[LEGION] Windwalker Discussion

[Damaind]

Had this feed back on the WoW fourms so I thought i'd post my initial post here. Fromat is a bit wanky due to the Bnet fourms not allowing as many characters per post as here.

Ok so when people said that WW monk was too hard and needed to be changed that didnt mean make it brain dead. Now that being said let me explain why I say this.

The new mastery make it so that we gain damage by using a different spell from the last one we cast, the point of this change was to stop the brainless spamming we had in WoD. Well instead of spamming Jab(now Tiger Palm) we just have to spam Tiger Palm and BoK back and forth (1 2 1 2 1 2) if there happens to be nothing up from CD at the time, thus the problem is still there but now the rotation is more annoying.

This leads to what I meant by "brain dead" its not so much that its more of there isn't much to think about anymore in the rotation once you have adjusted to the Mastery. hit TP and BoK till something is off CD then hit that, AKA hit whatever isn't on CD then go back to TP/BoK. Other than that the only thing that remains in the skill ceiling is lining up your CDs ( or rather singular "CD" lookin at you SEF) with boss fight mechanics that require it AKA basic raiding 101 stuff.

What I'm trying to get at is that there's nothing to do other than to hit random buttons every other spec has a buff or debuff or SOMETHING to maintain/interact with but not WW, I'm not exaggerating when I say hit whatever you want so long as its not a repeat of what you just did.

Now don't get me wrong when Blizzard said "we wanted to make it feel more fluid because that what monks are supposed to be." you definitely nailed it it does feel fluid, but to reiterate what I've said is that after you adjust to the mastery that's it... there nothing else to learn or do.

A good way to put it would be this: Its a more flashy Arms warrior that's slightly less boring but made of paper; Bringing me to my next point.

Made of PAPER, like seriously hands down the squishiest melee by FAR we have 1 baseline defensive and 1 talent (Karma and 75 talent row) that's IT. Now Karma is useful but its been nerfed a fair bit and the 75 talent most would argue is very MEH Healing Elixir's 15% is like 1-2 hits from player or mob and Dampen Harm is alright vs like a Rogue or maybe some raid wide damage. The only one in that row that's hand down the best is Diffuse Magic, but again... only useful vs Magic.

Now you may ask "well dps should be able to live through everything there supposed to be weaker than tanks." Well yes they should be weaker than tanks HAND DOWN a fact there..but when you look over a Rogues with (off the top of my head) a base line 30% max hp heal, 100% parry CD, Cloak of Shadow, and Evasion (plus Vanish if you want to count it as a defensive) you can start to see what I'm getting at here... severely lacking in the defensive department.

This next part will be Talents feedback, I'll go row by row and give feedback the the talents in said row that need it. (the ones that don't get feedback I think are fine/in a good place.)

15: Eye of the Tiger doesn't heal or do damage enough (mostly heal) to be taken over either of the other 2. This is mostly a numbers thing so not much else to say. Other 2 are fine

30: Talent row is fine, lots of different choices and all have their play style/use

45: Energizing Elixir is straight up not needed in just about any situation. with the way the mastery is now we are never going to need chi on the spot or energy on the spot. other 2 are fine.

60: Dizzying Kicks you could argue would be useful in slowing some add that needs to be slowed or PvP but honestly we have Disable to do that, feels like a waste of a slot to me.

75: I've already gone over this row above so I'll just say that Healing Elixir doesn't heal enough to even be noticeable and the other 2 are situational at best, could use a buff in #'s across this row if not at least make one of them baseline to fix above's defensive issue.

90: This row is fine, good diversity here but if I had my way Id make Xuen baseline for WW but that's not really a concern considering the problems stated above are far more important.

100:Chi Orbit Man this spell adds no interaction and no control (I'll give it its animation is cool tho) it should be redesigned like SEF was. Other 2 talents are fine this tier but Chi Orbit brings me to my final section.

Suggestions:

Other than the things I've said above about needing more baseline defense and the rotation being here are the suggestions to fix said problems.

First off, Defense is low WAY too low the defensive's that are in the PvP tree should not be there Fortifying Elixir should be baseline... that or Whirling kicks in some shape or another. WW simply CANT survive...PERIOD. Once Karma is gone there's NOTHING in our power to save out asses but run... run as fast as we can away... that to me doesn't fit the "class fantasy" of WW monks, after all it reads "A martial artist without peer who pummels foes with hands and fists." not PART 2 BELOW...





