[Windwalker] 6.2 ChiTorpedo general use guide

[pandanaconda]

Hey there,

initially didn't intend to post about this since I thought it would probably confuse people more than anything, and would barely help them. However, I've received an increasing amount of questions regarding the use of Chi Torpedo as a windwalker, so instead of answering separately to everyone, decided to make a general thread with enough informations about it.
Credits go straight to Conjugate and Bastian as usual, since only cooperation allowed us to gather enough information to make the most out of this spell back then. It was great working on that with the two of you.

Any simcraft done here was done on 30 000 to 50 000 iterations, and corresponded to many previous simulations.

Why use this meaningless spell?

(and some history of it)

You might have gotten used to the pityful chitorpedo we used to have back in 6.0 or before. however, in 6.1 a number of hybrid windwalker talents received a significant buff (Zen sphere, Chi burst, Chi torpedo).
This sure didn't go unnoticed: people changed their lvl 30 talent habits a lot, and Chi Torpedo's damage was increased by 150%, making it extremely relevant both in pvp for its uncanny burst, healing and extra range, and in pve for burst AoE situations like Beastlord Darmac and Operator Thogar. Its interaction with the glyph of victory roll made it crazy good in some of these scenarios.
Simultaneously, people realized that this sole interaction meant they could dismiss their healer in Challenge mode and replace him with a Brewmaster/Windwalker spamming Chi Torpedos with enough resets. This became an overwhelming strategy in 6.2 with mirror of the blademaster.

However, chi torpedo's damage being reduced by our strongest spell, Storm, earth, and fire, made it very unpopular in cleave/AoE situations where SEF was abused.
Back then, I noted that over the course of 3 minutes, chi torpedo added up somewhere close to as much damage as a full xuen, the go to talent for single target, would be able to deal. However, you needed the fight to last about 3 or 6 minutes (the worst kill timers for Xuen use) for it to compete with it, and it was just extra trouble and a loss of mobility for no gain.


Back in August, during Hellfire Citadel progression, that topic of torpedo's damage adding up to a respectable amount came up when we were trying to see how much we could exploit Hurricane strike and soul capacitor (turns out, we can't.) A few days later, Conjugate came back to me with tons of technicalities about how much we could push torpedo's damage by fitting 3 during opening Soul Kappacitor/ring, adding up to crazy amounts of damage.
Back then, with 720-730 ilvl on Mythic progression, we found out Chi Torpedo would beat Xuen for our gear lvls on kill timers between 2 and 3 minutes. We also found out that as our gear progressed and our ring ilvl's increased, the strength of this would raise dramatically.

How does it work mechanically?

You've probably heard of this on plenty of different threads, when you where going for Mannoroth mythic progress and asked what to do or in some pvp windwalker thread, but you are not forced to follow Chi Torpedo's animation for its full duration. You can cancel this animation by jumping as you cast chi torpedo, making the roll way shorter. This interaction is the same that allowed us to abuse roll+pvp 2 part during Highmaul Progression. This is also the same way PVP players burst with chi torpedo without moving.

What effect doest this have? Well, just like roll, ChiTorpedo is not on the GCD (global cooldown.) Therefore, you are allowed to cast a spell, torpedo, and still be able to cast a second spell one second after the first one. If you follow chitorpedo through its whole animation, you'll lose more than a second between cast, but with the jump you'll be able to chain casts.

A direct result of this is that when playing perfectly with low latency, you can fit 3 chi torpedos during your opening burst without changing your opening rotation at all.
In a perfect situation, you could do:
0:00 Rising sun Kick+Chi Brew
0:01 Tiger Palm
0:02 Blackout Kick+Chi Brew
0:03 Tigereye Brew+Fists of Fury
0:07 Arcane Torrent, Serenity+blackout kick+ jump + chi torpedo
0:08 Rising sun Kick + jump + chi torpedo
0:09 Blackout Kick + jump + chi torpedo +

This allows you to fill 3 Chi Torpedos in first soul capacitor without even delaying this one, during opening ring, without delaying any other spell. That alone is strong enough to justify most uses of Chi Torpedo.

