WindWalker Talents need a REWORK

Classes Monk
1

Hi guys,

I wanted to address a major concern I have with our Talent tree. The Talent tree itself is redundant in many areas, and don’t offer a unique play-style or unique experiences. The difference between the talents are so marginally slim or so overwhelming one sided, I am shocked they have gone unaddressed for so long.

This is just my analysis of the Monk WW Talents, and I dont think its worth Simcrafting every aspect of the Talent tree because thats not the point of this thread. Its about diversity in playstyle and experience, and the lack of that when selecting talents. Some Talent rows are good, and matter, while others are absolutely pointless.

This is meant to address all players, and not people who understand and WANT to min/max.

Tier 1

  • Eye of the Tiger (Passive)

  • Chi Wave (Instant, 15s cooldown)

  • Chi Burst (1s cast, 30s cooldown)

Okay, essentially we get to decide what kind of damage we want to apply, because the DPS from these three talents are arguably the same, meaning you will be choosing an ability based on your playstyle. All three of these abilities do the same amount of DPS. 1 is passive damage, one is more interactive, and another is a larger cooldown. Taking anything other than Eye of The Tiger means you will have another button for hit combo (which is a problem talent itself)

Tier 2

  • Celerity (Passive).

  • Chi Torpedo (Instant, 20s cooldown, 2 charges)

  • Tiger’s Lust (Instant, 30s cooldown)

This is a Talent Row that I think is perfectly fine. Its our mobility talents and we have plenty of mobility. I think most of us, if not all of us would agree that everything available in this row is nice, unique, fun, and different enough to change game play.

Tier 3

  • Ascension (Passive)

  • Energizing Elixir

  • Fist of the White Tiger

I HATE THIS TALENT ROW SO MUCH, EVERYTHING IN THIS TALENT ROW IS TRASH AND LET ME EXPLAIN WHY.

Each one of these talents do EXACTLY the same thing. You will find almost no change in your dps, and energy consumption. Let me Translate what this talent row actually says - “Would you prefer to passively manage your resources, or push a button to generate them?”

Why blizzard, Why does this talent row even exist? Why??? Elixir was once baseline. Tiger was once baseline (Strike of the windlord), and Ascension was the flavor talent (favoring people who for some reason stacked haste for endless energy spam) You essentially broke up a porition of the windwalkers rotation to force it as a talent choice and reduce options. It blew my mind when I had to pick between two generating abilities, that were both once baseline. In what world do ANY of these talents appear to be TOO STRONG to be baseline? They need to exist for the class to even function, and that for me means ONE OF THESE SHOULD NOT BE A TALENT, AND SHOULD BE BAKED INTO OUR SPELL BOOK (its the elixir)

Tier 4

  • Tiger Tail Sweep (Passive)

  • Good Karma (Passive)

  • Ring of Peace (Instant, 45s cooldown)

I dont mind this talent row, but I will argue how bad Karma currently is. Its a premptive cool down since its been nerfed, and should be use proactively when YOU BELIEVE you are about to get clapped, if you have to activate Karma because of a reactionary situation, it means you messed up… This was not the case in the past, and I feel this was nerfed to not creep on the Paladins BoP.

Ring of peace should be a baseline talent for MW, but thats not what this thead is about. This Talent tree is fine. I’m not here to argue the power level of the our spells (Karma needs a buff against non player targets)

Tier 5

  • Inner Strength

  • Diffuse Magic (Instant, 90s cooldown)

  • Dampen Harm (Instant, 120s cooldown)

Aside from diffuse magics massive nerf before SL, this talent tree is fine, picking between two defensive cool downs is okay, we dont need the best of both worlds.

Inner strength should be base line or deleted, and a new defensive talent (passive) should be placed here imo. Inner strength is literally useless, you will never use this unless you want to turn your brain off.

Tier 6

  • Hit Combo (Stacking Passive).

  • Rushing Jade Wind (Instant, 6s cooldown) - YOU WILL NEVER PICK THIS LOL

  • Dance of Chi-Ji (Passive Proc)

Here it is boys, THE WORST OFFENDING TALENT SELECTION FOR WW.

Let me explain how Hit-combo is the worst talent the monk can have because of how much it negatively effects the experience.
Hit Combo Gimps us, so, hard. This Talent is so darn lazy, its our mastery that is a mandatory selection. You have no choice but to take this talent, its too strong compared to the other two. Spinning crane kick competes for this slot, but you dont want to pick it up, as the expansion moves further, the percentage buff on all your damage will completely out weigh any other talent in this row.

