With the upcoming Hero Talents feature in The War Within, and our dearest hope for a Windwalker/Monk rework before then, I’ve decided to take a moment to write down my thoughts about the fantasy and theme of the monk, and Windwalker in particular. The aim of this post is to solidify the theme like I would personally like to see it, with the hopes that others will be able to pitch in with their thoughts and ultimately give Blizzard some good inspiration for a class fantasy to establish with a potential rework.
Note that these ideas are a combination of my personal interpretation and headcanon about monk and all of its specializations. While I have a fairly good grasp of the established lore, I certainly do not know everything and I might say something that goes directly against established facts (and sometimes even intentionally).
So, let’s begin with the broad outline:
What is a monk, and what sets it apart from the other classes. As the story goes, the pandaren of Pandaria were once enslaved and oppressed by the Mogu, who used them for labor. As slaves, they were naturally not given access to weaponry, but rebellious sentiments grew nonetheless. As the Mogu empire was growing unstable, the pandaren seized the opportunity to prepare a rebellion, training themselves to fight barehanded. During this training, they cultivated the ability to manipulate the Spirit of Life, one of Azeroth’s five elements which had grown scarce due to Azeroth’s Worldsoul having mostly consumed it. They named this energy Chi, and used it to break free from their oppressors. In the current age, pandaren settlers and explorers teach their Chi techniques to other races as well.
With that little history lesson, we can define Monk as such: a martial artist who uses the element of Life, or Chi, to empower their techniques. Chi can also be manifested as a jade-colored mist, which greatly boosts the natural healing and immune system of living creatures and can be used to heal injuries, as well as draw out poisons and destroy harmful magic. Furthermore, Chi can be infused into concoctions with special ingredients, creating brews, teas and elixirs that provide benefits that Chi cannot effect on its own. Over time, different schools of martial arts have sprung up in Pandaria, each mentored by one of the four August Celestials, a group of powerful Wild Gods.
Now, one thing that has bothered me a little bit is how the current iteration of the class design of the monk doesn’t explain very well how the three specializations connect with each other. Particularly the disconnect between Chi and Jade mists is a strange gap to be left to the imagination. To remedy this, I present to you my personal interpretation of the three specializations:
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Windwalkers are monks who’ve focused on offensive techniques. They use Chi to fortify their fists, arms, and legs in order to become as effective in combat as a combatant using weapons. Some of their techniques involve injecting their Chi into their target, and cause internal damage to their Spirit, while others infuse the surrounding air with Chi to create gusts of wind which can be used for mobility or as direct attacks. A Windwalker master becomes capable of manifesting their Chi as a white lightning. Xuen, the White Tiger, takes a particular fondness for Windwalkers and trains them in the temple the pandaren have built in his honor. He has personally mastered the use of his own Chi to produce his White Tiger Lightning.
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Mistweavers cultivate their ability to use Chi in the form of Mists, and take up the role of healers during combat. They’re still quite capable in hand-to-hand combat, and are proficient in using the surplus Chi of their attacks to immediately transform it into Mists for more healing. They’ve also developed a unique application of the jade mists, by wrapping their allies in a mist that dampens or even entirely deflects incoming attacks. Both Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent, and Chi-Ji, the Red Crane, train their students in the use of Chi by way of mists, and both demonstrate a high degree of mastery over it.
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Brewmasters specialize in the creation of powerful mixtures using their own Chi, granting the brews various effects. The most common application of this technique is to enhance the toughness of the user’s skin and bones in order to endure powerful attacks. Brewmasters also use Chi techniques to boost their reflexes and their body’s flexibility, creating an unpredictable style of martial arts that focuses on evading and softening incoming blows. This evokes the image of a drunken, swaggering fighter, which brewmasters jovially accept. Niuzao, the Black Ox, trains monks in these techniques.
Alright, so now we have a pretty clear idea on how monks work, and how their different specializations are derived from the fundamentals. We’ve also established what the link between the monks and the Augest Celestials is.
Next, I’m going to go through some abilities and talents (in no particular order), to see if any need their tooltips adjusted to reflect the theme as described. Some may recognize a number of the suggested reworks as ideas that I’ve presented before on the Peak of Serenity discord server.
Crackling Jade Lightning: right off the bat, CJL presents a bit of a problem. In the description of Windwalker, I mentioned that lightning is a sign of a Chi user who has mastered offensive techniques, so why is CJL such a basic ability that any monk can use? Therefore, I propose that it is replaced by the following:
Obviously this causes an issue with Windwalker’s Last Emperor’s Capacitor, so I’ve reworked that into this:
This establishes lightning as a windwalker-exclusive trait, while keeping the general projectile spell that every class should have, and not changing the windwalker talents significantly.
Rushing Jade Wind: Other than its mistweaver variant, Refreshing Jade Wind, this ability seems like a strange addition to the arsenal of windwalkers and brewmasters. It’s also notably the only mist-themed ability that deals damage instead of healing. My suggestion would therefore be to desaturate the texture of the animation, and give it the appearance of a regular tornado. The tooltip could then reflect the intended flavor of the ability like this, for example: “Infuse your Chi into a whirling tornado around you, dealing damage etc.”
Storm, Earth, and Fire: The name itself already suggests an elemental attribute that isn’t and shouldn’t be there, and the tooltip is also misdirecting by calling the spirits “elemental”. I propose that the tooltip be slightly adjusted to “Split into three spiritual bodies”. The name should then be considered a poetic choice, similar to Rising Sun Kick not having a fire attribute.
