Brewmaster Monk Tank Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.0.5
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Brewmaster Monk in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.5. We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
Within this page we will go over every single talent available to Brewmaster Monks. Many of them are only passive effects, but they all can have an impact on how the spec is played whether active or passive. To see how these choices fit into how you play as a Brewmaster, take a look at the Rotation section of our guide.
Talent Cheat Sheets for Brewmaster Monk
Remember that you can easily import the talent tree below into the game with either of the two "Copy Export String" buttons:
While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly recommended method of setting up your build, the talent tree listed above will work well for general purposes such as world content and entry-level raiding/mythic+ content.
Raiding
Although the build above will likely be "good enough" for most encounters within the Vault of the Incarnates raid, we highly recommend visiting our dedicated raid tips section of this guide for separate talent recommendations on every encounter individually.
Mythic+
In addition to having a separate talent build and breakdown for Mythic+, we also have an entire section of this guide devoted to further Mythic+ tips and tricks that you can quickly navigate to.
Brewmaster Monk Talents Explained
Due to the nature of Dragonflight's talent trees, almost every talent is meant to be viable or have a desirable niche where you may want to select it. As such, we will cover some of the more favored talents that you will want to prioritize most of the time from the top of each tree on down, followed by mentioning some of the bigger niche talents that are likely only rarely useful. If you would like to see a list of every single talent's effect as well as the abbreviations they are often known by in the community, please consult our Spell List and Glossary section instead.
Talent Rows 1-4
Noteworthy Talents
Talent | Description/Effect |
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A basic ability that deals a large amount of damage to a single target; has one extra, passive interaction with the larger rotation. |
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Your primary ability as a Brewmaster; this is to be used on cooldown. |
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A passive effect that gives your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
These two talents are on one choice node, and both provide nearly identical
damage; however, ![]() ![]() |
|
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Your main source of active mitigation. It
removes 50% of the damage you are currently ![]() |
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Dispels all ![]() ![]() |
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Incapacitates a target for 1 minute; any damage the target receives will break the effect. |
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Increases all healing received. |
Niche Talents
Talent | When to Consider |
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Strong utility for offhealing and in content that is easier, like world questing. |
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While the healing scales with your own maximum HP and can trigger ![]() |
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Although it does result in a lot of ![]() ![]() |
Talent Rows 5-7
This section of the talent trees in particular is where you will find many utility and defensive abilities.
Noteworthy Talents
Talent | Description/Effect |
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Place a spirit with ![]() ![]() |
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Deals damage in a cone in front of you and has no cost
on a 15-second cooldown. Any targets that have already been hit by
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Casting ![]() ![]() |
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Create an area on the ground within 40 yards that prevents any enemies from being within the zone for 5 seconds. |
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Gain 60% damage reduction against magic damage for 6 seconds, while also dispelling any active magic debuffs and applying them to their original caster, if possible. 90-second cooldown. |
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A 2-minute defensive cooldown that reduces damage for 10 seconds depending on how hard the hit is. All hits will be reduced by 20%, and incoming damage exceeding 100% of your max Health will be reduced by 50%. |
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Your main defensive cooldown, granting damage reduction and increased health on a long cooldown; gains additional effects from other passive talents. |
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Your interrupt. It stops a cast, and prevents similar spells from being cast for 4 seconds. It has no cost, with a 15-second cooldown and is not on the global cooldown. |
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Increases the damage of ![]() ![]() |
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One of your main defensive tools, allowing you create a powerful shield that absorbs all damage. Note that this defensive ability is on the global cooldown. |
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A channeled defensive cooldown. For 8 seconds, you take 60% less damage, but cannot attack. It is broken immediately on receiving Physical damage or movement, and has a 5-minute cooldown. |
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While this 3-minute cooldown is active, a spirit of Niuzao
will assist you for 25 seconds. During this time he will attack your targets,
frequently ![]() ![]() |
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Reduces the cooldown of ![]() ![]() |
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Niche Talents
Talent | When to Consider |
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If a particular target needs to be quickly repositioned (such as a caster that has just been interrupted), the extra movement speed is unique among taunt abilities. |
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This ability fully restoring your Energy is arguably more useful than
the brew cooldown resets, as it is hard to maximize its defensive potential.
