[LEGION] Windwalker Discussion

[Captnrex]

It's probably Ann accident they haven't noticed, thought will have to check other classes skills to see if any others are like that.

Hmm that's weird frost dk and others is the same, someone will probably have to make a thread or ticket about it. It might be they did it to make sure people use the right artifact weapon for the abilities and forgot about low levels not have that luxury?

[v1perz53]

From WoW dev twitter:

Yes. Windwalkers are intended to use only one-handed weapons now. Other changes will be made to account for this.

WW is a 1H only spec now. As has been discussed before, this is probably an animation and time issue. Yea, it kind of sucks, no, it doesn't really matter that much because you will be using only artifact 1H weapons in legion anyway, yes you should prob grab some 1H weapons now but they will probably also do something in case you only have a 2H when pre-patch hits.

[Lucrece]

From WoW dev twitter:



WW is a 1H only spec now. As has been discussed before, this is probably an animation and time issue. Yea, it kind of sucks, no, it doesn't really matter that much because you will be using only artifact 1H weapons in legion anyway, yes you should prob grab some 1H weapons now but they will probably also do something in case you only have a 2H when pre-patch hits.

I doubt it's an issue of animation. Survival hunters, who use a polearm, are using the same exact punching flurry animation on their artifact ability, except instead of white/blue punch outline the punches throw out green spear outlines lol. Better be a placeholder for those poor hunters.

[Gianavel]

Thanks. I found the tweet, here's the link: https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/sta...24085103976448

I really don't agree with this change. I wish I had beta access so I could complain somewhere that has a slim chance of it being seen.

[v1perz53]

I doubt it's an issue of animation. Survival hunters, who use a polearm, are using the same exact punching flurry animation on their artifact ability, except instead of white/blue punch outline the punches throw out green spear outlines lol. Better be a placeholder for those poor hunters.

It is very clearly an animation issue. It isn't limited to Monks, frost DK abilities require 1H weapons, Unholy 2H, fury war abilities require 2H weapons, pretty much every spec that worked with both 2H and 1H weapons on live is weapon type limited in legion. Any "conspiracy theories" about them doing this for flavor or any other reason are pretty dumb, it is very obvious that they designed whole new sets of animations for each class knowing full well that at max level they will only be using a specific set of weapons and did not want to waste time designing animations for weapon types that wouldn't be used. And it seems to be a blanket decision, because yes, many Monk animations are very similar to live and work with 2H currently, but the new animations show weapon models so it is likely they didn't want to take the time to design, animate, and test a set of combat animations that don't show the weapon when it would basically never be seen because of artifacts.

But here's the thing. They could literally say "Fist of Fury: Requires Fist Weapons" and it would change nothing at all for WW Monk for the entirety of the expansion except for the 1% of the time spent levelling if you happen to start from lv 1, because you will only be using the artifact. So sure, I'm not happy about this change. But it also has literally no impact on me because I had no option of equipping anything but two fist weapons on my WW anyway.

Really, my only hope is that they work on animations during legion such that the next expansion when we lose our artifacts we can get 2H back, and fury wars can get 1H back etc. But that is so far out in the future I can't really be bothered to think about it.

Edit: Yea, hunter artifact animation looks SUPER dumb. I hope it is a placeholder too. Doesn't really mean anything though, it just means they animated one ability to have fist things flying forward and one to have spears. Hunters even awkwardly hold the spear sideways in one hand when using the ability.

[Lucrece]

Edit: Yea, hunter artifact animation looks SUPER dumb. I hope it is a placeholder too. Doesn't really mean anything though, it just means they animated one ability to have fist things flying forward and one to have spears. Hunters even awkwardly hold the spear sideways in one hand when using the ability.

Survival hunters should grab a page from FFXIV's Dragoon animations; WoW devs are lazy and are essentially copying the slashing animation of other 2H into a spear, the only difference is how the hunter grabs his polearm. It's super awkward, which is a shame because the sword animation updates are pretty good.

WW's are screwed as well with their fist weapons, I think only Sultriss on the alpha/beta forums has brought up to the devs how badly animated our fist artifacts are, because the baseline monk animations strike with the side of the palm, and now our artifact strikes slightly angled up instead of a real punching animation.

It looks pretty bad and I hope they'll fix it, but it's unlikely if only one person brings it up in a 4 page thread made up of 99% complaints about wanting SEF and TEB reverted (which won't happen, so it's worthless feedback).

