WW current rotation is one of the few things it has going for it with the exception for stomp… that ability sucks but overall Monk playstyle is fun. Its scaling and utility issues that monk needs help with.
Oh and not having a pile of ToD talents.
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These are hilariously simple problems to fix. One involves math and changing a number or two in the code, the other involves giving someone the development equivalent of a blank check. That said, what utility are you thinking of?
I agree, but it could be improved by leaps and bounds very easily, making us all the more deadly.
For one, Blizz could take the RNG out of our AoE and mitigate the cringe that is our ToD talents. We still yet to have an efficient system to discharge all of our Thunderfist stacks, which is a whole other thing to talk about. (People want to hamfist auto attacks as the default spending method instead of something simple like just tacking it onto FoF or RSK). It’s still borderline impossible for us to break mastery on spells we care about unless we try. There’s still the ever present issue/problem that is Skyreach. As you say, FLS is nigh universally hated by WWs, yet all it does is what RSK used to do with extra steps. Et cetera et cetera.
Summary: I think if you need a weakaura to figure out what the heck is going on with your Hero Talents, then it is not a good tree.
So to get the most of this tree, you’re going to need a WA to track Flurry Charges, another to track your energy spent, and another for Wisdom of the Wall. Advanced players will do this and be able to maximize the value of the buffs. The average player will not track any of this, and the whole tree kinda just becomes “You do some damage sometimes.” There is no flavor or real gameplay change at all.
There needs to be a cool way of seeing your monk power up and then unleash. Maybe a faint glow around them that gets stronger the closer you get. Having the damage unleash passively is also kinda sad. Maybe when the buff is ready, Rising Sun Kick lights up on your bars and causes a big explosion on use. Add some spice!
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Seems pretty cool, but i can see a few issues, specifically with health scaling abilities.
Not huge on how you generate charges, but otherwise seems pretty good.
Keeps the core rotation in place and not too over the top.
Gives a nice contrast in choice between Conduit
This seems like such a missed opportunity to add some cool combo effects to monks. Why are other classes getting combos that change what an ability does if used again within X time but not monks?
For example Blackout kick turns into Blackout strike for X seconds or even effects added on to different spells like your RSK adds lightning damage to your next Tiger Palm
Instead we get to pick between channel aoe/summoner spec or you better download WA to track energy and chi spent to not waste all your damage spec.
To not be all doom and gloom i do like that this spec did not add more keybinds or summons so at least that is something.
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My only real grip with this one is how you don"t really have control over when anything happens.
While it’s fine in the sense that monk specs already have busy rotations, it feels like we’d need to optimise to pop in our cds paired with wisdom of the wall to be optimal. In the current game where you often need to delay cds to align with grp or mecanics, I feel it’s going to be problematic…
I’m also unsure how this will scale as well. Monk, specifically ww, already has troubles with how secondaries and hp scales, and while wisdom of the wall seems to want to help with secondaries, we’re still doulbing down on hp scaling, which was already problematic with touch of death…
Overwhelming fury doesn’t really feel like it is appropriate for a Shado-Pan Monk. I don’ t think there is any supporting lore for it, nor is the gameplay compelling.
We know based on the dungeons and quests from Pandaria that include Shado-Pan, they are the defenders of the wall, they repel the Klaxxi and the Yuongol, and they keep the Mogu in check. They sit proudly on top of the Great Wall and use heavy munitions and stealth tactics to control the battlefield.
Shadow-Pan Monastery iconically starts with monks appearing out of this air, continues with a flurry of arrows that stop you in your track, and before the Sha-corruped part, are bombarded with Master Snowdrift’s flurry of melee, ranged, and counter attacks.
In Gate of the Setting Sun, you aid the Shado-Pan atop the Great Wall in dispatching the Klaxxi with the aid of Shado-Pan cannons. Heavy munitions are scattered throughout Pandaria; heavy ballista, flamethrowers, and cannons.
Shadow-Pan make more sense as weapon masters with an affinity for stealth and ranged attacks. Stealthing around Townlong Steppes and the Dread Wastes doing recon and assassinations is another iconic part of the Shado-Pan.
With that background and lore established, there are some recommendations I would like to make.
One angle you could take for hero talents is to focus heavy munitions. This would allow them to equip ranged weapons, replacing one or more attacks for ranged attacks, and giving them extra range on their melee attacks ( they are attacking from a wall). A concrete example is that Fist of Fury transforms into the on use effect of the Shado-Pan Dragon Gun; instead of a fury of fists, you channel a flamethrower at your enemy.
Another angle you could take would be to emulate the ninja-like Taoshi. Dispatch enemies with stealth, create decoys, use the the knowledge of Chi to dispatch and hinder enemies. Paralysis, touch of death, and touch of karma all affect the opponent’s Chi and perpetuate this trope. You would need an ability to be replaced or added so that rotationally there is something that also continues the theme. Chi Explosion comes to mind as something that can be re-used to fulfill this fantasy.