Use if you want just a few more casts of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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If you are traveling for long periods of time and cannot mount, stacking
the buff of ![]() |
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You may wish to use this talent instead of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Include this talent if you need to turn ![]() |
Talent Rows 8-10
Noteworthy Talents
Talent | Description/Effect |
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Provides an 8% increased healing aura to allies within 10 yards; the effect lingers for 10 seconds if they leave this range and is always active on yourself. |
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Attacks have a chance to deal additional Nature damage to all nearby enemies. 10% proc chance; 1-second cooldown between procs. |
Your choice between these two talents will have a large impact on your
rotation. In particular, selecting ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
|
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Toss a flaming keg with no target cap on a 1-minute cooldown. Every target hit will deal 99% reduced damage with their autoattacks for 3 seconds. In addition, all direct hits from your attacks will deal bonus Fire damage during this time. |
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Gain 10% Mastery for the next 30 seconds, while also resetting the cooldown
of ![]() |
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Coat enemies and allies in a targeted location for 10 seconds. During this time, all of your abilities have a 50% chance to replicate 40% of their damage or healing done. |
Niche Talents
Talent | When to Consider |
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If you are in content where you need more defense, this is perhaps the first talent to switch into. |
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So long as you are very confident in your ability to perform your rotation well, this talent will provide an additional 5% damage reduction at nearly all times, along with a substantial increase in your single-target damage. It is highly recommended to read the relevant section of our rotation page to understand how to correctly make use of this complex talent. |
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Consider this talent when extra defensive power is needed against constant danger. Due to the effect triggering more or less on cooldown, it is not a replacement for another defensive option, but just a supplement. |
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As Avoidance only reduces AoE damage, consider this talent in stacked group content featuring a lot of it. |
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Use this in AoE or Mythic+ environments where enemies will survive for at least 30 seconds and not be moving around. |
Try these talents together in content where you are taking heavy amounts
of ![]() |
We recommend checking our dedicated rotation section if you want to know how to optimize the use of these talents.
PvP Talents for Brewmaster
PvP talents are PvP-centric options that activate out in the world when you enable War Mode in the talent pane, or when participating in instanced PvP content. If you are comfortable with being flagged for PvP, some offer great benefits to questing.
You are permitted to choose 3 talents from the PvP Talents list. Here is a recommendation of those most helpful for questing:
Double Barrel is an active ability that is off the global cooldown. When used, it increases the damage of your next
Keg Smash by 50% and stuns enemies for 3 seconds. Note that its cooldown does not begin until this buff has been consumed. This is great for larger packs, but does require a keybind that is not useful in Raids and Dungeons. Fortunately, as it is off the global cooldown, it can be cast at the same time as Keg Smash with the help of a macro if you want to passively benefit from it.
Incendiary Breath alters
Breath of Fire, doubling its radius and damage, but also its cooldown. It will also disorient any enemies hit. This is excellent, as often you will only get to use one Breath of Fire, so the increased cooldown will hurt less. The
Spitfire talent can be combined with this PvP talent for a noteworthy damage boost in open-world content. The Breath of Fire effect from
Celestial Flames is also doubled by this option.
Hot Trub causes your
Purifying Brew to also deal split damage to enemies around you, based on 20% of how much damage you have Purified. While this is often a small amount of damage due to low
Stagger amounts in world content, it is entirely passive and does not require any special planning.
Microbrew allows you to use
Fortifying Brew more frequently without reducing its strength as your most powerful defensive cooldown.
Eerie Fermentation, while not offering a strong benefit most of the time, will allow you to gain increased movement speed and a little extra defense against magic attacks while questing. Magic damage from players or NPCs is normally a little more dangerous to a Brewmaster.
Alpha Tiger provides a large amount of Haste when casting
Tiger Palm on a target, though you cannot gain the buff more than once every 30 seconds per enemy hit. In open-world content where you are fighting multiple enemies for only a short amount of time, this talent is quite strong.
Dematerialize acts as a form of stun protection, providing you with temporary damage reduction while stunned. However, its amount decreases with every second you are stunned, completely depleting after only three seconds.
Admonishment is also worth mentioning. It causes your
Provoke to increase the damage a target takes by 3%. However, this amount can increase all the way to 15% bonus damage for every unique player that attacks the target While this is not very useful while completely solo, if you are taking on elites with other people that happen to be in the zone or questing in a group it can be worth taking. Be careful using this on World Bosses — they will still attack you when you Provoke them!
For most situations, a solid combo is Double Barrel,
Incendiary Breath — if you have
Sal'salabim's Strength
talented — and
Eerie Fermentation as
these provide largely-passive benefits while increasing your damage-dealing
and defensive potential.
While it can be fun to use your PvP talents, if you are looking to PvP more seriously you will likely want to consider doing so as a Windwalker or Mistweaver.
Changelog
- 24 Jan. 2023: Talent trees adjusted based on 10.0.5 talent changes; added notes on Blackout Combo as a potential talent decision.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Build and talent recommendations slightly adjusted based on recent developments regarding Charred Passions, Dragonfire Brew, Special Delivery, and Rushing Jade Wind.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Adjusted general build to focus on world content and entry-level Mythic+/Raiding. See their respective guide sections for more tailored builds.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Monk Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Sinzhu, a Mythic raider on US-Kil'jaeden who has passionately played Brewmaster for the past nine years. He also contributes to the Peak of Serenity and is a Moderator of the Monk Class Discord.
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