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  1. #1

    Windwalkers - State of DPS 5.4

    The stuff below is meant as a basic 'Frequently Asked Questions' for Windwalkers in 5.4. Since the current Windwalker thread is starting to get outdated and Mihir quit / is no longer updating the guide that is in there, this is an attempt to summarize all the solid discussion that has been going on in this thread.

    If you find anything that's incorrect or incomplete, let me know.


    - - - Updated - - -

    What are the major changes to Windwalkers in 5.4?
    - First and foremost: New mastery! The new mastery gives you a % chance to gain an additional stack of Tiger Eye Brew (TEB) every time you gain a stack the normal way. The old mastery increased the damage multiplier from TEB on activation, this multiplier is now a fixed 6% / stack. No more 200%+ damage increases with Rune of Re-origination trinket, which is now rather useless for us.

    - Rushing Jade Wind (RJW) is redesigned, and now replaces Spinning Crane Kick when specced into it. It is now a 'whirlwind' aura around you that does AoE damage to everything in 8 yards radius that does not require channeling. This means you can activate RJW and continue your singletarget rotation for a few seconds (until you need to cast RJW again).

    - Xuen now has a pet bar (no more randomly attacking targets 5 miles away) and does slightly more damage.

    - Storm, Earth and Fire was buffed, as a result this ability is now definitly worth using in situations where there are multiple targets.

    - Stat priority for 5.4?
    It seems it will be: hit/exp cap > haste cap > agi > haste => mastery > crit. Sofar it seems that builds with high haste and mastery outperform crit-based builds, but a lot of testing is still done on this subject.

    - Will Rune of Re-Origination still be viable for the start of 5.4?
    NO. Get another trinket!!!! even the 522 VP (now JP) trinket is likely to give you better performance, especialy if you gear mostly for haste as mentioned in the stat priority above. If for some reason you really are stuck with the Rune, make sure it either procs mastery or crit.

    Best pre-5.4 options: Juju + Renetaki's.

    - tier 16 BiS list based on current PTR?
    t.b.d.

    - Value of the new T16 bonuses?
    2 piece should come out of the gates as a 2-3% dps increase. Nothing too fancy but it is 'free' damage I suppose. Warforged non-set items might give you better results.

    4 piece is a lot harder to estimate but seems very underwhelming. Again, this setbonus give you a free bonus in the form of some minor chi-gains, but don't go out of your way to get the 4 pieces if there are others in your guild that will benefit more.

    - new RJW vs new Xuen?
    You trade SCK for the new RJW if you spec it, so no more spinning like mad man if you do. Since the base damage is a lot lower than SCK the main reason to use this would be the fact that you get to do other stuff while RJW is up as it’s not channelled but just a self buff. The question then becomes:
    RJW + free gcd’s for other stuf vs. SCK spam / Xuen?

    You can use this rule of thumb:
    "AOE" is required for less than 10 seconds at a time ---> SCK
    3 or more targets stay up longer than 10 seconds ---> RJW

    This 10 second rule is just a general guideline, basically RJW is not worth it if stuff dies very fast. In those cases you're better off just frontloading some damage with SCK.
    Last edited by Callypso; 2013-09-04 at 07:16 AM.

  2. #2
    There's not a lot of discussion because most of the (very simple) changes were handled a while ago, the only thing that's been in flux has been RJW.

    New mastery is just as garbage (dps wise) as the original Combo Breaker was, makes the stat priority pretty easy to figure out.

    Of course Roro is going to be useless, with no mechanic to abuse and all 3 stats persistently doing something it doesn't even come close to any of the current tier Agi trinkets, that's why no other spec uses it except Ferals and BrMs.

    T16 bonuses are alright, 2 piece is a meh DPS increase but the 4 piece is irritating because it yet again lowers the haste cap, so anything higher than around 8k haste will be practically unusable, and it's annoying because it does some wierd rounding (4 stacks reduces by 1, 5 and 6 stacks still only reduces by 1, 7 reduces by 2, 8-10 all only reduce by 2, it does not roll the count like TEB generation does) which devalues the set bonus a bit, making ours only 2-3% while 4 piece bonuses are typically in the neighborhood of 5% increases, hooray. The TL;DR is just like T14, take tier if you can get it but if you can get a few more ilvls out of dumping the bonuses you can go ahead. BiS will likely include 2 piece but not 4 piece.

