[5.4] Bottled Fury: A Windwalker PvE Guide

[Serendepityz]

Actually have to agree with you here; we are very valuable for any AE or cleave fight, and when played properly, we can also produce very strong numbers for single-target fights.

Yup, killed Malkorok tonight in pure single target I ended up 4th behind 1 rogue and 2 warlocks finishing at 310.4k

[Totaltotemic]

I think the problem is just that the vast number of Windwalkers are sadly incompetent, and I really wish that was an overstatement. Seriously, look at the DPS rankings for 25 man Protectors with proper sorting like All Parses. What is wrong with the people dragging the DPS below Rogues and Warriors on this fight? You spec RJW, press SEF on 2 targets, and go to town and get an easy 250k+ for virtually no effort. Then we look at single target fights like Iron Juggernaut and see that on average people are doing the same DPS as Fury Warriors and Ret Paladins, when they should be slightly above those classes. Take a look at Dark Shaman, another SEF cheese fight in which WW is grossly OP, people doing less DPS than Arms Warriors.

Sadly this is what the Monk community is made of, this is the bulk of the testing, the numbers Blizzard is seeing the community put out. Windwalker is legitimately overpowered on any fight with sustained AoE or cleave potential, and still serviceable (if you're not rocking lucky weapon upgrades in the 2nd week of the tier, otherwise very strong) on single target only fights. Yet, we still see people talking about how RJW isn't useful, or how they want to use Power Strikes, or confusion over concepts other classes have known for years like cooldown stacking and using defensive cooldowns to maintain higher damage uptime (looking at people not using Touch of Karma/Diffuse Magic on Garrosh to completely ignore Whirls), and this is on a third party forum which is much more likely to have a more competent player than a random encounter in-game.

Part of it is new class syndrome, part is a lack of outside resources (Simcraft broken for all of T15, no popular WW blogs/websites, this being the only forum that any real theorycrafting happens on outside of the limited EJ community), but there's going to remain a huge noise-to-signal ratio at least until the next expansion, so dealing with people not knowing what WW is capable of is going to be an on-going problem for the foreseeable future.

Edit: Re-reading that seemed a bit harsh so I'll clarify something. Monk is probably the single hardest class to play at an optimal level for all 3 specs, and that does a lot to add to the seemingly large pool of clueless Monks. Concepts like TEB (and when to use it), stat juggling for Shuffle uptime while also using the most complex mitigation mechanic of any tank, and Mistweaver's entire suite of spells that read like a foreign language upon first examination do a lot to muddle the picture for the few people enthusiastic enough about Monks to level from 1 to 90 and then go into raiding, especially with fewer resources to turn to than everyone else. I'm not surprised that the section of the Monk population that knows what they're doing is small, but it does still concern me that we get threads like "why is this WW's DPS low?" where the TP uptime is less than 90%, ditto for BrM and MW threads.

[Deleted]

So, the guys who use RJW on protectors, do your guild tank rook close to the other 2? As i have opted out for xuen as RJW would only hit 2 targets max for the way our guild does it.

Also on Spoils i use Xuen as seems we open the box a bit slow or something as it seems there is only few mobs up most of the time.

Actually i havent used RJW much at all. on Sha of pride it feels more like padding as the adds go down fast enough anyway. Same on Garrosh and after first phase not so much use of it. On Gala i am in the Towers group so i have opted for xuen on there too.

Maybe things change when we start heroics on Wed.

[Callypso]

I think the problem is just that the vast number of Windwalkers are sadly incompetent, and I really wish that was an overstatement. Seriously, look at the DPS rankings for 25 man Protectors with proper sorting like All Parses. What is wrong with the people dragging the DPS below Rogues and Warriors on this fight?

They are in a guild that tanks Rook away from the rest?