Aren't you just wasting your time for 0.2k dps? Is farm this boring?

Well, one of the reasons I didn't want to post this at first is that I don't want this thread to become a list of people saying "I have 2300 multistrike, 713 ilvl and a 753 ring, should I go chi torpedo on a 2 minutes and 26 seconds fight?".
I also didn't want to mislead people into using this for fights they are progressing on. Performing chi torpedo's rotation is within anyone's grasp, however it will probably take your focus at first and I don't want angry raid leaders knocking at my door saying I've killed their raiders because they fell off some platform or went for a dive in Gorefiend's pool.

What kind of fights can you use this on? Allmost every fight is the answer. I usually read some people saying stuff like "if fight is 40 seconds long then go for Xuen" or "with more targets up you want to use SEF so Chi Torpedo is bad". I'll do a fight by fight analysis later, but just to scratch those thoughts:
Chi torpedo, with high enough gear, beats invoke Xuen on any fight length. There, I said it.

How about some numbers and simcraft for that:

actions.opener=tigereye_brew,if=buff.tigereye_brew_use.down&buff.tigereye_brew.stack>=9
actions.opener+=/blood_fury,if=buff.tigereye_brew_use.up
actions.opener+=/berserking,if=buff.tigereye_brew_use.up
actions.opener+=/chi_torpedo,if=buff.tigereye_brew_use.up
actions.opener+=/arcane_torrent,if=buff.tigereye_brew_use.up&chi.max-chi>=1
actions.opener+=/fists_of_fury,if=buff.tiger_power.remains>cast_time&debuff.rising_sun_kick.remains>cast_ti me&buff.serenity.up&buff.serenity.remains<1.5
actions.opener+=/tiger_palm,if=buff.tiger_power.remains<2
actions.opener+=/use_item,name=maalus_the_blood_drinker
actions.opener+=/rising_sun_kick
actions.opener+=/blackout_kick,if=chi.max-chi<=1&cooldown.chi_brew.up|buff.serenity.up
actions.opener+=/chi_brew,if=chi.max-chi>=2
actions.opener+=/serenity,if=chi.max-chi<=2
actions.opener+=/jab,if=chi.max-chi>=2&!buff.serenity.up

actions.st=blackout_kick,if=set_bonus.tier18_2pc=1&buff.combo_breaker_bok.react
actions.st+=/tiger_palm,if=set_bonus.tier18_2pc=1&buff.combo_breaker_tp.react&buff.combo_breaker_tp.rem ains<=2
actions.st+=/rising_sun_kick
actions.st+=/blackout_kick,if=buff.combo_breaker_bok.react|buff.serenity.up
actions.st+=/tiger_palm,if=buff.combo_breaker_tp.react&buff.combo_breaker_tp.remains<=2
actions.st+=/chi_wave,if=energy.time_to_max>2&buff.serenity.down
actions.st+=/chi_burst,if=energy.time_to_max>2&buff.serenity.down
actions.st+=/zen_sphere,cycle_targets=1,if=energy.time_to_max>2&!dot.zen_sphere.ticking&buff.serenity.d own
actions.st+=/chi_torpedo,if=buff.tigereye_brew_use.up
actions.st+=/blackout_kick,if=chi.max-chi<2
actions.st+=/expel_harm,if=chi.max-chi>=2&health.percent<95
actions.st+=/jab,if=chi.max-chi>=2


What are those? Those are allmost the base APL from simcraft for serenity+chi brew single target. I changed the chi torpedo line to make simcraft use it whenever Tiger Eye Brew is up, and added a line to use it in the opener as soon as Tiger Eye Brew is up.
Currently, Simcraft allows any number of chi torpedos to be cast per second. This is skewed, however the opener I gave as an example before proves that all my chi torpedos can be fit into the same conditions (soul capacitor up+tiger eye brew+maalus up) therefore it doesn't change anything in the end, damage would have been the same.
Why didn't I do a better APL? Xuen doesn't benefit really from any APL enhancements. You cast it and it does its full damage during blood lust+agility potion. However, chi torpedo benefits from things like "Don't use your torpedos untill either you get to 3 stacks or Soul Kappacitor procs and you can dump stacks for big chunks of damage." Therefore, I stayed with the most basic simCraft APL (action priority list) and made Chi Torpedo useage as simple as possible.
Anyone could copy those two simple APL changes in their simcraft and see for themselves how this affect their talent choices.


