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
i’m posting this again on this threat maybe this way we can get something
About Overwhelming Flurry:
Binding a DPS proc to maximum health might cause a lot of strange issues. I already see WW monks clicking their priest buff away to improve their damage output…
Rather bind this to base stamina multiplied with a scaling factor, so that it ignores all kinds of buffs and debuffs.
Windwalker, in particular, already has a lot of procs and other RNG elements. For supposedly being disciplined martial artists, a lot of our ability queue is quite random and unpredictable.
Blizzard, is there any version of Flurry Strikes that you considered (but didn’t ultimately choose) that would give more agency to the player, and not just result in another uncontrollable effect we have to track with a WeakAura?
My issue is not so much with how Flurry Charges are accumulated (though, as others have already so eloquently stated, max HP is a problematic scaling value) as it is with how Flurry Strikes is triggered. Monks — especially Windwalker monks — need more, not less agency with our toolkit. Is there a button we can hit to unleash our stored charges, as opposed to staring at a WeakAura and praying that we don’t cross that 400-energy line right at the end of a pull?
I do not like Flurry Strikes, I do not like that the entire tree revolves around Flurry Strikes, and I do not think this fits the theme of Shado-pan at all.
I like the generally passive buffs in this tree and I like that Shado-Pan is a hero class for monk.
Here are some things I would like to see in this tree instead:
I genuinely struggled to find anything to like about this tree. I hope this tree and Monk in general get the attention they deserve in Alpha/Beta.
The engagement from the community should show blizzard that they should change this.
Or read the room and respond with something.
I have played Monks in Everquest, DnD and FFIV as well as WoW. One of the things I love the most about the Monk fantasy is a lot of small, precise fast attacks.
So, in theory, a hero subclass built around a flurry of fast attacks is fine, but in practice, the entire thing being passive, totally ruins it - it’s just at that point, why not an aura?
Imagine if every other hero talent tree was like this, just passive. Warriors, just sometimes had a uncontrollable hit, or hunters a shot, or mage’s a blast.
There are already enough buttons to press, so I am not talking about 8 new buttons, but at some point, we should be able to control and get the satisfaction of pressing the jolly candy like button to release the attack in the right context of the content.
Peak of Serenity Discord would be a great place for them to reach out for feedback or a Developer interview!
Peak is the last place Blizzard devs should go.
They need to keep it open and public. Not a place where a cult controls the narrative.
Blizzard should say come to us and our tier 3 forums aka private forums. Give temporary access to confirmed number crunchers and theory crafters. But keep it in their control.
It’s quite telling that anytime someone mentions Peak you literally throw a toddler tantrum. I don’t think Peak is the issue.
All the class discords are.
you mean where they have actual moderators?
The disconnect i swear
As one of those number cruncher/theorycrafters I can tell you that Peak is a much better forum for those discussions and Discord is better suited for it.
I’ve updated the Shado-Pan monastery voice line with these changes in mind:
“When I was a cub, I could scarcely throw a punch. Now, after years of training, I can scarcely throw a punch.”
I wanted to really spend some time thinking about these trees and looking into them after my first reaction, and at this point, I think I’m ready to get into it with the Shado-pan hero spec. I’m going to take this talent by talent as best as I can, and explain first how the ability stacks up with the class fantasy, and then how I feel the gameplay will be.
Overwhelming Flurry:
From a flavor standpoint, this misses the mark by a pretty wide margin. Of the many shado-pan NPCs we interact with, we seldom see them doing any barrages of extra strikes. In fact one of the few cutscenes where we see a shado-pan actually fight his moves are slow and methodical, and often involve focusing himself before sending them off.
From a gameplay standpoint, this ability is all over the place in terms of design. I can see why it’s a feature tied to maximum HP, that’s something that has been part of the monk class fantasy since day one, but because this wants to reward lower health rather than higher it misses that mark fairly widely. By being tied to energy expended we also see an issue in that spending energy for windwalker is generally a bad feeling moment, as tiger palm deals less damage than an auto-attack in many cases.
