Hi everyone,
I wanted by this post to point the obvious things that I feel, hear and read, on the overall situation on the ww monk spec. Am I a top world player? No. But I do like to “think on things” further out before talking.
So I will just phrase things out as segments.
#1 UPCOMING UPDATE In the .7 update , while some heavily announced rework for the ret pal has gathered quite some attention, the ww monk has a « class tuning » mostly perceived as non sense or worse « trash ». It’s as is " we’ve heard you never use those abilities ? right we’re even nerfing one (as of dmg per spec point view), and buffing other nobody ever take". In a attempt to buff single target dmg overall. That’s a fail story here.
Right now there is NO WAY you can take a ret pal at dps contest at equivalent gear. I put it simple as that, to do an averaged of 15K AOE you need 4 keypress and a proc, a ret pal only need 1 button to do an averaged 25K AOE. Talking with ret pal, they agreed on tankyness/mobility issue, but the burst thing, tbh please the players. I have a terrible feeling for what’s coming for them.
#2 The overall scaling is bad , and the mastery scaling especially. why? because simply put our mastery is too powerfull. While a rogue buff his finisher move or other class buff only a element or a part of their dmg , we have full raw damage on next ability if it is different from the previous. so this cant be buffed as is or we gonna end up #1 dps again while rolling on the keyboard with our head.
Right now,
Haste has a cost of approx 170-171 rating per %, there is no DR I’m aware off
Versatility has a cost of 205-206 rating per %, there is no DR I’m aware off
Mastery has a DR mechanism very punishing wich prevent you going further thant 30-35% (because it’s too expensive!) 1% of mastery cost you around 79 rating at 22% or so while it start at 22 point of rating per 1% at 258 rating.
Critical Chance has a DR mechanism wich prevent you going further 40-45%, you start at round 7 point of rating per 1% and ends up around 128 point of rating per 1% at 4400 rating. But people continue to raise CC. Why? Because there is very little to zero burst in ww spec. Sadly arent we suppoed to be a high burst class? Well boys, there’s no burst if you don’t have crit.
So most of high end monk sits here with no outside buff or pots:
34-37% CC
18-25% vers (why? Because mastery
0 to 6% haste
20 to 25% mastery
Either we’re all wrong, or something is a miss somewhere in the ww monk mechanism because this will get you into a wall were other spec/class will continue to have more dps output while ilvl raise.
#3 ressource management is bad ,
Especially energy’s one . Unless you build for heavy amount of haste, wich nobody does because otherwise , as stated in #2 scaling is bad, you will drastically reduce your dmg output to a point you are non competitive. So right now, people are stacking versatility/crit and some variable amount of mastery/hate.
Wich conclude in if you want a good energy sustain, you must DROP your dmg output.
Chi’s return is bad as in his state , we only have small chance of getting chi back when using our abilities. In aoe phase, with 5 target debuffed, most of the time I got 1 chi back so I need a builder to have 3, then start spining again. Chi return on other aiblities are as bad.
Outside of RSK procs, or mastery stack, I track all these in a very easy frame right in front my eyes. I used every optimised combination or prioritization of our abilities, to check this out. On AOE’s phase you can do FOF priority and only using SCK 5 stack when it proc (this is a dps loss btw), or you can do SCK 5 stack no matter proc or not, this wont help chi return either. Now adds raid/mm mechanism and you can toast very quick the sequence. There is no keyboard key for you to crush for sure! (close an eyes to enh chaman in the corner!)
While an outlaw has one of the best combo point mechanism, I feel we have the worst of all spec.
It’s easy to fix, we’re supposed to be some sort of momentum figther, well we need more momentum please on our builder /spender and overall energy regeneration mechanism.
#4 skill ceiling , button press and spec design. [ And capped AOE everywhere ]**
This one is an easy one, our mastery put a big constraint on how to play the spec.period.
You want to favor ST? then don’t use SCK outside of proc. you want to favor AOE ? then favor SCK even outside of proc!
Other than that it’s the regular management of kicks’n’ fist, 4 pieces’s bonus don’t interfere much with the gameplay. You buff fist with kicks, and you buff kicks with fists. The true fof lies in pvp, and it’s a terrible thing. They cant simply get balance between pvp and pve, so they choose to have this skill talent system. Here kiss’n’by to our beloved fof.
Past these basics things, we have on average over 25+ to 30 keybinds, 4 CD def, 4 CD off, 1 to 2 trinket, and some other abilities that don’t have a keybind. On average we have the same number of keybind than a protection war. I can name a few dps spec with the lowest amount of keybind, but that’s not the point.
We need way more button press and brain to actually puts out a few numbers.What so? This is the way.
And don’t tell numbers arent important, or your not playing the same game!
bug on death touch and design
there’s a few bug on death touch that prevent the first hit to do actualy mean damage.
it happens from time to time, you see rididiculous damage on first hit (as in anything from 5K to 10K hit) then the second one is the average 450K+
there this other issue, you use DT to cleave, not for the actual damage on main target most of the time…because the main target would have die anyway most of the time with or w/o your DT. that is a really bad designed ability, while it started interresting at the begenning. simply put if you dont use it for cleave, you are not using it correctly.
that’s is not appealing gameplay , and i dont see a fit in the monk universe for this :
« tab to find a target that light up DT to cleave » to do some number.
#conclusion
It’s now the time to get the thing done for the ww monk as it is for the ret pal. A complete rework or redesign of the spec. change tree, core abilities should not cost point, but be baseline as it ever was?!
Make new apealing abilities, there are plenty one in the monk universe in wow or outside wow. I give you one inspiration, from an other game. make new connection. fuse the obvious placeholder to just spend a point? the tree design feel lackluster overall.
it’s probably time to reverse a few nerf after SL. Also it feel dull to spend point on core class/spec mechanism. Current state of the ww tree offer absolutely NO choice for 99% of the players. Not yet talking about ST build, there’s isnt any viable choice.
A long time ago a concurrent company made a game , a sci-fi game with a class named “martial artist” . [here come hater, go play this game, blabla…i don’t listen to hater… ]
There were his core abilities :
-Fight with fist only, don’t need a weapon to wear but he could do so if he wanted to (any kind, not just staff, axe and sword), but then he could not use fist. Logic , right? Talking wow, There is no code issue here, they could do it “tomorrow” if they wanted to. Here in wow, we do need weapon to fight with fist. That’s called a work around ! because in fact we are fighting with our weapon code wise. So basicly we’re not a monk as in monk fantasy, we’re a monk as in a biased code optimisation point of view. Someone at blizzard found out that altering animation to not show weapon was the best way to make the monk. Fastest, economicaly interesting, sure. But limiting, indeed.
-Could change the element damage of hist fist : wind, earth and fire (ice too btw) Doesn’t this recall you something??
-has the highest crit rate of all spec class, and could do very short burst crit because he knew the weak point of the body. (with fof buffing crit chance of RSK, that’s a sort of small short crit window burst …but it’s only one ability)
-no pets (well , question of universe)
- high evade dps or tank (unless you play BrewMaster, there’s no such thing as high evade anymore for monks , evade in ww spec died a long time ago)
-could heal other or himself (unless you play MW or FW, you can barely save one’s life), but as of now you can save yourself from some trouble.
- could buff other with powerfull crit buff