Brewmaster Monk Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.0.5)

When you are first entering a fight and have access to every one of your cooldowns, you will initially need to focus on establishing Shuffle to bolster your defenses before continuing the main priority below. A simple single-target "opener" can be described as follows:

1. Activate Rushing Jade Wind before entering combat.
2. Use Chi Burst as you start moving to your target.
3. Use Keg Smash while moving to your target.
4. Use Blackout Kick.
5. Use Blackout Kick.
6. Use Tiger Palm.
7. Use Breath of Fire.
8. Activate Weapons of Order.
9. Use Keg Smash.
10. Use Blackout Kick.
11. Use Blackout Kick.
12. Use Tiger Palm.
13. Use Keg Smash.
14. Use Rising Sun Kick.
15. Use Blackout Kick.
16. Use Blackout Kick.
17. Refresh your Rushing Jade Wind.
18. Use Blackout Kick.
19. Follow the main single-target priority below.

Reminder: This rotational priority is most helpful when you are in the middle of combat and need to decide what ability to use as your next choice. When entering combat, consider following the sample opening ability sequence above first before utilizing this priority system.

1. Activate Black Ox Brew — it is off the global cooldown — if your Energy is low and all charges of Purifying Brew and Celestial Brew are on cooldown.
2. Use Touch of Death on an enemy if it can be activated.
3. Use Rising Sun Kick if you have 10 stacks of the Press the Advantage buff.
4. Use Blackout Kick to trigger Blackout Combo or whenever the Charred Passions buff is present. Consume your Blackout Combo buff with Rising Sun Kick if you have 10 stacks of Press the Advantage, or otherwise with Tiger Palm. Breath of Fire is also acceptable for more defense.
5. Use Blackout Kick if the Charred Passions buff is present.
6. Use Keg Smash. Do not cast this if you have 10 stacks of Press the Advantage, unless you are in need of additional defense.
7. Use Breath of Fire.
8. Use Breath of Fire.
9. Even if taking minimal damage, activate Celestial Brew if near two charges of the ability or your vitality is near your maximum Health.
10. Activate Weapons of Order.
11. Use Blackout Kick.
12. Use Breath of Fire.
13. Use Breath of Fire if it was not empowered with Blackout Combo to gain the Charred Passions buff.
14. Use Rising Sun Kick, which additionally triggers Chi Wave.
15. Cast Chi Burst.
16. Throw Exploding Keg at your targets, and ensure Rushing Jade Wind is active beforehand. Try to cast the ability while having up to 5 stacks of Balanced Stratagem, using only Physical abilities beforehand to deal increased damage.
17. Use Rushing Jade Wind to maintain its buff.
18. Use a spare charge of Purifying Brew if you are taking very little damage for additional Special Delivery procs.
19. Use your second charge of Keg Smash to effectively "bank" partial recharge time when Keg Smash comes off cooldown in the middle of another ability's cast.
20. Use Tiger Palm, even if the Charred Passions buff is present.
21. Use Tiger Palm if there is nothing else to do, and you will still have enough Energy for your next Keg Smash.
22. Use Spinning Crane Kick if there is nothing else to do and you will still have enough Energy for your next Keg Smash. Do not use more than one in a row, as this prevents you from gaining stacks of Press the Advantage.
23. When playing as a Shado-Pan Brewmaster, do not worry about spending extra Energy to trigger Flurry Strikes faster. This will cause you to fall behind elsewhere in the priority.

It is absolutely imperative that you have enough Energy to cast Keg Smash on cooldown, as this is a large source of damage and the main source of both cooldown reduction for your Brew-based abilities and Shuffle to empower your Stagger.

Against multiple targets, it is especially important to establish Shuffle to bolster your defenses before continuing the main priority below. A basic multi-target "opener" can be described as follows:

1. Activate Rushing Jade Wind before entering combat.
2. Use Chi Burst as you start moving to your target.
3. Use Keg Smash while moving to your target.
4. Use Blackout Kick.
5. Use Blackout Kick.
6. Use Tiger Palm.
7. Use Breath of Fire.
8. Activate Weapons of Order.
9. Use Keg Smash.
10. Use Blackout Kick.
11. Use Blackout Kick.
12. Use Tiger Palm.
13. Use Keg Smash.
14. Use Rising Sun Kick.
15. Use Blackout Kick.
16. Use Blackout Kick.
17. Refresh your Rushing Jade Wind.
18. Use Blackout Kick.
19. Follow the main AoE priority below.

Brewmaster Monk is a somewhat unique specialization in that your rotation will mostly stay the same whether you are in single-target or multi-target combat. As a reminder, this rotational priority is most helpful when you are in the middle of combat and need to decide what ability to use as your next choice. When entering combat, consider following the sample opening ability sequence above first before utilizing this priority system.