Hit Combo plays a massive role in the awful feeling you get when you play your WW in hectic situations. This Talent also promotes “I need more buttons to push on a class with already a ton of buttons to push”

Hit combo makes this class a waste of energy and thought. On top of the large amount of abilities that you are never allowed to repeat (unless you want a sharp decline in dps) you are working very hard to achieve NORMAL damage. The amount of effort required to DPS on WW compared to other classes, just so you can perform as expected is really shameful.

You will put in so much work on your rotation, perhaps even flawless execution, never dropping hit combo once just so you can be competitive with a demon hunter or hunter.

Tier 7

  • Spiritual Focus (Passive) YOU WILL NEVER PICK THIS

  • Whirling Dragon Punch (Instant, 24s cooldown)

  • Serenity(Instant, 90s cooldown)

Il spare you the analysis the passive ITS BAD. You only pick dragon punch. There is no situation you need any other talent here, which is quite sad. One of these need to be made baseline, and I believe its serenity because of the lack of damage and defensive abilities it grants. Its DPS cd, but its not good enough to ever be selected outside of, maybe pvp.

Overall, the spec is just over-saturated with spells, hit combo forces a specific play style, and is, IMO, the main reason this spec is suffering so much. Why does Hit combo exist? Will a developer ever explain this to us? If its so important for the class identity, dont make it a choice… perhaps make it stack up to 12 and reduce its damage bonus to .75% or something. This way it rewards playing through the class design that you obviously want us to always use. I believe if you can maintain a long hit combo you should be rewarded, not given the same chance as everyone else.

What are your thoughts on these talents? Do you disagree? What would you change??

6 Likes
2

WW monks have the worst/most bland talents out of any dps spec in the game. WDP should’ve been baseline two expansions ago. We don’t have a lot of interesting choice and our play style is roughly the same no matter what talents we use.

Also, I hate hit combo. It’s just a fancier version of our mastery!

4 Likes
3

I agree with pretty much everything except Tier 3.

Strike of the Windlord was a chi spender, not generator, so it can’t really be compared to Fist of the White Tiger. Also it was an artifact ability, not baseline so you didn’t really lose anything that no one else didn’t lose as well.

This is a good thing. This is the standard ALL talent rows should be compared against. They feel distinct from each other and all provide similar enough dps which means the choice is entirely personal preference.

Take the mobility row for example. All three talents do the same thing and the only question is “do you want passive mobility or push a button for mobility?” Why is that a good row to you but not tier 3 when the philosophy is identical?

1 Like
4

Thats actual a good point, and makes me sound redundant haha. I always felt that the tier 2 talents were well balanced and I think I always enjoyed them since I could pick them so I have a bias towards the way they feel. As the tier 3s go, I think having either actives as baseline would be nice because it would free up the talent slots of something much more fun. Thats why I would prefer them moved off the talent tree. For the tier 2 talents, I cant see any of these being baked into our kit because their just all pretty good.

5

What changes would you suggest?

I am not personally offending you, as it seems too much a general trend on game forums -

But what specifically would you change and how you change it? Anyone can say anything is broken and feel vindicated it is if they don’t understand the the pieces well enough. (Not stating you don’t)

But if you see it broken, or boring or bland, how would you fix it without making the class too strong (right now they are perfectly average, so nothing that is a big spa increase) or without breaking and making the class bad.

Personally I think everything is fine. I do agree 1 or 2 talent rows don’t have choices as the options are not good, but I enjoy the choices I had to make. I like hit combo, personally.

6

Nah, I understand the sentiment. Honestly it is hard to say what changes could take the place of the other talents. I’m not a developer so I wouldn’t be able to give you spells or passives with numbers associated with them because it would likely be completely broken (both too strong or too weak).

What I want is more of our talents to become baseline (the talents you have no choice to pick) or they need to remove the talents that do NOTHING and add competitive slots. Hit Combo is too strong to remain on our talent tree anymore. You could never balance this talent row because you just could never justify NOT picking a flat 6% damage boost. Hit Combo belongs in our spell book, perhaps capping at a much higher stack and reducing the percentage to .75%. Hit combo should stack up to 10 times. (see im not a developer so I cant just plug this change in and see how it would fix or ruin the spec)

So Il outline my main issues

Tier 1

  • Eye of the Tiger (Passive)

  • Chi Wave (Instant, 15s cooldown)

  • Chi Burst (1s cast, 30s cooldown)

They all do the same thing, the choice is meaningless

Tier 3

  • Ascension (Passive)

  • Energizing Elixir

  • Fist of the White Tiger

They all do the same thing, the choice is meaningless

Tier 5

  • Inner Strength

  • Diffuse Magic (Instant, 90s cooldown)

  • Dampen Harm (Instant, 120s cooldown)

Inner strength is a blank talent, its not a choice, you dont pick it because it does nothing, but the other two are great, I dont think this one really needs a huge change, maybe delete inner peace and move talents around the list im not sure.

