Brewmaster Monk: Midnight Expansion Preview

Welcome to our Midnight expansion guide for Brewmaster Monk. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about Brewmaster Monks in the forthcoming Midnight expansion, including class changes, additional Hero Talent nodes, a new four-part Apex talent, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the Midnight Alpha and Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Brewmaster Monk, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving across development, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

At its core, Brewmaster Monk's main playstyle remains unchanged. You will continue to make use of the Stagger passive to convert a portion of your damage taken into a damage-over-time effect that you can then reduce with the help of Purifying Brew. Your entire kit continues to revolve around this relationship, whether that's casting Keg Smash and Blackout Kick to increase Stagger's strength with Shuffle, or using Tiger Palm to reduce the cooldown of Purifying Brew. If you are familiar with this basic rotational flow, expect no serious changes to occur here.

Where you can see larger adjustments, however, is in the form of attempts to simplify the playing experience for most specializations, whether that is in pruning less important rotational abilities or reducing the number of passive effects to potentially keep track of at a time. For Brewmasters, this has been done by removing the ability of Rising Sun Kick entirely, along with the Weapons of Order cooldown. Similarly, Celestial Infusion (or its alternate choice of Celestial Brew) no longer scales in absorb size based on the Purified Chi buff from casting Purifying Brew, instead offering a larger baseline effect. Finally, Purifying Brew will no longer glow whenever your character is in Heavy Stagger, but instead shortly after receiving a large increase in Stagger or the amount being at its highest within the past 10 seconds (15 with Bob and Weave). Overall, you can expect to see this approach to class design throughout Midnight's development hopefully make every specialization more approachable for players while still retaining elements of skill expression across gameplay.

While not specific to only Brewmaster Monks, the Midnight expansion also features a major item level and stat squish across the board, resulting in greatly reduced numbers on display. For players that had a hard time parsing a hit for millions of damage or a boss with billions of health, rejoice!

Beyond this, there is a fairly substantial shake-up to the talent system as a whole for all players in the coming expansion by introducing new talent points to spend in all three trees! From Levels 81-90, you will gain an additional 4 points each in the Class and Specialization trees, and 3 points in your Hero Talents to automatically acquire the three new talents appearing in them. This will lead to a lot less concern for grabbing utility within the class tree in particular, as a Brewmaster already had plenty of wiggle room to get what was needed. Within the specialization tree, though, you will have a much more difficult decision to make...

One of the key new developments for all specializations in Midnight is the introduction of Apex Talents. These are new, isolated talent nodes accessible from the specialization tree beginning at Level 81, and you can spend up to four points on them to gain a series of effects with increasing strength. However, you must spend all three earlier points if you want the effect of the fourth; it is sequential. Alternatively, you can make use of these four additional points elsewhere in your specialization tree for greater build flexibility. The choice is yours!

The Apex Talent for Brewmaster Monks is called Bring Me Another, and focuses on enabling a new source of damage when you make use of your "Brew" abilities. As you continue to invest points in it, you will also unlock additional cleave damage and even a consistent source of extra healing for both you and up to two nearby allies! These four versions of the talent are the following:

1. Bring Me Another — Using an ability with Brew in its name has a chance to generate an Empty Barrel (max 1). When you next cast Keg Smash, your Empty Barrel will also be thrown at your target to deal bonus damage.
2. Bring Me Another — Increase all Physical damage dealt by 5/10%. In addition, your Empty Barrels will ricochet to an additional 1/3 target(s), dealing reduced damage with each bounce.
3. Bring Me Another — Whenever you cast Fortifying Brew or Celestial Brew/ Celestial Infusion, you and up to 2 nearby allies gain a Refreshing Drink, along with an Empty Barrel for yourself. Upon taking damage, Refreshing Drink is consumed to trigger a substantial heal-over-time effect.