1. Activate Black Ox Brew — it is off the global cooldown — if your Energy is low and all charges of Purifying Brew and Celestial Brew are on cooldown.
2. Use Touch of Death on an enemy if it can be activated.
3. Use Rising Sun Kick if you have 10 stacks of the Press the Advantage buff against 3 or less targets.
4. Use Blackout Kick to trigger Blackout Combo or whenever the Charred Passions buff is present. Consume your Blackout Combo buff with Rising Sun Kick if you have 10 stacks of Press the Advantage, or otherwise with Breath of Fire.
5. Use Blackout Kick to trigger Blackout Combo or whenever the Charred Passions buff is present. Consume your Blackout Combo buff with Tiger Palm. Breath of Fire is also acceptable for more defense, and will provide more damage against 3+ targets. against 8+ targets.
6. Use Blackout Kick if the Charred Passions buff is present.
7. Cast Chi Burst.
8. Use Breath of Fire.
9. Use Keg Smash. Do not cast this if you have 10 stacks of Press the Advantage, unless you are facing 4+ targets.
10. Use Breath of Fire.
11. Even if taking minimal damage, activate Celestial Brew if near two charges of the ability or your vitality is near your maximum Health.
12. Activate Weapons of Order.
13. Use Breath of Fire.
14. Use Breath of Fire if it was not empowered with Blackout Combo to gain the Charred Passions buff.
15. Throw Exploding Keg at your targets, and ensure Rushing Jade Wind is active beforehand. Try to cast the ability while having up to 5 stacks of Balanced Stratagem, using only Physical abilities beforehand to deal increased damage.
16. Cast Blackout Kick.
17. Cast Blackout Kick.
18. Cast Rising Sun Kick, which additionally triggers Chi Wave.
19. Use Spinning Crane Kick if the Charred Passions buff is present. Do not use multiple times in a row to avoid spending too much Energy. Do not use more than once in a row unless fighting 3+ enemies, as this prevents you from gaining stacks of Press the Advantage.
20. Use Rushing Jade Wind to maintain its buff.
21. Use a spare charge of Purifying Brew if you are taking very little damage for additional Special Delivery procs.
22. Use your second charge of Keg Smash to effectively "bank" partial recharge time when Keg Smash comes off cooldown in the middle of another ability's cast.
23. Use Spinning Crane Kick if you will have enough Energy available by the time Keg Smash is available. Do not use more than once in a row unless fighting 3+ enemies, as this prevents you from gaining stacks of Press the Advantage. Use Tiger Palm instead if more Brew cooldown reduction is desired.
24. When playing as a Shado-Pan Brewmaster, do not worry about spending extra Energy to trigger Flurry Strikes faster. This will cause you to fall behind elsewhere in the priority.

Although Spinning Crane Kick deals enough damage to normally justify being a high-priority ability, it is too expensive on Energy to use when there are plenty of other free abilities. It will also cause you to gain stacks of Press the Advantage more slowly due to pausing your auto attack timer during its channel.

Brewmaster Monks rely on a specific ability ( 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 13 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 Bob and Weave talent, which increases the duration of the Stagger DoT by 3 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).

A simple example, assuming a Stagger amount of 40%, is as follows:

1. An attack of 100,000 Physical damage is performed against you.
2. 60,000 damage is dealt to you instantly.
3. A Stagger DoT is applied to you, which deals 40,000 damage over 10 seconds — essentially, 2,000 damage every 0.5 seconds.
   • With the Bob and Weave talent, this is instead 1,540 damage every 0.5 seconds over 13 seconds!
4. You cast Purifying Brew after 5 seconds, removing 50% of the Stagger DoT's 20,000 remaining damage: 10,000.
5. After 10 seconds, you have sustained 60,000 instant damage and 30,000 in Staggered damage, for a total of 90,000. You avoided 10,000 damage of the original hit with the help of Purifying Brew!
   • If you had cast Purifying Brew after only 1 second, you would have instead avoided 18,000 damage of the hit or even 18,460 with the Bob and Weave talent. Using Purifying Brew closer to the original hit will result in more mitigation! In addition, Master of Harmony players have access to an even stronger Purifying Brew with the Mantra of Purity passive, resulting in an extra 3,160 damage avoided here.

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 additional options that provide you with benefits for reaching ever-higher levels of Stagger as well, including High Tolerance, Training of Niuzao, and Dragonfire Brew.

