They made the right move making some old spells baseline. Some classes got more meaningful spells than others though (naturally). The way I see it, they made little to no design changes (besides shamans), just adding already existing spells. This makes me think that they care more about making the players somewhat happy, but do not realize that some classes still have core design issues. I remain skeptical about the outcome and any good incoming changes. Anyway, stopping the complaints.
WW needs some significant changes in my opinion. The 15 and 90 talent rows are so completely insignificant that you can literally play without a talent chosen and your playstyle and dps would be 99% the same. I’d urge them to completely rework the 15 and 90 rows, or at least tune the numbers significantly (while shifting the damage ofc).
I’d like to see Hit combo stacks increased by 2 (maybe even 3 or 4) with dmg increase from 1 to 2%, obviously while reducing the dmg of other abilities to make up for it. BUT balance them around a 8-10% avg increase from hit combo. That would drastically bring meaning to the mastery again and enable good and bad players to be differentiated more by enabling players who are able to maintain high stacks hit combo for long periods of time be rewarded with a 10% avg dmg increase, while failing it repeatedly will reduce your overall dmg by 10%, meaning 20% top to bottom. Ofc these numbers might be slightly too large but I think at least 10% difference from top to bottom performance in regards to hit combo is good.
The mastery makes no sense ( I know many people will disagree) because the only meaningful abilities are rsk and fof which have long cds, making them practically impossible to repeat. The third is SCK in aoe which repeating in aoe is still more worth than hitting bok or tp, even with the reduced dmg cuz of mastery (which is third best stat which is around 25-30%).
Then there’s the most derpy offensive cd in the game - SEF. I can’t stress how much I hate this. I understand some people may like it because of the aesthetics and fantasy and all that (even though it comes from warcraft 3 panda brewmaster guy, not class fantasy), but I think we can all agree that it’s mechanically bad. Pressing it, then pressing it 3-4 more times to make sure the images are focused on target and waiting half a sec before using anything is JUST BAD DESIGN. Not to mention in PvP u get ccd in it, trinket, then having to press it multiple times again to make them stick on the target is very annoying. It needs a serious rework - one that is not based on AI and is reliable and smooth. It’s just a mandatory ability that we must press in order to do dmg, not that adrenaline feel good feeling you’d get with other specs.
Then there’s Serenity which is by faaaaaar the better ability. I’d like to see it become the go-to talent if they aren’t willing to rework SEF. I prefer it in its legion equivalent with high dmg amp and low duration, but that’s unhealthy for pvp. What made it good in legion was mostly the artifact ability which was big dmg on long cd. You literally had to press artifact and rsk once and you got like 70% of its value. I’d also like to see SotW return, but if it doesn’t happen, a good change would be to keep serenity low dmg amp, high duration, but increase haste by a lot, so u can get like 2 fofs in it and 3rd with no chi cost. That would feel epic.
Some slight buff to TeB in pvp would also be good. Ofc and burst cooldowns should be off the gcd.
For a passive last row talent - chi explosion
Pvp Wise - FoF stun back in some way (im thinking of an active that makes your next fof stun), at the cost of RoP np.
Incap cd reduced down to 20-30 secs, port cd to 30 secs
I completely agree with a lot of your points. I would love a shorter cooldown on Incap as a 4 second CC on a 45 second cooldown. I don’t think it should be allowed to be on a 15 second cooldown as it was bonkers and made us have too many stops, but I do think around the 25 second mark would be great and could be balanced as long as our damage is tuned.
Also I love the Fist of Fury stun. The setup-potential Windwalkers had was a lot of fun, and I would trade that for the bonkers damage we do at the moment.
Your best point is regarding SEF. It’s absolutely dreadful. The AI is useless and it’s not fun to play with. Imo the best solution would be to bring back the old Tigereye Brew. It was an insanely fun and well-designed mechanic and promoted less scripted gameplay.
Windwalkers remained relatively the same from MOP to Legion, playstyle-wise and the Windwalker community has generally been extremely happy with the design of Windwalkers so I have no idea why the spec was changed.
annoying thing is that even if they buff hitcombo dance of chi ji will probably be miles ahead in dps so choosing hit combo will be too big of a dps loss
im fearly new to monk , i come from maining a rogue (assa is boring imo , outlaw is cluncky, sub is fun but dissapointed now in BFA) , im not a min maxer im a casual player but main , im having fun !!! its fast , its flashy im fcking Jackie Chan ! + i love mw to , didnt touch BM yet .
I’m a fairly casual player now after being a mythic raider for a few years, then taking a break.
I have been leveling a monk and warrior and am trying to choose a main.
I enjoy both as I really like ths mobility of both.
I think monk is slightly more engaging but warrior I just charge in and wreck stuff.
It’s a tough choice. Dont really want to be rejected from pugs all the time in shadowlands.
But I guess it’s too early to tell.
I agree with almost everything you said but this. I believe Hit Combo is a very boring talent that should be scrapped instead of empowered. The talent literally says “Deal 6% more damage” for a skilled windwalker and isn’t innovative or fun. It would be a cool ability for any class BUT windwalkers. It simply adds more mastery. I’d rather have something interesting in this tier instead.
Another thing is SEF. The talent row of level 100 has been prety much defined for the last 2 expansions. We always go Whirling Dragon Punch. I believe the way to fix it is to give us WDP baseline. It’s one of the best abilities of windwalker both strength and flavor. While it will probably be our only uncapped aoe we need it really badly. This would actually create more space in the talent row. If we wouldn’t basically trade up both SEF and WDP for Serenity, it might become a viable pick even in this current underpowered state.
The point you also probably forgot to mention is touch of karma. While it is flavorful and cool in PVP it’s a terrible ability in PVE. I hate damaging myself on purpose only to deal more damage to the boss (imagine popping Fortibrew along just for the damage, what a waste but it will happen). Is that a defensive ability? an offensive one? been playing a windwalker for 4 years and I’m not really able to answer that, although i’d probably lean towards the offense. I’d rather the ability get reworked and not deal damage at all (but then the name barely makes sense) and have a defensive ability instead or scrapped completely.
Our mastery is fine. I believe it’s the scaling that makes it quite bad. With the recent change to ToD which will give us significantly less damage and (hopefully) a karma damage removal we’ll have mastery at almost the same priority as versatility i believe. It’s these spells that are not scaled with mastery making it weaker.
I Love this idea, i believe this is a great choice instead of our Tiger Tail Sweep but this is probably mostly for pvp players to discuss as this might be too strong.
This one as well, yes please. Transcendence is probably my favourite spell in monk, great flavor, really makes you feel good to utilize it well.
My last idea for fixing SEF is simply changing it completely. We got Xuen baseline, which is… fine, Xuen scales really badly. But what if our Invoke Xuen would actually invoke him inside the windwalker. Imagine a new rebalanced ability that would work similarly to Vale of Eternal Blossom buff where you turn into Xuen and have special abilities for a limited duration, zapping lightning and mauling enemies. That’s my idea for fixing both SEF and Xuen at the same time, make it our primary offensive cooldown instead of these two.
It’s very early so this is a numbers thing really, but I’ve heard two different things, as I’m not in the alpha. One was it’s currently insanely broken, another is hit combo is still the go to option as outside of the procs which are completely random (which feels bad to play to be honest) it just gives us nothing.