This is my interpretation of Shadow-Pan, I’m sure others may have some such as defenders of the wall, and destroyers of the Mogu, or Klaxxi annihilators, or maybe some that I didn’t even think about. The current implementation idea does not give the user any agency, any tie in with the lore, or any real impact on gameplay.
Monk is already a niche class with with a lot of buttons. Defaulting to a passive would not serve the monk player, as they already signed up for an advanced class. We monks are looking for depth and want tools to deal with different situations, not just passives that increase our damage. You don’t play monk because they are the strongest, or the easiest class. You play it because you like the playstyle and the theme.
One reason monk has had issues being invited is because of their lack of utility. Unless they are overpowered, there may be no reason to bring them, as their 5% physical damage buff is laughably weak when most classes do magic damage. These hero talents are a way to round out the class and give it unique tools to thrive. Trees that just prop up damage will be seen poorly by the community.
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For me the choice between summoner hero talents or weapon/bombmaster talent would be an easy subscription cancel. What you are describing with using guns/bombs/weapons is survival hunter minus a pet or a sub rogue, not an unarmed martial arts class.
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May be okay but why is there haste?
How many times has it been said “Haste on WW is bad”?
(And baseline Haste will just devalue adding more haste as a gear stat.)
Energy spend for flurry needs tuned down and hp storage needs a smaller coefficient (unless health pools don’t scale like they have in the past four expansions). You are going to be stuck with your hand on the tuning knobs all expansion as you adjust the power scaling between offense (damage) and defense (health pools)…
More frequent is a flurry. Otherwise it’s not a flurry, it’s a nuke. Think of the Odyn’s Fury snippet on Twitter – lots of numbers flying around the screen. That is a prime example of a “Flurry”. 
You would likely be better off scaling smaller values for the start of the expansion for frequent and steady cycling (more early interactions within the hero tracks), with scaling health pools picking up slack for harder and harder bursts later in the expansion (albeit, slightly slower cycling).
Worthwhile note between the role gap: Scaling from hp disproportionately discourages BM from HP stacking (which they should).
This is just boring now. Do damage to store damage to do damage. At least Conduit has some thematic flavoring. I’ll laugh really hard when even they can be kicked or need to consistently cancel to sweep/para/kick (Priority A Fists of Fury).
I will say this is why some have long wondered if anyone is even playing the same game over there.
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Shado-Pan misses the mark. We get a (semi) random flurry of attacks? That’s it? I’m already seeing ideas in this thread that sound way more interesting… stealth monks flying in and kicking your target, smoke bombs being thrown, etc.
Some of the revealed talents actually sound visually and thematically appealing, and some clearly don’t. I’m not sure if all the developers are on the same page here.
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This has no viable choice for windwalkers please redo it add something to increase damage to something. like spinning kick or increase damage to storm earth and fire / serenity.
Choice Node: Whirling Steel and Predictive Training
- Whirling Steel: When you become injured, summon Whirling Steel, increasing your Parry chance and Avoidance by 15% for 6 seconds.
- Predictive Training: When you dodge or parry an attack, reduce damage taken by 10% for the next 6 seconds.
Efficient Training: Abilities that spend Energy deal an additional 15% damage. Every 50 Energy spent reduces the cooldown of Storm , Earth , Fire , Serenity , and Weapons of Orde r by 1 second.
We already have a talent for the Storm earth and fire / serenity that reduces cooldown all this is a band aid for weapons of order.
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Please help me understand this because I just don’t get it. A WW monk brings:
-5% physical debuff
-plus healing received and plus avoidance to everyone in 10 yards (so all the melee and possibly the tanks and healers depending on the fight and spec)
-An aoe stop
-a single target cc
-a friendly cleanse
-top shelf mobility
-standard melee interrupt
I’m new to playing a monk so I must be missing something. As far as I can tell monk (specifically WW) brings some of the best utility of any class.
I don’t see why brewmaster would be excited to take any of these.
Overwhelming Flurry seems like something else that needs a weak aura to efficiently track so it can go off when I want and not feel like it was wasted. What if after combat I try to heal up a party member and it puts me over the 400 energy? Does it just go off on nothing?
Lead from the Front seems like a worthless talent, at least from my brewmaster perspective. Those skills do such little damage I can’t see myself even noticing 30% leech on it. The leech from healing is something I wouldn’t even notice outside of looking at details.
Against all odds and controlled instincts is just “cool more stats for doing stuff and things”, like the others have said, that feels pretty lame.
Efficient Training is almost a dead talent from my perspective, it really feels like it was designed with WW in mind. I much prefer to run Press the advantage/Blackout Combo instead of weapons of order as BrM, so half of this talent provides 0 benefits if you choose to run an alternative build. Otherwise it’s just more passive damage increase.
