I run low to mid keys on my holy priest and I almost never see a monk, let alone a windwalker. Tier lists have them listed as low to middling as well. This post is to ask input from windwalkers who are have knowledge than me because I just started one this week.
I started gearing my monk because I had a lot of down time and mistweaver appealed to me because of the mobility compared to my priest. Plus, I love throughput-reactive healing. I only played windwalker to quest and quickly fell in love.
I know my enjoyment is partially because it’s new and different, but why the rarity? I’ve been competitive in dps against more geared toon as I’m only 406 and I feel good utility with: ring of peace, leg sweep, paralysis, tiger’s lust, disease/poison dispel, and good priority damage if i can learn how to use touch of death better. WW also has pretty good defensives.
The negatives I’ve noticed are touch of death being too much of my damage and a lack of group buffs other than 5% physical damage increase. I miss having PI, BREZ, or bloodlust.
What am I missing? Why aren’t there more windwalkers? I understand fun is subjective, but man I feel like a better rogue who doesn’t need to rely on stealth gimmicks to lock targets down and survive.
Thoughts?
Edit: i forgot one weird negative for me. I HATE the fists of fury animation, especially with it’s long channel time.
Couple of reasons:
(1) While there have been a few times where WW was strong, the vast majority of the time WW has been a middling performing spec. This is fine, but is also why there are hardly ever a lot of fotm rerolls to monk.
(2) Perceived effort versus reward. No class is hard anymore, but the “opinion” of a lot of players is you have to put in a lot more work on a WW to get the same results as much easier classes… hence the perceived. Some classes are easier than others, this isn’t a bad thing.
(3) Class buff. In short, anytime BrM or MW is strong, there isn’t a reason to bring one. Now while I don’t subscribe to this as class and spec are irrelevant outside of the race to world first, far too many people listen to streamers and/or tier lists and think being a good mid performing dps isn’t enough. Ironically, they reroll and parse grey and green.
(4) Class theme. The martial arts class is either hit or miss with people. In addition (and in my opinion), the tier sets have overwhelmingly looked like hot garbage. If you don’t like looking at your character, you don’t want to play it.
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All good points. Thanks for the reply. I will say the theme was hard for me as well, but I leaned into a more blademaster style with my orc monk and that helped me identify with it more.
Mistweaver is more a hybrid. We have good reactionary heals but to get the most out of the spec you have to play proactively using renewing mists and ramp with vivify.
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Blizz (understandably) really has it out for us, and it is pretty public knowledge now. Beyond that, i’d chalk it up to personal taste for aesthetics or gameplay/playstyle. There’s also some probably old monks that swapped because they got tired of Blizz’s handling of WW.
ToD is a fair amount of our damage even though a lot of people thought it was a bad call when talent trees were revealed and still do to this day. That said, FoF and RSK start to overtake it by a significant margin as you get more gear.
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As a windwalker, what are you missing? Invites to mythic plus keys, most likely.
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I make my own groups so that isn’t an issue.
Edit: To be clear I just got him to 410 so I’ve only been doing 10-11 keys for now but my dps has been competitive and the utility is decent.
The ramp comes from EnvM as it is the heal that boost the heals following it. renewing mist → vivify is more a cleave rather than ramp. Bonus ramp if you take lessons over more clouds.
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Yes that’s what I meant. I was in cold induced haze when I responded and didn’t actually look back at it till now.
So much damage loaded into aoe touch of death x2 is kind of lame.
At least that is my biggest complaint.
Monks are fun though.
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I think monk has a very misleading class fantasy.
People seem to think of monks as martial artists but theyre not… okay they are. But theyre more than that.
Theyre empowering themselves with spirit energy, theyre calling upon mists and drinking brews.
Theyre summoning celestials and splitting themselves in to 3 copies to destroy enemies.
Theyre flying around on a cloud and breathing fire.
The surface level of the class doesnt really stack up against other classes where you know what youre getting in to.
And the surface level is all people will know until they spend time with the class.
Which sounds cooler, punching things or summoning an army of demons to do your bidding? 
Im new to monk myself, but its not what i spent years thinking it was.
Punching and Kicking then going super sayien sounds way cooler than being a poor man’s warlock.
Sadly we don’t go super sayien. But I’d take punching and kicking over anything else in this game, again though that is because of who I am irl.
I gave up on it. Biding my time on Classic and other games, but once I’m bored there, probably not coming back to Retail Monk.
Biggest problem.
I played Monk in EQ.
I played Monk in DND since 3e.
I played Monk in FFXIV.
WoW somehow does it worse than each.
I felt my enhancement shaman in Cataclysm was more in line with Monk than post-WoD Monk. It was alright in MoP and I spent a lot of hours on the class before it was fundamentally changed because of RoRo.
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If you are still using touch of death you are doing it wrong.
Wanna increase your dps go serendipity build.
Prepull - expel harm
At pull chi burst or wave
Expel harm
Feline stop
Touch of karma
Tiger punch
Serendipity
Beacon
Tiger
I forgot the ability name but has a semi long cool down frontal cleave
Fists of fury
Rising sun kick ( clip first of fury )
Blackout kick
Spinning crane kick ( if proc )
Rising sun kick during spinning crane kick.
Feline stomp once debuff falls off boss
Rinse repeat for Aoe it’s more or less the same
This is really rough priority and some decisions have to be made when to use other procs.
In mythic keys I am usually top dps at around 130k dps, unless I die. If I did numerous times I will drop down to like 112
Why not do all that and also use touch of death? The cleave build on wowhead uses serenity and touch of death.
Well sorry, you still use tod but it’s very little damage because you don’t spec into the enchanting of it.
Would you mind linking your build or character so I could check it out?
For most M+ whether it’s fort or tyran.
For fort heavy add dungeons.
For NL.
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Thanks for this. What is NL?
Care to explain? is it because they have to be cautious because of our TOD can be super powerful or something else. I have fun leveling WW monk and this one is my second one.
I feel WW is quite an easy play style as long as you don’t hit the same ability twice in a row. Maybe someone who has had some time played in rogue or warrior might have trouble at first but brain muscle builds fast imo. I used to play mage and had no trouble adapting to WW.
I’m guessing it’s Neltharions Lair.