all the other tank specs in Legion I can honestly say Brewmaster feels like utter trash to play. There is no interesting thought behind doing anything and you never do anything but slave away over your brews and stagger.

What it needs is for Ironskin Brew's CD to be nerfed, Tiger Palm and Keg Smash's cooldown reduction on brew tuned up, an energy sink which provides shielding/healing (so you can choose between hefty stagger and just straight up mitigating damage for different points of fights and mechanics) and spinning crane kick.

Oh. And real mitigation cooldowns, not this 7 minute Fortifying Brew garbage and Zen Meditation.

Agreed completely.

BrM is my offspec but I tank alot of plus dungeons, the only thing we shine on is kiting for certain affixes, raging/necrotic. In that gameplay the monk shines but overall it is pretty meh.

[ambident]

Don't people remember in beta when celestalon said brewmasters were probably too strong and nearly unkillable?

Between when he made that claim and today, nearly every tank has been significantly nerfed, but not brewmaster...

At least Ion's claim is a lot closer to reality than celestalon's.

[spiritsurge]

Disc is liquid shit, it's very arguably worse mechanically than it was during early WoD with the added cherry of being notably iffier on performance as well for several encounters.

First off, it does heal less, this isn't up for debate. It's not some gigantic gulf but there is a gap in most circumstances and the DPS boon does not cover it. It's viable and viable typically isn't fun when it comes with no added perks or an exciting playstyle, which is about the last thing anyone could say Disc has.

Secondly and most importantly, and most important is that it plays like fucking trash. It is one of the most clunky, thankless specs ever added and in Mythic+ it's literally the worst spec ever to grace WoW; from classic to Legion. The idea of DPS to HPS is good but you actually have to fucking design something. Disc is one of the most half-assed attempts I've ever seen.

As a Priest I feel like you haven't played Disc, or even played Priest at all in Legion. There are some things that seem counter intuitive about Disc when you get into raid healing vs dungeon healing but Disc is actually really good at both. However unlike most other healers you actually have to git gud to play Disc effectively.

Git Gud then try again.

[AetherMcLoud]

Yea but in the situations where it does work, it is ABSOLUTELY broken as all hell. The only example I can think of right now is the stupid rock throwers in arcway, most tanks get shit on, BrM monks not so much.

My hope is that there is a raid scenario where this CD really shines so everyone stops bitching.

That doesn't change the fact that it's a bad cooldown that's not even worth using the GCD most of the time.

A spell that does 100 billion damage to a target but has 6 months cooldown would be ABSOLUTELY broken as all hell once every half year that doesn't change the fact that it would be dumb and totally unfun.

[Jaewalk]

While it's purely a "feel" issue, I'd rather tank something even as quick and simple as a random heroic when there's a tank satchel on my paladin that's 25 ilvls and 7 artifact traits lower than my brewmaster. I feel like I have more "answers" to events happening around me, I pull larger groups of trash without feeling like I'm running out of cooldowns, I do more damage, and I require less babysitting. Doing boss-type world quests are also easier on my paladin. If I get below 35% with no way to get back above it for more obstinate determination procs, I can try to roll/tiger's lust away, transcendence away, etc, but often I just watch my health drop the rest of the way feeling helpless. I don't have that on my paladin.

You are just bad. Purify is the answer to everything. BrM is my OS with only 15 points in the weapon. I feel unkillable in heroics. Last night for giggles I pulled every mob after Naraxas to And including Dargul. Everyone else died but I parked myself in a corner and owned it. I'm pretty sure I could solo every heroic so I don't know wtf your talking about. BrM has a few issues...but your just bad

[AetherMcLoud]

Yeah struggling in heroics is honestly a real learn2play problem. I take so little damage I don't even need a healer in heroics anymore.

[Dreyen]

I have a guildmate, who has large succes with running mythic+ 10+ dungeons and he is rocking tanking heroic raids. So i would agree with Ion, that monks are doing quite well and is a good tanking spec when it comes to numbers and control.

What i don't know is if the spec is actually feeling smooth. I fee like that if you don't have major healing or shield, your tanking spec just feels wierd. I would love if they could push some healing or absorb into the tanking spec, because it really hurts, when you can't press a button and give your healers a break. You will always take dmg as a Brewmaser no matter what and that is the big problem in my mind.

While m+10 and heroic raids are challenging, they are far from the hardest content a tank deal with. These 2 are nothing compared to hard hitting bosses in mythic raiding or rough trash pulls/tyrannical bosses in m+15 (which is the highest m+ with a reward which is probably only going to get easier with ToV out and legendary boosts so make that +17)

[Deleted]

While m+10 and heroic raids are challenging, they are far from the hardest content a tank deal with. These 2 are nothing compared to hard hitting bosses in mythic raiding or rough trash pulls/tyrannical bosses in m+15 (which is the highest m+ with a reward which is probably only going to get easier with ToV out and legendary boosts so make that +17)

I think this shows the main problem with brm perfectly. They have a scaling problem. The harder enemies hit the more you need to purify, the more you struggle with the uptime of your other brew.
The solution to this is tricky if you want to keep the shared cooldown and the tough choice.

[Dreyen]

I think this shows the main problem with brm perfectly. They have a scaling problem. The harder enemies hit the more you need to purify, the more you struggle with the uptime of your other brew.
The solution to this is tricky if you want to keep the shared cooldown and the tough choice.

I think it's mostly a psychological problem: of course you are going to have higher stagger and feel like youre going to need to purify more: the damage output in m+15 is insane, you HAVE to tolerate a certain of amount of stagger and trust your healer. That said, it feels incredibly bad because the monk AM leads us to believe with have a vast control over our fate but it is not so. Psychological or not I think it's worth fixing to make the design more pleasurable. I still think splitting purify and ironskin on different charges would be good.

[Raakel]

"Brewmaster Monks have a community perspective problem. People aren't as familiar with your spec, so they go with someone else rather than "taking a risk".

Basically these kind of statements are "your reality versus my reality" and while it's true for both parties a statement like this doesn't solve the problem, Mr. Ion. That's a fact. Something must have gone wrong with the spec if it's so unrepresented and unwanted. It doesn't matter if it plays OK.

[Blur4stuff]

BrM is better than it was months ago. I'll give them that.

Still want to see ISB and Purify separated with altered cd/recharge times. Bring back SCK. and several other improvements mentioned here in this forum...

[Deleted]

I guess blzz made ISB and PB on shared cd because they wanted us to choose between staggering more dmg and purifying it, but there actually is no choice. You keep ISB on all the time and than you have limited charges of PB depending on your haste. They even could made ISB passive buff like shuffle in previous expansions and made PB cd. The only difference is, we are staggering more dmg and purifyin less than before

[Flurryfang]

While m+10 and heroic raids are challenging, they are far from the hardest content a tank deal with. These 2 are nothing compared to hard hitting bosses in mythic raiding or rough trash pulls/tyrannical bosses in m+15 (which is the highest m+ with a reward which is probably only going to get easier with ToV out and legendary boosts so make that +17)

Classes should not be balanced around m+15 and the hardest bosses of Mythic raiding.