Fist of Fury Re-work

Classes Monk
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Hey guys, am I the only one who hates FoF? Wind Walker is supposed to be about quick successive attack and combos, but FoF is just standing there and flailing for 3-4 sec. It’s the only animation for WW that doesn’t incorporate below the waist, and interrupts an otherwise fluid feeling rotation. I think we can all agree that WW needs some love overall, but I think Blizzard would be wise to re-work FoF. I’m not just here to complain though, I do have a solid idea…

Re-work:
Instead of standing still (or running) while throwing a flurry of punches, I’d suggest a brief focusing animation that grants a buff (Flurry of Blows) causing the next 3 abilities to strike the target and nearby enemies with additional punches for X damage. The idea being that the Monk centers themselves and unleashes an onslaught of strikes, without interrupting the fluidity of the rotation.

Damage:
Currently FoF’s damage is calculated as 5 x (120.75% of Attack Power) over 4 seconds and halve that to other enemies within 8rds. I’d suggest the buff to do (201.25% of Attack power) with each additional punch, and half that to other enemies within 8yrds. This keeps the damage output of FoF the exact same, with no need to alter the CD.

Animation and Sound:
For the animation, I don’t hate the “flurry” effect, I hate the “stand and flail” that the character does. I’d suggest for the initial focus a step back or crouching stance, something that feels like you’re keeping your center of gravity and collecting yourself to strike, accompanied by a minor aura to denote the focusing; both for sake of flavor and PvP. On consumption of the Flurry of Blows buff the current FoF animation can be used, but with a delay. You’re not going to do a Kick and a punch at the same time, but you will kick and follow it with a punch. if the same animation is used in the last 0.5sec of the GCD then it looks like a fluid strike combo. Sound wise, the same sound effect can be played when the current FoF animation is implemented. I think the biggest challenge for this is Blackout and Rising Sun Kick, getting the timing right will take some behind the scenes tweaking to be sure, but overall the animation, sound, and play style would come together much better than FoF in its current state.

Effect on PvE:
This idea will actually free up ~2 GCDs per FoF to cast other abilities. On average you want to cast FoF about 2.5 times a minute (according to simcraft T23 Patchwerk it should be cast 16 times in a 6min fight) which means this would free up ~5GCDs a minute. 5 global cool downs per minute! That’s a lot of extra damage! but wait… in reality you aren’t going to cast 5 more rising sun kicks because it still has a 10sec CD (reduced by Blackout Kick), you’ll really get 5 extra Tiger Palms or Blackout Kicks. In turn the BoK’s would give you an extra 2-3 RSK’s in a long fight. The downside to this is that you would spend less time waiting on FoF and letting energy regen naturally, it will feel like we have slower resource generation. Personally I wouldn’t mind a buff to that but energy=damage on a base level and there’s a lot more balancing that goes into that than I care to put on this page.

Effect on PvP:
It’s been a while since I did any PvP on a Monk, but to my understanding after FoF lost it’s stun FoF has just been WW burst (Correct me if I’m mistaken). In that regard, FoF is X damage over 4sec. With this re-work, it would be a GCD of no damage followed by 3 GCD’s with abilities + X damage. Because the damage occurs at the beginning of the ability the damage would be spaced out as:

Initial cast GCD (1sec if they keep the current FoF GCD)
Ability + 1/3 FoF
GCD (1.5sec)
Ability + 1/3 FoF
GCD (1.5sec)
Ability + 1/3 FoF
GCD (1.5sec)

Essentially this makes the damage burst about 4sec, the same duration as before. With a couple more damaging abilities being present there is more burst overall. The downside to this being that the initial animation will announce incoming damage to a veteran player, with the first GCD allowing reaction time. Overall I feel like this does not add or take too much value from FoF in its current state damage wise. It DOES stop WW burst from being uninterruptible with a 0.5 sec CC, which is needed. The current PvP talent that effect FoF (Turbo Fists) works perfectly with the re-work as well.

