Any who played monk back in Uldir know what i mean when i talk about the degenerate Touch of Karma playstyle. Our defensive ability being at the top of our damage done was fun while it lasted but also created a lot of lasting issues for Windwalkers that are still harming the spec going into Shadowlands.
For some reason Blizzard seems to believe that incorporating damage into a defensive ability is not only a good idea, but so good that it should merit nerfing the rest of our spec to balance out the damage it deals. We saw the result of this in Uldir when they eventually did nerf Karma and had to give massive buffs to the rest of our offensive kit to keep us competitive.
Unfortunately Karma still exists, so i was brainstorming some ideas for ways to change Karma, especially now that we are getting Fortifying brew which will only make the problem worse.
Going into this i had a few things i was keeping in mind:
- I wanted to keep the design philosophy the same, a defensive element that enables an offensive element
- I wanted to minimize the degenerate playstyle that Blizzard seems to be against
- I wanted to fix the lack of proper self sustain that only Windwalkers (and Arms Warriors) seem to suffer from
And this is what i came up with
Touch of Karma: Every 50 energy you spend grants you a shield equal to 2% of your max hp for 10sec. Stacking up to 5 times. Applies 1 stack of Bad Karma to an enemy for every 20% of this shield they deplete.
Bad Karma: Increases damage taken from the Monks next ability by 5%. Stacking up to 10 times.
Alternatively, the Karma stacks could be gained when we activate Combo Strikes. I chose energy consumption because it allows us to build stacks even without a target, for example Wrathions “air” phase, and makes being away from the boss less punishing due to the big hit you can deliver once you get back in range.
Obviously it would need to be tuned and adjusted, but look at the concept over the numbers. And if youre going to say healing yourself to gain stacks before a pull sucks, just dont let it work outside of combat.
What do you guys think?