Preface
The first set bonuses of an expansion are often simple in nature, as there are usually plenty of other class and spec changes to take in at the same time and get used to. This means that there isn't always a need to do further experiments with playstyles through wackier bonuses. Was this goal accomplished for Brewmaster Monks? As some in the Monk community might say, "yesn't".
Brewmaster Bonuses Explained
As it currently stands, there is not a lot to puzzle out with the
Monk Brewmaster 11.0 Class Set 2pc bonus. A 20% boost to
Keg Smash and
Blackout Kick damage is fairly self-explanatory, and the 3% damage reduction on
Shuffle will be present at all times when performing the rotation correctly--Brewmasters who regularly drop
Shuffle are also regularly found on the floor, after all!
The
Monk Brewmaster 11.0 Class Set 4pc bonus, on the other hand, has a bit of nuance to discuss regarding its inner workings. As of Build 55000 (Jun 3, 2024), it works as follows:
- Each cast of Blackout Kick provides a stack of the Flow of Battle buff, lasting for 15 seconds and increasing your damage dealt by 1%, stacking up to 3 times. This buff increases your ability damage only and will not apply to any damage from gear effects or trinkets.
- Each cast of Blackout Kick has an approximately 30% chance to instantly reset the cooldown of Keg Smash and make its next cast cost no Energy.
This is shown through a similarly-named Flow of Battle buff, which lasts for 15 seconds and also causes your Keg Smash button to glow.
It should be noted that
Keg Smashes costing zero Energy due to
Flow of Battle do
not count as spending any for the purposes of the
Flurry Strikes or
Efficient Training nodes found among the Shado-Pan Hero Talents. This has some dangerous consequences depending on how
Flurry Strikes is tuned in particular. Due to the
One Versus Many passive in this tree, you may end up reaching the cap of 10
Flurry Charges before spending 400 Energy due to all the extra procs of
Flow of Battle. In a worst case scenario, you could end up
cancelling the buff to go back to spending Energy and avoid "wasting" potential charges. Similarly, the cooldown reduction to
Weapons of Order provided by
Efficient Training also suffers from this quirk. Fortunately, this can be avoided by still having these "free" casts pretend you spent the Energy, though this may be impractical to implement.
Overall, these effects are simple, easy-to-understand buffs for a Brewmaster Monk to chase, giving extra damage, healing, and damage reduction. They're perfectly adequate for general use in the traditional way of playing the spec...
Hidden Potential
On the surface, these bonuses do not seem to have any real impact on your playstyle as a Brewmaster Monk. If you have played the specialization at all across its lifespan, you are already aware that
Keg Smash and
Blackout Kick represent your two highest-priority abilities at all times. In theory, this means that you can just enjoy another 20% bonus to the damage on each and spend your
Flow of Battle procs as you get them. At most, maybe, you would only opt into the
Stormstout's Last Keg talent to avoid "wasting" any of the cooldown reduction provided from this proc. However, there are
five other talents that specifically interact with
Keg Smash's damage and another
six for
Blackout Kick's. That's not even including the more "universal" damage bonuses on a Brewmaster, such as
Mystic Touch,
Weapons of Order, or the newer
Martial Instincts talent. These, alongside the Hero Talents of The War Within, mean that there is room for bigger changes in talent builds to occur.
Note: The following discussion is speculative and will ultimately be determined by how tuning turns out. Consider it a way to get your own ideas going on what these bonuses could mean over time!Alternate Playstyles
Mentioned above, Brewmaster Monk is a specialization that features
many separate damage buffs that come together to amplify abilities that otherwise have very underwhelming baseline numbers. For
Keg Smash, the five talents in particular that specifically impact just its damage are the following:
Meanwhile, for
Blackout Kick, its six specific damage amplifiers are:
There are two talents in particular from the lists above that have been on the talent trees since the start of Dragonflight, despite never being recommended for use by players:
Scalding Brew and
Fluidity of Motion. This is due to
Scalding Brew competing with
Sal'salabim's Strength, a much more useful passive for improving the rotation, and
Fluidity of Motion creating too much chaos in it. However, with the extra boost from the
Monk Brewmaster 11.0 Class Set 2pc bonus and the slight reduction in Brewmaster's keybinds in The War Within, you could now feasibly run both of these while making major use of other passive talents such as
Special Delivery or even
High Tolerance.
On top of a playstyle that is possibly reduced to only five core abilities, all of the extra
Keg Smashes from the
Monk Brewmaster 11.0 Class Set 4pc and freshly-reworked defensive talents such as the new version of
Anvil & Stave means that you can see incredibly reduced cooldowns on
Purifying Brew and
Celestial Brew as well. With every source of Brew cooldown reduction applied, it is not out of the question to reach up to one cast of
Purifying Brew every 4-6 seconds! Of course, whether or not there is room to select all of these defensive talents while still pursuing damage in this alternative way remains to be seen. That I can even talk about seriously using so many "dead" talents from Dragonflight is already plenty exciting, though!