Brewmaster Monk Patch 9.1 Changes Analysis

This page will go over how the changes in Patch 9.1, Chains of Domination, will affect Brewmaster Monks, specifically how the changes might impact its playstyle, best Legendary choices, Covenants, and the like. If you are simply interested in what the current changes are for Monks in Patch 9.1 in general, you can instead read our full list of changes to the entire Monk class on our dedicated page below. For an additional list of content coming with Patch 9.1, you can also check out our Patch 9.1 Overview page.

Brewmaster Monks have not yet received any changes to the specialization. A couple of tooltips have been updated to reflect changes that were hotfixed in at an earlier date in Patch 9.0.5, such as Brewmaster's Balance now properly mentioning its additional 10% damage reduction and also displaying a bonus Health modifier that was already present on a passive specialization aura the player cannot see in-game.

As with the specialization itself, there have been no Talent changes made in PvE for Brewmasters.

In PvP, however, there have been two changes:

• A New Honor Talent by the name of Rodeo has been added. This Honor Talent allows you to essentially "bank" additional casts of Clash by keeping the ability off-cooldown for 7 seconds at a time, allowing you to Clash an additional enemy if you cast the ability again on your next use. Up to 3 additional casts can be stored and unleashed in this way for your next use of Clash.
• The Craft: Nimble Brew Honor Talent has been reworked into simply Nimble Brew. Now, rather than having to create a Nimble Brew in your bags to save for an appropriate time, you can instead hit every target within a small area up to 30 yards away and provide immunity to the next loss of control effect they receive within 8 seconds. This new version of Nimble Brew has a 1.5-minute cooldown between uses, compared to the old version's 1-minute recharge time.

Neither of these Honor Talent changes seem particularly noteworthy. While it is fun to be disruptive with Clash, you are incentivized to use Rodeo to Clash different targets since your primary one has already been rooted and would not be further displaced unless the root is removed. This means that you cannot move a target further and further away from where they are trying to go.

Nimble Brew, on the other hand, can be thought of as a somewhat net-neutral change. Although you can no longer choose to remove a specific loss of control effect as long as you are holding a charge of Nimble Brew in your bags, you can now instead provide temporary immunity to an entire group of targets at once. This could result in denying otherwise-annoying AoE effects like a Mage's Frost Nova, but only if you have cast Nimble Brew on the group beforehand. However, without more fundamental changes, it is unlikely for a Brewmaster to be brought into PvP over the more popular choices of Guardian Druid or Vengeance Demon Hunter.

At this time, there has been one Brewmaster-specific change to Covenant abilities, labelled as a bugfix. This change is that the Necrolord ability Bonedust Brew's replicated damage and healing can now critically strike. This brings the gap between Necrolords and Kyrians much closer in both single-target and AoE. With that being said, the choice between the two remains mostly a matter of preference.

In addition, there is an extension to every Soulbind containing three new traits each, along with an additional Potency Conduit slot and choice between an extra Endurance or Finesse slot. Some of these traits offer very potent effects, such as Emeni's Pustule Eruption, Niya's Bonded Hearts, General Draven's Regenerative Stone Skin, and Forgelite Prime Mikanikos' Effusive Anima Accelerator.

In Patch 9.1, every class has received four new Legendary Powers to unlock with the Runecarving system. These four Legendaries are separated into one unique to each Covenant that will interact with your Class Ability from it.

The four Covenant Legendary Powers for Monks are:

• Kyrian — Call to Arms, crafted on Legs or Feet — Casting Weapons of Order will also summon your specialization's Celestial for 12 seconds. For Brewmasters, this means you will spawn Niuzao from Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox.
• Necrolord — Bountiful Brew, crafted on Shoulders or Chest — Your abilities will occasionally cause a cast of Bonedust Brew to occur at your target's location. This occurs at a frequency of approximately 1.25 procs per minute, but has a 5-second cooldown between activations of the effect.
• Night Fae — Faeline Harmony, crafted on Waist or Hands — The 6% chance for your abilities to reset the cooldown of Faeline Stomp is doubled, increasing it to 12%. In addition, both enemies and allies hit by Faeline Stomp gain the Fae Exposure buff. This buff increases the damage taken or healing received from you by 8% for 10 seconds, depending on if the target was an enemy or an ally.
• Venthyr — Sinister Teachings, crafted on Wrist or Finger — Fallen Order summons one additional adept matching your specialization that lasts for 24 seconds. While any adept from Fallen Order is present, your critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Fallen Order by 3 seconds.

Beyond that, there have been no tuning changes to any existing Brewmaster Legendary Powers. You should continue to follow the recommendations of the guide as a whole on which Legendary to use.

Call to Arms is a Legendary whose effect offers a bit of synergy with Forgelite Prime Mikanikos' new Effusive Anima Accelerator trait, as reducing the cooldown of Weapons of Order means more instances of Niuzao being summoned. However, this would mean players that currently use both Walk with the Ox and Charred Passions would have to contend with the cooldowns of Weapons of Order and Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox not being synced up anymore due to fewer casts of Spinning Crane Kick. With that being said, the utility of this Legendary would really come down to the damage pattern of the encounters you wear it in. Your true goal with it, after all, would be to maximize the amount of Staggered damage you can convert to Niuzao's Stomp damage with Purifying Brew.

In addition, it should be noted that while two Niuzaos are present, they both draw from the same pool of recently-purified damage to empower their Stomp through the Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox passive. This means that you should avoid having two active at once.

Bountiful Brew is a bit simple in its effect. For Brewmasters, who have the ability to reduce the cooldown on Bonedust Brew already, there is not a lot about it that is appealing. In fact, the extra Bonedust Brew casts from this Legendary currently only reset the duration of an already-present Bonedust Brew buff rather than extending it or existing separately. As such, maximizing its potential currently requires you to sit for periods of time with Bonedust Brew ready to use while you wait for a buff to expire. For now, it can be largely ignored.

Faeline Harmony is able to reset the cooldown of Faeline Stomp often enough to achieve high uptime on both Fae Exposure and the ability's temporary increase to your Stagger against targets hit by it. Reaching 70% or higher uptime on these buffs is not out of the question if you do not have to move off of your faelines. With this, along with the Potency Conduit Way of the Fae and the extra stacks of Grove Invigoration provided by Niya's Soulbind, Night Fae manages to solidly dethrone Charred Passions or Stormstout's Last Keg as the default choice of Legendary if you are a Night Fae in AoE. However, the moment you are unable to reliably stay on your faelines this Legendary Power's value quickly declines.

Sinister Teachings is a Legendary that is impacted by tuning to an incredible degree. Even discounting the cooldown reduction, having an extra Ox Adept from Fallen Order for the ability's entire duration results in an additional 3-4 casts of Keg Smash and 1-2 casts of Breath of Fire; this further enhances the natural burst offered by the ability. As for the cooldown reduction itself, there does not appear to be a cooldown on how often it can occur with repeated critical hits. In addition, individual ticks of abilities like Rushing Jade Wind and Spinning Crane Kick can each count for triggering this reduction. There is potentially immense strength in having an ability whose damage output is tuned around a 3-minute cooldown suddenly being able to be cast two or even three times more often! Regardless, Fallen Order itself still suffers from the questionable AI of the Adepts themselves and the annoyingly-random nature of when each type chooses to spawn.

There have been no changes to the Anima Powers available to Monks in Torghast.