Could monk talents be improved by improving tier cohesiveness?

[Musubi]

Knowing that "mechanical changes are done" some talents seem to more sense if they were moved around. Some talents don't seem to mesh on a conceptual level with others that share the same tier. Specifically T90 and T100 sets:

T90 modifies an existing move ie: SCK -> RJW and Roll -> CT ... how exactly does Xuen fit in there?

For T100:

Brm - seems targeted to improve mitigation
WW - appears to provide some form of burst window or dps concept
MW - One talent to make fistweaving less punishing (I guess that's PoMs idea), a lack luster directional stack CD, and a chi burner that from what I read is only any good at 4 chi (if at all since the fix)

Would it be conceptually sound to move ChiEx to the T30 row to replace Zen Sphere and return the chi cost to Chi Burst and Chi Wave? Maybe ChiEx is always 4 Chi, Burst would cost 3, and Wave 2? The tier could then be considered an "alternative chi use" tier or some-such. Also untie ChiEx from BoK.

Perhaps move HS for WW from T100 to replace Xuen in T90, and have it replace FoF? Have it do full damage to primary target and meteor the rest of the damage in a PBAoE... and bring back the damage immunity to replace the loss of the FoF stun?

Could move Xuen to T100 and remake into Invoke Celestial with a relevant effect/celestial, which has been suggested/requested numerous times.

As for new T90s for MW or BrM... I'm unsure. Maybe something that sacrifices your statue for improved abilities ala Warlock's "Grimoire of Sacrifice" or the Hunter's "Lone Wolf" talents.

Last thought would be Breath of the Serpent... maybe change it from a cone heal to instead have it so GotS spheres no longer can be picked up and instead do a pulsing AoE heal around the sphere in a small radius for their 30 seconds.

Some of these ideas may be horrid, I don't know. I just thought it would be fun to toss it out there and see what others think until "tuning" happens, because I'm fighting the idea of rerolling druid so I can continue raiding without feeling like a liability, wasted slot, or bench warmer.

[Totaltotemic]

Oh this is a fun topic, lots of good stuff in here. First off I'd like to illustrate how the talents are currently laid out:


L15 - Mobility

This is very straightforward for all three specs, Celerity is for more Rolls, Tiger's Lust is for more freedom of movement and control over movement, and Momentum is for marathon distance running.

L30 - Damage/Healing

The key factor that links all three spells is that they both do damage and healing simultaneously. Zen Sphere is both single target and AoE, Chi Wave is single target, and Chi Burst is AoE.

L45 - Resource Generation

Also self-evident, more resources. Power Strikes is passive and directly injects Chi, Ascension provides more Energy (which is more versatile than pure chi) and another Chi slot to accommodate faster generation, and Chi Brew provides controlled Chi as well as Brew/Tea.

L60 - Crowd Control

Ring of Peace is continual non-stun CC, Charging Ox Wave is a ranged stun, and Leg Sweep is a melee stun. Nothing to discuss here.

L75 - Survivability

Healing Elixirs provides healing often, Dampen Harm mitigates against all damage, and Diffuse Magic only mitigates magical damage, but more than Dampen does. This is also a pretty perfect tier.

L90 - AoE

The common factor of all three talents is that they all do AoE damage. RJW is sustained AoE, Xuen is long-duration long-cooldown AoE, and Chi Torpedo is burst AoE (theoretically at least), the fact that two of them modify and existing spell isn't actually very relevant.

L100 - Do Role Better

WW has damage increasing talents, BrM has damage reducing talents, and MW has healing increasing talents. Each has Chi Explosion for sustained betterness, Serenity/BotS for a 1.5 minute cooldown betterness, and Soul Dance/Pool of Mists/Hurricane Strike are specialized sustain for the first two and extremely short term burst for WW.


Now of course anyone that has actually played a Monk before knows that the L30, L45, L90, and L100 tiers all have their duds that don't do what they're actually supposed to. I think we can all agree that L15, L60, and L75 are more or less fine, I know I've personally used all three of those talents as all three specs before. That said, on with the analysis.


