I am pretty new to wind walker but after playing every class except shamans I have to say…
There are wayyyyyyyy to many abilities to choose from. I mean, this spec needs a serious house cleaning. No wonder when I invite WWs into higher m+ keys one WW is doing 20k dps and another is at 13.5k with the same ilvl. Are WWs good or are they not viable?
They probably are viable, but its needs a bunch of abilities deleted in my opinion so every player can pick up WW and play it, and enjoy it.
At this point I am thinking of just removing some abilities from my WW bar for PVE. It just feels clunky and its not fun to learn being fresh and new to the spec.
blizzard has been doing this since WOD launched and we’re now at an all time low for playerbase.
I pray this is a troll, but on the off chance that it isn’t, your not supposed to pick up a class and just “master” it in the matter of a few hours, days, dungeon runs, or arena’s. It’s supposed to be something that you invest time into and then gradually become a god at.
So you want remove iconic abilities from WW, abilities that first attracted people to WW, abilities that WW players adore just because your too lazy to invest a little time into WW?
Right, your first resort is to just go on and prune abilities!
Hell from the looks of it, your not even max level, so you probably just now boosted that character, and your already trying to “clean-house” and prune abilities that you, in a matter of 5 minutes came to the conclusion that WW is hard just because it has more than 5 abilities? If you’ve tried other classes you’d know that there are other classes out there with a lot more abilities than WW.
You my friend are the poster-child of why this game has a declining # of people playing.
btw just play eye/ascension/hit combo build if you like having fewer abilities on your bars.
We have a passive on the left row and an active on the center and right rows like nearly every other spec, the exception being specs that have some baseline utility that can be modified in some way, like the Garrote/Kidney Shot row for Rogues or Silence/Mind Bomb row for Shadow Priests. Each of those specs has a different kind of complexity associated with them and that is the reason for those rows functioning differently. Windwalkers primary combat focus are on Combo Strikes (Mastery) and Resource / Cooldown Management.
If you are having trouble learning or adjusting to the baseline rotation which consists of 5 abilities baseline (1 generator, 2 rotational cooldowns, 1 filler, 1 AoE spender) then instead of choosing additional abilities through talents I would suggest running the left side of the talent tree until you become more familiar with how Windwalkers work, Mastery specifically , before adding additional complexity to the action bar.
I understand the perspective of going from a spec that might use ally target macros, or has utility that require a ground target / enemy target, or possibly one that only has to use the ability for it to drop at their feet, and there is an awkwardness at first setting up keybinds especially when they conflict with muscle memory and similar abilities. With the exception of Protection Paladin, none of the 9 classes I play have any more or less keybinds than another, with each ranging between 32 - 35 binds. I don’t think the issue is that Windwalker has too many buttons. Players with a wide range of varying skill levels in accessible content like M+ are not indicative of bloat.
In terms of viability among melee specs, Windwalkers are in the same tier as Frost Death Knights and Retribution Paladins, which are all behind Havoc & Assassination.
I do appreciate the reply. Its true WWs are behind.
As far as frost DKs, I was able to win the first arena I ever joined as a frost DK and learned the playstyle in a few days (but not master it of course). WW just has a countless amount of extras, even an extra tiger pet, the ability to clone yourself and others. So many spells to consider and when to use them. Played WW for a decent amount of time and yes, got the rotation of 5 buttons but still there are many more abilities that I feel would take longer to master or find a use for vs. playing a mage, arms warrior or lock. Could be why, like I said, there seems to be a big spread in the DPS of many WW’s I’ve seen.
That’s more of the players fault than the developers. They design fun things for us to use and we decide for ourselves how we should best use the tools.
Baseline Windwalker is already very watered down compared to how it was when it released and because of that the baseline kit is not amazing. Through talents you can specialize yourself for the content and that is where learning how to play Windwalker effectively begins. If you don’t then you’ll find that in most situations you’ll be weaker than competing classes.
In the past iterations of Windwalker we we’re just a spec that dealt damage either to a single target, or by putting your Fire or Earth clones on up to two secondary targets in order to cleave or AoE. Xuen at the time was our only traditional cooldown, Touch of Death was an execute, and talents like Rushing Jade Wind replaced Spinning Crane Kick rather than being another ability to use. Players complaining that these were too difficult to use intuitively is what led to them being changed and everything else following this trend of “This ability has a long cooldown. That means its strong. Use it.” for ease of understanding.
