If you haven’t seen the recently announced tuning yet, here’s the relevant part:
- All damage decreased by 10%.
- Rising Sun Kick damage decreased by 20%. Does not affect PvP combat.
- Glory of the Dawn damage decreased by 50%.
- Spinning Crane Kick damage increased by 30%.
- Fists of Fury damage increased by 40%.
- Rushing Wind Kick’s activation rate increased to 60% (was 40%) and no longer has a cooldown for Windwalker Monks.
- Touch of the Tiger increases Tiger Palm’s damage by 50% (was 15%).
- Conduit of the Celestials: Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger’s Empowered Tiger Lightning now copies 4% of your damage done (was 8%).
- Conduit of the Celestials: Celestial Conduit damage decreased by 20%.
- Shado-Pan: One Versus Many now increase Fists of Fury damage by 60% (was 20%).
There are two changes in this list that really stick out: Fists of Fury damage increased by 40%, and One Versus Many damage bonus increased to 60% from 20%.
To put it mildly, this is a bizarre change. I’d compare it to Sargeras tucking in an infant but even that doesn’t quite do justice to how heavy-handed this is. If you’ll recall, the previous round of tuning included a 10% FoF nerf, which I initially thought was reasonable, but even that turned out to ripple through the talent tree to such an extent that potential FoFless builds were appearing. Well, that issue has certainly been resolved.
Additionally, the previously stated goal of increasing Windwalker’s multitarget throughput has also been somewhat addressed. Spinning Crane Kick seems to be worth casting before Blackout Kick now, so it’ll likely be useful as a chi filler on 5+ target encounters. It’s not exactly the solution I was hoping for, but it’ll do.
So, why then are you detecting a veiled undertone of criticism in this post, you observant reader you?
Well, to be clear, I am overall cautiously positive about this tuning pass. As most players, I can accept a lot of messy balancing as long as it’s in our favor. The AoE buff isn’t huge, but it’s significant for Shado-Pan. It shouldn’t be that surprising if you remember how dominant FoF was before its 10% nerf, nevermind now. However, it looks like it may be a nerf in ST, depending on how the changes end up being implemented.
But that’s exactly why I’m a little apprehensive about it, as well. The reason why I initially didn’t think too much about the FoF nerf was because it was so dominant, and I thought it was a bit unhealthy for the spec. The devs seemed to agree, since that appears to be the main motivation for the RSK buff from the same tuning pass. “Tweaking Rising Sun Kick’s damage contribution” was the dev note. It is odd, therefore, that the RSK buff was unceremoniously reverted and FoF was buffed to far beyond what it ever was.
This is almost certainly going to lead to situations where FoF contributes the lion’s share of your overall damage. 40% in single target can be expected, and extremes of 65%+ have been spotted in multitarget sims. Your rotation in all situations is going to revolve around casting as many FoFs as possible, no matter what. Every other spell takes a backseat, including the minor cds of Strike of the Windlord or Slicing Winds. I’d consider this an unhealthy internal balance.
It also really doesn’t make much sense to create such a large gap between Shado-Pan and Conduit of the Celestials. As it stands, SP will be much better than CotC in every situation.
I really can’t stress how odd of a decision this was. It’s like responding to a well-intended shoulder push with a shotgun blast to the face. Yes, the AoE numbers are in our favor, yes, this addresses a couple of previously highlighted issues, but some degree of a delicate touch could’ve been considered. To highlight my point, the combined buff to Fists of Fury when playing Shado-Pan is 87%.
I may have to update this in the future when things are more clear, but as preliminary feedback, I would suggest reducing the RSK nerf to 10%, reverting the ETL nerf entirely, and maybe reverting the 20% CC nerf. Maybe tweak the global aura as well, 10% is just so much.
As an aside, we’re still looking very dire in the defensive department. Losing Diffuse Magic was such a massive blow to our toolkit and it really needed some compensation. I’m not expecting entirely new talents or sweeping reworks to our current defensive abilities, but maybe a buff to Yu’lon’s Grace, Calming Presence, or Martial Instincts?