Brewmaster Monk Playstyle and Rotation Guide

General Rotation

This assumes you’re not inside any cooldowns like Weapons of Order and do not have anything that needs to be used like Exploding Keg or utility. It can get a little weird when you start getting keg smash resets with our tier set, but this is a simple guideline to follow.

Single Target

1. Blackout Kick to trigger Blackout Combo
2. Tiger Palm to consume the Blackout Combo buff
3. Keg smash
4. Breath of Fire
5. Blackout Kick to trigger Blackout Combo
6. Rising Sun Kick
7. Tiger Palm

Multi-Target

1. Blackout Kick to trigger Blackout Combo
2. Breath of Fire
3. Keg smash
4. Rising Sun Kick
5. Tiger Palm

Opener

Single Target

1. Chi Burst pre-pull
2. Keg smash
3. Breath of Fire (to apply the debuff)
4. Blackout Kick to trigger Blackout Combo
5. Tiger Palm to consume Blackout Combo
6. Weapons of Order
7. Keg smash
8. Rising Sun Kick
9. Keg smash
10. Blackout kick
11. Tiger Palm
12. Keg smash
13. Breath of Fire
14. Exploding Keg

Multi Target

1. Chi burst pre-pull
2. Keg smash
3. Blackout kick to activate Blackout Combo
4. Breath of Fire to consume Blackout Combo
5. Weapons of Order
6. Keg smash
7. Rising Sun Kick
8. Keg smash
9. Blackout Kick to activate Blackout Combo
10. Tiger Palm to consume Blackout Combo
11. Breath of Fire
12. Keg smash
13. Exploding Keg

Playstyle

Stagger

While you are taking damage you’ll notice one of three debuffs applied to you at any given time:

• Light stagger (Green) - This indicates your stagger amount is low and you’re fairly safe. This DoT will be anywhere from 1% of your Max Health to 29%
• Moderate Stagger (Yellow) - This indicates your stagger is at a decent amount, and you should start thinking about ways to mitigate or clear this. This DoT will be anywhere from 30% to 59% of your Max Health.
• Heavy Stagger (Red) - This indicates your stagger is high and you are likely in danger if you don’t have any ways to clear or help mitigate this. This DoT will be anywhere from 60% of your max HP or more.

The harder content you do, the more often you’ll be dipping into or even just sitting inside of heavy stagger. As long as you are receiving a steady amount of healing, whatever the source, you’ll be fine.

Shuffle is an important buff to maintain, as it greatly improves the effectiveness of your Stagger. Without this, I’d argue stagger is almost useless in the current patch. Fortunately, you don’t really need to think about this too often as you gain it through multiple abilities in your core rotation.

Another way to make Stagger greatly more effective, is through the use of Purifying Brew. Purifying brew has 2 charges, and the cooldown of which, along with every other Brew your have in your arsenal, is reduced through a multitude of ways (Tiger palm, Keg smash, and certain other talents). What Purifying Brew does is cleanse 50% of your current stagger amount, as well as grant you a stacking buff (based on the amount you cleanse), to increase the size of your Celestial Brew.

So that tank buster you just got hit in the face with? Stagger reduces the amount (varies depending on agility amount), turns it into a DoT, and then you can cleanse that through Purifying Brew to effectively mitigate and reduce the amount of damage you’re actually taking. It sounds complicated but I promise it’s not!

Finally, this all feeds back into the tool that is Celestial Brew. Now the base absorb amount of this ability is rather lackluster, but through clever use of Purifying Brew in combination with the talent Improved Celestial Brew, you can over triple the absorb amount, making it a very powerful defensive tool for us.

Cooldown Usage

Exploding Keg - A 1 minute cooldown, Ideally used on cooldown and paired with 4 stacks of Weapons of Order. All damage events inside of the 3 second debuff apply additional fire damage, so if you’re running charred passions or Rushing Jade Wind be sure to have them running prior to using it, and on AoE be sure to Spinning Crane Kick in this window for the most damage.

Weapons of Order - A 2 minute cooldown that increases your Mastery, resets the cooldown of your Keg smash, and debuffs enemies hit by Rising Sun Kick and Keg Smash to take an additional 8% damage, stacking up to 4 times for a total of 32%. You can reduce the cooldown slightly with the Chi Surge talent.

Touch of Death - A 3 minute cooldown baseline, reduced to 1.5 minutes with Fatal Touch. Used to Execute enemies with less health than you, or with the talent Improved Touch of Death you can use it on any enemy below 15% health to deal 35% of your max hp in damage. It’s ideal to use this solely to execute mobs, and when used reduces your stagger by 200%.

Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox - 3 minute cooldown that summons a pet to attack. Deals minimal damage even with the extra talents to buff it, and has a minor defensive component that makes the pet take 25% of your stagger in damage.

Defensives

Celestial Brew - A 1 minute cooldown that applies an absorb shield to consume damage taken. You can increase the absorb size through Purified Chi and reduce its cooldown massively through your rotation (keg smash and tiger palm)

Fortifying Brew - A 6 minute cooldown that provides 20% max health and 20% damage reduction. You can lower the cooldown to 4 minutes through Expeditious Fortification, or gain an additional 10% max hp and 10% damage reduction through Ironshell Brew. You can also cause it to increase the effectiveness of your stagger for its duration by 15% with Fortifying Brew: Determination. The cooldown is already pretty strong, so the additions can be pretty overkill at times. You can also reduce the cooldown of this with your rotational abilities similarly to Celestial Brew.

Zen Meditation - A 5 minute cooldown that allows you to channel a 60% damage reduction, which breaks when you are hit by a melee or move.

Diffuse Magic - 1.5 minute cooldown that provides 60% magic damage reduction for its duration and dispels magical debuffs and reflects them onto the caster where possible. This is a choice node alongside Yu’lon’s Grace

Yu’lon’s Grace - This is a passive talent that continuously applies a magic absorb shield.

Dampen Harm - A 2 minute cooldown that reduces between 20% and 50% of the damage you take. This is a choice node alongside Dance of the Wind

Dance of the Wind - A passive talent that increases your dodge by 5% at all times. Only good in scenarios where you are mostly taking dodgeable attacks. Outshined by Dampen Harm in almost all scenarios.