What were the results? This is on my highly geared toon, running serenity, chi brew, chi wave, soul capacitor and Sacred Draenic Incense:

ChiTorpedo, 20 seconds: 374469 dps
Xuen, 20 seconds: 349872 dps

ChiTorpedo, 40 seconds: 259713 dps
Xuen, 40 seconds: 246956 dps

ChiTorpedo, 3 minutes: 142877 dps
Xuen, 3 minutes: 135607 dps


20 seconds: This is right as the ring exploded, with this simple APL the opening burst is a bit weaker than what you could achieve on live. However, it is apparent that with that high of a soul capacitor, you gain 25k dps over this period of time, aka 500k more damage than Invoke Xuen on these 20 seconds. That's huge, specially considering Xuen at this gear lvl deals less than 900k damage over its full 40 seconds duration.

40 seconds: This is the point where Xuen should be the strongest, right at the end of its full duration. Funnily enough, it's still 12k dps behind ChiTorpedo here, AKA close to 500k behind. This is hard to point out in logs because most of ChiTorpedo's strength lies in its crazy interaction with Soul Kappacitor and Maalus.

3 minutes: This is, on the other hand, the weak point on Xuen, where it has the lowest uptime. We saw that torpedo was better on first 40 seconds, but the few charges you gain after that are "extra" and allow it to get even further ahead from Xuen. The total difference of damage by then is above 1.25 Millions damage, more than two free touches of death.



This is, of course, at max gear lvl. However I think most people who could be interested in using this for single target are allready pretty high geared. Keep in mind we made our first uses of this talent back when Conjugate and I were not on Mannoroth yet and Bastian had not killed Archimonde, around 725 ilvl with low ilvl rings.
You are free to use the APLs offered or do your own to sim for yourself. I might do it for averaged Heroic Geared character later on.

If someone wants to doubt those sims, you are free to check for yourself since its a very simple change in APL. Proper use of the talent/the opener make it even stronger.

What do I use ChiTorpedo on then?

Now that we've covered to some extent how strong torpedo can be, I'll do a quick list of HFC bosses with wether or not it should be used.
Some might say this will disagree a lot with my previous work on talents to use for HFC. That is indeed true, and I have never trully followed all the talents I advise there, however I've allways believed the advice I gave was the proper one for people progressing through those fights. Giving up mobility and focus is not the smartest move on progression.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1815383-WW-in-HFC-Tips-and-tricks!


Plebfire Assault: This boss is boring, however one of the best way to burst AoE as a windwalker remains to have ChiTorpedo. Glyph of victory roll mandatory.

Iron reaver: This is the perfect example of a single target fight, which in some cases can last less than a minute, where ChiTorpedo will be able to beat Xuen. If you time Soul Capacitor delay well, you can get a torpedo or two to cleave on Volatile Bombs near the boss, gaining uncanny amounts of damage.

Kromrok: Allthough the dream of getting freed before everyone with Touch of Death then rolling over hands will never really happen, Chi Torpedo is still a better choice than Xuen for pure single target damage on boss here if you can give up the mobility.

Hellfire High Council: A fight where SEF has an important role and therefore Chi Torpedo should be weaker than Xuen... But then again, its 45% weaker than usually while you're hitting 2 targets, so its still doing 110% of its damage. Xuen's crackling hits two targets for some time, but he's down for most of Fel Rage. If you're looking at ranking, Chi Torpedo's burst during Fel Rage is actually better, and the single target damage of Chi Torpedo for the remainder of the fight makes it compete with Xuen.

