Please check out our new Hero Talents preview and let us know what you think in this thread.
1 Like
Copied from where I’ve already posted some of this, as monk main I’m seriously underwhelmed.
Shado-pan loses functionally all the flavor of the faction it’s emulating. When I saw the name I was hoping to see a diverse set of support elements from all the classes of WoW, because the Shado-pan are more than just monks, they’re everyone. I was hoping to see something akin to the scalecommander, calling in reinforcements, using hidden techniques, or possibly interacting with the ability to draw the Sha from our opponents. You know, the literal first thing we see a member of the Shadow-pan do in Pandaria.
Instead we’re treated to “when you do damage, do some more damage, sometimes.” It does nothing to fix any of the problems that windwalker or brewmaster currently have, and in fact it’s going to exacerbate existing issues the classes are facing, namely scaling. From a keystone that literally reverse scales as you level and gear, to a series of nodes that continue to suffer from the monk problem of “do thing, get free stats” even further invalidating stat scaling on our equipment, and generally distinct lack of usable utility, either in defense or mobility, and you’re left with a hero spec that basically fails at everything the system is set out to do: Shado-pan doesn’t make me feel like the fantasy it’s expressing, doesn’t make my character cooler or more interesting to play, and doesn’t prop up problem areas or cover additional ground for the class.
27 Likes
… what are the Non-Pandaran monks supposed to do with this?
7 Likes
There is a massive anti-synergy between how the Flurry Charges are generated by dealing damage equal to your maximum health and the myriad of ways to buff health (Fortifying Brew, Power Word: Fortitude), in addition to Brewmasters inherently having higher health.
There’s also an anti-synergy for Windwalkers in that they use Energy much less often due to channeling Fists of Fury and using Chi.
I’m confused about why Controlled Instincts grants a large amount of Haste given that it’s the worst secondary stat by far for both Brew and WW. I get the sense that the intent is to boost Energy Regeneration as Flurry Strikes relies on spending Energy, but even at 0% haste neither spec is energy-starved.
14 Likes
yah popping serenity also just means that you’re never proccing flurry strikes during your go. it seems like that is the intent of it, like to give you damage outside of your burst windows. but that just seems bad/unfun for a brand new system for the spec.
like they could rework our existing talents to include this hero talent spec, and introduce actual fun/interesting abilities to our spec’s
i mean all the talents are “good” bonuses for the class, but it seems like other classes got some actually dope stuff
3 Likes
Haste is actually decent for WW in large chunks, with Invoker’s Delight and Lust being the prime examples. The pacing between energy regen and cooldown reduction speeds up and creates a pretty positive gameplay loop.
4 Likes
yeah i’m hoping it feels super satisfying, but our rotation is going to remain the exact same as it has for the past 2 expansions, which basically equates to hit stuff off cooldown and you’ll do 90% of your max dps.
i was reading through that dragon ball z thread, some ideas are dope. i wish chi wasn’t just a spender for rsk, fof, and bok.
2 Likes
Painfully bland. No rotational changes, new or upgraded spells, there’s literally no class fantasy here. Depending on how it works with stamina, at best it’s a passive damage proc that’s basically a glorified trinket, and at worst it causes degenerate gameplay like clicking off Power Word: Fortitude.
18 Likes
Seems highly RNG
2 Likes
The problem here is that part of the reason haste is so bad for monks is because of the massive proccing buff in Invoker’s Delight. Adding further procs like this will make the class scaling issues worse.
1 Like
These are my initial thoughts on most of the Shado-Pan Hero Talents from a BrM perspective:
Overwhelming Flurry:
- Useful in AoE situations where you can do lots of damage quickly as BrM
- Almost completely useless in Single Target situations, where you see a double whammy in that you do far less damage than WW and have a much larger HP pool to build up a charge of Flurry Strike
Suggestions:
- Make it 50% of BrM Health pool to allow it to proc more
- Adjust the One vs Many talent further down the tree to count as 4x for primary target and regular damage for targets hit by the AoE (instead of double). This would allow it to be more useful in ST fights.
Controlled Instincts:
- From a BrM perspective hitting a single target 5x in 2 seconds is quite difficult unless you shorten global cooldowns significantly. The only way I could see this working would be with Rushing Jade Wind hitting the target passively while you also hit with active attacks.
Suggestions:
- Reduce this to 3x (or even 4x) for BrM so that it’s possible (WW can do it with Fists of Fury so they could stay at 5x but would still be very challenging outside of FoF.)
Protect and Serve / Lead from the Front :
- Vivify isn’t a spell we have in our rotation usually, this would be pretty niche, maybe slightly useful for spiky damage or PvP.
- Chi Burst and Chi Wave would need to be significantly buffed for this talent to be worth it. Expel harm leech wouldn’t generally be worth much based on the damage you’d do from it.
Suggestion:
- Change Protect and Serve to also include Expel Harm and reduce the amount healed by both to say 20%. (we are going to hit Expel Harm way more than Vivify)
- Change Lead from the Front by buffing the heck out of Chi Burst, Chi Wave AND increase the amount healed by like 50% of the damage done.