    RJW is still garbage for single target damage because at best it generates 1 chi, at worst none, which slows TEB stacks and BoK usage. It will be better for AoE heavy fights than the current RJW, but only barely. Keep in mind that we do not have another AoE option if you take SCK away, so any prolonged AoE (longer than 6 seconds or so) starts to actually decrease the total AoE damage done by RJW to below SCK levels. It's really only good for things like Ball Lightning where you really wish you could RSK them for the buff but don't have time between all the SCK spam. It will likely be ignored in favor of Xuen like usual.

  3. #3
    I agree with you Toteltomic in that there's not really anything new I posted here, but since most of that discussion is spread across several threads/dozens of posts I figured i'd compile it in one overview for everyone's convenience.

    I'll update the OP later on to make it a bit more of an overview for 5.4 for the windwalkers among us who don't follow every bit of dicussion.

    However:
    Quote Originally Posted by Totaltotemic View Post
    New mastery is just as garbage (dps wise) as the original Combo Breaker was, makes the stat priority pretty easy to figure out.
    What (math/sims/sheet) are you basing this on? While this was my initial thinking as well, when taking into consideration that:

    - The increase of the 'proc' chance on the mastery is pretty high compared to the amount of mastery rating required
    - The new 4P bonus increases the value of TEB stack generation (more TEB = more 'free' BoK/RSK).
    - Since TEB's damage multiplier is now fixed, TEB's value (and therefore mastery) still scales with your gear.

    I can't write off mastery as a potential candidate for stacking right from the bat. To be clear: You might be right, i'm just wondering what you're basing this on as I haven't seen numbers on the subject myself.

  4. #4
    Deleted
    It's a bit early for discussion, since the big numbers pass didn't hit the PTRs yet. And monk will get a buff to even out the new mastery / lack of RoRo. Depending on what will get buffed, the stat prio may change.
    That being said: The haste softcap will probably be a bit lower, since RoRo falls away, and especially when you have the 4p bonus. The new mastery, in its current implementation, seems to be quite bad: I think I have seen some math done in the big 5.4 thread here in the monk forum. But I haven't gone through the numbers myself, so don't take my word for it.
    Still this leaves two possibilities: caps > crit > mastery or caps > mastery > crit.

    To RJW: It looked awesome, but already got a huge nerf (from 100% of SCK dmg / sec to 60%). It's quite hard to compare it with Xuen when the numbers are still changing so drastically. Probably it will be balanced in the end for something like:
    Single target - Xuen
    Some short cleave phases - Xuen
    Constant cleave - RJW
    AE - Depends on many factors. Without really calculating it out it's very hard to tell. SCK does more DPS than RJW, so with many targets it's probably not worth it. For fewer targets, the gain from your single target styles / the bonus of RJW having a higher dmg / energy may outweigh the ae damage lost.

    Remains to be seen. As said, a real discussion makes more sense when the numbers are somewhere near where they should go.

  5. #5
    Deleted
    The old RJW was broken, it was too good. Immerseus, Sha of Pride, Galkaras, Nazgrim, Spoils, Garrosh are all good RJW fights; and we haven't even finished testing HC modes on PTR. No one except BrM could come close to us on AoE/Cleave. I'm looking forward to testing the new version of it and seeing how well it does, it's a nerf, but I don't think it's as big as some of you are making it out to be.

    Our single target is lacking, but without having the numbers adjusted on PTR yet I wouldn't worry about it; we will get compensated. We probably won't be that good on single target, which I don't mind considering how good we are on cleave and AoE; and the sheer number of fights which have cleave or AoE.

    As for the stat priorities will be something along the lines of haste 7-9k>crit>mastery. I've been playing around with the CDR trinket which I really like as you can get even less haste, maybe down around 6.5-7k. However that trinket is godly for Rogues/Ferals/BM Hunters and is only 'nice' for us rather than game breaking.

