How much 'finesse' is required for WW?

Upfront confession: I mained a prot (and ret) paladin for 10 years. After learning that Shadowland’s catch-up mechanisms were very alt-friendly, I decided to bust out and level this gnome monk I’ve had lying around, perhaps put the paladin down, and see what it’s like to be an ankle-cappin’ little ninja.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell if it’s just because of the unholy trifecta of paladins (plate, bubble, heals) being ‘OP’, or if there’s some magical button I’m not pressing here, but my performance at 60 is… kinda pathetic.

I notice I am absolutely squished in both PvE and PvP, and I notice survival tools are… kind of minimal. Sure, there’s mobility, but once caught in something, there’s not really a way out, or included survivability! Yet I’ve fought numerous monks that have been able to stand toe-to-toe with me as a paladin, knowing that they had spent a fair bit on the offense, and not just kiting me or running off - So what am I doing wrong here, in which I can’t seem to stand up to really anything?

What is the main area your struggling with? Just the transition from paladin → monk playstyle or just monk gameplay in general? Have you already checked out https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/useful-monk-resources/728548 ?

I could type a bunch of stuff but 99% of it will be irrelevant if we don’t know what applies to your situation.

Windwalker is probably a contender for the most tanky melee DPS right now in PvE and we have a lot of defensive tools in PvP as well.

What exactly did you die to?

Stuns will kill anyone in the current meta so if you get caught without a trinket on any class I think most people understand they’re probably going to die.

1 Like

As a paladin, did you stand still and facetank a lot? I remember switching from warrior to monk, you realise that plate wearers tend to have less mobility and less need for mobility but they feel beefy.

Monks, you will over time learn to use your mobility offensively as well as defensively.

I recommend practicing between the 3 movement talents and seeing how they affect your playstyle.

Have your mobility button a very accessible. Chi torpedo is c for me, so I can hit it with my index or thumb.

Go into fights with the aim of using your mobility offensively, and see how much of an advantage that gives you. (Like, random bg or skirmish practice, no expectation of winning)

I assume you have your trinkets and burst abilities macro’d together so you’re not wasting burst window and unnecessary binds

Play around with using ring of peace both offensive and defensively. Use it ahead of an enemy to force them into melee range and prevent escape.

Use it defensively if a rogue is trying to stun lock you, trinket and slap a ring down and stand in the very centre to get control of the encounter.

If you’re used to facetanking as a paladins practicing trying to get behind your opponent. You don’t need to be behind to use your abilities, but it prevents dodge, and counterattack. Also, you will find the occasional keyboard turner who is now dead meat.

Also, you talk about being beaned while snared. Stuns are hard, but monks have lots of snare dealies.

Make a castsequence macro that binds escape artist to roll, boom, instant escape.

Use leg sweep and roll, or leg sweep and then use rop to boop them away from you.

Transcendence. You can literally teleport my dude. Remember, transcendence ignores line of sight, so you can poof around corners. There is also a conduit that gives you a minor speed boost when you use it, but our finesse conduits kinda suck chunks.

If all else fails and you are stuck in a frost nova eating dirt, check the tooltip for jade lightning - it has half decent chance of pushing the target away, enough to scoot a rogue or interrupt a caster.

I notice that in your pvp talents, you chose 2 that reduce your target’s speed, but nothing really defensive. I would swap out with disabling reach or turbo fists with ride the wind or wind waker to have s more balanced setup.

Uh… hope that helps, I’m tired

Oh p.s. I would drop inner strength for dampen harm, it helps with the burst meta.

2 Likes

Admittedly I have not looked into that post - The first thing I did was hit 60, then take the sheeple route of just pulling off the latest Icy-Veins build. On a plus side, I was told that I pull my own weight in group content, so I guess I have that much down (even if it feels like I’m going full monkey-brain through it)!

In general, I die to… well, being hit in the face. Funny, I know.

Will lump my extended answer down below.

The thing about paladin (using ret for this comparison), is that while both ret + ww have a simple, extremely similar system (combo pt builders + spenders), I feel like monk, by comparison, lacks a good chunk of self-sustain. As a ret paladin, I had as many spammed Word of Glory as I could build points for, and even hardcasted flash of light for a few extras. By comparison, the WW’s revivify works like the FoL, but Expel Harm is absolutely not a replacement for WoG.

