[LEGION] Windwalker Discussion

[Babylonius]

I just want some new talents so i can play my monk instead of having to reroll because blizzard are a bunch of world destroyers.

What talents do you have issue with and why? Right now the only two that are a pain to work with are Serenity and Energizing Brew (or w/e it's called).

Blizzard's monk design philosophy this expansion: "Eh, fuck it. Nobody plays them anyway."

Monk has received quite a bit of focus the last few weeks, or already WW has. Not sure how much more attention you'd like. They've addressed the major issues plaguing the spec in some pretty good ways in order to foster more people playing the spec.

Wait, did they remove the damage buff on Tiger stance? Is that really a thing..?

If they "removed" it then it's just baked it. It was an easy way for them to control our damage inside of an expansion. Between expansions it can be reset to 0 while everything else is balanced.

[Viradiance]

What talents do you have issue with and why? Right now the only two that are a pain to work with are Serenity and Energizing Brew (or w/e it's called).



Monk has received quite a bit of focus the last few weeks, or already WW has. Not sure how much more attention you'd like. They've addressed the major issues plaguing the spec in some pretty good ways in order to foster more people playing the spec.



If they "removed" it then it's just baked it. It was an easy way for them to control our damage inside of an expansion. Between expansions it can be reset to 0 while everything else is balanced.

I don't think you could shill harder if you were trying.

"addressed the major issues plaguing the spec" is a pretty asanine way to say they gutted our cleave, turned our AOE into the most obnoxious mechanic they could and have failed to address everyone's immense distate for talents like Chi Orbit, Serenity, and Energizing Elixir.

Beyond that... Look at the state Brewmaster is in. Look at our copy-pasted order hall, level 7 mobs and all. Look at the fact that our campaign hasn't functioned for three months, despite having been among the first to get it. They implemented a version that apparently had 0 internal testing and haven't touched on it since. I know it's alpha and all that stuff, it's just... kinda depressing to be a monk right now.

[Deleted]

What talents do you have issue with and why? Right now the only two that are a pain to work with are Serenity and Energizing Brew (or w/e it's called).



Monk has received quite a bit of focus the last few weeks, or already WW has. Not sure how much more attention you'd like. They've addressed the major issues plaguing the spec in some pretty good ways in order to foster more people playing the spec.

You can't argue with facts. WW is the least played spec in the game, it would make sense if they just give less crap about it compared to any other spec.
They have limited time until Legion hits and I doubt they want to repeat the fiasco WoD was, so rather than wasting time on a spec that is dead, they use the time on real classes like rogues, warriors, etc.

We still have talents like Serenity, Energizing Brew, Chi Orbit (arrgh), traits like Death Art, Light on your Feet, Good Karma, etc.

[Babylonius]

Chi Orbit is a non issue, or a tuning issue at best. It requires no thought so it's damage should reflect that. This type of complaint is a big problem with Alpha feedback, if someone doesn't like it, they use words like "broken" or "useless". When alpha first came out the general concensus was that Chi Orbit was a nice change of pace from the other options, and that it just needed to be tuned correctly. Overtime resentment has built without any changes from what was previously liked, or a nonissue at best.

Not sure how our cleave was gutted when we have FoF, WDP, SotW, SCK, and RJW. That's a lot of buttons with more than one target.

Saying the class is dead is as doom and gloom as you can get. They new changes can, and likely will, allow new players to pick up and learn WW. Some of the stuff like the campaign not working isn't worth getting upset about, there is 0 chance they ship it with something like that literally broken.

I can argue with your facts. WW is the least played spec, but Monks have one dps spec, so Blizz has to make it work. Classes with more than one dps spec can afford one not being good, Monks cannot, and Blizzard knows this.

I personally really like the class hall, I think it's the only real choice. You can claim I'm "shill"ing(?) but I'm just not of the mind that Alpha is anything but testing, that things can change, and that the changes so far have been for the benefit of the many, even if the vocal few don't like them.

[George Costanza]

What talents do you have issue with and why? Right now the only two that are a pain to work with are Serenity and Energizing Brew (or w/e it's called).

Most of them are basically copy pastas and then changed levels for instance the lvl 30 talents are now the lvl 15 talents, Dizzying kicks is a rather lame talent, I just want something that the other classes have, something that gives the monks more damaging abilities. I find it ridiculous that we still have a row for defenses, while other classes (rogue for instance) gets it baseline, I feel like one of the defensives could at least go baseline. The fact rogues get parry evasion (outlaw) and a more powerful cloak of shadows is adding to this of course.

