Monk Tree is up on Dragonflight alpha. Here are some highlights.
- Strike of the Windlord is back!
- Whirling Dragon Punch no longer exclusive with Serenity or Spiritual Focus.
- Drinking Horn Cover returns. Extends Serenity/Storm, Earth and Fire based on chi spent.
- Toghast Power: Shadowboxing Treads returns as a talent. Increase blackout kick damage, and cause it to strike 2 additional targets.
- Teachings of the Monastery (Borrowed from mistweaver) Very, very cool functionality.
It’s a little unclear what touch of death is going to do for windwalker. The general tree treats it as though it’s the shadowlands version. The windwalker seems to treat it more like the Legion version. There are some cool talents that directly affect touch of death that could be very cool.
Faeline stomp and Bondust brew return as talents. Not terribly interesting, pretty much the same functionality as shadowlands.
All in all, similar to mistweaver, I am pleasantly surprised.
Also worth noting that with vivify being instant cast, combined with escape from reality talent, windwalkers will have some epic self healing.
1 Like
IDK how to feel really, the right side of the tree + middle look pretty interesting, I’m hoping serenity will be at least competitive or better than SEF for a more pet-less build
Left side seems to be just making the exact same monk you have now lol really not a fan of that honestly, and too many shadowlands covenant abilities splashed in
I think its a solid C+ maybe B- tree to start with
I have a feeling people will figure out how to abuse all ToD talents and get them nerfed into worthlessness.
3 Likes
The left side of the tree is definitely the less interesting side.
Overall they seem to be adding a considerable amount of synergy and flow which I really really like. For example:
Hit Scheme + Teachings of the Monastery + Transfer the Power.
I also really appreciate that they are keeping to a relatively low rng setup. Teachings of the Monastery brings a little rng, but it’s a fun additional variable to take into consideration. Encouraging more regular and intentional gameplay to maintain hit combo while managing Teachings of the Monastery.
Compared to now this tree is a godsend. We get our three strongest SL legendaries all useable at once now. Keef, voke, and xuens battlegear means our kill windows are massive especially with strike of the windlord returning with guarenteed crits and 33% haste xuen with serenity going. Also getting dance with jade ignition and so many modifiers for FoF and blackout. Overall it might be the second best tree I’ve seen with warriors receiving the best.
I don’t know about you guys but as a dps or tank don’t feel confortable having to select a healing talent (soothing mist) to be able to roll, I consider it should be a general hability learnt by leveling.
3 Likes
Yeah this just feels weird … should be a baseline ability. Just feels like a point dump, windwalker doesn’t have a use for soothing mist really unless they want to off heal.
Also the instant vivify seems like … I guess it could work because it costs energy?
I can see it now. Newbie monks who forget to take roll
Roll is baseline, confirmed by blue post. The “roll” you see in the tree is a +1 charge, and you’ll be able to get another +1 charge with celerity.
I hope serenity is competitive with SEF and it might be since SEF no longer has 2 charges. So now it’s 1 charge of SEF or 1 charge of serenity, and let’s also hope that spiritual focus works with serenity like drinking horn does.
1 Like
There are certainly some things that need to be worked out, but it looks salvageable.
Some things that stood out for me:
Cool SotWL is back, but why are we keeping NF? NF is basically SotWL that’s more flash than substance.
Why did WW get BDB and BrM get WoO?
Why did we keep BDB to start with?
Why is there still damage attached to DoCJ?
Why in god’s name did we keep Keefer’s and Invoke?
Why was XBG not fully reverted to giving 65% (70% would better to offset the 5% that we lost in Legion)?
How is roll not baseline and why is it after soothing mist?
Why the emphasis on ToD?
2 Likes
Yeah gotta say invokers is a real turnoff in the tree… what a boring thing to retain, and as a final row talent? Bleh. Keefers is also hot garbage lol
Agreed, all of this is good stuff
I don’t understand why Teachings of the Monastery is in the WW tree. It goes against our Mastery if we were to TPx3 then BK. And being able to weave TP 3 times before needing to hit BK doesn’t seem like it would be doable with any consistency unless you want to sit around doing nothing waiting on CDs.
1 Like
Personally love the fact that we kept bone dust brew over weapons - it will be missed in PvP no doubt though
Looks like there is a few different playstyles in the tree
1 Like
You aren’t hitting tiger palm for it’s pitiful damage, and because BK isn’t TP even if you did TPx3 then BK your BK would still get the mastery, at least the first one. We’ll have to see if the procs benefit from mastery if the main BK does.
I suppose. It just feels wrong to design something that incentivizes you to ignore your mastery. They did that before with Chi Explosion since it replaced BK.
Although… I don’t see Hit Combo so it’s not as big as a loss in this case.
It’s okay not to get your mastery 100% of the time. You literally do that now on live for aoe.
This exactly. I’m glad this is gone.
You don’t need to hit 3 tp in a row though. You could do
tp > rsk > tp > bok
which would give you the benefit of 2 stacks which is still extra damage. If you had chi to start with you could go
tp > rsk > tp > fof > tp > bok
So you’d be holding off hitting bok for a bit longer but it’d make up for it by tripling the damage.
This is pretty much how I do it on MW anyway. Weaving in a heal or a kick here and there until I get to 2-3 stacks of teachings
I don’t know how the balances out overall but it’d definitely be effective for burst.
Blockquote Why in god’s name did we keep Keefer’s and Invoke?
I can live without invoker but keefers is just so fun 
1 Like
Yeah exactly, I think the important thing to remember with Teachings of the Monastery, is that just because it can stack up to 3 times, doesn’t mean it has to stack 3 times. It gives value regardless. Just if you happen to say weave in a chi wave or a fists of fury, you can pick up an extra stack for a free blackout kick. I think it’s going to work fairly well.
1 Like
Roll is baseline, that skill just grants another charge.
But soothing mist for bm and ww feels useless. I’d much rather have renewing mist there instead.
1 Like
I can see it (teachings of the monastery) being very usefull for pvp burst windows! Also, see it like extra damage when you blackout kick normally. You don’t need to always stack 3.
1 Like
It could also be good in pve combined with the other blackout kick talent, shadowboxing treads, so tp tp tp as adds spawn then blackout kick, presumably that would 4 kicks to 3 targets for a total of 12 kicks. Could be good might not be better than spin to win, that’ll be a numbers game.