DOTA 2 Brewmaster Guide

By PlayerAuctions | October 17th, 2022 | Categories: Others

While DOTA 2 offers an overwhelming number of heroes to its player base, choosing the right one that compliments your playstyle and draft is crucial. As such, an excellent Offlane pick against the enemy carry can definitely make or break the game. Fortunately, we’ve found Brewmaster incredibly useful when paired up with aggressive Support.

This guide will focus on explaining Brewmaster’s abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and how you should play the hero in team fight situations. Without further adieu, let’s start!

Table of Contents

Learning Brewmaster’s Abilities

Learning Brewmaster requires you to understand its abilities and use them smartly. The hero relies tremendously on his utility, and a thorough understanding of his abilities is what separates a casual player from an exceptional one. A rundown of Brewmaster’s abilities is given below starting from the absolute basics to general tips that will help you understand the core mechanics of Brewmaster’s playstyle.

Thunder Clap

Radius	Damage	Move Speed Slow	Attack Speed Slow	Slow Duration	Cooldown	Mana
400	90/160/230/300	25/35/45/55	25/35/45/55	4 sec	13 sec	90/100/110/120

With Brewmaster, you need to rely on Thunder Clap as your primary way to dish out early-game damage in the lane and other small skirmishes. It is an area of effect (AoE) attack where he slams the ground, dealing damage and slowing down the enemy’s movement speed and the rate of attack. The AOE allows you to easily clear out jungle camps or enemy creeps, boosting your farm and allowing you to keep up with the enemy Carry even if you’re bullied out of the lane.

During the early stage, you may want to catch as many heroes in the radius of attack to get the most out of your ability. Later on, as the damaging effects aren’t as significant, the ability becomes an essential tool to counter enemy Carries due to its attack rate slow-down effect. Thunder Clap makes Brewmaster a viable hero in the anti-carry role.

Cinder Brew

Radius	Move Speed Slow	Ignite Damage	Duration	Ignite Duration Increase	Cooldown	Mana
400	24/28/32/36	80/160/240/320	5 sec	3 sec	20/17/14/11	50/60/70/80

This is another AOE attack in which Brewmaster drenches himself and the area where he points in alcohol. The enemy heroes in that area get inflicted by slow debuff for 5 seconds. However, that’s not all; when an affected enemy gets hit by any spell damage, it ignites the enemy, and the slow debuff refreshes for 3 more seconds.

The ability can be paired up with your first (Thunder Clap) to keep refreshing the time and force the enemy to stay glued to their spot. it’s also helpful when chasing down enemies; combo it with a blink to jump on the face of your enemies, slow down them, and wait for your teammates to catch up and back you up.

Drunken Brawler

This ability gives passive bonuses to Brewmaster based on his Drunken Brawler stance.

Stance	Effect
Earth Brawler	Grants 1.0 armor and 5.0% magic resistance.
Storm Brawler	Grants 15.0% evasion and 5.0% bonus move speed.
Fire Brawler	Grants a 24.0% chance to crit for 145.0% of your attack damage.
Void Brawler	Grants 20.0% Status Resistance and gives 25.0% Slow for 2.0s on the attack.

When Drunken Brew is paired up with Cinder Brew, bonuses are multiplied by 3. This ability can be used both offensively and defensively. For example, a Storm Brawler stance that increases evasion and movement speed can be used to either run away from enemy attacks or chase them down to trade attacks.

However, keep in mind that the movement speed alternates between fast and slow with each second. So, the optimal use would be to close up on the enemy for 1 second when you are fast and attack the next second when you are slow. This may take some practice to master but it’s definitely worth it!

Primal Split (Ultimate)

The ultimate ability of Brewmaster allows him to split into 3 Elemental Brewlings and a Void Brewling (if you have the Aghanim’s Shard). To use this effectively, you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each Elemental Brewling so you can adjust your playstyle accordingly.

Earth Brewling

The Earth Brewling summon has the following abilities:

Ability	Description	Cast Range	Damage	Duration
Hurl Boulder	Throw a boulder at an enemy unit doing damage and stunning it	800	50/100/150	Stun for 2 sec
Spell Immunity	Immunity to spells	–	–	–
Demolish	Bonus damage to buildings	–	–	–

Strengths

It is the tankiest summon due to its high HP and spell immunity.
Since the Hurl Boulder ability has only a 5 seconds cooldown and requires no mana, you can keep spamming it to create chaos among enemy lines.
The ability will constantly keep the enemy unit debuffed with a stun and give your team the chance to maximize the damage output.

Weaknesses

When the ultimate ends, Brewmaster spawns at the position of the Earth panda. However, Earth is the slowest panda of the lot, so fleeing with him becomes near impossible. Therefore, you need to position it strategically in fights.

If you plan on evading enemies when the ultimate ends, many pros often go aggressive with the Earth panda and let them die so you can respawn as the Storm panda after the ultimate. However, if both Earth and Storm die, you will appear as the Fire panda.

