Optimizing/Restructuring WW

Classes Monk
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I’d like to just start this off by saying that WW is decent as a spec in its current iteration. However, there are noticeable elements to the spec that feel off as well as things that have been taken away from us. As such, I’d like to optimize WW a lot and make it a mix of the best of WW between MoP’s utility, Legion’s raw power, bits and pieces between WoD and BfA, and a few genuine improvements to WW.

Changes and their throwback/inspiration will be denoted with (MoP) (Legion) (GI) (WoD) or (BfA).

To start things off I’d like to go over some of the less controversial changes on this list.

The Agreeable Stuff:

(GI) (Legion) First off, we’re gonna axe FotWT and just put Power Strikes back into its place. They’re basically the same thing except Power Strikes doesn’t take up a button, and isn’t a giant middle finger to the legacy of SotWL. We could probably even just change the numbers of Power Strikes to make it exactly like FotWT.

(MoP) (WoD) (Legion) Next, we’re gonna give Flying Serpent Kick a 2 second flight time again. Why it was changed in the first place, I don’t know.

(MoP) (Legion) Good Karma is getting axed from the talent tree and being made baseline. In its place, I’m thinking of either putting in a talent that lets Karma absorb for 100% of our max life or a CD reduction on Para of about 15-20 sec.

(MoP) (Legion) Tiger Tail Sweep is becoming Dragon Tail Sweep, and the CD reduction it gives to Leg Sweep is being changed from 10 to 15 to make it like how we used to talent into Leg Sweep, and a 5 yard increased radius instead of a 2 yard increased radius.

(MoP) (WoD) Zen Meditation is also being returned as a baseline ability in its group protecting form for all those soak mechanics that we need to eat and as a 90% magic DR again along with Diffuse Magic being made a 90% magic DR again.

(Legion) And probably most importantly. We’re gonna undo the asinine nerf to BoK that happened during pre-patch to address our ST situation, so BoK is getting buffed by 27% and RSK/WDP and FoF are getting buffed appropriately as well to ensure that the whole chi efficiency versus output issue doesn’t come up again.

And now for the stuff people are more likely to disagree with, or as I’d like to call it,

the Fun Stuff:

(MoP) FoF stun and 100% cleave returned.

(MoP) (BfA) Pressure Points is being made baseline for a variety of reasons. 1. It essentially used to be in terms of its execute department. 2. Now that its CD is reset if the target dies, it could actually become part of our standard rotation for M+. 3. This change and the FoF one will hopefully make DHs and other specs more obsolete w/o having to touch/nerf them.

(GI) Replacing Pressure Point’s spot on the PvP talent tree is going to be a new talent called Inevitability, which lets ToD purge immunities like ice block and bubble, which will hopefully cull the numbers of both of the classes it affects in PvP especially since Hpals are so prevalent now. Honestly, it’s a pretty fair trade. They eat Karma with immunities, we eat immunities with ToD.

(MoP) (GI) While we’re replacing PvP Talents, lets take a swing at Ride the Wind. I’m considering two different things for it. Option 1 would be to just axe it and replace it with original Yu’lon’s Gift which let FSK, and roll clear snares. Not very creative but handy. Option 2 is the fun one, where instead of leaving a wake of movement speed increasing boredom, I’d like to replace the movement speed increasing boredom with a line of Rings of Peace.

(MoP) (GI) And since Turbo Fists is likely going to be axed with the glorious return of FoF stun and 100% cleave, it shall be replaced with a PvP talent called Gale Strikes which lets us ignore half of our target’s armor.

(GI) Wind Waker is getting renamed to Agility (or Speed) of Xuen, and is getting 2 things tacked onto it. The first one is making our Windwalking Aura increase movement speed by 20%. The second is halving our GCD to .5 seconds as a lateral method of buffing Serenity.

(MoP) (WoD) The Spiritual Focus talent is gonna be straight up replaced by the old TeB system. No alterations, so we’ll essentially have two masteries. However, let it be known that i was extremely hesitant about adding this onto the list because it’d likely be more of a pain to balance than most of the list combined. That said, SEF + full stacks of TeB + whatever on use trinket ppl prefer whether its Plume or Mechagon laser sounds pretty awesome.