As this is the keystone, I chose to do a little digging and see how this ability would be applied in practice on a Mythic fight. I simply pulled a log and did some quick maths, so forgive me if it’s not perfect. In this log the windwalker used Tiger Palm 70 times, and Expel Harm 21 times, over a 6 minute fight. This means that they, on average cast around 12 tiger palms and 4 expel harms per minute, rounding to the nearest whole number for easy maths.This means that the given player spent roughly 900 energy per minute, which would trigger slightly more than 2 flurry strike effects in that time. This character was doing roughly 280,000 DPS, while the character has around 850,000 HP, this means they generate a charge every 3 seconds, so would have roughly 10 charges each time the flurry strike effect triggers.
This seems genuinely cool, until you consider that this is someone in very high end gear, pushing for a very high parse on a mythic boss, with some measure of external support, in the final tier of an expansion. A character who is freshly level 70 in questing blues and greens has around 260k HP and does roughly 25k DPS (based on me just jumping on my level 70 monk who I just finished leveling yesterday and punching a dummy,) and spends energy at a much slower rate, as they simply have less energy income. If I were to spend my energy as quickly as possible (which would be a DPS loss, but just for the sake of argument) it would take me roughly 40 seconds to spend 400 energy. This gives me a rough total of only 4 flurry strikes in this 40 second window, which feels much less interesting, and poses an issue that we’re all talking about in the back of our heads: scaling.
If this ability is balanced at launch on us being able to trigger roughly 6 flurry strikes per minute, then when we’re able to trigger 25ish at end game the ability will be wildly overpowered. By the reverse if it is tuned to be fair in the late game, it’s going to be largely useless in the first tier of the expansion. I for one am not a fan of seeing an aura buff applied to monks every tier in an attempt to bring them in line of classes that are just better designed.
Finally, this is just one more thing in the long line of “weak aura plays my class for me” issues the game currently has. Someone will write an aura that pops up saying “stop spending energy” and then when it’s the right time that will go away and you’ll spend your flurry strikes when it tells you. Without a WA it’s going to be impossible to track otherwise.
Veteran’s Eye:
From a flavor standpoint I can actually sort of get behind this. While the shado-pan aren’t known for huge flurries of striking, the idea of them opening up the opponent’s guard is just a very cool fantasy I want to support. Learning your target’s weaknesses to bring them down is such classic wuxia fantasy, and monks have lost some of that over the years.
From a gameplay perspective however, I’m much less impressed. Obviously it’s impossible to know exactly what will count for this, but I’m going to assume it will trigger off of every direct damage source, therefore not counting ticks from dots but counting ticks from channels. I’m also going to assume that each flurry strike is going to be a unique hit, instead of one big instance of damage. This means that in early tiers you’re likely to see this generally rolling around the 3-6 stack range, while in later tiers it will almost certainly have a 100% uptime.
This sounds like a good thing, but it is not. Because of how monk attacks and resources work, adding haste generally doesn’t provide a direct benefit to their damage. The class doesn’t really follow the “more haste means do more things” that other classes enjoy because of our GCD locked rotation and fairly long cooldowns. This coupled with the fact that the windwalker tree gives a massive boost to haste when using one of our major cooldowns just further invalidates haste as a stat. Sitting at 20% bonus haste for an entire fight would make a mage’s day, but a monk just doesn’t really feel the change. And if haste is reworked to be more of a benefit for the class, we run right into that scaling problem again AND still have to deal with the fact that our class is still giving us a large haste buff already, which will make scaling all the worse.
One versus Many:
This is a nice quality of life feature that allows the flurry strikes to trigger much more often in AoE combat, as well as slightly more often in single target. From a theme standpoint it makes sense, the shado-pan basically always fight in small numbers, and generally against the endless swarm of the mantid. It’s cool to see that reflected in their fighting style here, and this is the first big flavor win for me.
From a mechanical standpoint, this is perfectly fine. It will increase the amount of flurry strikes in all tiers, but that once against leans into the scaling issues of the class. Getting 100% more strikes from a single channel at the low end is a larger overall damage increase than it will be at the higher tiers of play. Adding 1 extra flurry to 6 is worth much more than adding 2 to 20. If this isn’t paid attention to, it will make them once again required to apply aura buffs to fix the monk’s performance.
