WW Monk Issues And Fixes

[Nexen-frostmourne]

So… I love WW Monks and have since MoP, however as time has progressed I have noticed that this class/spec has been accruing more and more issues with most going unattended. Below is MY quick analysis on what I believe to be WW Monk’s biggest issues, after this I will go over changes that I think would address these issues.
So first up are the problems:

1. Consistently bad performance in PvE, consistently decent performance in PvP. Hard to buff PvE without also buffing PvP.

2. Loss of unique playstyle and abilities - Many unique functions have been washed away or are irrelevant. Combo strikes is the only truly unique function that remains however it falls flat with most buttons having short cooldowns that prevent back to back usage. Additionally, other classes have been slowly getting monk mechanics, usually a more powerful version. Havoc has at least 4-5 abilities that are essentially directly ripped off from a WW monk. More classes getting significant movement buffs etc…

3. No diversity in play style, talent tree is dead with a significant portion of the options never being touched. There are talents that will not be selected regardless of the content or situation.

4. No valuable / unique group offering, essentially every other class brings more or brings something to the table that other classes cannot. Other classes bring more in both M+ and raids. Of the few things a monk does offer, most of it is insignificant and goes unnoticed when not present.

5. Shifting class/spec identity, this makes it hard to lock down a direction for the spec. Is it a Zen martial artist that uses chi, is it an ambassador for the celestials, or is it one with the wind. Does it even have any wind related abilities?

6. One of, if not, the least played spec/class in the game.

7. Poor scaling, due to the mechanics of WW’s abilities they scale very poorly

8. Bugs, bugs and more bugs… this spec/class has soooo many bugs that it’s ridiculous. What’s worse is that they have been there for years.

Ok, now with that all said keep in mind that I love this class and especially this spec, mainly because the theme ‘zens’ with me… However, if I were to evaluate it against the other classes in the game based on what it contributes, the Windwalker Monk would lose out bigtime… oh and lastly, please don’t crucify me over the numbers or scaling, they are for example purposes only, its the mechanics that I’m interested in.
So here is what I think could be done:

I have tried to keep the below concise (but clearly failed) however I have emboldened the key phrases for quick reference to the specific changes that I think are absolutely necessary.

• Remove Storm, Earth and Fire replace with WAB (see below) - So many problems fixed with the exodus of this ability.

• Baseline WDP - remove the WDP buff from casting both RSK and FoF and modify it so that FoF and RSK each add a seperate buff when casted that is required to cast WDP, consumed on use. It can only stack once. This would allow for WDP to be used at the start of new fights if it wasn’t used in the previous engagement or if we don’t want this, then we can make the buff only last 30 seconds for FoF and 12 seconds for RSK. This would bring the ability more in line with how other ‘proc’ abilities work and would make it a bit more flexible to use. (Would need to add glow effect when ability is available to use).

• Increase mark of the crane potency to compensate for loss of SEF stacks, not much just to 15%. Other abilities will carry this loss.

• Add in an activatable effect for the wind walking passive that clears all snare, root and immobilisation effects from all allies affected by wind walking. 5min cd. Provide a gust of wind animation for all affected allies.

• Increase wind walking passive move speed to 15% and make it stack with other movement speed bonuses.

• FoF now does 100% to the primary target and 50% on sqrt scaling. We need to not have two hard caps. Ideally on one cap such as sqrt scaling for FoF, which would make positioning super interesting when aiming for priority damage.

• SCK now gets either infinite MotC buffs and is capped to 6 targets or can only receive 6 stacks of MotC and is either sqrt scaled or soft capped at 20. I suggest the first one.

• Add a 2 second stun to the primary target for FoF.

• Expel Harm/Reverse Harm to be reworked to heal based on missing health. Heals 30% of missing hp, deals 60% of heal amount in damage. If you had a max hp of 20k and were missing 10k health then it would heal for 3k and deal 1.8k damage, @ 100% hp it would heal for 0. 15 sec CD.

