Maximize's WW Monk Guide

[Maximum]

I made a guide recently at http://hornofwinter.com/monk/windwalker/. The site's mission is to be similar to Icy Veins by having guides for people to learn, but having it done by reputable players for that specific role. I tried to make it relatable to newer players, while also expanding on what makes the best windwalkers in the world do the damage they do. I've never published a guide before so I'm open to any and all criticism. Tell me what you think.

[Babylonius]

Just a quick peruse before going to work, but your Serenity opener has you start with 5 Chi then spend 3, then generate 4 more with Chi Brew which would over cap. Just put a BoK in there before the 1st or 2nd CB to clear that up. You can also put an additional BoK between Chi Brew x2 and TEB to use up extra chi and generate more TEB stacks. This won't put you beyond the 20s potion/trinket window.

Your TEB usage page is somewhat confusing, mainly your 3rd and 4th bullet points. You don't want to delay FoF at all unless you will energy cap or not be able to channel its full duration. Outside of those conditions, delaying it 5-6 seconds as you seem to suggest, over the course of a fight, will likely result in a lost cast, which is more detrimental than the dps you'd gain saving it for a small proc.

[Tradu]

Might want to mention that you need to Zen Med or ToK+DM/DH if you're going to solosoak a slice on Gruul as an explanation, seeing as you mentioned that it's doable already. Might want to mention ToK whoring possibilities(Maidens bombs etc, you only mention Oregorger crystal).

[Maximum]

Your TEB usage page is somewhat confusing, mainly your 3rd and 4th bullet points. You don't want to delay FoF at all unless you will energy cap or not be able to channel its full duration. Outside of those conditions, delaying it 5-6 seconds as you seem to suggest, over the course of a fight, will likely result in a lost cast, which is more detrimental than the dps you'd gain saving it for a small proc.

This is more done in practice of knowing your RPPM and the 5-6 seconds which is more 2-4 in practice can easily be shared with the time of pooling that last little bit before your burst.

Also, your opener is comparable and one commonly used, however I prefer wasting the chi to get your fists/serenity rolling in your Trigger proc a gcd earlier. Anyways i'm sleeping until later tonight, I will answer any questions or concerns when i get back home.

- - - Updated - - -

Might want to mention that you need to Zen Med or ToK+DM/DH if you're going to solosoak a slice on Gruul as an explanation, seeing as you mentioned that it's doable already. Might want to mention ToK whoring possibilities(Maidens bombs etc, you only mention Oregorger crystal).

These are good ideas, I will get to that later.

[Deleted]

This is more done in practice of knowing your RPPM and the 5-6 seconds which is more 2-4 in practice can easily be shared with the time of pooling that last little bit before your burst.

Also, your opener is comparable and one commonly used, however I prefer wasting the chi to get your fists/serenity rolling in your Trigger proc a gcd earlier. Anyways i'm sleeping until later tonight, I will answer any questions or concerns when i get back home.

Going off what maxi said I would 100% do the same as him in this situation, you'd rather get the extra Bok in during procs than a jab (your constraint in the opener is time not chi) As a blood elf I actually will not waste that chi as I can use torrent to gain one extra chi so using a bok before fof => using 1 during your serenity w/ procs up.

[rockforce80]

Heya Max,

First off, thanks for the guide and the useful macros.

Here is my issue:
On most fights I have no problem doing quite well and performing near what I see on a target dummy.

The one fight I am having trouble on is Blackhand; my guild is not into mythic, and we are progressing on Heroic Blackhand at the moment.

I have tried a few different set-ups (Serenity and Chi-Brew with all of these; Floating butterfly, Zen Meditation, ToK glyphs):

• Chi Burst and Chi Wave (not tried Zen Sphere yet)
• ToK on Blackhand when I go upstairs
• ToK on a soldier when I go upstairs
• Clone on Blackhand when I go upstairs
• Clones on various soldiers upstairs
• Clone on Siege engine (Clone only gets about 6 seconds, making me doubt its' beneficence)

I am having trouble nailing down the best set-up and CD usage for the fight.