Tier 6

  • Hit Combo (Stacking Passive).

  • Rushing Jade Wind (Instant, 6s cooldown) - YOU WILL NEVER PICK THIS LOL

  • Dance of Chi-Ji (Passive Proc)

Hit combo is the only talent choice here, why even give us the other two???

Tier 7

  • Spiritual Focus (Passive) YOU WILL NEVER PICK THIS

  • Whirling Dragon Punch (Instant, 24s cooldown)

  • Serenity(Instant, 90s cooldown)

you can only pick dragon punch because we all know it should be baseline but for some reason it isn’t. Your kit is gimped if you dont have this selected.

2 Likes
7

Hit Combo has to be one of the laziest talents in the game. Bake it into our Mastery and give us something else.

4 Likes
8

Agreed, and I believe people have been complaining about hit combo since legion but we have never once gotten a single dev comment on this talent.

9

I’d love to hear;

Is monk the least played class because of all the problems, or do all the problems exist because we’re the least played class?

10

Yeah I was actually typing something similar to that in my previous comment but removed it. I really think a main problem with our balance is the lack of player base, and that might translate to lowering the importance of balancing the class. If like maybe 2% of players choose the monk class, its not worth investing their dev time to frequently. Our feedback is valuable and the frequency of our discussion should be enough to signal to them its a problem, but perhaps to them, its not a problem worth addressing.

11

I personally do not want more buttons to push. If a wind walker monk means more talents and more buttons to push then I think that’s a bad idea.

Overall I think the monk is it over complicated version of the demon Hunter. in which case the demon hunter does everything better than the monk.

I personally think they won’t change anything because they just put out an expansion and typically they do big changes before the expansion and not at the beginning of one. So basically it is what it is, sadly.

12

Ret, Shaman, DH, feral, and probably a bunch of other specs would disagree.

13

WDP needs to be baseline and have its animation-lock removed, Chi Burst should be instant cast, Hit Combo is redundant.

1 Like
14

I couldn’t agree more with the need for talent changes, our bottom row is garbage because you are forced to pick WDP or give up SEF which is a huge CD for us.
I’d also like to mention we really need to have the bugs looked at for WW, SEF is still reducing Xuen’s damage, Dance of Chi-ji for some reason can’t seem to proc off of Spinning Crane Kick and the old SEF bug of course where your clones just decide to loitre around and do nothing. I’d also like to see Serenity get a second charge if it is going to replace SEF when taken as a talent.

1 Like
15

I hate hit combo.

I take dance of chi ji because of its amazing damage when it procs. It’s fun to just melt someone with an ultra roundhouse. Its fun compared to having a maintenance buff talent in hit combo.

1 Like
16

My biggest beef is with the 1st row talents. Its like they are intentionally made to be so useless they aren’t even worth the gcd spot. A free damage/heal ability that only costs a second of our time should not be so garbage that many take it off their bars.

1 Like
17

Serenity made sense during tomb of sargeras with how touch of death worked.it hasn’t been relevant since but if they could make it worthwhile I’d pick it everytime

18

On this point, I would rather have had SotWL over FotWT, rotation felt smoother, at least to me, with SotWL spending chi, especially with the legendary that reduced it’s cost by 1 along with the legendary that reduced FoF by one chi over FotWT generating 3 chi. I tried to make it work after Legion but kept overcapping chi.

Also agree with the Combo Strikes talent, maybe replace FotWT with a SotWL like ability or change FotWT to be like SotWL, replace Combo Strikes with a talent that either reduces the cost of it and FoF by one chi or something that has a chance to proc. the one chi reduction, and please make WDP baseline, and please add a talent to make ToD have the nice little reset thing it had in Legion was so nice to have that second chance to try to finish a fight quickly especially if you were about to die and ToD didn’t finish said mob the first try.

19

I don’t understand why FotWT and SotWL are compared.
The only thing they have in common is their animation.
Their functionality and purpose are entirely different.
Fist is a chi generating and light hitting ST only ability with minimal impact on our damage profile with extra resource generation being its main purpose.
Strike was a chi spending andhard hitting ST with meteor AoE that had a significant contribution to overall damage with burst damage being its main purpose. Strike has a lot more in common and seems to have been a refinement of the hurricane strike WoD talent.

The frank situation of monk/WW is that Blizzard need to be bold with their changes. Some talent rows need entire changes with one of the talents being made baseline.
The most important talent rows that need adjustment are the final two.

There have been many posts about this so I can’t be bothered reposting my suggestions.
One thing I do want to say though is that hit combo should not be made baseline, it should simply be removed. It’s too similar to our mastery and the double up is frankly lazy.

20

I feel like the Black Out kick proc is also counter intuitive to WW mastery. Feels weird and doesn’t fit.