Kilrogg: A fight where Chi Torpedo can shine. As explained in my other guide, Chi Torpedo+victory roll is enough to solo all the adds in visions of death once you've cleared 6-8 stacks. Otherwise, a single target/2 targets stacked fight, keep your torpedos for soul capacitor/when add is up outside of visions.

Gorefiend: Actually a fight where we cannot hit the hitbox, ChiTorpedo is pretty terrible here, don't take it.

Iskar: Chi Torpedo gives the best mix of Single Target burst on Phantasmal Resonance + AoE burst. Want to top damage on resonance while doing fine overall? Forget SEF, go ChiExplosion+ChiTorpedo+victory roll+ChiBurst, Fists of Fury, Touch of death, all of that will allow for some Crazy AoE burst and topping the priority target damage.

Socrethar: Single target fight, Chi Torpedo wins, plus you get to keep 2/3 stacks for excellent burst on Dominators.

Velahri: Unlike what people think, this is a great fight for Chi Torpedo once mastered. Xuen will not shine even though this is mostly 2 targets cleave. Chi Torpedo during phase 2 is VERY tricky, during phase one too if you fat finger it often, the aura might wreck you. Other than that, even with SEF up Chi Torpedo hits like a truck, and having 3 stacks to dump at the end of phase 3 feels godlike (or during a soul capacitor).

Fel Lord Zakuun: Single target fight, Chi Torpedo wins. Pay attention: Zakuun's torpedo hitbox is REALLY small, you need to stand right on top of him making some targeting annoying. This also means a long torpedo during phase 2 (when he cleaves) will result in you dying.

Xhul'orac: Chi Torpedo can perform decently/very good here. You get 3 stacks every 45 seconds, aka every other imp wave. You need to be a master of juggling between tiger eye brews and SEF uptimes to perform it though.

Mannoroth: The fight on which everyone will agree ChiTorpedo shines. Imps are up everytime you reach 3 stacks of torpedo, they are stacked up perfectly, you can do last torpedo a bit late to fish for glyph of victory roll procs.

Archimonde: Decent fight for chi torpedo. If you're running it on mythic, of course it can be tricky/risky to use it on boss phase 3. However, you can allways stack torpedo up to 3 for 45 seconds and dump them when you get a chance. This allows for crazy burst on Sources of Chaos/infernos compared to what you might be used to. Beware of falling down obviously.





Here we go; I'll be checking in to make sure this thread answers all questions you might have on Windwalker use of Chi Torpedo. Some parts (like the APL for Chi Torpedo) can seem very simplified here, but the point was to prove how little you need to do with high gear to get a damage increase out of Chi Torpedo. I consider this to be a great pick up for the lvl 90 talents on 11 out of 13 mythic fights. It is not required though.

Thanks again to Bastian for discussing this a lot, bringing new ideas/uses whenever we felt done with it, and pushing this spell to its limit. Thanks to Conjugate who I think was the first to acknowledge how strong the interaction of this spell with Soul Capacitor/Maalus could get. It might seem normal by now, but early in august no one knew exactly how this ring was working and using Chi Torpedo on single target was enough to get you considered insane.



EDIT: Hinalover gave some of his time to update SimCraft with APL changes and introducing a 1 second delay between two torpedos. As of today (monday, april 11th 2016) I cannot say for sure when this will be updated but the SimCraft part will probably be something you can forget soon enough. Thanks again Hina!

[Conjugate]

lol tryhard^^

[Viradiance]

Super interesting. Gonna miss this spell in Legion, though.

[TrollShaman]

well this is an interesting discovery. Sadly playing with ~230 ms (australian playing in the US servers) may not give me much hope with this method I do have one question though: does this mean soul capacitor is required when using Chi Torpedo this way? And to my understanding, the regular 'rotation' with CT would now be ability -> jump -> Chi Torpedo -> another ability, of course saving charges for ring/soulkappa?

