Hey, I have been maining a BrM in S1 TWW and I really love both the class fantasy and how the rotation feels. The big issue I have though is that I feel like I am a burden in M+. I feel like the other tanks all have something to feel good about, something they bring to the table and something to rely on even if numbers tuning is not in their favour.
For example, as a Prot pally you always know that you can help your team with locking down casters, providing external defensives, cheezing some mechanics with bubble, b-resing, offhealing. As a Blood DK you know you bring b-res, you can grip pesky casters/shooters, sometimes AMZ can be big and even if you are prone to one-shots, you know you can mostly sustain yourself without a healer attention. Similar with Vengeance DH, you have a lot of self-sustain, nice group CC, casters love you for the debuff, you feel like a god when in Metamorphosis. As a guardian, the vers buff is big, (they used to have quite a strong offhealing with “After the wildfire” but not sure if that is still the case) and you can plan big-psycho pulls around being immortal in Incarnation.
But I feel like I bring nothing by being a Brewmaster. Even worse, by being extremely reliant on healer I feel like I am actively putting more pressure on my team just because I like monk fantasy. You can not self-sustain, so healer has to tend to you more than to other tanks, you have no defensive utility for your team, you have no aoe silence, no interrupt every other second (like ppal), no make-me-god button like meta/incarn. You have leg sweep and ring of peace. And sure, its nice, but it is not something outstanding about BrM. Plus loads of other DPS have AoE stun, so if you want to lock down enemies, DR will screw you real fast.
I feel like if you ask me “What is the advantage of bringing BrM into a key? What is good about having a BrM in a key?” I really dont know. I feel like there is none. The physical damage taken debuff applies to like 3 specs in the game (its better to take a prot war if you want that dmg amp), the CC is mid, you put pressure on the healer and you do nothing to help your DPS. I guess the one thing you bring is being able to handle one-shots but to be honest I dont really feel like BrM is that much better at it. And to be honest in the top keys there are some brews, so I suppose you can make it work and leverage it to your advantage, it just feels awful to me if you are random Andy trying to play the spec. And on top of that, BrM is not even that tanky nor does it do significantly better DPS compared to others. So, I feel like, what is the point of bringing a brew into a key?
I would like to have something that I can feel good about. I was brainstorming some ideas and looking over what other people suggested and my take would be someting like:
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Get rid of that idea of BrM relying on a healer and amplifying healing through Celestial Fortune (CF) and replace it with Keg of Heavens. We would be more self-reliant and lower-tier keys would be more fun, since you are more in control.
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If the design is such that we have small HP pool and we are supposed to rely on healing and healing amplification from CF, make us share the healing from CF with the party. So the trade is: Healer has to pay attention to you, but you then compensate for it by healing others. On a similar note, have BrM heal his party for some portion of the damage he clears with Purifies, to compensate for taking healers attention.
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Give us Avert Harm for PvE situations
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Some party buff like Devotion aura but you stagger some of the damage you reduce? Thus you provide some survivability to your team and you can fill your stagger even when there is not much tank damage. Maybe the Aver Harm could amplify this for a short time.
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Rework Zen Meditation to something usefull. It could reduce damage to everyone in a tiny area around you and not break on damage or similar. Or to not make it similar to Avert Harm, it could be a boosting spell. It could increase the DMG of people nearby while you channel. I just do not understand why a spec that is supposedly baseline made to survive one-shots through stagger has a 5min CD that is explicitly used to survive a oneshot.
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Make Paralisys cause the target to not aggro. I dont get why DH can Imprison and run by without aggroing a mob, while Monk has to Para + Ring and then still have someone pull it by accident.
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Give the option to have Ring of Peace as a Silence effect or maybe even Disarm. The pushback is nice and it has a niche use here and there, but having a silence would be much more impactful.
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Give BrM a battle ress. The other tanks that come from tank/healer/dps class have it anyways.
That is probably all I can come up with, plus I saw tons of other people throwing ideas around. My point here is not really to post about how brewmasters are unplayable or how I can not push above 12 or anything like that. I just want to feel like I bring something to the table. Like I can provide something to my team outside of just holding threat (which to be fair is a struggle on its own with how small the Keg smash radius is). Instead I feel like I am actively putting pressure on my team and not helping with anything while on a brew.
Brewmaster has always been the black horse of M+ and I really think it comes down to this. People make the spec out to be way worse than it is, by reading forums you get the impression that it is impossible to time a +5 on BrM. But I really think it is all about the fact that you bring not much and on top of that you take resources away from others.
That’s about it, thanks for reading and let me know what you guys think.