[PTR]5.2 Windwalker Summary

[Tangra]

Works on harmful spells that don't deal damage, such as Fist of Justice. Only silences after the spell is cast.

Nice, if it didn't silence CC it would juts be awful.

[Ujio]

updated OP - slight buff to SEF with 2 clones out.

[Reith]

This is seriously not a joke post or anything like that. How do you counter Ring of Peace as a melee?

[Totaltotemic]

This is seriously not a joke post or anything like that. How do you counter Ring of Peace as a melee?

You don't, the same way you don't counter Hand of Protection or Divine Shield (except for the 2 classes of 11 that can do that). It's not exactly new, just on a really really short CD now.

[Moozhe]

I just tested the latest PTR.

1. Storm, Earth, and Fire now benefit from Tigereye Brew.
2. Tigereye Brew stack generation is no longer bugged on the PTR when Combo Breaker: Tiger Palm procs.
3. Tigereye Brew stack generation is back to 1 stack per 3 chi spent.

The biggest thing that I was hoping would be fixed but wasn't is Chi Wave. Currently it heals for less on the PTR even though it has double the CD. So our self healing is now massively nerfed compared to what it was on live.

The exact change is somewhere around 20% less healing per tick than what we have on live. Except with basically double the cooldown the effective throughput would be closer to 40% of what our HPS is on live. So we're looking at a -60% nerf.

This change happened immediately after the change to PvP power where hybrids now get 25% of PvP power as a healing bonus. So I'm going to assume the -20% healing coefficient was meant to counter-balance the PvP power change since 80% + 25% is basically 100%. This was probably the intention but they forgot to make the new coefficient double what it is on live to keep balance with the doubled cooldown.

My issue with this is that nerfing an ability just to compensate for a PvP power change is a PvE nerf. Our Chi Wave is now less useful in PvE... raids, dungeons, Brawler's Arena, or soloing old raids.

I really don't think we needed a nerf to our healing since it's not doing us any favors on live. It's certainly not getting us any Gladiator titles.

[NeverStop]

I just tested the latest PTR.

1. Storm, Earth, and Fire now benefit from Tigereye Brew.
2. Tigereye Brew stack generation is no longer bugged on the PTR when Combo Breaker: Tiger Palm procs.
3. Tigereye Brew stack generation is back to 1 stack per 3 chi spent.

Can you test the T15 4 piece really quick? People are saying the 10% increase in Tigereye Brew stacks is either bugged or really lackluster (it's a less than 1% dps increase).

[Vishiz]

I've been messing with the 2 and 4pc on the ptr and right now they are either not working as intended, or extremely weak. I'll have some real numbers posted up soon.

[Loaf Lord]

Is the chi wave projectile speed just as slow and shitty as current? They also need to make a minor glyph that makes it so chi wave doesn't hit other players.

[Ujio]

I just tested the latest PTR.

1. Storm, Earth, and Fire now benefit from Tigereye Brew.
2. Tigereye Brew stack generation is no longer bugged on the PTR when Combo Breaker: Tiger Palm procs.
3. Tigereye Brew stack generation is back to 1 stack per 3 chi spent.

Excellent stuff at least =]

[Moozhe]

Some more PTR observations:

Energy spheres generated by the Tier15 2pc set bonus:
- Last for 2 minutes.
- Collect beside you similar to Gift of the Ox spheres.
- Are consumed when you walk over them even if they will energy cap you.
- There does not seem to be a cap on how many can be spawned at once. I've seen up to 8.

The 4pc set bonus is not much of an enigma. It will simply change Tigereye Brew stack generation to be 10% faster. I feel like best case scenario we'll be generating about 20 stacks per minute. So this set bonus would contribute on average an extra 2 stacks per minute. Assuming an average mastery of around 4% damage increase per stack of Tigereye Brew then based on the uptime we'd see about a 2% overall damage increase from this 4pc set bonus. It will scale with both haste and mastery.