Serenity: Different people have different opinions, but I think Serenity is a bit of a wonky ability. It changes the rotation a bit too drastically while it’s active, while ironically also being a little too short to enjoy its strength. We’ve had an arguably superior version of the same spell in Shadowlands’ Weapons of Order, which was able to maintain the core focus of the rotation while still having a noticeable effect on the priority. I suggest blending the two abilities into something like this:
I’ve adjusted the values to still make some sense when accounting for Drinking Horn Cover. As an additional note, now that Serenity and Invoke Xuen are both a 2 minute cooldown, care should be taken that Spiritual Focus and Xuen’s Bond both provide a similar amount of cooldown reduction per minute. In my opinion, both should provide enough cdr to consistently reduce each spell’s cooldown by 20-30 seconds.
The Fists of Fury interaction is intended to remove any incentive for clipping it. A full channel Fists of Fury won’t cost you anything when you’re compensated in the duration.
I realize that this one was far more gameplay-oriented than the others, but if we’re talking about a rework, there’s little sense in leaving it out.
Touch of Death: After losing its Chi cost several iterations ago, this ability has sort of lost its Chi flavor on top of being the cause of several gameplay-related annoyances with players. This rework was mostly created by Hursti, with a little input from myself:
For bonus points, have the animation for FFG be similar to Killing Spree, where you snap to each target before returning to your original position.
Invoke Celestial: This applies to all four variations of the spell across all specs. Basically, the magic system as we’ve established in this thread doesn’t really support the ability to summon an effigy of a Celestial as a pet, temporary or not. Not to mention, and I hate to get pedantic, but that’s not exactly what “invoking” means. It would be more appropriate, both linguistically and for the monk fantasy, to call upon a Celestial as inspiration for powerful Chi abilities. Visually, the Invoke spells shouldn’t summon a pet, but create effects on the player character itself. Perhaps ornaments similar to the Mists of Pandaria Legendary cloaks, or glowing markings themed after each Celestial. Make it believable that the effects are manifestations of Chi.
For example:
Visual effects: White Tiger markings, white lightning effects, and/or tiger claws coating your hands.
Visual effects: Black Ox horns, a black glow, and/or hooves.
Visual effects: Jade Cloud Serpent head, jade glow, and/or cloud serpent tail.
Visual effects: Red Crane Beak, red mist effect, and/or crane feet.
Covenant abilities
I have brought this up on numerous occasions, but it's simply unacceptable to copy-paste a covenant ability into a specialization tree without any adjustments. Not just in terms of gameplay, but in terms of visual theme as well. During the story of Shadowlands, we entered into the different covenants and were granted a portion of their power, unlocking class abilities created from the magic from each covenant. As such, each covenant ability was heavily themed after the covenant that it came from, sometimes more so than the respective class, especially visually. Now that the abilities have been repurposed as talents, they must have been recreated by the player character without being able to rely on the covenant's magic, with their own power. At most the abilities may be inspired by the covenants, but that wouldn't make them visually the same.Just like the Touch of Death proposal, this Faeline Stomp rework addresses the theme of the spells as well as the gameplay effect.
Faeline Stomp:
The reset chance now comes from hitting targets affected by a debuff rather than standing on the shape. That removes any need for the shape to persist for 30 sec, so that can be removed. Giving it a Chi cost provides interaction with the reworked Serenity, and allows for a larger damage value and a more intuitive priority.
The animation should be altered to or replaced with a lightning field, using the same shapes as current FLS. The name change is to reintroduce some pandaren vibes rather than night fae and is a reference to the Lichtenberg effect (google it).
For Mistweaver, the spell doesn’t need to change much. The follow-up talents already add a considerable amount of quality of life. I still maintain that it needs a visual update to integrate it into the mistweaver theme better, but it might not take much more than a hue shift to a jade color.
Way of the Fae:
This is a complete rework seeing as how Way of the Fae is underpowered as hell and not all that interesting. Li Zen Ba’s Conduit adds some flat aoe damage to CJL, by charging it up with the Stomp first. The idea is that Crackling White Lightning keeps channeling to all chained targets, so this will synergize amazingly with Emperor’s Last Capacitor.
Faeline Harmony:
This is just a name change and visual update to reflect the changes above, functionally the same as Faeline Harmony.
The visual effects for these spells should ditch the entire Night Fae aesthetic, and instead adopt a lightning theme to demonstrate it being a high-level windwalker technique.
Just like Faeline Stomp, Bonedust Brew mainly needs a visual rework. That said, I included some gameplay-altering changes as well to make it work better as a “brew” rather than just an attack. I’ve used the Storm Brew from the Legion Monk Campaign as inspiration:
Bonedust Brew:
Dust in the Wind:
This is another complete rework, since Dust in the Wind is an absolute joke of a talent and presumably a constant source of crippling embarrassment for whoever put it in the game. Note that the value on the buff is intended as a multiplicative value on the stat rating, not the overall percentage.
Weapons of Order (Brewmaster): The ability is fine in terms of gameplay, and the visual effect is acceptable even if I think it could use some tweaking. I’d mainly argue that the name should be changed into something more appropriate. Seeing as how it’s a buff, it could even become a Brew, or an Elixir if you want to prevent the CDR from applying. I’d recommend something along the lines of “Draught of the Golden Lotus” and tweak the effect to a golden color.
Hero Talents
Now that we have a well-established, coherent, and united theme and fantasy for each specialization and the class as a whole, we can offer some quick suggestions for the newly announced 11.0 Hero Talents.
- Master of Harmony sounds fine as the hero talent path between Brewmaster and Mistweaver, I don’t have anything to add here.
- Thundersurge could be the hero path between Windwalker and Mistweaver, granting techniques for limit-breaking Chi that cannot be safely used without self-healing spells.
- Living Weapon can be the path between Brewmaster and Windwalker, with potions/elixirs that greatly boost offensive power instead of defense or additional offensive effects to existing brews.
