Monk Burst

[Authentic]

You're picking something I already admitted was a bad example and then you've taken it into the realm of absurdity by giving other scenarios that are only linked because of the presence of adds. The reason I gave heroic elegon as an example of needing burst damage was because on early progression killing the final waves actually did require some sort of an output boost. You've completely misunderstood the premise of what I've said.

It's not a hard concept to understand, since monk DPS is so linear over the course of a fight it will end up being problematic in early progression due to the lack of the ability to produce extra DPS for a short time span. It's clearly obvious this is meant to be an intended part of the windwalker spec, tigerseye delivers exactly what I'm talking about but it's stacking is largely unpredictable unless you can estimate accurately the amount of chi you will spend before a given part of the fight where it's required.

So what you're saying is that Monks need more burst cooldowns to get on par with other classes' burst output, while already being one of the best singletarget dps'ers? Sure, our damage is linear, but if you time your Tigereye Brews and your Xuen you'll be fine. Surely there's a case to be made about the unpredictability of Tigereye Brew, but you know when you need 10 stacks, you have a rough estimate of how long it takes you to get there. You are allowed to save the Tigereye Brew for when you need it most, noone is making you use it on 'cooldown'.
You won't do the 250k dps the Elemental shaman is doing, but the elemental shaman on the other hand won't do the 100k dps you're doing outside of your burst. Bosses with burstfases aren't designed around every class doing 200k+ dps, neither are they designed that every class needs to do 100k+ dps outside of burstfases. I'm sure everyone would like to see their class dishing out sick amounts of damage once every 3 minutes, but that's a very childish approach to class balance.

High single-target damage isn't something that can be sustained for very long. One day there will be some hotfix nerfs or buffs, or maybe in the next major patch, and that won't exist anymore. It's a very transient thing, and I highly doubt that Monks are actually balanced specifically to have higher than normal single-target DPS, so I wouldn't count on that being Windwalker's "thing" even as far as next raid tier.

Utter, utter bullshit. You are already scheming your doom and listing stuff that could possibly go wrong. If shit's about to hit the fan and Monks are really on the bottom of the charts, it will be noticed. In our current form they are fine and exceed at certain things where other classes aren't as good on.

In every classforums here players try to make a case where their class need to have high burst damage, high single target damage, high aoe damage, a battle ress, 4 different raidbuffs and a bloodlust in order to be viable. You are viable. Get over yourself.

[Totaltotemic]

Utter, utter bullshit. You are already scheming your doom and listing stuff that could possibly go wrong. If shit's about to hit the fan and Monks are really on the bottom of the charts, it will be noticed. In our current form they are fine and exceed at certain things where other classes aren't as good on.

In every classforums here players try to make a case where their class need to have high burst damage, high single target damage, high aoe damage, a battle ress, 4 different raidbuffs and a bloodlust in order to be viable. You are viable. Get over yourself.

Did you miss the part where Monk is a new class and things like burst and utility are about the design of the class whereas "high single-target damage" is just a numbers thing? What could "go wrong" is that being a spec whose usefulness rests solely on overpowered damage would be stacked to hell on fights like Will of the Emperor or Gara'jal where you can have a couple of people sit and DPS for the entire fight. At first glance you'd think that's great, until you realize that kind of thing is 100% certain to bring down the nerf bat, and then you're back to average damage with no utility and no burst. Having a DPS designed to simply be better than every other class at sustained damage is terrible for the game.

It's not about being "viable." It's about having a class design that will be useful and desired for something even when the times come where we don't have overpowered DPS. I'd rather not see Windwalker become the spec that gets sat depending on where they sim for the day because everyone else just brings something useful besides DPS.

Disclaimer: If you don't play at a level where that kind of balance matters or are simply raiding with people that aren't as good as you (i.e. you rank 1 on WoL and no one else ranks higher than 10th for their class), you can see your way out of this discussion as balance isn't a concern for you.

[Deleted]

My point from the get go was that tigerseye is a bad mechanic. I'm not exactly sure what's childish about wanting a slight quality of life improvement but I'm sure that's just you slinging in a random derogative adjective to sound more intelligent, considering you're failing to grasp what's being argued after a fairly straightforward explanation. I'd be happy with an extra 5 stacks on tigerseye if they're intent on keeping the terrible ramp up.

Pretty much every class has something to facilitate some kind of burst, it's emphasized this tier with the set bonuses and it's pretty much a standard part of a DPS tool kit.
Warriors have recklessness, avatar and their 45(?) talents.
Paladins AW, GoAK & their 75(?) talent tier.
Rogues have vendetta, adrenaline rush, killing spree & shadow dance.
Death Knights have ERW, pillar, unholy frenzy & raise dead (Frost).
Druids have incarnation, force of nature, NV, hotw, CA and TF.
Hunters have dire beast, fervor, toth, blink strike, LR, their entire 90 tier, BW, rapid fire, readiness, stampede and more.
Mages have PoM, shatters, combust, arcane stacks and alter time to double up on any of that.
Priests have their 75 tier, FDCL & shadowfiend.
Shamans have EM, Asc, EB, PE & fulmination.
Warlocks have meta, dark soul, felstorm, haunt, chaos bolt and imp swarm.