With this major shake-up to talents and abilities coming in Midnight, where does this leave Brewmaster Monks after they just received major adjustments in Patch 11.2 of The War Within? For the most part, those that already enjoyed its gameplay should not have to worry about things being too different, as the core loop of Stagger, Keg Smash, Blackout Kick, and Purifying Brew is still present. Although the loss of both Dampen Harm and Diffuse Magic will certainly sting defensively, the nature of Stagger makes it very difficult for a Brewmaster to ever be in danger of poor innate tanking performance. Rather, the additional talents of Vital Flame/ Awakening Spirit and Bring Me Another in particular seem to signal a shift in design toward a more healing-oriented one instead of properly managing large cooldowns. And, for those that were overwhelmed by having to handle a specialization with among the largest number of rotational keybinds, the removal of Rising Sun Kick and Weapons of Order should make for an easier time overall.

Where things currently become murky are in the cooldowns that remain for Brewmasters, namely Exploding Keg and Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox. With both being positioned at the very bottom of the specialization tree and having supporting "capstone" nodes afterward, they will both need to be very compelling abilities to justify this position. However, from the perspective of The War Within, there is a long way to go to meet this goal. Although the Shado-Pan talents incorporate some interactions with Invoke Niuzao in particular, they do not feel like an organic addition for an otherwise underwhelming ability. On the other hand, both Hero Talent trees have lost their main elements of randomness, which is excellent when considering how much of a Brewmaster's ability breakdown in The War Within was subject to passive effects largely outside of one's control. In particular, the Potential Energy talent is a major improvement over the Monk Master of Harmony 11.2 Class Set 2pc bonus, and its Harmonic Surges create a strong synergy with the new Vital Flame talent for self-healing. Overall, the bones of Brewmaster remain solid, and its gameplay experience will be incredibly consistent. There may be a risk of its Hero Talent choice simplifying down to using Shado-Pan in AoE or Mythic+ and Master of Harmony for single-target or raiding, but this will be decided by tuning much closer to Midnight's launch. Otherwise, for those who desired a few less keybinds and somewhat unnecessary buffs to track, things are shaping up well for what has been a consistently strong tanking specialization.

Below are the initial Tier Set Bonuses for Brewmaster Monk in Midnight. Any additional notes on their effects can be found in separate bullet points immediately afterward.

• Monk Brewmaster 12.0 Class Set 2pc — Keg Smash damage increased by 10%. Breath of Fire damage increased by 10%.
• Monk Brewmaster 12.0 Class Set 4pc — Keg Smash's Energy cost is reduced by 5 and when it strikes a target afflicted by Breath of Fire it deals additional Fire damage.

These set bonuses are on the "safer" side, featuring effects that are simple and to the point without dramatically altering any of your rotational decisions as a Brewmaster. However, due to Keg Smash dealing additional damage to your main target in Midnight, the Monk Brewmaster 12.0 Class Set 2pc in particular is one that ends up being slightly stronger in single-target combat while still offering power in AoE. Breath of Fire, meanwhile, is just a small buff with no noteworthy implications.

The Monk Brewmaster 12.0 Class Set 4pc, on the other hand, is a little more interesting to consider. By creating an additional source of Fire damage for a Brewmaster, an extra source of healing from the Vital Flame talent is also made! Whether this ends up being "useful" healing will, however, depend entirely on eventual tuning before launch. Still, these bonuses are at least effective for all types of combat no matter how boring they may be.

Strengths

• Further keybind pruning has occurred, removing both rotational abilities and some defensive cooldowns ( Rising Sun Kick, Weapons of Order, Dampen Harm, Diffuse Magic).
• Additional talent points available in both the class and specialization trees, enabling greater build flexibility.
• Reduced reliance on addons to figure out rotational passives and Stagger.

Weaknesses

• Potential loss of self-sustainability from cooldown pruning.
• Remaining offensive cooldowns are largely passive and underwhelming for their relative importance.
• Overall gameplay loop is unchanged, creating stagnancy if looking for a "new" Brewmaster experience.