What's the exact reason why WW monks are not high on DPS meters

[Jetpistol]

Hey guys! i fell victim to resub because i finished up KH3 Re:Mind and i asked people in the chat and look through youtube mythic kills to see why WW monks are not on top. I know they are popular in pvp but can anyone fill me in on that? As well as the future of WW monks in shadowlands.

[valky94]

i guess they arent that bad, its just that other melee specs are easier to play, perform slightly higher

[Hightotemz]

I think a lot of people are weary to play WW in shadowlands as we bottom of the dps and I mean the real bottom of dps in mythic raiding as per the below link.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/24/

Bellular sums it up pretty nicely below and he switched from WW to DH in patch 8.3. The top community monk also went DH for this patch.

https://youtu.be/FRGH-AwEkFg?t=695

Basically Demon hunters can do everything BETTER then WWs with not close to the skill required to perform.

[Clozer]

Because of bad tuning? One has to be at the bottom. Pretty simple - shitty that's it so much worse than most other specs, but what can you do.

[Greyvax]

Basically Demon hunters can do everything BETTER then WWs with not close to the skill required to perform.

This is why rogues have gone the way of the dodo.

[Lubefist]

i guess they arent that bad, its just that other melee specs are easier to play, perform slightly higher

WW is just as easy as any other melee in the game.

[Yuli]

WW is just as easy as any other melee in the game.

nice joke you made there

OT: I think there's a tuning problem. WW has high skill ceiling, but with tuning like in Legion we had mythic monks destroying the dps charts in M+ and beginners who did no damage at all. Blizz is tuning DPS for the top 1%, that's why it's especially bad when a class like the DH outperforms the monk while being much easier to play optimally. As someone who only clears heroic it just feels bad imo. That's why I switched to ret this expansion, but I hope I can return to WW in SL.

[Piplupzero]

They just dont scale well with stats at all. Haste is useless because the spec is designed around a certain flow thats already theres at 0% haste. Mastery is just versatility but again, crit is just a bit more damage sometimes. Versatility is just our best stat by default because it gives a bit of damage reduction too so may aswell have the stat that double dips a bit. Especially now that all the non-stat corruptions keep getting nerfed we just cant scale to the levels of other classes now that we're at the end of the expansion.

[Babylonius]

Windwalker scales worse with stats than almost every spec, and thats exaggerated by corruption.

[Hightotemz]

Maybe WW will be given some love in raids in SL but not sure if it's worth risking to be in this situation again.

[Samuraijake777]

my joke response would be that its because as a "Mobile DPS" they have to do all the mechanical work while non mobile dps get to sit and pad meters....(im kidding but thats not far from the truth)

The actual response would probably include the fact that they dont always get to have full use of things like touch of karma on cooldown. To my understanding, blizz includes that damage as apart of their total package.

[Migrin]

WW and DH have much in common. Similar damage profile, high mobility and bring a 5% damage buff to the raid.

DH was more desirable in raids: While the 5% physical dmg buff of monks was present in almost every raid because of the dominance of brewmasters. Due to the bad spot vengeance was in, the 5% magical damage of havoc was much more attractive to mythic raids. This imbalance is increased further by the fact that a large part of dps spots in mythic raids are filled with ranged dps, of which most are magical damage dealers.

Survivability: Havocs survivability outclassed windwalker monks, as well as rogues, by a significant margin. This problem is is worsened by the fact one of our key defensive abilities also functions as a damage increase.

Scalability: As stated above, ww monks scale worse than other meele dps specs.

Whats going to change for the better: Havocs survivability has been significantly nerfed while windwalkers have gained better tools to reduce damage taken. In terms of scalability, we have gained Xuen as baseline damage cd which should help on that front.

What is probably going to stay the same: Brewmaster is currently still looking strong while vengeance is still struggling with a lot of the issues it had in bfa. So the 5% physical dmg buff will probably still be redundant in mythic raiding compsbecause it will be provided by one of the tanks. Ranged dps are still going to be better suited for mythic raiding, and in terms of damage profile, monk, havoc, survival and other meele dps specs are still going to be very similar. Whats special about havoc is that it is a meele dps spec which improves other casters. Where as other melees, like enhancement, warriors and, monks mostly help other melee specs(and hunters) deal more damage.

