Windwalker - RJW or Xuen? Haste cap?

[Girthmonster]

Hey all,

So I recently picked up my WW again, he's about ilvl 540. I was wondering, has RJW really become the best single target damage talent over Xuen? If so, it must be used on CD correct? I see a lot of WW's using it on every fight. Any help here? What fights are people using what talents on? I figured Galakras would be the only viable fight for RJW.

Also, I know haste is subjective, but is there a number I should be aiming for? I've been gunning for 10k but I'm not sure really.

Quick Edit: I just looked at some of the top Warcraft Logs parses and these dudes are just BLASTING haste. I mean anywhere from 13-16k. Is this the way I should be going? If so, should I be prioritising haste over agi? Or should I still be gemming agi/haste in yellows and pure agi in reds? AMR has me gemming pure haste in yellow sockets and haste/hit in blues. I don't thing haste has a 2 to 1 value over agi so I think AMR might be wrong on this one?

Would someone mind giving me some decent stat weights to put into AMR?

Thanks for the help!

[Totaltotemic]

You should probably check out the guide at the top of this forum for information on stats, it's all there.

No, RJW is not a single target DPS increase, it's just the best AoE ability in the game.

[Girthmonster]

Sorry, I guess cap was the wrong word to use. I am just curious as to why these dudes are blasting to 13-16k haste? I thought 9k provided enough energy regen?

[Totaltotemic]

Haste
Haste increases attack speed and energy generation. At level 90, ~425 haste is needed to increase your haste by 1%.

How Much Haste Should I Have?
This common question is fairly tricky to answer.

Long story short:

Enough so that you aren't energy capping, but you're still using Energizing Brew.

So what's the long story?

First, look at your trinkets. Which trinkets are you using? Are either of them Assurance of Consequence?

If yes, you probably only need around 8-9K haste, depending on your lag. Wow, that's not very much! However, that's because this trinket means that you are going to be using more Fists of Fury and more Energizing Brew. If you can't do that (and most people can't, don't feel bad), then you should probably swap to a different trinket.

If not, then you want as much haste as you can get your greedy little hands on. Many monks are going as high as 13k-15k haste. The reason isn't even just energy regen, but also because our RPPM cloak, meta, and trinkets all scale with haste. So, more haste = good! (Plus, it also lowers the channel time of Fists of Fury).

That's from the guide, but it's all accurate. You're probably thinking of the 9350 number that was all the rage for people without RoRO and using Ascension back in T15 that a lot of guide have not bothered to update from (most notably Ask Mr Robot and Noxxic). These days Ascension is a DPS loss compared to Chi Brew which creates a much higher haste cap.

[Girthmonster]

No shit. Thanks a ton. I'll grab Chi Brew. Any other tips?

[Babylonius]

Read the guide. Total is just quoting the guide at the top of this thread, so it would be much faster if you looked there first.

[bounstar]

Hey all,

So I recently picked up my WW again, he's about ilvl 540. I was wondering, has RJW really become the best single target damage talent over Xuen? If so, it must be used on CD correct? I see a lot of WW's using it on every fight. Any help here? What fights are people using what talents on? I figured Galakras would be the only viable fight for RJW.

Anything that remotely resembles AoE is a good RJW fight. There are some scenarios where it's not really effective DPS, but this tier has been over for months.

Would someone mind giving me some decent stat weights to put into AMR?

The default AMR stat weights are fine if you change the haste "cap" to 12-13k and if you bump up agi higher than 2x of the next secondary stat. (6 is a clean number)

[Hottie4Hire]

It really depends on the player. People quote those guides and stat priorities as gospel but they don't work for me as well. You might want to test yourself and see what you like. I have 10k haste, 14k crit, and 10k mastery (from memory - it's something like that) and I do very, very well. The guide would tell you that you should have like 4k mastery.

Or really, it could just be that the stats are so close in value that it makes no difference. Playing correctly is clearly the optimal thing to do.

I rarely use RJW (Galakras and Spoils only). Xuen is very, very good. I've seen people try to use it for single target but it's not worth it. Never do that.

