I am very much enjoying seeing Mythic progression through a discord stream 
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Unfortunate that we realistically donât see improvements for another 2+ weeks most likely. WW suffers from this curse of appearing decent in the first week of a patch and then as item level increases, it slowly becomes awful. This tier exaggerates this issue even more due to an even larger item level increase compared to the usual.
Here is an export for a build that goes out of its way to take all BoK and SCK talents
B0QAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJJJJJRjIRCAAAAEJJNEAJJQSJSEJ0KSSaJJtEAAAA
This loadout is awful, and sims are on average 14.5% loss in ST vs the standard FLS ST build, and 13% in AoE vs FLS AoE or 7.5% vs FFG AoE being only 1% better in AoE than the standard FLS ST build
It does not apply to ToTM thank god, but it applies to SBT, if you had to get 3 stacks of ToTM you would have to find a way to reset mastery 3 times in order to use 1 BoK, TP RSK TP FSK TP SCK for Blackout Reinforcement BoK is a valid combo, the issue is finding those for minutes on end which would be far worse than what the tier already is.
Only a slight increase in 3 target AoE
No, they have no earthly idea what is going on with WW monk. If you are ever pressing CJL as a WW Monk in an actual encounter, you are not playing the spec correctly. (Debuffing platform adds on Denathrius for Hunters not included)
This is legitimately comparable to just not taking Xuen at all at a massive -24.8% from standard FLS ST build. Also, high tier trolling yourself ever taking RJW.
The only way to land a 20 stack CJL every Skyreach is to cast 20 chi generators in 1 minute, this is very easily doable, it takes about 35-40 seconds, to get it without BoK and SotWL? You have to use RJW on CD and overcap chi or you have to break mastery and hit combo.
I recommend you check out the Peak of Serenity discord to learn more about WW because about a quarter of each of our trees are dead talents that we either never take, or take to get something else.
WW players: Please rework us Blizzard!
Blizzard:
In all seriousness though this is one of those tiers where I feel like main speccing Brewmaster and off speccing Windwalker this tier.
Iâm a Windwalker enjoyer and normally I just live through its down because I just enjoy the spec, however due to how our spec tree is designed and our gear scaling issues still being a thing after how many years this is still talked about, It had got to a point where Iâm just main speccing Brewmaster now.
Like no offense to the dev who made this spec tree for WW but Faeline stomp shouldâve just stayed in the Shadowlands where it belongs, most of our AoE damage is just coming from Touch of death and while it may be cool to see you skyrocket in the dps meters, having one button that does most of your damage in AoE/M+ is just boring man.
Gear scaling has been a topic for years(?) and every single tier we end up needing aura buffs to compensate our gear scaling issues and when it becomes a regular occurrence for every tier for Windwalker, I feel like there is a problem here and it needs to be looked at.
I still do enjoy Windwalker but this tier and with its set bonus being like âThis aint it dawgâ to me, I have decided to off spec Windwalker unless something happens in the next season or TWW.
I understand frustrations are high here but also there are people who arenât as familiar with this stuff
You have to understand that game developers formulate some kind of intention in their mind for the tier sets. If you look up the tier release, they specifically mentioned itâs intended to shake up the talent tree.
A reasonable approach in the mind of the developer would be to take all of the bonuses related to the abilities mentioned in the 2p tier bonus â SCK and BOK) and then take nearby connections to try and optimize a new build.
Just because I made the build doesnât mean I think itâs good. It is all out of the way to get those talents â but this is the kind of feedback blizzard needs to get.
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Speaking on the point of using sims to test out different talent builds, itâs important to understand that simulations all rely on an APL (action priority list) as a fundamental set of assumptions about your rotation.
The major flaw with this is assuming that your priority list is the best priority list, and that is what theorycrafting is about
I tried to provide a brief APL but when you run your sim itâs probably not using an optimized APL that represents my brief description of how you might optimize the talents I provided. Neither just because I provide a build can you immediately play the optimal version of it
Also, some people have already provided some feedback, as to the discussion of SEF Vs Serenity in this hypothetical new build, or the importance of SCK during serenity and Reinforcement procs. This kind of discussion is whatâs needed for the devs, because they might have different opinions. And I would to. To me, the reinforcement sounds like itâs supposed to be a positive feedback of chi spenders, given the CJL change, to make capacitor charge faster. Following the logical nearby talents of the 2p bonus abilities. In a quick way to optimize this hypothetical build, to me it seems the damage bonus of SEF syncing up with BDB/CJL/sky touch every minute or so would outweigh the 1.5 min Cd of serenity. Serenity is such a short window I have a hard time seeing the blackout kick reinforcement as being a core part of that window, but rather a general priority change to the class. To me it seems very logical to have a feedback of SCK/BOK as much as possible as free/low cost chi spenders in succession. Potentially with enough haste, you could maybe get a Capacitor every 30s, for a 30s, 1min, 1.5 min sync cycle of CDs.