TLDR: Monks might be in a better spot than in BFA, but unless our damage is top tier, there's not really going to be a reason to bring more than one Monk to a raid. And even that one spot is only relevant if there is a considerable amount of hunters and meeles in any given raid comp.

[Fastlane_hellscream]

Whats going to change for the better: Havocs survivability has been significantly nerfed...

Are you talking about the dodge chance removed from blade dance, or are there other nerfs I'm unaware of?

[Razion]

Monks notoriously have had very low player population ever since their inception. If less players are playing monk, it's less likely good players are playing one - which can overall hurt community perception. There's an inherent problem with WW constantly being in competition with BM and MW across a class that is already less represented who also usually bring the same critical utility WW brings - such as the physical debuff, or Ring of Peace. WW seems to be in dire need of something it can bring that is a little more exclusive at the very least to its own class.

First, some examples of things that are kind of an issue for WW utility historically and what could be done to make them work.

Fists of Fury historically couldn't have parry or slow/stun components because it would hurt dps to hold for the utility and thus the inherent population damage perception the spec already deals with, so having the utility be a second press after FoF's initial press for damage would be one way to deal with FoF still being a rotational ability and having the utility still kind of tied to the ability. Second ability presses are already present with abilities like Flying Serpent Kick, so I think if anything it would be a bit flavorful for WW to bake that into the utility a bit.

Speaking of, Flying Serpent Kick historically has granted a Wind Rush Totem or Stampeding Roar effect via Ride the Wind in pvp, but in raiding this would present a problem of hurting Shaman/Druid representation (specifically Enhancement and Feral). One idea would be to have it provide a Speed secondary stat buff rather than a movement speed buff so that it could overlap with other movement speed increasing effects. Perhaps the wind could obscure hostile enemies from other hostile allies within it, or reduce enemy movement speed from the intense winds.

Zen Meditation being available to WW would probably help them, but historically it had a problem of being dangerous to the point of sometimes one-shoting the WW if certain abilities were redirected to them as well as potentially hurting BM and WM representation. The redirection of effects being exclusive to Brewmaster in pvp is currently a thing, and I think that's a good niche for Brewmasters to have in terms of differences they could bring. I think WW having a difference of the version where it just reduces damage taken for nearby allies I think would probably be one way to go about it, as that way perhaps stacking Monks in this way may even be beneficial rather than a case of only taking BM for the redirect - it would be beneficial for BM to redirect in some cases, but the DR from WW would be better in other situations so I think a spec-flavored distinction there may be okay. It may be kind of confusing if Zen Med looked exactly the same when they did different things, so maybe that would have to be addressed if a Zen Med option was going to be done, I think, as I don't think removing it from BM is entirely on the table.

Grapple Weapon being exclusive to WW would probably help them without hurting other specs as none of the other Monk specs currently use it. Historically taking boss weapons has been a problem in terms of in some cases either reducing boss damage by too much and/or increasing monk damage dealt from the taken weapon by too much. Modifying the kind of debuff and buff provided to perhaps be more similar to Disc Smite where the damage reduction and bonuses are less overall a percentage modifier to everything else but rather an independent amount that can scale on its own would probably be safer. I do like the idea of a utility ability that kind of rewards the dps player with a bit of a damage bonus a little bit, and certainly grappling a weapon is pretty thematic to that end I think.

