Shadowlands Brewmaster

[Shokfactor]

Hanging up my warrior mantle that I've been playing since BC. Thinking about going Blood DK or Brewmaster, I love tanking and like to dps if needed. Are you guys excited for brewmaster in shadowlands or not. The class and spec has always interested me so I kinda want to know what your guys opinion on it is.

[Shelly]

Without a double-charge of Keg Smash the spec just feels anemic with regards to damage which makes it slow to play solo.

Outside of that it's one of the easiest tank classes to play, has a very strong toolkit against big damage and probably the easiest AoE aggro tool around with Rushing Jade Wind which just requires a single global every now and again to maintain threat on most everything.

Really it's a solid all-rounder with excellent CC, aggro and survivability, but could use just a single tweak with a double charge of Keg Smash to increase overall damage and smoothness.

[shade3891]

Maining Brewmaster next expansion. I always hated the connected charges between the brews, very glad that is gone. DPS can feel a bit lackluster as Shelly pointed but im hoping Touch of Death will make up for it.

[dcc626]

Without a double-charge of Keg Smash the spec just feels anemic with regards to damage which makes it slow to play solo.

Outside of that it's one of the easiest tank classes to play, has a very strong toolkit against big damage and probably the easiest AoE aggro tool around with Rushing Jade Wind which just requires a single global every now and again to maintain threat on most everything.

Really it's a solid all-rounder with excellent CC, aggro and survivability, but could use just a single tweak with a double charge of Keg Smash to increase overall damage and smoothness.

good news, wowhead has some potential datamined legos, and keg smash shoulders are one of them. good times.

[Anna Hope]

good news, wowhead has some potential datamined legos, and keg smash shoulders are one of them. good times.

Imo that's the whole problem since Legion. We shouldn't need every expansion's artifact weapons, essences, covenant abilities and legendaries that our specs feel good to play! They should have baked in everything from the Legion artifacts, then you could add borrowed power on top of an already fun spec.

[Marrilaife]

Brewmaster has been "meta" since its introduction in MOP, in basically every patch outside first 1-2 patches of Legion (period before Nighthold). I think you can't go wrong with it for Shadowlands.

[Wuusah]

Imo that's the whole problem since Legion. We shouldn't need every expansion's artifact weapons, essences, covenant abilities and legendaries that our specs feel good to play! They should have baked in everything from the Legion artifacts, then you could add borrowed power on top of an already fun spec.

let's just always pile on power on top of power. In a few expansions we'll just press a button and the whole screen explodes

[dcc626]

Imo that's the whole problem since Legion. We shouldn't need every expansion's artifact weapons, essences, covenant abilities and legendaries that our specs feel good to play! They should have baked in everything from the Legion artifacts, then you could add borrowed power on top of an already fun spec.

i mean, the game is 15 years old and hard to balance as it is. they cant add every xpac and move on. i agree that all borrowed power is frustrating, but the game cant take constant additions with any hopes of even attempting balance.

- - - Updated - - -

let's just always pile on power on top of power. In a few expansions we'll just press a button and the whole screen explodes

look what happened when the corruption vendor came out. within a few weeks the game exploded in a ridiculous way. the only way we dont get borrowed power systems is if they add very little each xpac and then gear is the only way to be stronger. andi tell you this, that would get boring really quickly. you know that feeling way into a tier when you basically have no upgrades you can get anymore? how good do you feel then?

[Jackstraw]

how good do you feel then?

Since Legion can be used as a sample, plenty.

You can push for higher keys, play something different, you can queue PvP without worrying of being outgeared and can actually practice your class at its theoretical absolute best.
Or you know, get back to the wheel and play an alt if the system does not actively punish for trying to play more than a character.

[Samuraijake]

Imo that's the whole problem since Legion. We shouldn't need every expansion's artifact weapons, essences, covenant abilities and legendaries that our specs feel good to play! They should have baked in everything from the Legion artifacts, then you could add borrowed power on top of an already fun spec.

I agree on this, Im considering Brewmaster as my main or Side h0e class going into shadowlands and i feel like those shoulders are just gonna be required or at minimum a "grab" just to have that keg smash smoothness back.

