Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation
Single Target
- Blackout Kick to trigger Blackout Combo
- Invoke Niuzao, The Black Ox
- Tiger Palm to consume the Blackout Combo buff
- Keg smash
- Breath of Fire (if talented)
- Exploding Keg
- Keg Smash
- Purifying Brew (if talented into Special Delivery)
- Tiger Palm
AoE / Mythic+
- Blackout Kick to trigger Blackout Combo
- Invoke Niuzao, The Black Ox
- Breath Of Fire (to gain or refresh Charred Passions)
- Tiger Palm (to consume Blackout Combo)
- Keg Smash
- Chi Burst
- Rushing Jade Wind
- Exploding Keg
- Keg Smash
- Spinning Crane Kick (when you have nothing else to press)
Opener
- (Optional) Breath Of Fire (for Charred Passions)
- Rushing Jade Wind (before combat, if talented)
- Chi Burst from a distance
- Keg Smash
- Blackout Kick
- Breath Of Fire (to refresh Charred Passions)
- Tiger Palm
- Exploding Keg
- Keg Smash
- Blackout Kick
- Invoke Niuzao, The Black Ox
- Rushing Jade Wind (If Talented)
- Return to the General Priority
Playstyle
Stagger
While you are taking damage you’ll notice one of three debuffs applied to you at any given time:
- Light Stagger (Green) - This indicates your stagger amount is low and you’re fairly safe. This DoT will be anywhere from 1% of your Max Health to 29%
- Moderate Stagger (Yellow) - This indicates your stagger is at a decent amount, and you should start thinking about ways to mitigate or clear this. This DoT will be anywhere from 30% to 59% of your Max Health.
- Heavy Stagger (Red) - This indicates your stagger is high and you are likely in danger if you don’t have any ways to clear or help mitigate this. This DoT will be anywhere from 60% of your max HP or more.
The harder content you do, the more often you’ll be dipping into or even just sitting inside of heavy stagger. As long as you are receiving a steady amount of healing, whatever the source, you’ll be fine.
Shuffle is an important buff to maintain, as it greatly improves the effectiveness of your Stagger. Without this, I’d argue stagger is almost useless in the current patch. Fortunately, you don’t really need to think about this too often as you gain it through multiple abilities in your core rotation.
Another way to make Stagger greatly more effective, is through the use of Purifying Brew. Purifying brew has 2 charges, and the cooldown of which, along with every other Brew your have in your arsenal, is reduced through a multitude of ways (Tiger palm, Keg smash, and certain other talents). What Purifying Brew does is cleanse 50% of your current stagger amount, as well as grant you a stacking buff (based on the amount you cleanse), to increase the size of your Celestial Brew.
So that tank buster you just got hit in the face with? Stagger reduces the amount (varies depending on agility amount), turns it into a DoT, and then you can cleanse that through Purifying Brew to effectively mitigate and reduce the amount of damage you’re actually taking. It sounds complicated but I promise it’s not!
Finally, this all feeds back into the tool that is Celestial Brew. Now the base absorb amount of this ability is rather lackluster, but through clever use of Purifying Brew in combination with the talent Improved Celestial Brew, you can over triple the absorb amount, making it a very powerful defensive tool for us.
Cooldown Usage
Exploding Keg - Exploding Keg presents itself as reliable burst damage, providing a Keg Smash reset and a strong defensive benefit, usable when setting up pulls in Mythic+ and helping to establish strong threat.
Touch of Death - A 3 minute cooldown baseline, reduced to 1.5 minutes with Fatal Touch. Used to Execute enemies with less health than you, or with the talent Improved Touch Of Death you can use it on any enemy below 15% health to deal 35% of your max hp in damage. It’s ideal to use this solely to execute mobs, and when used reduces your Stagger by 200%.
Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox - Niuzao provides substantial defensive benefits at times where you have Heavy Stagger, transferring that damage to himself. This however does not stop us using Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox as a damage-oriented cooldown. We are incentivized to fit as many casts of Blackout Kick as we can into his duration, to trigger as many Stomps as we can. Any Stagger that we purify during this time heals Niuzao, and with Mighty Stomp talented Niuzao can provide extra utility on top of everything he’s already doing.
Defensives
Celestial Brew - A 1 minute cooldown that applies an absorb shield to consume damage taken. You can increase the absorb size through Purified Chi and reduce its cooldown massively through your rotation (Keg Smash and Tiger Palm).
Fortifying Brew - A 6 minute cooldown that provides 20% max health and 20% damage reduction. You can lower the cooldown to 4 minutes through Expeditious Fortification, or gain an additional 10% max hp and 10% damage reduction through Ironshell Brew. You can also cause it to increase the effectiveness of your Stagger for its duration by 15% with Fortifying Brew: Determination. The cooldown is already pretty strong, so the additions can be pretty overkill at times. You can also reduce the cooldown of this with your rotational abilities similarly to Celestial Brew.
Diffuse Magic - Now an added bonus to Fortifying Brew, dispelling you and reflecting them back onto the caster where possible.
Yu'lon's Grace - This is a passive talent that continuously applies a magic absorb shield.