There is one more ability that indirectly works with your Stagger: Celestial Brew. Although the absorb it provides for only 8 seconds may seem small at first, it can be increased to up to three times its original size with the Improved Celestial Brew talent! This is caused by the Purified Chi buff, which you will gain stacks of with every use of Purifying Brew: one stack is gained from Purifying while at Light Stagger, two stacks from Purifying in Moderate Stagger, and three from Heavy Stagger. Each stack increases the size of your next Celestial Brew shield by 20% per stack, going up to +200% at the stack cap of 10.

Finally, it is important to remember that the recharge time of Purifying Brew — along with the remaining cooldowns of Celestial Brew 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. 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 for Master of Harmony players due to their Endless Draught passive.
• Keep one charge available for an emergency to use right after taking a big hit.
• Use a charge as the second charge is about to come off cooldown or if you are about to lose your Purified Chi buff.

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.

By having access to an abundance of Purifying Brew usage and making use of it directly after taking large amounts of damage, you will also have built up plenty of stacks of Purified Chi to give you larger Celestial Brew absorbs. As a result, this ability is also often used on cooldown. It will usually be better to create more shields over time rather than possibly wasting Purified Chi stacks and cooldown reduction. There is one small thing to consider, however. You may not want to Purify any Staggered damage if you will not take enough to eat away at the entire absorb. Since Celestial Brew's shield only lasts for 8 seconds, any amount of absorption afterward is effectively wasted. As this absorb can soak up any damage — including Stagger — you can think of it as a stronger form of Purifying Brew.

If nothing else, you only need to remember to never let your Purifying Brew or Celestial Brew be unused and off-cooldown.

There are potentially 10 or more active abilities and passive effects that need to be considered in the rotation priority among your chosen talents, and many provide very different effects.

• Rising Sun Kick should essentially be used on cooldown. Although it does not directly interact with the defensive parts of the Brewmaster kit without the help of talents like Spirit of the Ox and Strike At Dawn, it deals plenty of damage and has no cost, making it an excellent ability to help you avoid running out of Energy.
• Chi Burst is another ability with no cost and deals massive amounts of damage in addition to a small amount of healing. While plenty strong in single-target, it has incredible value in AoE and still allows you to dodge while casting.
• Chi Wave is a passive alternative with no cost that will only be triggered once every 15 seconds when you cast Rising Sun Kick or Vivify. Its "smart" nature will choose to bounce to injured allies over those with full Health.
• Rushing Jade Wind allows you to passively deal damage around you and has no Energy cost to maintain, so long as you remember to regularly activate the ability due to its low cooldown.
• Exploding Keg operates as one of the few tools of burst available to Brewmasters. This is due to its secondary effect of dealing bonus damage on direct hits to targets that were originally hit by the ability over a 3-second window. Due to how this ability interacts with both Rushing Jade Wind and Spinning Crane Kick, it is possible to achieve 10 or more additional hits to an enemy during this time.
• While Weapons of Order does reset the cooldown of Keg Smash, bear in mind that it only resets the cooldown of one charge if using the Stormstout's Last Keg talent. In addition, there is functionally little difference in how you apply the bonus damage debuff. So long as Keg Smash and Rising Sun Kick are being used on cooldown, you can largely ignore the bonus damage effect, as it will not cause a major change in rotation, nor will it buff the damage of trinkets or consumables. At most, you should aim to cast Exploding Keg while your enemies have four stacks of the increased damage taken debuff.

Although it is a passive talent at its core, Press the Advantage substantially alters the flow of your rotation as a Brewmaster Monk and features massive opportunities to maximize its potential. This is primarily achieved through simply consuming your 10 stacks of the Press the Advantage buff on Rising Sun Kick whenever you can, even if it means leaving Keg Smash off-cooldown for a few seconds at a time — though it can still be useful if you are in need of a large amount of Brew cooldown reduction. Done correctly, roughly every third Rising Sun Kick will trigger Press the Advantage's extra attack!

Where the real potential of this talent comes into play is when its interactions with other talents are considered. The bonus attack of Press the Advantage works with all talents that affect Tiger Palm or Weapons of Order. These talents are:

• Face Palm — A 50% chance to deal 50% additional damage and gain additional Brew cooldown reduction.
• Counterstrike — After dodging an attack, gain 100% increased damage to your next Spinning Crane Kick or 50% to your Press the Advantage ability.
• Blackout Combo — Casting Blackout Kick immediately before consuming your 10 stacks of Press the Advantage on Rising Sun Kick increases its damage by 50%.
• Chi Surge — Consuming your 10 stacks of Press the Advantage applies a massive DoT, split among all targets hit. This DoT is only 50% as strong as when cast by Weapons of Order.
• Call to Arms — Consuming your 10 stacks of Press the Advantage has a chance to summon Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox for 12 seconds.

