Windwalker New Talent/Mastery Suggestion

[Dootsydoodle]

New Talents/mastery idea

First I just made these changes up so they’re probably broken or useless, I just made them based on what I think would fit in the combo style identity of monk (what I think the identity is anyway). The Windwalker identity for me is that we are masters of the martial arts, using a combination of swift and fierce attacks to topple our foes. In layman’s terms were like Chun-Li or Marshall Law, from Street fighter/Tekken.



The current mastery increases the damage of our abilities when they are not a repeat of the previous ability. Whilst there isn’t a huge issue with current mastery, I feel this doesn’t really provide Windwalkers with the identity of a combo master, more like a cant cast the same ability twice master. Another problem is that the tier 6 talent Hit Combo (HC) has been taken for 99.8% on all bosses for Mythic (taken from Peak of Serenity article written by Babylonius), which is kind of ridiculous! Showing no variety in talents is something that can make the spec feel restrictive.

Some people have suggested making Hit Combo the new mastery, (some combination of Hit Combo and current mastery). Whilst this opens up tier 6 talents, I still feel like it doesn’t appeal to the core identity of being a combo master, perhaps a change to the current mastery could be something like every ability increases your next ability by x, stacking 2 times? Then on the 3rd stack the ability consumes the stacks for bonus damage. To put it more simply, every 3rd damaging ability will do bonus damage. So for example you cast Tiger Palm, gain a 15% damage buff on your next cast, followed by a Blackout Kick (BoK) giving you a 60% damage buff on your next cast, which on your next cast (say Rising Sun Kick (RSK)) will consume the stacks.

It would look like this: (1.00)*TP -> (1.15)*BoK -> (1.60)*RSK ->(1.00)*TP …..
(The numbers representing total % of damage done, i.e 1.00 = 100% damage, in this case mastery is 15%, and the final stack provides four times the mastery which happened to be 60% in the example.)

Problems with this that I can see is it can be kind of complicated and annoying to manage with keeping track of the amount of stacks you’re on as well as if you happened to cast tiger palm as your third ability, getting a buffed TP over a more favourable spell such as rising sun kick would feel bad, however a possible solution is that only chi consuming abilities can use the final damage buff, instead abilities like Chi Wave and TP would only refresh the duration. What I like most about this mastery is that it doesn’t restrict you to casting a different ability each time, whilst at the moment the non-repeating casts playstyle is core to WW identity, it can feel restricting at times where I want to pool chi or dump energy/chi.



If these changes were to go through (either combining a HC/current mastery, or my new abomination of a mastery) as new masteries, it would be weird still having HC as a talent, therefore my next proposed change (and personally my favourite) is a completely new talent to replace it. We’ll call it C-c-c-c-combo breaker or CB for short. This ability would be a short cd ability that based on your next 3 casts will grant you an amount of stats. The stats given by CB would be based on how much chi was spent in those 3 casts; 6 or more chi will give haste, 5 chi will give mastery, and 4 chi will give critical hit and three chi or less will give versatility. The duration of these stats will range from 20-30seconds, and the cooldown of the talent would be similar 30-40 seconds. This talent really doesn’t address any problems that Windwalkers currently have, but I really like the idea of chaining moves together to give me a reward, (I feel this adds to the combo identity of Windwalkers).

The reasons I’ve chosen those numbers for each stat is because in a situation where you want haste you’ll probably be casting Spinning Crane Kick (SCK) and as such its plausible that you could spend 6 chi in 3 casts, (Assuming you already have 3 chi or Energising Elixir/Power Strikes) SCK-> TP -> SCK, with mastery at 5 chi, the most common chain of abilities would be a RSK+ SCK/FoF. I like the idea of 4 chi giving crit with current tier (t20) as you could BoK TP FoF obviously followed by a TP and RSK. Versatility gives some niche in extra DR and damage, perhaps seeing play in PVP, 3 chi or less being easily spent using a filler rotation to help provide burst or if you just want the extra base damage. Unfortunately this talent becomes a bit awkward when you use talents/legendaries that modify chi consumption, (I’m talking about Serenity and Katsuo’s if you haven’t figured that out already). As you can imagine with Katsuo’s to combo 5 chi, you would either need to cast SCK (which can feel dirty on ST outside serenity) or have 5 chi to begin with for FoF->RSK->BoK. With Serenity, the major implication is that your chi consumers are free so you wouldn’t be spending any chi, obviously you could just cast your abilities outside of serenity get the buff and then use serenity, but delaying our openers further can be detrimental to overall enjoyment. An obvious solution to both problems would be for the game to take the attempted cost of the chi (that’s worded poorly I know), meaning casting FoF would always be treated as casting 3 chi regardless of legendaries or talents, same for RSK and SoTW. Honestly I would just leave them how they are currently, having talents that clash with each other or legendaries that synergise more with other talents is okay, (note not saying we should have a 7.0 DHC again where it had 0 synergy with Serenity.), as it encourages diverse builds that suit individual playstyle.



While I was messing around with the idea of changing Hit Combo, I thought about the other tier 6 talents. Firstly Invoke Xuen, The White Tiger is an ability used for its burst (over 45 seconds?) in ST or fights where priority damage is required (Moontalon on sisters?), as such instead of having a 3 target cleave attack, instead I would change his attack to a cone area in front of him, similar to fist of fury, however, his attack would work much like SoTW in that the primary target will always take 100% damage and any other additional targets will take a % based on number of targets. I think this highlights Xuen’s ability to provide high priority damage to a single target, whilst giving a little bit of cleave. Xuen’s attack could also be changed to be split between targets in his cone, not a fan of this idea as it removes his ability to do high single target damage in cleave fights.

The other talent on this row is Rushing Jade Wind (RJW). I have a lot of issues with RJW in its current state, meant to be our aoe talent, RJW only applies Mark of the Crane (MoTC) to 2 targets, (Really? When will I ever use RJW over HC or Xuen) the problem with this is that 2 targets is hardly that much of a benefit to warrant picking this talent over HC or Xuen, even in high aoe situations, I propose two possible changes to RJW. First, RJW replaces SCK, costing 3 chi and perhaps a tiny increase to damage over SCK, this new RJW (nRJW) will work exactly the same as current SCK, except that targets hit by the full duration of nRJW will gain MoTC, limited to four stacks per nRJW. This talent becomes absolutely insane in high aoe situations in combination with Serenity, but offers no benefit in single target or cleave fights, which in current tier of raid bosses, brings this talent back down, really the only fight that would kind of justify this talent would be Mistress and Harjatan, and Host if you’re lazy. The second change that could be made to RJW is that it modifies FoF to also apply MoTC, similar to nRJW mobs would have to be hit by the full duration of FoF, however there is no cap to how many MoTC stacks are applied (IDK man maybe there is, probably would be busted if there was no cap right?).



Finally the most minor talent change not in tier 6, remove Dave from tier 4 talents (Summon Black Ox Statue), and replace it with a Summon White Tiger Statue, this statue would work similar to Wind Rush Totem, except would just apply the Windwalker move speed buff to targets within 30 yards. Statue would have same duration as Black Ox Statue.



These are just some ideas that I made up while I was at work, I haven’t even thought about the actual numbers or balancing because that’s no fun at all, tbh I just want people to pat me on the back and say that’s cool .

[Deleted]

Dont take my Dave away.