Master of Harmony
Master of Harmony Season 3 Tier Set BonusesImplementation & GameplayWhen your
Tiger Palm is set to trigger a
Harmonic Surge, you will gain the
Potential Energy buff for 30 seconds and stacking up to 6 times--though in practice you won't be maintaining more than a stack or two of this effect for a few seconds at a time. From there, it must be stressed that
Harmonic Surge is an entirely separate damage event that does not benefit from any of your bonuses to
Tiger Palm, though it can critically strike or heal. It will instead become a passive part of your rotation, with a random charge of
Potential Energy generated roughly once per minute on top of the two guaranteed charges every time you cast
Celestial Brew (or its new choice node alternative of
Celestial Infusion). With how inconsequential the damage and healing is, you have no reason to withhold a cast of
Tiger Palm to use it at a "better" time, especially if making use of
Blackout Combo.
In addition to its baseline behavior being fairly self-explanatory and passive, there are a couple of quirks to note on these bonuses. First, despite being tied to gaining vitality, you are still able to generate the random charges of
Potential Energy while capped on it (though you should avoid being capped). Next and more critically, the healing effect of
Harmonic Surge is, unfortunately, able to target pets and guardians. Although this reduces the bonus's utility considerably, the large 40-yard range on
Harmonic Surge's healing and preference for targeting injured players means that it shouldn't be too much of an issue in most realistic content. If nothing else, this downside can help balance the strange upside of still generating
Potential Energy at full vitality and stay thematic to the Master of Harmony Hero Talents themselves.
Strength & ContentDespite its hybrid-style effect, this set bonus is unfortunately a triple-threat of negative elements, being underwhelming, fairly random, and unimpactful. While the damage is acceptable enough in purely single-target fights--with
Harmonic Surge currently being about as strong as a
Rising Sun Kick--the value splitting in AoE severely hinders its potential. Beyond that, the healing is insultingly low for a tank's health pool, with each
Harmonic Surge currently healing for less than 1% of a Brewmaster's health (which is already among the lowest of the tanks). Even when healing a DPS player, this bonus's random bursts of additional healing certainly won't ever be what saves a life, despite the potential of giving Brewmasters a piece of group utility.
Fortunately, these weaknesses can be shored up with appropriate tuning, though seemingly the biggest risk will be in balancing the "guaranteed" stacks of
Potential Energy from casting
Celestial Brew or
Celestial Infusion. Still, this set's effects do at least provide a token amount of both damage and defense to complement the hybrid nature Master of Harmony's already known for.
FeedbackThis set bonus almost feels like a bit of an experiment on Blizzard's part, or perhaps just a happy coincidence from having to consider Mistweavers as the other specialization with access to the Master of Harmony talents. Whatever the actual reason, Brewmasters end up gaining a form of group utility with
Harmonic Surge's healing across a party. Of course, this comes at the cost of a fairly underwhelming damage effect that remains at odds with this group healing goal by rapidly losing value outside of purely single-target fighting.
As a result, from a design point of view I would like to see the healing of
Harmonic Surge provide more to a Brewmaster than the allies that are additionally affected. In this current iteration, you are left feeling like the already subpar bonus is operating at a fraction of its potential when not in a group. Instead of feeling rewarded among friends, you feel punished when solo. The rest can (hopefully) be resolved with additional tuning, though it is somewhat charming that the Mistweaver equivalent of these bonuses currently reverses the damage and healing values by comparison.
Shado-pan
Shado-pan Season 3 Tier Set BonusesImplementation & GameplayDespite having many potential pitfalls, the Shado-Pan set bonuses have been created to be as intuitive as possible and remove the risk of encouraging poor gameplay decisions. For example, the 10 stacks of
Flurry Charge generated by the
2-piece bonus are separate from the ones generated by the rest of your kit, preventing any "wasted" Charges. These bonus charges will then trigger off of your next attack, including your autoattack, and all of this being tied to activating
Weapons of Order gives your main damage cooldown as a Brewmaster some extra punch right away. From there, this cooldown gains an incredible amount of burst by cutting the amount of Energy required to trigger your regular Flurry Strikes by nearly 40%, totaling every 4
Keg Smashes, 6
Tiger Palms, or any combination in between. And, if you had already spent 150 Energy toward activating
Flurry Strikes when activating
Weapons of Order, your next Energy spender will immediately set them off, potentially at the same time as the bonus set from the 2-piece!