If you want to have reworks then we should help test this build and show that itâs either good or bad but donât apply the same set of assumptions of the current APL/rotation to what the developer intention is or the most optimal
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There are no APL changes that would make a blackout kick and SCK focused build remotely competitive. Theory crafting is far more complex than you make it out to be and is done via ability damage comparisons under all scenarios and looking at time/resource constraints. There is no scenario in which the talents you noted are viable, and if that was the intent then the developer in charge of windwalker simply doesnât know what they are doing.
Class balance isnt particularly hard, blizzard just refuses to do it for arbitrary reasons
And this is the kind of stuff they need to hear
Post the sims man, if the results are so specific as to account for every possible variation, where can they find those results?
Post them here I love data and that would be cool to see
My point is that the developers clearly have some intention related to SCK / BOK / CDR
But also that there is a lot of genuine feedback about the talent positions, connections, and effects.
My personal opinion is they are baking something in the kitchen and they are probably looking for genuine feedback, sim data, etc to provide either examples or counter examples to their intended design, and are really wondering how to make the necessary changes to the talent tree and likely probably try to address the scaling issues.
My point has been that the developers specifically stated the point of the new tier is to create changes in talent trees - look it up. Given this fact, and the bonuses on the set, and the fact that developers use logic for design. Theyâre logic is probably âhey they should pick up all the SCK and BOK talents and then pick nearby talents to make a buildâ â that makes total sense. If it actually boils down to a numbers issue with that particular build that they are thinking we should play, providing more targeted feedback might help.
This team has been iterating a lot more than before, I think WW is Soon âą. I think they are genuinely working to try and hit every class but unfortunately we are on the latter end.
They have received plenty of feedback that numerically the tier set was bad in every scenario and that irrespective of tier WW was heavily undertuned with very poor performing talents
The CJL Change is a HUGE insight into the developers thought process right now.
Clearly, given that SCK and BOK are chi spenders that âreinforceâ eachother through the tier mechanic â they are intending for us to switch to Capacitor.
Therefore itâs probably a good idea to theorycraft either examples or counter examples as to why that wouldnât work â then the developers have more specific feedback relevant to their design intentions.
It seems they are trying to go for some haste breakpoint with the reinforcement effect to build capacitor charges fast. This is reinforced by the 4p bonus greatly reducing our chi spenders (and WDP for some reason, but itâs on the other side of the tree of capacitors and the prerequisite BOK/SCK talents â which is an example of something they need to hear)
In the same boat, there is Cooldown reduction from chi on SEF, but the connections to get it is bad (th is has been mentioned already for Xuen CDR as well I know but needs to continue to be mentioned).
Iâm their minds, it makes sense to try and reduce the CD of SEF To try to be 1 minute so you can get every other capacitor / BDB if those are down to 30/ or so
They might even be trying to promote Attenuation build (if Attenuation no longer has an ICD, or depending on the ICD, there are ALOT of damage instances with SEF RJW CJL FOF SCK or some such combo.
Could they be going for some kind of 30-40s BDB cooldown rotation where SEF creates tons of damage instances to reduce the CD of BDB to line up with a 30-40s capacitor more often?
These are logical follow through a for what the developers released, but to me I only see you guys playing the same build and claiming that âall options have been checkedâ which is hard to believe
I do agree WW NEEDS changes to its talent tree connections AT MINIMUM. But it should really receive a larger rework which we can only hope for. I think itâs coming though really I do
You think this is way more complex than it is I assure you
Emperors capacitor does not do very good damage.
It is physically impossible to make SEF/SER a 1m CD due to GCD constraints. This has been mentioned since the talent was introduced
Attenuation is literally horrible
None of that is relevant to raid builds because again as mentioned the talents simply do nothing on ST where WW is struggling the most.
What the ACTUAL intent of the tierset to do is the following
It accomplishes those well, it just does so in a way that is very unintuitive to play, and frankly bad. The CDR is nearly worthless for a multitude of reasons as they have been informed for months.
The person in charge of WW is simply bad at their job and refuses to engage with people who know what theyâre talking about
Not really. Itâs a really common thing to look for synergies with new tier.
