Mechanically how is WW playing right now?

[Jmarsh56]

I am entertaining several classes as possible main raiding classes for Legion and I am curious, those of you with beta access how is WW feeling right now? I don't care about numbers and such as those can and will be adjusted. I am mainly concerned with the feel of the spec.

[Gibgarde]

It almost feels like a different class. I didn't care for it in MoP too much, but I love it so much in Legion that I'm considering maining a WW monk. Doing good dps feels rewarding, moreso with this spec than other specs I've played in the beta (mostly assassin rogue an feral druid). I do feel like it'll be a "love it or hate it" type deal, but personally, I can't stop playing it.

My damage seems...fair. I do roughly the same dps, if not a little more, than most people I get in pug dungeons. It's fast, it's fun, it's rewarding, and it's new. I'm hyped about it.

[Felancelan]

It's fun, new mastery makes your fingers dance and haste makes rsk & fof cooldowns go faster. Feels really fluid.

[Gorlab]

I don't know how I feel about it yet. The reality is there is so much reason to not hit the same ability twice in a row that you definitely don't want to but because there are only 2 abilities that don't have a cooldown this turns kind of silly. It almost feels to me like playing a fixed rotation like I did with my DK back in Wrath.

[Dragore]

I find it kind of meh. So far on the beta I've played an Enhance shaman, DH, and WW monk. Rotation wise, WW just seem so steady and fixed and not really in a good way to me. Theres always something to press but it's just underwhelming compared to enhance and DH where theres so much more variety in the abilities they use. Was kind of hoping they would adopt more of the Diablo3 monk for legion.

[Babylonius]

Mechanically WW feels very paced, and a little slow, due to low haste levels. You should be able to plan ahead easily, without so many procs that can throw things off. There are also many buttons in the rotation, so they can cover a wide variety of situations.

[Jmarsh56]

Mechanically WW feels very paced, and a little slow, due to low haste levels. You should be able to plan ahead easily, without so many procs that can throw things off. There are also many buttons in the rotation, so they can cover a wide variety of situations.

That is a problem that has plagued WW since its inception though right? Kind of like fire Mage and fury warrior "suffering" at low crit levels until they get better gear. As you get better gear the rotation will speed up as a whole right? Faster energy regen, lower GCDs(??) and shorter cooldowns on rotational abilities(??).

[Felancelan]

I find it kind of meh. So far on the beta I've played an Enhance shaman, DH, and WW monk. Rotation wise, WW just seem so steady and fixed and not really in a good way to me. Theres always something to press but it's just underwhelming compared to enhance and DH where theres so much more variety in the abilities they use. Was kind of hoping they would adopt more of the Diablo3 monk for legion.

I can't say I've played enough enhancement to talk about it but, dh felt too spam my for me. I do think monk will change the most from gear though.

For the OP, I would look into what off spec you'd like to play, and how the artifact traits change your play style ww starts off slow will ramp up alot during the expansion. I do think legion is an expansion that blizzard wants to push players being a class not a spec. We are not windwalkers, we are not brewmasters, we are not mistweavers, we are monk, or something like that.

[Babylonius]

That is a problem that has plagued WW since its inception though right? Kind of like fire Mage and fury warrior "suffering" at low crit levels until they get better gear. As you get better gear the rotation will speed up as a whole right? Faster energy regen, lower GCDs(??) and shorter cooldowns on rotational abilities(??).

Its a problem that plagues just about any energy class, low haste means low energy regen means slower game play at low gear levels. Currently Haste is the most valuable stat in Legion, so with it, energy will regen faster and abilities will have shorter cooldowns. WW has a base GCD of 1s, it doesn't get faster than that.

[Conjugate]

Considering that secondary stats scale very little with gear in legion and that haste is not even close to being our best stat I really can't understand the "gameplay will speed up a lot" reasoning.

I see the basic ST rotation described as "paced", "fluid", w.e and I don't really understand if this is your way of nicely saying that it's very basic and with no depth:/

Current ST rotation is just using everything on cooldown while not being tempted to press the noob-trap(bok) when you have nothing to do unless you really have to.

It's very unrewarding smart play and pretty much makes priority addon be all you really need to play optimally.

That was stable ST rotation. What about priority targetting? Our on demand burst pretty much depends on keeping ToD and all our cd skills(rsk/fof/sotw/..) off cooldown, pooling resources is nearly meaningless because of how ineffective an extra bok or three on priority target are compared to simply using all the cd-stuff on it. This style of on demand burst is extremely(yes) bad for progress and such because your ongoing damage is greatly punished for those delays, and your on demand burst will be extremely poor otherwise.

As for aoe we have a lot of options, yeah, some of them seem quite fun, some don't, some are practical in a hectic raid encounter, some aren't, but we will probably be ok on that part because with such a versatile aoe toolkit it is very unlikely everything will suck.

