[PTR]5.2 Windwalker Summary

[Ujio]

Thought it better to have one thread to discuss all upcoming WW changes. This is not a full list - you can check front page for that - just the stuff that i thought was relevant to WW. Numbers not final obviously & none of this is set in stone yet.

Fire-Charm Battlegear - T15 ~click for full size.


Monk T15 Windwalker 2P Bonus (New) - Your Chi generating abilities have a 15% chance to generate an Energy Sphere, which will grant you 10 Energy when you walk through it .
Monk T15 Windwalker 4P Bonus (New) - You have a 10% chance to gain an additional charge of Tigereye Brew every time you gain a charge of Tigereye Brew.-Build 16446
The 2pc Windwalker PvE bonus no longer drops spheres in a circle. They drop right next to you, much like the Brewmaster's Gift of the Ox, so that you can shift side to side and pick them all up. - Ghostcrawler

Arena Season 13 Set

Changes

Paralysis - 20 yd range baseline now. Deadly reach removed. Is now a physical, non-magical effect, and can no longer be dispelled, grounded or reflected

Paralysis is now a physical, non-magical effect, can no longer be dispelled, grounded or reflected, and its base range has been increased to 20 yards. The Paralysis effect lasts 40 seconds (was 30 seconds) for non-player targets, 4 seconds when used against other players, and lasts 50% (was 200%) longer when used from behind a target.-Build 16539

Charging Ox Wave - 30 sec cooldown instead of 60 sec.

Dampen Harm - Dampen Harm can be cast while stunned now. Its cooldown will now begin when used, not when the effect ends.

Healing Elixirs - extra 5% health when this procs, 15% total.

Tiger's Lust - No chi cost anymore. Can no longer be used on targets that have other temporary speed increases active

Zen Sphere - Can have 2 up at once now. Will auto detonate if they are dispelled or target goes below 35%. No chi cost anymore but 10 sec CD instead.

Chi Wave - Now does 100% more damage and healing. No chi cost anymore but 15 sec CD instead of 8 sec.

Chi Burst - Now does 100% more damage and healing, no longer costs chi but now has a 30 sec CD instead.

Brewing: Tigereye Brew - Activates via 2 chi spent per stack now instead of 4. Damage up from 2% to 2.6% per stack. Can now stack up to 20 times instead of 10 but can only use 10 at a time.
Brewing: Tigereye Brew now gains a charge per 3 Chi used, up from 2.-Build 16446

Touch of Karma - No chi cost anymore.

Chi Torpedo - Now deals 15% more damage.

Path of Blossoms - has been removed.

Spinning Fire Blossom damage now scales from weapon damage rather than attack power. This will result in an intended nerf.-Blue Post

Spear Hand Strike Energy cost removed. Silence reduced to 2 sec -Blue Post

Rising Sun Kick debuff causes all targets within 8 yards to take an increased 10% damage from your abilities, down from 15%.

Windwalker Monk PvP 2-piece bonus now also increases the range of Keg Smash.Official Patch Notes

Cyclone - Will now share diminishing returns with Paralysis and Quaking Palm
We are reverting Cyclone having shared diminishing returns with other forms of crowd control.-Blue Post

The Eye of Sauron is Upon us....We are concerned that fully geared Subtlety, Enhancement and Windwalker DPS are still too high. None of these are particularly easy specs to play, so it might be okay that given that players won't realistically be able to hit their theoretical maxima. Just wanted to let you know they are on our radar.
-Blue Post

New Skills & Abilities

Ring of Peace - Forms a sanctuary around the target for 8 sec, causing all enemies to be silenced and disarmed within 8 yards. Requires Level 60. 40 yd range. 1.5 min cooldown. ~Replaces Deadly Reach.

Ring of Peace has been adjusted. It now forms a sanctuary around the friendly target, causing enemies within 8 yards to be disarmed and causes enemies who cast a harmful spell to be silenced for 3 sec. Moving out of the ring does not remove the silence, but it won't trigger again. The duration of Ring of Peace is 8 sec.-Blue Post

Ring of Peace forms an 8-yard sanctuary around a friendly target for 8 seconds, disabling enemy player auto-attacks in PvP, and causing all enemies (both players and NPCs) in the area of effect to be disarmed for the duration. In addition, enemies that cast a damaging spell while within the area of effect will be silenced for 3-seconds.-Official Patch Notes

Ring of Peace has a 45 second cooldown.-Build 16539

Nimble Brew (New) - Clears you of all root, stun and fear effects and reduces the duration of future such effects by 60% for 6 sec. Nimble Brew can be cast while stunned or feared. 2 Min CD ~level 30 ability for WW & BrM

Combo Breaker (New) - You have a 12% chance when you Jab to cause your next Tiger Palm or Blackout Kick to cost no Chi within 15 sec. ~Old mastery baseline now

Mastery: Bottled Fury (New) - Increases the damage bonus provided by Tigereye Brew by .2% per Mastery per stack.. ~Replaces Combo Breaker as our mastery

UI Update - A user interface alert now displays upon reaching 10 stacks of Tigereye Brew.

