Windwalker Monk - Touch of Death Feedback PvE

Classes Monk
1

For some time this expansion, monks have been a bottom of the barrel class on average for single target fights. On a lot of the high end performers a lot of them have high numbers compared to normal because of being able to take advantage of something like grief torch procs, but that still leaves the base class in a bad state.

A lot of the monks design for windwalker is based around expending a lot of points around touch of death; however, when it comes to single target fights, those talent points are of waste and there are not really any alternatives to those.

I think something that could be useful for monks, is that on either the monk tree, or the windwalker tree, to give these same touch of death talents an alternative selection. To what should be the alternative(s), I am unsure, but I do have some suggestions.

One suggestion could be that the alternative gives an overall damage boost, something to the effect of 3%. If I look at a fight like Terros, which is purely single target, touch of death did roughly ~0.5% of total overall damage in a kill of a relatively short time (4.5mins). If a monk was able to select otherwise a 3% overall damage boost, effectively that would make single target output increased overall and a more viable option and the monk still has the baseline ability to use, but not having to spend talents into it for minimal to no effective increase.

Another suggestion I have as an alternative would be to give the monks something like an execute phase as an alternative option. If the mob or nearby mobs are below a certain threshold, you output an additional % damage increase while hitting said mobs.

The thing about touch of death is how it works. You effectively have to use a GCD or an auto-attack for the game to actively check the target’s HP% threshold for the game to recognize that touch of death is now available. If you are on encounters where the adds spawned are of low hp pool thresholds and the monk is not able to touch of death said adds due to them being blown up, the monk is effectively losing overall output and is wasting several talent selections.

The numbers I am putting in here as an increase are purely subjective. I am just using them for more of example purpose of the idea, not that those should be the numbers; however, I do think with the current state of windwalker monk in raid, there could be some improvements made. Effectively giving alternatives does not weaken the state of the class and can improve the class where it is lacking.

7 Likes
2

My hero, My Savior, My Warlock.

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So something like Admonishment for WW?

You focus the assault on this target, increasing their damage taken by 3% for 6 sec. Each unique player that attacks the target increases the damage taken by an additional 3%, stacking up to 5 times. Your melee attacks refresh the duration of Focused Assault.

1 Like
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I feel that the ToD talents could be condensed and/or moved to their own branch in our talent tree.

Blizz could very simply delete BDB’s branch of our talent tree, buff SCK/MotC, and move all the ToD talents on WW’s spec tree to where that BDB trash used to be.

3 Likes
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There was a post or two saying how ToD stuff should replace the toy statues. I had the same idea myself. Touch of Life replacing the crane statue would be pretty cool.

One of the ideas for ToL is that it’s a 12 second melee range HoT but if the target dies, the target will be resurrected/reawakened after the HoT ends…I like the idea but I’d like to know what MW would want.

1 Like
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ToD problem is that it’s relatively easy to mess up and has huge consequences when you do. It’s got a long cooldown and you have to invest a lot of points to get it to the point it’s useful, and things start dying very, very quickly at 20% because every class with a spammable or passive cleave is quickly whittling down their health. The easiest solution would be to make it useable at 35% rather than 20%.

That said, I hate ToD. I wish we didn’t have it because I think it makes it harder to adjust WW.

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7

agreed. it would be better without it

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No it wouldn’t. Taking away the crutch doesn’t mean Blizzard then swoops in to fix everything else wrong. It means you’re going to drag yourself through instead of hobbling along. It would be objectively worse.

You assume that “broken” means “will get attention/fixed”. Let me say, that has not been Monk since day one.

1 Like
9

Any monk raiding/high mythic + will tell you. Its nearly impossible to get the full value out of touch of death becuase of how it works… Its totally broken and will likely remain broken the entire xpac. Id scrap monk or unsubscribe if i was you.

2 Likes
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I mean, if it works sure.

I have worked closely with developers on other MMOs, the thing about the development team, is that if there is a thread popping off, they don’t want to see arguments. They want to see statistical data and they want to see suggestions. So far, this thread has been on a correct path.

I’ve played a bottom of the pack class before in games and its not fun. If admonishment could be an alternative PvE talent for one of the ToD slots, I mean, based off numbers, a 15% increase would probably bring it from bottom to 2nd from bottom, lol.

The thing about the balancing system, is to not rely on ToD, you would effectively have to introduce something into a majority, if not all of the touch of death slots, at least for windwalker to be more effective as a dps class.

For example, by taking admonishment, most likely this would be a chosen talent for a lot of single target raid fights where you would want the sustain damage, maybe some AoE, where in that aspect it might be too strong and adjusted to be only applicable to a unique target. A 15% increase to your overall performance, assuming it could be maintained completely, is better than a 0.5% increase of your total damage.

That leaves monks with still having the viable option of going touch of death for things like mythic+ dungeons where it can be a really good pick, especially in higher keys.

1 Like
11

Pretty much. Is everything in range? Can you acquire your target before it dies? Are you off GCD to hit it? Oh good, the cooldown is triggered! Uh oh, server lag didn’t register the damage before the mob died. Oh well. We can just lean on our lackluster aoe now until our next chance.

Touch of Death is crap.

4 Likes
12

Ya lol, that’s pretty much the experience of playing a WW at the moment. If everything is low and you can get TOD off and it claps 3-4 mobs great, if it doesn’t or you miss it… it feels really really bad lol.

I know TOD on Sennarth big add I have to spam TOD to get both of them off. There is no way I can TOD and then cast anything and the add will still be alive for the next TOD.

Even if monk is doing slightly better with the ring that doesn’t change the player experience revolving around TOD.