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
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.