Aaaand that about wraps up how I’d optimize/reform WW. I expect the “fun” alterations to get flamed to fel, and the agreeable ones to be agreeable.

2 Likes
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See posts like this forgets one thing you are only buffing, not balancing. Changes like these in current meta would just make us unstoppable gods. The majority of people I meet already have a hard time killing me 1v1, things like this would just make it impossible

1 Like
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I’d say most of the Agreeable stuff is pretty balanced. I think the one thing on that list that may be pushing it would probably be the segment about Good Karma.

The actual buffs are more or less focused on culling the numbers of specific classes/specs as well as fun stuff and covering up weaknesses in WW.

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100% absorb and healing for karma would be broke asf.
As well as I said before the fof stun, as I have mentioned before it would dr on itself let alone with other stuns. And we dont need more cleave we need better single target damage.
On TeB we need that back and sef needs to go back to how it use to be.
On ToD yeah we should have some way to counter their defensives if our defensive can be countered by them.

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I don’t disagree about the ST. However, back when FoF stun was a thing, it DRed with other stuns anyway. The point to having it is having a tool that is frequently up to straight up shut down mobility, and if we’re chasing a target far, i don’t see it DRing itself.

Getting down to specifics, it would shutdown fury war snare immunity, dk death’s advance, make DHs calm the hell down, restrict shaman ghost wolf and druid shapeshifting mobility by bypassing their easy counter to snares, might come up so frequently that mages might not take shimmer, and add an extra interrupt for us. As for the extra cleave, that’s just icing on the cake.

I mean it is and it isn’t. It could be considered broken IF you got the heal off, but that would mean people attacked into Karma which is a pretty big no no. It is also why i proposed an alternative in a Para CD reducing talent. I honestly think that the Para CD one would cause more trouble than 100% Karma.

Though, I’m surprised that you didn’t have anything to say for Zen Med, Wind Waker or Ride the Wind.

1 Like
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It didn’t DR itself though, which is the point you are missing. I can get fofs off faster than stun drs would drop off. Effectively making them permanently immune to stuns. And unfortunately a lot of dmg is based around fof right now. Old fof was brain dead, this one we have to plan ahead to get it off and land.

Yeah people been attacking into karma since the beginning of monk. Because it’s not dangerous. Again there is a reason there wasn’t many of us above 2k in 3’s 5’s or rbgs, because our defensives sucked. People equated WW with op, yet we were the least represented dps. We were great for 1v1, but as everyone always says 1v1 doesn’t matter.

That would share with RoP and RoP would be much stronger still.

Neither of these options would be good. We are mobile enough, slows aren’t that huge of a deal to us in current meta and again would break it. The RoP part just wouldn’t make sense. And honestly make for some super cheesy things.

I already said multiple times we need original Zen Med back

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If you’re worried about FoF DRing itself and say that old FoF was braindead wouldn’t it be more rewarding to ensure that it was the player’s responsibility to not make FoF DR itself. In addition to that, while i agree that a lot of our damage is loaded into FoF now, it is also why i proposed the un-nerfing of BoK and the buffing of our damaging abilities, as well as allowing us to ignore 50% armor. That way FoF will still hit like a truck, but everything will also hit harder. Also you say we have to plan our FoFs, which is somewhat true, but currently it just gets countered really easily either through cc or burst mobility pretty brainlessly. It is so easy that the Blizz AI from Comp Stomp unwittingly or is programmed to do it.

Then I don’t see what the issue is. If people attack into Karma, then they should be punished. The current version is ok for that, but it can still be bursted through. Boosting it to 100% just takes away one of Karma’s counters which is just bursting through it.

Yu’lon’s gift would be amazing for us. While a singular snare/slow doesn’t mean crap to us, spammable ones are, and there are a lot of ranged spammable ones in the meta.

As for RoP, that would just be for fun, and it would allow for a small form of battle line disruption so that we don’t have to just nuke it all to death in a global or grind it out. Also where you see cheese, i see opportunity for fun.

1 Like
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I didn’t say it wouldn’t be amazing I said it would be broken in current meta. I am not saying it wouldn’t be fun. But being broken is only fun for the person who is broken.

