Brewmaster, too many abilities?

[Sumatran]

Currently have a 400 geared Prot warr, 391 prot pally, and 391 bear.

After messing around with the brewmaster (which I currently plan to reroll to) there seems to be just too many fucking abilities.

I am sure that I am missing the learning curve just having a level 85 (as you level you know what abilities to use and what are useless to you) but this seems overwhelming.

Am I right or should I chill out and level one and then see?

[Edds]

Currently have a 400 geared Prot warr, 391 prot pally, and 391 bear.

After messing around with the brewmaster (which I currently plan to reroll to) there seems to be just too many fucking abilities.

I am sure that I am missing the learning curve just having a level 85 (as you level you know what abilities to use and what are useless to you) but this seems overwhelming.

Am I right or should I chill out and level one and then see?

im getting the same problem with mistweaver. (only with melee abilities)

while prot pally and prot warrior lost a few abilties which free'd up several of my keybinds. im kinda stuck with trying to find spots for brewmaster and mistweaver

[Blueeagle]

When I played around with it, I was just overwhelmed. The more i got into it the simpler it got. I ended up with about 1 action bar worth of main abilities.
Jab
Keg Smash
Expel Harm
Tiger Palm
Guard
Blackout Kick
Purifying Brew
Elusive Brew
Lvl 30 Talent
Healing sphere

Aoe -
Dizzying Haze
Breath of Fire

Not counting cooldowns into this, nor roll since they are more to the side then playstyle.
The rotation becomes pretty simple once you get into it too.

[420rogue]

Cooldowns and roll and transcendence all have to be included. You cant just say rotation. Also you forgot provoke. Those alone just doubled your keybinds needed

[elfporn]

There's a lot of different angles you can get into when playing.

i leveled one to 81 a few builds ago.

i had 2 bars filled, 16 abilities hotkeyed



top to bottom, left to right:

Clash, keg smash, zen sphere (talent), touch of death, roll, dizzying haze, path of blossums (don't know how good this is now), expel harm, guard, elusive brew, fortifying brew, and avert harm

taunt ( " ` " on far right), Blackout kic, jab, tiger palm, breath of fire, spinning crane kick, purifying brew, detox, crackling jade lightning (rarely used, if ever as tank), spear hand.

That's my bars for leveling, a few things would be swapped in for raiding, but for the most part, its not too many abilities - i use an old logitech G11 keyboard - it might seem overwhelming at first, but its no worse than any other class (and not as bad as some); leveling from the start definitely helps too.

also, some abilities like touch of death and healing sphere you will just leave behind as a tank in a raid situation, though maybe touch of death on trash? oh well.

[Rege]

I think like every other tanking class, you have abilities that you use for certain scenarios. (AoE versus Single Target, etc.)

I too have dabbled in Brewmaster, and even though there are a lot of abilities, it's not as overwhelming once you get a feel for what to use and when.

---------- Post added 2012-07-31 at 10:40 PM ----------

Btw, love the instructions your guild chat is giving.

[Blueeagle]

Cooldowns and roll and transcendence all have to be included. You cant just say rotation. Also you forgot provoke. Those alone just doubled your keybinds needed

Roll is the only one i would keybind personally, which is why i don't really count them. provoke and leer of the ox are taunts, and come along with every tank no matter what so i didnt count them either =D

[Ergar]

I dont think brewmasters have that many abilities to use. Sure its a wide arsenal, but i can easily bind all that i need with 1-6. c,v,b,g,t,r,e,q + mousewheel + shift modifier to a few keys. I use just regular mouse + keyboard, that came with the computer when i bought it, so they have no extra keys.

[420rogue]

While transcendence isnt used much in dungeons, in raids i think it will be something to really use. Going to move due to mechanic but want boss back where he was? Boom transport back to where you were and there goes the boss back in place.

Adds spawn here everytime? Use it to port at last second for more uptime on boss.
Boss sucks you in every 30 seconds then AoEs? Teleport soon as sucked in.

I could go on but you get the point. It's not required as no other tank has it but i think you should take advantage of that.

[Mistfit]

I usually just bind the longer cd's on to shift or another modifier on my action binds so I can easily access them. If you do macros such as :
#showtooltip
/cast[nomod] Black Out Kick
/cast[mod] Fortifying Brew
for example then you hit any modifier and it will show the correct image/tooltip of the CD on your bar. I macro all my keybinds similar to this so I have one bar, but numerous skills linked. Then it is all a matter of muscle memory for learning it. YMMV

[The Madgod]

Currently have a 400 geared Prot warr, 391 prot pally, and 391 bear.

After messing around with the brewmaster (which I currently plan to reroll to) there seems to be just too many fucking abilities.

I am sure that I am missing the learning curve just having a level 85 (as you level you know what abilities to use and what are useless to you) but this seems overwhelming.

Am I right or should I chill out and level one and then see?

I'd relax and look at the connections and use of the abilities. If you can organize them in a way that makes sense to you, it will become infinitely easier to manage them all.

Like for example, I keep guard close to tiger palm, since you need to use tiger palm three times so as to maximize the effectiveness of guard. I keep all of the chi generators together, as well.

