Windwalker Monk - the next experience

Classes Monk
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I wrote before, how my shocking Windwalker experience was such a disappointment due to small DPS and being generally weak, ineffective, immobile, etc. especially compared to same level Paladin.

However, now that we have won some BGs and I have leveled that monk, it’s actually a bit of great fun to play, so I take some of it back, perhaps it is, after all, a great, fun class and spec to play.

Lowest DPS still, but at least I was able to be ‘useful’ in those BGs, so things are looking up.

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You’re not 120 yet, and neither no Azerite traits, you really can’t judge DPS at a low level.

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There are BG’s where I feel… useful, but more often than not I feel gimped. I’m a dirty casual, so take my humble opinion with a mountain of salt…
WW BfA is awful in comparison to Legion. Especially in battlegrounds. I feel so… basic.
Where I used to Power Strikes into HHS, I now need to TP-BoK-TP-LS-FoF to get the same effect. Where HE would be a saving grace for 6s HoJ/6s Kidney/Lightning Lasso, I now have Vivify. Where people wouldn’t dream of ploughing into Karma without killing themselves, their healer or their efc, it’s just burst through in <2 seconds. Even when my strongest defensive isn’t insta-dispelled/negated, 1 Chaos Bolt / 1 G.Pyro / 1 Lightning Lasso is enough to negate it. Karma is actually worse than a Third Wind Potion, (atleast with 3rd Wind I can pop it every minute).

There’s an argument to be made that WW’s perform well in Arena (I wouldn’t know, I don’t play it) but we’re handicapped in bg’s. I appreciate bg’s are one tiny corner of WoW & I don’t expect to be balanced around them, but 14s saps & 14s roots & 14s fears & hex’s & Mind controls & Poly’s every 15 seconds, 7s Ring of Frost, 7s Freezing Trap, 6s HoJ, 6s Cyclone, chains of ice… but Paralysis (stand still for 3s) needed a 300% cd!? Dead in 2xLightning Lasso every 30s but FoF stun was OP!? We can’t match other classes mobility (Druid/DH) -fair enough, we shouldn’t all be ‘the same’ -but for whose benefit was FSK nerfed? Steering FSK didn’t seem OP, other talents are way more beneficial, it was just a fun tool to play with, why even remove it?

I honestly hope Monks improve for 9.0, mainly by reverting some of the awful changes made for BfA & then buffing from there.

-WW-
2s FSK returned
25s Transfer returned (+heal, for bonus points)
Power Strikes returned (FoTWT removed)
Auto-proc Healing Elixirs returned
100% Karma baseline returned
Heavy Handed Strikes returned
Steering FSK returned
Hit Combo buffed
SCK stacks increased
Haste reduces GCD

-BrM-
Blackout Combo baseline
Increase Keg range
Make Healing Elixirs brews
ISB increases movement speed / Purify dispels snares.
Zen Meditation buffed or replaced in PvP -way too fragile for such a long cd.
Special Delivery - make it work (100% chance!) even when not in combat. If I think there’s a stealth around & want to drop some aoe.

For all specs:
15s Paralysis retuned
Each charge of Roll has its own 20s cd
Auto-proc Healing Elixirs/Brews
Tigers Lust gives Root+Snare immunity for duration.
CjL has guaranteed knockback, stronger the longer it’s channeled (and interrupts flag caps).
RoP increased by 2yds & duration by 2secs
PossiblyMaybe remove things from GCD altogether (roll/para/defensives…)
Make Zen Pilgramige / Wandering Isle relevant

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Some classes suck at low level since they don’t have all their tools.

At max level, ww won’t top meters but if you want something dead theres few better classes to achieve that with their toolkit.

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I don’t really agree with this, to be honest.

I think you’re being too hard on fists of fury. If you talent into it, it’s definitely harder to dodge than many other similar abilities (bladestorm, eye beam), and on top of that it parries everything, making it incredibly strong against melee classes, and on a super short cd, too.

Monks are still pretty tanky even with the karma nerf. And karma is still pretty good even with the nerf. It’s a bit unfair to say we only have vivify now. The only thing that bothers me is how it gets dispelled by iceblock and divine shield. Like okay, maybe the dot should be gone, but the absorb / redirect should definitely remain.

Re: control, I mean we have a 5 sec aoe stun, I think I’d take that over poly. :stuck_out_tongue: Altho you definitely have a point that paralysis is too short and unreliable a disable for its cooldown. I’d be okay with it if they brought back the mechanic to make it last longer when from behind, or if they reduced its cd to like 15 seconds. As it is, it feels a bit underwhelming. (Yay panda racial tho!)

Where I really disagree is the “handicapped in bgs” part. I can’t count how many times I’ve managed to pull off a banzai on enemy flag carrier and save the day. The burst we have from SEF + Xuen + Maledict trinket (which each spirit copies) is ridiculous, and you can also add the karma damage from the escort team that’s pounding on you. On top of that we can instakill with touch of death, so all enemies have effectively 90% hp.

Most of the things you are suggesting would completely break the class and initiate mass whining + everyone rerolling a monk. I think windwalkers are almost fine and just need some fine-tuning on a couple abilities.