Hereâs the blue post:
âIn the Guardians of the Dream update, set bonuses can interact with or modify talents anywhere on the talent tree. We expect them to shake up some builds that youâve been using, enable entirely new builds, or further augment some high-powered abilities as you gear up in Season 3.â
Again, all I see is you trying to work the same build and say the tuning for the tier doesnât work for that build
Instead I reccomend trying to make a build that aligns more closely to the developerâs intentions and then provide more feedback as to why that is numerically and functionally bad
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Probably is â but given the design intention, it seems very clear to me they might be trying to make it work
Furthermore, the BDB radius increase talent is a joke can we get a real talent please?
Again, this is what YOU think, but not necessarily what the designer things or intends. Neither is it what I think. Would you rather have a 1.5 min AoE cooldown or a 1 min AoE cooldown? For almost all AoE profiles the 1 min burst is way more ideal than a bigger but longer Cd cooldown as itâs typically better to have burst more often
Just because WW does have an excess of resources at times doesnât mean they are trying to do this I think youâre reading into this 1 tbh.
I think what you are suggesting is that w will use less tiger palms because we will be shifting those globals to SCK, therefore having less chi.
In terms of game design they are clearly making a positive feedback loop in the tier which is UBER clear by the name âReinforcementâ. Should be looking for synergies instead.
Given their intentions to subvert the talent meta for WW, (probably specifically to get rid of Invokerâs delight for so many patches) itâs also plausible they could be trying to mix up the crit/vers priority for so many patches with a haste build.
Maybe their intention is for you to do everything just a lot faster and have a lot more casts of everything.
Can you explain this 1 because to me it seems the 4 piece would theoretically give you more CDR on both of those abilities than what exists currently so you would still have more of those burst windows
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To me it really seems that they intend for you to pick up all of the SCK and BOK talents and then nearby talents that synergize. It seems plausible to make an attenuation build to bring down BDB to 40s or so using SEF, RJW, CJL, FOF, and SCK (all of which are many hits) so that it aligns with a roughly 40s capacitor. While a 60s SEF is mathematically impossible, if 80s is plausible then you could create a sync
Not saying this is mathematically good, but just seems to be their intended design
There is no shifting of globals to sck, Iâm not sure where youâre getting that notion. It is only FREE scks, as in DocJ procs or Serenity SCKâs. There is absolutely no additional priority on this button and no incentive to take SCK related talents. This is also why I say it makes Serenity a better AoE button. SEF is also a 1.5m CD and the CDR from SF isnt particularly better for SEF given its harder to spend chi than with serenity.
CDR is not burst.
In aberrus ww was doing ~30% of its dps in the keefers window, aka 5s every 1m. This was partly to due with this significant multipliers put on RSK and FoF by the aberrus tier set. CDR simply smooths damage profiles, as additional casts land outside of cd windows.
I can 100% promise you there is no âsecret buildâ. Theory crafting is far too optimized for that to happen.
Also to add, there are entire spreadsheets dedicated towards providing damage calculations based on these various factors including talent setups and tier set bonuses. These things also include calculating the damage number benefits of the CDR provided by BoK and such too. There really isnât a hidden build. We know the most optimal ability options given different talent setups and build the sim priority list based off of that.
Okay so it seems they changed the tier â my bad.
Earlier iteration was melee abilities proccing a free SCK (hence my suggestions about SCK) but now it looks like it procs the BOK instead
Again though, the premise is still roughly the same. Cast more abilities to proc more DotC for more rBoKs and also more abilities equals more rBoKS (dope name). I think that they are shooting for spreading out our damage (which is something people have been asking for, additionally with the ToD changes)
Still, I see an issue with the serenity thing. Even though it grants the free SCK for blackout reinforcement, serenity is so short thereâs a limited number of globals and itâs not like the CDR from the blackout kick is super relevant during that window with how short it is and how fast things recharge already so I think your assumptions are flawed (but itâs possible this is still mathematically best, again, Iâm on your side and trying to stimulate good discussion thst the devs are likely thinking, not to contradict you â itâs very likely that significant number changes need to happen on many talents in Ww Tree)
Iâm not saying it is, but you said:
So I donât understand how having more Rsk:FoF windows from the 4 piece bonus is reducing burst since you have more of them, sure you lose the FoF bonus from tier but you are now having more of them.