Transcendence having a unique passive for WW that amplifies it to behave like Demonic Gateway may be useful. To have it behave differently than Demonic Gateway, perhaps it could teleport the one that clicks on the Transcendence spirit to go to where the WW currently is. This way, the situations a Gateway and Transcendence may still be a bit different from each other - while perhaps also playing into the strength of WW being fairly mobile and thus able to get to places less mobile classes may not be able to get to as quickly. Though, with planning, Gateway can still situationally perhaps be better or preferred over a Transcendence gate to the WW. (It probably goes without saying Gateway and Transcendence would have to share a debuff from being used in combination with each other.) Additionally, with Battle Resurrections usable out of combat in M+, it may be useful for WW to be able to place a Transcendence before they die to allow groups to take a spirit to get to them over certain large gaps or terrain otherwise blocked by exceptionally strong groups may be one use of this that could help WW in M+ have some merit to additionally help a current problem of perhaps groups feeling they need things like Shroud of Concealment for certain skips.

Healing Sphere as a spell historically was ran over by people who needed healing, but often a lot of over-healing was done and the over-healing wasn't being distributed to nearby party members with missing health. This kind of behavior would probably fix the ability's problems, but for WW there was an additional hit to functionality because of its cost of Energy getting in the way of wasting dps resources in addition to the global - so having WW have a mana bar like other hybrids to spend on these kinds of utility abilities would probably be beneficial so that they could do some off-healing in situations where pre-emptive planning of leaving healing spheres for upcoming damage could be beneficial and one way other classes don't really handle off-healing so I think it would be kind of special. Another solution would be to possibly make Healing Sphere in its spell form behave like Lightwell or Soulwell. Lightwell isn't currently in use, so I think that would probably be a less offensive iteration to other specs overall. There is a bit of a conflict in the original iteration with Effuse also healing, so perhaps Healing Spheres doing less healing as Healing Spheres is a mobile and a stackable planning placed kind of heal may kind of leave Effuse with a purpose - though I think Healing Spheres as a spell replacing Effuse would be better were one of them to be pruned to leave WW a distinction of having mobile off-healing to kind of be a small bit of flavor to its utility perhaps appropriate considering how mobile the spec is meant to be.

Spinning Fire Blossom historically like Healing Sphere had the problem of costing damage resources, so like Healing Sphere I think it would benefit from costing mana for WW. One-target ranged slow/root is good utility, but I think it could be more powerful utility if it returned as an AoE slow/root that explodes out from the target. And while on GCD historically was a problem it may be justified if it were for example a substitute for a talent on the old lv60 row which seems prime for replacements while still fitting the row as group control utility.

Zen Flight could be given a unique WW passive to make it be a friendly-cast slow-fall when in combat or cast on other players. This would potentially be useful in terms of long jumps in vertical dungeons but also mostly useful against potential bosses that have lately started to incorporate fall damage. There are lots of various forms of fall protection in the game, but I think it's a nice bit of utility to have a spec be able to bring friendly fall protection perhaps.

[Eapoe]

Monks notoriously have had very low player population ever since their inception. If less players are playing monk, it's less likely good players are playing one - which can overall hurt community perception. There's an inherent problem with WW constantly being in competition with BM and MW across a class that is already less represented who also usually bring the same critical utility WW brings - such as the physical debuff, or Ring of Peace. WW seems to be in dire need of something it can bring that is a little more exclusive at the very least to its own class.

First, some examples of things that are kind of an issue for WW utility historically and what could be done to make them work.

Fists of Fury historically couldn't have parry or slow/stun components because it would hurt dps to hold for the utility and thus the inherent population damage perception the spec already deals with, so having the utility be a second press after FoF's initial press for damage would be one way to deal with FoF still being a rotational ability and having the utility still kind of tied to the ability. Second ability presses are already present with abilities like Flying Serpent Kick, so I think if anything it would be a bit flavorful for WW to bake that into the utility a bit.

Speaking of, Flying Serpent Kick historically has granted a Wind Rush Totem or Stampeding Roar effect via Ride the Wind in pvp, but in raiding this would present a problem of hurting Shaman/Druid representation (specifically Enhancement and Feral). One idea would be to have it provide a Speed secondary stat buff rather than a movement speed buff so that it could overlap with other movement speed increasing effects. Perhaps the wind could obscure hostile enemies from other hostile allies within it, or reduce enemy movement speed from the intense winds.