Between all of these effects, it is possible to massively inflate the damage of the extra attack from spending your 10 stacks of Press the Advantage, though it will also require incredible attention on your part to do so and still not be able to rival Weapons of Order's power. However, due to stacks of Press the Advantage buff only being generated from auto attacks with your main hand weapon, it is a substantial damage gain to receive the Windfury Totem buff from an Enhancement Shaman or even Power Infusion from a Priest when talented!

However, there is a hidden downside to this talent removing access to Tiger Palm. Without this ability, you will need to incorporate more casts of Spinning Crane Kick into your rotation, even in single-target. Ordinarily, this would not matter much, but because Spinning Crane Kick is a channeled ability, you are unable to perform auto attacks while spinning. This means that you will delay building up your stacks of Press the Advantage, and significantly so if you cast Spinning Crane Kick multiple times in a row. To get around this, make sure that you do not repeatedly use this ability unless you are fighting 3 or more targets.

If you have chosen Black Ox Brew, you should always make sure to have consumed both of your Purifying Brew charges and that Celestial Brew is on cooldown before using it. Remember that you will also need to use another Purifying Brew charge afterward to avoid wasting any cooldown reduction and will likely put up a Celestial Brew shield that does not have many stacks of Purified Chi improving it. Since Black Ox Brew also refills all your Energy, you may also wish to cast Keg Smash or Tiger Palm/ Spinning Crane Kick at the same time. If your priority does not allow for this, however, then it is okay to waste a little bit of Energy regeneration.

As a Brewmaster, you have a number of talented defensive abilities with long cooldowns. You also have two offensive cooldowns that also provide some defensive effects as a bonus. Compared to the reactive nature of Purifying any Stagger you have built up with the help of Shuffle, these cooldowns are best used before you have taken damage in the first place.

• Fortifying Brew increases your current and maximum Health by 20% while also reducing all damage taken by 20% for 15 seconds. You can further alter it with the Fortifying Brew: Determination and Ironshell Brew talents to increase your base Stagger amount by 15% or provide you with even more damage reduction and Health. Note that its 6-minute cooldown is reduced by 1 and 3 seconds when you use Tiger Palm and Keg Smash, respectively. This cooldown can also be reduced with the Expeditious Fortification talent. It should be used in planned moments where you are about to take a large amount of damage. Alternatively, it can be used as an emergency cooldown when your Health is low, although it is less effective in this way.
• Zen Meditation is a very powerful defensive cooldown. It reduces damage taken by 60% for 8 seconds, but the effect is canceled prematurely if you are the victim of a melee attack or move. This cooldown allows you to greatly mitigate the damage dealt by abilities with a cast time in particular since the cast allows you to time Zen Meditation perfectly. Alternatively, it can reduce the first melee attack or boss ability that hits you while channeling it.
• Diffuse Magic is a powerful defensive cooldown that you can use to counter magic damage in particular. One of its more unique effects is the ability to both dispel and reapply a variety of potent magic debuffs to enemies.
• Dampen Harm is a survival cooldown that you can use to mitigate the damage from powerful boss attacks. It is most useful if used preemptively. A further breakdown of its damage reduction can be found in the Spell Summary.
• Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox takes on a portion of the damage you are Staggering during the time he is present while also dealing a small amount of damage. If you are not making use of the Improved Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox talent, then this damage is largely negligible, and the cooldown's defensive bonuses are more useful to consider.
• Touch of Death is to be used when an enemy's Health is low enough to allow it. While the damage it deals will also remove a portion of your Stagger, you are usually using it against something that is nearly dead and cannot harm you anymore. This cooldown is, therefore, more useful offensively, but you may rarely be able to plan around its defensive benefit as well.

Season 1 of The War Within features a new set of Monk-themed gear to collect, known as the Gatecrasher's Fortitude set. Pieces of this armor can be earned from bosses in the Nerub-ar Palace raid, alongside any of the nine slots in the weekly Great Vault, and can also gradually be made at the Matrix Catalyst as a catchup system. This armor, when enough pieces of it are worn, unlocks two special bonuses for Brewmasters:

• Monk Brewmaster Season 1 2pc — Blackout Kick and Keg Smash deal 20% additional damage, and Shuffle also grants 3% damage reduction.
  • Shuffle should have 100% uptime when playing a Brewmaster, meaning a permanent 3% damage reduction is present with this bonus.
• Monk Brewmaster Season 1 4pc — Blackout Kick increases your damage dealt by 1% for 15 sec, stacking up to 3, and has a chance to reset the cooldown of Keg Smash and make its next cast cost no Energy.
  • The damage buff is shown through a buff called Flow of Battle
  • This reset chance is approximately 30%, and shown through the similarly-named Flow of Battle buff when it triggers.

