I don’t know. To me it feels like if a mage or a paladin or a druid was in a problematic state, Blizzard devotes sincere time, energy, research to fixing it.
They backpedaled pretty damn fast on a nerf. I just don’t see this happening for monks and they just languish in the corner. Like lowest PvP representation for MW for the entirety of the expansion thus far, constant bugs, and more.
Like MW (I keep going back to it since it’s my main) we keep telling them that it’s fundamentally broken design wise. In PvP, it’s supposed to be mobile but Soothing Mist roots you. It’s supposed to be good at burst healing but the GCD blocks it. We contribute ZERO damage and pressure. If we’re supposed to be in melee to do damage, where are our defensives then? We just cannot. Period.
And nothing.
I’m not saying we’re completely ignored but it just seems like feedback just seems more irrelevant from us than other classes.
I’ve jumped my main around on a few classes in SL and to be honest its pretty similar lack of communication across the board. They’ve done some really good fixes and quick turnarounds on a number of issues which is promising, but it leaves us scratching our heads when you look at the state of monk.
The problem with Monk (at least from a WW perspective) is we have no fallback option. When Outlaw got destroyed by aoe changes, rogues just switched to sub. WW doesnt have that option… so it hurts so much more.
The bigger issue is when monks do get a fix or buff it feels like they’ve spent a whole 15mins thinking about it. The latest WW buff changed nothing, which the community was able to predict within the first hour of it being announced. So blizz have acknowledged a problem, did the minimal and havnt followed it up for 3 weeks now. Its just deflating…
It’s probably a difference in scale of feedback, mage/paladin/druid having issues can easily see a hundred unique responses while monk generally sees like twenty unless something is extremely broken (such as the response against the 8.3 initial RM nerf and the early Legion rally against Essence Font)
This is definitely a factor. I was comparing parse submissions for Heroic Sepulcher, as an indication of how many people are actually raiding on each DPS spec.
Also, half the Monk community is afraid to report beneficial bugs because that’s been what carries the class in Shadowlands. They fix those pretty quick for “apathy”… If anything, it’s antipathy.
Removing clones? Make Serenity replace Xuen, and buff the unmodified standard rotation slightly to compensate. Then toss Xuen on the last talent row.
Give Serenity super armor to avoid flinching while attacking, like the stun immunity of IBF. Super armor is a fighting game mechanic, right?
And for the 300th time, let Spear Hand Strike be castable with FoF without breaking the darned channel! I will not break FoF to interrupt – deal with it. Hey, I have no problem cancelling a cast mid Combustion to make sure the Counterspell gets priority. But I won’t break FoF channel. This is proof of a terrible design issue.
Barely anyone actually plays this class, sticks with it through the highs and lows. When you’re the least played class in the game and no devs play your class either then you’ll always be an afterthought. I remember when they had class previews for everyone at the event announcing Shadowlands, well everyone except monk.
When I play windwalker it’s like I’m playing jazz piano pressing all these buttons for mediocre damage and then I log any other class and with far less effort and button mashing the damage is far higher
This is what I enjoy about it. It has nice flow and tempo, highs and lows. I prefer that over pressing Chaos Strike/Annihilation over and over and over between Meta windows.
That said, Tiger Palm could use some love. Something about barely tapping for a mere 1,000 damage on a crit is a bit off for an activation.
there is a flow… but I feel theres a lot of negative aspects to WW monk abilities… Not sure by design or what… but it seems like everything comes at a cost.
TP costs 50 energy… (designed simply to slow down monk rotation and make us run out of steam… cos reasons)
FoF has to cancel to interrupt
WDP makes you immobile
Chi Burst has to stand and cast
SPK another channel
mastery forces us to not repeat abilities (this is a signature of WW so I’m not against it at all, but its another straw on the +/- aspect of WW)
On their own they’re not too bad, but combined it makes a WW feel so restrictive. It was highlighted to me during explosives last week. The rotation feels good and flowly but in reality, we’re so locked into our own world it can be difficult to just punch an explosive orb at the right time. It’s just not worth it all when the majority of damage is based around a pet ability that causes the spec way more design issues than its benefits and our ST damage outside of burst is so poor it’s becoming a liability to any half-decent raid group.