Wisdom of the Wall again is something else that feels like it needs a weak aura if you want to know when it’s going off so you can time other abilities or adjust your strategy. I can already see that I’d like to line that proc up with a 10 stack press the advantage/blackout combo rising sun kick.
I also seriously dislike how little information is provided by certain tooltips. What does “become injured” mean for whirling steel? What’s the internal cooldown like? How long does the buff from vigilant watch stay up? Do the 10 flurry strikes for Wisdom of the Wall remain after combat or do they decay? Do they have a timer in combat?
Overall there’s not much that feels like it will be easily “used with intent” unless you have a few weak auras for it. Without WA’s it’s just stuff happening when you do normal monk stuff and I don’t see how that’s adding any fun or flavor to the gameplay. Lots of passive increases that I likely won’t even notice outside of damage logs.
I also don’t know much about the lore, but I do know the Shado-Pan are supposed to be like elite ninjas. Nothing in this tree screams elite ninja to me. Master Snowdrift in the shado-pan monastery dungeon has some neat shado-pan abilities that I feel like could easily have been adapted to a hero tree. A brief google shows me that an ability already exists on a Shado-Pan NPC called Whirling Steel which has no similarity to the hero tree talent. Doesn’t exactly connect me to the lore of shado-pan after 2 minutes of googling.
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As far as the Shadow-Pan tree itself goes I really like it overall, but I have two major concerns:
1-Flurry strikes interacting with max health is a concern. This will absolutely lead to folks doing less than desirable things to boost their dps. Avoiding stamina enchants, clicking off buffs, cancel aura on rallying cry, etc.
I understand the intention is to make the number of flurry strikes somewhat consistent and so its leaning on the “health pools increase as damage does” thing, but I think this is the wrong way to go. Just make it based on number of gcd attacks, auto attacks, or chi spent.
2-Wisdom of the Wall being based on number of flurry strikes. This is something that will likely need to be tracked and played around. Holding other cooldowns to align with it, slowing dps do get it to proc during a plus damage phase, and other things like that just aren’t fun for most people on a class as busy as monk. Maybe just make it an on use?
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The tree seems pretty barebones considering other classes are actually getting new things. I dont think tracking a new buff and dealing X% more with other abilities is really “HERO” territory design wise.
Who ever on the design team that loves the wordage “based on” should be reevaluated for making design decisions. A good chuck of brewmaster abilities are bugged or glitchy based on this.
I feel like efficient training should include Ox and Bonedust brew also
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It is quite involved you just dont understand it
I like the idea but I think fundamentally the way it works needs to change. As a test I did a short cooldown burst on the aoe dummys using serenity build and ended up doing about 24 mil damage (and I have 840k health so lets say ~30 stacks by this point) in 40 second or so and only hitting tiger palm five times in that window. Going off that I can see possibly some degenerate set up where you intentionally game your stacks so you end up with 20-40 in a minute and fire them off with a skyreach tiger palm generating several wisdoms of the wall while you do so. Such a build would emphasize ways to not spend energy as to stagger your procs and enable more burst. This might even be the intended gameplay loop going off all the throughput talents being based on doing a crazy number of attacks in a short window or flurry procs. I don’t like the idea of going all in on 6 seconds out of every minute to do big damage since I enjoy ww for its moment to moment gameplay.
I think this kind of gameplay is problematic before even going into the part where it scales off of our healthpool or lack thereof.
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[WW pve pov]
Can have wild interpretations of the tooltips here. A clarification of energy consumption and flurry strikes would be appreciated :
- Does strikes auto proc on reaching 400 energy? If yes, that is insanely doggy for so many reasons. Could be something like “after 400 energy, your next X ability unleashes charges”. X preferably being something that you could hold without stopping dps. Or any other alternative that would minimize punishment of using energy in lullz moments.
- Is it specifically damage energy spenders or does healing (vivify, soothing mist) count towards 400 energy threshold/“Efficient training” CDR as well? Does it work outside combat?
- Does furry strikes by default aoe, hit as many targets as there are stacks or unleashes everything on your primary target, nearest enemy? Does Wisdom of the Wall effect (that makes strikes deal extra aoe damage) count for “High impact”?
Can’t send this comment without a rant about “defensive” nodes here. “Predictive training” - I will give it a pass, since other choice node is applicable, pvpers can have this one. But what in the world is “Protect and Serve”/“Lead from the Front” choice. Vivify healing… “Protect and Serve” is borderline disrespectful, send it back to the oven.
Overall, initial impression - too many uncertainties now, but can imagine this adding more min-max/skill expression potential, which could be fun. Need to play around and see how this energy-strike-buff cyclic mini-game synergizes with core rotation. Biggest concern being aforementioned flurry strikes activation behavior.
No scaling. In fact, its reverse scaling so we get less procs the more HP we gain. No interaction with spells. Nothing to proc to add excitement. Just a punch of passive % modifiers. What a wasted opportunity and it won’t change in any meaningful way, just like how WW talents were a missed opportunity last this expansion. Epic fail.