Like ummpa above me, I got better results speccing Xu'en for this simply becauses most of the time my RJW wasn't hitting 3 targets and thus a DPS -LOSS-. Similar situations even occured on Spoils, although I still consider RJW to be the stronger option here. SEF is still very strong there, but it's not as easy on the number trolling as with 3 mobs + RJW spam.

Don't start calling all WW's shit just because you didn't take the time to consider there's more than 1 way to do some bosses. Moreover, at this stage in the ranking it very much depends on who's getting gear and who isn't. For example, in our first normal clear we didn't have a single agi 1h drop.... (and that's on 25m), gl ranking properly with that shit RNG.

[Totaltotemic]

They are in a guild that tanks Rook away from the rest?

Like ummpa above me, I got better results speccing Xu'en for this simply becauses most of the time my RJW wasn't hitting 3 targets and thus a DPS -LOSS-. Similar situations even occured on Spoils, although I still consider RJW to be the stronger option here. SEF is still very strong there, but it's not as easy on the number trolling as with 3 mobs + RJW spam.

This is actually exactly what I'm talking about. How do you know that you get better results speccing Xuen? Xuen is actually a very, very small amount of damage, only 6-10% depending on amount of cleave, less so if it's an SEF heavy fight. No one stops to think that RJW on 2 targets with SEF on the other is actually way, way more DPS than the little bit Xuen gives you, despite not giving chi (consider that 70% + 70% RJW damage on 2 targets is 280%, or almost what RJW does on 3 targets by yourself). There's still some weird Xuen worship going on as if it's 15-20% of damage when at best it's only 10%, you really don't lose a whole lot from not having it.

Windwalker is a very weird spec, what you'd think at first glance is the best way to do things is actually probably not, like FoF on cooldown or that using TEB whenever you want should be okay. The problem is that a lot of people simply haven't caught onto that and still do the obvious thing instead of the subtle back door approach that can do 20% or more DPS than what they were doing before.

[Deleted]

So, the guys who use RJW on protectors, do your guild tank rook close to the other 2? As i have opted out for xuen as RJW would only hit 2 targets max for the way our guild does it.

Also on Spoils i use Xuen as seems we open the box a bit slow or something as it seems there is only few mobs up most of the time.

Actually i havent used RJW much at all. on Sha of pride it feels more like padding as the adds go down fast enough anyway. Same on Garrosh and after first phase not so much use of it. On Gala i am in the Towers group so i have opted for xuen on there too.

Pretty much this. We too tank Rook away, so RJW only hits 2 targets. RJW and Xuen shouldn't yield in that much of a difference in that case (RJW was a little ahead in my PTR testing), but it will be much lower than RJW on three targets for the majority of the fight. Still, that WW is on average lower than rogues or bms on this fight seems a bit strange.
The same holds true for the shamans. You can just offtank one shaman with two tanks / a healer, and just deal with the abilities of the other shaman. Completely without SEF (except to nuke the dogs in the beginning), you're missing that edge over other classes which are strong in single target damage (e.g. rogue). And you will do a lot less damage than other monks, which can use SEF the whole fight because of a different tactic.

And I also don't think that the monk is that much harder to play than other classes. The class plays very differently compared to other classes. That can lead to many players, coming from other classes, not feeling very "safe" in what to do. I had to make that experience when I changed my second spec to MW over the weekend to do the proving grounds achievements. Never played MW, no idea what buttons to press, and completely different than all other healing specs (played everything except palading). So I went on ahead and wiped on bronze the first time.
But the addon is out there for almost a year, so those differences shouldn't really matter that much anymore in a raid, where people should be used to their specs.

[e] An addendum to RJW / Xuen for protectors: In terms of raw dps, RJW will be a really big upgrade for that fight, even if you tank Rook away. Some of that comes from the tank phase, when at least one of the adds usually is about where priest / rogue are. But also a lot of that damage is to the adds in the priest phase, which despawn when the ranged kill the big ones. So I'm talking about useful damage, not overall damage, in my comparison.