[Totaltotemic]

It really depends on the player. People quote those guides and stat priorities as gospel but they don't work for me as well. You might want to test yourself and see what you like. I have 10k haste, 14k crit, and 10k mastery (from memory - it's something like that) and I do very, very well. The guide would tell you that you should have like 4k mastery.

Mastery is a mathematically worse stat than Crit. It doesn't really matter what you feel is right, math is what dictates what is and is not a DPS increase. You may like using those stats, but that's less DPS than a correct stat priority. Most of us that hang around this forum don't just quote guides, we've all been a part of contributing to them and doing the math ourselves. There's no room for opinion here, we're talking about mathematical facts.

It's not that you're wrong for playing that way, doing whatever you want regardless of optimal DPS is certainly a valid way to play. It's just generally accepted that when people come to a forum for advice they're looking for what is optimal, not what other people think feels right. There's an implied "...or just ignore all of that and do what you want if doing the most DPS possible isn't your goal" at the end of every post, but it would get pretty tiring to actually end every post that way.

[Volibear]

Total is right. There's an "optimal stat priority" for a reason, and that's because it's optimal.

[Hottie4Hire]

And I'm saying that, based on my data (anecdotal, sure, but it's not like there's any real statistics to back up the other side either), the math is being done incorrectly. There's simply no way that if mastery is so bad that it should be avoided like a plague that me, having considerably more mastery than anyone else, am not only competitive but I actually outdps nearly every monk in the game (if log rankings are anything to go by).

Or, maybe, the math is just not accurately accounting for movement and its affect on haste.

Or maybe it's something else. In any event, it's not as accurate as you say.

Either way, it's not like I'm actively trying to get mastery or anything (I share some pieces with tanking). Rather, I'm saying that people are worrying far too much about their optimal stats when they should be worrying about the things that actually matter. It seems very obvious that what stats you're using basically does not matter as long as it's remotely close to what those guides are saying.

[bounstar]

am not only competitive but I actually outdps nearly every monk in the game (if log rankings are anything to go by).

Big claims. You got any recent logs I can look at?

[Totaltotemic]

And I'm saying that, based on my data (anecdotal, sure, but it's not like there's any real statistics to back up the other side either), the math is being done incorrectly. There's simply no way that if mastery is so bad that it should be avoided like a plague that me, having considerably more mastery than anyone else, am not only competitive but I actually outdps nearly every monk in the game (if log rankings are anything to go by).

Or, maybe, the math is just not accurately accounting for movement and its affect on haste.

Or maybe it's something else. In any event, it's not as accurate as you say.

Either way, it's not like I'm actively trying to get mastery or anything (I share some pieces with tanking). Rather, I'm saying that people are worrying far too much about their optimal stats when they should be worrying about the things that actually matter. It seems very obvious that what stats you're using basically does not matter as long as it's remotely close to what those guides are saying.

That has no bearing on your absolute DPS. Just because you do more DPS than other people doesn't mean you couldn't do 2-3% more with a proper stat priority.

[mjolnrik]

Cant say mastery is too bad tho. Surely by having more mastery you are giving yourself a higher bursts at the start of the fight aswell as more frequent bursts. When I was using my brewmaster gear which at the time was high mastery due to how I liked to tank, I could consistently get 9 or 10 stacks of teb in the first 10seconds of the fight whilst with a crit build I would usually end up with 5 or 6.
I know crit mathematically is more dps than mastery but say for instance you need to burst something down in a fight quickly like maybe the conveyor belt on siegecrafter, wouldnt having more frequent high bursts be better? Same reason why I generally like a higher mastery build in arena, can get out a higher burst at the start and keep the pressure up by constantly having 10stacks of teb

[Babylonius]

Cant say mastery is too bad tho. Surely by having more mastery you are giving yourself a higher bursts at the start of the fight aswell as more frequent bursts. When I was using my brewmaster gear which at the time was high mastery due to how I liked to tank, I could consistently get 9 or 10 stacks of teb in the first 10seconds of the fight whilst with a crit build I would usually end up with 5 or 6.
I know crit mathematically is more dps than mastery but say for instance you need to burst something down in a fight quickly like maybe the conveyor belt on siegecrafter, wouldnt having more frequent high bursts be better? Same reason why I generally like a higher mastery build in arena, can get out a higher burst at the start and keep the pressure up by constantly having 10stacks of teb

Mastery isn't bad, no one should be saying that. However its not as good as the other stats.

