Brewmaster Monk Tank Spec, Builds, and Talents — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

1. Talent Choices for Brewmaster Monk

Level	Choices
15	✓ Eye of the Tiger	✗ Chi Wave	? Chi Burst
30	✓ Celerity	✓ Chi Torpedo	✓ Tiger's Lust
45	✓ Light Brewing	✗ Spitfire	✓ Black Ox Brew
60	✓ Tiger Tail Sweep	✓ Summon Black Ox Statue	✓ Ring of Peace
75	✓ Bob and Weave	? Healing Elixir	✓ Dampen Harm
90	✗ Special Delivery	✓ Rushing Jade Wind	? Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox
100	✓ High Tolerance	? Guard	✗ Blackout Combo

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Tranquil Mind and Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

2. Talent Cheat Sheets for Brewmaster Monk

While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly recommended method of setting up your build, the talent builds listed below work great for specific purposes.

2.1. Raid Encounters

This build is an excellent starting point as a "standard" raid setup. It is very highly recommended you read the individual talent points as this specialization in particular is highly situational with respect to talent choice.

• Level 15: Eye of the Tiger
• Level 30: Chi Torpedo
• Level 45: Black Ox Brew
• Level 60: Ring of Peace
• Level 75: Bob and Weave
• Level 90: Rushing Jade Wind
• Level 100: High Tolerance

2.2. Mythic+

• Level 15: Eye of the Tiger
• Level 30: Chi Torpedo
• Level 45: Light Brewing
• Level 60: Summon Black Ox Statue
• Level 75: Bob and Weave
• Level 90: Rushing Jade Wind
• Level 100: High Tolerance

3. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Brewmaster Monk

✔ Eye of the Tiger

✘ Chi Wave

? Chi Burst

• Eye of the Tiger causes Tiger Palm to also apply both a buff (to yourself) and a debuff (to the target) called Eye of the Tiger. On you, it is an 8-second HoT, while on the target it is an 8-second DoT (dealing Nature damage). The DoT may only be active on one target at a time.
• Chi Wave is an active ability with a 15-second cooldown. It is essentially a chain-heal that bounces to the 7 nearest targets (within 25 yards). The bounces target allies and enemies alternatively. Each target that the wave bounces to is healed or damaged (Nature damage), depending on their alignment. The healing portion of Chi Wave is a smart heal, in the sense that it prefers healing low health players.
• Chi Burst is an active ability with a 30-second cooldown. It heals all friendly targets, and damages all hostile targets in a 40-yard line in front of you.

Eye of the Tiger is the best choice for self-sustain and self-healing. It is also the best option for dealing damage.

Chi Burst is the best choice for AoE damage and provides a nice burst heal. Using it efficiently requires some amount of consideration (as we will see on the rotation page).

Chi Wave can provide strong burst self-healing, but typically only for solo content. If you use it in groups, it bounces to allies as well, removing most of the self-benefit from the healing component. Theoretically, it can result in slightly higher DPS than Eye of the Tiger, however, if you have to ever delay the casting of Chi Wave, even only a few times in an encounter, it loses efficacy. This means Eye of the Tiger is virtually always a better option for both damage and survivability.

4. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Brewmaster Monk

✔ Celerity

✔ Chi Torpedo

✔ Tiger's Lust

• Celerity passively increases the number of charges of Roll by 1, and reduces its cooldown by 5 seconds.
• Chi Torpedo replaces Roll. It causes you to roll a moderate distance in front of you (further than Roll), increasing your movement speed by 30% for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to 2 times.
• Tiger's Lust is an active ability with a 30-second cooldown, which removes all roots and snares from the target, and grants them 70% increased movement speed for 6 seconds. It can be used either on yourself or on an ally.

In this tier that revolves around movement, the choice depends on your preference and on the requirements of the encounter.

Tiger's Lust is a great choice for a movement speed boost, since not being linked to roll makes it quite versatile. Removing slows and roots is excellent everywhere, since these frequently show up in raids, dungeons and the world. We recommend you have a mouseover macro to give it to a friendly player who needs help.

Chi Torpedo is the best choice for encounters that require you to move quickly for a long distance at once, so it is excellent when burst movement is required. The speed increase after rolling stacks, so a high average speed can be achieved by using Chi Torpedo near the end of the buff duration.