This major increase in frequency for activating
Flurry Strikes will make it all the more important to trigger
Weapons of Order as frequently as possible. Fortunately,
Chi Surge and
Efficient Training can effectively cut this cooldown in half in AoE, and the strange ability for
Against All Odds to stack up to 20 times can finally be taken advantage of! Notably, however, these bonuses do mandate the use of
Weapons of Order. At this time, there are
no interactions with
Press the Advantage.
Strength & ContentWith most of the power in these set bonuses being tied to buffing your regular sets of
Flurry Strikes, this is a uniquely dangerous amount of burst potentially being created for Brewmasters. For example, as the additional set of
Flurry Charges from the
2-piece bonus do contribute toward
Wisdom of the Wall, this is potentially another set that can trigger the bonus Shadow damage effect while also increasing the number of sets you can pull off during each
Weapons of Order. This, in combination with the unique ability to manipulate the "random"
Wisdom of the Wall effect granted will create enough potential AoE damage to really gain some player's attention. However, the large gap in this set's power between Single Target and AoE will also make it particularly tricky to balance.
FeedbackIn terms of feeling "fun", these Shado-Pan-themed set bonuses deliver one of the best experiences for Brewmasters by creating an intoxicating amount of potential damage to deliver on a semi-frequent basis while still allowing the tree's effects to remain entirely passive. This is certainly in line with how the rest of the talents function already, and there are plenty of ways to attempt to tune it in terms of the Energy reduction, additional
Flurry Strikes damage, and the effectiveness of the bonus set of
Flurry Charges. In fact, ironically enough, all three of these facets
have received adjustments over the course of the PTR!
However, with that being said, this set bonus features no direct defensive bonuses for a tank specialization, which is a bit odd (though not unwelcome). Rather, its tanking value is strictly tied to the additional uptime on
Wisdom of the Wall's effects. In addition, it should be reiterated that this set effect does require you to select the
Weapons of Order talent rather than
Press the Advantage, though this has been a frequent theme as of late. It is entirely possible that
Press the Advantage won't be around in Midnight at this rate. On the bright side,
Weapons of Order is an easy cooldown to manage, and the combat rotation assistant can help handle the burden for those that dislike the frequent use of
Tiger Palm in your rotation. For Brewmasters that are seeking the maximum amount of potential damage, randomness aside on Shadow
Wisdom of the Wall, this will almost certainly be the set of choice.
Master of Harmony vs. Shado-pan
Of these two sets of bonuses, there is certainly a clear winner and loser at this time, with Shado-Pan's effects absolutely coming out on top. This is a bit of a shame, as the Season 2 set bonuses brought both Hero Talents completely in line with one another for even the hardest pieces of content out there. Left without further surgical adjustments, these effects will certainly tip the scales back in Shado-Pan's favor despite its bonuses being purely damage-based. The real shame of this is that the Master of Harmony bonuses do something fairly unique by comparison with
Harmonic Surge's healing. While it certainly shouldn't directly compete with the
After the Wildfire talent of a Guardian Druid, I don't want this potential experiment on Blizzard's part to fizzle from the start.
Due to this current strong slant in favor of Shado-Pan's bonuses, it would be unlikely to see players at the pinnacle of content playing Master of Harmony in Season 3 of The War Within. While it would still remain at least viable and could handle almost everything a player chooses to do, it would be incredibly difficult to pass up the allure of Shado-Pan's substantial additional damage, least of all in AoE. Still, at least one strong bonus is better than none, and conceptually both are sound. The rest is up to tuning.