[Alhoon]

In response to Totaltotemic, I said this over and over at the start of the expansion and will echo myself here:

We've had two classes added over the course of all WoW expansions: DKs and Monks. Now I'll only focus on DPS, since this is about WWs. Everyone who was playing at the launch of WotLK remembers how grossly OP DKs were. Contrary to popular belief, this was a VERY GOOD thing although it skewed balance temporarily, since it caused major amount of minmaxers to roll that class. Over time, DK imbalance was more or less removed but the fact that they started OP gave them a head start they needed to build a competitive community around the class.

Now look at Monks. When they were introduced Blizzard explicitly said that they do NOT want to repeat the "mistake" they did when introducing DKs. Since Blizzard is obviously very bipolar, what they actually did was to make sure Monks suck so bad that even the worst trolls won't complain out of sympathy. Over time, that also has been diminished upto the point we are now. But how many minmaxers did we get into our ranks for being below average for the whole expansion? How many theorycrafting blogs revolve around WWs? We don't even have enough knowledge to fix SimC priority list for God's sake.

I still remember the overall mood around these forums a year ago, which was that WW is more of a "fun spec", many people said that "it doesn't matter we aren't that competitive, but we're fun to play". Even now wherever I look people are spouting "but I top meters in my raid, so we're the best spec gaiz". This toxic attitude is so deep rooted into Monk community that getting rid of it at this point would require some huge mistake by Blizzard, buffing us immensely to obscene levels to force few minmaxers to roll into our ranks.

But there's still hope, nothing is impossible. I mean just look at Assassination.

[saltdoc]

I think the problem is just that the vast number of Windwalkers are sadly incompetent, and I really wish that was an overstatement.

I know that you somewhat qualified this statement later but this is really not helpful in a thread that is supposed to be the windwalker guide. I do know that I have become one of those incompetent WW and need to reforge/regem before you look at my profile but that is really useless.

The start of the guide is great - I applaud Alysmera for updating it. I have found a lot of useful information in it. WW has become my main and I love it.

what I don't see, despite at least one other person asking specifically, is what those of you who truly are experts, are using for rotations. What rotations are you using for chi brew and what is different for Ascension? how are you running in and starting? how are you keeping track? I see a lot of weakauras help on the brewmaster side for keeping track of these, but not so much for WW. I may just be missing it, but it hasn't been as easy to find.

Some of us (me) need some of it spelled out a bit more if possible. Yes, I want and easier button if not an easy button for figuring this stuff out in a new tier. I was getting happy with my dps last tier, but honestly my rotation is waay off as my ilvl has increased like 15 already and i think my dps has gone down and I only had an lfr RoR before. I'm going to regem for agi, and agi/crit rather than haste but I don't think this is the major part of my problem.

--------------------------

oops did find some weakauras at the start of this thead as well. I stand corrected.

[Totaltotemic]

To clarify: I'm talking about relative to the populations of other classes, that Windwalker monks are typically behind other classes at the same level for what they need to know. If you're not at least looking at normal mode Garrosh at this point, I'm not really talking about you. I don't really expect people coming to this forum just to ask questions to know what's up. I meant the people giving input on this guide, answering questions on the forum, participating in the big theorycrafting threads on this forum. Typically only these people go into these guide threads and talk about things and read other posts. Once this thread passes to page 7, posters like Saltdoc here won't even see my post, so I'm not too worried about the impression it gives everyone. The people to which that post is addressed are probably familiar with my posting style by this point even if they don't like it.

On a non-meta note, there is virtually no difference between a single target rotation with Ascension or Chi Brew, Chi Brew is just another cooldown to deal with.