Celerity is a good choice if you use Roll often and if the fight requires you to move a lot, especially if Chi Torpedo would move you too far.

5. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Brewmaster Monk

✔ Light Brewing

✘ Spitfire

✔ Black Ox Brew

• Light Brewing reduces the cooldown of Ironskin Brew and Purifying Brew by 3 seconds, and increases their maximum number of charges by 1.
• Spitfire causes Tiger Palm to occasionally reset the cooldown of Breath of Fire.
• Black Ox Brew is an active ability with a 2 minute cooldown, which instantly refills your Energy and your charges of Ironskin Brew and Purifying Brew.

Black Ox Brew used optimally on cooldown, gives the most brew uses per fight. It should be used on the pull after using all your Ironskin Brew charges to give a great, stable start to a fight. As well, it provides you with more uses Tiger Palm throughout the fight due to the extra Energy that it generates. Black Ox Brew has its cooldown reduced by Keg Smash and Tiger Palm allowing you to use it even more often, so keep a close eye on the cooldown. The talent does have a problem of giving you too many charges at once, forcing you to wastefully purify if you have maxed out your Ironskin duration, and suffers greatly from downtime.

Spitfire provides almost no defensive benefit and only a marginal DPS increase. Players doing content that does not challenge them at all who want a tiny bit more damage can use it. It also gains some utility in War Mode.

Light Brewing is really comfortable to play with since it benefits you passively and does not require any attention from your side. It is slightly behind Black Ox Brew in Brew generation under optimal play, but small mistakes and any fight downtime rapidly close the gap. However, since it provides no Energy it provides slightly lower DPS than Black Ox Brew. You should use it in raid fights with downtime, dungeons or if you just prefer it.

6. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Brewmaster Monk

✔ Tiger Tail Sweep

✔ Summon Black Ox Statue

✔ Ring of Peace

• Ring of Peace is an active ability with a 45-second cooldown. It forms a ring at the targeted location, which lasts for 5 seconds. During this time, most enemies who enter the ring will be knocked out of it. Has no effect on bosses and certain enemies resistant to crowd control.
• Summon Black Ox Statue places a stationary statue at the target location. The statue persists for 15 minutes (or until killed), and during this time it pulses threat to all nearby enemies within 30 yards (the threat belongs to the statue, so mobs will try to attack it). When using Provoke on your Black Ox Statue, all enemies within 8 yards of the statue are forced to attack you. This constitutes a sort of AoE taunt.
• Tiger Tail Sweep increases the range of Leg Sweep by 2 yards and reduces its cooldown by 10 seconds.

Summon Black Ox Statue is a solid choice for any raid encounter with frequent adds that would otherwise be annoying to pick up. It will usually be the focus of any new mob that spawns, so you can easily pick them up without stress. It is also a solid way to pull packs in Mythic+, especially in Skittish where the AoE taunt is excellent to save overeager DPS players. You should always make sure to be careful where you place your statue, since it will pull anything in range.

Tiger Tail Sweep is a reasonable choice, but since Leg Sweep is baseline the other two talents will usually be better. If you find yourself needing to use Leg Sweep slightly more often it can be a good choice.

Ring of Peace is niche, but useful in several raid encounters to stop enemies from getting to where they want to be. It can be placed on raiders to stop adds targeting them, or act as a makeshift interrupt by knocking mobs that are casting around. In Necrotic dungeons, you can cast it around yourself to allow stacks some time to reset.

7. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Brewmaster Monk

✔ Bob and Weave

? Healing Elixir

✔ Dampen Harm

• Bob and Weave causes the Stagger to last 3 seconds longer, decreasing the damage each tick deals.
• Healing Elixir is an active ability with 2 charges and a 30-second recharge time that heals you for 15% of your maximum health.
• Dampen Harm is an active ability with a 2-minute cooldown. For 10 seconds, all damage you take is reduced by 20% to 50%, with larger attacks having their damage reduced by more than smaller attacks.

The choice in this tier is situational.

Bob and Weave is a simple, reasonable option for general use when there are no large damage spikes to worry about. Extending the Stagger DoT by 3 seconds means that each tick does less, and each cast of Purifying Brew removes more damage.

Dampen Harm is a good option if you find you need an additional cooldown to stay alive, especially when you are unable to use external healer cooldowns.