For the most part, these bonuses need no further explanation. 20% additional damage to Blackout Kick and Keg Smash, two of your most frequently used Brewmaster abilities, is always welcome, and using them correctly translates to always having the Shuffle buff active. This means you should always have the extra 3% damage reduction provided by the Monk Brewmaster Season 1 2pc bonus. Likewise, you can simply spend your Flow of Battle Keg Smash reset buffs as they occur, and there's an opening in your rotation with minimal adjustment.

However, although these bonuses are fairly simple and self-explanatory, they have the potential to impact your talent choices as a Brewmaster. Due to being a specialization that features a lot of smaller buffs to individual abilities, adding just one more can suddenly push entirely different talent builds to the level of being not only viable but even preferred...

Due to the many stacking buffs to Keg Smash's damage available between these set bonuses and the Shado-Pan talents, you may switch from the Sal'salabim's Strength talent to Scalding Brew for a significant boost to your output. If doing so, bear these slight playstyle shifts in mind:

• You must use Charred Passions to maintain the debuff from Breath of Fire, not only for its damage reduction but for Scalding Brew's bonus damage. This also means you will want to carefully make use of Blackout Kick's cleaving effect from Shadowboxing Treads while tabbing between targets to maintain Breath of Fire's DoT in AoE. Spinning Crane Kick will not be used to refresh the DoT unless there are 5 or more targets present.
• Blackout Combo should also be talented, with its combo buffs being exclusively consumed on casts of Tiger Palm, even in AoE.
• You should be playing with the Shado-Pan Hero Talents to fully enable this build, otherwise it will only perform as well as a more traditional one in the hands of a Master of Harmony.

As a final note, be aware that the 3% Flow of Battle damage buff only applies to damage from your abilities. It will not empower your trinket damage or any other gear effects'.

If you would like to learn more about which pieces of the tier set to focus on acquiring from Awakened raids, please see the gearing section of this guide, linked below.

Ring of Peace is fairly unique among enemy-moving abilities, allowing you to deny access to an area they may be trying to reach or to use it as an emergency interrupt by knocking the target away. If placed in a corner, an enemy may be forced to bounce against the wall repeatedly. Be warned, however, that some enemies and all raid bosses are immune to its effects. Otherwise, you can find plenty of creative uses for this talent.

Summon Black Ox Statue is a one-of-a-kind ability. Having all of your enemies running to the same place can make everything so much easier when trying to get their attention. Do not forget that you can also use Provoke on your Black Ox Statue to taunt all the mobs near it. However, remember that the statue is killable and only has half of your max Health, so you should be quick to summon another one if it has been attacked recently. This WeakAura can help you keep track of your statue's Health.

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.
• 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 midair!

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.

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.

Provoke is your single-target taunt, forcing an enemy to attack you for up to 3 seconds at a time. Be aware. However, 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 three 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.

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 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.

While some specializations may have Hero Talents that make a major impact on their rotations, Brewmaster Monk's Shado-Pan and Master of Harmony both are ultimately small in their changes to gameplay. However, there are still some strengths and weaknesses in each, resulting in times when one may be the preferred choice over the other.

If you would like to learn more about what these Hero Talents do, consult our full section of the guide below.

When playing as a Shado-Pan Brewmaster, the main rotational change you will likely feel is exclusively in the more frequent use of Weapons of Order due to the cooldown reduction provided by the Efficient Training passive. Otherwise, its buffs to Tiger Palm and Keg Smash do not make a real difference, as these abilities were already fairly high-priority, particularly with Blackout Combo talented.

With limited rotational adjustments, what is there to draw a Brewmaster to play with the Shado-Pan talents? The answer lies in the pursuit of offensive power. While the damage gap between Brewmaster's Hero Talents is smaller than it is for many specializations, there is nevertheless an edge in Shado-Pan's favor for maximizing damage, particularly in single-target. Its defenses, though strong when Predictive Training can regularly trigger and there is Energy to spare on Vivifys empowered by Vivacious Vivification/ Protect and Serve, may be more limited in their use-cases.

As an additional downside, Shado-Pan's AoE performance can have a large amount of variance based on when you trigger Flurry Strikes. If you are not able to regularly trigger High Impact or the bonus Shadow damage from Wisdom of the Wall when it is active, your damage will not reach its true potency and may make the talents feel less compelling.

A Master of Harmony Brewmaster plays a similarly passive game, though it does come with the extra consideration of needing to press Celestial Brew to trigger Aspect of Harmony and start spending vitality. In addition, due to your self-healing similarly building vitality, areas where you are triggering Gift of the Ox more frequently will result in reaching the full potential of this tree.