"A martial artist without peer who pummels foes with hands and fists unless Karma is down, insteadthey run from a fight." adding 1 (or both) of those talents (or an ew defensive for all I are) to WW would increase survivablity.. not to make them good.. but to make them EVEN with the rest of the classes...

2 thing here is 2 birds with 1 stone and it all revolves around Chi Orbit. Now I'm not sayingthis change will make the over simplified rotation perfect but it would be a welcome start and a talent that those who want a challenge to pick. This idea also brings back a Psudo Chi Explosion which i'll explain why.

Make Chi Orbit have 4 charges stored, hva it not on the global CD and have them passivly float around you (they dont explode on impact ot anything anymore passievly) Instead have it so that if you press the button on your action bars (remember off global CD) that it would empower your next ability you use to do bonus damage, also do a small aoe splash (aka psudo chi explosion) AND ignore the mastery for that spell only. Put a decent recharge time on each Chi Orbit orb... say 45-1min CD. This isnt my idea entirely I saw it somewhere (cant remember where but if anyone does let me know i'll edit the name here) all I did was expand on it for it to make sense as a full on dps/rotational mechanic. adding this would make the rotation more complex for those who want it to be, keeps the flow thing Blizzard wants, and if you dont want to use it you have other simple options.

This concludes my feedback for Windwalker Monk, thank you all for the read (especially you Blizzard employee #1456 stuck reading fourms) and I'm open to feedback.

[Lucrece]

I always advocated Chi Orbit be given the Aurelion Sol (champ from LoL with orbiting stars he damages with) treatment where you get the passive orbiting projectiles but can use an active of that passive ability to empower it for some time to do extra damage and increase its radius.

Chi Orbit could be the same. Passive as it is, with draining either energy or Chi to empower its orbit (make orbs appear more offten and increase their radius of aoe). Voila, it's interactive now.

But we're like 2 months away from release so I expect nothing. The past 2 months have been miserly changes across builds.

[Notter]

That last part about the spheres reminds me of ragnrok online, monks also had "chi spheres" which you had to summon in order to execute certain spells.
they were a resource there, but it's kinda the same as empowering abilities.


But yeah... at this point, they'll be crazy to try and change anything concerning mechanics, and they've already stated that they are not gonna do that.
just tweak numbers.

[Babylonius]

Damiand, you're massively oversimplifying your discussion about the rotation. If you just spam TP/BoK between spells and just "hit random buttons" then you're not going to be getting the most out of the spec. There is the possibility for quite a bit of nuances and traps depending on how things are tuned. We just don't know how they will pan out till we get some numbers tuning. There will be plenty of explaining to do when people are using things incorrectly.

I will never understand the issue with Chi Orbit, just seems like it's popular to hate on it. I don't see the same complaints for Eye of the Tiger or Ascension or Power Strikes, that they're passives. Even Xuen is practically a passive, one button press every few minutes isn't super "active". WDP and Serenity are going to be better in nearly every situation once you learn to use them. I don't see the problem with an ability that players can take if they want one less thing to worry about while they learn other stuff, provided it does les overall damage than the active options, which it definitely does.

[Jaigar]

I was a little disappointed in not being able to use a 2h weapon on the PTR. I went to a target dummy in Garrison and and went WTF when I couldn't Fist of Fury it with my 2h weapon. I have 2 730 2h weapons, but only 1 730 1h weapon (took from kormok).

WW is looking pretty good to me. I've mained spriest for TBC, wrath, and WoD, and I was thinking about maining it for legion but I think I'll just go WW. My spriest is better geared (roughly 8 ilvl higher) and does about 20-25% more damage than my monk on the PTR, but I take that with a grain of salt. I'll probably switch to WW because Spriest feels really gimmicky at times. The insanity mini-game happens way too often and seems like a nuisance (especially if you grab Legacy of the Void).

WW monk rotation seems simple, but I think there's a lot of room to improve play. I'm not too worried about getting bored with the rotation.

[Damaind]

Damiand, you're massively oversimplifying your discussion about the rotation. If you just spam TP/BoK between spells and just "hit random buttons" then you're not going to be getting the most out of the spec. There is the possibility for quite a bit of nuances and traps depending on how things are tuned. We just don't know how they will pan out till we get some numbers tuning. There will be plenty of explaining to do when people are using things incorrectly.

I will never understand the issue with Chi Orbit, just seems like it's popular to hate on it. I don't see the same complaints for Eye of the Tiger or Ascension or Power Strikes, that they're passives. Even Xuen is practically a passive, one button press every few minutes isn't super "active". WDP and Serenity are going to be better in nearly every situation once you learn to use them. I don't see the problem with an ability that players can take if they want one less thing to worry about while they learn other stuff, provided it does les overall damage than the active options, which it definitely does.