Healing Elixir offers reasonable healing, but it is not as good as either choice in raids and dungeons. It is usually the best talent to use while out in the world, since spikes are rare and stagger does not reach high levels.

8. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Brewmaster Monk

✘ Special Delivery

✔ Rushing Jade Wind

? Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox

• Special Delivery gives your Ironskin Brew and Purifying Brew a 100% chance to toss a keg at a nearby enemy which deals damage in an 8-yard radius and reduces targets movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds.
• Rushing Jade Wind is an active ability with a 6-second cooldown (reduced by Haste). It deals damage to enemies in an 8-yard radius around you over its 9-second duration (also reduced by Haste).
• Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox is an active ability with a 3-minute cooldown. It summons a pet, Niuzao, for 45 seconds. The pet control bar allows you to choose what Niuzao will do, although by default he attacks your primary target, taunts it, and frequently uses Stomp (with a 5-second cooldown), damaging nearby enemies.

Rushing Jade Wind is your standard choice here. It deals the most reliable damage of the 3 talents and fits into your empty global cooldowns nicely.

Special Delivery should be avoided unless a heavy slow is desired. It deals slightly less damage than the other options generally and is also liable to miss moving targets, or hit enemies that are immune to damage.

Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox will allow you to put most damage into a 45-second window. It will not do more than Rushing Jade Wind in most situations, but if there are burst windows every 3 minutes where you need extra damage, or a fight which lasts 3:45, 6:45, etc., this could be a viable option.

9. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Brewmaster Monk

✔ High Tolerance

? Guard

✘ Blackout Combo

• High Tolerance increases the amount of damage you Stagger by 10%. It also causes you to passively gain up to 15% Haste based on your current amount of Stagger damage (the higher the damage, the more Haste you gain).
• Guard is a 5-second long shield with a 30 second cooldown which absorbs the portion of attacks which would be staggered, up to a cap.
• Blackout Combo causes your Blackout Strike to empower your next ability (used within 15 seconds), as follows.
  • Tiger Palm has its damage increased by 100%.
  • Breath of Fire has its cooldown reduced by 3 seconds.
  • Keg Smash reduces the remaining cooldown of your Brews by an additional 2 seconds.
  • Ironskin Brew pauses your Stagger damage for 3 seconds.

High Tolerance is recommended as the default choice for ensuring maximum survival, as the additional Haste in combination with the added Stagger provides the most reliable and stable damage intake.

Blackout Combo provides a tiny increase over High Tolerance when played properly, and should mostly be avoided unless you enjoy the playstyle or are doing non challenging content.

Guard is a reasonable choice against short periods of large damage after which you must continue to tank.

We recommend checking our dedicated section if you want to know how to optimize the use of these talents, especially the intricacies of Black Ox Brew.

10. War Mode Talents for Brewmaster

War Mode talents are PVP-centric talents that activate out in the world when you enable War Mode in the talent pane. If you are comfortable with being flagged for PVP, some offer great benefits to questing. This will only cover those talents.

11. Tier One

This tier only has talents to break out of and reduce crowd control, mainly stuns. These are not that common in questing, so choose whichever you like. Relentless is a good passive choice.

11.1. Tier Two

You are permitted to choose 3 talents from tier two. Here is a list of those helpful for questing:

• Double Barrel is an active ability which increases the damage of your next Keg Smash by 15% and stuns enemies for 3 seconds. This is great for larger packs, but does require a keybind that is not useful in Raids and Dungeons.
• Incendiary Breath alters Breath of Fire, increasing its radius and damage greatly and disorienting enemies, but also doubling the cooldown. This is excellent, as often you will only get to use one Breath of Fire, so the increased cooldown will hurt less.
• Niuzao's Essence clears snares when you drink Purifying Brew. While tanks cannot be dazed, many mobs still have frustrating slows. Being able to get rid of these is excellent, and you generally have many free brew charges while questing.
• Fast Feet reduces the duration of slows against you and causes you to run faster for 3 seconds after being attacked. This is not game breaking, but a high-uptime run speed increase is nothing to scoff at.
• Admonishment is also worth a mention. It causes your Provoke to increase the damage a target takes by 3%. However, if the target takes damage from other people, they also add 3% to this up to 15%. Obviously, this is not useful while completely solo, but 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 Incendiary Breath, Niuzao's Essence and Fast Feet, as these are totally passive.

12. Changelog