Brewmaster Monk Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — 12.0.5

Brewmaster Monks rely on a specific passive effect ( Stagger) to smooth out the damage they take throughout fights. This is a somewhat complex ability and is explained in-depth in the sections that follow.

In addition to dodging and parrying attacks, Brewmaster Monks have an additional means of mitigating the damage that they take, called Stagger. This is a key element in your survivability as a tank, so it is important to understand it correctly.

Stagger causes all attacks made against you to have their damage split into two portions:

• An instant portion will immediately deal its damage to you in the moment of the attack.
• A Staggered portion, which does its damage to you every 0.5 seconds for 10 seconds (or 15 seconds with Bob and Weave talented).

The amount of Physical damage Staggered is based on your Agility, and 58% of that amount applies to Magical attacks, including any other DoT effects. While you are Staggering damage, you will have one of three debuffs to represent how intense its DoT is: Light Stagger (green), Moderate Stagger (yellow), and Heavy Stagger (red). If you are in Heavy Stagger, then that means you are taking at least 60% of your Maximum Health as damage over its duration. However, you are likely to regularly exceed this amount in some forms of content.

Beyond that, the division between the instant and Staggered portions of damage your damage taken depends on other factors, namely whether or not you have the High Tolerance talent — which increases the Staggered portion — and whether or not you have Shuffle or Fortifying Brew with the special Fortifying Brew: Determination talent active. There is also the Zen State talent, which further increases your Stagger based on your current health when struck, and the Bob and Weave talent, which increases the duration of the Stagger DoT by 5 seconds, slightly reducing the amount of damage dealt to you during each 0.5-second tick.

As you might have already noticed, Stagger does not by itself provide any form of damage reduction, mitigation, or avoidance. This is where Purifying Brew comes into play. Purifying Brew has 2 charges with a 20-second recharge time, and using it instantly Purifies 50% of the Staggered damage (the damage you are due to take over the next 10 seconds). The ability's icon will also glow whenever you are in "elevated Stagger", which is any time your Stagger is the highest level it has been in the past 10 seconds or after a large spike.

Beyond this basic loop of Stagger and Purifying Brew, there are a number of additional effects that interact with how much damage you can delay, along with how to reduce that amount. The most important of these abilities is a passive called Shuffle. This buff increases the amount of damage you Stagger, and you are given 5 and 3 seconds of it when you Keg Smash or Blackout Kick, respectively, along with up to 4 seconds when casting Spinning Crane Kick. Shuffle can be extended until it reaches 15 seconds. Note, however, that Shuffle has no impact on "old" damage you have already Staggered, instead affecting new damage you take while the buff is active.

In a similar vein, the Ox Stance talent also works to increase the amount of damage you Stagger, but in a much more limited manner. Rather than being a buff that is easily maintained like Shuffle, this talent instead builds up charges from casting Purifying Brew. These charges are then consumed against sufficiently large hits based on your current Health to buff your Stagger against those hits only. As a result, this talent gives you extra defense when you need it the most!

Shuffle and Ox Stance are not the only effects that reward you for actively making use of your other abilities when it comes to Stagger. There are further effects that can be used to additionally remove some of your delayed damage, such as the Staggering Strikes, Tranquil Spirit, and Quick Sip talents, or even heal you for a portion of the damage with Gai Plin's Imperial Brew. These talents exist alongside options that provide you with benefits for reaching ever-higher levels of Stagger as well, such as Training of Niuzao.

There is one more talented ability choice that indirectly works with your Stagger: Celestial Brew and Celestial Infusion. Each of these abilities generates a shield to absorb damage for some period of time. While your Stagger will take priority and reduce the damage first, any amount that remains can be blocked by these shields instead, with them also absorbing the damage your Stagger DoT would deal. Use them often to make yourself easier to heal!

Finally, it is important to remember that the recharge time of Purifying Brew — along with the remaining cooldowns of Celestial Brew/ Celestial Infusion and Fortifying Brew — are reduced by 1 second each time you use Tiger Palm and by 3 seconds each time you use Keg Smash.

