Brewmaster Gear
I’m lazy and Wowhead does it better by making it customizable, so here are best in slot lists for Brewmaster monks. I’ve automatically excluded PvP items because I personally will never PvP for PvE gear, but you can add it back in by removing the “PvP Power = 0” filter.
Here are the stat weights I’m using, which are partly based on spreadsheets and partly based on how I personally weight these stats:
- Agility: 1
- Exp: 0.6
- Hit: 0.6
- Haste: 0.6
- Crit: 0.6
- Parry: 0.3
- Dodge: 0.3
- Mastery: 0.4
Expertise and hit would normally have higher values, but this is assuming you are already at your desired caps. Because of reforging, expertise and hit drop to the next highest valued stat (in this case haste) once you reach the cap. If you happen to be unable to reach caps, raise those hit and expertise values to around 0.75.
If you happen to place a higher value on any of these stats, you can experiment with changing them around. I personally like to give crit a higher value because I love Elusive Brew, but you don’t need to do that. There are also cases where you can build a mastery set (though I usually prefer to only reforge to mastery for those cases).
5.2 Gear Ranking
This is still a work-in-progress, but you can preview it by following these links. Generally, it’s worth getting four pieces of Tier 15.
Weapons
Weapons are a little difficult because we can dual-wield (which introduces complications like double enchants) and because of Sha-touched weapons. Generally speaking, if you obtain a sha-touched weapon, you do not want to replace it with anything that is not sha-touched. That even goes for replacing an LFR sha-touched weapon with an LFR not-sha weapon (unless you need an upgrade in weapon dps).
Approximate Dual-Wield Ranking
Approximate Two-Hander Ranking
This list was rather difficult to put together so I may have made a mistake. If you find something that doesn’t quite make sense, please let me know.
- Gao-Rei (H) //// Shek’zeer (H) + Shek’zeer (H)
- Shek’zeer (H) + Gara’kal (H)
- Shek’zeer (H) + Shek’zeer (N)
- Shek’zeer (H) + Gara’kal (N)
- Gara’kal (H) + Shek’zeer (N)
- Shek’zeer (N) + Shek’zeer (N) ///// Gao-Rei (N)
- Shek’zeer (H) + Shek’zeer (LFR)
- Shek’zeer (H) + Gara’kal (LFR)
- Gara’kal (H) + Shek’zeer (LFR)
- Shek’zeer (N) + Gara’kal (N)
- Shek’zeer (N) + Shek’zeer (LFR)
- Shek’zeer (N) + Gara’kal (LFR)
- Gara’kal (N) + Shek’zeer (LFR)
- Shek’zeer (LFR) + Shek’zeer (LFR) //// Gao-Rei (LFR)
- Shek’zeer (LFR) + Gara’kal (LFR)
- Screaming Tiger (H) //// Gara’kal (H) + Gara’kal (H)
- Gara’kal (H) + Gara’kal (N)
- Screaming Tiger (N) //// Gara’kal (N) + Gara’kal (N)
- Gara’kal (H) + Gara’kal (LFR)
- Gara’kal (N) + Gara’kal (LFR)
- Screaming Tiger (LFR) //// Gara’kal (LFR)
Trinkets
Trinkets are very situational for tanks, and we have a lot to pick from. Generally, if you are facing a boss that tends to burst you down faster than healers can heal you up, you want Time-To-Live or Hybrid trinkets. If you have few problems with sudden, unexpected deaths, you want Avoidance trinkets.
These are listed roughly in order of preference.
Avoidance
- Terror in the Mists (Heroic, Normal, LFR)
- Relic of Xuen
- Arrowflight Medallion / Woundripper Medallion
- Jade Bandit Figurine
- Hawkmaster’s Talon
Time-To-Live
Hybrid
These hybrid trinkets tend to be very situational, especially because they usually grant mastery, which is of varying usefullness to brewmasters. My advice is to take them if no one else wants them, but to pass if another teammate is interested.
- Bottle of Infinite Stars (Heroic, Normal, LFR)
- Stuff of Nightmares (Heroic, Normal, LFR)
- Vial of Dragon’s Blood (Heroic, Normal, LFR)
Gear
Four piece Tier 14 is usually worth keeping, unless it’s a major upgrade like LFR to heroic. Even then… I would think really hard about it.
The best four pieces of tier depend on what off piece you have. If you’re going for full best in slot, then you want tier helm, shoulders, gloves, and legs, and you should get the chest that drops off Sha of Fear.