How To Improve As Brewmaster Monk — Dragonflight 10.0.5
On this page, you will find out how you can improve at playing Brewmaster Monk in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.5. We list the common mistakes that you should try to avoid and the small details that can greatly improve your performance.
Common Mistakes that Brewmaster Monks Make
While every specialization has easy-to-make mistakes, Brewmaster's unique
position as a tank that takes constant damage over time due to
Stagger instead of regular damage from each attack, lends it to
being misunderstood by players new to the specialization. This section lists
common errors made, along with strategies to both recognize and avoid them.
Poor Shuffle/Brew Management
The most common mistake made by Brewmasters is misusing their Brews. While
other tanks seek to use their abilities just before periods of damage (like
Shield of the Righteous for Paladins) Brewmasters are focused more on
reducing the damage after it has been
Staggered by first maintaining
100% uptime on
Shuffle. This will smooth out the damage you
take — if it drops off you will suddenly be taking a lot more damage
up-front from each attack! Fortunately, provided you are using
Keg Smash
and
Blackout Kick on cooldown, you should naturally achieve full uptime
on Shuffle.
While Purifying Brew may feel like a long cooldown with two charges,
your rotation will roughly cut it in half! However, it is also important to try
to stay at a point where you have one charge available for a sudden spike of
damage, but never have both charges sitting off-cooldown. Though
Moderate Stagger (Yellow) will often be handled fine by healers —
especially those that heal over time like Restoration
Druids — you may find that you are often having to Purify at this lower
Stagger amount to avoid sitting on both charges. On the other hand, even
Heavy Stagger (Red) is not always threatening if you are the
only one taking damage at the time. The hard part is striking a balance between
knowing when your next big moment to Purify is coming and still using up spare
charges in-between.
Celestial Brew usage does not have to rely on nearly as much of
a decision-making process. You will simply use it more or less on cooldown, as
you should have enhanced the absorb naturally from the stacks of
Purified Chi generated by regularly using
Purifying Brew.
Just remember that damage you have already
Staggered is also eating
into the shield, so if you have created a large one during a time of relatively
low damage, it may make more sense to not Purify and have less of the absorb go
to waste by timing out.
Energy Management
As a Brewmaster, you have three rotational abilities which cost Energy:
Keg Smash on a low cooldown costing 40 and
Tiger Palm/
Spinning Crane Kick with no cooldown costing 25. Almost all
players will make the mistake of overusing Tiger Palm or Spinning Crane Kick a
little at some point. This happens when you do not have enough Energy to cast
Keg Smash right as it comes off cooldown. However, players who do this too often
will find it severely impacts their play. Keg Smash does very large amounts of
damage and reduces the cooldown on your all-important Brews.
To avoid this, you should use Tiger Palm or
Spinning Crane Kick
two or three times between each
Keg Smash at most, with the rest of
the globals filled with
Blackout Kick,
Breath of Fire, and, if
you have it talented,
Rushing Jade Wind. If Keg Smash is coming up and
you have only a little Energy, it is fine to not press anything.
If you find yourself in this position often, consider taking the talents
Black Ox Brew (which will refill your Energy in a pinch, as well as
your Brews) and
Rushing Jade Wind (to fill empty globals
where you might be more tempted to spend extra Energy).
Tiger Palm or Spinning Crane Kick
In theory, the decision between Spinning Crane Kick and
Tiger Palm is meant to be easy: if you are fighting more than one
target, then use Spinning Crane Kick instead. However, Spinning Crane Kick
does not reduce the cooldown on your Brews while Tiger Palm
does. While the Rotation section, linked below, goes into a little
more detail about choosing between the two abilities, for now you should still
use Tiger Palm more often unless you are having a hard time maintaining threat
against multiple targets.
Gift of the Ox Orbs
When you take damage, you will generate small yellow orbs to your sides.
Stepping over these will heal you. In raid situations, you will be spawning
plenty of them, and they can be very helpful when you are taking a lot of damage
or healers are unable to pay full attention to you. Orbs that expire will still
heal you for their normal amount and you can have up to five active at a time.
You can quickly see how many are present by looking at your Expel Harm
icon; the number represents your orb count.
With how these orbs spawn, you should try and strafe left to right at times
when you need some healing! It may look silly, but that is no reason to ignore
them entirely in an emergency. You can also use Expel Harm to instantly
collect all your orbs, no matter how far away. However, strafing can be more
useful if you only need a little bit of healing. Expel Harm also costs Energy
and has a cooldown, but rewards you with a bit of damage for your healing.
Using Cooldowns
It is likely you are used to using Dampen Harm,
Diffuse Magic, and
Fortifying Brew when you need them, but there are other cooldowns
available to you in a dungeon or raid setting: external ones from healers. If
you are about to take a lot of damage from either a boss mechanic or
accidentally letting your
Shuffle drop, call for a specific external
if you can! Healers will not always know the best time and may provide you with
multiple at once if you just ask for help in general. This advice is mostly for
those who play with a microphone and are comfortable using it, but it might be
worth asking a healer beforehand to use a cooldown at a certain point. A
list of these are:
- Restoration Druid:
Ironbark (low cooldown damage reduction)
- Mistweaver Monk:
Life Cocoon (large absorb and increase in healing received)
- Paladin:
Blessing of Sacrifice (damage reduction, also harms the Paladin)
- Discipline Priest:
Pain Suppression (strong damage reduction)
- Holy Priest:
Guardian Spirit (saves you from damage that would have killed you, and increases healing received)
Changelog
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 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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