Storm, Earth and Fire
40 yd range
Instant
Requires level 75
The Windwalker can summon up to two elemental duplicates that mirror damaging abilities that the Monk uses while they are active. For each spirit summoned, the Monk's damage is reduced: 1 spirit causes the Monk and the spirit to deal 60% of the Monk's normal damage, while 2 spirits will cause the Monk and both active spirits to deal 40% of the Monk's normal damage. Each spirit lasts until the ability is canceled, or that spirit's target dies or otherwise becomes unavailable.

Storm, Earth, and Fire is now a Windwalker spell. Now costs 10 Energy. The Monk splits, summoning an elemental spirit to attack the target. The Monk can split into up to 2 elemental spirits at a time. The spirits will attack their targets and mirror your damaging abilities. However, for each elemental spirit summoned the Monk's own damage will be reduced. 1 Spirit Summoned - Monk and spirit deal 60% of the Monk's normal damage. 2 Spirits Summoned - Monk and spirits deal 40% of the Monk's normal damage. The elemental spirits will last until the Monk cancels the effect or their target dies or is otherwise unavailable. -Build 16446

Storm, Earth, and Fire - Monk and spirits deal 45% of the Monk's normal damage when 2 Spirits Summoned, up from 40%.-Build 16562


Storm, Earth, and Fire is a new ability for Windwalkers. It’s intended to be fill the role of attacking 2 or 3 targets. It’s a rather complex ability, technically, and you’re seeing a very early version of it that still has some significant bugs (which we’re hoping to hotfix soon). To give you an idea of the design intent here, the spirits should mirror your damaging attacks against targets other than the one they’re on (so that it’s not a single target DPS gain). The spirits auto attack on their own. It should reduce your and your spirits damage while they’re out, but the exact tuning for that is still being iterated on. They’re currently -40% for 1 (total of 120% of normal against 2 targets), and -55% for 2 (total of 135% against 3 targets). Non-damaging attacks (such as Spear Hand Strike) should not be mirrored, but damaging attacks (such as Fists of Fury) should. Feedback very appreciated.-Blue Post

Storm, Earth, and Fire: The spirits will not mirror non-damaging abilities like Leg Sweep or Charging Ox Wave. They will mirror damaging abilities like Chi Wave. In the cases of damaging abilities that also heal (Chi Wave, Zen Sphere, and Chi Burst), their healing and yours is reduced. But for other heals which aren’t mirrored (like Healing Sphere, Blackout Kick from the front, or consuming a Healthstone), it won’t reduce the healing. In the case of Zen Sphere, the spirits will cast it on themselves when you cast it on anyone. Note that many of these things aren’t working yet, but should in the next PTR build, or perhaps the one after that. Also, in the next PTR build, attempting to cast it on a target that already has one of your spirits on it will recall that spirit.-Blue Post

Storm, Earth, and Fire does not affect Xuen's damage. The spirits benefit from your Tiger Eye Brew. We agree that a spell with "storm, earth and fire" in the name sounds like a shaman spell, but Warcraft 3 established it as a Pandaren monk ability.-Blue Post

[Uko]

Someone find me that meme of a stick figure vomiting rainbows onto his computer cause thats what im doing right now after seeing these changes!

On topic all these changes are good i hope we do get some for of that storm earth and fire skill when it hits live would fix our not having any cleave nicely.

[Deleted]

Excited for 5.2 if most of this goes live, especially deadly reach being removed and no chi cost for ToK. Ive been saying this needed to be like this ever since I level'd my monk!

eeeeee

also nice job on the information!

[Mr. Casual]

glory so happy i dropped my warrior after first week of mop for monk. I knew warriors were going to be destroyed eventually and saw mucho potential for monks

[Deleted]

Huge buffs all round, only thing missing is on demand brew stack for burst at start of a fight, but can live without that while getting all this new stuff. Elemental Monks seems lots of fun too, and offers up some pretty great pvp opportunities as long as their AI isnt retarded.

[Ujio]

Huge buffs all round, only thing missing is on demand brew stack for burst at start of a fight, but can live without that while getting all this new stuff. Elemental Monks seems lots of fun too, and offers up some pretty great pvp opportunities as long as their AI isnt retarded.

The way S/E/F is worded it seems to just stay on the target you use it on. Very cool ability though - I hope it gets confirmed.