Monks have a pet with it's lackluster damage spread over 45 seconds and a minute 30 ramp up that gives them 20% extra damage for 15 or so seconds and scale terribly with haste past a point and mastery.

[Authentic]

Did you miss the part where Monk is a new class and things like burst and utility are about the design of the class whereas "high single-target damage" is just a numbers thing? What could "go wrong" is that being a spec whose usefulness rests solely on overpowered damage would be stacked to hell on fights like Will of the Emperor or Gara'jal where you can have a couple of people sit and DPS for the entire fight. At first glance you'd think that's great, until you realize that kind of thing is 100% certain to bring down the nerf bat, and then you're back to average damage with no utility and no burst. Having a DPS designed to simply be better than every other class at sustained damage is terrible for the game.

Good thing that Monks aren’t in such a place then. What exactly is one of the design flaws for Monks? Burst surely isn’t a thing, because we’re fine at it. Just time your cooldowns like you said. The only thing I can get upset about is the way mastery and haste aren’t cooperating.

It's not about being "viable." It's about having a class design that will be useful and desired for something even when the times come where we don't have overpowered DPS. I'd rather not see Windwalker become the spec that gets sat depending on where they sim for the day because everyone else just brings something useful besides DPS.

The manner on which you are playing this game probably will never get you benched, seeing as only on the levels of competitive raiding classes are being stacked or excluded from a raid. Also something that’s not a concern for Monks, as most top guilds have a WW monk. You’re one of the guys who thinks your class should atleast be able to battleress twice during an encounter in order to be viable. We bring 2/8 buffs and can survive like no other DPS can, we’ve got enough tricks up our sleeves to earn a raidspot.

Disclaimer: If you don't play at a level where that kind of balance matters or are simply raiding with people that aren't as good as you (i.e. you rank 1 on WoL and no one else ranks higher than 10th for their class), you can see your way out of this discussion as balance isn't a concern for you.

What does that even mean? It just shows that even with a malfunctioning raid it doesn’t even matter how well the classes you bring are tailored to a certain fight to get a kill.

My point from the get go was that tigerseye is a bad mechanic. I'm not exactly sure what's childish about wanting a slight quality of life improvement but I'm sure that's just you slinging in a random derogative adjective to sound more intelligent, considering you're failing to grasp what's being argued after a fairly straightforward explanation. I'd be happy with an extra 5 stacks on tigerseye if they're intent on keeping the terrible ramp up.

Pretty much every class has something to facilitate some kind of burst, it's emphasized this tier with the set bonuses and it's pretty much a standard part of a DPS tool kit.
Warriors have recklessness, avatar and their 45(?) talents.
Paladins AW, GoAK & their 75(?) talent tier.
Rogues have vendetta, adrenaline rush, killing spree & shadow dance.
Death Knights have ERW, pillar, unholy frenzy & raise dead (Frost).
Druids have incarnation, force of nature, NV, hotw, CA and TF.
Hunters have dire beast, fervor, toth, blink strike, LR, their entire 90 tier, BW, rapid fire, readiness, stampede and more.
Mages have PoM, shatters, combust, arcane stacks and alter time to double up on any of that.
Priests have their 75 tier, FDCL & shadowfiend.
Shamans have EM, Asc, EB, PE & fulmination.
Warlocks have meta, dark soul, felstorm, haunt, chaos bolt and imp swarm.


Monks have a pet with it's lackluster damage spread over 45 seconds and a minute 30 ramp up that gives them 20% extra damage for 15 or so seconds and scale terribly with haste past a point and mastery.

No, that's not me trying to sound more intelligent. That's just you being childish. Just like you’re being childish right now: why are you bringing other classes abilities into this thread? Homogenization of classes is a bad thing. Boo.
Sure it’s nice to have a talent that will fuck over everything in sight, but it’s just not needed. Xuen is fine at what he does. Even with the toolkits other classes have they are on par with Monks for a lot of fights, whereas mages (for instance) beat them. Does that mean every class needs to get buffed to be able to do the same as the mage? No. It just means that the mage has somewhat of a better design for a certain fight.