Efficient Training:
From a theme standpoint this is another hard win for me. The shado-pan are always under equipped and outnumbered, when they fight they’re always fighting an uphill battle, and so being the best at what they do is what keeps them alive. This gets high marks for me.
From a mechanical standpoint…I hate this, and it’s probably the worst thing in the tree so far. Increase the damage of energy spenders for brewmaster is actually quite good, as most of their damage comes from there, but for windwalker it is basically just a nothingburger. Spending energy reducing the cooldown of abilities is also not something I’m interested in for several reasons. One is this will create breakpoints of energy spending that will push these cooldowns out of sync with the rest of the cooldown suite. Another is that this simply further feeds into the issue of the game currently where classes do so very little damage outside of their cooldowns that you’re only playing the game every 2 minutes or so. Lastly it also has anti-synergy with serenity because using that ability makes us not use energy, which means it then doesn’t get cooldown reduction. This needs to be changed.
Wisdom of the Wall:
This is another really great win for theme. The shado-pan cut their teeth defending the serpent’s spine, and that makes this iteration feel really excellent. The name could probably be changed, but the fantasy does land as it is, and it feels very wuxia to have something named like this. Learning lessons and improving is another part of the monk fantasy, so being able to apply those lessons in battle lands every time.
From a mechanical standpoint, I have a lot of questions. Do we get all 4 of these effects at once? The tooltip is ambiguous at best. If not, how do we access them? Is it a set rotation or random? If we do get all of them, that leads to further issues with the cooldown uses above. Getting this raw amount of power from a largely uncontrollable proc will feel really bad to play, and will lead to degenerate gameplay where you simply stand around and not spend energy until just before your cooldowns are up and you drop your flurry strikes for maximum damage.
This also then goes on the make the scaling issues all the worse, by giving you extra critical strike damage it would make crit seem better, but the class already has access to a very large crit buff, and this crit damage bonus doesn’t really help brewmaster’s main desire for crit in the healing taken buff. Increasing mastery by 25% makes that stat suddenly all the less important than it already is, and because the next bullet point adds in dodge it makes mastery less attractive to brewmasters as well. Verse giving us other stats does nothing but double down on the boring class design of “stack verse to win” that we currently have, which is a reflection of the class’s core issues. The effect is cool, and it’s probably good, but it’s going to be unfun to play around and a nightmare to balance.
Pride of Pandaria:
This right here is a massive failure in theme. Pride is literally the last remaining Sha, that we had to cleanse ourselves of in order to take the fight to Garrosh after saving the veil. This name needs to be changed. Period.
Mechanically it is another failure, because once again it’s giving the class more free stats is going to make scaling worse. I don’t really have much else to say on it.
High Impact:
Making people explode because you hit their pressure points all at once is just such classic wuxia that I can’t express how awesome this talent’s theme is. Just top notch.
Sadly it loses points on being another thing we’re going to need to play around in AoE pulls, especially in M+ content. This further adds to the weakaura’s play my class problem.
Protect and Server:
I guess the theming is that the shado-pan are sort of like cops? It’s very much a miss for me.
Buffing self healing is fine, but windwalkers and brewmasters seldom heal themselves with vivify, so why would they heal others? On top of that this is another instance of an ability costing energy, and so won’t be used unless it’s made free so the class doesn’t push out flurry strikes too soon.
Lead from the Front:
I like the idea of the shado-pan being leaders of combat, as is often the case in the lore. They’re generally rallying the locals to support them and this naming gives that flavor. Unfortunately the mechanics behind it don’t do that at all for some reason?
Expel harm and the two chi abilities already do functionally no damage so giving them leech is a nothing burger. And also it confirms they’re not going away, which is a massive failure for me.
Against all Odds:
Again leaning into the one man army fantasy of them, which I love, and doubling down on how they’re going to have to win because if they don’t, the people die.
