Brewmaster - Breath of Fire

[dileria]

Currently Breath of Fire is in a weird spot.
The Damage numbers are low, also the damage reduction is kind of low?
And the uptime is clunky. 12 Secs duration, 15 Secs cooldown xD?
All in all this spell feels/is bad

This is already the case in BFA.

Now i look at the Shadowlands Abilities

Night Fae - Faeline Stomp: Ignites enemies with Breath of Fire
Venthyr - Fallen Order: Your Ox Summons cast Breath of Fire
Conduit - Scalding Brew: Keg Smash deals increased dmg to targets affected by BoF
Legendary - Charred Passions: BoF increases the dmg of SCK and BOK for 8 sec, furthermore they will refresh the duration of BoF

Talent - Spitfire: Tiger palm has a 25% Chance to reset BoF CD (we already know that [dead] talent for more than one expansion...)
Talent - Celestial Flames: Brews have 30% Chance to buff SCK for 6 secs. SCK applies BoF and BoF has an additional 5% damage reduction

6 Effects / Abilities to buff a bad spell.
Many different effects to push the uptime from 80% to 100%, while one effect is already enough -> making further uptime effects obsolete

It is unlikely for Blizzard to change/improve all these effects, so....

My Bandaid Fix suggestion:
Breath of Fire Stacks (up to 3,4,5,X times?). New Stacks dont refresh old stacks.
If the Damage reduction is too strong. High Stacks can have a diminishing return on the damage reduction

This can open up a new BoF build.
Night Fae, Venthyr, the legendary and finally even Spitfire have some real defensive benifits. Furthermore that conduit is less annoying and celestial flames becomes maybe a worthy alternative to high tolerance.

Personally i like the fantasy of Breath of Fire. (I played that brewmaster in wc3 )
Sadly the current implementation does not deliver that feeling i long for :/

[Wuusah]

BoF is really in a weird spot. They are giving all these cool interactions with it in Shadowlands but keep the base of the skill super weak. It's like giving an enhancement shaman some really cool ways to weave lightning bolt into your rotation, but lightning bolt does 1 damage.

The BoF stacking sounds like a cool idea. Could get out of hand, though, with some of the powers in this expansion.

[dileria]

Yeah i see your point, that this could get too powerful.
This can be solved by number tuning.
For Example:
First application reduces enemy dmg by 5% and further stacks by 1/1,5/2%

This way the priority is to maintain 100% uptime, and further stacks are not strictly necessary, but rather just a small benefit defensive wise.
The damage of BoF can stack without restrictions in my opinion.

[Pearstriker]

I feel like in BfA the only reason we maintain so much uptime on BoF is because of boiling brew. I mean, I've had one stack of that since I got my first piece with it.

So this is actually something I've wondered about, I know it's an ability that doesn't cost anything but a global, but it really feels optional for the first time in a while. Since I play with blackout combo, (might change going forward but I'm sticking with it for now) the bonus effect for BoF comes to mind but that was a poor use of it before the changes and with so much fewer BoK's these days I can't imagine using it on that.

Beyond that, the 5% damage reduction has been on that ability since it was an artifact ability back in legion, so moving it to a talent when it's already kinda lackluster with that built in is a very odd choice.

Or is that talent an extra 5%? Ive been slacking a bit, I'll admit it

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