You would think the low player count and poor performance would be a massive red flag to Blizz that they would act upon. unfortunately, it appears they just have zero interest… They’ve put WW in a box and theyre happy where it is. You win Blizz. I’m gearing up a switch to lock and concede nothing is going to change until Dragon Flight… hopefully.
Revert MotC to Legion where SCK had uncapped AoE and MotC had uncapped targets and gave SCK a 50% damage boost a stack.
Just make it an option for AoE and not the go to for all situations.
Revert TP to 40 energy. Maybe return EE to baseline.
That’s basically the same as what we have now. Alternatively, Blizz could make old school TeB a thing again. Or to make our current mastery (no doubling) actually matter they could make WW’s mastery scale like MW’s mastery or just give RSK and FoF 2 charges.
That’s terrible. 1 is slow already. Our base GCD should be .75 at the highest.
Prolly not. Though I could see converting FoF to a 1 global ST ability to get FoF Stun back as a PvP talent.
Btw sorry to the OP. That response just really triggered me. As for your topic. Yes. Monk gets ignored like hell in the development department. Just look at our covenant abilities. They’re all just different but crappier flavors of stuff we’ve had before.
WoO is just a different flavor of Serenity that falls into the same trap of GCD. If WoO halved our GCD while active, it’d be an actual improvement.
BDB is just multi strike from WoD on a CD, but more cheesey.
Fallen Order is just SEF with extra steps.
Faeline Stomp is just crappier SotWL.
The worst part is, because of our lower pop, we get stupid changes that wouldn’t fly were it another spec. My biggest gripe is still the loss of FoF stun. That’d be like if Rogue lost Kidney or CS. People would have rioted, but no one batted an eye when we lost FoF stun. And to add insult to injury Ele still has Lightning Lasso.
Before I comment specifically, just want to say I agree that just because something is “good” doesn’t mean it can’t be better. There are problems with the spec, but how combat flows outside of cooldowns is not the problem. Many classes are faced with this issue though, and it’s addressed in other parts of the forums – this is how many high-end players want the game to be designed because of DPS checks in top content getting squeezed into finite windows.
I agree with your listing for the most part. There are other issues to me due to current game state (clones, pets, and low max hp, given no stealth and the lack of crazy leech or self heals1 on a leather spec), but combat still has a unique feeling compared to more APM-laden specs like HDH (despite all those APMs are one button). 1: To those who stop and think “Monk has crazy self healing, what are you talking about?” Yes, the self healing is good but it requires you to first run away and then dump an entire energy bar and 2 handfuls of GCDs/Casts on the recovery – the other specs have that level of healing built into the rotation via Predatory Swiftness or Eye Beam, or are ranged casters. The best Monk gets is the Expel Harm PvP talent – which without it, Expel Harm is a mostly dead GCD.
This one I can’t agree with though:
I will never complain about this just because you stop for a minute. It also has a hidden effect which negates movement. This means if you’re not GCD locked, you can counter knockbacks, and this was absolutely pivotal in timing Orgrimmar Visions for me during BFA. I had issues with DPS checks, but I could make up for it by being efficient and cleaving with controls. In Orgrimmar specifically, there are the large bugs with the headbutt knockback. No interrupt is needed for the headbutt, just hold a GCD and WDP to cancel. It was a moment where this game knowledge actually put in some extra power, and added to the depth of the spec.
Plus, I think it feels cool to have that short-duration lockout on the animation to feedback “this is it!” If it were every ability, it would be annoying, but it’s this one that actually helps tie-in more of an action-oriented mechanic (think, games like Dark Souls, every attack brings a specific lockout timer of some kind). I think the AoE damage needs to be brought back up a little bit because DCJ procs make SCK the better skill, but still overall “nice”.
Maybe just allowing it to be animation-cancelled with a Roll would be sufficient, and really tie together the theme while retaining functionality? (Would it be too much to ask for it to also animation cancel Roll, if input order is reversed?)
I would prefer (1) auto attacks continue during the channel and (2) SHS usable during the channel. Otherwise, I would need some kind of energy reset cooked into the skill to maintain the current flow, where FoF is a nice, soft reset given the high TP cost.