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  • Bring back Zen Meditation (whether as baseline or PVP talent i will not comment)

  • Bring back old TEB as our baseline burst (with old SEF taking spiritual focus place in the talent tree)

  • Pressure Points baseline

  • Fist stun PVP talent (removal of turbo fist, removal of fist cd reduction on BOK)

  • PVP talent to reduce para cd by 15 seconds.

Rest seems pointless, useless, or just makes no sense.

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No just needs to be baseline

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Idk about that. Yu’lon’s Gift back seems like it would be a pretty big thing. As would ToD purging immunities. And ignoring 50% armor would let us rip plate melee apart.

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you seem to have a bias towards adding things that would make WW insane with no regard on how it affects the game is what im saying

3 Likes
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id be happy with.

  • para CD down to 30 seconds.
  • turbo fists baseline.
  • SEF turned into a talent as an option. with a 2 charge serenity, 1 min CD, 8 sec duration as the baseline CD. bonus would be changing its flat % dmg into versa instead so it could be used defensively as well as offensively.
  • and karma replaced by life cocoon. this way we can cast it on others for more group utility.

theres other stuff id change like removing all of the T15 talents and putting actual fun/interesting stuff on the line. id change the uptime of inner strength to 8 seconds. removal of the aoe cap on FOF again. oh and almost forgot, whirling dragon punch baseline. it should just plain be part of the rotation by this point. but id just be happy with the above 4 changes.

and i wish blizz would fix the WDP bug when its not usable despite RSK/FOF being on CD… that would be nice.

2 Likes
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In fairness, it’s more returning and/or improving what we have than it is adding. The only true additions would be ToD purging immunities, which is a pretty fair trade considering what immunities do to Karma, and the change to Wind Waker. The rest we more or less had before.

I’d say that’s fairly inaccurate. Most of the changes in the “fun” section were made as efficient countermeasures against the other specs, so in that sense i had a great deal of concern for how it affects the game. I don’t expect Blizzard to go swinging with the nerf bat at other classes for a variety of reasons, so the alternative was to outcompete them. Adding a few constants like FoF stun or ToD purging immunities accomplishes this quite well.

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I mean u can say what u want but “adding things that would make WW insane with no regard on how it affects the game” is still true in each of your posts.
You seem like the type of guy who wants to add every single drop of things that WW lost back, with the addition of new things, ultimately making us some sort of god, with no realization on how it actually affects the game.
Just because we USED to have it doesn’t mean its good for the game now, Nimble Brew is a good example of this.

Im a fan of bringing back everything too, MOP was the best expansion for monk’s (atleast in PVP IMO) and i’d love every single ability brought back not just for monks, but for every class, but that’s not the case, atleast not yet (if Ion actually sticks to his word and brings back some things)

But just because its an ability we used to have, or an ability that “counters a counter” doesn’t mean its healthy or fits into the game.

Serenity 2 charges with SEF being in the talent tree would be nice, or even turn SEF into it’s old self and have 2 charge Serenity as our burst sounds cool.

Eye of the Tiger is the only boring one IMO, Chi wave is just weak which makes it appear boring, same for Chi Burst.

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Aoe stuns were nerfed across the board, which means wind walkers lost the most on that one

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Leg sweep is still a 5 sec stun in pvp so its still the same.

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Actually I feel nimble brew should be returned. If we get caught without a trinket there is a good chance we will die. We are rogues without vanish and dont have the option unless extreme kiting to reset a fight of we are in major trouble.
With how rampant rmx is we have no protection against them. So a sub par team has a pretty good chance of killing any monk regardless of skill

But you are right about the rest of your assessment. Adding those things would be unhealthy for the overall game

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having nimble, + orc stun reduction, + trinket
or nimble, + human stun trinket, + relentless seems a bit over the top

there are other changes that can be brought into the game to help solidify our issue with dying in stuns to RMx, but Nimble is the most unhealthiest of them all.

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Uh undead monks in mop had racial nimble and trinket, and back then had no shared cd between racial and nimble way more broken. Also with how nerfed every man it wouldnt be nearly as broken as you think