The goal of this post isn’t to list a myriad of bugs—the Monk Discord has done quite a bit of that already but to get some communication from the devs as to what the plan is going forward with the class at least via a community manager such as @kaivax.
Jack of all trades, master of none isn’t a niche.
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Being mid at everything may seem thematic for a Windwalker but that’s not a replacement for a true damage profile which provides flexibility that could be WW’s actual niche at the cost of being harder to play and learn.
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Considering you need to play at 100% to accomplish that only for other classes to outperform you while performing at lower percentiles for their class, results in WW being below average at best for most players.
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Filtering mythic logs by top-performing Windwalkers in comparison to other specs drops it from being below average on a mythic population level to the bottom 5 (not counting aug evoker) at the 99th percentile to the bottom 3 when filtering for boss damage also not counting aug evoker but this time because it’s above WW.
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This problem persists in Heroic, and Normal logs while being slightly higher compared to Mythic.
Parody Without Parity
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There’s an overlap between Paladins, Monks, and Druids —but Monks don’t receive the same level of finishing touches that Paladins do. Paladins got a significant update mid Dragonflight and now again coming in 11.0.5.
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This raises the rhetorical question of why pick a Monk when a Paladin can provide better group utility aside from number tunning.
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Simple things like Monk getting a soothe effect attached to para but keeping it at an over 30-second cooldown where druids and hunters soothe is 10sec AND hunters tranq also removes a magic effect. It’s designed to fail.
No reason to play Windwalker
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Unless Windwalker is numerically overtuned, there’s little incentive for a raid team to choose it over another class. If it’s not offering top-tier DPS or unique utility, its place in the meta becomes irrelevant, as it has always been. The class lacks a compelling reason to be picked, which leads to frustration for players who WANT to specialize in the spec but are constantly overlooked.
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Haste was the worst stat to now being the best at the expense of breaking the rotation with bloodlust and/or PI. You can’t press WDP most of the time because of how WWs abilities interact with one another, reset/lower the cooldown of FoF, and lower the CD of its core abilities since they’re all hasted without lowering its capped 1sec GCD.
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I say this as someone with a Wooting keyboard where I can change my buttons actuation point and even with a 0.4mm lowest being 0.1mm it’s still not enough to press it in the WDP window in some cases.
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There is a negative feedback loop where when you get good ‘rng’ I.E your RSK crits, lowering the cd of your FoF which you want AND you happen to get a Dance of Chi-Ji proc AND god forbid you play with knowledge of the broken temple and you’re over capping on the teaching of the monetary stacks AND trying to not over cap on energy because it’s the backbone of shado-pan… you’re then punished and not able to press WDP on top of all that.
- This is by no means overwhelming for ‘ME’ but I don’t have the GCDs to press all this, darting hurricane was supposed to help with this, which it did sort of, but it was nerfed??? I expected a buff or it being permanent rather than a buff you track. What is going on here?
- This is by no means overwhelming for ‘ME’ but I don’t have the GCDs to press all this, darting hurricane was supposed to help with this, which it did sort of, but it was nerfed??? I expected a buff or it being permanent rather than a buff you track. What is going on here?
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To interlink another point to the above chain, Serenity was removed sniff which was a spell most people didn’t like (apparently), I did, but it was supposedly removed due to wasting resources because of it… Well, now you’re wasting way more resources than ever… from ToTM stacks, energy, chi, uses of WDP, etc
- What did this solve?
- What did this solve?
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WW has one of the lowest DPS variances in the game compared to other classes which for me is a huge positive and yet because of the former points it doesn’t feel like it anymore, despite still being the case.
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I don’t want this post to get too long because I can keep going but looking at the options Paladin has for its capstones pales in comparison to the wasteland for WW, albeit Darting Hurricane and Revolving Whirl/Knowledge of the Broken Temple are good anchors to start with.
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Paladins are the most overrepresented class in the game especially ret. I don’t think it’s bad it shows how solid their theme, rotation, animations, utility, and talent choices are. Mage is getting to that state too.
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I’m personally looking at going back to my mage because I personally feel I’m holding back my raid team and then myself from being able to enjoy the game rather than playing catch-up.
- I can’t gear as easily outside of the raid, getting into PUGs is a chore but with 1/3 of the time my mage has almost caught up in gear to my monk who’s had 2-3 HC resets and 2 mythic resets over the mage.
- It has better damage profiles/options, brings BL to PUGs etc
- I also don’t like the SCK spam as an AOE filler with jade lighting being the only option you can talent into to offer something different… This is a personal bias, but no thanks…
- Holding or trying to get ToTM stacks for Courageous Impulse (old DF s3 tier set bonus) isn’t as rewarding as it should be because blackout kick doesn’t do much damage.
- I can’t gear as easily outside of the raid, getting into PUGs is a chore but with 1/3 of the time my mage has almost caught up in gear to my monk who’s had 2-3 HC resets and 2 mythic resets over the mage.
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I’m able to adjust my build, damage profile, or CDs as a mage because of the flexibility of having 3 DPS specs. WW doesn’t have that, there are new talents that let you lower the CD of Xuen to 90sec but WW needs way more than that. Having a monk buff if you don’t have a MW or BrM doesn’t justify to me numerically playing WW over mage. Frost can get 2 immunities off if needed, WW has none. I’m also not asking for WW/Monk to get one, just highlighting the never-ending list of discrepancies between other classes and Monk.
- Again all of this at the expense of being harder to play, not all mages can play well and play all 3 specs at that same level.
- I don’t like the concept of ‘button bloat’ being blamed for everything while also not shutting the door for better design options, recently seen with the update to echoing reprimand being moved to Shiv for rogues. The way I see it, less is in fact less rather than more for WW.
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Monks, WW in particular is so starved for changes that I see people online call the TWW update to its talent tree a ‘rework’ it’s not a rework. Combust in Legion for Fire, was a rework. WW got an update, not much else, and it seems not much else after it either.
Lack of Communication
- The Windwalker community has consistently voiced concerns over the past few expansions, but these concerns have largely gone unanswered. For instance, why is Jade Fire Stomp still in the WW spec tree? It was unanimously hated and A default pick in DF single target yet it’s still there…
Inconsistent Buffs and Nerfs
- When Windwalker Monks do receive tuning, it often feels reactive rather than proactive.
- The buffs and nerfs seem to come out of nowhere and don’t address the core issues that players are raising while the last nerf/change to darting hurricane was mind-boggling to me (as is the SCK change made in beta). This inconsistency makes it harder for players to invest in the spec long-term, as they never know if their class will be viable from one patch to the next.