From a mechanical standpoint this is another balancing nightmare. In the early tiers it will give roughly 4% bonus agility for 6 seconds, and 10% for 6 seconds in the end game. What is really bad however is that it doesn’t indicate that these stacks don’t overlap, it just seems to treat it like a regular stacking buff. What this says to me is that if, between the increased flurry strike income from certain spells, and the increased free stats from this ability and others in the tree, will this just turn into a 20% agility buff for the entire fight? It seems unlikely that you’ll be able to spend 400 energy every 6 seconds, but it’s entirely possible that you could with certain gearing options. If that is the case it will lead to a TBC era style breakpoint system, in which you either have enough of a stat to get you to the 6 second cycle or you want none of it at all.
Martial Precision:
I love the idea of striking around someone’s armor, getting to their vitals and just going off on them. Another classic wuxia signature.
However, 10% armor penetration is, at best, 3% more damage, and that’s if all of your damage is physical. This tree, and these two specs in general, happen to do a non-zero amount of magical damage, and so in reality it does slightly less than 3%. If this node said “do 3% more damage” people would mock it for how subpar it is, and so that’s what I’m doing now.
Whirling Steel:
So this one seems really sort of out there for me. What is a “whirling steel” exactly? Is it a floating weapon ala dancing rune weapon? We have seen that before from the shado-pan, so that’s not totally out of the realm.
And this is the part where I’m probably going to get a lot of flak, but based on how I’m reading this, and based on other features in the game, this seems like it will have a 100% uptime. Becoming injured in the game generally means “taking damage while at full HP,” and is used with exactly that wording in other abilities. For brewmaster this will literally always trigger, because of stagger being a mechanic. For windwalker if they suffer any AoE damage at all, the next instance will be at 15% reduced and they’ll get the buff again. This is just wildly overpowered and once again further reduces the value of stats for the class. “Oh, you want these avoidance boots? We’re giving them to the druid because you just have 15%.” Parry is also an unfun mechanic for brewmaster, because parry isn’t fun for tanking in general. Tanks want smooth damage, parry makes damage spiky.
Predictive Training:
Being able to read your opponent’s moves and avoid them is just so high fantasy monk that I want this to just be the name of some baseline passive. I love the theme of setting up your opponent and matching their moves, and it becoming more and more effortless for you as you do, ala Neo.
Downside, this effect does nothing for windwalker when they’re not in the open world, and is less general DR than whirling steel in those moments, so it’s an entirely dead node.
Vigilant Watch:
The shado-pan are “the watchers on the wall,” so I’m a fan of this being in here. It also leans into that fantasy of opening someone’s guard up and then clobbering them that I love so much, just a really cool idea that I want more exploration into like this.
I am reading this as it doesn’t really stack in any way, and also that it doesn’t seem to have any duration, not unlike blackout reinforcement. This means that it really reads “use one blackout kick every 30-50 seconds for 10% more damage.” This is a boring node pretending to not be boring. I know they can’t all be winners, but seriously this node could just read “flurry strikes deal 10% more damage” and it would be the same thing.
I know this was a small book, but hopefully the designers can take this feedback to heart and really help us make this into something really worth playing, and something that can live up to the fantasy of the heroes that have acted to inspire the monk class. Reposting because for some reason it loaded the wrong character when I logged in.
Flurry strikes just sounds like passive damage FoF style. Can we please get more lightning based aesthetic/ abilities?
would love it if they did something with Crackling Jade Lightning too. That would be awesome to have more attacks with lightning.
It should be a knockback or a yank as a talent choice instead of maybe 7 of the different boring choices we have
remember folks, people who hate on classcords usually do because they got banned from them 
and its notoriously hard to get banned in classcords unless you used slur’s
I honestly wouldn’t mind if Crackling was just turned into a buff for our attacks to add some lightning damage like a shamans weapon imbue. Could even give it a fun appearance too like lightning surging through the fists/arms/or body. But at the same time i know people love it as a simple pulling ability
Yeah agreed but thats is pretty normal on the monk dev front. Zero commication is pretty normal, pretty sure there was little to no post during the beginning of dragon flight when they redid everyones trees.
We all know it’s true, but we also all wish it wasn’t. I really just wish we’d get any response at all.