Regardless of "the possibility for quite a bit of nuances and traps depending on how things are tuned." it will take max a week to sort these out not even that. the main point of my argument is that there is no room to GROW as a player after learning the mastery, 14 months of the same rotation? Now normally id be okay with this if we had meaningful talents that changed how we play that we could pick and choose from, now there are talents that we can pick and choose from for certain fights like aoe or single target...but like you said they are basically passives. A well designed talent for example is:

Breath of Sindragosa on DKs... its optional and if you pick it then you have to think when to use it, have to pool resource to use it, and have to have the know how on how to sustain it. At most in our talents we get another button to press when its off CD...no thought no game play change, the only thinking in it is comes from the boss fight itself.

There is no learning curve. The -only- time you will ever be lower in dps is if you use the same ability a second time in a row and realistically there are only ever two abilities that line up under that. There's no curve to learn because... There's no reason not to hit every single button on the bar, as they become available. Short of, maybe, holding SEF for a specific add heavy or burst phase, the actual disparity between monks playing 'well' and not is going to be fairly small as the mechanics currently stand.

Which would be fine on it's own if there was room for the amazing monks to stand out... But there's really no place with the tools that are currently available to make that happen.

EDIT: Look i'm not asking for an overhaul I like the new rotation a lot actually, it feels fluid and nice... all I'm asking for is a few talents that actually make me think about my actions. before you say that there are talents that make you think about your action let me just say.. that for me there isn't, maybe for you or someone else but none of them make me(and I know alot of others from the talking ive been doing with people) think for more than 2 seconds.

[Lucrece]

Quite frankly, I'm completely fine with passives and Chi Orbit. I don't get why everything has to be a game of micromanagement and multiple weak auras and macros just to play a spec well. People play a game for various reasons, and difficulty/multitasking/jugglinh UI is just not everyone's cup of tea. Why should they be penalized significantly in output?

Fact is, if you make an active significantly superior to the alternatives, then it's not a talent option anymore, it's imperative to take it in any raid environment. I DO NOT want flat out superior talent options, because it makes for a cookie cutter build with a single build path. It's just bad policy to build in inherent superiority in talents if we assume everyone will eventually master the active ones.

I also don't think it's as simple as TP>BoK simply because combo breaker will cause a Chi Surplus if you're not weaving in additional spenders, especially if you get unlucky with multiple combo breaker buffs, which at this point I deeply dislike as it makes you sit on downtime waiting for abilities to come off cd instead of pressing your BoK or TP because you'll either over cap on chi, lose out on mastery, or overcap on energy.

I DO wish Chi Wave at least prioritized its healing bounces on the player if he's wounded.

[Deleted]

I was thinking of playing a monk for legion, windwalker pve of course.

ARe there any like very detailed youtube vids so far?

[Deleted]

Yes, there are some quite detailed videos out there. The one I found take the most time to explain all the abilities/talents/artifact is Finalbosstv's 2nd pass at windwalker monk. It's quite long though, around 45 minutes, so you know.

I've mained a windwalker all of Warlords and even though he might be wrong about certain stuff, he's done quite a good job at summarizing the spec imo.

The details does not deal with any stat priorities or anything like that, as it is too soon to be looking at that right now. I know Hinalover is doing a lot of testing, but I wouldnt look at stat prio's until at the very earliest in the prepatch tbh.

There will most likely also be a prepatch stat prio and an early Legion stat prio.

[Babylonius]

There may be nuances we don't discover for weeks, it won't take days. Things like SEF needing their own RSK and TP buffs in WoD took weeks before someone discovered

The spec is enormously more straightforward, but it's not static. With gear it will get much faster, and with speed comes difficulty. There are also interactions with legendaries and tier bonuses that can/will change things.

I was thinking of playing a monk for legion, windwalker pve of course.

ARe there any like very detailed youtube vids so far?

There are a few videos on YouTube, should be an easy search. Most are from players with very little experience on WW, so take them with a grain of salt. We're rolling out posts about legion on my site, link below.

[Methosmv]

Ok, have a 732 WW monk and have been messing around in PTR some... Other than the 10fps I"m dealing with in there, I'm curious as to the dps most are getting in there. It seems that no matter which talents I use, or what I do I'm going to avg about 42-47k depending on dungeon. There are of course spikes up to 70-90k etc. I know everyone is checking out things and trying new stuff but curious as to what my damage is compared to others. It seems that I'm right there with most of the other dps that's similar in dps mostly with a few exceptions but curious still as I like to try to maximize what I do.