    We still have the whole no utility issue as well, but I think we have discussed that one to death.
    Last edited by mmoc3d907a70fd; 2013-08-09 at 03:46 PM.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by pattison View Post
    Our single target is lacking, but without having the numbers adjusted on PTR yet I wouldn't worry about it; we will get compensated. We probably won't be that good on single target, which I don't mind considering how good we are on cleave and AoE; and the sheer number of fights which have cleave or AoE..
    Single target DPS is pretty good especially with our 4pc and the 10stack TEB. You can get high uptime of TEB, especially with lucky mastery procs with the TEB-Chi feedback loop.

    TEB is pretty broken atm and I'm guessing it's going to change before they balance numbers.

    I'm seeing stats as being Haste to cap (~9.5k w/ 4pc T16) > Agi > Crit > Mastery. Our new mastery is definitely better than combo breaker, but because of how TEB is a little busted right now we generate way too many stacks as it is, so the marginal benefit of adding some mastery isnt very valuable. I'm basing this on my spreadsheet in my sig. Feel free to take a look.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Callypso View Post
    What (math/sims/sheet) are you basing this on? While this was my initial thinking as well, when taking into consideration that:

    - The increase of the 'proc' chance on the mastery is pretty high compared to the amount of mastery rating required
    - The new 4P bonus increases the value of TEB stack generation (more TEB = more 'free' BoK/RSK).
    - Since TEB's damage multiplier is now fixed, TEB's value (and therefore mastery) still scales with your gear.

    I can't write off mastery as a potential candidate for stacking right from the bat. To be clear: You might be right, i'm just wondering what you're basing this on as I haven't seen numbers on the subject myself.
    Like I said it's been quite a while since the week or so everyone spent crunching it, I can't look at the moment but there's probably that whole discussion still sitting on EJ as well as a couple people that keep WW spreadsheets updated.

    The logic behind what makes the numbers work out that way is pretty clear though:

    TEB already starts at a ~55% uptime with haste cap and 3k mastery raid buff. Because it starts that high, any generation increase puts the extra TEB beyond any and all chance of popping it with trinket procs, reduces the damage (from lack of crit) in burst phases where TEB is most useful in favor of using TEB when burst is not needed, and the mastery per proc chance is simply not high enough to compete with crit.


    Note: I haven't seen any numbers regarding the new t15 4p, so mastery may still be slightly better than crit with it, this is all under the assumption that we'll be losing 4p rather quickly in 5.4 with how much higher the SoO ilvls are.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Callypso View Post

    What (math/sims/sheet) are you basing this on? While this was my initial thinking as well, when taking into consideration that:

    - The increase of the 'proc' chance on the mastery is pretty high compared to the amount of mastery rating required
    - The new 4P bonus increases the value of TEB stack generation (more TEB = more 'free' BoK/RSK).
    - Since TEB's damage multiplier is now fixed, TEB's value (and therefore mastery) still scales with your gear.

    I can't write off mastery as a potential candidate for stacking right from the bat. To be clear: You might be right, i'm just wondering what you're basing this on as I haven't seen numbers on the subject myself.
    With barely 2K mastery, you will already have 80% uptime on TeB. That's the math that he's seeing. I did an update to our SimC module (you will need to pull the code to test it) in order for us to "see" what it will look like - pull in a profile without Rune, and you'll see that our uptime is already going to be very high without stacking mastery.

    Quote Originally Posted by Totaltotemic View Post
    Note: I haven't seen any numbers regarding the new t15 4p, so mastery may still be slightly better than crit with it, this is all under the assumption that we'll be losing 4p rather quickly in 5.4 with how much higher the SoO ilvls are.

    Correct.

  9. #9
    Rune with crit priorities isn't actually bad. I've been doing fairly well in ptr testing with it, much better than any of the new tier trinkets really.

  10. #10
    With the T16 4-piece we don't want any Haste on our gear because our softcap will be so low. Math below:

    Assuming we generate 20 stacks of TeB per minute.
    The T16 4-piece is worth 5 Chi per minute.
    5 Chi = 2.5 Jabs = 100 Energy

    100 Energy / 60 sec = 1.667 Energy / sec
    425 Haste = 0.1 Energy / sec

    1.667 Energy / sec = 7084 Haste rating

    With just the 4-piece we'll be Haste softcapped, so we'll want Crit + Mastery gear. Now we just need to figure out if 1 Agi > 2 Crit.
    Last edited by NeverStop; 2013-08-12 at 12:13 AM.

