Hey all, I have created a video showcasing some particularly egregious bugs with SEF, one of which is guaranteed to cost you damage on every cast of SEF, without fail. See below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1AV2gh0lX8
So basically, SEF clones are consistently dealing approx. 7.31% less damage than you are while it is active, ultimately meaning our CD which is meant to buff our damage by 20%, is only buffing it by around 14%.
I tested this with every rotational ability, with no gear on, and no enchants, and removed any possible thing that could cause any variation in my damage, or my clones, and it’s the same across the board.
The only thing that actually works with SEF is Slicing Winds (lol)
Even if this were to be fixed, there are other issues with SEF that can’t ever be realistically addressed, such as FoF/CJL not hitting every target due to your clones facing a certain direction, something you have no real control over.
With personal testing I have done on target dummies since Dragonflight, I regularly have my clones missing anywhere from 1/5th to 3/5th’s of their hits with Fists of Fury on a pack of 5 mobs, ultimately meaning that cast of FoF would have done more if I just hadn’t popped SEF in the first place. (With worst case being missing 4/5 targets entirely, which happens in my video)
This also happens with CJL, which is particularly bad since it makes up a very large portion of our damage currently.
And THEN, we’ve also got the timeless classic of SEF clones just not copying abilities AT ALL, which I also have an example of in my video.
As someone who has played heaps of Windwalker Monk, and has mained it since release (At least 750 days /played on my monks alone since MoP), I’ve put a lot of time into personal theorycrafting and understanding everything there is to know about this spec.
Since Storm, Earth, and Fire became a thing, it has had its bugs. Some of which have allowed for damage increases in the past, one of which involved CANCELLING SEF to increase damage of Dragon Punch.
After Legion reworked SEF into our main DPS cooldown, it’s just caused nothing but problems for us. Prior to Legion, SEF was something that used in specific scenarios. Multi-boss encounters in raids (Twin Ogron, in Highmaul, for example), or in PvP it could be used to eat traps, prevent restealths, split damage in certain controlled scenarios, or in 1v1’s like in the Hurricane Strike burst below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ERUVtxWPQ
The difference was that you could cancel it and re-toggle it whenever you wanted, it had no CD, no GCD, you could use it freely and cancel it if it wasn’t going to work properly, while not exactly ideal to have to do so if something bugged out, at least it was something you could micro manage, and there wasn’t a huge loss involved.
Now though, since it’s our main and ONLY dps cooldown available, since Serenity is gone, we have no choice but to deal with those bugs.
Even though SEF has been patched countless times since Legion, it’s like it only gets worse with time. Every expansion has its own set of bugs and issues, and War Within has felt particularly bad in both PvP and PvE, which is ironic given the clones now move faster, copy Tiger’s Lust, and are immune to CC.
Prior to them being given the CC immunity, I had to actively cancel SEF so I didn’t do less damage that I would have if I didn’t use it, specifically because my clones got rooted in place, or feared, or whatever else.
It’s beyond a joke at this point, we need to seriously get rid of SEF. It doesn’t even make sense to keep it from a design perspective, it causes so many bugs and issues and doesn’t work properly with trinkets, new talents/traits and needs to be patched REGULARLY after new stuff is added.
Why are we keeping an ability in the game that requires an unreal amount of extra work and maintenance, when we could just remove it, replace it with Serenity, or Tigereye Brew, and all of these issues would be resolved.
So in summary, here are just SOME of the bugs I regularly encounter:
- Abilities not copying from clones at all
- Channels stopping mid-way through
- FoF from clones casts later than yours (which means they finish channeling after you do, and since Momentum Boosts damage buff is only active when you are channeling, their last tick of FoF loses the damage buff)
- CJL from clones channel stopping if a target they are channeling on dies
- Clone damage on Fists of Fury and CJL sometimes being FAR lower than yours due to missing modifiers in some aspect (Likely some bug with Transfer the Power/Emperor’s Capacitor)
And then just annoying things, like:
- Clones not facing the right way during channels, losing damage
- Clones not re-fixating on a target after their fixated target dies, having to re-do it after every enemy death
- Clones, when not fixated, flying off into space and hitting an enemy that’s not in a great position, costing you AoE damage
- Also, when clones are not fixated, when moving and bouncing between abilities, if an ability is cast during that point, generally that ability will not be copied by them.
- RIDICULOUS number clutter, with SEF tripling the amount of numbers on your screen, and Gale Force doubling on top of that during bursts, the damage is unreadable (No more chunky, big crits or anything like that)
- Just overall micromanagement and watching your clones like a hawk to make sure they’re doing everything they’re supposed to
Anyway, let me know your thoughts, share the vid/post if you can. For the first time since MoP, I am genuinely taking a step away from PvP due to frustrations with this “ability”, and even though I am actively PvE’ing, I just find myself annoyed consistently by SEF acting up, in all aspects of PvE.
Please, PLEASE remove it, replace it with something else.
#DELETESEF
Sincerely,
A ticked off monk.