There is, however, a major flaw in how Aspect of Harmony works: vitality cannot be built while in the spending state of Aspect of Harmony. Unfortunately, this means that you can feel punished for needing to use Celestial Brew while damage cooldowns such as Weapons of Order are active. At the same time, if you want to make full use of Coalescence's damage buff, then you will still want to trigger Aspect of Harmony at some point while your enemies are debuffed. Finally, a Master of Harmony Brewmaster will also want to consider the Balanced Stratagem passive, aiming to reach a full 25% buff on Exploding Keg or Chi Burst by not casting other Fire or Nature abilities leading up to it.

This all results in the Master of Harmony tree frequently having a higher ceiling on its defensive potential. Although its single-target damage does suffer and end up being lower than Shado-Pan, sometimes substantially, it is still a viable choice when you have need of its power.

Despite being a very early choice node in the Brewmaster specialization tree, your decision between Special Delivery and Rushing Jade Wind will make a large difference in the pacing and feel of your rotation. Indeed, this node represents a very real choice, where one option is sometimes better than the other depending on how well you can use either of them and how many targets are being fought.

Special Delivery acts as a "simpler" option between these two talents, being a passive damage increase that also offers a hefty 50% snare to targets that are hit by all of the falling kegs. It is also somewhat unique among AoE damage sources in that it does not deal reduced damage until hitting a massive 20 targets or more. The main thing to bear in mind when using this talent, however, is that you may have more "empty" moments in the rotation where you will need to not press any abilities while waiting to restore Energy. In addition, there may be times when a crowd-controlled enemy is accidentally freed by a stray falling keg.

Rushing Jade Wind, meanwhile, is the much more "active" option of the two talents, requiring you to press its button very frequently in the rotation. However, in exchange, it provides a useful amount of passive damage and Threat, particularly in the opening moments of a pull; note that compared to Special Delivery, this talent instead begins dealing reduced damage beyond 5 targets. It is also uniquely powerful with effects that trigger from dealing damage, as each of its hits may count as activators.

Overall, this makes the choice between Special Delivery and Rushing Jade Wind rather complicated. If you are having a hard time managing your rotation or just want to deal the most damage, then Special Delivery will usually be better, though you will have to be more careful about managing your Energy. On the other hand, the continuous AoE threat of Rushing Jade Wind can still be an advantage, especially in open-world content or areas where you are concerned about Threat. Feel free to experiment and use which of the two you prefer, based on your own comfort level!

Continuing the trend of many choice talent nodes representing genuine decisions, both Charred Passions and Dragonfire Brew are each viable talents where one may be superior over the other in certain circumstances.

Dragonfire Brew again acts as the "passive" option between the two, minimally impacting the rotation beyond potentially encouraging you to use Breath of Fire when beginning a pull (assuming you are using the always-recommended Sal'salabim's Strength talent) rather than Keg Smash. The unique strength of this talent, likewise, comes from its damage not being reduced until hitting 20 targets or more. This makes the talent very powerful at all target counts while still remaining competitive in specifically single-target scenarios.

Charred Passions, on the other hand, makes a larger impact on your rotation as a Brewmaster. More specifically, it further emphasizes the use of Blackout Kick on cooldown, regardless of target count. In addition, due to frequent recommendation of Sal'salabim's Strength, its effect will almost always be active due to the low cooldown of Keg Smash resulting in always being able to cast another Breath of Fire before the Charred Passions buff expires. However, this does result in a rotation where you are heavily punished for failing to reliably press Blackout Kick.

What the distinction between these two talents boils down to is primarily one of comfort with Brewmaster Monk's complex rotation. Due to the overall damage gap being small when both choices are played optimally, you can certainly get away with using Dragonfire Brew at all times if you wish. Charred Passions, meanwhile, acts as a choice to help gain every possible bit of damage-dealing you can while punishing you more heavily for failing to press Blackout Kick on cooldown. As such, you may choose whichever of the two you prefer, with one exception...

If you have talented into Scalding Brew rather than Sal'salabim's Strength, then you are no longer able to maintain the debuff from Breath of Fire at all times. This would also result in Scalding Brew losing value by not always having Keg Smash cast on enemies suffering from the Breath of Fire DoT. Fortunately, Charred Passions refreshes this debuff when it is active and you are casting Blackout Kick or Spinning Crane Kick. However, this means that you must select Charred Passions rather than Dragonfire Brew if you have opted into Scalding Brew!