Thanks in advance.

[Crusch]

Does anybody have an idea about which professions are the best for windwalkers in legion?

I currently have none and I have nothing to do in wow anyway so might as well get some professions.

[Babylonius]

Does anybody have an idea about which professions are the best for windwalkers in legion?

I currently have none and I have nothing to do in wow anyway so might as well get some professions.

This has been a very popular question recent and I"m not entirely sure why. Professions will have little to no effect (emphasis on "no effect" most likely) on DPS or any spec's ability to perform. Pick whatever one you want.

There is a Q/A upcoming soon that should speak on professions to clarify anything, but the current sense is that it doesn't matter.

[Damaind]

This has been a very popular question recent and I"m not entirely sure why. Professions will have little to no effect (emphasis on "no effect" most likely) on DPS or any spec's ability to perform. Pick whatever one you want.

There is a Q/A upcoming soon that should speak on professions to clarify anything, but the current sense is that it doesn't matter.

The only profession that benefits raiding is Inscription now with the tomes to respec and what not.

[Deleted]

Is the current behavior on PTR of SEF the intended behavior? I notice when there are more than 2 extra targets the clones are jumping around all over the place, for the entire duration of SEF. This is seems bad for autoattack uptime but good for building SCK stacks.

On the last boss of the Everbloom I noticed reaching 10 stacks of SCK while I was simply tunneling the boss intending to do single target dmg, due to this behavior of the clones automatically jumping around attacking stuff. If this turns out to be optimal it would reduce the skillcap of WW AoE, but on the other hand the mechanic is pretty clunky so I'm not sure if that would be such a loss.

[Notter]

Fact is, if you make an active significantly superior to the alternatives, then it's not a talent option anymore, it's imperative to take it in any raid environment. I DO NOT want flat out superior talent options, because it makes for a cookie cutter build with a single build path. It's just bad policy to build in inherent superiority in talents if we assume everyone will eventually master the active ones.

The way i see it, active SHOULD be stronger, since it's situational.

Active means you have more control, which means you have a chance to fuck up, as in, activating it at a bad time.
passives are out of your control, and are simpler, which means you'll probably get the same results no matter what.

[Creatinebrah]

Any one have logs from their mythic dungeons or from the recent raid tests?

[Deleted]

Finnaly got to try out WW on PTR, even though I was skeptical at first (Sef changes for example), I am really suprised in a positive way. It's so much fun to play and they actually fixed alot in the playstyle. The thing I like the most about WW is that it's much more focused. You can really get into a flow and abilities like DWP,SEF and ToD feels fun to press because of their uniqueness and combo's/synergies you can make with other abilities. Monk has been my main since MoP and I was doubting between DH/Rogue/Monk but I'm now for sure monk will be the go-to class. Pre-patch can't come soon enough. AND it still requires skill to be good since you need to know what you're going to press and plan ahead!

[Lucrece]

The way i see it, active SHOULD be stronger, since it's situational.

Active means you have more control, which means you have a chance to fuck up, as in, activating it at a bad time.
passives are out of your control, and are simpler, which means you'll probably get the same results no matter what.

You could say the same of tigereye brew. It's easy to fuck up. But that didn't entitle Windwalkers to do more damage than other more passive classes.

The truth is, anything in your control is something you can eventually master. Doesn't matter if you can fuck it up if in a week or two with habit you already eliminate the fuck-up's.

Then you have a single viable talent and two dead ones. I don't want to be told by any raid leader than under no circumstances should I be using Chi Orbit or Ascension or what have you that happens to be passive because it's significantly worse performance.

1-2% difference I can tolerate, once we get to 5%+ the idea of choice is gone.

[Babylonius]

Is the current behavior on PTR of SEF the intended behavior? I notice when there are more than 2 extra targets the clones are jumping around all over the place, for the entire duration of SEF. This is seems bad for autoattack uptime but good for building SCK stacks.

On the last boss of the Everbloom I noticed reaching 10 stacks of SCK while I was simply tunneling the boss intending to do single target dmg, due to this behavior of the clones automatically jumping around attacking stuff. If this turns out to be optimal it would reduce the skillcap of WW AoE, but on the other hand the mechanic is pretty clunky so I'm not sure if that would be such a loss.

That behavior is intended. They don't lose anything during travel time, the travel time is purely visual, not functional. Their first priority with multiple targets is to get you as many SCK stacks as possible.