The things you two are referring to, and everyone has been referring to in these cases only apply to high end raiding guilds.
For instance the first spine of deathwing kill was achieved through stacking mages. Whole community goes rampage about mages being op and class x and y being underpowered because they didn't facilitate the needs to defeat that boss. In the first 3 days of the fight being released. Before hotfixes. With a raid in gear that's not on the same level as the encounter. Then, 6 weeks after the top guilds defeated the encounter, and your guild starts to progress on that fight, such a problem doesn't exist any longer, because hotfixes have been made and your raid has better gear than the top guild's raid had when they first cleared the encounter, tactics have become a lot clearer and you'll manage just fine.

You two really have been creating problems that aren’t even there. Monks aren’t underrepresented, Monks bring enough to the table to have them in the raid.
If you’re not giving your raidleaders a reason to have you in the raid over someone else, you might just want to improve yourself instead of the class.

[Totaltotemic]

I'm done responding to you, it's impossible to have an intelligent discussion with someone that puts words in other people's mouths and pretends to know what they think, all while ignoring sound, logical conclusions.

[Deleted]

So what you're saying is it's fine there's a nice big hole in our toolkit because the boss will eventually be hotfixed so everyone can do it ? That's nice but it's just not good enough for some of us. You're not quite comprehending nobody is asking for an overall output buff at all.

[Moozhe]

I disagree with Totaltotemic that we need raid utility, but I agree that we need some work with our DPS versatility. Our numbers are fine but our mechanics are not.

These are the types things I think we need:

1. Some kind of damage increase against 2-3 targets.
2. Improved on-demand cooldowns. The biggest problem with Tigereye Brew is probably the fact that it skews our damage based on the length of the fight. It makes us stronger on long fights and weaker on short fights.
3. A mastery which doesn't conflict with our haste. This is going to cause some ridiculous scaling problems later on.
4. An execute. I've had fights where I'll be #1 DPS until the last 20% and then I'll fall to #6. Most classes have an execute and it helps break the tedium of 100-0 linear DPS.

My personal suggestions are the following:

1. Fists of Fury should not split damage.

It should do 100% damage to multiple targets up to a certain number (between 3 to 5), at which point it would have diminishing damage similar to how most AOEs diminish at around 10 targets. This would shake up our AOE rotation a bit because right now it's just SCK/RSK spam. It would also give us some burst AOE instead of our very flat and linear SCK AOE. This change would also make things interesting in 2-3 target situation because FoF would probably have a higher priority than RSK. Finally, this change solves the problem of how we can't use FoF to "focus" a target. Right now if 2 targets are being tanked beside each other and we need to burn down one (Protectors of the Endless for example), we can't use FoF at all.

2. We should be given a new cooldown which acts like Readiness does for Hunters. It should automatically fill our Tigereye Brew stacks to full.

It could also reset Energizing Brew and other short CDs. We could use it to chain Tigereye Brew back to back, or use it to be able to use Tigereye Brew from the very start of the fight. We currently don't have a 5min DPS cooldown and most classes do. The nice thing about it is that it doesn't double up so it shouldn't cause balancing issues for PVP. Cooldowns that double up are like Recklessness + Avatar. In this case, you can't double up two Tigereye Brew buffs for +40% damage, you could at best chain them back to back. So no gibbing in PVP. It would also help fix us in PVP because right now most arena battles end before we ever get to use Tigereye Brew.

3. Replacing our mastery is difficult since Blizzard wants to avoid "boring" masteries which give a flat damage increase. Ideally I think our mastery should be something that reduces GCD/energy capping instead of increasing them, so we can balance mastery with our haste to give the perfect balance of energy income. One idea I have is to give mastery a chance to proc a 4-chi cost Blackout Kick. With a 4-chi cost we would be able to dump chi faster the more mastery we have. And it would still maintain the fun factor of having our abilities light up, even more fun in this case since the ability would presumably hit for 2-3x as much as it normally does.

4. I would like to say rework Touch of Death for execute range but it's trying to do too much already. It is designed around PVE leveling, dailies, etc. It has a glyph and a set bonus to make it slightly useful for PVP. It is pretty much useless in raiding. Changing Touch of Death to an execute would ruin the fun factor of going around 1 shotting things while leveling and doing dailies and the like. There could be a glyph that reduces the CD to 10-15 seconds or so and makes it only usable against targets with < 20% health, but I feel like that's not a good solution to expect every PVPer and raider to have a pretty much mandatory glyph all the time.

[Deleted]

Touch of Death solution is easy, just had it give a shorter cooldown if it doesn't kill the target - though giving us an execute would require damage to be taken away from our regular abilities.

[Totaltotemic]

Our numbers are fine but our mechanics are not.

I've only been saying this for the entire thread. I constantly said that we needed something to be good at, raid utility is just one of the many things a class or spec can have. Lacking all three of cleave, utility, and burst leaves only single-target damage as a reason to bring a spec, which will never be WW's niche because it would be far too binary. I feel like most of the discussions on this forum get completely derailed simply due to lack of reading.