Firestarter
This tier set bonus is based primarily around Breath of Fire, which has usually been a mistake in the past, but not this time. It’s very good.
It fixes Brewmaster Monk’s biggest issue in Mythic+, and generally makes Monk tankier in all situations. It’s a great bonus.
Fight Fire With Fire
Let’s look at the offensive side of this bonus first. 20% more Breath of Fire damage is pretty weak. It’s arguably better in AoE than single-target, but the offensive contribution of the 2-piece is pretty minor either way.
The 4-piece bonus adds a proc with a pretty high rate (~50%) to add a 10% multiplier onto all your damage events. This means it’s worth roughly the same percentage of damage increase in all situations (~5%). That being said, Brewmaster Monk’s damage output scales up dramatically in AoE, so this is a substantial damage increase in AoE. That’s great.
Set Fire to the Rain
Now let’s look at the more interesting aspect of this bonus: The defensive components.
The 2-piece bonus grants healing for 50% of all fire damage dealt. This includes the straightforward sources of fire damage such as Breath of Fire and Exploding Keg, but also includes talents like Charred Passions.
These heals can crit, proc Celestial Fortune, and currently they are double-dipping from Versatility. How much of this is intended is unclear, but at present, it’s unreasonably good as a source of self-healing.
The 4-piece bonus procs deal Shadowflame damage. Shadowflame damage counts as Fire damage. This also heals via the 2-piece. It’s good.
Monks deal a fairly high amount of fire damage, so these bonuses stand to be roughly equivalent to 15% Leech, or possibly a bit more. This is a stronger bonus in AoE than single target, since damage values are higher in AoE, but in both cases, it’s good.
Additionally, the 4-piece grants an extra shield when you use Celestial Brew. This added shield (also named Celestial Brew, presumably to add unnecessary confusion to logs and weakauras) absorbs Stagger damage, and it is worth 100% of the Shadowflame damage you have dealt since the last Celestial Brew. This shield can be worth 200k-400k Stagger absorption in normal tanking circumstances, added on top of the 400k-700k shielding you get from a normal Celestial Brew.
Brewmaster Monk: It’s tanky! What a concept!
Burning Down the House
This addresses the single biggest problem Monks have faced throughout Dragonflight (and the history of the class, really).
Monks have great bursts of damage mitigation, and great damage smoothing. This makes them good against large sources of predictable damage, which is the main source of danger in raids. They compensate for this by taking a lot more damage than other tanks overall, but generally being easier to heal in raids by having smaller base health pools and multiplying all incoming healing. It has worked really well in raids for nearly the entire time Monks have been in the game.
In Mythic+ dungeons, Monks’ increased damage taken and small health pools are a huge liability. Their ability to mitigate big, predictable bursts of damage is no longer a great advantage, because tanks face constant pressure in Mythic+. Monks’ inability to constantly convert a large portion of their damage output into some kind of damage mitigation or self-healing, such as Druids’ Ursoc’s Fury, Demon Hunter’s Spirit Bomb, and so on, is a huge liability for them in Mythic+.
Monks deal great AoE damage, they have good self-healing tools and great defensive cooldowns. Aside from that lack of a consistent way to turn offense into defense, they’re really great tanks. They have almost everything they need to be top-tier Mythic+ tanks.
This tier set unlocks all those other positive attributes. It gives Monks a way to directly convert their excellent damage output into a steady source of much-needed self-healing.
It also adds an even larger defensive safety net onto Celestial Brew, which is every bit as good in raids as it is in Mythic+. This is a tier set that’s great in both Mythic+ and raids.
Burnin’ for You
This tier set is tied to Breath of Fire, so talents that synergize with it like Sal’salabim’s Strength and Charred Passions, both of which are already extremely popular, will remain must-haves.
In terms of altering talent choices or the rotation from the established setup, this tier set doesn’t.
If anything, it locks in the established Brewmaster Monk meta even harder.
Whether you see this as a positive or negative is entirely a matter of personal perception.
Do you like the current state of Brewmaster Monk’s talents and playstyle? Great! Nothing is changing!
Do you hate the current state of Brewmaster Monk’s talents and playstyle? Ah, shucks! Nothing is changing!
Sleep Now in the Fire
Brewmaster Monks have been a great raid tank for most of their history, and that is only getting reinforced by this tier set. That’s great news.
In Mythic+, these bonuses are an incredible source of much-needed consistent defensive power that could be a tremendous boost to Monks in Season 3. Saying that a tier set could catapult a spec from the bottom of the pack to the top of the pile might be an overreaction in a lot of cases, but here, it’s warranted.
Most – but not all – of Brewmaster Monk’s toolkit has been well-suited to Mythic+. It has great CC, good defensive group utility, strong cooldowns, and eye-watering AoE damage. It has been missing a single, crucial element of a good Mythic+ tank: A way to directly protect themselves by dealing damage.
Like a pile of wood soaked in kerosene, Monk has just been waiting for a spark to set the whole thing ablaze. Here it is.