Considering the energy spheres from our 2pc bonus I'm tempted to say that we should not stack haste in order to be able to actually use these spheres. However since our mastery scales with haste and our 4pc bonus scales with both haste and mastery I think we might see the best DPS increase from either a Haste>Mastery>Crit stat priority or a Mastery>Haste>Crit. I think it will most likely be a Mastery>Haste>Crit priority since we won't want either too much or too little haste.

I think our Mastery is weaker in a Patchwerk/spreadsheet style analysis than it will be in an actual raid environment. For example right now on live on the Garalon boss I save my Tigereye stacks for when there is a leg up, and when one spawns I blow the stacks even if I only have 6-8 of them. Being able to pool our stacks up to 20 will drastically increase our ability to time the usage properly. For example on Jin'rokh the Breaker we have time at the start of the fight to build a fair number of stacks before the first pool spawns which gives a +40% increase in damage. Most guilds will probably Bloodlust/2nd potion at this time and if we can build a 20stack beforehand and we're stacking Mastery it will be pretty insane.

Also outside of topping the damage meters, stacking Mastery will allow us to better meet DPS checks for burn phases, Tendons on Spine of Deathwing being the perfect example. More recent examples would be breaking Lei Shi's "Get Away" shield or killing the last couple of waves of Energy Charges on Elegon.

---

I'm not sure if it has always been like this but I noticed that the Storm, Earth and Fire elementals actually use different weapons and it affects their damage. The Earth Spirit uses a staff, the Storm Spirit is using fist weapons, and the Fire Spirit uses swords. As a result, the Earth Spirit hits harder but significantly less often than the other spirits.

[NeverStop]

Considering the energy spheres from our 2pc bonus I'm tempted to say that we should not stack haste in order to be able to actually use these spheres. However since our mastery scales with haste and our 4pc bonus scales with both haste and mastery I think we might see the best DPS increase from either a Haste>Mastery>Crit stat priority or a Mastery>Haste>Crit. I think it will most likely be a Mastery>Haste>Crit priority since we won't want either too much or too little haste.

What's a good amount of Haste when 5.2 hits live, with the T15 2 piece and without? Right now I'm at around 6800 Haste and I'm pretty happy with the energy regen.

Also, what about FoF in 5.2? Is it still worth using or is it too situational?

[Alviarin]

What's a good amount of Haste when 5.2 hits live, with the T15 2 piece and without? Right now I'm at around 6800 Haste and I'm pretty happy with the energy regen.

Also, what about FoF in 5.2? Is it still worth using or is it too situational?

You're at 6800 now (Live) ? That's like way too much if you're using Ascencion. Usually people limit themselves at ~4000 haste (even less sometimes). That is, if you're using FoF as soon as possible too.

Regarding the new items "discovered" on the PTR, I've taken a look at the new trinkets and one of them especially had me scratching my head in doubt :

Rune of Re-Origination

How do you think it will work ? Will if, as the tooltip states, take all your "less important" secondary stats (let's say, crit and mastery if rocking a haste-heavy build) and convert them to haste ? That would really suck. I can't think of any spec for whom secondary stats are not interconnected in regard to their values, i.e. the value of crit/mastery rises the more haste you have, to a point where it overtakes the "usual best" stat.
I can't imagine myself suddenly gaining like 5000 haste only to have no mastery (or only the buff) and no crit (only the +5% buff and the crit converted from Agi) left.

What do you guys think ?

[Deleted]

You're at 6800 now (Live) ? That's like way too much if you're using Ascencion. Usually people limit themselves at ~4000 haste (even less sometimes). That is, if you're using FoF as soon as possible too.

Regarding the new items "discovered" on the PTR, I've taken a look at the new trinkets and one of them especially had me scratching my head in doubt :

Rune of Re-Origination

How do you think it will work ? Will if, as the tooltip states, take all your "less important" secondary stats (let's say, crit and mastery if rocking a haste-heavy build) and convert them to haste ? That would really suck. I can't think of any spec for whom secondary stats are not interconnected in regard to their values, i.e. the value of crit/mastery rises the more haste you have, to a point where it overtakes the "usual best" stat.
I can't imagine myself suddenly gaining like 5000 haste only to have no mastery (or only the buff) and no crit (only the +5% buff and the crit converted from Agi) left.