Zen Meditation being available to WW would probably help them, but historically it had a problem of being dangerous to the point of sometimes one-shoting the WW if certain abilities were redirected to them as well as potentially hurting BM and WM representation. The redirection of effects being exclusive to Brewmaster in pvp is currently a thing, and I think that's a good niche for Brewmasters to have in terms of differences they could bring. I think WW having a difference of the version where it just reduces damage taken for nearby allies I think would probably be one way to go about it, as that way perhaps stacking Monks in this way may even be beneficial rather than a case of only taking BM for the redirect - it would be beneficial for BM to redirect in some cases, but the DR from WW would be better in other situations so I think a spec-flavored distinction there may be okay. It may be kind of confusing if Zen Med looked exactly the same when they did different things, so maybe that would have to be addressed if a Zen Med option was going to be done, I think, as I don't think removing it from BM is entirely on the table.

Grapple Weapon being exclusive to WW would probably help them without hurting other specs as none of the other Monk specs currently use it. Historically taking boss weapons has been a problem in terms of in some cases either reducing boss damage by too much and/or increasing monk damage dealt from the taken weapon by too much. Modifying the kind of debuff and buff provided to perhaps be more similar to Disc Smite where the damage reduction and bonuses are less overall a percentage modifier to everything else but rather an independent amount that can scale on its own would probably be safer. I do like the idea of a utility ability that kind of rewards the dps player with a bit of a damage bonus a little bit, and certainly grappling a weapon is pretty thematic to that end I think.

Transcendence having a unique passive for WW that amplifies it to behave like Demonic Gateway may be useful. To have it behave differently than Demonic Gateway, perhaps it could teleport the one that clicks on the Transcendence spirit to go to where the WW currently is. This way, the situations a Gateway and Transcendence may still be a bit different from each other - while perhaps also playing into the strength of WW being fairly mobile and thus able to get to places less mobile classes may not be able to get to as quickly. Though, with planning, Gateway can still situationally perhaps be better or preferred over a Transcendence gate to the WW. (It probably goes without saying Gateway and Transcendence would have to share a debuff from being used in combination with each other.) Additionally, with Battle Resurrections usable out of combat in M+, it may be useful for WW to be able to place a Transcendence before they die to allow groups to take a spirit to get to them over certain large gaps or terrain otherwise blocked by exceptionally strong groups may be one use of this that could help WW in M+ have some merit to additionally help a current problem of perhaps groups feeling they need things like Shroud of Concealment for certain skips.

Healing Sphere as a spell historically was ran over by people who needed healing, but often a lot of over-healing was done and the over-healing wasn't being distributed to nearby party members with missing health. This kind of behavior would probably fix the ability's problems, but for WW there was an additional hit to functionality because of its cost of Energy getting in the way of wasting dps resources in addition to the global - so having WW have a mana bar like other hybrids to spend on these kinds of utility abilities would probably be beneficial so that they could do some off-healing in situations where pre-emptive planning of leaving healing spheres for upcoming damage could be beneficial and one way other classes don't really handle off-healing so I think it would be kind of special. Another solution would be to possibly make Healing Sphere in its spell form behave like Lightwell or Soulwell. Lightwell isn't currently in use, so I think that would probably be a less offensive iteration to other specs overall. There is a bit of a conflict in the original iteration with Effuse also healing, so perhaps Healing Spheres doing less healing as Healing Spheres is a mobile and a stackable planning placed kind of heal may kind of leave Effuse with a purpose - though I think Healing Spheres as a spell replacing Effuse would be better were one of them to be pruned to leave WW a distinction of having mobile off-healing to kind of be a small bit of flavor to its utility perhaps appropriate considering how mobile the spec is meant to be.

Spinning Fire Blossom historically like Healing Sphere had the problem of costing damage resources, so like Healing Sphere I think it would benefit from costing mana for WW. One-target ranged slow/root is good utility, but I think it could be more powerful utility if it returned as an AoE slow/root that explodes out from the target. And while on GCD historically was a problem it may be justified if it were for example a substitute for a talent on the old lv60 row which seems prime for replacements while still fitting the row as group control utility.