[Deleted]

Chi Brew is just fantastic when something proccs or burst is needed. Those 4 stacks TeB and Chi can really make a difference when you mastered an adaptive playstyle. This might take some time...
@ the Dps debate: The damage dealt highly depends on multiple factors. Like how good you know the encounter (maybe you spend more focus on avoiding death) or how much singletarget burst is demanded from the raidlead for the first kill. Additionally there is the room for personal failure (gear setup and rotational) and maybe a lack of gear.
Give it some time folks. Wait for the heroic logs and for some gear homogenization, then you might compare yourself. But one thing is true: On fights like Totaltotemic said and even singletarget you shouldn't suck.

[Deleted]

When reaching white crit cap, I assume we just go for mastery/haste?

[Ezyah]

When reaching white crit cap, I assume we just go for mastery/haste?

isnt the cap 60% how can u reach that atm

[Deleted]

Just look on your character sheet while fully raidbuffed + agi proccs. Now assume you have item level 565, .. seems pretty easy for me. And I'd go mastery at that point.

[Callypso]

There's still some weird Xuen worship going on as if it's 15-20% of damage when at best it's only 10%, you really don't lose a whole lot from not having it.

No, but you lose a whole lot from having RJW in a situation where keeping it up nets you exactly 0 chi in return. That is a LOT of energy that would normally go into a singletarget rotation (amplified by SEF) that RJW has to make up for before it even becomes a dps increase, while Xu'en just adds 'free' damage on top of what you're already doing.

Considering my experience is based on 2 attempts total (lol1shots) I admit that can't say much more than ' Xuen this week >>> RJW last week ', but either back up your argument that RJW > Xuen based on personal experience in a strategy like this (which from what i can tell, you don't have) or some math.

Now you just seem to be pretending you're the only one that knows how to play a windwalker, which quite frankly is a bit sad. It's not like the rest of us are going into fights going DURRRRRRRRRR.... XUENISSOPWETTY!!!! (Ok, I am, but not for reasons that have anything to do with dps)

[Deleted]

Let me ask this

Rushin jade wind is not channeled, so it is good single target damage. You can continue your rotation normally while RJW is going, so how cant this be good? Btw why fists of fury is not used?
Also, I would really like to play ww monk. But sadly melees in general are not wanted in raids, and those few spots go to warriors or rogue or dk.

[Bijohx]

Guys I need a advice about a trinket.
I have the LFR trinket from Sha of Pride, the ShadoPan trinket and Thunderforged Renataki, which is the best combo of trinket? ty

[Totaltotemic]

I'm not going to argue about things here anymore; it's a complete waste of time to figure things out one week only to have people that weren't around at the time come back 2-3 weeks later and force me to go back several weeks into the past on this forum to direct them to the theorycrafting that took place when changes happened that they couldn't be bothered to be a part of. I've set up a blog that I'll be posting on in the future, covering things like RJW, SEF, TEB, Ascension/CB, FoF, and anything else that comes to mind. There's a lot to do on this Tuesday so I won't get to start writing up posts until tomorrw, but at least I'll have a solid reference to link people back to instead of 1000+ forum posts scattered all over the place that disappear 3 days after they happen.

Until then, if you want more information on RJW on 2 target with SEF being greater than Xuen, see the discussion 3-4 weeks ago on this very forum about the RJW buff on PTR to 80% of SCK damage and how that affects single target viability, multitarget viability, and the conclusion that RJW damage is silly on even 2 targets (and some speculation about Paragons style fights in which the extra 2 targets are padding but the damage + chi from RJW might break even with Xuen for single target damage).

[Deleted]

Clone ability is single target dps increase, since you are doing 80% of normal damage, while clone does 80% of your normal damage, so you are doing 160% damage compared to normal damage.

I cannot see the issue here.

[Totaltotemic]

First post is up on TTT, topic is Diminishing Returns. Not strictly Monk-related but it's a starting point to launch off into other topics.

[Saltycracker]

When reaching white crit cap, I assume we just go for mastery/haste?

I'd still stick with crit. White damage is about 15% of our output, and crit is twice as good as mastery/haste at GCD cap. The value of crit doesnt diminish too much past the white crit cap. I'd still SimC it just to check.