L30 - Damage/Healing

The biggest problem with this tier is, as OP pointed out, Zen Sphere. It's really just a fundamental design problem, the single target/AoE dichotomy is as old as time but when would you ever want to do a mix of single target and AoE, and delayed AoE at that? The most simple fix for the tier would be to reverse ZS's Detonate so it happens at the start rather than the end, and balance it around being a sustained AoE talent with a slight single target benefit. That really seems like the only way to make this tier work.

L45 - Resource Generation

It's biggest issue is having talents that are too similar. Chi Brew does not need to grant Chi, period. If it was rebalanced to 4 stacks (6 probably for BrM), then we'd have a nice distribution of an energy talent, a chi talent, and a Brew/Tea talent, and it would be much easier to balance and more interesting choices. The other major change is that, similar to MW's own Ascension value, BrM and WW cannot share Ascension values. WW takes 4.5 seconds to Jab and generate 2 chi, while BrM takes 3.64 seconds to generate only 1 chi. Those values are too far apart for Ascension to be properly balanced for both simultaneously. That's not a very difficult change, and it should probably happen sooner rather than later.

L90 - AoE

Yes, I know Xuen is normally a "single target" talent, but really that's only because it's free, so of course it's free damage. The reality though is that Xuen's damage is 75% AoE, but its duration is far too long to compete with RJW's gain on real AoE. It should have its duration cut to 20 or even 15 seconds for the same amount of damage, allowing that big burst of AoE when necessary.

At the same time, Chi Torpedo has historically just been purely terrible for damage. It needs to have its damage tuned to such a level that someone might consider bursting with it every 45 seconds (3 Celerity charges). The healing for BrM and WW is irrelevant, as is the damage for MW, there is already an entire talent tier devoted to doing that, Chi Torpedo doesn't need to be confused with that. Either Chi Torpedo should replace Zen Sphere, or it should be changed to not be terrible.

RJW is great, shine on you crazy diamond, one of the most fun AoE abilities in the game. Who honestly doesn't like being a giant tornado?

L100 Do [Damage] Better

This is specifically referring to the WW talents. What we have here is an extremely specific burst talent, a sustained damage increase/AoE ability, and a cooldown.

Hurricane Strike - The reason why it has to be its own ability and not just a buff to FoF is the 3 chi cost, it would simply be too bursty if that much damage could come out with only 3 chi total, whereas this way the FoF/HS combo is 6 chi. An alternative would be to steal an idea from Seraphim and make it be a super buffed FoF that costs 5 chi, but no longer cleaves and no longer stuns in exchange for doing ~150% more damage (a 50% increase in total damage per chi). I think it might be okay the way it is, but a way that forced it and FoF together for 5 chi would probably make more sense, it's very awkward that it costs 6 total.

Chi Explosion - Good idea on paper, but the numbers are way off to make sense. Realistically the 3x and 4x levels should probably be flipped, granting a charge of TEB is often much more valuable than doing even more AoE damage, but at the same time the AoE should probably not apply the DoT (i.e. effectively do 33% less than it does in beta) because it's rather absurd that the 4x level is worth that much. Its sustained damage is simply too good to compete with anything else, and this isn't a talent that should be forced on newer players that much.

Serenity - Another good idea, but it really needs a 20% damage boost or something for the duration, it's awkward for WW because 20 free chi doesn't mean nearly as much as it does for BrM, spamming BoK just really isn't very impactful.


L100 - Do [Tanking] Better

Soul Dance - Great idea, BrM has no good magic mitigation.

Chi Explosion - Should be 2 seconds of Shuffle plus 3 per chi consumed, I won't go into this here because you can see that in the BrM thread. TL;DR is that having no benefit for the 2x level makes no sense, it does cost a talent slot after all.

Serenity - Spamming PB for 10 seconds is effectively a damage reduction, so that plus being able to spam BoK puts it in a good place, also introduces a neat effect that shifts focus to keeping an eye on Stagger.

L100 - Do [Healing] Better

Breath of The Serpent - I don't know what the point of this talent is. MW doesn't need another strong, free, PBAoE heal. It should be trashed or replace Chi Torpedo or Zen Sphere, I don't get it.

