So Blizzard just announced incoming class tuning changes for a few specs, most notably Havoc. Play testing on the PTR showed Havoc DPS on the lower end but still out performing Windwalker and yet Havoc received some pretty substantial buffs to ensure their relevance with the 10.1 patch.
I used to believe that it was simply the developer’s unwillingness to correct the issues that Windwalker has historically had throughout it’s conception but as time goes on it is starting to feel like the developer’s genuinely have no idea on what should be done to the spec to make it less polarizing and more easily tuned. Windwalker being left out of the upcoming tuning update for next week’s raid release is really beginning to highlight the developer team’s lack of direction with the spec. Windwalker did not even receive a mention by the developer’s that the issues both numerical and mechanically would be addressed in a future update, but instead proceeded to gloat about how they made our sister spec Mistweaver a more satisfying spec to play.
Honestly, the most frustrating part about being a Windwalker is that you only have one damage spec if you wish to continue to play Monk. With almost every other class in the game if a damage spec is not performing to a high enough level there is a 2nd or 3rd damage spec that can be used until changes happen. I enjoy playing Brewmaster, but I would much rather play Windwalker.
I think for the first time I have officially lost hope in Blizzard. When does this end?
If you know what’s good you will reroll. Which sux because it takes a lot of time and effort to gear out a character, but this is prob the best time to do so. What do we expect to happen? Ret level rework? For monk??? You know the answer… They are too deep into the TOD gimmick.
Ww will suffer of this design issue until next xpac (unless they accidentally overtune a tier set or some wonky trinket).
Pretty sure WW got some decent buffs for single target like less than a week ago I think… Now I have no clue if those are enough, in fact I think that they probably aren´t but what I mean is that whatever balancing they wanted to do for WW prior to S2 happened there so it was not likely to get more changes with this new set of tunning updates.
They arent decent. The spec doesn’t scale. I doubt monks will even do that well the first 1-2 weeks of the raid. Windwalker needed a rework a lot more than Ret did. Even before this expansion people have been screaming at Blizzard to fix the scaling. Instead the class got turned into a fist fighting pokemon trainer with statues.
I’ll bet they’ll “fix” windwalker more with flat buffs again thinking its doing anything when it shows ww is still bad.
My man, of the three buffs there were, only one really mattered and is noticeable.
I think Tiger Palm got buffed by 15%, BoK got buffed by 8%, and RSK got buffed by 15%. Blizz could have slapped a zero on the end of the TP buff and we still might not feel it.
Buffing auto attacks and Demons Bite by 10% is about the same as buffing Tiger Palm by 15%.
A lot of the weaker skills don’t see exaggerated performance because of linear damage coefficients but exponential power scaling. It’s like you said, they could buff Tiger Palm 150% and it still wouldn’t be noticeable.
When Tiger Palm is a 38% coefficient and RSK is a 258% coefficient, a 1000 damage difference becomes a lot bigger of a gap. Talents like Fast Feet don’t help that either. Do any other classes get a 70% damage buff to their hardest hitting ability in their general class tree?
I definitely chose my wording poorly when I said ‘Significant’ when referring to the DH buffs. However, the point I was making was that DH outperformed WW during PTR play testing. I would really like to see some genuine number tuning that brings monks single target damage in line with the rest of melee. At the very least a statement from Blizzard acknowledging the issues surrounding WW monk and that a possible rework is being looked at.
