why playing smth which isnt good or the best to begin with? i need to switch to warri tank for this raid tier thanks to “good” balancing.
plus there are bosses which have heal reduce % debuffs…and you will struggle as brewmaster with this
Ah yes, my bad. 
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Why should I take a brewmaster when I can take a class that’s better? Brewmasters are made of glass and will be even less durable after the nerf.
Well that’s a deeper subject in and of itself.
If Frost performs 10% better than Fire, does every Mage play Frost? Yes.
If Frost performs 0.1% better than Fire, does every Mage play Frost?
At some point it’s not Blizzard’s ability to balance everything within reasonable comparison that drives the popularity of a given spec, but rather the community’s optimization-driven mindset where only the best choice is perceived as a viable choice, even if the delta between best and second-best is marginal.
This isn’t some few percentages difference regarding tanks, with brewmasters already being the worst taking the biggest hit.
It’s a difference of:
Will the tank be able to survive this without much struggle or will he almost be on the verge of dying or even dying because he’s the wrong the class and taking massive amounts of damage?
Healing a blood DK is basically effortless and will be so even after the nerf, it barely affects them when you compare to how much of a hit brewmasters are going to take and brewmasters will be a nightmare to heal if you’ve ever healed any other tank.
A blood DK can single-handedly handle Liu Flameheart’s absorb now after it was nerfed and stay alive to like +15, maybe even higher in 392 gear. A brewmaster without the healers attention is going to die.
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probably dying with the healer’s attention lmao
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But again, the index to balance around is whether the spec can successfully do a Mythic +20 dungeon.
That’s what you should reasonably be able to expect from Blizzard, that they can balance the spec so it can do that content – i.e. you’re not barred from any of the game’s rewards because of the spec you’ve chosen to play.
So will Brewmasters be able to do a +20 Mythic dungeon during this Season? Most likely yes. There doesn’t seem to be any situations in any dungeons where a Brewmaster wouldn’t be able to be successful.
So that’s Blizzard’s first class balance objective: Make everyone viable for the given content. That’s the axe-job of class balance and what they do first.
The second objective is to make everyone more equal – the scalpel-job of class balance.
So Brewmasters can do a Mythic +20 dungeon and so can Protection Warriors. But Protection Warriors can do it more easily. So the goal of subsequent balance changes is to narrow the gap in performance whilst still keeping everyone viable.
Blizzard are never going to be able to balance all specs to perform perfectly equal to one another. That’s practically impossible. But what they are able to, and what they’ve shown themselves capable of, is to make all specs viable for the game’s content, and make all specs more equal to one another over time.
Over time. Not instantly. It’s a process. We’ve been through it many times before. This is how it goes. We’re 2 weeks into an expansion that will last 2 years. We’re 2 days away from a Season that will last at least 2 months.
These balance changes do not define an end-point but a starting point. There will be more.
Brewmaster’s were glass cannons in the alpha. Then they nerfed their DPS and now they’re just glass. They knew about the issues with them since the alpha.
I’ve healed brewmaster’s now on live and I’ve healed the other tanks as well. Brewmasters are a nightmare to heal compared to any other tank, you barely have time to even press your DPS buttons because suddenly the brewmaster is dying and then you think you can press your DPS buttons and he’s dying again and then you use your CDs and then you think you can press your DPS buttons and he just flat out dies suddenly.
Like, legit nightmare. Their HP is bouncing like a DKs except they don’t have the self-healing that DKs do.
Why should I pick a brewmaster when any other tank is better and less of a nightmare to heal? Like, they need to BUFF their damage reduction by 10% and then increase stagger by like 10-20%.
Again, we’ve been through this 8 times before. And every single time the Beta always ends with some unresolved issues that Blizzard didn’t manage to address in time.
With a new expansion releasing there’s always going to be some specs that perform better than they should, and some that perform worse than they should.
And every single time there’s a process by which Blizzard makes balance changes to ensure that every single spec is viable, and subsequently that the performance gap between specs is narrowed down.
Whatever a spec is when an expansion releases is not what it ends up being 2 months or 2 years later.
But I do sympathize with the frustration of having gotten a worse starting point than some other spec, for example Protection Warriors.
No one is happy to play the underperforming spec(s).
Because you enjoy it?
I mean, if we accept the premise that class balance is constantly changing, then there are two ways to go about it:
- Play that which you think is most fun.
- Play the FotM.
???
I’m speaking from a healer point of view. Not as someone that plays the class. I don’t even have a monk at max level and have never had, because it doesn’t appeal to me at all.
