Brewmaster feels like you are a burden in M+

[Bimchii-silvermoon]

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:

• 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.

• 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.

• Give us Avert Harm for PvE situations

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

[Nellja-magtheridon]

@Bimchii-silvermoon

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.

This is the best description of all the tanks I have seen on the forums so far. Good job.

You do have the best tank mobility and if you are playing right, the best physical (non-bleed) damage mitigation in game, as a Monk. You also give the physical damage buff your melee DPS will love.

You also have an AoE taunt, practically without cooldown.

I like your suggestions too.

[Kriislee-dalaran]

BrM niche used to be his immunity to tank burster and his damage.
Tank burster are gone and prot pal, colossus war and vdh deal way more damage than BrM now.
It is sad to say it but season 2 will be way worst than season 1 (down from 2nd tank to 4th or lower in M+).
I think heal through CF could be nice but impossible to balance between 5 man content and raid and same goes for a stagger for group even tied to a 5min+ cd.
Ring of peace used to disarm AND silence ennemies in the ring maybe removing song of chiji and having a choice between the 2 version of RoP could help with monk utility.
There are no reason to not buff gift of the ox sphere drop rate anymore but this is unlikely to happen before 11.1.5.

[Bimchii-silvermoon]

Thank you for the reply!

Absolutely, mobility is a big part of what makes brew a lot of fun and a nice perk to have. But I would not say that it is something that will make you any stronger in M+. Kiting mobs has its uses here and there but you do not want to rely on kiting as your tanking strategy.

To me, big part of what causes brew to never be meta is the fact that if brew utilizes its strength, then the game is really broken and it gets quickly fixed. If the aggro is such an issue that you need to spam AoE taunt on cooldown (which only brew can do), then the game is unplayable for the rest and it will get fixed. If there are so many physical one-shots that you need brewmaster survive it, it is again unplayable to the rest and will get fixed.

So the game is permanently in a state where all the tanks are good enough to deal with the stuff brew excels at, while at the same time brew can not keep up with other tanks excellence (eg self sustain, group utility).

By that I meant to say that I definitely appreciate having mobility, Tiger’s Lust, Dispell, RoP. It just feel like it is never enough to really make brew stand out in any situation. Thank you for contributing to the discussion.

[Bimchii-silvermoon]

Ye! In the end, the self-sustain is to me the biggest reason why brew has poor community perception. If that was fixed, I think we would get much more credit and would deal with other weaknesses much better.

You are right that some of my suggestions (and stagger in general) would be hard to balance between M+ and raid. But to be honest I would not mind having a passive that only applies in a Party setting. Once in raid group it just turns off. Not the most elegant solution but we have the same thing with PvP/PvE versions of spells. And I think there is even a precedent of priests having two versions of spells in M+/raid.

Not elegant and probably a bit of a hustle for developers. But I believe it would beat the current situation where brew is balancing being too strong in raid while too weak in M+.

There are no reason to not buff gift of the ox sphere drop rate anymore but this is unlikely to happen before 11.1.5.

I really hope they can give us some love in .5 patch.

Thanks for contributing!

[Vawek-argent-dawn]

@Bimchii-silvermoon

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:

• 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.
• 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.
• Give us Avert Harm for PvE situations
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Although I understand what you mean with that there’s a difference between the other tanks and brewmaster. That difference is felt at 12 keys and up. However, what you are experiencing is not a flaw in the spec, it is a flaw in perception. You look at Brewmaster and ask, “What do I bring to the group?” as if worth is determined by a checklist of utility, as if tanking is a matter of collecting tools rather than mastering the art of survival. You see Blood DKs gripping, Prot Paladins bubbling, VDHs leaping through the air, and you mistake these theatrics for effectiveness. Yet, a Brewmaster who understands their toolkit does not need to rely on such things, because they have already transcended the need for panic buttons and last-minute saves.

The entire philosophy of Brewmaster is built on the idea that you do not need to react to damage, you control it before it even becomes a problem. You stagger instead of healing. You mitigate instead of mending. You turn what would be a catastrophic spike of damage into a steady flow that can be handled without issue. That is your strength, and that is what you bring to a group.

You say you feel like a burden because you rely on a healer. But tell me, when a Paladin presses Word of Glory in desperation, when a Blood DK is frantically Death Striking, when a Vengeance DH is clinging to their last Soul Fragment, who is really reliant on a healer? Brewmasters need healing, yes, but they do not need saving. They do not suddenly collapse when their “oh crap” buttons are on cooldown, because their entire design is built on not getting to that point in the first place.

And as for utility, if you think Ring of Peace is “niche,” you are not using it properly. Ring of Peace is one of the strongest forms of mob control in the game. A poorly placed mob? Fixed. A dangerous add trying to escape? Denied. A key moment where a deadly cast is about to go off? Disrupted. Other tanks bring crowd control through brute force and no-brain, you bring it with finesse. You create space, you control positioning, and you dictate the battlefield.

The issue is not that Brewmaster lacks tools, it is that you have been conditioned to expect tanking to feel a certain way. You expect big cooldowns, flashy effects, and abilities that scream “I am doing something important right now.” Brewmaster does not give you that gratification. Brewmaster is the quiet master of control, the one who never looks like they are struggling, the one who does not need to make a spectacle of their strength.

If you want to feel like a god when tanking, then yes, perhaps you should play something else - my second option to Brewmaster is Guardian Druid. But if you want to become the kind of player who does not need crutches, who does not need to constantly feel like they are compensating for their class, who understands that true mastery is not in what you bring but in how you use it, then embrace what Brewmaster actually is. For instance, I remember during Shadowlands and first season of DF where BM were viable in PvP. They had great self sustain. The changes to how expel harm works during DF after season 1 changed very much how the spec sustains itself. However, with those changes I realized that the spec was never supposed to be played as I played it.

And if you truly seek ways to further optimize, there are details even beyond your spec; When playing Brewmaster, race is not a huge deal, but understanding what subtle advantages each race provides can give you a small yet meaningful edge. Earthens 10% armor increase makes your stagger even more effective, reducing the amount of raw damage you take before mitigation. Vupleras Nose for Trouble passively reduces the first big hit you take, further smoothing out damage intake. Pandaren racial, granting increased random secondary stats through food, plays into Brewmaster’s reliance on stat synergy, mastery, versatility, and critical strike all offering different benefits in managing incoming damage.

Even the smaller details matter. Shadowmeld as night elf can be used to instantly drop combat, reset fights, or cancel a dangerous fixate. The Draenei’s self-heal provides a small buffer for when external healing is scarce. Even Goblins, often overlooked in the tanking world, gain Rocket Jump, a tool that can be used to quickly reposition in ways other tanks cannot.

Mastery is not just about the talents you pick or the rotation you follow, it is about how you perceive the game, how you use the tools available, and how you recognize the depth beyond what is immediately obvious. Brewmaster is not the tank for those who need validation from their abilities, it is the tank for those who understand that true strength comes not from what is seen, but from what is controlled.