[Conjugate]

Since soulcap has the strongest proc, obviously it is especially powerful for that, but this works well with any other trinket as well. I think this playstyle makes the heirloom less potent though because all the rolling might make you lose autoattacks occasionally which means less chance to proc it.

If you are having latency issues and still wanna try it, you can use a keyboard/software macro to make 1 button that does roll+jump together. I tried that in alpha now where I have latency +- like what you describe(280, the horror!) and it worked pretty okay-ish(as much as playing with 280ms can be ok, anyway...)

[pandanaconda]

Yeah as pointed out, but to make it even clearer, what makes Chi Torpedo so powerful is having 3 stacks up for each ring, and being able to stack this ressource for 45 seconds without losing anything, only dumping it when you deal the most damage (Soul Capacitor+Tiger Eye Brew for instance, or adds popping) or when you're about to cap.
This is however not only possible with soul capacitor; I think the sims show that even with the simplest APL (no mention of soul kappacitor, just dumping charges on TEB), you get way more damage than a xuen does, and not only during opening capacitor. You can deduce yourself how strong it can be in other scenarios.

For instance, on high council, pairing it with malicious censer achieves the same goal roughly.

We've discussed keyboard macros a bit, I haven't gotten to using it but Conjugate and many others have confirmed it works very well for pvp/pve uses.

[Deleted]

"Xhul'orac: Chi Torpedo can perform decently/very good here. You get 3 stacks every 45 seconds, aka every other imp wave. You need to be a master of juggling between tiger eye brews and SEF uptimes to perform it though."

While we have killed Xhul before, unfortunately one of our biggest aoe burst guys have stopped playing so much, and we are struggling to burst the imps down. Could you explain what you mean by juggling between teb and sef?
Cancel sef on all things hit teb and triple roll? then get the sef's back up? Also where does fof fit into this? just use it on cd ignoring if imps are up or not?

also, I'm using spinny trinket on the fight, as its good *and easy* aoe for the imps on a rotation. Does chi Torpedo NEED soul Kap? even on a fight where im going to be using sef a large amount? if we are only struggling on the imps dps and i dont care about my overall dps would this be better (again with or with out soul kap)

eu .battle. net/wow/en/character/twisting-nether/Loreleí/advanced -------- My monk. I'm am a bad monk so any other hints on how to use this trick...

Thanks was very interesting read

Edit: I cant post links sorry

[pandanaconda]

Hey there,

indeed I said it could be used on Xhul'Orac, but it's really not worth the focus you need to give it. You would need to juggle perfectly as in cancel SEF every other imp wave, have TeB still up for a few seconds, dump trhee stacks on gripped imps then reapply SEF at a very high speed, reapply TeB/TP/RSK on clones. The loss from canceling SEF is barely made up by the burst you gain.

If you're having issues with imps damage, just go for Rushing Jade Wind, remove glyph of floating butterfly and take glyph of flying fists instead. If played properly, you'll be able to burst imps and stun them with fists of fury on each wave.
If you were going for overall damage, you'd be smashing Fists of Fury on cooldown; if you're struggling with imps, its fine to line it up with each imp spawn, stun them with it. You could go Rising sun kick on imp spawn to apply debuff, then after grip Chi Burst into Fists of Fury (with that glyph, stunning each wave if done properly); try to have RJW up just before that but that's pushing it a bit.


Also, allthough soul kappacitor is very strong because chi torpedo benefits a lot from trinket interaction, I wouldn't consider soul capacitor on this fight, and torpedo doesn't need it to be playable. Mirror of the blademaster is awesome on that fight.

if you're looking for progression tips, the other thread I linked is probably more what you're looking for:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ips-and-tricks!

[Deleted]

Such a "knowledge bomb" topic. Shame that I never got to play torpedo properly on ST while it lasted.

[Deleted]

Thank you Pandanoconda for your response, I thought this might be the case but as it was really just an inquiry about aoe burst i hoped chi torp could assist. oh well I'll work harder on lining up my fof and doing less overall dmg. Thanks for your response.