Why should I, as the healer, pick a brewmaster instead of taking a better tank? They don’t bring the damage any more that they had on the alpha, they don’t bring the smooth damage intake that they had before and they have pretty much no self-sustain when we compare to other tanks. Why should I not pick another tank?
Mea culpa. I didn’t read that correctly.
Well you tell me, how big a performance difference does there have to be for you to differentiate between a Brewmaster and any other tank?
If a Protection Warrior is perceived to be S-tier and a Brewmaster Monk is D-tier, then you probably pick the Protection Warrior every time, right?
But if a Protection Warrior is perceived to be A-tier and a Brewmaster Monk is B+, do you still only pick the Protection Warrior?
Blizzard’s struggle is that class balance is as much a numerical comparison as well as a perceived comparison. It very much depends on how players interpret it. But at the end of the day, then it doesn’t change Blizzard’s task, which is to make everyone viable and then subsequently narrow the performance gap between them. If the gap narrows enough, then you stop caring whether you bring one or the other to your group.
For one, not being a nightmare to heal. I should be able to leave them alone for some time without them suddenly dying. Meanwhile, healing temple on the beta I had brewmasters that were unhealable on Liu, they flat out couldn’t take the damage output together with the healing absorb. No other tank was that bad to heal in there. DKs, vengeance DHs and prot warriors were the easiest to heal there. DKs helped a lot in clearing the absorb, likewise with DHs. Prot warriors could take the damage output until I had gotten rid of the absorb without dying, unlike monks.
Can’t speak for paladins as I never really healed one in there.
Right. So that’s the kind of class balance issues that Blizzard needs to tackle, preferably sooner rather than later.
And historically that is what they try to do – sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.
They basically take the ones at the top and bring them down a bit, and the ones at the bottom they bring up a bit. Rinse and repeat and you get class balance.
Then there are some tricky cases where a spec is overpowered in one activity but underpowered in another, and those tend to be more difficult to tune.
And when Blizzard have spent a lot of time and gotten most specs relatively balanced across most of the content, then they release a new expansion and start over from scratch. 
Again, we’ve been through this 8 times before. I feel like we know how it goes at this point and what to except.
They sure don’t look like they’re tackling it when they’re nerfing an already weak as hell tank that needs buffs. They’re already a nightmare to heal and with a nerf to their damage reduction there’s no shot I’ll ever take a brewmaster if it’s up to me.
I don’t know. That depends on what the index for PvE tank balance is.
If tanks are supposed to be able to tank half the mobs in a dungeon at the same time, then Brewmasters are arguably underperforming compared to other tanks.
But if tanks aren’t supposed to be able to do that, then Brewmasters may arguably be balanced and it’s all the other tanks that are overperforming.
It’s up to Blizzard to define what kind of gameplay experience a dungeon should provide. Should it be quick with big pulls, AoE, and gogogo, or slow with crowd control and mana breaks? Which one it is determines the direction of the class balances.
No tank can do that in m+.
Here’s from a streamers pug adventures on the beta:
That’s 2 packs and it ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED them.
Oh he is back at it again… 
I’ve heard that exaggeration promotes understanding, but maybe it just causes confusion… Hmm.
It was an exaggeration, but you get the point I hope.
Balance is both a question of accuracy as well as precision. Get all specs close to each other, but also get them close to the desired goal.
In this case the goal is whatever gameplay experience Blizzard envisions a dungeon run to provide. Fast or slow? AoE or single-target? Crowd control or zerg? How much, to what extent, and how do you balance classes to achieve it? That’s the crux of class balance design I suppose.
There’s nothing hard about buffing monks.
Give them more damage reduction, increase their stagger so they have smooth damage intake instead of being spiky like DKs but not having their self-sustain.
Fixed.
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You’re missing the point and I have to go to bed, so I’ll reiterate it once more.
Let’s say that the ideal dungeon tank gameplay experience is symbolized by 0.
Let’s say that Brewmasters are -1. Their performance is slightly below the ideal.
Let’s say that other tanks are +3 (so 5x+3). Their performance is far above the ideal.
How do you balance this?
Well you can get comparative class balance if you buff Brewmasters to +3 like the other tanks, but then you’re further off the mark with regards to the ideal gameplay experience across the board.
But if you nerf all the tanks by -2, then you’ve reduced the 5x+3 down to +1 (which is closer to the ideal 0). The Brewmaster is worse off with -3 now, but overall you’ve narrowed the scope of the problem down from 5 big issues to 1.
That’s basically what Blizzard have done.
Axe first, scalpel after (hopefully).