  • Have expel harm/reverse harm be situationally stronger than TP, such as when X amount of HP is missing. Maybe it generates a base of 1 chi when healed, but the more it heals for percentage wise, the more chi it provides. At 90-100% no chi, 60-90% 1 chi, 30-60% 2 chi and 30% hp or less it could provide 3 chi. For example if you were at 18k hp out of 20k, the heal would only be for 600hp, would do 360 damage and would provide 1 chi, at 4K hp out of 20k, it would heal for 4.8k, do 2880 damage and generate 3 chi.

• Add a passive that when falling a distance that would be fatal and if roll is off cooldown it consumes and activates a charge of roll and reduces the damage. Essentially, you don’t die from falling if you have a roll off cd. Come on, we’re Monks and we cant find a way to avoid dying from fall damage but everyone else can? Give us some parkour skills! OR, you could just have it so that you don’t take fall damage during FSK.

• Bring back MoP Zen Meditation baseline with some adjustments. (Channel for 6 seconds and redirect the next 6 spells cast at you and your allies to your Zen Sphere and reduce the damage of these redirected spells by 80%) Allow movement during the cast but it slows move speed by 80%. Breaks on melee.

• Replace Vivify with healing spheres, add a mechanic where double tapping the HS ability places it in front of the Monk. Requires 50 energy. Historically the maximum number of spheres out at once was 3, however if it’s too strong make it 2.

• Baseline “Wind Awakening Brew” (WAB) as the fundamental dps cooldown to replace SEF - every 5th combo strike in a row builds 2 charges. Max of 20 charges. WAB can be consumed 10 stacks at a time for a 3% damage increase per stack, max of 30%, lasts 10 seconds. Additionally, while under the effect of WAB all your mystic touch applications will be increased by 0.5% per stack, max of an additional 5% for the duration of WAB. Total max damage increase from mystic touch during this time is 10% (5% from WAB, 5% base). You could tone this down so that it either only provided the additional 5% to the party the Monk is in, or make it 0.25% per stack, for a total increase of 2.5% additional damage at max stacks. Also, add a mad wind based animation for WAB! No GCD on this ability.

• Bring back the Tiger Strikes passive attack speed bonus (4 attacks at 400% speed) but tie it to a buff that occurs after a FoF channel has finished, this would make up for the lost Auto attack time during FoF, or instead you could allow auto attacks to occur during FoF.

• Add the ability to aim FSK. Not OP but super fun around tight corners.

• Xuen now becomes “invoke” Xuen which shrouds you in tiger lightning and amplifies your most iconic abilities. Lasts 12 seconds, 3 min CD.

  • FoF has a chance when damaging a target to hit for additional tiger lightning damage and incur a 90% snare on the targets for 0.1 seconds OR (and I prefer this one) you could have fists of fury leave behind a lighting afterimage of the Monk casting FoF that follows the target and completes the cast, during this time the Monk turns into the embodiment of tiger lightning, increasing move speed by 250% until the clone’s cast is complete or until cancelled (max 4 sec). When the Monk exits or cancels this form, the Monk explodes for X lightning damage, damaging all enemies in a 5 yard range.
  • RSK leaves an after image of the Monk that explodes for tiger lightning after 2 seconds or if you took the second option with FoF then another option would be for RSK to reduce your GCD by 0.25 seconds for 4 seconds.
  • BoK leeches speed (20% slow + 20% move speed inc). lasts 2 sec.
  • SCK has its AoE size increased and damage changed to nature.
  • Roll now teleports 15 yards instantly and leaves behind tiger lighting that slows targets that pass through it. Roll recharges 300% faster (due to the short duration of this buff it would at best let you use 3 empowered rolls within the cooldown).

• Remove the damage AND healing component of Touch of Karma - now it no longer needs a target - Change the name to Chi Barrier - have the healing and damage component as a PvP talent option. Change the mechanic to shield you for a base of 20% hp up to 70% hp based on how much chi you spent in the last 5 seconds before the cast and the 5 seconds after the cast, lasts 10 seconds. This enables it to be potentially up to 70% as soon as you cast it, but also you have a chance to increase its potency after you cast it. 8 chi consumed for max potency. I like the idea of the visual aesthetic of this spell becoming more overt/opaque as the potency of the spell increases. Like a white sphere around the Monk with chi symbol and at 20% it is just visible, at 70% it is clear and obvious.

• Implement 3 new talents on the 100 row.