Itâs a frequent theorycrafting calc to have to determine if more casts or harder hitting casts are better, and clearly that is a thing here. For the past several expansions, itâs been to have harder hitting casts during burst windows, hence our constant vers prio. Given the design intent to shake things up, and I think they really are looking at changing WW, it makes a lot more thematic sense to have a fast attacking (and therefore haste oriented Ww build) and they could be trying to do something like that.
All in all, it seems they are trying to shift the damage profile from burst into more spread out, which is a good thing for the class
Again I think changes are coming but right now need to be trying to find their build they think we should be playing then provide the relevant feedback on numbers and mechanics to get some good changes
Our most important burst window is Skyreach, which is 6 seconds. The tierset doesnât get us more casts inside that 6 second window regardless. We have the same ability sequence inside Skyreach before and after getting Amdrassil tier. The point made about reducing burst is that we lose our old abberrus tier which increased RSK/FoF damage, and this bonus made burst higher since we have those same ability sequences doing more damage. But now, without abberus tier and with our new tier, those abilities do less damage, but the BoK damage throughout the rest of the pull is increased.
The serenity rotation is rather static, even more so during Bloodlust. There is so little room for additional ability casts in these cooldown windows, which leads to the tier bonuses feeling more irrelevant. The only major bonus of the tier set in our burst windows is that the CDR affects Strike of the Windlord. All other ability Casts arenât really getting any more. For example, inside just Invokers and Serenity, you can essentially already go RSK â BoK â RSK, so the tier does nothing in this case, because we donât need the CDR. This is the general case across the board inside our cooldowns.
Unfortunately, haste is just a doomed stat with WW and to a degree, most energy specs. Energy-based specs have static global cooldowns, so haste has much less value. Also, the fact that WW has such a large amount of time where it cannot auto attack (During FoF channels and SCK channels), haste loses even more value. And more procs from haste does not do anything because Windwalker as a whole is essentially Global Cooldown Locked, meaning we canât actually press more abilities, so CDR doesnât help us as much as Blizzard thinks it does.
Again just to reiterate, I want changes for WW. I donât play it because itâs already so hard to get into groups as pug with dps, especially when itâs not performing well. You 2 have mythic guilds and Probably M+ communities I just pug.
I know a lot of this feedback has been given as well. Iâm just trying to approach things from how the developers might think in any chance it might help. So bear with me while I play angelâs advocate.
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Why then is Invokerâs delight mandatory
Clearly haste has some role regardless of the fact that our channel(s) stop our auto attack.
Additionally, if haste reduces the channel time of FoF/SCK, then youâll have more time to auto attack.
On top of that, the 4p reduces windlord which has a talent where melee attacks cause the additional damage, which haste would benefit.
Since haste ultimately will allow you to use more chi spenders, and chi spenders are critical to the function of proccing DotC and rBoK
There needs to be a calc on whether having 30% more chi spenders is better or worse than 30% more damage on existing chi spenders. Itâs not always cut and dry and that calc can sometimes be really difficult to do because of all these intricacies.
Again, you reinforce my point that Serenity is maybe not the way to go with this tier given the effects and the clear intentions to shift up the talent meta.
Again, they could be trying to subvert this too, who knows? Itâs also been Meta for so long. It still might be mathematically best, and we need Blizzard to help create some alternatives.
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For MW at least, you can have 2 clear itemization options, haste build with no Invokerâs or a Vers build with Invokerâs.
Itâs highly possible they could be trying to do something here.
While this is true, I think this is being exaggerated by a lot.
Bloodlust and Invokerâs are still very good for us regardless of the GCD differences for energy classes.
Furthermore, secondary stat scaling at this point in the expac is high. Iâm sitting at 43% crit. Itâs not a stretch to itemize for a âpermanent Invokerâsâ by having 33% haste and choosing different talents
So specifically â right now we stack vers and gain haste during our CD window, they could be trying to shift that where we itemize for haste and use the talents to get more burst windows via CDR.
I think I should frame this a different way. The stuff you are theorizing are things theorycrafters have already taken looks at all the way back during PTR once the final version of our tier set was implemented. We have looked at SEF being used. We have looked at different stat allocations. We have taken looks at a wide variety of talent builds that focus on different parts of the tree. And we have even adjusted the sim Priority to adjust based on these talent setups and tier set bonuses.
We have covered these different factors that could affect how the spec actually should play. We donât blindly stick to one set build. But its a set build because its worked and will continue to work because its like the only viable option numerically after comparing it against dozens and dozens of other trees. And yes I think its bad and boring, thats why I made this post in the first place lol.