The hardest part of playing a Brewmaster Monk is remembering to maintain 100% uptime on Shuffle while trying to find the best time to make use of Purifying Brew and Celestial Brew/ Celestial Infusion. The latter two abilities have extremely valuable effects, but they have long initial cooldown periods between uses; however, as you continue to perform your rotation, their cooldowns will be substantially reduced. As such, you have to find an appropriate time to use them without letting the abilities sit off-cooldown and waste the cooldown reduction effects your rotation is naturally providing.

Fortunately, Shuffle is not too hard to keep up, nor is the decision on which Brew to use and when too complicated. So long as you are following the Single-Target or AoE priorities above, you should generate plenty of Shuffle time. As for your usage of Purifying Brew, there is a fairly simple set of rules to follow:

• Do not have both charges of Purifying Brew off-cooldown. This also includes Celestial Brew/Infusion for Master of Harmony players due to their Endless Draught passive.
• Keep one charge available for an emergency to use in "Elevated Stagger" (shown by the ability glowing and meaning you have taken a major increase in Stagger).
• Use a charge as the second charge is about to come off cooldown.

You may notice that this set of rules more or less involves you pretending that the ability has only one charge instead of two. This is intentional due to how frequently Purifying Brew will be available during your standard rotation. What this also means is that there may be times when you end up having to purify in only Light Stagger or Moderate Stagger rather than heavy, and that is okay so long as you still have that second charge ready for a sudden spike of damage.

A Brewmaster's chief source of healing lies in Healing Spheres that are generated through the talents of Gift of the Ox and Spirit of the Ox. Their behavior may be further modified by the Niuzao's Resolve talent. Understanding how they are created and consumed will greatly benefit your survival.

Although Gift of the Ox claims to offer a chance to summon a Healing Sphere when taking damage, it actually follows a consistent set of rules. One of these spheres will spawn for every 100% of your maximum Health you have taken as damage before accounting for absorbs (including damage delayed from Stagger). These Healing Spheres will persist on the ground until you either walk over them or they time out after 30 seconds and automatically provide you with their healing. There can only be up to 5 active Spheres at a time. Any further spawns beyond that will cause the least-recent Sphere to heal you and be consumed.

If you can predict when you will take higher than usual damage, you can save up some Spheres around you and use them all when you need the extra healing.

Since they can sometimes be hard to spot, Gift of the Ox Healing Spheres can also be gathered using your Expel Harm ability. Expel Harm costs 15 Energy and will immediately heal you for a small baseline amount, plus the value of all of your existing Spheres, along with dealing damage to an enemy equal to 10% of the amount healed. In addition, your Spinning Crane Kick will slowly draw them toward your position while it is being channeled.

Your Healing Spheres are precious, and you should try to save up at least 3 of them before you either pick them up or use Expel Harm. With this said, you should only use the Spheres when you are dropping low on Health or need to get topped off before a dangerous hit occurs.

Niuzao's Resolve offers a significant shift in your defensive playstyle in a Brewmaster by changing your Healing Spheres from both Gift of the Ox and Spirit of the Ox to become a heal-over-time effect rather than being instant healing. This works similarly to a Guardian Druid's Ironfur ability, where every consumed Sphere has its own timer, but stacks up to five times as one buff. In addition, every time this HoT effect ticks, its healing is increased by up to 80% depending on your missing health. This healing increase has no breakpoints, meaning that if you are at 50% health the increase will be 40%, and so on. Due to this behavior, the "passive" healing from these talents that helps offset Stagger damage and regular enemy attacks turns into more of a steady stream rather than bursts, which aims to keep your health at a certain level—though it will never be full.

There is, however, a key downside to this talent regarding the usefulness of the Expel Harm ability. As your "oldest" Healing Spheres are automatically consumed once you have reached the cap of five active spawns at once, any use of Expel Harm will immediately remove some of the steady healing from Niuzao's Resolve and instead attempt to maximize your buff stacks. However, because this healing is still a HoT effect, doing so is unlikely to instantly save you in an emergency. In addition, while the Strength of Spirit talent normally has a hidden effect of also increasing the healing of Spheres that Expel Harm consumes, this does not apply to Niuzao's Resolve since it would be "double dipping".

