This is a fried take. The purpose of this thread is to discuss what was shown. There is no possible way to do that without the context of the current trees. Speaking in any other way would be theorizing what the developers have planned…which is as you say “asinine.”
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I wanted to come back in and make some more detailed comments since that is probably going to be more useful overall than just a “looks good”
Celestial Conduit:
I’ve had to read this a few times and generally I don’t really “get” how it will play. For both FistWeaving and WindWalker, seems like I’m just going to stop active DPS and radiate for a bit which I imagine will feel unsatisfying in terms of visuals and gameplay, even if the actual effect of causing nature damage is good.
Left-side top choice node:
Seems fine, a lot like other trees we’ve seen with innocuous choices.
Heart of the Jade Serpent:
I hope for MW this plays out as a QOL thing, and no a reason to waste Shielun. If there is a point in a fight where I first think “oh I want CDR” and then suddenly need to save a few people, it leaves me in a tricky spot. Albeit one we’d learn to play around.
The WW part seems fine but admittedly I play WW less.
Left-side bottom choice note:
Same as above choice node really
Courage of the White Tiger:
Easy damage gain, no notes. I’m picturing the animation almost like a feral druid animation, curious if that’s how it plays out of if its full-size Xuen next to you for a moment (which might be visual clutter)
Strength of the Black Ox:
Also seems like a nice passive win
Chi-Ji’s Swiftness:
Probably a new opportunity for us to accidentally roll off an map edge, but we’re used to that and movement speed always feels good.
Ride-side top choice node:
These seem fine, I don’t have strong feelings about RJW although it has never felt great to press. Its passive and green swirly effects, so why not. In comparison the Brew fire breath is not dissimilar visually but feels more impactful (again, just visually)
Flight of the Red Crane:
Much like CotWT above, this one is going to feel really different based on how its animated, a quick Chi-ji appearing and vanishing seems correct, but hacing Chi-ji running around for a bit like I just used my healing CD could be confusing or cause clutter.
Right-side bottom choice node:
So far the “cycle through X options” of gameplay on these trees hasn’t been my favorite approach, and as MW Jadefire feels amazing to use so I can’t see ever choosing Inner Compass, but maybe other folks like it.
Unity Within:
Generally sounds great, but I’m wondering overall if I am playing MW, and I’m in a group with a Rider of the Apoc DK, a Diabolist Lock, a BM Hunter … are we just absolutely surrounded by pets?
I am not. Removing Essence Font cripples Fistweaving in Raids, because a large amount of your healing is through TFT Upwelling Essence Font when there is raidwide damage incoming. It is also important because the Essence Font bolts from Faeline Stomp and Essence Font itself causes Chi’Ji Gusts of Mists to do very, very high healing throughout its duration.
Essence Font needs to stay, as well as Font of Life for the cooldown reduction for Thunder Focus Tea, and people who don’t like it should have methods to path around it for other options.
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Ok but there is the concern of wanting to time it with Serenity because you can pull some very degen stuff like that. I can already picture people FoFing (potentially back to back) during Serenity when Heart of the Jade Serpent procs. Thats 24 Chi that you can burn if you’re just blasting FoF during Serenity or 20 Chi if your blasting FoF and RSK/SotWL back and forth during Serenity.
Initially, very disappointed in this tree due to a few acute and long-standing issues as a Windwalker.
The bad:
Celestial Conduit, as an ability, seems extremely un-fun to play as Windwalker.
- 4 second channel time - like Fists of Fury, it exacerbates our historically poor auto-attack damage. Also like Fists of Fury, Dragonflight’s talent system and tier sets have injected so many resources into the spec that it becomes increasingly difficult to accommodate such a channel without wasting energy.
- 90 second cooldown is desynchronized from Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger. And while it does sync with Serenity and SEF, we would not want to use Celestial Conduit during those cooldowns due to the 4 second channel - we would be losing the primary benefit of Serenity (free chi cost and cdr), and we would not be able to play around Drinking Horn Cover as much either. Maybe this ability should replace the Invoke Xuen button, and summon him as part of the spell? It would seem weird as a “celestial conduit” for us to specifically not cast the spell alongside our celestial cooldown.
Rushing jade wind and Jadefire Stomp both feel terrible to play as Windwalker, and so nodes that enhance these abilities feel bad as well. To the designer’s credit, the tree offers alternatives to using these abilities, and I hope that these alternatives remain truly competitive enough that we will not need to talent into either RJW or JS when using this hero talent set.
A few nodes in the tree have considerable anti-synergy with Serenity
- As mentioned above, we don’t want to spend time channeling Celestial Conduit inside of Serenity
- We cannot consume chi during Serenity to benefit toward Heart of the Jade Serpent.
- Proccing Jade Serpent and then entering Serenity however may yield some fun results with both effects contributing 100% faster CDR
- We do not Tiger Palm during Serenity, devaluing Courage of the White Tiger, and therefore Strength of the Black Ox
Both defensives on our choice node seem extremely weak.
The good:
The theme is very on point, and I think this is a good way to get the Celestials involved into the playstyle.
I have never liked how Invoke Xuen has functioned in the rotation since it was redesigned in Shadowlands, pushing a significant amount of our burst damage into a pet, but I find the occasional proc for bonus damage as a celestial showing up to be a fine way to enhance flavor. (sidebar, please delete Invoke Xuen, or reimagine the ability Xuen blessing the player character with enhanced damage/ability)
Heart of the Jade Serpent looks like it could be some fun added burst windows to play around.