This spec only likes haste in extremely large amounts and only during our burst cooldowns. Lo and behold, Invokers does exactly that. It lines up well with cooldowns and gives big haste. We donât really care about haste nearly as much outside of cds. Looking at serenity specifically, we shift our priority from doing the most Damager Per Chi spent to focusing on doing the most Damage Per Execute Time (Global). Ofc this is because we donât use chi there. But now we see why the big haste here is so good. Because cutting 30% off our big spenders just increases how often we get to cast the higher DPET abilities. But once we are outside of cooldowns, haste loses a lot of value because we need to care about Damage Per Chi again.
And again, CDR really isnât that good and realistically will never be insane because of Static Global Cooldowns. We theoretically can press 60 buttons per minute for our damage rotation. Eventually you hit a wall where you canât press any more buttons because of this static global.
Shy of an entire spec rework, I canât see where would ever have a setup where haste is a number one priority. The current version of WW just cannot have a setup of haste being its top stat. Mechanically, it just canât work like that. And unless I see theoretical rotations and impacts on the rotation I will stick to that belief because Iâve seen the different priority lists for the simulations we use and efforts made to have other stats be made good.
Playing with the 2pc further:
I quite like it for cleave and aoe scenarios, however there are some issues
The primary one being that CDR makes FoF come off CD sooner, and you press FoF over anything else, so you just end up kinda wasting procs as they get overwritten. This occurs in CDâs and in general multitarget/single target scenarios.
The 4pc is just very strange. It has anti-synergy with the 2pc and provides very little value besides the strike cdr. The rsk cdr is effectively worthless, and the fof cdr has marginal value given RSK already gives plenty of cdr. I really think this was a giant miss on tier set design and even with a likely aura buff, windwalker will feel quite strange to play for the remainder of the expansion
Extremely dissapointing work given the multitude of feedback given on the useless of the tier set. Whoever designed this should really reconsider their approach
Iâll chime in on this one too just to quickly remind you that the prior tiers directly increased their power instead of frequency.
More ON them vs More OF them
Assuming sustain is flat for general tuning reasons, burst must 
as consequence.
Experimenting with procedure calls to drive dynamic rotation response seems fine (instead of mapping out the next three presses in advance). The problem is the spec was rebuilt on not doing that in Legion given their new mastery. You canât plan RNG events which force rotation changes on a spec that requires planned attack sequence.
Itâs also why in a version I proposed prior to this tierset being announced, I explicitly called out âThis extra Blackout Kick will not break your combo.â Getting a DoCJ from an SCK clearly illustrates how at a high level (1) the demand of non-repetition collides with (2) the demand of immediate response.
The other major difference was the extra Blackout Kick was fired automatically from any special attack, versus demanding its own global cooldown consumption. The tier set demanding a low priority action in a dynamic sequence as its own GCD space conflicts too with other high value actions.
(CDR is negligible most cases because of already existing CDR and skills that matter are already designed to be off cooldown when youâll need them next. Gaining a bonus off cooldown kick is also âfreeâ CDR.)
Again, the WW tree is a hot mess and needs big changes.
Mostly just discussing from the point of view of what the devs might be intending.
Personally, I feel like the WDP effect on the tier is for pvp given the recent PvP modifier and dev note but perhaps not intended for PvE as mentioned about global cap already.
I feel like the large CDR from the 4p bonus is intended to let you take other talents besides Xuenâs Battlegear, and that the concept of a âreinforcementâ should be that casting more of those abilities which reinforce eachother (aka having more haste to get more procs) is what they are intending (not that itâs mathematically any good).
In the same boat, teaching of the monastery causes RSK resets (equivalent to a ton of CDR)
Given these and the change to CJL, it seems they want you to drop TOTM, Xuenâs Battle Gear, Transfer the Power (since we no longer have the Aberrus tier modifier on FoD), and Invokerâs delight and instead choose other talents.
This way, there is not excessive CDR but rather itâs probably on par with what you have with Battlegear/Totm but you can take other talents instead to boost your damage.
Probably still want skyreacch and they want you to get that through capacitor, hence the buff.
However, itâs really easy napkin math to see that the Xuenâs Bond has an upper max of 11s reduction on xuen which is a laughable 9% reduction or a 10 min fight before you get a single free Xuen and that assumes you are haste capped the whole time. Dev should be able to make simple inequalitiy like that and see the talent is dead int he water, just like the SCK radius increase and the BDB Radius increase.
Also there are too many talents in the first tier that need to be made into 1 point talents.
Anyways, not saying itâs any good to not take those talents, just that might be their intent