What this all means when talenting Niuzao's Resolve is that you are essentially giving up some agency in saving yourself in an emergency, but usually with significantly wasted healing in the process, in exchange for a smoother experience of receiving healing overall. For most players and content out there, this method will result in greater success while remaining less skill-intensive. Once in harder content such as Mythic raids or higher keystone levels of Mythic+, an experienced Brewmaster will likely prefer the extra agency of traditional Healing Spheres and more frequent Expel Harm usage. Ultimately, you should try out both styles of self-healing and see what your own preference is.

Brewmaster Monk's Apex Talent is called Bring Me Another, and focuses on empowering your Keg Smash spell when you make use of your "Brew" abilities. By investing further points into it, you will also unlock a helpful way to fill the rotation, improved Physical damage, and even a consistent source of extra healing for both you and up to two nearby allies! The four versions of the talent are as follows:

1. Bring Me Another — Using an ability with Brew in its name (or Celestial Infusion) 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 and can ricochet to up to three additional enemies. These bounces will not occur in single-target.
2. Bring Me Another — Increase all Physical damage dealt by 10/20%. In addition, the cooldown of Keg Smash is reset and the Energy cost of its next cast reduced by 50/100% whenever you generate an Empty Barrel.
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. The damage of Empty Barrels is also increased by 100%.

For the most part, Bring Me Another is entirely passive in how it is used, but it also is a key element that ties your entire rotation together as a Brewmaster. In particular, the cooldown and Energy cost reductions to Keg Smash add up to a substantial amount of casts over time. Where a Brewmaster may have opted into a talent like Rushing Jade Wind before to fill in the "empty" space of the rotation rather than waiting around or spending extra Energy, these bonus casts from the middle points of Bring Me Another can now fill the same role while also dealing a lot more damage!

However, there is one key downside to be aware of in that you can only hold 1 Empty Barrel at a time. This can cause moments of "wasted" triggers by gaining one guaranteed Empty Barrel from a cast of Celestial Infusion (thanks to the final point of Bring Me Another) and another random trigger from casting Purifying Brew around the same time. These moments will be rare, but as a result you will want to prioritize spending your (free) Empty Barrel as soon as possible by casting Keg Smash regardless of Hero Talent choice.

Provoke is your single-target taunt, forcing an enemy to attack you for up to 6 seconds at a time. Be aware that multiple taunt effects within a short period can result in your target gradually becoming immune to its effects! In addition, if you have taken the Summon Black Ox Statue talent, you can also cast Provoke on your statue to force all enemies within 8 yards of it to attack you. This constitutes a sort of AoE taunt. It is worth noting that taunting a target while talented into Hasty Provocation also increases its movement speed by 50% for six seconds, which is useful when you have to quickly change the positioning of an enemy. However, it can also be dangerous when you are trying to keep an enemy from attacking you, but you need to maintain your Threat against it.

Brewmaster Monk is one of the most mobile specializations in the game, featuring no less than 4 abilities devoted to it in some way. However, two of them, Roll and Transcendence, are more unique than others.

Roll is an ability that allows you to quickly move 15 yards in front of you. It is a useful mobility ability, which you should use extensively for quickly traversing short distances. Here are a few facts about Roll:

• Roll has no resource cost and no cooldown. It is based on a charge system.
  • It has a baseline maximum of 2 charges, and these charges have a 20-second recharge time.
  • The Celerity talent grants an additional charge and reduces recharge time to 15 seconds.
  • The Lighter Than Air talent adds 2 seconds to the recharge time, but allows you to temporarily dash forward once per Roll by double-jumping shortly afterward. You are also able to run across water while its buff is present!
• Roll is off the global cooldown, but while you are rolling, you are unable to use any other ability.
• Roll will always send you in the direction that your character is currently moving (including backward). If your character is stationary, Roll will send you in the direction your character is facing.
• You cannot roll through objects or obstacles. If you encounter an obstacle, your Roll is ended prematurely.
• Your movement speed while rolling is greater than while running, so rolling off a cliff will push you further than if you were just running and jumping.