My ilvl is 682, no set bonuses, 2hander, Ilvl 670 Scales of Doom and Meaty Dragonspine Trophy as trinkets. Quest ring is 690. With Legacy White Tiger (no food, flask, or rune) 32.15% Crit, 6.5% haste, 34.34% Mastery, 24.1% MS, .78% Vers.

I hit 50k on the opener, it slides down to 27k by phase 2... in phase 3 I end between 24-25k dps before my death tanks the number. Our best attempts have phase 3 wipes at 7% or so, we are close, and I feel if I could step up my numbers to over 30k at least, I think we'd be in there.

TLDR: Sorry for the long post, but do you have more in depth tips/tricks/cd usage and/or play style for Blackhand?

[Fakie]

Heya Max,

First off, thanks for the guide and the useful macros.

Here is my issue:
On most fights I have no problem doing quite well and performing near what I see on a target dummy.

The one fight I am having trouble on is Blackhand; my guild is not into mythic, and we are progressing on Heroic Blackhand at the moment.

I have tried a few different set-ups (Serenity and Chi-Brew with all of these; Floating butterfly, Zen Meditation, ToK glyphs):

• Chi Burst and Chi Wave (not tried Zen Sphere yet)
• ToK on Blackhand when I go upstairs
• ToK on a soldier when I go upstairs
• Clone on Blackhand when I go upstairs
• Clones on various soldiers upstairs
• Clone on Siege engine (Clone only gets about 6 seconds, making me doubt its' beneficence)

I am having trouble nailing down the best set-up and CD usage for the fight.

My ilvl is 682, no set bonuses, 2hander, Ilvl 670 Scales of Doom and Meaty Dragonspine Trophy as trinkets. Quest ring is 690. With Legacy White Tiger (no food, flask, or rune) 32.15% Crit, 6.5% haste, 34.34% Mastery, 24.1% MS, .78% Vers.

I hit 50k on the opener, it slides down to 27k by phase 2... in phase 3 I end between 24-25k dps before my death tanks the number. Our best attempts have phase 3 wipes at 7% or so, we are close, and I feel if I could step up my numbers to over 30k at least, I think we'd be in there.

TLDR: Sorry for the long post, but do you have more in depth tips/tricks/cd usage and/or play style for Blackhand?

You probably shouldn't go on the balcony as a windwalker to be honest. Other classes clear out the adds a LOT more efficiently than we do.

[Deleted]

Also, your opener is comparable and one commonly used, however I prefer wasting the chi to get your fists/serenity rolling in your Trigger proc a gcd earlier. Anyways i'm sleeping until later tonight, I will answer any questions or concerns when i get back home.

As someone that has spend a lot of time working on the Serenity opener (and still is working on it) I will ofcourse have a lot of things that I would prefer to do differently when comparing to yours or many other peoples openers.
However I will not do that since the difference between all them openers are minor, and there for will not be of great impact on your average dps at the end of a fight (unless extremely short ofcourse).

With all that being said I did feel the need to point out that that BoK Babylious pointed out is partly to not overcap your most important resource, but more importantly it allows you to spend atleast 4 chi which generates 1-2 TeB. I thought that might be something you would want to consider.

[Lalaman23]

This is more done in practice of knowing your RPPM and the 5-6 seconds which is more 2-4 in practice can easily be shared with the time of pooling that last little bit before your burst.

Also, your opener is comparable and one commonly used, however I prefer wasting the chi to get your fists/serenity rolling in your Trigger proc a gcd earlier. Anyways i'm sleeping until later tonight, I will answer any questions or concerns when i get back home.

Knowing your RPPM
knowing.....rppm. hello

Then that opener.......like what. You waste a chi and you pop TEB 1 chi short of another 1. Oh but you prefer it, WWs have been arguing over the best opener since forever and I can honestly say I have never seen your. Mostly because it makes no sense.