Currently apart from the chance of being highly overtuned I can't really see why windwalker will be a very strong contender for a melee spot in raids, but if you are looking for a pretty basic spec that is easy to master without too much hassle it might be a good choice

[Tehterokkar]

I have a very strong feeling WW will be played by an addon that tells you what to use for Single-target situations.

[Deleted]

I find WW monks on live really meh, but the beta WW monks are pretty fun to play, and I don't know why, since I feel like it kept a lot of it's abilities but it's still... different. It might be that you have a little more to play with

[Gemini Soul]

With some haste it handles really well, i run Ascension and i alternate between TP and BoK so i don't loose out on any mastery bonus damage. TP then BoK leaves me with 1 chi, so i do that alot but when i see SoTW/RSK/FoF coming off CD soon i let the chi bank instead of firing off a BoK so i can fire off them as soon as they are off CD and as soon as i do i can TP BoK TP again then hit another one that came off CD with out energy or chi capping.

For example all my stuff is on CD and im about to energy cap, TP into BoK into TP into BoK leaves me with 2 chi to burn that i can use on either SoTW/RSK or pool some energy and TP into FoF or into BoK into TP into W/E comes off CD. With the extra chi cap with Ascension and its increased regen comes in real handy.

TLDR:If you ever played rogue/feral where pooling energy is key to maximize DPS, WW takes it a step further and adds Chi to the mix also.

[Conjugate]

While it might feel "nice" to you to do all those bok/tp alternations to generate chi in a fluid rotation, if nothing changes then it's reallllly not gonna happen. You simply don't generate enough chi to supplement that playstyle while using our cooldown-y chi spenders whenever they are ready. These calculations have already been made before so I'm not gonna repeat it, but just take one minute of a fight, see how much energy you have during that time, from which you can get how much chi you can generate in 1min. Deduce the amounts required to use rsk/fof/sotw(especially with 2set t19) during that minute, and... oops? your suggested playstyle brings you SO high above that number that it inevitably means lot of cd delays and hence not good if rsk will be better than bok per chi spent(which is almost certainly gonna be the case).

Also, energizing brew is superior to ascension in every aspect now that we don't have chiexplosion-combo breaker to worry about.

[Babylonius]

Yeah, you'll have about 4 or 5 BoK worth of extra chi every minute, so don't expect you're going to be spamming it, its one of the traps for newer players.

[Deleted]

Personally I absolutely hate it especially after playing the current WoD WW for a long time. Its really slow, your choices is basically press your hardest hitting ability when its off cooldown and the "priority list" of abilities to hit is really easy to see as the the stronger the ability the longer the cooldown usually. Now 1 thing I havent been able to test much of but i am really excited about is the new way SCK and SEF works. I am a fan of the current SEF but this changes can make us seem like absolute monsters in burst aoe situations. This can make me fear however that we will become below average on anything that doesnt have burst aoe. And after playing other classes it also seems like many of those can also fill that burst aoe role(arms warrior and unholy dk comes to mind).

[Babylonius]

Personally I absolutely hate it especially after playing the current WoD WW for a long time. Its really slow, your choices is basically press your hardest hitting ability when its off cooldown and the "priority list" of abilities to hit is really easy to see as the the stronger the ability the longer the cooldown usually. Now 1 thing I havent been able to test much of but i am really excited about is the new way SCK and SEF works. I am a fan of the current SEF but this changes can make us seem like absolute monsters in burst aoe situations. This can make me fear however that we will become below average on anything that doesnt have burst aoe. And after playing other classes it also seems like many of those can also fill that burst aoe role(arms warrior and unholy dk comes to mind).

You have to keep in mind that current WW with HFC gear has quite a lot of haste and many many many procs that increase how fast things are now. Going from that to undergeared template toons on Beta will be a huge adjustment because of how low their haste is and all the trinkets, tier, combo breaker proc fiesta being gone.

Any energy based class feels slow at the start of an expansion, moreso when you compare them to super geared toons from previously.

[chaarrllee3000]

All we do is run, run, heal in arena. LOL.

https://youtu.be/wPDTnnyPB4M?t=3m11s

Starting at 3min 11sec in this youtube arena video above, you can see that basically all we do in arena is run run heal.

His partner (the rogue) was basically doing everything. The rogue did most of the damage than him.

I think Windwalker needs another defensive ability. Because most people know about Karma now. They know that when the windwalker karmas, you just stop attacking him and wait until his Karma ends, and then go back on him and burst him down lol.

But what we lack in defensives, we make up for in mobility. Windwalker has pretty good mobility, I guess which is why I still play my little windwalker monk.

I wanna be able to take a hit and not run lol.

I will just copy and paste what he said in his video:

"I would rather stay in a fight then have to run away. I really don't have a choice if I want to live because Monks are seriously lacking in defense at the moment on alpha. Really our only defensive is our ability to kite which really does not fit the fantasy of the class at all if all I can do is stun, burst and then kite rather than staying in a fight. That is my opinion and I hope that they change it going into the expac."