I agree on the part that WW has quite a bit of abilities to choose from, however I disagree on that being a problem some players like having more stuff to worry about and some players like less.
Glad you brought the Frost DK example because for me it works the complete opposite way… This was right before Legion launch, I came back to the game and decided to test a lot of classes in order to decide what I wanted to play, luckily thanks to the invasions I was able to test a bunch while also leveling all classes to 100…
I remember I really liked WW, then went to test DK and Unholy felt alright but when I switched to test Frost it was a very clear NO for me, I couldn’t stand my rotation being 3 buttons and my action bars also had multiple empty spots.
A similar thing happened when I tested Havoc, that one I quite enjoyed during the scenario and the mobility and animations definitely made it fun for a while but when I was done and my action bars still felt empty (even after adding the talents that I was still going to learn) it was again a no-go for me, it actually felt a bit like a simplified/streamlined version of WW monk: Very similar but with less intricacies and fewer interactions to manage, so I chose the Monk.
Are you trolling? Or are you actually complaining about how many buttons WW has? It doesn’t need a prune. At all. Quit trying to drag down the spec just because you haven’t learned the buttons yet.
A game is suppose to have classes that are harder than others. If you dumb them down, the players that had mastered them will feel very frustrated because that’s probably what they liked about it. If you struggle to master them you are free to pick an easier one.
This is the worst thing I’ve ever read on the forums. Pruning is the worst thing to happen to this game. I could probably do without touch of death, but if they replaced it with 5 new abilities I’d be a happy camper.
I agree back then ToD was a welcome extra to the class, it had a really long CD and wasn’t practical in every situation but we didn’t need it to be. It was perfect as that extra we had for an execute if this kind of extra ability has no spot in the current iteration of the game I get it. They also did away with all the other fun spells like symbyosis and time warp.
In regards to OP I would love to see you try a sub rogue or a feral druid? I have mained a ww since pand, but I’ve played every other class besides warrior. Monk to me has felt like one of the easiest classes to play in the game. It is also my highest /played by a landslide.
But if I was to compare ww to anything else it would be a rogue or a feral. Sure outlaw and assass are easy enough to pick up but I’m still not sure if you can’t be a ww you definitely couldn’t be a rogue. If you can’t play a ww no WAY could you play a feral Druid.
I honestly was surprised at the “fresh” complexity of this class compared to others or more so the variety of options, and what defense or offense abilities to use at what time. Try to put yourself in the shoes of a new player. There are folks who bought this game just for BFA and haven’t played in years. Maybe they wanted to run monk, start playing it and might be like “I can’t figure this out” and then uninstall and quit.
People are quiting wow at high rates and perhaps the difficulty of getting into the dps rotation of a class, the overwhelming azerite trait options and other factors cause new players to quit.
Being able to casually play a class is essential to keeping someone playing the game, if they are new to it. Then intriguing them more to master it is also needed.
WW felt harder to me to pickup compared to a lock, which I have enjoyed leveling, or a mage, or a ret paladin, or a warrior or a hunter. That’s why my post. I hop on my monk and then stop playing it. Can’t seem to get the feel for it.
Then I chose to level as brew spec because that took about 1 hr to enjoy.
WW is a more involved spec to play than most DPS specs that I’ve encountered, and I’ll agree that there are a lot of buttons. My monk’s bars are probably more full than any other class, but you’ll get accusomed to it. You have to get used to what each ability is doing for you and then get into the spec’s flow. I haven’t played it anywhere near as long as a lot of people on this forum but once you get it in your head that the spec is built around keeping Combo Strikes up it starts to make more sense. You have to plan ahead a little bit and sometimes not use chi in order to have enough down the road to get Fists of Fury or Rising Sun Kick off immediately. It isn’t like DH where you usually can’t go wrong just slamming Chaos Strike, because it could be if you use Blackout Kick now you might flounder later on
Tiger Palm is your builder and a good way to keep your mastery up, Rising Sun Kick and (especially) Fists of Fury are your primary damage abilities, with Blackout Kick mixed in there when you know you won’t need that combo point to use on FoF or RSK. Touch of Death will do a big chunk to something that’ll be alive for more than the time it takes for the ability to go off. Touch of Karma is useful to push a bit of extra damage when you don’t need it as a defensive option
You’ll get there. WW does take practice though. If you haven’t done any keybinding with Bartender or another addon that can be very useful; I couldn’t imagine trying to play WW without my keybindings
I respectfully disagree again, lets put aside the argument about if WW Monk is difficult or not (that’s not the part I want to focus on), but the fact that some specs are easier and some are harder to pick-up and/or master is a good thing, different players like very different things so the more variety the better.
