WoW Brewmaster Monk Tank Guide

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.

With season 2 we’re nearing out breaking points more quickly than previous expansions, factoring our tier bonuses, mastery is going to be a stat that’s going to see more value.

Note: I will be updating this section as further testing occurs after the tuning passes has finished. New embellishments have arrived in 10.1, perhaps changing our Best in Slot embellishment items. Its best to use caution in the first couple of weeks of a new patch to wait on tuning passes before crafting some items. Be aware.

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

How the 10.1 tier set changes our playstyle

2-pc – Blackout Kick damage increased by 20%. You have a 10% chance to not reset your Elusive Brawler stacks on a successful dodge.

4-pc – 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.

Elusive Brawler is our mastery bonus, Being hit by a melee attack, hitting an enemy with Blackout Kick, and now Rising Sun Kick grants us a stacking bonus to our dodge chance until our next successful dodge, the new tier set has a 10% for that not to reset. When we do dodge an attack we’ll gain a stacking buff(up to 5 times), the damage and critical strike chance of our next Blackout Kick or Rising Sun Kick by 5% per stack.

This set shifts us over to Charred Passions, causing our Blackout Kick and Spinning Crane Kick to deal an extra 50% damage increase as fire damage. While Blackout Kick was always an important and integral part of our rotation, it’s made the centre focus of this tier set.

Onyx Annulet

The Onyx Annulet from the Forbidden Reach is going to be one of our better options for the foreseeable future given its damage and defensive bonuses.

Offensive setup: Infused Storm Stone, Desirous Blood Stone, Prophetic Twilight. Given our love for critical strike, we gain a lot of damage with a minor bump in healing, the Infused stone will proc off our critical hits, prophetic then procs the Blood stone for healing.

Defensive setup: Cold Frost Stone, Indomitable Earth Stone, Shining Obsidian Stone. Cold Frost provides us with an absorb every 20s, Indominable has a chance to proc an absorb when we take damage(which procs off Stagger), both stones then proc Shining Obsidian to deal damage to nearby enemies. This setup can easily increase your total healing by 20% overall with a minor damage loss in comparison to the Infused Storm setup.

Until you get your new 4 piece tier set for season, Dragonfire Brew will be the better talent build

Dragonflight Brew Build

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Charred Passions Build:
Below are two build for Charred Passions, both of which I’ll will be explained in the talents descriptions below.

Charred Bonedust – Defensive Build

Build Code: BwQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIAAAAgSUKJJBSSatIAAAApEKJRiESBJJJpkAOgIRapVSE

Charred Counterstrike – Offensive Build

Build Code: BwQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIAAAAIpElSSSgkkWLCAAAQKhSSkIhUQSSSKJgDISkWaEB

Basics

Managing your stagger is key for brewmasters success, which comes in three main danger zones, green, yellow and red. I do recommend a weak aura to track the specific amount the DoT is damaging you for.

Baseline abilities:

• Blackout Kick: Melee strike on a 4s cd, grants shuffle.
• Spinning Crane Kick: A channeled spin kick(not interrupt) that deals good damage, grants shuffle and makes your healing spheres towards you.
• Expel Harm: An instant heal on a 5s cd that deals 10% of the damage to enemies within 8 yards.
• Crackling Jade Lightning: Useful only for pulling something at range.

Brewmaster is in a really solid spot coming into 10.1, the tier adds to its complexity, 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.

In 10.1 Charred Passions synergizes well with our new tier set giving us a few options to work around and personalize our offensive and defensive capabilities.

• 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. This season, there are quite a number of poison and disease dispel requirements in most dungeons, this dispel is going to have real value.
• 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 2nd charge earlier in the tree.
• Fortifying Brew(default): Baseline it provides a 20% damage reduction, with other talent options you can customize this defensive to your liking.
• Ironshell Brew vs Expeditious Fortification: Ironshell increases your armor and your dodge by 25% while Fort Brew is active, Expeditious reduces the base cooldown by 2 minutes. Depending on which content you’re running, both can see play.
• Strength of Spirit(default): Another Expel Harm talent! Like Protection Paladin’s Word of Glory, this talent increases Expel Harm healing based on your missing health. I have personally seen this bring me from 5% to max health.
• Improved Touch of Death(flex): Touch of Death being baseline now and Brewmaster having the highest monk health pool(tank stuff), this is a big single target nuke that can come in handy for priority kills and speeding up runs.
• Fatal Touch(default most scenarios): Reduces the CD by 90 seconds. More Touch of Death? yes please!
• Close to the Heart(default): Party/Raid buff but more critically, a you buff. Allies standing within 10 yards, gain 8% increased healing, including yourself.
• Resonant Fists(default): Your attacks have a chance to resonate, dealing 15% attack power back to attackers. This does a surprising amount of damage even after the nerf.

With this build you’ll have one remaining talent point to place wherever you’d like. In the code I’ll pop in White Tiger Statue but place it where’d you like, I’ll list a couple options below.

• White Tiger Statue(flex): Place a statue on the ground, pulses damage for 30s. Overall this is unfortunately very weak and adds to the button bloat of the spec. If you want extra damage, take it, but in a mythic plus run, it won’t be pumping, but some is better than none.
• Bounce Back(flex): A passive when you get hit for 20% of your health in a hit, you gain a 10/20% passive damage reduction trigger on a 30s cooldown. With monks’ stagger ability, this can be more tricky to proc than you may think until you reach a certain level of challenging content.
• Generous Pour(flex): Each point, like Close to the Heart, provides another party/raid buff of an increase of 2/4% Avoidance.
• Vivacious Vivification(flex): Every 10s, gain an instant cast use of Vivify, in Season 1, Vivify healing was, well.. not great. In Season 2 it was buffed by 92% to go along with the 25% HP boost. This does provide some nice off healing for the cost of global every 10s.