I also don’t know how much armor still matters in the game after so many expansions, so it could be a combination of that, along with the whole ‘two armor classes lower’ increased squishiness.

In PvE, I find with the monk I can have a difficult time soloing elite mobs, while my ret can pull 2 and come out just fine.

In PvP, I find that if I get sneezed on, I just die. Even in skirmishes, I can plop a teleport behind a pillar, but as soon as that opener hits, I mash the transfer back as fast as I can, and I still end up behind a pillar with 30% or lower hp. WW heals do not fix that.

It could just be intense unfamiliarity which’ll take time to amend, but for now, I guess it could just be a fundamentals thing.

Also gear. Blizzard took out pvp scaling, so every ilvl actually matters a lot.

You’ll start getting bulky in PvE once your ilvl goes up

Pvp wise your gear is no offence but pretty trash and most pvp players are going to wreck you if they are better geared at this point

For now I’d say you might need to use good karma just to make yourself a little tankier until you get more HP and more versa or you’re going to get destroyed

After you’ve done that you should get a little breathing room to make some mistakes in PvP and be able to recover, remember to make sure you use expel harm off CD, it’s a decent heal and it only use half a global - the conduit for it can give you some pretty beefy healing
If you find you’ve got enough time to throw down a heal on yourself but your not recovering fast enough then grab that conduit for your self heal
If burst damage is really smashing you hard you can get the conduit for the shield on iron skin brew and pick up a battle master trinket, if you make a macro to use the battle master trinket with iron skin brew (battle master on top of iron skin in the macro) you will end up boosting your up by like 10k, then get 15%hp on top of that with a damage shield for 15%+ of your hp - you end up getting like an extra 20k hp and might end up making it that you can save your karma (if your kyrian you can also pop your potion after this combo and it will heal almost 50% more)

You’re going to have to trade out a lot of cooldowns but luckily monks have a few, karma has a fairly low CD
The PvP talent for fist of fury can be used defensively

Don’t forget CC can be used defensively, the ranged disarm is amazing for fighting all melee as well as hunters, diffuse magic can be used to break roots and a few other things (do NOT use this on affic locks if they have UA up on you)
The range on our slow is also a really tool for our kit, I was doing arena today vs a 30k hp WW holy pally and I had 22k HP and we managed to win because I could just kite him to death

Monks can be a bit of a skill check class because you can’t just face tank a lot of stuff, after a while you’ll learn all the tricks of the trade and start dunking on noobs

But for now if you’re finding yourself way to squishy try good karma (can be slightly more useful in BGs and karma is better in arena) and also use dampen harm or diffuse magic (dampen harm is more versatile, diffuse is good if you’re facing a lot of casters)

Hi Syllacore,
I mostly pve. I’ve been debating maining my ret pally or leveling up my monk. Which are you liking better thus far? Just curious why you switched over or are you just alting the monk?

For the time being I’m “just alting” the monk, however, I did have a real interest in considering doing actual endgame content with him. More or less to try things from a different, yet fun, perspective.

I guess time will heal all wounds, in this case. I did see the rest of what you had to say, I just didn’t wanna quote it all.

Thank you very much for the input!!

Honestly I mained rogue BC-Cata and Lock MoP-BFA but decided to main WW outta left field for SL. It was much harder to get used to than those other 2 classes but now I feel like a straight wrecking ball with all my cool downs and my gear isn’t good yet. The best part is if you feel like you’re losing a fight you paralysis them then double roll away then itg they happen to trinket and slow you just pop tigers lust and flying dragon kick your way outta the picture. You can try away easy. The class is not easy to learn at all

I have the same problem for leveling. I have an arm warrior and I find that, in terms of self-healing, ww monk is even worse than arm warrior. Expel harm and vivify’s healing amounts are really really insignificant, and same for healing sphere.

Is there any trick you guy can advise, just for leveling and questing?

Thank you :kissing_heart:

If you’re comfortable with having war mode on, the Reverse Harm pvp talent doubles the healing of Expel Harm and makes it generate 2 chi instead of one, that can be helpful.

If you can talent Good Karma, and use Touch of Karma more often, that can help you out for bigger pulls.

Don’t forget about your CC options to give breathing room.

Try to focus down the weaker enemies of a group first, as you’ll want their healing spheres as you work on the next ones.

1 Like