There really aren't any situations this tier, outside of Arena, that a WW should be called upon to "burst". Siegecrafter belts come close, but you should have nearly 10 stacks for every time you go up with Chi Brew, I know I occasionally have to skip using TEB on one belt phase per fight if I'm not getting the luck I need or things are dying too fast for me to build up stacks. Mastery isn't a burst stat, it serves to take the burst and smooth it into happening more often so that its not called burst anymore. The goal of mastery is to have 100% TEB uptime, the closer you get to that, the less it can be called burst.

[Callimonk]

@ Mastery vs. Crit people who are favoring mastery - please back up your claims with logs.

And, frankly, like Babylonious says - even with just having mastery passively on gear, I almost always have a rolling amount of TeB stacks. If you're at 100% TeB all the time, you're probably lacking in other areas. Besides, the best way to get those stacks is with haste, as logs + spreadsheets + sims + math has proven.

[Jocias]

And I'm saying that, based on my data (anecdotal, sure, but it's not like there's any real statistics to back up the other side either), the math is being done incorrectly. There's simply no way that if mastery is so bad that it should be avoided like a plague that me, having considerably more mastery than anyone else, am not only competitive but I actually outdps nearly every monk in the game (if log rankings are anything to go by).

The stat priorities that we keep talking about have been independently verified by logs, sims, spreadsheets, and just plain math. You're welcome to believe what you want, but we KNOW that mastery is the worst secondary stat. WoW is as much a game as it is a giant math problem. If you can figure out the math, you can figure out how to best play the game. We've pretty much figured out the math for WW monks. Mastery is the worst secondary stat. It's worse than crit and worse than haste. That's not to say having more than 4k-5k mastery will tank your DPS, but point-for-point, haste and crit will yield more damage in most circumstances. Mastery is, empirically, the worst secondary in the game for WW monks by a fair margin.

[Volibear]

For a start, logs don't mean anything, especially this far into a tier. Most competitive players are at basically a gear cap, and logs are just e-peen stroking whenever players get told they're allowed to pad on a fight.
Second, you can't beat the fact that crit and haste are better than mastery for WW currently, just because they give more bonuses than a chance on RNG to get TeB uptime a little higher.

[Dirtdogs]

For a start, logs don't mean anything, especially this far into a tier. Most competitive players are at basically a gear cap, and logs are just e-peen stroking whenever players get told they're allowed to pad on a fight.
Second, you can't beat the fact that crit and haste are better than mastery for WW currently, just because they give more bonuses than a chance on RNG to get TeB uptime a little higher.

If you could inform us all how exactly we can be padding on a fight like Iron Juggernaut that would be great. IJ is the fight looked at by most Monks because it has no movement for most strats (100% time on target) and there is no adds to be AoEd down.

Yes Tricks can skew longs along with amazing RNG from trinkets but to come to the forum and debate that Mastery is "better because every Windwalker is doing the math wrong on Haste and Crit" is completely ridiculous. Its obvious that Crit and Haste are better than mastery and you have absolutely zero evidence to support your wild claims about the magical weight of having excess mastery.

[Hottie4Hire]

That has no bearing on your absolute DPS. Just because you do more DPS than other people doesn't mean you couldn't do 2-3% more with a proper stat priority.

I'm well aware of that. I'm not saying your stat priority is wrong. I'm saying that somewhere along the line someone did not account for something properly and it made the stats farther apart than they actually are. That, or people really exaggerate how bad mastery is. My point in all this is that clearly it's not as bad as people say. That, instead of focusing on stats, people should be putting the majority of their effort into their priorities - what abilities they're using then. And that's what you should be telling them. Because clearly people are fucking it up.

- - - Updated - - -

Big claims. You got any recent logs I can look at?

I'll try to get you an Iron Juggernaut one this week where I stay on the boss (I usually tank it and we do the strat where we sit at the back). Barring that, I think I'm ranked like 6 on Thok or something like that on 10 man. You can look at that.