Introduction
Stagger, yeah, let's start there.
If you spec into Brewmaster, you might notice that we have significantly less health than all other tanks, which might look scary at first. There is a solution to that called Stagger.
Stagger works by reducing the initial damage of a hit while delaying the rest of it as a dot. You can then cleanse some of that to take even less damage.
Brewmaster is excellent for progression because it generally allows healers to focus more on the raid rather than babysitting you like other tanks.
On top of Stagger, Brewmaster has always been a reliable way to get Mystic Touch in a raid.
While Brewmaster's weakness lies in the lack of self-healing, Celestial Fortune makes up for it in a raid environment where you generally have hots and beacon healing rolling on you.
What has changed
Changes in Patch 10.1.7
There haven't been any changes to Brewmaster Monk in Patch 10.1.7 that have required updates to the guide.
Patch 10.1.5 Monk Changes
- New Talent: Yu’lon’s Grace – Find resilience in the flow of chi in battle, gaining a magic absorb shield for 2% of your max health every 2 seconds in combat, stacking up to 20%.
- Yu’lon’s Grace is located as a choice node with Diffuse Magic.
- New Talent: Dance of the Wind – Your Dodge chance is increased by 10%.
- Dance of the Wind is located as a choice node with Dampen Harm.
- Generous Pour’s tooltip has been updated to more accurately describe its functionality. No functionality has changed.
- Yu’lon’s Grace now stacks up to 10% (was 20%).
- Brewmaster
- New Talent: Press the Advantage – Your auto-attacks reduce the cooldown on your brews by 0.5 seconds and block your target’s chi, dealing additional Nature damage and causing them to take 1% increased damage from your abilities for 10 seconds. Upon reaching 10 stacks, your next cast of Rising Sun Kick or Keg Smash consumes all stacks to strike again at 100% effectiveness. This bonus attack can trigger effects on behalf of Tiger Palm. Replaces Tiger Palm.
- Bonus attacks from Press the Advantage trigger Chi Surge when talented and have a chance to summon Niuzao, the Black Ox when Call to Arms is talented.
- Ability damage increased by 7%.
- Rising Sun Kick and Blackout Kick damage increased by 20%.
- Tiger Palm and Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox damage increased by 50%.
- Blackout Combo tooltip adjusted to reflect current functionality with Breath of Fire.
- The following changes have been made to Press the Advantage:
- Stack duration increased to 20 seconds.
- On-hit Nature damage increased to 20% attack power (was 10%).
- Only triggers from main-hand attacks.
- Triggers on attempted melee attacks, not just successes.
- Face Palm and Counterstrike apply to all targets hit by a bonus Keg Smash.
- On-hit Nature damage no longer buffed by Counterstrike or Blackout Combo.
- Blackout Combo now correctly consumed by Rising Sun Kick.
- Second charge of Keg Smash no longer consumed by bonus casts.
- Face Palm’s value is now correctly reduced when triggered by bonus casts.
- Chi Surge effectiveness reduced when triggered by Press the Advantage.
Patch 10.1.0 Brewmaster Monk Changes
With a new raid tier comes new tier sets.
The monk class set is called Fangs of the Vermillion Forge.
- (2) Set Bonus: Blackout Kick damage increased by 20%. You have a 10% chance to not reset your Elusive Brawler stacks on a successful dodge.
- (4) Set Bonus: Rising Sun Kick grants a stack of Elusive Brawler. When you dodge, damage and critical strike chance of your next Blackout Kick or Rising Sun Kick is increased by 5%, stacking up to 5 times.
Additionally, Blizzard put game wide buffs to several things:
The stamina of players has been raised by 25%. Meanwhile, the damage dealt by enemy spells and melee attacks has also been increased by 25%. Self-healing and absorb shield spells for damage dealers and tanks have been increased by a commensurate amount, so that they retain their impact when solo or when supporting a group."
With this, we received these changes:
- Soothing Mist healing increased by 25%.
- Chi Burst healing increased by 25%.
- Chi Wave healing increased by 25%.
- Expel Harm healing increased by 25%.
- Staggering Strikes reduces Stagger by an additional 25%.
- Celestial Brew absorbs 25% additional damage.
- Vivify healing increased by 92%.
- Celestial Fortune now has a chance equal to your critical strike chance to be healed for an additional 80% of the amount healed (was 65%).
This is expected to be net neutral compared to before the patch.
Patch 10.0.5 Changes
Resonant Fists got a big damage nerf, but the nerf is compensated by a lot of our other abilities getting buffed, essentially moving our damage profile from a lot of passive damage into having our abilities mean more damage-wise.
We also get a new talent on the Brewmaster-specific tree called Spirit of the Ox, giving our Rising Sun Kick and Blackout Kick a chance to summon Healing Spheres (8ppm hasted).
This gives us a much-welcomed extra self-healing boost.
Down below are the official blue post changes:
- New Ability: Spirit of the Ox – Your Rising Sun Kick and Blackout Kick have a chance to summon a Healing Sphere
- Stagger is now a baseline ability
- Resonant Fists damage reduced by 45%
- Keg Smash damage increased by 10%
- Tiger Palm damage increased by 20%
- Blackout Kick damage increased by 20%
- Spinning Crane Kick increased by 20%
- Breath of Fire damage increased by 25%
- Quick Sip now purifies 5% of damage delayed by Stagger (was 2%)
- Gift of the Ox is now a 1 rank talent (was 2)
- Graceful Exit is now a 1 rank talent (was 2)
- Quick Sip is now a 1 rank talent (was 2)
- Staggering Strikes is now a 1 rank talent (was 2)
First Impressions
We have gotten a bunch of nice things in Dragonflight, and regarding damage, it seems alright.
We have also gained some more defensive abilities, such as Diffuse Magic and “Improved Zen Med.” While those sound nice, with so much of everything doing a lot of magic damage currently, Brewmaster feels squishy compared to what we’re used to.