11 Likes
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FoF fills in a hole in the rotation - WW has a lot of abilities on cooldowns, and it’s an energy class. channeling fists allows cooldowns to tick and energy to regen without wasting time standing there doing nothing.

i would love a glyph that makes you rapid kick instead of punching, chun-li style

32 Likes
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I like your idea, but maybe like a whole punch/combo on a random style. So like it has 3 predetermined move combos, one starts with a kick, the other with a punch, etc.

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Just, please, make it so our weapons stop disappearing/reappearing during attack animations. I would love to use something other than “invisible fist weapon” transmog.

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Or allow ww to use polearms again, even better if they allowed us to pick between x2 1 handlers or polearms.

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I addressed this briefly in the initial post, in the “Effect on PvE” section. I agree that it currently fills a hole in the rotation. I don’t think WW should have any open GCD’s in the rotation but FoF is a terrible fix to this. The REAL fix to this would be properly balancing energy generation and ability damage. It’s not just WW Monks that suffer from this. Hunters, Rouges, and Druids feel this as well, they just have a much bigger effect from Haste. The fact that WW value Versatility shows that all the other stats have weak scaling. Blizzard’s excuse for not balancing energy properly has been “Haste will fix it” for 2 expansions now… in any case a channeled ability is a weak solution to the problem, if you’d even consider it a solution at all (which I don’t), and they shouldn’t have to take from the feel of the class or rotation to make up where they’re lacking somewhere else.

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I beg to differ, fist of fury is my favorite ability of all time. It looks really good and even better with wm on. The animation is really good with low graphic settings for some reason.

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i like fists of fury, its a very unique ability that makes the monk stand out from other melee classes, but i do have to agree that channeling a long punching animation can get somewhat tiresome in quick speedy spec like WW. I wouldn’t like to see it get reworked or removed though, rather id like to see some quality of life improvements and other changes made to it. Maybe like; gaining a speed boost while channeling, deflecting attacks while channeling, reducing the channeling time, damage, and cooldown all together to make it go by faster but keep the same overall dps, or maybe even letting you use other abilities while channeling.

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I don’t so much mind the animation as it is, more so that lack of animation from the waist down. Doesn’t feel like hand-to-hand combat at all.

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FoF is sort of wonky feeling at times with having it channeling away, but with how the class is made currently you would need to rework the class some to fill in downtime that FoF fills. Wonky feeling in the sense that WW seems rather quick acting with its other abilities.

We likely won’t ever see it change all that much unless blizzard decides to do so bigger change up on WW monks. But I guess I wouldn’t mind if they would update the animation some to make it feel like it actually has some fury in it.

2 Likes
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Hate the animation. Really the only thing I don’t like about monk. Looks to street fighterish

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This is actually a very good idea. I’m not sure about replacing FoF but a new spell…

like… no GCD for every spell and haste very very high (equal or above lust) for a short period of time where you can do a kind of “special custom combo move”, like in fighting games such as Street Fighter alpha 3. Dude, this would be soooo fun :star_struck:

https://youtu.be/4ltxIVEhud8?t=6

1 Like
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FoF work really stupid, you punch the target like thousand times but only strike 5 hits (make sense if you use cursed vision of sargeras btw) , FoF should do damage by the ‘‘punchs’’ instead the 5 hits (like hurricane strike was) and they can make FoF 3 seconds cast instead of 4 .

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I love the way FoF looks and feels. My only complaints about it are that it needs the turbofists functionality baselined. The Parry and the massive cleave feels amazing more like it used to.

It feels way less epic to push now w/ wm off. The split damage for large groups crushes the punishing feel of the spell. It used to feel epic to know a big pack was coming and to delay it just right and hit FoF on a huge pack and watch the meters go crazy. Now it feels bad to be channeling FoF on a large pack and watch other classes pushing way ahead during my 20 sec cd AoE spell. Especially if you have less than perfect azerite traits.

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not that unique its like blade storm

1 Like
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Fist of Fury need a rework on the animation, create an little area of effect and the monk punching everything in front, “teleporting”, something like the rogue abilities ( i think its shadowdance) that feels agile.

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You thinking of killing spree

2 Likes
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yep, thats it.

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FoF should be like this:
https://zippy.gfycat.com/LightheartedOptimisticGordonsetter.webm

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It’s been over a year, and I’d still like to see FoF get some attention. A change in the animation at the very least…