I don’t think that’s too big of an issue actually, a new player will typically start with a new character at level 1 with perhaps 1 or 2 spells and during the leveling process he will slowly gain access to more stuff… Digging into my memories from when I was a noob, I never felt overwhelmed by the amount of spells I had simply because I picked them up one by one so I had more than enough time to incorporate them into my rotation before I learned a new one.
Also I’m pretty sure that making all specs more streamlined and removing complexity will cause much more players to quit, you know, the ones that main the spec and enjoy the complexity. (Actually a lot of players already quit because of that).
If you are not feeling the WW gameplay I would recommend you try Havoc DH, it has some similar abilities and very nice animations but it was designed to be more straight-forward so it was quick for anyone to pick-up and enjoy (I’m pretty sure they expected a lot of new players to want to play the new flashy class when they designed it).
alright, so i’ll just tell you this because like you i made the mistake of level boosting a class i thought i knew about rather then just actually playing it all the way through and experiencing it myself, level boosting i have to admit is a big mistake, i only ever reccomend level boosting if you know about the class you’re going to level boost, thing with you not knowing about the particular class is the reason i have to bring this up, in order to fully experience something, you have to play it from a level 1 perspective, not just fully boost the class and just say oh, i’m gonna play the content this way, it doesnt work like that unfortunately, in order to get to know the class you yourself are playing you have had to spend time with leveling the class the normal way, i made the mistake of level boosting a paladin to level 110, and i made the same mistake with my old goblin hunter main, level boosting really just ruins the experience in my opinion, it makes things seem confusing, and you enter new territory with content that yes you may have done before, i have yet to even fully experience legion, and i experienced it the way i shouldnt have, and thats what ruined it for me, thats why i’m giving the class i loved since vanilla another chance, at a very low level which is why i’m posting this on my level 11 hunter… because i wanna give you perspective, thats all this is, perspective, to hopefully have you learn from the same mistake i have committed when it comes to enjoying something, i’m not robbing you of it by any means, just letting you know my side
because i think level boosting just straight away from the start of the game just to get into new content is just a waste of time, it robs you of the joys of leveling, the experience, and thats what i did after coming back to wow after so many years and i have come to regret spending the 60 dollars i had, just to rob myself of something that i thought i enjoyed enough to atleast try and see and do, i did it two times, it was a foolish mistake and i learned from that mistake myself, because it ended up giving me a hinderance, rather then the full experience, sometimes we just have to start from the beginning the natural way, baby step it the way through
Classes shouldn’t be designed so simple that you face roll on the keyboard for 5 minutes and do maximum dps. As pruned as classes are at the moment you still need to put some effort into learning the basics of your procs and maximising your spec with correct talent choice, azerite traits, and good knowledge of everything in your spell book to try and maximise any situation. Some will do this better and others but because one windwalker with same ilvl as another is doing less damage then more abilities should be pruned? That’s a horrible idea and completely lazy way of thinking. Blizzard have pruned this game to death and class design is a failure in BFA. Your entitled to your opinion like me but my god please don’t suggest that Blizzard prune classes even more. The windwalker struggling with 13.5k dps just needs to watch a few minutes of the talents and rotation section of Venruki’s windwalker guide on youtube to improve dps. Educating is the answer not pruning.
I guess you haven’t played DH since Legion because that’s not really it anymore. Your damage is between Eyebeam and Blade Dance. Chaos Strike is your basic filler like BOK between FoF and RSK.