Are Windwalkers worth bringing to a raid?

[TheWindWalker]

http://www.simulationcraft.org/510/Raid_T14H.html

That's some of the most over-blown expectations I've ever seen. Even stranger than it has all three Rogue specs doing well over 100k DPS when they normally sim down in the 80s.

monks tend to be good tanks and great healers.. but not much else.

This bit has changed quite a lot in the past month.

[Deleted]

Is it worth bringing a WW specifically over some other melee specs? No it's not worth it.
Is it worth bringing a good player who happens to play WW? Yes it is. Most guilds aren't in a position where they should turn down good players just because of the class they're playing. You might be a little better off if that good player was playing another class, though.

The fact still remains that other specs bring equal or better damage, while at the same time providing superior raid cooldowns, offhealing, burst damage, cleave damage etc.

[asharia]

unless you're in a world top 100 guild, it doesn't matter what class or spec you play.

[Dracodraco]

What? Touch of Karma is OP as hell in terms of defensive cooldowns, Diffuse Magic is just as good as CloS is. Fortifying Brew is about as good as you get in terms of long-duration damage reduction.

I don't see how "ranged" "brings" mobility, but Windwalkers are by far the most mobile melee class except in PvP where roots are prevalent. That's very good for target swapping and high movement fights.

DPS is absolutely fine now since 5.1 fixed a number of issues, with the only problem being a lack of 2-3 target cleave. In terms of single target, WW is the same if not more than most melee DPS now since 5.1 buffs.

Overt utility is a problem, but Rogues and Hunters don't really have any either, so if you're going to rule out Monks rule them out too.

You're sadly misinformed.

Touch of karma is allright. Diffuse magic is not nearly as good as CloS, for the sole reason that I still haven't seen our windwalkers remove debuffs such as Parasites on Ambershaper with Diffuse Magic yet. Fortifying brew is as good as any other 20% dmg reduc, the only difference you'll notice from it is on a fight like garalon with constant passive damage. As a counter, you bring up Hunters and Rogues later in the post - hunters gets a passive 15% dmg reduc from Aspect of the Iron Hawk, which I'd deem significantly stronger than a 3 min CD on a 20% reduc for 20 sec.

Windwalkers being mobile in any kind of raid encounter won't do you any good - mobile melee classes vs non mobile is a thing of the past. Every single melee has some sort of sprint now - in order:
Rogue - Sprint, Shadowstep.
Kitty - best passive movement speed (30%), Dash, Stampeding Roar.
Enh shaman - Ghost wolf (not too sure if there's others).
DK - Death's Advance.
Ret paladin - their first tier is entirely devoted to mobility in different forms.
Warrior - Leap, Charge.

Not to mention that the only fights where mobility for melee is a bonus, would be elegon (getting back after killing a protector), Emperors (courage-> boss or boss->courage), and Sha of Fear (from adds to boss).
Any other fight, there's no need for excessive movement - and if there is, you're doing that boss in a very ineffective way.

There's no reason to bring a monk over any other melee dps - that's not to say that there's a reason to bring, for example, a DK either (unless it's a gimmick fight like Lei Shi where Army is the bomb for add control). But Warriors are the strongest melee, by *far* right now. They've got cleave, they've got supreme mobility, they've got good sustained AOE, high singletarget damage, and bring multiple raid cooldowns.

I'm not misinformed at all - if you think that personal cooldowns (that are only slightly ahead of what every other class has, and in some cases, behind), decent sustained AOE (neccessary on no bosses at all, maybe apart from Windlord dependant on tactic - personally, my guild goes with one that requires no AOE at all to lower the boss to 80% hp, then finish the encounter in less than 2 minutes by burning and triggering recklessness right after each other) that's roughly mid-table, and on-par singletarget damage is going to make me bring a windwalker over something else, then you're the one who's misinformed <.<.

[Totaltotemic]

The OP asked if it was worth it to bring a Windwalker to a raid, i.e. will he be hurting his raid to have a Windwalker instead of a different melee. The answer is no. Being on par with everyone else means just that: not the worst, not the best. To twist that into saying that they have nothing that everyone else can't do better implies that Windwalkers are the worst melee. Apparently you're not misinformed, you just think that bringing something at the average to a raid is unholy.

[Deleted]

I've yet to be beat by anybody in my raids in terms of DPS. My gear is alright, by no means as good as my guild mates, and I'm ranking on a lot of fights on World of Logs.