What do you guys think ?

Right now most monks are running 4-4.8ish haste. I have been playing around on the ptr with roughly 6k which seems reasonable to me (I would not want to go over 6.5k right now).

With regards to re-origination we need someone to get the trinket and report how it works. The way it reads right now would seem to convert all of your secondary stats into one, reducing the other two to 0. If this were the case no-one would want the trinket. If this were on live right now I would get 65% crit roughly, but 0% mastery and 0% haste for the duration of the proc which would be utter shite. They either need to re-word or re-work that one, otherwise no-one in their right mind would want it.

[flavie]

i read the trinket like this: if u have the highest stats on crit, the same amount will be applied to haste and mastery, or whatever other combination. So the other two dont get reduced to 0 and added to one other, but will get buffed to match the same amout as the highest. Dunno whath the real implication of that would be, but it sounds more realistic than reducing two stats to 0, no? :s

[Deleted]

I doubt that will be the case Flavie, otherwise it would be extremely OP for a class that heavily stacks one stat. Say you give a fire mage, who stacks crit and can reach around 9k rating, equal amounts of mastery and haste - it would be insane!

[Callimonk]

Energy spheres generated by the Tier15 2pc set bonus:
- Last for 2 minutes.
- Collect beside you similar to Gift of the Ox spheres.
- Are consumed when you walk over them even if they will energy cap you.
- There does not seem to be a cap on how many can be spawned at once. I've seen up to 8.

I noticed they're also more orange than yellow. I think our toons need to drink more water - that's not healthy.

The 4pc set bonus is not much of an enigma. It will simply change Tigereye Brew stack generation to be 10% faster. I feel like best case scenario we'll be generating about 20 stacks per minute. So this set bonus would contribute on average an extra 2 stacks per minute. Assuming an average mastery of around 4% damage increase per stack of Tigereye Brew then based on the uptime we'd see about a 2% overall damage increase from this 4pc set bonus. It will scale with both haste and mastery.

We should be receiving at least 10 stacks/min (give or take a few seconds) when neglecting Combo Breaker and set bonus. I can see both of those increasing stack generation quite nicely. Haste and mastery definitely have an interaction, but I found 6K to be a bit high for myself, personally - but maybe it'll be an adjustment. In the LFRs I ran on PTR, where gear scaled down to 480, I had around 4800 haste total and still managed to do as well - if not better - than on live. I ran with haste (6k) > crit > mastery, and I did swap crit and mastery around but didn't see terribly much difference between the two. I think that our faster generation of stacks (which was NOTICEABLE) will place mastery into being a much stronger stat for us in the longterm.

Considering the energy spheres from our 2pc bonus I'm tempted to say that we should not stack haste in order to be able to actually use these spheres. However since our mastery scales with haste and our 4pc bonus scales with both haste and mastery I think we might see the best DPS increase from either a Haste>Mastery>Crit stat priority or a Mastery>Haste>Crit. I think it will most likely be a Mastery>Haste>Crit priority since we won't want either too much or too little haste.

I can see that. I think the crit > mastery just came out of some early math that didn't take into account our faster stack generation and greater uptime of the buff. Think I'm going to need to change my tune on our priorities, though when I did do testing (as mentioned) I didn't see much difference.

With the scaling, I had no energy issues, especially considering the frequency that I ran through spheres in movement-heavy encounters. I had less combo breaker procs, but not enough to worry me. I think our current haste softcap will remain as-is - perhaps going higher with item level, but I think there will be more desire for mastery/crit gear than haste/crit (most items I've looked at have one or the other, or have hit or expertise). I don't think gearing will be terribly difficult, as far as stat balancing goes.