I am assuming this is for people brand new to WW monk so i would be careful saying "use energizing brew/serenity with it" on your TEB section, they might not know that you don't mean popping them both at the same time.

• That being said Tigereye Brewing and immediately using Fists of Fury every 23ish seconds is not correct, but holding it for 2-4 seconds longer to see if you get Tiger Strikes or a proc, granted you don’t already have either of them.
• If you do not have procs, pool for 2-4 seconds and see what you get. Immediately after using what you have for Tigereye Brew + Fists of Fury and then spamming.

Says the same wrong thing twice.

SEF is now almost always worth casting even if a mob is going to be alive for a single ability,

That is just not true at all. Do you even play windwalker?

Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Mark of the Thunderlord. Enchant Weapon - Mark of the Frostwolf is also viable.
uhh.... no. You take Multistrike for singletarget but generally you take haste since most people don't have two sets of gear for single target/multi target


Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Mark of Warsong – if dual weilding use 2 of these if you are low on haste, if not run one Enchant Weapon - Mark of Warsong and one Mark of the Thunderlord

Dude what. No, no no no.
I don't know maybe its way too late for me and I am being harsh but honestly if somebody told me they were going to play WW i would not tell them to read your guide and I'm assuming your goal is to make a guide we can all recommend. Honestly reading this I'm not even convinced you play WW. I will try to reread when I awake but on first glance... yeah no.

[rulee]

Knowing your RPPM
knowing.....rppm. hello

Then that opener.......like what. You waste a chi and you pop TEB 1 chi short of another 1. Oh but you prefer it, WWs have been arguing over the best opener since forever and I can honestly say I have never seen your. Mostly because it makes no sense.

I am assuming this is for people brand new to WW monk so i would be careful saying "use energizing brew/serenity with it" on your TEB section, they might not know that you don't mean popping them both at the same time.

• That being said Tigereye Brewing and immediately using Fists of Fury every 23ish seconds is not correct, but holding it for 2-4 seconds longer to see if you get Tiger Strikes or a proc, granted you don’t already have either of them.
• If you do not have procs, pool for 2-4 seconds and see what you get. Immediately after using what you have for Tigereye Brew + Fists of Fury and then spamming.

Says the same wrong thing twice.

SEF is now almost always worth casting even if a mob is going to be alive for a single ability,

That is just not true at all. Do you even play windwalker?

Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Mark of the Thunderlord. Enchant Weapon - Mark of the Frostwolf is also viable.
uhh.... no. You take Multistrike for singletarget but generally you take haste since most people don't have two sets of gear for single target/multi target


Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Mark of Warsong – if dual weilding use 2 of these if you are low on haste, if not run one Enchant Weapon - Mark of Warsong and one Mark of the Thunderlord

Dude what. No, no no no.
I don't know maybe its way too late for me and I am being harsh but honestly if somebody told me they were going to play WW i would not tell them to read your guide and I'm assuming your goal is to make a guide we can all recommend. Honestly reading this I'm not even convinced you play WW. I will try to reread when I awake but on first glance... yeah no.

You and Max should compare Warcraft logs.

[Maximum]

Knowing your RPPM
knowing.....rppm. hello

Then that opener.......like what. You waste a chi and you pop TEB 1 chi short of another 1. Oh but you prefer it, WWs have been arguing over the best opener since forever and I can honestly say I have never seen your. Mostly because it makes no sense.

I am assuming this is for people brand new to WW monk so i would be careful saying "use energizing brew/serenity with it" on your TEB section, they might not know that you don't mean popping them both at the same time.

• That being said Tigereye Brewing and immediately using Fists of Fury every 23ish seconds is not correct, but holding it for 2-4 seconds longer to see if you get Tiger Strikes or a proc, granted you don’t already have either of them.
• If you do not have procs, pool for 2-4 seconds and see what you get. Immediately after using what you have for Tigereye Brew + Fists of Fury and then spamming.

Says the same wrong thing twice.