Storm Brewling

Storm Brewling summon has the following abilities:

Ability	Description	Cast Range	Damage	Duration
Dispel Magic	It damages summons, illusions, and dispels buffs and debuffs	500	1000	–
Cyclone	Captures an enemy unit in a cyclone temporarily removing it from the battlefield	600	–	Creep 20Hero 06
Wind Walk	Temporary invisibility, 50% increased movement speed, and bonus attack damage	–	140/200/260	20

Strengths

Dispel Magic ability deals a tremendous amount of damage to summons and illusions. It will be your best weapon if the enemy unit uses either.
Even if there are no summons and illusions, the Dispel Magic ability can dispel most of the buffs and debuffs. Hence, always make sure you get the most out of it.
Constant usage of Cyclone helps you to remove tanky and spammy heroes or backline supports from the enemy team. Consider using it against heroes like Crystal Maiden or Enigma to prevent them from causing chaos in the fight.

Weaknesses

Despite Cyclone and Dispel Magic both being extremely practical, they do not go well together. Using Dispel Magic while Cyclone is active immediately ends the Cyclone ability. Therefore, you need to be careful when using them both.

Fire Brewling

Fire Brewling summon has the following abilities:

Ability	Description	Radius	DPS	Status Resistance
Permanent Immolation	Its burns all the nearby enemies	220	25/50/75	–
Permanent Phase	Provides phased movement and status resistance to Brewling	–	–	30%

Strengths

Fire panda can constantly damage nearby enemies with no mana cost, although the radius of damage is fairly limited. However, it’s a great way to chip down on your foes and prevent them from blinking out.
The panda has fairly high HP, even in the early levels of the game.
With a fair bit of armor, it can also endure a good amount of damage. So, it is best to always keep it close to the enemy lines to soak in the impact.

Weaknesses

As described earlier, the small damage radius of the Permanent Immolation ability means you have to be in the face of enemies at all times. This leaves the panda in a pretty risky position and often results in its death.
You cannot phase through buildings with the Permanent Phase buff, which leaves a lot to be desired.

Void Brewling (Aghanim’s Shard)

You need the Aghanim Shard upgrade to summon the Void Brewling. Once that’s required, here are the abilities the summon will provide you:

Ability	Description	Radius	Move Speed Slow	Duration
Astral Pulse	It disarms and slows down the movement speed of the enemies	500	20%/ 30%/ 40%	2.5

Strengths

It can slow down enemy movement speed significantly. Moreover, since it costs no mana, spam it as soon as the cooldown wears off to get the most out of it.
The slow can be combined with your First (Thunder Clap) to hold down enemies while backup arrives.

Weaknesses

This is the weakest summon among all, as the only thing it has going for itself is the Astral Pulse ability, which has a massive cooldown of 12 seconds.
The Astral Pulse ability has a pretty short slow duration which can often allow enemies to escape away if it isn’t paired up with other abilities and items.

Primal Companion (Aghanim’s Sceptor)

Use of Aghanim’s Scepter allows you to use the Primal Companion ability on Brewmaster. Primal Companion allows the player to create a Primal Split Brewling based on the Drunken Brawler stance of Brewmaster. Unlike Primal Split, this ability only allows 1 Brewling at a time. So, make sure you use the correct Drunken Stance to summon an Elemental Brewling according to the need of the situation.

Before using this ability, you should keep the following setbacks in mind:

Only one Brewling can be summoned at once, and upon using Primal Split, the summoned Brewling will disappear.
If one Brewling is taking damage from the enemy, the player cannot summon a new one for at least 3 seconds.
If Brewling moves away from the range, it cannot cast a spell and suffers a 50% movement slowed penalty.
The cooldown on this ability is a whopping 70 seconds which can definitely hurt when you’re constantly skirmishing.

Learning Itemization On Brewmaster

Once you’ve understood the abilities of the hero, it’s time to get a hand on the itemization. As Brewmaster’s stance provides him with significant movement, evasion, and crit buffs, it is preferable to use armor and flat damage items on him to make him tankier and scale the damage output.

However, crit and evasion items are not entirely redundant, as those stats also tend to stack and can prove to be quite useful in certain situations.

Early-game

Apart from traditional boots and regen items, you should rush to get a Soul Ring and a Blink in the early game. Here’s why:

Soul Ring: Since Brewmaster is a utility-dependent hero, getting an early Soul Ring allows you to spam your Thunder Clap and regenerate your health quickly for constant skirmishes and trades.

Blink: Rush this item right after your Soul Ring. This helps you in getting into the heart of the battle, or catch backlines and get your ult off. Moreover, This also lets you quickly blink out and escape when your ult ends.

Mid-game

During mid-game, you want to focus on the Mana sustainability of Brewmaster. This makes Vladmir’s Offering an excellent choice for him due to its damage, Lifesteal, and Mana regeneration. Generally, passive aura items work in tandem with Brewmaster’s ult as the aura persists during the ultimate.

You’ll also be an asset for your teammates, and physical carry’s like a Phantom Assasin or an Anti mage can definitely benefit from the Lifesteal aura.

Late-game

During late-game, a focus on aura items is preferable for Brewmaster. Assault Cuirass is an excellent choice as it gives +10 armor and +30 attack speed aura. A second choice could be Shiva’s Guard, which provides +30 intelligence and +15 armor, plus an AOE slow that compliments the rest of your abilities. The auras stay active during ult and magnify Brewmaster’s abilities outside it.

Conclusion

Brewmaster is a popular choice of hero, both in professional tournaments and pubs. Watching pro players can help you get a feel for different build varieties depending on your play style and how to execute them. Overall, the tanky hero is not as item dependent as many other heroes and has a highly flexible and fun kit.