I'm also terribly disappointed that of our artifact weapons, only the Spirit's Reach model has a jade color palette, so the artifact will be incompatible with most of my transmogs for a WHILE (and I have the suspicion such large claw weapons are not gonna look good with our current striking animations).

[v1perz53]

Survival hunters should grab a page from FFXIV's Dragoon animations; WoW devs are lazy and are essentially copying the slashing animation of other 2H into a spear, the only difference is how the hunter grabs his polearm. It's super awkward, which is a shame because the sword animation updates are pretty good.

What bothers me most is that they don't even use the weapon during the animation for their artifact weapon ability... Like it isn't even like they are poking furiously forward with the spear tip, they just hold it while punching forward, as seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o0Lw1zEpHc

Anyway, I digress. I am overjoyed that we are finally getting new attack animations because 10 years of seeing the same jump slash on every human melee toon I roll or the same behind the back pass the weapon attack on my blood elf males was getting really old. At this point, I will sacrifice weapon types I can use to get new animations, assuming we wouldn't have gotten new animations at all if they had to do them for all weapon types. Though they did do a much better job on some new animations than others. And a bit more on topic, it is funny, I actually think the base skin for the WW artifact looks awful in most animations. The weapon seems to rotate oddly during many punches and just looks non-functional as a weapon. Most of the skins fix this, and I really like some of them (looking at you Stormfist, depending on how huge it ends up on a human female), but man the base skin would be non-functional as a weapon, twisting towards your knuckles or palm with every hit!

[Lucrece]

What bothers me most is that they don't even use the weapon during the animation for their artifact weapon ability... Like it isn't even like they are poking furiously forward with the spear tip, they just hold it while punching forward, as seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o0Lw1zEpHc

Anyway, I digress. I am overjoyed that we are finally getting new attack animations because 10 years of seeing the same jump slash on every human melee toon I roll or the same behind the back pass the weapon attack on my blood elf males was getting really old. At this point, I will sacrifice weapon types I can use to get new animations, assuming we wouldn't have gotten new animations at all if they had to do them for all weapon types. Though they did do a much better job on some new animations than others. And a bit more on topic, it is funny, I actually think the base skin for the WW artifact looks awful in most animations. The weapon seems to rotate oddly during many punches and just looks non-functional as a weapon. Most of the skins fix this, and I really like some of them (looking at you Stormfist, depending on how huge it ends up on a human female), but man the base skin would be non-functional as a weapon, twisting towards your knuckles or palm with every hit!

You can watch the weapons on your racial models on the WoWhead dressing room.

The stone fists are ridiculously large, it's clipping galore.

[Darmal]

Has a rotation / priority list been suggested yet?

[Reyvah]

The stone fists are ridiculously large, it's clipping galore.

Yup, that looks pretty proportional to me

[Lucrece]

Yup, that looks pretty proportional to me

That pose is just the best lol

She looks like the evil bitch from Kill Bill

[v1perz53]

I can't imagine they are gonna go live like that so I didn't put much stock in how things looked in the dressing room. I've been wrong before though...

[Babylonius]

Has a rotation / priority list been suggested yet?

Not really, other than what's being quietly tested and prepped for when they start to tweak numbers. Once we start to see numbers tuning in the next weeks and months then we'll be figuring out a priority.

[Myta]

Yup, that looks pretty proportional to me

The red version of those is perfect for the Heroic BRF set.

[Bullettime]

Survival hunters should grab a page from FFXIV's Dragoon animations; WoW devs are lazy and are essentially copying the slashing animation of other 2H into a spear, the only difference is how the hunter grabs his polearm. It's super awkward, which is a shame because the sword animation updates are pretty good.

WW's are screwed as well with their fist weapons, I think only Sultriss on the alpha/beta forums has brought up to the devs how badly animated our fist artifacts are, because the baseline monk animations strike with the side of the palm, and now our artifact strikes slightly angled up instead of a real punching animation.

It looks pretty bad and I hope they'll fix it, but it's unlikely if only one person brings it up in a 4 page thread made up of 99% complaints about wanting SEF and TEB reverted (which won't happen, so it's worthless feedback).

I'm also terribly disappointed that of our artifact weapons, only the Spirit's Reach model has a jade color palette, so the artifact will be incompatible with most of my transmogs for a WHILE (and I have the suspicion such large claw weapons are not gonna look good with our current striking animations).