Brewmasters are a totally different story. Their new design is just bad for pvp and even in pve it feels very one-dimensional, with everything focused on stagger stagger stagger and some more stagger while you staggeringly stagger the stagger.

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That’s fair enough.
There are games where I feel epic & I love WW playstyle.

But I genuinely feel 1/2 as effective (less mobility, less cc, less healing, less defensives, slower rotation (while other classes gain insane cc’s /micro cc’s & mobility & healing &/or their specs barely got touched) ) & have less depth (25s Transcence+heal, 15s Para, HE, 100% Karma+heal & RoP…).

idk, it was a really fun playstyle & I got a lot from it when used to (nearly) full potential.

Now I (personally) feel handicapped.

Not solely because of our nerfs, but combined with the shift in dynamics. Cloth wearers tankier than plate (what’s the point of armour types again?/there’s no convenient pillar to ‘just los’ in a bg). Healers can’t be solo killed (unless they’re bad) so what’s the point in trying? May as well let them solo defend that base or flag, rather than blow cd’s on something I can’t kill.

I could once run into enemy flag room with most (sometimes all) of them defending & go full beast-mode, get pulled down to 20%hp, pop Karma & heal to full whilst continuing to burst & redirecting all the dmg, throw RoP to stop flag pick-up, return, Champion Salute & escape. Now, with 2 defending, I (80% of the time) have no hope.

I disagree we’re tanky, but it’s likely you’re just better than me.
(yesterday, a rog sapped me for 14s, then took me 100-20 in 8s stuns. 22s of cc & I start the fight at 20%. I popped Karma, he shrugs it off. I LS, he Trinkets. I try to build chi for FoF parry but I’m dead by the 2nd TP) …I appreciate there’s an element of L2P, but give me back 100% Karma, HHS, 15s Para, auto-HE etc …then nerf Evasion by 50%, remove Crystal Vial, nerf sprint by 25%…etc, so I can smugly say L2P.

I appreciate we’re not a one man army, but it was nice to have so much potential & depth, players in randoms can be so unreliable. So what else can I do with a nerfed spec & pathfighters but despair & rage post.

I appreciate what I suggested (in a vacuum) would break the current dynamics (even though most of it is just returning what was taken), but by all means buff other specs too. Give DH a triple jump / give Mages an 8th Blink / reduce GCD for everyone, I honestly don’t care, aslong as WW is returned to its rightful place as King. …or atleast just better than it is now.

I’d rather classes were enhanced in their uniqueness & specialities (buff racials!), but BfA WW feels like the antithesis of ‘enhanced’.

As seemingly do many other WW’s, which makes me feel crazy for wanting to undo the BfA nerfs & reduce GCD.

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Do you not talent into reverse harm? I feel that talent is pretty much mandatory. You should never start a fight with 0 chi, unless you got sapped while mounted. You always spam that on cooldown and try to have 6 chi at all times while not in combat.

I’d also trinket the kidney shot, and para + self-heal if it’s 1v1 and things are bad. You can also root the rogue and heal some more.

You should definitely be using Sinister Gladiator’s Safeguard and the absorb shield azerite traits, too. Rogues aren’t supposed to kill you by just chaining stuns.

You’re not in the wrong for asking for some buffs, I defs. agree that karma and paralysis for example could use them, but let’s be honest, there are much weaker specs atm. I’d rather nerf other classes’ defensives instead.

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And basically immobilizes you, since it reduces your speed by 90%

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Yep! Hence harder to dodge.

I think players tend to get overly invested into their main class/spec and get upset whenever they feel its weaknesses. But if you glance at the pvp forums right now, there’s that mass whining that oh no, a big bad scary Windwalker spanked me to death and I couldn’t do anything cause she rooted me and parried my stun! :scream: BLIZZO NERF PLOX :sob: :sob: :sob:

Grass, always greener, etc :wink:

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Wait, when did this become a thing? Last I knew my WW PvP spec was mediocre…

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It’s been a thing for months x’)

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Yeah… I’d given up on WW somewhere back in October because where the heck was my FoF stun? That was so good when levelling in previous expansions and it hurt bad when suddenly it wasn’t there :confused:

Been enjoying MW since however, so not unhappy. Nice that there’s some option to go WW for PvP though :slight_smile:

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yea ww is just unbelievable unfun to play in bfa. its hard to imagen that every other version even wod was 100000 more fun then this piece of garbage

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I was super bummed at the start of BFA, windwalker felt terrible compared to legion. So I put it on the shelf for a while. But in 8.1.5 with some good gear it feels very very powerful.
Altho at this point I’ve mostly forgotten how it was in legion. But if ww got more buffs now it would be beyond broken, at least in pvp. Kind of like unholy DK already is.

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Gear does help. Meandering around the open world in WW spec with ~385 ilvl is very different to recently dinged 120. Everything dies before you get to that dead-zone where you have neither chi nor energy, so it feels fast and fluid, and you’ve got that lovely pinball effect between mobs.

Tackling dungeons as WW… the dead zone is still there. 10 buttons, pause, 10 buttons, pause. The pause destroys the spec, and it’s silly because the actual sum total output is decent, it’s just… cumbersome. A spec that used to flow and leave you wondering which button to push now gives you no buttons to push.

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