[Aherooffools]

I.... I'm so happy.... I think I just gave Blizzard a second chance.

The mastery change, tiger's eye brew, no chi all around, cc breaker (FINALLY), and the pretty AoE CC..... It's all so shiny... So beautiful.... I think I want to marry my windwalker now. If any of the blues EVER read this I just want to personally thank you and the the rest of the staff for making my monk's fun factor hit an 9.9 on the richter scale (It was already REALLY fun, but now I actually feel ALOT more PvP competitive).

My question would be if mastery increases the damage of tiger's eye brew, and TeB is already getting buffed, how much burst are WWs going to be pumping out? With the current 20% + trink I'm hitting 70-140k RSKs. So according to this, if I reading correctly, BEFORE mastery plays an effect: 2.6% per brew = 26% damage usable 2 times, and 1 point of mastery = 2% more damage (2.6% + 2.0% * 10 = 46%). Now let's see what 10% mastery would do assuming that 1% mastery = .2% (2.6% + 4% = 6.6% * 10 = 66%)... Yeah... that burst makes me happy. [Note: I could be wrong with these equations, and we don't know if 1% mastery = 2%, or has a scaling of initial 2% and 0.2% per 1% after. Just a guess]

Earth, Wind, and Fire seems like too much damage though.... If it's doing my damage when I'm bursting with a 20% damage reduction, that's still 54k-116k RSKs PER extra monk. That's a full one-shot, essentially. I still think it'll be a cool talent to have. EWaF coupled with TeB + Use trink + Xuen will make our burst exponentially better.

[Uko]

Someone in the other thread said most likely for storm earth fire to go live it would have to have a restriction like your clones cant attack the same target as you so you cant gib people like you suggested aherooffools.

[Ujio]

Someone in the other thread said most likely for storm earth fire to go live it would have to have a restriction like your clones cant attack the same target as you so you cant gib people like you suggested aherooffools.

~Hypothetically if this does get confirmed
I agree that it can't be possible to have it stack up on one target. I think the best way they could keep it balanced mechanically(if they haven't made it like this already) would be to have the target that you activate it on debuffed to take reduced damage from your own char by a certain %.

[Terahertz]

While I agree WW monks needed buffs (got one myself at 90) Nimble Brew is yet again one of blizzards way to screw up something and make something OP. I'm curious to how strong WW burst is gonna be with 2x TB after eachother and having a second Trinket with no cost at all. I hope it at least shares a small ICD with the general PVP trinket, or costs some Chi. Also the 60% reduced CC effect for 6 seconds after use is also really stupid. It's basically what Avatar and Bestial Wrath were except it removes everything and grants a huge DR-like effect after it's used. Deadly Reach baseline was necessary, but I'm curious to how it's going to be as an 8 sec CC on a 15 sec CD is pretty strong when used in the right hands (skilled players who manage to get behind someone).

All in all a very nice patch for WW monks, besides Nimble Brew which is going to be a QQ topic for arena. At least make it cost something, like chi OR energy (50 energy?) and remove the 60% diminished effect on further CC/snares etc. Or reduce it to 3 seconds duration.

[Ujio]

added tier set up top <3

[Pandragon]

For the love of Chen I hope these new changes will make it so monks arent like the plague when it comes to bgs. "Awesome youre 2k rated DPS, k I'll inv you to my group" -invites- "oh youre a monk?" -kicks-.

[Aherooffools]

While I agree WW monks needed buffs (got one myself at 90) Nimble Brew is yet again one of blizzards way to screw up something and make something OP. I'm curious to how strong WW burst is gonna be with 2x TB after eachother and having a second Trinket with no cost at all. I hope it at least shares a small ICD with the general PVP trinket, or costs some Chi. Also the 60% reduced CC effect for 6 seconds after use is also really stupid. It's basically what Avatar and Bestial Wrath were except it removes everything and grants a huge DR-like effect after it's used. Deadly Reach baseline was necessary, but I'm curious to how it's going to be as an 8 sec CC on a 15 sec CD is pretty strong when used in the right hands (skilled players who manage to get behind someone).

All in all a very nice patch for WW monks, besides Nimble Brew which is going to be a QQ topic for arena. At least make it cost something, like chi OR energy (50 energy?) and remove the 60% diminished effect on further CC/snares etc. Or reduce it to 3 seconds duration.

I agree with this that it does need to be costly, but having it share an ICD with trink is the whole reason Monks are so easily trained. They need some kind of CC breaker besides trink. I completely agree about the 60% DR being 3 secs rather than 6; 6 seconds of "Lol! you can't really fear/root/snare me" isn't going to fix anything, but having some DR is nice. Especially if it's on a 1 min CD, or even a 1.5 min CD, at least it's some kind of cc breaker.