  11. #11
    Slight correction, Ascension isn't just 1.15 energy per second, the 15% is after haste so it's actually closer to 1.2 or 1.25 energy per secound depending on your haste

    Of course that's with Ascension as 11.5% when it's really 15%, so he final number is around 1.7 energy per second.
    Last edited by Totaltotemic; 2013-08-11 at 10:25 PM.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Totaltotemic View Post
    Slight correction, Ascension isn't just 1.15 energy per second, the 15% is after haste so it's actually closer to 1.2 or 1.25 energy per secound depending on your haste

    Of course that's with Ascension as 11.5% when it's really 15%, so he final number is around 1.7 energy per second.
    Whoops you're correct. Ascension still beats buffed Chi Brew.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by NeverStop View Post
    Whoops you're correct. Ascension still beats buffed Chi Brew.
    In total chi yes, but the TEB stacks could be very important for the start of a fight or something, we'll have to see how it plays out.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    - 300k "monkburst(lol)" compared to 1,6m dps burst of a firemage on a single target. everyone else is around 450-700k.
    - (singletarget) always at the end of the meters (just slightly, but hey)
    - aoe and cleave is "ok"
    - no point in taking a single melee to any of the new encounters (standing 5sec in a corner waiting to do dmg again, because you are afraid to die instantly, is not rly enjoyable or useful)

    Still waiting and hoping to be op for just one tier.
    I bet there will be no single target dps buffs.

    would like to see some ww ptr raidtest logs to compare and did someone test the legedary cloak proc?

  15. #15
    Did some PTR testing today with the guild and I was consistently in the top 3 on malk and Spoils. Really liking where we're at even before the numbers pass.

  16. #16
    Dreadlord Callimonk's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Runewrath View Post
    Did some PTR testing today with the guild and I was consistently in the top 3 on malk and Spoils. Really liking where we're at even before the numbers pass.
    This has been my experience as well. In my stream last night (Flex mode testing), I was consistently #7 or higher on our meters throughout the night (no legendary cloak). This is with incredibly imperfect play (chaining TeB, not being hit/expertise capped, etc).

    I don't think we are in a terrible spot when played correctly, but we are incredibly dependent upon our 2/4pcs. I do think our numbers could be bumped up a little bit.

  17. #17
    Deleted
    You guys do realize that there is a chance that our compensation for the rune is the SEF buff? I'm not saying that it's 100% like that, but it's possible.

    And the Number adjustments don't have to be positiv for us, maybe even nerf some more stuff? You can call me pessimist but after all those bad choices regarding monks i simply have lost my faith in the Monk developer

  18. #18
    Did some testing on the PTR, and WW DPS is really strong. Anectdoally, I was topping the meters, which may or may not mean anything since trinkets were a little buggy, and lots of people had hit/expertise scaling issues. I was finding times where I could chain TEB 10 stack for about 45 seconds with the new mastery and the 4pc. It's a little bananas.

    The 4pc is pretty strong, and all in it's about 6 extra Chi/Min and 2.5 TEB/min once you cycle the 4pc through the rotation cycle.

    Trinkets this tier are really great for switching out since they all pretty much have agi procs on them and dont require any reforging to swap out.

    I think we are in a good place and I'm looking forward to day 1 5.4 when I can shard my rune and snort the sha crystal dust.

  19. #19
    devs think SEF is a "CD" and that "WWers heal" enough to justify a spot in a progression 10 man guild.

    For those of us in H 10s, there really isn't anything left to discuss productively.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Moncoko View Post
    devs think SEF is a "CD" and that "WWers heal" enough to justify a spot in a progression 10 man guild.

    For those of us in H 10s, there really isn't anything left to discuss productively.
    Here is the full quote:

    For Windwalkers, we redesigned their Mastery (yet again) and buffed the Storm, Earth, and Fire ability so that the cleave aspect of the cooldown would feel really potent.
    I'm pretty sure it's just bad wordsmithing, but it sounds like SEF buff in conjunction to the mastery change is the cooldown he is talking about. You will see bigger numbers if you throw out SEFs before popping TEB.

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