Chi Explosion - Similar to the BrM version, why is there no perk for a 3x? It's just a really bad version of Uplift at that point. I'd like to see something similar to my WW suggestion, 3x makes it AoE but without the HoT and splitting the extra like FoF (healing is too strong to allow straight duplication), basically increasing the heal amount by 66% for that level.

Pool of Mists - Cool talent for stance changing, but 15% on ReM is a joke. Even if that's 20% of you're healing we're talking about a 3% throughput increase vs things like BotS and CE, it's a joke. It needs to be like 50% to take it seriously.

[Callimonk]

The only thing I disagree on off the bat, TT, is that L60 is "more or less fine". Healing Elixirs - if I ever saw an app spec into that, I'd question their sanity. DM and Dampen Harm are far more effective, even in PvP situations.

Also, math shows that Serenity won't necessarily be granting 20 free chi. With 0 mastery, it grants about 5.25, with perfect lpay (FoF at last second, TP right before you cast it, and having at least 3 Chi at time of cast). With Mastery, you should realistically get along the lines of 12-15 or so (statistically speaking - obviously more or less, depending on RNG and such). I may not have said it here, but I definitely agree that Serenity needs to have some % damage component in order to make it more desirable - even just a 5-10% damage component would bring it more in line with Chex.

I have to agree completely with people who state that Hurricane Strike should really replace FoF or something. It does make our rotation feel almost like current enhance shaman - you're just pooling chi while you wait on your next CD. Maybe its feel will change in T18, but even then, it's a very niche talent. And maybe that's okay, since Serenity and CE kind of fill the two "main" niches of AE/cleave and Single-Target (theoretically).

Chex is too strong. It makes our rotation feel incredibly jilted. I wouldn't hate it so much if it didn't make us feel so slow by easily eating through 75-100 energy per cast.

[Totaltotemic]

In a world where healer mana wasn't infinite self-healing would have a place, but I'm not really sure what else you could do there. I've gotten use out of Elixirs in WW and MW PvP and BrM PvE, I'm just not sure how constant self-healing talent could possibly be pitted against a damage reduction and make sense in raids.

It probably should be bumped up to 20-25% of max health healing now that I think about it.

[Imbalanced]

In a world where healer mana wasn't infinite self-healing would have a place, but I'm not really sure what else you could do there. I've gotten use out of Elixirs in WW and MW PvP and BrM PvE, I'm just not sure how constant self-healing talent could possibly be pitted against a damage reduction and make sense in raids.

It probably should be bumped up to 20-25% of max health healing now that I think about it.

I often times leave it when I'm tanking because on so many fights I just don't need/care about the CD. I would just call it a PvP talent and move on though sure against Caster comps you will take diffuse but Elixirs is still quite strong and will likely be stronger in WoD with adjusted health pools.

[Kitmajere]

T100 is confusing for BrM. I agree that how you classify it (tank better) is probably their intent but the reality is that it's actually: a survival talent, a (mostly) dps talent, and a survival/dps hybrid. They really should make that tier match a theme better, and it could easily be done with small changes.
Ideally (in my mind) that theme would be survival+dps and soul dance would get a dps component and chi explosion a greater survival benefit. I've suggested adding MW's 8 healing spheres generated around the user to 4 chi CE, and a passive mastery buff (not set on that at all, just one of the many options) to soul dance. That way you have three survival/dps hybrids used in 3 situations: magic damage, aoe tanking, high physical damage/fights with lulls/fights where tank dps cds are important/single target.
Alternatively they could go straight mitigation, but that's tough with serenity which WW shares and is inherently going to be dps/survival hybrid.


As an aside on T100 tuning: Serenity could also likely use a duration nerf+shorter cd so it's less wasteful, and possibly even a dps buff if CE isn't nerfed more. CE/Serenity should be tuned dps-wise so that serenity is the winner single target and CE the winner for aoe. Soul dance is also pretty boring, and a very niche talent. I wish it was designed a bit more like holy shield -- let us dodge/parry magic damage and buffed our crit chance so we'd have more EB (or brought back swift reflexes tuned to match serenity/CE's dmg) but c'est la vie.

