Greetings all - I just wanted to give any fledgling Brewmasters some advice / feedback I have noticed for the rank 8 bountiful delves.
My Brewmaster was around item level 577 when I ran Kriegval’s Rest. Bran was set as DPS, not healing.
Basic strategy was to advance in the delve, drop the candle, and then pull mobs and run around while Bran killed them. AOE stun was very useful, as well as Transcendence and the talent that heals you (twice).
In general on the boss I found I could not self-heal enough to tank him and so I basically kited him back and forth and kept aggro while Bran and his dinosaur killed him. I dropped a candle by the entrance to the boss’s room and then there was another candle by the boss and I alternated running back and forth so my timer would come up for instant vivifies.
Since then I have run about 4 more bountiful delves with my Brewmaster as well as my Prot Paladin (also around item level 577-580) and my experience was quite similar - popping cooldowns to stay alive while Bran killed everything.
Only major difference I noticed was that the prot paladin had better burst dps periods (yes even compared to Shado-Pan, which to me feels like Enhancement Shaman from 2008). Both specs were basically unable to heal themselves. I did try running Bran as a healer but his damage potential kills things quicker than my DPS + his healing.
So - at the end of the day, I got some nice Champion track gear. I have only done Kriegval, Fungal Folly, and Mycomancer so far at that tier, but I would say from a difficulty perspective I would rank it around 8.35/10; I think a lot of players will be unable to do them at that level (probably easier with higher item level). Then again, anyone who plays a tank is probably (objectively) a better player than your random dps spec.
/edit:
I was able to get another character (prot warrior) up to 80 and decked in out honor gear plus a few world quest items.
Total iLvl around 572. Bran was also set as DPS, not healing.
I ran Kriegval’s Rest with my prot warrior and I would have to say there were some striking differences.
First of all, tanking trash mobs was much easier with prot warrior, as I could cycle between three sources of stuns and a tether ability. I did not have to kite the mobs like I did with Brewmaster, and my damage seemed quite high, especially with Demolish being thrown in.
For the actual boss, where with the Brewmaster I had to kite him between candles and try to stay healed as Bran did dps, the prot warrior face-tanked him and was able to heal enough to stay alive.
From my observations then, this indicates that ignore pain, 30 second heal, and leech on the prot warrior is much, much better at mitigating damage than the stagger mechanic + celestial & monk heals.
My Monk is around ilvl 600 now so I will run it again, but I did another test with the raid boss dummy in town, and my prot warrior had to run away at 11 stacks whereas my monk and druid had to run at 8. And this is a 599 ilvl brewmaster compared to 570 guardian druid and 572 prot warrior.
Anyways, I really enjoy the brewmaster class, but I feel it is not tuned and the mitigation abilities do not scale like what the %-based heal and ignore pain do for prot warrior.
/edit again
Just wanted to mention that I re-ran Kriegval (8) with my brewmaster at ilvl 597 and I was able to face-tank the end boss as well.