  • Increases primary target damage from WDP by 30%
  • WAB now also decreases your cooldowns by 20% for the duration.
  • Adds a chance for you to proc “invoke Xuen” the same way “Fury of Xuen” does. Each time you cast FoF you have a chance to activate invoke Xuen based on the stacks you have. Each time you spend Chi, you build stacks. Each chi spent could provide 2 stacks. Stacking to 100, each stack is a 2.5% chance. This invoke Xuen lasts 8 seconds. Essentially 20 seconds of constant building and spending, ignoring procs, would net a 50% chance to proc invoke xuen on FoF cast. Note: to feel good the tiger lightning benefit should apply to the FoF that procs it.

• Implement new talents on the 90 row.

  • Add ‘Pre-Prepared Brew’ for WAB, making it significantly more usable at the start of fights. This passive would provide 1 stack of WAB every 3 seconds while out of combat. Up to 8 stacks.
  • Change rushing jade wind (RJW) to be a toggleable passive (or at least allow the duration to be extended by combat) which works like the Diablo Monk’s sweeping wind. It gains charges which improve its damage and radius for a short duration when you critical strike, maybe 8 seconds. Stacking 4 times.
  • As we have modified the Xuen cooldown to be something interactive that impacts our abilities instead of a summon, we can now leave this talent as a summon xuen for those that like a pet, this would just occur at the same time as when you invoke Xuen. (Would need to scale properly).

• Implement new talents on the 75 row.

  • Inner strength - changes to a “distance moved” buff that provides additional charges of damage reduction based on distance moved. 2% DR per charge, 1 charge every 5 yards moved for 4 seconds, stacks 5 times. Perhaps instead it works off your combo strikes like WAB does, gaining stacks based on how many combo strikes in a row you have hit. OR you could have this tied to your WAB charges, the more stacks you have the more damage you mitigate, making you decide between damage and damage mitigation. For example, per stack of WAB you get 0.75% damage mitigation. Max of 20 stacks so max of 15%, although you would almost never have this because you want to be able to do damage. OR this could be attached to the Chi Barrier defensive, allowing you to place this ability on a friendly target, this uses the Monk’s HP, not the friendly target.
  • Diffuse magic is fine, maybe make the ability taper down for 10 seconds from 100% to 0% magic damage mitigation, this adds another layer of timing to its usage.
  • Dampen harm is fine, but maybe adjust its damage reduction scaling to be pre-fort brew mitigation so that Monks can stack these abilities for some serious damage reduction.

• Implement new talents on the 60 row.

  • Tiger tail sweep, reduces the cooldown of leg sweep by 0.4 seconds for each chi spent.
  • Remove good Karma and replace it with a buff to the windwalking activatable mentioned above - increasing the passive move speed bonus aura in both potency and range (maybe 10% additional move speed and 5 yards more range). Also apply an immunity to snares, immobilisations and root effects for 3 seconds when activated.
  • Keep Ring of peace, build in mechanic that causes double tapping the ability to place the ring around the monk.

• Implement new talents on the 30 row.

  • Combine celerity and chi torpedo, 3 charges, 20 yard distance, shortened CD, remove movement speed bonus.
  • New talent called “momentum” that improves movement speed based on distance travelled, such as every 10 yards travelled in 2 seconds you get a 5% movement speed bonus, stacking 10 times, lasts 4 seconds.
  • Change tiger’s lust talent to always apply on you, even if cast on another, shorten sprint duration to 4 seconds.

• Implement new talents on the 15 row.

  • Chi Burst to be modified so that we can cast while moving. Make this cast longer but reactivatable to do more damage the longer it’s cast. Max of 3 seconds. Chi gained could be static or scaling based on charge time.
  • Chi wave to be modified so that it does more damage per bounce, rewarding maximum bounces.
  • Eye of the tiger to be modified to apply on FoF ticks or at least allow the application onto multiple targets. Weaken the effect if need be.

• Fix the bug where FoF keeps you in combat ages after a fight.

Blizz… if you make these changes I will pay you a 2 year sub right now…

This is just my analysis and my ideas for how to resolve these issues so please take it with a grain of salt.

Looking forward to hearing some of the communities feedback and ideas.