Although seemingly a no-brainer of a decision, the choice between Sal'salabim's Strength and Scalding Brew is another one that is worth considering in figuring out how simple or complex you want your rotation to be as a Brewmaster Monk.

Sal'salabim's Strength is frequently considered the "default" choice of this talent pair, providing a complete reset on the cooldown of Breath of Fire every time you cast Keg Smash. This results in maintaining the 5% damage reduction effect attached to its DoT at all times, as its 12-second duration is normally shorter than the 15-second cooldown of the ability. In addition, these resets of Breath of Fire fill in potential gaps of the rotation where you otherwise may have nothing to do or would attempt to cast an extra Tiger Palm/ Spinning Crane Kick and risk starving yourself of Energy.

Scalding Brew attempts to act as a more simple alternative, providing a substantial buff to Keg Smash's damage when hitting any target affected by the debuff of Breath of Fire. With other talents potentially able to handle Breath of Fire's debuff instead, such as Celestial Flames or Charred Passions, Scalding Brew theoretically results in a noteworthy damage gain. However, its impact on your greater rotation and the creation of additional gaps where there is nothing to press results in a less satisfying experience.

Ordinarily, this set of talents has a fairly standard default answer: select Sal'salabim's Strength at all times for better rotational flow and identical damage. With that being said, due to the Monk Brewmaster Season 1 4pc bonus providing additional casts of Keg Smash in the rotation, you may instead switch to Scalding Brew with this bonus equipped for a noteworthy damage gain. All the while, there will be minimal impact to your playstyle, so long as a talent like Charred Passions is used to maintain Breath of Fire's debuff.

At first, choosing between Tiger Palm and Spinning Crane Kick seems like a decision with an obvious answer: use Tiger Palm against one target and switch to Spinning Crane Kick if there are two or more. However, the actual choice is not so simple. Spinning Crane Kick also generates additional Shuffle time with every target hit and attracts your Gift of the Ox spheres to you, while Tiger Palm reduces the cooldown of your Brew abilities by 1 second.

Even though it is a channeled ability, Spinning Crane Kick deals damage longer than a Brewmaster Monk's global cooldown. In fact, if you use another ability as soon as you can, Spinning Crane Kick will finish its damage even though you have "stopped" channeling to cast something else. Plus, if using Spinning Crane Kick twice in a row, the two casts' channel times will combine to prevent any potential damage being wasted. Finally, when making use of the Walk with the Ox talent, its effects will trigger four times due to each tick of damage individually granting Shuffle.

Spinning Crane Kick is not without its downsides, however. While it may seem convenient for your Spinning Crane Kick to draw in Gift of the Ox orbs, this also means that you are not able to easily save them up for a large heal with Expel Harm in an emergency. You also already should have maximum uptime on Shuffle by using both Keg Smash and Blackout Kick on cooldown. In addition, while channeling Spinning Crane Kick, your auto attacks — which are still an important part of your overall damage — do not occur. This means that all of the supposed defensive benefits of Spinning Crane Kick do not really help you out as a Brewmaster, and it may actually reduce your damage if used inappropriately.

Knowing all of this, your actual choice between the two abilities only becomes a little more complicated. Even if you do not need extra cooldown reduction on your Brews and do not need to use a stronger Expel Harm, Spinning Crane Kick will still not provide you with more damage unless you are fighting multiple targets. Even then, if you use it, remember that though the channel is longer than your global cooldown, other abilities can be used without the channel being broken early! Using Spinning Crane Kick multiple times in a row will also combine the channel durations to avoid any of the damage being "wasted." On the other hand, if you need more defensive power are fighting only a single target, or have talented into Blackout Combo, then Tiger Palm makes more sense to use.

If you have chosen to make use of the Charred Passions talent, the decision between Tiger Palm and Spinning Crane Kick does not change. While the Charred Passions buff is present after using Breath of Fire, you will still only make use of Spinning Crane Kick in substantially large AoE. With Blackout Combo, you may even avoid casting it there in favor of more Tiger Palms!

On a similar level, if you have chosen to talent into Press the Advantage, you will not have access to Tiger Palm at all and therefore need something to utilize your excess Energy on. Ordinarily, this would mean you simply replace every potential cast of Tiger Palm with Spinning Crane Kick, no matter how many enemies you are facing. However, while channeling Spinning Crane Kick, you will not be able to perform auto attacks with your weapons and may miss out on hits entirely. This can substantially slow down your ability to build up stacks of Press the Advantage's buff, which could even result in a loss of damage overall!

With this warning in mind, you will still want to utilize Spinning Crane Kick at least some of the time when playing with Press the Advantage. You will, however, want to avoid casting it twice in a row to limit the chance of missing auto attacks. Fortunately, once you are fighting larger groups of enemies, you may again safely cast Spinning Crane Kick multiple times without fear of it being a loss of damage, which mirrors how the ability is normally used without Press the Advantage.