Xuen’s Guidance is a neat way to interact with Teachings of the Monastery
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Is anyone going to talk about the healing being stuck at 20 yards? That’s half of healing range.
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From a WW perspective, Celestial Conduit seems like a flow breaker with the long channel time. It would at least be cooler if it felt like a Martial Arts attack and not mystically radiating energy.
Gameplay wise, I’m greatly concerned with seeing Jadefire Stomp in the tree. I’ve played a WW as a main in Warlords, Legion, and Shadowlands, and that ability makes me not want to play the spec. Please don’t bake it into the Celestial tree so it can be properly removed from the WW tree. Thank you
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Jadefire Stomp is literally consecration, fat benefits if you stay inside of it but it’s the antithesis of being mobile (yes, I already know of the lingering effects).
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i also don’t like that it is a channeled ability.
however, and i may be alone in this, i think it COULD work if it were simply a big cast. esp if the animation and particle effects were done right. once every 1.5m we enter a meditative/trance to invoke the celestials… give it a cast time, and then have the effect around us last X seconds, during which we can still use our CDs etc.
I like it. I like it a lot.
Its pretty much just monk convoke and a bunch of very flavorful passives and procs. Everything that requires a certain talent is a choice node with something that doesn’t require said talent.
I’d like to see RJW be tacked onto tiger palm instead of it’s own button, but that’s more of a WW complaint than a hero talent complaint.
Overall this is absolutely one of the better ones I’ve seen. Celestial conduit is going to have to be really strong to be worth a four second channel, but if it is look out.
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As a hero talent between Windwalker and Mistweaver, make Rushing Jade Wind do damage and heals. They said they are changing Mistweaver for War Within so I don’t know they could be doing a bunch of changes. Still think they should bring out the changes for monk sooner so we can test and give feedback for season 4 going into the next expansion.
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Which is why I directly mentioned those issues.
You did not. The only mentioned part from my post replying to yours was the mention of Chi’Ji Gusts of Mists applying twice on those with Essence Font applied on them.
I expanded on the issues with potentially removing Essence Font + Font of Life.
Sidenote: You shouldn’t be using Essence Font to apply Ancient Teachings. Chi Burst can be used to reset the cooldown of Faeline Stomp, and proper positioning alleviates the issue for the majority of the time.
Also depends on the content you’re referring to as well, but this is a Feedback topic, so I won’t go any further here.
Great now prune all classes down to a 3-4 skill rotation like the old days, and make the tallents just add perks to those skills
I want to remind everyone that this person does not speak for the majority of players.
Balancing never works out 100%. There will be periods it’s stronger and periods where it’s not. If blizzard is not dropping the ball the difference shouldn’t be huge.
That is the key… When has blizzard balanced WW monk to be competitive?
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i would like to hear back from blizz, i think there are great points on this posts, and people is saying what they think about the hero talent tree, can we get any kind of answer blizz ? a dev, a community manager, even a gm, anything at all, having zero answer from blizz makes me think that they don’t care at all, but once again, they are posting this talents to have feedback from the community
WW is pretty well balanced right now. it is kinda middle of the pack (10th place) on Fyrakk 70% percentile. A bit lower if we consider all bosses, but that is often the case when you have 1 monk slot in your raid and MW is so strong right now.
in M+ it is the 5th out of 13 most picked melee spec for 25 keys and up. However the placement drops a bit for 30+ keys.
Disregarding playstyle like AOE touch of death, ressourcemanangement, procs etc. WW is pretty much middle of the pack for overall dmg done, wich is fine.
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To start, I’ll disclose that I do not like pets for monks, I enjoy Jadefire Stomp, and I do not mind Rushing Jade Wind (if it is powerful enough). That said, I like this hero tree more than I expected upon first hearing the name.
Celestial Conduit reminds me a bit of Essence of the Focusing Iris and the fun that could be had with that giant death laser. I think a big requirement for this ability to be interesting for WW monks is that it needs to do insane damage during the channel and it needs a good visual.
Yulon’s Knowledge is a really intriguing solution to make Rushing Jade Wind more appealing. I’d like to see more ways of proccing RJW so that it becomes a resource/stack management ability instead of the maintainence buff that it currently is. Alternatively (or maybe additonally), if RJW had interactions with Dance of Chi-Ji, Jade Ignition, and Bonedust Brew it seems conceptually possible that RJW could replace Spinning Crane Kick in some situations.
Regarding Niazuo’s Protection and Jade Sanctuary, I think this is actually a balanced choice node with reasonably intersting effects, but I feel strongly that monk does not need defensive increases in any hero trees.
In my opinion, the weakest part of this tree are the celestial’s themselves. The Niuzao, Xuen, and Chi-ji procs are just random damage procs with no gameplay interaction. Yu’lon is the only celestial with a controlled trigger and actual gameplay interaction, but it is quite unclear the intent of this effect from solely the tooltip.
Personally, I am much more intrigued by Inner Compass and would like to see this stance concept utilized more throughout the hero tree. Rather than having the random celestial procs do a single damage hit, it would be more interesting if these procs were a means of triggering stances and those stances provide unique buffs (i.e. instead of Blackout Kick triggering Nuizao, Nuizao triggers Ox Stance which buffs Blackout Kick).
Ignoring that specific idea, I think the concept of changing stances is far more interesting than randomly summoning celestials.
Overall, I am excited by the possibilities of this tree, but the core mechanic of the celestials needs some improvements.
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