I think our Mastery is weaker in a Patchwerk/spreadsheet style analysis than it will be in an actual raid environment. For example right now on live on the Garalon boss I save my Tigereye stacks for when there is a leg up, and when one spawns I blow the stacks even if I only have 6-8 of them. Being able to pool our stacks up to 20 will drastically increase our ability to time the usage properly. For example on Jin'rokh the Breaker we have time at the start of the fight to build a fair number of stacks before the first pool spawns which gives a +40% increase in damage. Most guilds will probably Bloodlust/2nd potion at this time and if we can build a 20stack beforehand and we're stacking Mastery it will be pretty insane.

Oh, good, I'm doing it right. Back on topic. We will want to have 20stacks for a haste phase - I think that's where we'll be the weakest. And let's face it - most Patchwerk situations will call for an early lust. That will still hurt us, because we won't have as consistent of an uptime of a full buff. I think for Patchwerk, perhaps Crit will be king again. But in practice, Mastery will be strong.

Also outside of topping the damage meters, stacking Mastery will allow us to better meet DPS checks for burn phases, Tendons on Spine of Deathwing being the perfect example. More recent examples would be breaking Lei Shi's "Get Away" shield or killing the last couple of waves of Energy Charges on Elegon.

---

I'm not sure if it has always been like this but I noticed that the Storm, Earth and Fire elementals actually use different weapons and it affects their damage. The Earth Spirit uses a staff, the Storm Spirit is using fist weapons, and the Fire Spirit uses swords. As a result, the Earth Spirit hits harder but significantly less often than the other spirits.

They've always used different weapons, but I'm not sure how it affects their damage as I haven't done enough testing with the spell. If that's the case, that tells me that a 2-target fight may not see the full 120% damage increase?


@NeverStop: It scales with all 3 secondary stats -> it's still quite useful.

[Schaden]

Honestly, I really hate our 2pc bonus. On Patchwerk/stand still fights, its going to be useful, but any fight with any sort of movement is going to make it a crap shoot. Im really not comfortable with the idea of gearing/reforging around it. =\

[Callimonk]

Honestly, I really hate our 2pc bonus. On Patchwerk/stand still fights, its going to be useful, but any fight with any sort of movement is going to make it a crap shoot. Im really not comfortable with the idea of gearing/reforging around it. =\

It seems to me that gearing for secondaries will be stronger than gearing for your 2P. It's not unprecedented to not shoot for the 2P over secondaries.

Also, when I tested it on LFR, I didn't have any issues picking up orbs while moving. Some will be wasted, but that's to be expected. They also last 2 minutes - which is a decent time period.

[Deleted]

You're at 6800 now (Live) ? That's like way too much if you're using Ascencion. Usually people limit themselves at ~4000 haste (even less sometimes). That is, if you're using FoF as soon as possible too.

Regarding the new items "discovered" on the PTR, I've taken a look at the new trinkets and one of them especially had me scratching my head in doubt :

Rune of Re-Origination

How do you think it will work ? Will if, as the tooltip states, take all your "less important" secondary stats (let's say, crit and mastery if rocking a haste-heavy build) and convert them to haste ? That would really suck. I can't think of any spec for whom secondary stats are not interconnected in regard to their values, i.e. the value of crit/mastery rises the more haste you have, to a point where it overtakes the "usual best" stat.
I can't imagine myself suddenly gaining like 5000 haste only to have no mastery (or only the buff) and no crit (only the +5% buff and the crit converted from Agi) left.

What do you guys think ?

I think Finally pretty much nailed it, but I'd imagine it won't go live like that, it completely emptying two secondary stats for one would screw you up BIG TIME. There's just too many variables.

[NeverStop]

I think Finally pretty much nailed it, but I'd imagine it won't go live like that, it completely emptying two secondary stats for one would screw you up BIG TIME. There's just too many variables, imagine, for example, if a Healer used this: Spirit is counted as secondary right? incoming MAJOR regen....

Re-read the tooltip. The trinket can only affect Crit, Haste, and Mastery.