I’ve been loving and playing windwalker since release but this feels like the worst version it’s ever been in personally, I’ve given up on the spec until it changes and will be playing brewmaster instead.
I’ve played quite alot of WW on the beta / pre-patch and can say with full confidence that the spec simply feels worse to play, I first noticed they took away our Expel Harm which was one of the most interesting and fun spells to use for me personally. I loved how it refreshed Hit Combo and allowed out of combat Chi refreshment and synergized with our mastery, This was the cherry on top of the cake for WW especially since it was half a GCD.
Now it’s nerfed, no longer generates Chi. Also there’s a mandatory talent “Combat Wisdom” which makes it a passive spell which helps generate chi and adds to the menagerie of buffs we already have to track which I’d argue is worse than button bloat if that’s the reason for it’s removal I’m not sure.
Then I noticed that I can’t cast Chi burst, but not only that it no longer grants 2 chi. And realised our only chi generation outside of random buffs or procs is simply Tiger palm. This change is interesting but again adds to the buff tracking issue, I hope they allow this to generate chi again.
So we have to track Combat wisdom buff, Darting hurricane procs(otherwise it can ruin our hit combo due to faster GCD’s), Ordered Elements RSK buff and lets just say we wanted to play Shado-Pan we’d have to track at least 2-3 buffs on that tree as it’s completely passive, On top of everything we already track. This buff and proc bloat is more confusing than button bloat in my opinion.
I can look past this all since I love windwalker but the reason I decided to quit was because of bugs on the beta, with only a few weeks out from release there’s something causing our Chi-Ji procs to cancel, (same issue with celestial conduit), Strike of the windlord removes hit combo buff entirely and there’s a bug that doesn’t allow monks to change talents for the past 2-3 days now.
Sadly some things I loved about monk are also gone like being able to cast spinning crane kicks whilst rolling or whilst using other melee spells, and the removal of damage from Flying serpent kick which causes it to no longer effect hit combo/mastery.
Lastly I’d like to say that some of these new capstone talents are simply copy and paste from shadowlands legendarys and the concept of Tiger palm (our only generator) being mega buffed from talents and the tier set just doesn’t feel right or good.
I really hope that we can have expel harm back at least and I don’t want to be negative so here’s what I like so far about the new talents, Momentum boost- This is a cool concept which makes haste feel relevant on windwalker, I’m interested to see everyone’s new builds eventually. Lower cd on strike of the windlord and talents to buff it feel great, Before this button didn’t feel that impactful and 40 sec cd felt a little strange. Lighter than air is super fun to play around with! And flurry of xuen alongside the 100% crit whilst xuen is out feels great, I like the playstyle to summon loads of xuens!