Leveling as a brewmaster will help too, since it'll get you used to all of your abilities slowly, over time.

[KelaniScar]

I had everything comfortably key bound with my Brewmaster.

(Video for ui reference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vFjmVxWLvI)

It depends on how you key bind. I had all my main abilities nicely bound on my first bar, then using a shift modifier my 'extra abilities', then using two other modifiers I had personal cooldowns and additional cooldowns. Maybe I have more binds than the average player, but the sooner you move to binding all abilities the faster you can get muscle memory going and the faster you can start to play more intuitively.

Either way, for the basics you would only really need Keg Smash, Jab, Tiger Palm, Blackout Kick, Breath of Fire and potentially Dizzying Haze. Past that the self heals / extra talents can be clicked if you so desire, just have them in an appropriate place.

[Nobleshield]

I found this as well but being a Prot Warrior I'm used to it I have all four main action bars used on Prot Warrior, and on Brewmaster. Sometimes I forget what keys I have bound to what because there's a bunch, but I like to group related talents (e.g. my "filler" ability is always my F key - Devastate on my Warrior, tiger Palm on my Monk; "V" is my cooldowns - Shield Wall, Shift+V is Last Stand, on the monk V is fortifying brew, I think shift+V is the OP 50% reduction CD). Also I don't use Shift mods for 1 and 2 because it's too hard for me to hit on a regular basis (okay maybe 2 could work, but not 1).

[Nikkaszal]

Levelling as a Brewmaster makes it much, much easier.

Slowly adapting your button setup, and getting used to the abilities you have while adding one more at a time into the mix, makes for a much more natural setup.


I levelled as Brewmaster/Mistweaver, so I can tank/heal as a monk in my sleep. Conversely, I switched to Windwalker at 88 to try something new, and was completely overwhelmed.

[Felade]

Prot Warrior

Charge
Intervene
Heroic Leap
Shield Slam
Revenge

Devastate
Thunder Clap
Demo Shout
Disarm
Shield Wall

Shield Block
Shield Barrier
Spell Reflect
Zerker Rage
Enraged Regen

Last Stand
Rallying Cry
Cleave
Heroic Strike
Shockwave

Intimidating Shout
Storm Bolt
Victory Rush
Battle Stance
Berserker Stance

Vigilance
Taunt
Heroic Throw
Commanding Shout
Battle Shout

Recklessness
Shattering Throw
Demo Banner
Mocking Banner
Skull Banner

Pummel
Piercing Howl




I get 36 conceivably useful Prot Warrior abilities (I put one talent in per tier that adds an active button). The guide here on MMO Champion lists 27 abilities. They might have cut out some of the more marginal monk abilities in their guide because they aren't important to mention, but I have most of these keybound on live (obviously not some of the talents, but some of the abilities I have keybound are going away so this is pretty close to the keybinds I have on live).

[Yorgl]

I'm really surprised to see such a topic. :-O
The BM doesn't have that many abilites (even with CD's), the difficulty is more how you use them.

[Deipfryde]

Levelling as a Brewmaster makes it much, much easier.

Slowly adapting your button setup, and getting used to the abilities you have while adding one more at a time into the mix, makes for a much more natural setup.

This. That's one of the bad things about the way the beta is set up, that you can create a max level character that you have no idea how to play. You look at the huge pile of abilities and you don't know what goes where. But if you look at the other classes, tank or not, you'll also find a shitton of abilities, most of which aren't used except in specific circumstances. I was just playing on my shaman just now, and I've got four bars full of various abilities and buffs and heals and all that. During a normal solo fight, I use maybe five or six of them. My pally tank is the same way. The five expands to maybe eight during a dungeon run, most of which are bound to mouse buttons or controlled by addons like TauntMaster (which maybe expands it up to ten or twelve with right-clicks, middle-clicks, etc, all on one button). OP, if you look at your prot warrior or bear, I think you'll find you have just about the same number of overall abilities at your disposal there, too, it's just that you know how to use them.

I plan on leveling as a Brewmaster, and my only concern is that I may be lacking in offense to get through content quickly compared to a Windwalker, so it may be a little slower. But I do enjoy questing/leveling as a tank and being nigh-unkillable to most mobs. The whole "come at me bro" attitude of a questing tank is fun to me.

[Milkshake86]

I found it quite easy honestly. The core abilities gives you general knowledge then you move from there, I sit around 30 keybinds not including modifiers so wasnt a stretch at all.

[Nikkaszal]

I plan on leveling as a Brewmaster, and my only concern is that I may be lacking in offense to get through content quickly compared to a Windwalker, so it may be a little slower.

Keg Smash hits like a train, as does Breath of Fire. Brewmasters are totally boss at AoE levelling. What makes it even more spectacular than other tanks' AoE farming is the fact that Dizzying Haze is a spammable, ranged, instant, AoE mob-tagger.

I levelled as a Brewmaster (albeit many, many builds ago) and it was great. Planning on doing it again on Live.

[Cutedruid]

They're like every other tank, really. You have 13120382 abilities but really only use 5.