[dianagrayson]

i love warcraft

[Will]

the recent change to target cap keg smash to 5 kind of stings, but brewmaster is still going to do insane damage in shadowlands if you go Kyrian. Just pick literally every perk and choice that buffs keg smash (+ keg smash shoulders) or weapons of order's uptime. Then do absolutely disgusting AoE keg smash spam. Weapons of order buffs its damage by 25% (after max stacks), removes its cooldown for 30+ seconds (30 baseline, can be increased with the right choices) and the shoulders give it 2 charges and buff its damage by 30%. Even with the target cap nerf, a 5-mob pack in M+ is going to absolutely melt beneath the ridiculous keg spam.

Pelagos soulbinds:
Scalding Brew: Keg smash does +50% damage to targets affected by Breath of Fire

Strike with Clarity: Weapons of order gains +20% mastery and +5s duration
Combat Meditation: Activating Weapons of Order increases Mastery by 5% for 20s and occasionally expels items which you run into to extend Weapons of Order by 3s.

Leggo shoulders:
Stormstout's Last Keg -- Keg Smash deals 30% additional damage, and has 1 additional charge.

Charred Passions -- Your Breath of Fire ignites your right leg in flame for 8 sec, causing your Blackout Kick and Spinning Crane Kick to deal 30% additional damage as Fire damage and refresh the duration of your Breath of Fire on the target.

So to clarify, weapons of order will:

- Last 35s baseline, increased further if 'orbs' are collected, with a mere 2 minute cooldown
- Increase mastery by 35% (when upgraded) for the first 20 seconds, and 30% for the remainder of its duration.
- Completely remove the cooldown on Keg Smash so you can spam it.
- Give a stackable 8s increase to Keg Smash' damage by 5%, stacking up to 25% after a maximum of 5 times.

Keg Smash will:
- Gain 30% damage from the legendary in addition to the second charge.
- Gain 50% damage from fully-maxed-out Scaling Brew.
- Gain 25% damage from a fully-stacked Weapons of Order effect.
- Gain further damage from Weapons of Order's significant Mastery boost once those associated perks are stacked and maxed out.
- Lose its cooldown for a significant duration during Weapons of Order.

That's a 105% damage increase. (Actually unless I'm mistaken damage increases are still multiplicative, so that's more like 1*1.3*1.5*1.25 = 243%, for nearly 2.5x the original damage output of Keg Smash) and that's without even considering the extra damage from mastery.

[Sosuke Aizen]

Without a double-charge of Keg Smash the spec just feels anemic with regards to damage which makes it slow to play solo.

Outside of that it's one of the easiest tank classes to play, has a very strong toolkit against big damage and probably the easiest AoE aggro tool around with Rushing Jade Wind which just requires a single global every now and again to maintain threat on most everything.

Really it's a solid all-rounder with excellent CC, aggro and survivability, but could use just a single tweak with a double charge of Keg Smash to increase overall damage and smoothness.

I haven't had any issues with a slower gameplay while messing around with other legos or even leveling for that matter. I am able to pull big groups of mobs, get them down and move on. Even with the change to Celestial Brew and Keg Smash, I agree that we are pretty solid. I do find the Paladin a much easier class to play - either way I will have my Prot Pally and Brewmaster Monk at max level and geared from the start of the expansion.

[Wuusah]

the recent change to target cap keg smash to 5 kind of stings, but brewmaster is still going to do insane damage in shadowlands if you go Kyrian. Just pick literally every perk and choice that buffs keg smash (+ keg smash shoulders) or weapons of order's uptime. Then do absolutely disgusting AoE keg smash spam. Weapons of order buffs its damage by 25% (after max stacks), removes its cooldown for 30+ seconds (30 baseline, can be increased with the right choices) and the shoulders give it 2 charges and buff its damage by 30%. Even with the target cap nerf, a 5-mob pack in M+ is going to absolutely melt beneath the ridiculous keg spam.

Pelagos soulbinds:
Scalding Brew: Keg smash does +50% damage to targets affected by Breath of Fire

Strike with Clarity: Weapons of order gains +20% mastery and +5s duration
Combat Meditation: Activating Weapons of Order increases Mastery by 5% for 20s and occasionally expels items which you run into to extend Weapons of Order by 3s.

Leggo shoulders:
Stormstout's Last Keg -- Keg Smash deals 30% additional damage, and has 1 additional charge.