SEF is now almost always worth casting even if a mob is going to be alive for a single ability,

That is just not true at all. Do you even play windwalker?

Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Mark of the Thunderlord. Enchant Weapon - Mark of the Frostwolf is also viable.
uhh.... no. You take Multistrike for singletarget but generally you take haste since most people don't have two sets of gear for single target/multi target


Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Mark of Warsong – if dual weilding use 2 of these if you are low on haste, if not run one Enchant Weapon - Mark of Warsong and one Mark of the Thunderlord

Dude what. No, no no no.
I don't know maybe its way too late for me and I am being harsh but honestly if somebody told me they were going to play WW i would not tell them to read your guide and I'm assuming your goal is to make a guide we can all recommend. Honestly reading this I'm not even convinced you play WW. I will try to reread when I awake but on first glance... yeah no.

I don't even really know how to respond to this. I'll start by saying I streamed all of the progress i did in Duality this teir, topping in the raid and getting multiple rank ones. At one point I had all 6 outside of Imperator (dont aoe), then I went to a different guild and Am now tanking as I am better at it. I dont necessarily care about some random MMO Champ casual saying things he thinks are wrong. I disagree with what you are saying, and more so I Disagree with the way you went about it. If you think something is wrong you can give reason other than just stating a side of that argument that has been going on forever. People do their opener differently, mine obviously isn't wrong looking at the numbers I pull and neither is that one.

I'm pretty proud of my guide and I feel like I give a lot of good insight on the class and how it can be played, if you can find a better guide out there please link it. Its absolutely not perfect, but it is not incorrect like most guides you find out there.

[Megabloks]

I also don't agree with everything in the guide, overall some good points and a good guide. WW is probably the only class where there is a lot left open to interpretation, and this guide is good for people new to the spec, with some advanced points in there for veterans as well.

[gucci]

Thanks for the guide Max, there's not many top ranking WWs posting on forums or making guides and it's really interesting to read your thoughts on how to play the spec. In your section on TEB use, you suggest fishing for procs around FoFs cd before using TEB. What if for example FoF had 10s left on cd, but you got a godly proc like Tiger Strikes + Ring, would you just pop TEB immediately since you could still fit all of the FoF ticks within it? Or would you hold TEB and try to get more procs when FoF was about to come off cd, since the TS/Ring proc would wear off before you could cast FoF?

[Lalaman23]

I still stand by what I said but I am sorry for how i said it, i was extremely tired and was being a proper dick wad. Didn't mean to come at you like that just the majority of this I have never seen recommended before. I was trying to help the guide and rereading how I went about that I see where you are coming from so I will try this again but in a more hospitable manner.

All weapon enchants are extremely close this xpac so really none of them are bad but still I don't see why you wouldn't recommend the best or maybe expand on what the people reading should pick. Some players may only get 1 weapon/1 set of gear so what is the best all around enchants etc, also a middle of the round gearset people could aim for would be nice. Most people reading guides might not be getting two sets of gear anytime soon. For rings/neck/cloak I have always told people to go for multistrike because it is the best stat for Serenity and second for Chi Explo. Weapon enchants I usually just tell people Haste enchant if they have 1 weapon but if there is evidence otherwise I'd love to hear it.

SEF i can see how you can get away with throwing it on a target for 1 ability but I'd just add in that the clones need their own debuffs/buffs to start doing their full damage. SEF is pretty annoying/tricky/stupid ability I still see people throwing it on the target they are hitting thinking it increases their dps. I just think for a solid beginner guide you would need more info on SEF.

TEB/FoF. Yea I still don't know what you mean by knowing RPPM. Delaying FoF might pay off if it is a short fight but if you delay 2-4 seconds each time you are just going to end up losing a cast and there is no way all those procs and TEB made up for an entire FoF. TEB deserves its entire guide on its own but you hit the nail on the head with the pooling.