Transcendence allows you to place a copy of yourself at your current location for up to 15 minutes. If you then use Transcendence: Transfer, you will instantly switch places with your copy's location. This can be useful in a wide range of situations, typically those where you know you will have to return to a certain location after moving away from it. It can also be used to save you from most knockback effects that would otherwise send you flying off of an edge, even if you need to resort to placing your spirit in mid-air!

Transcendence can also be used to reset most raid encounters. If placed outside the room before engaging the boss, you can taunt the boss and use Transcendence: Transfer. Should the boss follow you outside of its encounter area, it will despawn. This can save your raid a substantial amount of time and gold in a progression environment. As such, if Transcendence is not being used already in an encounter, this unique behavior can be very desirable.

Blackout Combo empowers some of your main rotational abilities and, therefore, changes your priority somewhat. However, it can initially be a tricky talent to properly incorporate into your playstyle and optimize its effectiveness. Most importantly, you must continue to prioritize casting Blackout Kick on cooldown to maximize the amount of abilities empowered.

If you are feeling up to the challenge, then the main thing that needs to be noted is that almost every Blackout Combo buff from casting Blackout Kick should be consumed by a Tiger Palm due to how reliable this damage buff is and the number of other empowerments that stack with it, such as Face Palm, Meditative Focus, and Counterstrike. While comboing Keg Smash may seem helpful for additional cooldown reduction of your "Brew" abilities, in reality you would have to spend over 6 combos on the ability to gain even a single full charge of Purifying Brew! At most, this should be done when you are in desperate need of a charge that is only a few seconds away, instead. If you are regularly consuming your Blackout Combos on Keg Smash, then this talent will rapidly drop in value.

With Keg Smash and Tiger Palm taking up such a large portion of your rotation already, a key to performing well with this talent is to remember that Blackout Combo does not have an interaction with all your remaining abilities, allowing them to be effective "gap-fillers" that can safely be used as necessary while still maximizing your casts of Blackout Kick to enable further combos. A key part of properly utilizing Blackout Combo is often delaying consuming the Combo's buff and instead using these other abilities. Depending on what abilities are coming off cooldown, do not forget this behavior!

Exploding Keg is a Brewmaster's shortest offensive cooldown, though it also has slight defensive benefits. On a one-minute cooldown, it can be thrown to deal some of the largest burst damage available to the specialization, making it a great choice early in a pull when enemies may be at risk of dropping threat and attacking someone else. Plus, the reset of Keg Smash's cooldown enables follow-up for even more AoE damage! Once it has been thrown, the ability's built-in defensive bonuses come into play, causing enemy melee attacks to only deal 1 damage for a few seconds. Unfortunately, this is less effective than it sounds, as it only applies to auto attack damage, not abilities. On top of that, any auto attacks that would apply some form of debuff will still be allowed to; you are not automatically safe just by blinding your enemies with a flaming barrel.

While the reliable immediate Fire damage and ability to reset Keg Smash already make Exploding Keg a helpful cooldown, that is not where the damage ends. Any enemies debuffed to deal reduced damage to you will also suffer bonus bits of Fire damage when hit by any ability of yours. This includes every tick of damage from Spinning Crane Kick, Rushing Jade Wind, or even a Shado-Pan Brewmaster's Flurry Strikes. What this means is that, in theory, there is room for short bursts of extra damage with every Exploding Keg; in practice, what is the actual best thing to do?

Unfortunately, while it may seem thrilling to try to follow each cast of Exploding Keg with multiple casts of Spinning Crane Kick, these small hits of extra Fire damage do not make up for choosing to use stronger abilities instead, usually resulting in a damage loss. There are occasional exceptions to this, such as incredibly large pulls or if fighting enemies that are going to be defeated within only a global or two. Still, rather than aiming for damage this way, focus instead on trying to have Rushing Jade Wind active beforehand if you have it talented, and just continue your normal rotation. When playing as a Shado-Pan, aim to also cast Keg Smash during the damage window to trigger Flurry Strikes, and don't forget that this same Keg Smash can also trigger the Fuel on the Fire talent. Finally, you can also make use of the Empty the Cellar talent for a final set of damage-efficient hits.

Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox is a hybrid cooldown that offers both significant offensive and defensive benefits while active. Although the transfer of Stagger to the celestial is noteworthy mitigation in some areas, you should instead aim to trigger this ability more or less on cooldown. Then, while active, you are encouraged to utilize Blackout Kick to trigger as many casts of Stomp as possible to deal massive damage while also healing Niuzao when casting Purifying Brew with the power of Oxen Fortitude to offset his damage taken from your Stagger. Finally, if you have opted into Mighty Stomp, you may cast one Mighty Stomp per summon by reactivating the cooldown to knock nearby enemies into the air for added disruption.

Shado-Pan players are further empowered by this celestial, with the ability to trigger additional sets of Flurry Strikes whenever Breath of Fire is cast while he is active. Depending on what abilities are available during the 25-second duration of Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox, you may find your rotation devolving into a period of only cycling between Keg Smash and Breath of Fire, forcing additional resets of Keg Smash's cooldown through Bring Me Another by consuming Purifying Brew, Celestial Infusion, or even Black Ox Brew and Fortifying Brew. This will provide a significant boost in AoE damage during the cooldown, but could result in you having no defensive resources left when it expires.

In addition to altering the priority while Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox is active, the Shado-Pan talent Efficient Training naturally reduces the cooldown of Niuzao to 95 seconds, substantially increasing the number of casts available in a fight!

Touch of Death offers a fairly unique way to execute a target, but the damage it deals can vary wildly due to the restrictions on when you are allowed to use it. Ordinarily, this ability can only be activated if your target's current Health is lower than your current maximum Health. In other words, you can potentially deal hundreds of thousands of damage in an instant if you time this ability well, bypassing tons of combat time against weaker enemies in particular. Alternatively, with the Improved Touch of Death talent, you can instead use this ability on any target that has reached 15% of its maximum Health, dealing 35% of your own maximum Health as damage. However, even with this talent, there is still a way to deal the "full" amount of damage this ability can offer.

When facing an enemy with plenty of Health, you can instead wait for them to reach a point that is less than your current maximum Health, and triple the damage your Touch of Death will do to them. Furthermore, any temporary Stamina buffs, such as a Priest's Power Word: Fortitude or your own Fortifying Brew will increase this threshold. Of course, when trying to use this technique against enemies suffering millions of damage per second, it can be difficult to perform this "sniping" technique, in which case it may be wiser to just utilize Improved Touch of Death's more forgiving conditions.

If you are willing to take a chance, you can create a substantial increase in your overall damage by "sniping" with Touch of Death in this way. However, if you are not comfortable with this approach, do not feel forced to try it and instead take the more guaranteed damage of Improved Touch of Death.

A Brewmaster's most powerful cooldown that's strictly defensive in nature, Fortifying Brew temporarily increases your health while simultaneously reducing all damage you receive for a long duration. It can be further enhanced with Ironshell Brew or Fortifying Brew: Determination to increase the health and damage reduction or your Stagger, respectively. With such on-demand defense, it must be balanced by having a hefty baseline cooldown of 6 minutes.

For most specializations, 6 minutes would be a dealbreaker. On a Brewmaster Monk, not so much. This is because Fortifying Brew has "Brew" in its name, which means that the cooldown reduction effects of both Keg Smash and Tiger Palm work on it. As such, during continuous combat, you are able to cut its recharge time in half. From there, if you still need it even more frequently, then its baseline cooldown can be reduced to 4 minutes with the Expeditious Fortification talent, though you must give up access to Ironshell Brew in the process.

When this ability is actually only a 2-3 cooldown, it is now much more flexible for your defensive needs. While you should try to use it before suffering a large hit and dropping dangerously low in health, the bonus health it provides does grant you some leeway compared to other defensive abilities. Plus, if you do not need the defensive benefits whatsoever, its health bonus can be used as a way to buff the damage of Touch of Death. Using it at all is better than having it sit around because of your concern about its long cooldown.

TipsExternal Cooldowns

You're likely used to using Purifying Brew, Celestial Infusion, 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 may often still be worthwhile asking a healer beforehand to use a cooldown at a certain point in a fight. A list of these externals 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)
• Preservation Evoker: Time Dilation (essentially, a weaker form of Stagger, but often providing more defense against Magic damage than Stagger alone would have)