Please help windwalkers now >:^[

TL;DR: Windwalker has been in a pretty critical state along with Spriest for arguably longer, but we don’t currently have enough voices to spread it. Nothing will change until after Shadowlands though, so all I ask is for our 3 year old bugs to be fixed. WW remains the only spec in the game that has no bluepost for shadowlands.

I was happy when I read the changes for Spriest, they deserve they attention they just got, but I can’t help but feel like Windwalker was turned a blind eye on because it’s not as represented.

Ever since Legion hit, Windwalker has been consistently unimpressive, on top of having the same rotation and talents rebaked into one another. We have effectively gotten NOTHING new since MoP aside from borrowed power.

Demon Hunters were unfortunately a direct nerf to WW, since it can do more consistent damage in any content on top of having more utilities. The addition of Demon Hunters as a fantasy was really cool, but the game did NOT need another melee dps, least of all a leather wearing one.

With that out of the way let’s talk problems:

1- SEF (Storm, earth and fire) is not reliable, the AI isn’t even smart AI, they start attacking completely random targets and leap far away, forcing you to constantly repress the ability. However repressing isn’t even a garantee that they will connect with enemy in time to replicate your abilities. It’s a cool ability, but it is attached with countless bugs and inconsistencies.

2- Hit combo (the talent) nulifies a row completely, putting flat increase damage as a talent is not only lazy, but will always be the picked option, don’t let the addition of dance of chi-ji hype you up, as it will never be the viable option if paired with hit combo, I’m tired of seeing cool fun talents made unviable because of hit combo, REMOVE HIT COMBO OR REDESIGN IT.

3- Our damage scales with nothing other than versatility by design, which leaves us with some awful scaling during the start of an expac. Once we have enough versatility to become viable (Finally) it still feels boring since now the gameplay is THE EXACT SAME, but now you do more damage, there’s so much in terms of class design that could remedy this, but now we’re stuck with stacking versatility until something changes.

4- We lost to much of our baseline from MoP, readding fortifying brew and expel harm as baseline is a good thing, but it’s really just a bandaid fix to our core issues.

5- Touch of death returning to it’s initial design is fun, but now we are left with no burst window, and I don’t see anything happening there either.

6- Xuen returns as a baseline ability, however Xuen has historically scaled VERY POORLY with stats, still I’m happy to see it back, however it will drop in effectiveness really quickly as I gear up.

7- Tigerseye brew and chi explosion from WoD were where the design started to get interresting, you have to manage chi and tigerseye stacks in a smart way for different benefits, (Flat damage, AOE, faster tierseye stacks) Everytime you used chi explosion, it was a calculated decision on how much chi you should spend on it in that moment. THAT WAS GOOD DESIGN, THAT WAS FUN, THEN YOU REMOVED BOTH OF THESE THINGS, WHYYYYYYYY

8- Our raid viability is consistently F tier as compared to our leather counterparts.

9- WDP (Whirling dragon punch) has always been the only viable choice in it’s talent row, and has been bugged for over 3 years, making you unable to use it often even when the criterias are met. This destroys a dps rotation.

10- Chi wave has been a dead talent ever since WoD, it’s REALLY bad healing and REALLY bad damage, chi burst is also quite bad but can sometimes be picked for big AOEs.

11- Eye of the tiger is a yet another lazy talent that doesn’t change your rotation at all other than putting a lame dot on your main target, it’s consistently better than it’s other options though so it’l remain a dead talent row.

To conclude, I don’t expect any of this to change as people avoid Windwalker as a spec more and more. With the addition of DH, I doubt anyone would be willing to try Windwalker out since it’s just flat out worse. Shadowlands doesn’t look promising for us so far, but I have too much history with this spec to simply quit.

I feel like I have some grounds in which to review the spec on, I have mained this since Mists of Pandaria, and have decent experience with raiding, M+ and arenas.

62 Likes

its the end of the expansion. nothing is going to change.

What? Wind walkers still good man. I mean that’s what I hear.

3 Likes

Right now it’s okay at best, and it’s ‘‘okay’’ for the wrong reasons, Windwalker is very much viable right now, but we have had the exact same deal for 3 expansions in a row.

Tiger eye brew needs to come back baseline as well as dragon whirlwind needs to be base line. Reduce tiger eye cost to 20 and bring back jab as its old self and keep the cd reduction on black out kick. Energy regen needs to be increased by 5 percent and paralysis needs to go back to 4 seconds long on a 15 sec cd. Chi roll needs to do dmg again as it rushes through enemies. I know they took it away because of demon hunters but damn was that fun to add to the burst window.

9 Likes

what does this have to do with Shadowlands ?

Aside from when it’s been utterly dominant?

Not really, at all. They’re pretty much comparable, especially in m+.

That’s just horrifically false. Like, laughably and pathetically wrong at the same time.

1 Like

You won’t give me reasons why though, and will keep hiding your mains, just saying, it’s okay to disagree but you have to at least contribute your experience.

6 Likes

Where’s the confusion?

WW has dominated more than a few tiers in the past few years.

DH and WW fulfill the same basic role in m+, it really just comes down to which buff you need more

A simple look at raider io, raid rankings, and wcl shows that ww is far from F tier, in either.

1 Like

ww is decent for pve, just the scaling is kinda wacky sometime and monk will always be taken bc of that physical debuff, the gameplay is fun and they are busted in pvp.

as COMPARED to other leather wearing dps it absolutely is, just because it can do well doesn’t mean the balance is fine.

If we had good class design we wouldn’t need a flat 5% damage buff across the board every other patch, stop giving us flat damage % and do something to improves the spec in a different way.

1 Like

Yeah GL on this one. The WW community and it’s detractors are the exact same group and they enjoy bottom keking in any measurable way. It’s one reason I quit Monk. Community is the worst. Reminds me of old spriest community from WotLK. “Man dispersion kinda sucks” “what?!? Omg it’s the best ability EVAARRR!”
“Man they are taking away our Mana battery and not giving us anything in return” “what?!? Zomg spriest aren’t supposed to do big damage and Mana battery is boring”

Sigh…

3 Likes

I don’t care about the community, tell me what YOU feel like about the spec.

That argument is like, buff demon hunters because outlaw is the best by far in mythics.

I think the spec is a poorly designed hot mess. When your best stat is vers you done messed up and yeah DH isn’t a good spec it’s just broke af.

It’s 4 times the work for half the payoff of DH rotation. The cool downs are not only got garage but they have been notoriously bugged for YEARS. Not a patch… Years…

But hey they were good one MDI to make rogues and warrior damage higher so it’s fine… I could go on but you get the point.

8 Likes

A lot of people seem to get caught up purely based off of damage, which isn’t the best metric right now especially with the stacks upon stacks of borrowed power, WW’s problems are more technical, as in the scaling department, vers stacking shows a really shallow class design based on % increased damage only, which is extremely boring.

What levels are you talking because the highest levels have everyone stacking verse.

Like mythic 16s or 28s

1 Like

Stacking vers is the problem yes, it’s awful spec design, you got there all on your own. It doesn’t matter at what levels either, if you wanna play WW it’s what you HAVE to do, all 3 other stats are useless.

It’s verse stacking from the very start with WW though. All of the other stats are legit garage tier scaling for then

Like other classes at least hit break points before verse stacking. It’s been verse and only verse since 8.0

Ok the argument is the same for plenty of classes.

Arms warrior only stacks haste. So I mean you have a weak argument.

Arms brings mortal wounds to the table that benefits no one.

You bring a physical debuff that buffs physical damage which benefits all melee.

1 Like