I do wish chi torpedo was replaced with something else for BrM/WW, and zen sphere was cleaned up (single target hot ideally so it's the go to BrM talent, but really anything to make it more useful).

[Gaje]

I have been thinking about changing up the talents recently as well:

L15-Momentum, Tiger's Lust, Chi Torpedo

Celerity is relatively weak compared to the other two current options. Make part if it a WoD perk - either the extra charge or reduced CD. Momentum could use the extra help from a Celerity Perk.

Move Chi Torpedo down to this tier. It modifies a movement ability. It cannot compete with other dmg/healing options w/out making it extremely OP and would provide an interesting option to the other two talents on fights that don't require as much movement. Don't forget, Chi Torpedo does slightly increase the distance of roll, so it does modify movement already.

L30 - Chi Wave, Chi Burst, Zen Sphere

Leave talents as is with the exception of Zen Sphere mechanics. Make ZS 1 target, does more dmg as WW, more healing as MW, more self-healing as BrM. Re-balance around this. Priority is: Chi Wave is ST Burst, Chi Burst is AoE burst, and ZS is best HoT/DoT.

L45 - Chi Brew, Ascension, Power Strikes

Leave as is with changes Total suggested.

L60 - Leg Sweep, RoP, Ox Wave

Leave as is.

L75 - DH, DM, HE

I think Healing Elixirs was buffed? If so leave as is.

L90 - Xuen, Chi-Ji, Niuzao

Chi Torpedo was moved to L15. Make RJW a glyph, it seems like a glyph anyway.

Ok, I know I am dreaming a little here, but IMO the L90 talents should be the "Invoke Celestials" tier. Make each celestial have a strength -Single Target dmg, AoE dmg, Split dmg/healing. And as long as I am dreaming here also give each celestial a different minor raid CD, a la TI buffs. Xuen could give +5% dmg, Chi-Ji could give +stats/crit, and Niuzao could give +5% dmg mitigation.

Now this won't happen. It should happen. The peoples would be happy. Monks would rejoice and much fun would be had by all. But it won't happen.

L100 - ChiEX, Serenity/PoM, HS/SD/BotS

Still a bit too early to tell. From a WW perspective: Serenity needs a dmg buff, and I really think that HS would work better if it modified/replaced FoF. It would basically beef up FoF, let it be used at range, hit more targets, and could be made to be partial nature dmg. The mechanics would be more useful if it did 100% dmg to one target and split extra over other targets like FoF, or was 100% aoe like warriors blade-storm. Having both FoF and HS in the same rotations feels clunky, and I inherently don't like the fact that a lvl 100 talent does less dmg than a similar baseline talent, so just merge them.

[Brilynn]

L90 - Xuen, Chi-Ji, Niuzao

Chi Torpedo was moved to L15. Make RJW a glyph, it seems like a glyph anyway.

Ok, I know I am dreaming a little here, but IMO the L90 talents should be the "Invoke Celestials" tier. Make each celestial have a strength -Single Target dmg, AoE dmg, Split dmg/healing. And as long as I am dreaming here also give each celestial a different minor raid CD, a la TI buffs. Xuen could give +5% dmg, Chi-Ji could give +stats/crit, and Niuzao could give +5% dmg mitigation.

Can we go ahead and just make this happen?

[Deleted]

Healing Elixirs could have a % damage reduction tagged on to it: 10-20% for 5-10 secs.

Also, Invoke Celestials (or just Xuen if this never happens) should have a much shorter CD.

[Deleted]

Healing Elixirs could have a % damage reduction tagged on to it: 10-20% for 5-10 secs.

Also, Invoke Celestials (or just Xuen if this never happens) should have a much shorter CD.

To make it constructive feedback, please tell us why you feel this way, because I dont see anything wrong with any of those spells...