Whirling Steel / Predictive Training:
- Both of these are actually pretty good for BrM as they would trigger pretty frequently and give a lot of extra mitigation. I think outside of PvP and solo questing these are next to useless for WW though.
Against All Odds:
- Basically without fixing BrM to get Flurry Strikes easier it’ll rarely even proc. The only fix here is allow BrM to generate Flurry Strikes at the same level a WW Monk can.
Efficient Training:
- Nice to have a minor damage boost but the secondary effect really only works for WW as it affects 3 abilities instead of just 1 for BrM
Suggestion:
- Have it also effect Nizao and Exploding Keg (if talented)
Vigilant Watch:
- A minor Damage boost for Blackout Kick, but not enough to trigger Flurry Strikes more unless adjustments were made as mentioned above.
- I am also curious if the damage bonus to Flurry Strikes stacks or just stays at 10%. I assume it doesn’t stack or it would say so.
Suggestion:
- Have the damage bonus to Flurry Strikes stack multiple times so when you finally (eventually) get a Flurry Strike it is worth it.
Wisdom of the Wall:
- Seems extremely strong, only if you could actually get 10 Flurry Strikes within a reasonable time as BrM.
Again these are my initial musings, I do feel its a bit underwhelming, especially for BrM. Definitely will need some tweaking!
2 Likes
I feel like Shado-Pan is pretty disappointing.
Technical Question - Does flurry strikes just happen passively or is there some kind of lockout going on (like fists of fury)? I suspect no, but worth confirming.
Besides that - I just don’t really get a cohesive vision of this and how it ties into Shado-Pan in general.
The presence of Lead from the Front makes me very disappointed that Chi Wave and Chi Burst are going to stick around.
Gaining haste from Veteran’s Eye doesn’t seem great for WW or BrM - are there plans to make this a more attractive stat for those specs in TWW?
But really - my main issue is that it seems mostly or entirely passive? What’s the vision? What’s the goal? How does my gameplay change? Unless Flurry Strikes has a pretty massive animation it just reads like “your stats are better” the hero talent tree. You may not even know a monk is spec’d into compared to something like conduit of the celestials which, presumably, has a ton of different celestials jumping in at times.
It just feels boring.
14 Likes
lmfao no doubt we’re gonna see some stuff like this
2 Likes
I would like to see less maintenance buffs and more effects that involve “technique” or “combo” or “stealthy” attacks.
Seven-Sided Strike from D3 is a prime example of an ability I think of here, using techniques and attacks to assault an enemy from various angles with a combo of punches, palm strikes, and kicks.
And the new Overwhelming Flurry and Wisdom of the Wall talents are just more maintenance buffs. We have a ton to deal with already, and now we get several more to juggle from this small hero tree alone. None of these effects are new or exciting, which is especially disappointing for a primary and capstone node.
Some of these ideas sound nice, but there are more problems being added than solutions. Nothing here will change up our gameplay in a positive way—in fact, there are many negative implications due to reliance on health pool and aligning several cooldowns/procs that are all on varying timers.
This tree leaves much to be desired for being the most “Windwalker” of the two trees.
10 Likes
true my bro.
developers who may be reading this, take heed to this comment.
add in some spice to our specs. what is so heroic about these talents.
7 Likes
This feels like it only adds to the list of issues WW currently has and fixes none of them…
At least we got no touch of death mentions which makes me hope for some changes to the class and spec trees.
9 Likes
The talent tree does not feel at all like Shadopan and instead like a generic kungfu master who just has extra punches. Please consider reworking the tree to have some actual Shadopan stuff, like ninja attacks (maybe some NPC Shadopan summon in and out?), smoke bombs (maybe fighting an enemy can drop a smoke bomb around you, and NPCs have a hard time hitting you in it? would feel like some good fantasy), ninja clone jutsu… OR, if you won’t redo this tree, just name it something else. Grandmaster Monk or something.
Right now, even besides it mostly being passives, it’s not Shadopan IMO. I don’t think it’s a problem for there to be a generic “fighting” tree for Monks (though I think it’s a little boring) but it just needs a proper name.
It’s funny reading people’s comments about “we need more active abilities” when Monk has the worst button bloat of any class. I personally am ok with some passive talents, they just need tweaking as some of them may not work nearly as well for one spec over the other.
4 Likes
Talents can be passive without being practically invisible flat damage buffs like this. You can have new abilities that replace previous abilities and enhance them with new functionality and visuals.
This tree does none of that.
10 Likes
A passive tree is fine, the passives should just be cool. The Riders of the Apocalypse tree is 99% passives and it’s the clear winner of these 12 because it has great perks, is thematic, and has fun stuff happening in the passives (Riders being summoned and giving you passives or doing their own attacks).
Let there be a chance for Shado-Pan warriors to be summoned or fly out of nowhere and kick our enemies.
2 Likes