Anyway I feel like the monk choices is too much non-damage stuff which makes the talents feel more situational than anything, it is more "ok now i can stun that enemy" and less "I can jump to that target". ¨¨

The monk have about the LEAST unique spec talents, and that is a big issue for me, Legion is meant to be something that Impacts the SPEcs greatly on all classes, yet for monk... Monk feels like a Spec, not a Class.

Classes need to have different specs, and Different talents for each spec.

The Upper rows (90 and 100) are fine, here, but it is the others that are abit bland. and Extremely boring.

I find them entirely bland, since they are mostly just copy pastes of the current ones.

[Lucrece]

I don't think you can argue that Strike of the Windlord is a remotely good ability. Look at what other classes get. Ours is basically a crappier fists of fury on a longer cooldown with a useless 50% snare.

Look at our artifact traits. On top of Light on Your Feet being useless, so is tying our HEAL to transcendence, on top of having generic and boring artifact talents to begin with. They're all passive, adding nothing to our gameplay unlike the shadow priest or demonology warlock or unholy DK artifacts, just to name a few.

Then we have our gutted defensives, we gained no good raid utility outside the potential legendary item actually making windwalking a meaningful buff.

Our class talents are beyond bland. The chi talent row are just abilities you press when the rest of your cooldowns are spent, and the heal from these chi abilities isn't even reliable in the case of chi wave, nor are they even noticeable healing. They do neither good damage or healing; they just sit there as something extra to press.

We have a useless energy row, when all other classes had their resource rows removed and had resource generation baked in.

We are the class that gained the least novelty in terms of talents or abilities; look at shamans and DK's, those are talent rows you can actually call fun. Meanwhile all we gained is the pruning of our keystone class defensive cd's, losing our brews, zen meditation, and diffuse magic was nerfed to hell to be an inferior cloak of shadows on all counts.

I don't know how you can possibly say Legion will be a good xpac for monk. They didn't even bother to alter our fist attack animations to fit the artifacts; we're still striking with the side of our palms so the fist weapons are hitting all tilted and not being even used properly, it's a total eye-sore and the clipping that's gonna happen from those large fist weapons is going to be tremendous.

[George Costanza]

I don't think you can argue that Strike of the Windlord is a remotely good ability. Look at what other classes get. Ours is basically a crappier fists of fury on a longer cooldown with a useless 50% snare.

Look at our artifact traits. On top of Light on Your Feet being useless, so is tying our HEAL to transcendence, on top of having generic and boring artifact talents to begin with. They're all passive, adding nothing to our gameplay unlike the shadow priest or demonology warlock or unholy DK artifacts, just to name a few.

Then we have our gutted defensives, we gained no good raid utility outside the potential legendary item actually making windwalking a meaningful buff.

Our class talents are beyond bland. The chi talent row are just abilities you press when the rest of your cooldowns are spent, and the heal from these chi abilities isn't even reliable in the case of chi wave, nor are they even noticeable healing. They do neither good damage or healing; they just sit there as something extra to press.

We have a useless energy row, when all other classes had their resource rows removed and had resource generation baked in.

We are the class that gained the least novelty in terms of talents or abilities; look at shamans and DK's, those are talent rows you can actually call fun. Meanwhile all we gained is the pruning of our keystone class defensive cd's, losing our brews, zen meditation, and diffuse magic was nerfed to hell to be an inferior cloak of shadows on all counts.

I don't know how you can possibly say Legion will be a good xpac for monk. They didn't even bother to alter our fist attack animations to fit the artifacts; we're still striking with the side of our palms so the fist weapons are hitting all tilted and not being even used properly, it's a total eye-sore and the clipping that's gonna happen from those large fist weapons is going to be tremendous.

All of this. Shamans/dks/paladins/rogues have great talent trees.

[Babylonius]

I have faith that Legion can be a good expansion for Windwalker because we have lots of tools for lots of situations, so it all comes down to balancing. If Monk DPS is strong then people will come to play it, and the barrier for entry is much lower in Legion than it was in WoD.

You're confusing "I dont like how it works" with "It doesn't work", those two things are not synonymous. I like the Chi Shaping row, I think it covers a variety of situations, and for a lv30 talent row, is in a good place balance-wise. I agree that the energy row could use some work, Ascension should be baked in. Other class's talents and abilities don't make WW abilities not work, they may just be things you'd prefer. You may prefer the grass on the other side, but the grass over there doesn't effect the grass here.

IIRC SotW was just buffed to hit pretty hard, so its not a limp noodle like it used to be.

[Lucrece]

They could buff it to hit as hard as FoF, ultimately I play a class for its fun factor, and adding just a damage clone of another ability with little special interaction and no novelty or added flavor for the spec registers to me as a pretty big fail.