Yeah it's ind of upsetting how sword/axe/mace animations were so greatly improved, in both audio and visual effects, but spears didn't really get touched. FFXIV's Dragoon animations (like most animations in that game) were spectacular and would have been a good spot to look at for inspiration, but alas.

[Gorlab]

Thanks. I found the tweet, here's the link: https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/sta...24085103976448

I really don't agree with this change. I wish I had beta access so I could complain somewhere that has a slim chance of it being seen.

They have already made up their mind and its far too late to change. All the animation work, etc, that has gone into it has made them purely 1h dw now.

[Shoeboots]

Well I was fortunate enough to get beta access and spent some time with the monk.

As I suspected, AoE is just a mess. Yes, SEF assists SCK and that's all well and good. The problem is when you're not using SEF, which will be the majority of the time. In combination with mastery, you have to TP, Tab-Target, BoK, Tab-Target, TP, SCK for one basic AoE move. Burst is out of the question and this will be insanely annoying on trash pulls or any encounter that spawns mobs to be burned down quickly.

I get that SEF can be used as much as a third of the time, but this leaves a majority of the time being a mess, not to mention the fact that you're probably saving SEF since its also your single target cool down.

I'm pretty sad overall. I will not play monk as main if this goes live. I simply will not. And that's a big deal to me since I've been ww monk main since the MoP pre-patch. I plan to post more detailed thoughts on the beta forum now that I can, but I find this version of SEF to be extremely poor design and completely contrary to every stated design philosophy for classes in Legion.

[v1perz53]

As I suspected, AoE is just a mess. Yes, SEF assists SCK and that's all well and good. The problem is when you're not using SEF, which will be the majority of the time. In combination with mastery, you have to TP, Tab-Target, BoK, Tab-Target, TP, SCK for one basic AoE move. Burst is out of the question and this will be insanely annoying on trash pulls or any encounter that spawns mobs to be burned down quickly.

It gets even more awkward when you have pulls with 4+ mobs, because at that point it becomes optimal to tab target ST attacks until you have tagged every enemy before using an SCK, as it will do more damage once you have tagged all the mobs. But it does seem like in many cases they are moving away from the "use this filler spell when it is AoE time" model to more of a "do your normal ST rotation and throw in this AoE ability every so often" model in many cases, which I am not sure how I feel about. And honestly, I kind of hate the "tab target to buff SCK" gameplay, I don't think it adds anything besides making normal play a little bit more annoying.

But in terms of burst AoE I disagree, FoF no longer meteors, and that on top of Strike of the Windlord hitting all targets gives us pretty reasonable AoE burst with two hard hitting mid CD spells available to be saved for AoE burst.

[Shoeboots]

But in terms of burst AoE I disagree, FoF no longer meteors, and that on top of Strike of the Windlord hitting all targets gives us pretty reasonable AoE burst with two hard hitting mid CD spells available to be saved for AoE burst.

I take your point on the burst. I didn't consider FoF and SoW. I guess my issue boils down to the tab-targeting. It's not fun. It's never been fun. And I think 'being fun' is a fair baseline for my expectations of a game I play. I'm a strong proponent of the MoP/Warlords version of SEF and I like having SCK as a builder, but I could probably accept the changes if there was no requirement for tab-targeting. Aside from burst for reasons you mentioned, aoe will be atrocious beyond spending those two moves, and I'm guessing it's gonna make more sense to be building combo points in a SCK friendly way as a general practice for any kind of sustained aoe just as matter of best habits.

[Babylonius]

I take your point on the burst. I didn't consider FoF and SoW. I guess my issue boils down to the tab-targeting. It's not fun. It's never been fun. And I think 'being fun' is a fair baseline for my expectations of a game I play. I'm a strong proponent of the MoP/Warlords version of SEF and I like having SCK as a builder, but I could probably accept the changes if there was no requirement for tab-targeting. Aside from burst for reasons you mentioned, aoe will be atrocious beyond spending those two moves, and I'm guessing it's gonna make more sense to be building combo points in a SCK friendly way as a general practice for any kind of sustained aoe just as matter of best habits.

Its likely that if you're going to be tab targetting you'll want to TP - Tab/TP - SCK rather than worrying about the mastery for a menial amount of TP damage. With the new tab targetting system I found it to be very smooth even outside of using SEF. It feels very differently out in questing than it does in dungeons or it will in raids, so don't judge it by target dummies or while questing.

Its also possible that since FoF and the like do so much more cleave/aoe damage, that we wont worry about SCK until 5 or 6+ targets, until numbers are tuned, we don't know how we'll use it.