I get that monks can break snares with roll/TL/FSK, and TL breaks 1 root every 30 secs, but I still find that monks are easily rooted and slowed. I just make them pop TL/roll/FSK and slow/snare them into a full burst cycle that they can't get away from. So the DR for that will help with the training since monks were really meant to be more mobile than they currently are. They're like the lesser druid, if you will, haha.

Berserker rage still breaks fear/sleep everytime it's popped along with avatar, bestial wrath does the same, and can be reset with readiness, Mages can block/blink/altertime, Druids are almost completely immune to poly (Exception: caster form), snare, and rooting (non-feral/guardian), Shamans have totems for root/snare/fear/sleep/charm and grounding to stop a casted cc, rogues have cloak/vanish/root/snare breakers, Priests have geist/fade/disperse/fearward, Dks have fear/sleep/charm/aoe cc breakers, Pallys have root/snare/everything (Bubble) breakers, locks have second trink/Interrupt/silence/magic cc breakers.

Monks have... snare breaker, and 1 root breaker. Unless you're Mistweaver and get dematerialize/ stun cast life cocoon (If it's up), you're going to be locked in every cc until they finally DR to immunity. Relying on my hopefully well-timed trink isn't fun.

[Pandragon]

While I agree WW monks needed buffs (got one myself at 90) Nimble Brew is yet again one of blizzards way to screw up something and make something OP. I'm curious to how strong WW burst is gonna be with 2x TB after eachother and having a second Trinket with no cost at all. I hope it at least shares a small ICD with the general PVP trinket, or costs some Chi. Also the 60% reduced CC effect for 6 seconds after use is also really stupid. It's basically what Avatar and Bestial Wrath were except it removes everything and grants a huge DR-like effect after it's used. Deadly Reach baseline was necessary, but I'm curious to how it's going to be as an 8 sec CC on a 15 sec CD is pretty strong when used in the right hands (skilled players who manage to get behind someone).

All in all a very nice patch for WW monks, besides Nimble Brew which is going to be a QQ topic for arena. At least make it cost something, like chi OR energy (50 energy?) and remove the 60% diminished effect on further CC/snares etc. Or reduce it to 3 seconds duration.

Curious how strong WW burst will be...hmm..what burst? Even with that change there is no burst. It's still a constant stream of damage, but now it's more reliable. Xuen has always been our form of burst. Monks are more about sustained damaged instead of "zomg pop this and do 500k with 1 attack"

Yeah youre right. Youre already QQing about Nimble Brew. It kicks the effects then reduces their effectiveness for 6 seconds. It doesn't make us immune to them for 6 secs like some abilities have an immunity. You can still re-apply the cc on the monk it just won't last as long.

Example:

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=18499 Breaks Fear, Sap, and Incapacitate abilities, and then immunes the warrior to them.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=31224 Removes all Magic Effects then grants immunity to all magic effects for 5 secs. This includes Fear, Magic based Stuns and Snares.

[Totaltotemic]

Example:

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=18499 Breaks Fear, Sap, and Incapacitate abilities, and then immunes the warrior to them.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=31224 Removes all Magic Effects then grants immunity to all magic effects for 5 secs. This includes Fear, Magic based Stuns and Snares.

Add Lichborne and Pillar of Frost to that list for more CC immunities for DKs.

Bubble for Ret Pallies.

Really, a melee having a CC break or even full CC immunity cooldown is nothing new, and certainly doesn't automatically cross into OP territory.

[Pandragon]

Add Lichborne and Pillar of Frost to that list for more CC immunities for DKs.

Bubble for Ret Pallies.

Really, a melee having a CC break or even full CC immunity cooldown is nothing new, and certainly doesn't automatically cross into OP territory.

I didnt feel like adding them all. lol

All these new changes are a good step in fixing WWs biggest weakness. CC chains.

[Ujio]

SEF confirmed via patchnotes now - updated OP to show the current form it's in.

[Haven]

Oh. My. God. BOOM SHAKALAKAAAAA!!! I'm getting drunk tonight! Tis' a great patch for monks, folks, a greatest one! Finelly, that subtle feeling of not having quite the punch, is totally gone. It's like sipping wine after years of being forced to drink bad beer. AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!!

[Shadowbane]

I was kinda miffed at the +CD to the healing spell talents.. but now that I look at it, these are some pretty significant buffs.

[Jaese]

Very excited for these changes. Already love my Monk, going to love it even more.

Even with the CD changes, the level 30 talents all look really attractive with their healing/damage buffs (100% for each on Chi Wave, for example) and Chi cost cuts.