I ranked on Spirit Kings heroic with 25k dps, so yea.

[Dracodraco]

The OP asked if it was worth it to bring a Windwalker to a raid, i.e. will he be hurting his raid to have a Windwalker instead of a different melee. The answer is no. Being on par with everyone else means just that: not the worst, not the best. To twist that into saying that they have nothing that everyone else can't do better implies that Windwalkers are the worst melee. Apparently you're not misinformed, you just think that bringing something at the average to a raid is unholy.

Here's the thing - being average in everything is not good.
If you're average singletarget, you bring warriors and retribution paladins who excell at singletarget. Why would you bring the average monk?
If you're on a cleave fight, you bring in your DK and rogue.
If you're in need of raid cds, you bring kitties, warriors, and ret paladins.
If you need aoe, you bring your DK and warrior.

There's no point where a windwalker is worth spending gear on compared to say, a rogue. They have the same AOE and singletarget output, they have equal survivability, they even use the same weapons. But a rogue also has cleave.


All in all, this is obviously from a progress-oriented point of view. If you're not neck deep in heroics, you're not gonna need to bother with this, just bring your best player. But from a heroic-progress PoV, there's been no fights so far, where our monks has been usefull because they're monks - at the start, one of them was cleaning up the singletarget dps, but that turned out to be because he'd won the 502 garajal weapon from our first kill with a coin - thus he had a great advantage over almost every single other raider in terms of weapon.

[Totaltotemic]

You know, something tells me that a guy asking a rather basic question on an average forum about which spec he should focus on probably isn't in the kind of guild that's going to bench him specifically for certain fights to bring in other people just because of what class they are. Be honest, would you really ask the MMO-Champion forums if you were looking for a top 50 all-out progression min-max at all costs guild type answer?

[Babytaco]

Are you in a top 50 raiding guild? No? Then it doesn't matter. Bring the best players regardless of their class. If your best 10 players are monks, bring 10 monks. All classes are balanced close enough together that you bring the best players and don't worry about classes

^ Don't listen to this guy. Having a good raid composition can be extremely important for your raiding success. And let's be real here... Monks don't bring anything to the table anyway... What raid group DOESN'T have a Mage, Hunter, Paladin and/or Druid for crit and stats?

---------- Post added 2012-12-10 at 04:43 AM ----------

The OP asked if it was worth it to bring a Windwalker to a raid, i.e. will he be hurting his raid to have a Windwalker instead of a different melee. The answer is no. Being on par with everyone else means just that: not the worst, not the best. To twist that into saying that they have nothing that everyone else can't do better implies that Windwalkers are the worst melee. Apparently you're not misinformed, you just think that bringing something at the average to a raid is unholy.

If his raid is missing important buffs, then yes he could be hurting the raid group, depending on their DPS.

[Protean]

^ Don't listen to this guy. Having a good raid composition can be extremely important for your raiding success. And let's be real here... Monks don't bring anything to the table anyway... What raid group DOESN'T have a Mage, Hunter, Paladin and/or Druid for crit and stats?

---------- Post added 2012-12-10 at 04:43 AM ----------



If his raid is missing important buffs, then yes he could be hurting the raid group, depending on their DPS.

A raid that wipes because of a missing buff is a shitty raid.

[stellvia]

I don't think there is any class/spec atm that "isn't worth bringing" for the average raid. And a lot of those simcraft numbers only start panning out that way for ilvls that are unrealistic for the average person to expect. Some classes have strong DPS early in the ilvl curve, others don't. Low DPS is all on the player IMHO. Some of those sims also rely on unrealistically perfect play. IE: Sub Rogue may sim that high, but in practice it would be incredibly hard to fully tap -- it relies too heavily on perfect CD stacking on 1min timers, CP feeding via HaT from the raid, etc.

My main is Assassination Rogue and pushing over the 480 ilvl hump is when I finally started to see my DPS numbers climb into the competitive range. We have a very good Spriest that was just smoking me on DPS for a long time, but now I'm competitive with him on non-multidot fights despite him still being around 5 ilvl higher than me.

Of course there are still certain fights where certain specs just excel -- IE: Arms War seems to chew up Garalon, even though I spec Combat for that fight and have a 476 Fist weapon, while my daggers are only upgraded heroic ones. Easily 30%+ more total DMG than I'm able to do. But that has more to do with him being able to line up short CD burst cleaving on the legs, instantly charge to the next leg for better uptime, etc.