Charred Passions -- Your Breath of Fire ignites your right leg in flame for 8 sec, causing your Blackout Kick and Spinning Crane Kick to deal 30% additional damage as Fire damage and refresh the duration of your Breath of Fire on the target.

So to clarify, weapons of order will:

- Last 35s baseline, increased further if 'orbs' are collected, with a mere 2 minute cooldown
- Increase mastery by 35% (when upgraded) for the first 20 seconds, and 30% for the remainder of its duration.
- Completely remove the cooldown on Keg Smash so you can spam it.
- Give a stackable 8s increase to Keg Smash' damage by 5%, stacking up to 25% after a maximum of 5 times.

Keg Smash will:
- Gain 30% damage from the legendary in addition to the second charge.
- Gain 50% damage from fully-maxed-out Scaling Brew.
- Gain 25% damage from a fully-stacked Weapons of Order effect.
- Gain further damage from Weapons of Order's significant Mastery boost once those associated perks are stacked and maxed out.
- Lose its cooldown for a significant duration during Weapons of Order.

That's a 105% damage increase. (Actually unless I'm mistaken damage increases are still multiplicative, so that's more like 1*1.3*1.5*1.25 = 243%, for nearly 2.5x the original damage output of Keg Smash) and that's without even considering the extra damage from mastery.

your data is very outdated and you have misunderstood some things:

Conduits are capped at rank 5 in 9.0
Scalding Brew has been nerfed hard weeks ago. It will only give 8.4% more damage at rank 5.
Strike with Clarity will give 6.25% mastery at rank 5.

Weapons of Order has never completely removed the cooldown of Keg Smash. It resets the cooldown. That means you can immediately use it again once and after that it has its normal cooldown. So you do Keg Smash -> WoO -> Keg Smash -> something else

[Will]

Weapons of Order has never completely removed the cooldown of Keg Smash. It resets the cooldown. That means you can immediately use it again once and after that it has its normal cooldown. So you do Keg Smash -> WoO -> Keg Smash -> something else

Well no wonder I misunderstood it. I'm not on beta and the wording basically reads as:

"For the next 30 sec, your Mastery is increased by 10%. Additionally, Keg Smash cooldown is reset instantly and enemies hit by Keg Smash take 5% increased damage from you for 8 sec, stacking up to 5 times."

The way it's written is very misleading as it implies the Keg Smash cooldown reset is applied for the 30 second duration, because it's looped in with the stacking damage boost effect.

Strike With Clarity seems to be a WIP because according to the WoWhead calc, every rank is identical.

Also, isn't the cap of 5 for conduits only for the first raid tier? Aren't they increasing it as the expansion goes by?

[Wuusah]

Well no wonder I misunderstood it. I'm not on beta and the wording basically reads as:

"For the next 30 sec, your Mastery is increased by 10%. Additionally, Keg Smash cooldown is reset instantly and enemies hit by Keg Smash take 5% increased damage from you for 8 sec, stacking up to 5 times."

The way it's written is very misleading as it implies the Keg Smash cooldown reset is applied for the 30 second duration, because it's looped in with the stacking damage boost effect.

Strike With Clarity seems to be a WIP because according to the WoWhead calc, every rank is identical.

Also, isn't the cap of 5 for conduits only for the first raid tier? Aren't they increasing it as the expansion goes by?

Yes the cap will go up with further raid tiers but that's far in the future where other changes might come. It makes no sense to make plans for that time right now

[Pearstriker]

Brewmaster is great fun, and I think it's looking good for Shadowlands.

It's definitely gotten simpler since they -basically- made ironskin brew a passive effect instead of a tax on your brew charges, but there's still some good options to choose between in terms of your talents and play style.

So to answer your question, give it a shot! It's a good spec, and I'm excited for the changes going forward.

[Mouri Kogorou]

am getting crushed while leveling

[Julmara]

i didnt realy find a brewmaster post other than this so it looks like our tier set bonus is kinda bad once again sadly
9.2.0 Class Set - Monk - Brewmaster - 2PC Targets ignited by Breath of Fire deal an additional 4% less damage to you.
9.2.0 Class Set - Monk - Brewmaster - 4PC Breath of Fire empowers your next Tiger Palm or Blackout Kick, increasing Shuffle duration and Brew cooldown reduction by 100%.