I mean, you could say WOD monk was fine as well by your definition of working. WW's were takent to all mythic progression tiers even if they weren't a DK or warrior or rogue.

That doesn't really speak to the fun factor of the spec. The spec feels stale because nothing meaningfully new was actually added to our playstyle. We were just mostly streamlined and then stuck with the same boring talents and an even more bland artifact.

I've been playing this spec all through WOD and I'm not really looking forward to more of the same for the next 2 years. That's what actually appealing about an expansion, looking forward to new stuff for your class. And Legion gave nothing interestingly new. How the hell am I going to avoid burnout on my spec if it virtually plays the same with a few changes like SEF being our DPS cooldown now and sneaking in FoF 2.0 every 40 seconds.

Look at Void Torrent or Apocalypse or New/Full Moon or even Destro's dimensional Rifts. THOSE are artifact spells worth mentioning. They have meaningful interactions with class playstyle; they're just not some other button you press for damage.

[Ilir]

I don't play WW monk at all because I didn't really like it in mop or wod but in Legion it looks cool and it's fun to play.

Just wanted to share a non ww monk veteran impression.

[Azinath]

Shame about that artifact weapon being a damn fist.

Everything about WW monks in legion sounds awesome except for this. Personally I think artifact weapons are a lazy cop out. It would be so much better if different weapon choices has some actual affect on game play.

[Babylonius]

They could buff it to hit as hard as FoF, ultimately I play a class for its fun factor, and adding just a damage clone of another ability with little special interaction and no novelty or added flavor for the spec registers to me as a pretty big fail.

I mean, you could say WOD monk was fine as well by your definition of working. WW's were takent to all mythic progression tiers even if they weren't a DK or warrior or rogue.

That doesn't really speak to the fun factor of the spec. The spec feels stale because nothing meaningfully new was actually added to our playstyle. We were just mostly streamlined and then stuck with the same boring talents and an even more bland artifact.

I've been playing this spec all through WOD and I'm not really looking forward to more of the same for the next 2 years. That's what actually appealing about an expansion, looking forward to new stuff for your class. And Legion gave nothing interestingly new. How the hell am I going to avoid burnout on my spec if it virtually plays the same with a few changes like SEF being our DPS cooldown now and sneaking in FoF 2.0 every 40 seconds.

Look at Void Torrent or Apocalypse or New/Full Moon or even Destro's dimensional Rifts. THOSE are artifact spells worth mentioning. They have meaningful interactions with class playstyle; they're just not some other button you press for damage.

I agree with you that very little is changing. I just personally like what is changes. I'm sorry that its not looking like its going to be as fun for you as previously, but its looking more fun to me, and lots of newer players. My point is that there is a huge difference between saying you're not enjoying how a spec plays and saying that something is broken or not working, and typing subjective opinions disguised as objective facts does nothing to spread useful information. If its broken, then it can and will be fixed. If its just not fun to you, then its subjective so harder to say if any change would be coming.

[Deleted]

Windwalkers are fine. They did a nice job on them in Legion so far. But it's me being envious of other classes that's the problem. We got a lot, but all the other classes got so much more. Their talents and artifact abilities look and feel so much better, they got all new class halls (I don't disslike monk class hall, I think it's good, but it's shit compared to any other order hall.), and they feel new.

[Babylonius]

Windwalkers are fine. They did a nice job on them in Legion so far. But it's me being envious of other classes that's the problem. We got a lot, but all the other classes got so much more. Their talents and artifact abilities look and feel so much better, they got all new class halls (I don't disslike monk class hall, I think it's good, but it's shit compared to any other order hall.), and they feel new.

I was just in a discussion with a guild member last week as he complained (Warrior) that Windwalkers were getting all the attention and cool stuff and they were getting forgotten. Its all relative, its just important to make sure that opinions are worded like opinions, and facts are facts, and not mixing them up.

[Scotlander]

It seems to be a thing this expansion that a lot of ppl are excited and jealous about stuff every class/spec is getting apart from their own. I was just reading some of the rogue Legion posts as I'm thinking of switching mains to one, and the comments there are almost identical to ones here, Blizzard is ignoring us, they don't care about rogues, they don't have any rogues on the dev team, look at all the cool shit every other class is getting...etc.

[Ryuutora]

Late to the party but I disagree entirely on Chi Orbit's design. It doesn't count for the Mastery. It doesn't make any other attack hit harder. It's not mirrored by SEF. It just deals damage. I'm not seeing how it impacts the spec other than Gale Burst but then I can make Mechablast Rockets or other Engineering Explosives fit just as well. I think Eye of the Tiger or Hit Combo are good examples albeit Eye of the Tiger is a bit lacking. Even if it was made to be mirrored by SEF, it'd still need to cooperate with the spec in some manner not just doing it's own thing - attack based release is too similar to "Icicles" for Frost Mage.