Zen Flight could be given a unique WW passive to make it be a friendly-cast slow-fall when in combat or cast on other players. This would potentially be useful in terms of long jumps in vertical dungeons but also mostly useful against potential bosses that have lately started to incorporate fall damage. There are lots of various forms of fall protection in the game, but I think it's a nice bit of utility to have a spec be able to bring friendly fall protection perhaps.

It does bring something unique, it’s just not that useful. 5% movement speed is nice, but in a game filled with personal increases, speed pots, and gateways, it’s barely recognizable as a bonus.

[Zyky]

Are you talking about the dodge chance removed from blade dance, or are there other nerfs I'm unaware of?

They nerfed the self-healing too a while ago; one of the first alpha builds.

- Soul Rending nerfed to 5% down from 10% out of Meta.
- No Leech in Meta without Soul Rending, nerfed to 25% down from 30%.
- Blur nerfed to 20% damage reduction down from 35%.
- Netherwalk is a 3 minute cooldown up from 2 minutes.
- Desperate Instincts nerfed from 15% bonus reduction from Blur down to 10%.

[Wuusah]

It does bring something unique, it’s just not that useful. 5% movement speed is nice, but in a game filled with personal increases, speed pots, and gateways, it’s barely recognizable as a bonus.

It's an aura with a 10 yard range. It's already a very weak effect of only 5% and the group doesn't even get that effect reliably.

[Stacie]

I don't think they even perform all that bad, its just brewmaster brings the buff also and is very strong.

You have very limited amounts of melee spots in high end raiding and those you do have are given to immunity class's or ones that bring something decent. DH bring netherwalk/meta immunity ontop of the 5% and a good interrupt, paladins have a bubble and other such things, Warriors shout and do decent damage, DK can do nuts burst and fit nice into damage windows, have a unique grip, combat rez and AMS immunity. (AMZ in SL also)

Why take a dps monk when you can just take a heal/tank one for that 5% buff + a ranged or another utility class instead? Shaman and Druid are in the same spot outside of some niche scenarios. This trickles down and gives a bad perception turning it into a kinda meme when recruiting or putting comp together. Outside of giving a unique "Good" buff/utility or making a fight more melee friendly I'm not sure what they could do to fix it. If you have multiple solid options and a monk to choose from you pick something else unless they are a good mate.

[epigramx]

They are god-like for soling in the world. In my general experience about this game is that if you're into PvE do not pick a DPS that it has only one spec in its class. It comes to reason and it's logical and somewhat fair that if a class can not heal and can not tank it would do more DPS (so mages and hunters and locks good luck ever seeing them being beaten by a tank/healer's' only dps spec (in most bosses at least(I mean sure I was god-like with a cat in a few bosses but those were niche cases))).

[TaurenNinja]

They are god-like for soling in the world. In my general experience about this game is that if you're into PvE do not pick a DPS that it has only one spec in its class. It comes to reason and it's logical and somewhat fair that if a class can not heal and can not tank it would do more DPS (so mages and hunters and locks good luck ever seeing them being beaten by a tank/healer's' only dps spec (in most bosses at least(I mean sure I was god-like with a cat in a few bosses but those were niche cases))).

It's at least Blizzard's official intent that all DPS specs should be somewhat competitive (regardless of whether they have multiple DPS specs or not).
Problem being that if they intentionally nerfed some specs just because they're not "pure DPS" (the old hybrid discussion), the non-pure specs would see even less representation because the game has become more competitive and players sometimes (depending on content/difficulty/gear) can't even drag someone along who performs worse than others (even if they wanted to).

However, the main reason that "pure DPS" *still* tend to perform better than "hybrid DPS" is that they have more options/flexibility to switch to different specs or talents per encounter. If one of their DPS specs is bad (which will always be the case), they can simply switch to the one that is currently the best option for the given content. While the "hybrid DPS" specs don't have that luxury because they only have 1 option... and that option needs to be decent in all current encounters. Which is unlikely.