[Kitmajere]

I love Gaje's ideas in general.
I've always loved the idea of an invoke celestials tier or an invoke celestial talent that varied with spec. It definitely would be cool to have a burst single target, burst aoe, and sustained option (i.e. perma pet). Or alternatively keep the 45 sec duration with the ST and aoe ones and have a burst hybrid aoe/st as the third. I'm slightly wary of his hybrid dps/hps suggestion since BrM would be pigeonholed into taking it and I want my choices . RJW as a glyph makes a lot of sense too.

Re: Xuen's duration:
A DPS or healing cd with a 45 second duration is too long the vast majority of the time. A more concentrated burst handles very common raid mechanics -- burn down this add, deal with this burst of aoe healing needed (and Xuen is the burst healing cd of that tier) -- far better than the alternative. It's something that I've asked for many times personally and would love to have it, even if it was only a glyph.

[Deleted]

Personally, i think Healing Elixirs is fine, but some said it could use a buff. I think a %DR would be good because the others give a Large DR on a long CD, whereas this would be a passive, on a 'short cd'/whenever you drop below threshold.

The Invoke Celestials comment was about making them more practical. If there is something to be burnt down fast - single or AoE - it'll probably appear more than once every 3 mins. Seeing as none of the Monk spec's have an 'increased throughput' cd, something on a short CD (1.5min?) would be good.
MW has no way of drastically increasing throughput - whereas all other healing specs either have a spell or talent/s that they can choose for that purpose.
I enjoyed putting out raid Guards on BrM, but now that's gone A spell where the tank could help the raid out again would be great. Not a huge raid CD, but something small, like putting out Guards for the duration of the spell.
WW's, at least on live, are about sustained damage. Yes we can burst things down the TeB, but the overall feel is constant, unrelenting attacks. I don't know what the feeling on Beta is about how we do damage, but I reckon it would help our chance of a raid spot if we could bring a CD that could wreak some havoc every so often.

[Thunderbox]

I have yet to get beta access, but it seems with the relative doubled health pools and the reduction in self heals for tanks that Healing Elixirs may be more viable.

[Ltgoose]

L90 - Xuen, Chi-Ji, Niuzao

Chi Torpedo was moved to L15. Make RJW a glyph, it seems like a glyph anyway.

Ok, I know I am dreaming a little here, but IMO the L90 talents should be the "Invoke Celestials" tier. Make each celestial have a strength -Single Target dmg, AoE dmg, Split dmg/healing. And as long as I am dreaming here also give each celestial a different minor raid CD, a la TI buffs. Xuen could give +5% dmg, Chi-Ji could give +stats/crit, and Niuzao could give +5% dmg mitigation.

Now this won't happen. It should happen. The peoples would be happy. Monks would rejoice and much fun would be had by all. But it won't happen.

Please, I am throwing money at the screen and nothing is happening. Why is this not a thing.

[Jocias]

Please, I am throwing money at the screen and nothing is happening. Why is this not a thing.

RJW as a glyph would be far too powerful if you could also take Xuen.

Invoke Celestials would take too much dev time. Especially this close to release. I think there was a blue post saying that making Xuen change to a different celestial based on spec was something they thought sounded cool, but they just don't have the resources to make it a thing. Also they're trying to remove raid CDs from most specs. Adding an extra raid CD would kind of defeat the purpose of gutting raid utility from most DPS specs.

[Callimonk]

Will say this - Xuen's damage could use a pretty big buff in general.

[Gaje]

RJW as a glyph would be far too powerful if you could also take Xuen.

Invoke Celestials would take too much dev time. Especially this close to release. I think there was a blue post saying that making Xuen change to a different celestial based on spec was something they thought sounded cool, but they just don't have the resources to make it a thing. Also they're trying to remove raid CDs from most specs. Adding an extra raid CD would kind of defeat the purpose of gutting raid utility from most DPS specs.

Not in Beta, but Xuen isn't doing much dmg right now (as Calli pointed out), but this could all be tuned to make it work.

Don't get me wrong - I don't expect this to happen with WoD but maybe if we raise the point now it could be in for the next expansion.

As far as raid CDs go - Invoke Cele would give us a total of 1 raid CD, making us equal to almost every other dps.