Blackout Combo empowers your next ability and, therefore, changes your rotation somewhat. However, it can 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 every Blackout Combo buff from casting Blackout Kick should be consumed by a Tiger Palm for more offensive power (particularly a Tiger Palm that has been empowered by either the Face Palm or Counterstrike talents), Breath of Fire for extra defense (or damage against 3+8+ targets), or Keg Smash for additional cooldown reduction of your "Brew" abilities. If you are regularly consuming your Blackout Combos on Purifying Brew or Celestial Brew — an easy mistake to make since Purifying Brew, in particular, is not on the global cooldown — then this talent will rapidly drop in value. Your survival may also suffer if you regularly cast a "normal" Breath of Fire and overwrite the additional damage reduction of an empowered one.

However, when performing your rotation with this talent, remember that Blackout Combo does not have an interaction with Spinning Crane Kick, Rising Sun Kick (outside of Press the Advantage), Rushing Jade Wind, or Chi Burst, in addition to all of your cooldown 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!

Wisdom of the Wall is the capstone passive of the Shado-Pan Hero Talents. Although it may provide its effects in the background as you continue to do your regular rotation, there are two noteworthy ways to optimize its effects, particularly with regards to the bonus Shadow damage effect to Flurry Strikes.

Although Wisdom of the Wall claims to trigger its buffs at random when 10 Flurry Strikes occur, this is only partially true. Instead, this passive functions using a system known as a "deck of cards". The rules of it are as such:

• All four Wisdom of the Wall buffs are treated as "cards" in a "deck".
• Whenever you trigger a Wisdom of the Wall buff, one "card" is "drawn", and will not happen again until all remaining buffs in the deck have also been drawn.
• When the deck is empty, it will be "shuffled" and all four of the Wisdom of the Wall buffs can again be triggered.
• When logging into your character— or starting a Mythic+ dungeon— the deck is automatically reshuffled. The deck will otherwise remember its available cards between times of combat and even if you die.

The biggest consequence of Wisdom of the Wall's buffs working this way is that it becomes very difficult to see the same effect twice in a row, as that would mean it is both the final card in one deck and the first card of the next. Instead, what you can do is make use of WeakAuras for deck-tracking to know when the next chance for the bonus Shadow damage effect on Flurry Strikes (the substantially more powerful buff) is likely to occur. Then, you can potentially delay your Flurry Strikes trigger until adds appear to result in a massive swing of well-timed damage. While this is ultimately a small, thought-intensive optimization, it is quite potent in content with planned moments of AoE.

In addition to "deck-tracking" for Wisdom of the Wall, there is a second, easier optimization for bonus damage you can opt into regarding how your Flurry Charges trigger it. This is due to Wisdom of the Wall occurring when 10 total hits of Flurry Strike happen, which means you can gain a buff and have it immediately apply to any strikes still happening during the trigger. In particular, you can gain up to 9 additional hits of the bonus Shadow damage effect every time it procs, resulting in a substantial damage gain.

There are many ways to "set up" your Flurry Charges with this goal in mind (even accidentally). However, one easy and reliable method is the following. Note that you cannot do this if intending to go into Mythic+, as it will reset your Flurry Strikes/ Flurry Strikes and Wisdom of the Wall deck:

• Log out and back in on your character to reset the Wisdom of the Wall deck and remaining stacks to gain a buff, alongside your Flurry Charge/ Flurry Strikes Energy count.
• Go to a Level 80 training dummy, and perform two full channels of Crackling Jade Lightning (for a total of 200 Energy spent).
• Auto-attack and Blackout Kick the training dummy until you are at 9 stacks of Flurry Charge.
• Cast Vivify (cancelling the Vivacious Vivification buff if it is present) along with Expel Harm to reach 240 total Energy spent, triggering Flurry Strikes.

Remember, this setup should only be performed if you are intending to go into a raid environment. In Mythic+, it will be undone at the start of the dungeon. Additionally, your Flurry Charge stack count can "desync" if you ever trigger further Flurry Strikes with less than 10 Charges, which may happen (even mid-trigger) if your target dies, you move out of range, or you cancel targeting.

As a final note, neither of the above behaviours in Wisdom of the Wall need to be taken advantage of to do well as a Shado-Pan Brewmaster. Rather, they are skills that may separate the good or great from the very best, but nevertheless can be both frustrating and annoying to continuously monitor. Do not attempt them if it costs your enjoyment in gameplay; your performance will still be good enough letting them occur entirely in the background.