WoW Brewmaster Monk Tank Guide
Table of Contents
WoW Brewmaster Monk Introduction
Brewmaster monk is one of the more unique tank specs, instead of having to worry about active mitigation uptime, which is a passive, you have active mitigation
management with Stagger. Stagger takes a large portion of the damage intake and places of Damage Over Time effect on you which you can manage through purifying brews. This makes for a different playstyle altogether. Brewmaster is a more complex tank to get into and master, but when you do, it is an offensive juggernaut in AoE and incredibly difficult to kill.
The build below is based around Dragonfire Brew and proper Stagger management, a Charred Passions build is coming soon! For class fantasy, Brewmaster feels incredibly cool, chucking kegs, breathing fire while dodging loads of attacks while offering a ton of utility.
WoW Brewmaster Monk Strengths & Weaknesses
WoW Brewmaster Monk Stats
Brewmaster is an agility based spec, agility directly affects the strength of your stagger dot. Brew is also in a unique position in that it doesn’t really care about Haste.
- Critical Strike: Brewmasters have a passive ability in Celestial Fortune, which, equal to your critical strike chance, increases the amount of healing taken by a massive 65%. Add the fact this is a great offensive stat as well, Critical Strike is valued by Brewmasters. Luckily Critical Strike is incredibly easy to find on gear.
- Versatility: Increases Damage and Healing done and decreases damage taken(50% value). Versatility has been one of the harder stats to find on gear this
season, so prioritize versatility gear where you can without sacrificing Agility. - Haste: As said up above, Brewmasters don’t really care that much about haste, the High Tolerance talent can increase your haste passively to make the rotation feel good. Haste also affects Energy Regeneration and the cooldown of Keg Smash, something that Stormstout’s Last Keg(2nd charge) fixes the need to prioritize this stat.
- Mastery: Increases your attack power passively and adds defensive value with Elusive Brawler stacks, granting stacking dodge chance, while this has little use versus undodgeable attacks, but does provide a strong mitigation against those that do.
Versatility > Critical Strike > Mastery > Haste
WoW Brewmaster Monk Enchants, Gems & Consumables
Gems:
- Focus heavily on Versatility gems wherever possible, Critical strike is also a good secondary option.
Enchants:
- Weapon: Brewmaster has the option to run one 2 hander or two 1 handers, try to opt for two 1 handers due to the strengths of enchants. Sophic Devotion should be your main enchant choice all around, if you have 2 weapons, put Frozen Devotion on your main hand and Sophic on your off hand.
- Weapon Consumables: Buzzing Rune is a 2 hour Critical Strike buff to be used at all times.
Phials:
- Tepid Versatility: Brewmasters like versatility, they’re cheap to buy. Great in all content.
- Eye of the Storm: Each enemy that hits you grants you an Agility buff stacking 5 times. Great in all content.
- Glacial Fury: A good damage proc but does nothing for you defensively.
Enchants:
- Cloaks: Regenerative Leech is a nice form of stagger mitigation outside of combat while on the move to the next pack.
- Bracers: Devotion of Leech
- Rings: Devotion of Versatility or Critical Strike, whichever you feel need both.
- Chest: Waking Stats, a primary stat buff
- Boots: Watcher’s Loam, a nice stamina buff
- Pants: Fierce armor kit, a nice primary stat and stamina buff
WoW Brewmaster Monk Basics
WoW Brewmaster Monk Talents
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WoW Brewmaster Monk Class Tree
Brewmaster is in a really solid spot coming into 10.0.7, complex, but solid. The class tree offers some variability but is mostly rigid in pathing based on what you need as a tank. With Dragonflight, lots of defensives were added to Brewmaster, either making them more easily accessible or being brought over from the other specs. Today we’re going to be talking about a more beginner friendly build, where you can spec into more expertise along the way that focuses around Breath of Fire and Stagger Management.
WoW Brewmaster Monk Core Abilities
- Soothing Mist(default): Strictly for pathing, don’t even put on your bars.
- Vigorous Expulsion(default): Expel Harm is a baseline ability that is going to be your big when you need it to heal. This talent increases its critical chance by 15% and its healing for 5%. Since Brewmaster loves critical strike, this adds up nicely.
- Grace of the Crane(default): Increases all healing taken 8%. Brewmaster baseline can be very squishy, these talents are required to play at a higher level while in lower end content you may not feel these as much.
- Rising Sun Kick(default): Big single target ability, adds to the button bloat a touch but is too good to pass up.
- Calming Presence(default): Reduces damage taken by 3%. Simple.
- Tiger’s Lust(baseline): Movement speed increase 70% and removes all snares and roots(really good).
- Detox(take when needed): Disease and Poison dispel, like any dispel in content where it’s not required, dead talent, where it’s needed it’s invaluable.
- Paralysis & Improved Paralysis: In running Mythic Plus, you’ll hear the term ParaStop frequently. That is to stop a cast with Paralysis, can be used to skip mobs, keep them in place at a distance, this is a very great utility pick up with tons of uses. Last 1m.
- Ferocity of Xuen(default): Another boring talent option in the tree, but 4% increased damage is better than 0.
- Transcendence(default): Monk Port, this is as useful as you can be creative. Place your soul where you want it, run around, swap places with your souls when you need to. Anytime you know you need to be somewhere for a certain time, preplan a monk port!.
- Ring of Peace(M+ Default): Drop the peace, any CC’able add gets thrown out of the ring. Another creative use talent, that’s also immensely useful on Sanguine weeks. Can be used to stop casts, movement denial and control, positioning control. A brewmaster that’s mastered their Ring of Peace can pull off a lot!
*Fun Fact, if you place Ring of Peace on top of the Warriors Spear of Bastion you’ll make the mobs jump in and out uncontrollably for the rest of the duration of Spear. Stopping all casts for several seconds.
- Chi Wave or Chi Burst(your choice): Honestly this talent tends to add a little too much to the button bloat. Chi Wave has some good uses to pull a mob at range, take care of an explosion, etc.
- Profound Rebuttal(default): Expel’s Critical Heal Chance is increased by 50%. One of several talents that can make Expel Harm feel like a Paladin’s Lay on Hands, on a cooldown that’s only seconds long.
- Diffuse Magic(default): This is a very unique talent, pressing it gives you a 60% Magic Damage reduction but also transfers over any harmful effects back to the attacker, this can have some fun effects and add a lot of free damage while removing incredibly tanky. Does require some pre planning to use as effectively as possible.
- Fast Feet(default): Another simple talent, Rising Sun Kick damage increased 70% and Spinning Crane Kick increased by 10%.
- Dampen Harm(default): Another interesting defensive, reduces damage taken by 20%-50% depending on how hard the impact of the hit is, on a 2m cd, very strong.
- Spear Hand Strike(any content that requires a kick): Your interrupt, simple.
- Celerity VS Chi torpedo(default): Celerity grants you a 2nd charge of roll, while reducing its cooldown by 5s(my personal pick). Chi Torpedo transforms your roll into well, a torpedo and increases your movement speed by 30%. This is best paired with gaining the 2