Openers are like 5% of your dps for the entire fight, magically doing this opener or this one is going to make u do an extra 2k or anything when lucky ring/trinket prcs can do more for you, but since every one loves doing that fatty dps opener so we stlll talk about them. I would rather use that 1 global to get that extra 6or12% dps for the rest of my opener and if you don't thats fine its like a 200dps swing either way, I just hate wasting Chi.

Talent section I would just say that if your prayers are not answered on Iron Maidens for whatever reason that you shouldn't use ToD glyph or if your raid doesn't have taht supa hot fire dps to finish the last 20% in 90seconds. Its honestly a better guide than 90% of whats out there but nothing is ever perfect and i'm sorry about me being a jackass never wanted to compare epeens but its not like the best players in the world can't get better. If all of you really care about logs that much its literally my name but thats not what we are here for. Max spent a lot of time on the guide im sure and we should all try and make it better as fellow monks.

[Deleted]

I don't even really know how to respond to this. I'll start by saying I streamed all of the progress i did in Duality this teir, topping in the raid and getting multiple rank ones. At one point I had all 6 outside of Imperator (dont aoe), then I went to a different guild and Am now tanking as I am better at it. I dont necessarily care about some random MMO Champ casual saying things he thinks are wrong. I disagree with what you are saying, and more so I Disagree with the way you went about it. If you think something is wrong you can give reason other than just stating a side of that argument that has been going on forever. People do their opener differently, mine obviously isn't wrong looking at the numbers I pull and neither is that one.

I'm pretty proud of my guide and I feel like I give a lot of good insight on the class and how it can be played, if you can find a better guide out there please link it. Its absolutely not perfect, but it is not incorrect like most guides you find out there.

Ranking isn't a good arguement for knowledge of the game or class. Since the majority of someone ranking is thanks to the team they raid with. And there are many other things to come into account with thas aswell. Duration of a fight being a big factor. Now don't mistake this for me saying that you don't know how to play your class, since you obviously do. But you would have absolutely zero rank 1's in a guild with a very low skillcap.

Now I agree that he is wrong how he went about informing you. Heck even he himself stated that he might come across harshly. That however doesn't take away from the fact that even non rank 1 players can see many things wrong in your guide. From minor things that make what your trying to say unclear. To things that are just completely wrong.

For a quick guide for new players it might be 1 of the better resources due to its simplicity. But for players that have been through almost all the guides already, and have been playing and raiding with their monk since beta I must agree with Lalaman23, I wouldnt recommend yours either (.....yet, since you can still change things).

[Oranguto]

Yo Max

Can you go into a little bit more detail on Chi Pooling?

[Kib]

Yo Max

Can you go into a little bit more detail on Chi Pooling?

Sit on 2-3 chi when you don't have a proc so you can spam more hard hitting abilities when you get procs instead of building Chi inside of a proc window.
Same concept is true about energy.

Pooling TLR = do not spend any more resources then you need not to cap on chi/energy outside of procs and dump everything when you have procs.

[Octa]

I think instead of people just saying "Hey bro there's lots of shit wrong in here and even people who aren't that amazing at Windwalker can see that" you should probably form some sort of coherent argument as to what is wrong specifically. Say what you think is wrong and more importantly WHY you think it is wrong; be specific. Just giving blanket bullshit statements like "there's some wrong stuff in here, good guide though" isn't really helpful to anyone nor does it help improve the guide in any way.

[Ezekiel-Monk]

idk how you put up with this feedback but great guide

[Lalaman23]

I think instead of people just saying "Hey bro there's lots of shit wrong in here and even people who aren't that amazing at Windwalker can see that" you should probably form some sort of coherent argument as to what is wrong specifically. Say what you think is wrong and more importantly WHY you think it is wrong; be specific. Just giving blanket bullshit statements like "there's some wrong stuff in here, good guide though" isn't really helpful to anyone nor does it help improve the guide in any way.

Yea i agree my first response again was way out of line, I'm really not trying to shit on everything I want it to be an amazing guide because i think it will get a lot of exposure. If you are talking about my second post maybe I'm just too new here and should maybe lurk more