What I've read in the past is that people are all fine and dandy at not being the best at everything, so what's the need for the 60 row? Warriors don't/didn't like the knockback to Siegebreaker so Ring of Peace.... for personal use it's CJL but better, same goes for Dizzying Kicks vs Disable.

PvP talents have better mobility mechanics than the current level 30 row, including a controlled FSK. They should've strived for the specs to have different talents entirely with maybe a row overlapping, could've even lead to a redesigned Clash for Brewmaster.

George Costanza is right about defensives, and WoD Monk had some weird + bad defensive problems leading to the 2pc and 4pc PvP gear being both defensives being the only spec to have that then nerfing and removing the existing defensives makes things even worst. Blizzards envisions of Windwalker since WoD launched: "Arcade game and Ip Man type fighter while they're only as good as their weapon and hit'n'run to survive". Rather counter-intuitive and they should've seen that in those movies they've watched before the first blue post they gave the spec; even their inspiration Street Fighter let's the player take a beating.

Parroting was has been said before but the Resource row isn't necessary. They could've made Ascension baseline(as y'all have said), they could've done more with the Combo Breaker system to outdo Power Strikes entirely, and Energizing Elixir makes getting Chi faster but just enhances the Expel Harm problem; simple fix would've been to always regen Chi out of combat with everything having the same functionality, start with a full bar and everything still plays the same.

Mobility, CC, Defensives, and Resources - one or more of those talent rows could've been axed or consolidated, whether made baseline or jumbled row, in some manner; they're just following the old model with the only closes thing to that being Druid(30, 45, 60).

Really their entire design of late seems to be what they can make out of nothing and go with it, and even if they went with that model there's still stuff they can do with little to no major changes being needed."RIP Fistweaving" was the most controversial thing to happen to the class as a whole, it's not entirely unexpected for them to focus mostly on making sure that that one spec tailors to what people found disheartening. Same has happened with Demo as we can see with Afflic and Destro. Maybe they're working on the perfect version of SEF before doing things but it'd still be foolish to ignore the previous multiple builds before the first set of more meaningful changes and the response to BrM.

Also, thematically @Viridiancity both Wind and Lightning was barely played upon for the spec(CJL, SEF, Invoke, RJW at most) and Legion opened up the can of worms for them so BOTH should be present in the spec, not just one or the other. They want to do the whole "Wind"walker with Skywall and they gave 2 fists weapons named "Lightning" and "Thunder", among other things, they should finish playing off that. Being a Disciple of Xuen and Shamanstic in nature, it seems fitting as well. Maybe it's some unspoken design philosophy that Shaman and Monk "Wind" abilities are Physical while Druids Hurricane is Nature?

[Deleted]

cba checking if it was posted, but if you jump from slightly higher ground and land on lower ground (i.e. off a small cliff or rock) a lightning nova erupts from your character now whilst you have the WW artifact equipped. Confused me for a while as I had no idea what was causing it.

[Deleted]

offtopic: I never truly understood why the spec was called Windwalker to begin with. In War3 Windwalk was a rogue stealth like ability, in MoP, Windwalkers had nothing to do with wind or stealth and now we got the fists and we have like 1 or 2 wind abilities, but still not feeling the Wind fantasy in the spec.

[Viradiance]

cba checking if it was posted, but if you jump from slightly higher ground and land on lower ground (i.e. off a small cliff or rock) a lightning nova erupts from your character now whilst you have the WW artifact equipped. Confused me for a while as I had no idea what was causing it.

Seems to just trigger a lightning nova animation perodically, followed by some monk-looking lightning crackles over your body for a few seconds. Kinda meh, to be honest. Hoping for an option to disable.

Edit: Oh, yeah, jumping from high to low does seem to reliably do it, too.

[Lucrece]

I don't get the complaints over it. WW's are followers of Xuen, the lightning tiger. Moreover, Pandaren have overlapping shamanistic influences. Monks have a spell called "Storm, Earth, and Fire", and we possess "Crackling Jade Lightning".

Wind is a theme of WW's, but lightning fits just fine. Saying that only shamans get lightning is like saying only warlocks use shadow magic when shadow priests and death knights are also using shadow magic, and death knights are using ice magic just like frost mages and shamans have frost spells.

Hell, by this point I appreciate any visual flourish our spec gets because quite frankly we got the ugliest artifact weapon after rogues in Legion.