WW monk scaling is terrible and will always be bad as long as mastery and crit are so weakly tuned or useless. There has been a ton of things done to improve haste value so that it now is a higher priority than vers but that is far from what is actually need.
Some quick information for people that dont know. Versatility as a stat is the EXACT same for every class in the game particularly dps classes. It scales the same amount of damage a the exact same rate as everyone else. So in a way versatility is THE BAR. To tell if a class scales well or not compared to another class we can simply examine the value of haste/mastery/crit compared to THE BAR or versatility. Essentially any class that has versatility as one of its best stats has TERRIBLE SCALING.
For example feral druid, has massive crit and haste scaling so both of those stats are more valuable than versatility. On top of that the PERCENTAGE of mastery they get per point of mastery is also more valuable than the flat % increase from versatility. This is why feral druid despite all its flaws scales to a massive power house every xpac.
Now look at WW Monk. Every xpac its amazing for dungeons on first tier. Then every item level increase it lags further and further behindā¦ Why? Because until the haste changes vers was its best stat. Better than every other secondary!!! That means any class with a SINGLE stat better than versatility will out scale WW monk and most classes in this game have EVERY secondary stat as more valuable than vers.
TLDR: Improve the scaling of WW monks mastery at a bare minimum. If you could make crit slightly more valuable that would be great also. Classes that stat vers outside of PVP and are dps classes are terrible. No dps class in PVE should have vers as king. Somehwere along the lines you messed up if thats the case.
Your information is somewhat outdated.
You are correct that Haste scaling is MUCH better than it was before and that Vers is still strong. However, thereās a good chance that once the dust settles on sims that Crit will be ahead of Vers or that theyāll be close enough that it will depend on what gear you have as to which is more valuable to get more of.
They did increase the scaling of Mastery going into TWW by increasing how much Mastery we get from rating, so that will help. The āproblemā with Mastery for WW is the same as the problem for many other specs, that it doesnāt affect all of our damage. It doesnāt effect things like Auto-Attacks, which got indirectly buffed in TWW, any external sources, or things like Touch of Karma. From a contribution standpoint, I believe Mastery affects the least % of our damage, but thatās been the same for a long time. Something has to be ālastā and by a small margin it seems that is Mastery right now.
Windwalker scaling should be night and day from DF to TWW given the buffs to Haste and Mastery, with Crit/Vers/Mastery all likely being in consideration for 2nd best stat as the expansion goes on. Haste may even fall out of the top spot after a certain amount since we are limited in how much we can spend, but thatās a problem for the bigger brains and further into the expansion.
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This. WW is in a much better spot than it was before scaling wise.
Sims are out. Haste actually does have scaling which is great to see. However as ALREADY stated and ignored, crit and mastery scale worse than vers which makes WW the worst scaling class in the game but a large margin. Is the scaling better than the last 3 xpacs due to haste? Yes. But going from absolutely terrible scaling to just terrible scaling should not be the target. Enjoy being strong T1 and falling into obscurity T2-4 again this xpac outside of PVPā¦
What are you talking about? What data are you using to show that WW still scales worse than any other class/spec?
As far as Iām aware, Iām the only person whoās done a deep dive into comparing stat scaling across all specs, and I havenāt done it in a few years. Plus, it takes a TON of work to do correctly enough to draw conclusions like youāre drawing, so Iād love to see the data youāre using.
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As ALREADY statedā¦ vers scales the same for everyoneā¦ so if you compare how the other 3 secondaries scale compared to vers you compare across specs. This is well known that any class where vers is a best stat for dps is a poor scaling class. Which is why windwalker has started the last 4 expansions really strong and then gets left in the pve dust because the huge amount of secondary stats does little for wind walker where as every other class at least gets decent scaling. This is also absolutely not a new issue for WW so Iād this confuses you, you either donāt PVE or idk where you have been the last 8 years.
And as far as how do we come upon this info itās in sims and in every guide on the internet. Also most pve WW content creators bring it up from time to time. Yall so used to this you donāt even know anymore how rough it is.
I write at least three of those guides and I donāt remember dooming about scaling anywhere in them.
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Then you may be the reason WW monk has been a season 1 and done spec since Legion.
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I think youre confusing guide writer with class designer.
Regardless, if you can share your data that shows Windwalker will still be the worst scaling spec then we can certainly move onto ways to improve that.
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If I could link the most recent sim I would. As I have already stated, versatility scaling is the same for every class in the game. 10% vers is 10% damage increase no questions asked or debate. So you can use Versatility as the ābarā by which you compare classes. To then evaluate scaling we look at the top 2 scaling stats, even though soft caps where implemented so many classes scale well beyond the soft caps based on stat weights that they might as well not even exist. You can then check every dps classes stat weights and compare haste/crit/mastery weights versus the baseline versatility stat weight. If you compare these across classes WW monk has been the worst scaling class by an actually significant margin since Legion. This xpac things were improved and now haste has actual normal value for WW. The issue is that every other class in the game right now has haste crit and or mastery all weighted higher than vers except for maybe ele shaman. By virtue of some common sense and ability to critically think we can then look at WW monk and see that crit is barely worse than vers and mastery is weighted a decent bit lower than vers currently. Which means half of our secondary stats donāt even scale better than the ābaselineāā¦ This is not rocket science and idk how this is hard to understand. Just look through other class guides and see how versatility compares across classes if you can be bothered to review sims.
Of course things like stat weight shift with gear but in general it will follow the priority. If we are talking scaling in general we must deal in generalities.
It is true in one sense that versatility scales the same for all classes. When you look at versatility, all classes gain the same % increase per point of versatility.
It is not true that versatility scales the same for all classes equally though. This is because classes have different abilities that benefit from the other stats with different results. WW tends to rate versatility because we have many damage sources that does not benefit from all secondaries.
While you are generally correct the fact that other secondary donāt interact well with many aspects of WW monks kit further provide evidence that scaling could be improved. IMO mastery needs to scale at a higher percent or it needs to also affect things like trinkets etc. to make crit a better scaler you could add crit damage to some talents or the wind walker spec somehow? Or you could add some new effect that when your auto attacks crit your body pulses with chi dealing small aoe damage around you. Just making crap up but most other classes have systems that compound their scaling like ele shaman get 50% more crit damage so crit becomes very valuable and they scale with it hard. Monk has improved on the haste front but IN MY OPININ we can do better.
Ahhā¦ stat weights. I didnāt want to assume thatās what you were looking at, but I guess I should have known better.
Stat weights are a snapshot, not a prescriptive prognosis. Itās why I didnāt use simple stat weights to compare scaling when I did the research years ago. Youāre drawing massive conclusions from severely limited and narrow data.
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I like where windwalker is currently.
There are a couple of things you guys need to realize.
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We donāt have to be top dps in every fight, every dungeon, etc to be good. In fact I prefer not to be top because what ends up happening is the top always gets hit with the nerf bat then you get people complaining that monk used to feel so good until blank nerf happened.
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I do fairly well across all content as a monk. And for once I feel like there is a rotation that really feels smooth and polished. Our movement abilities feel so fluid as we move around the field of battle.
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We have, as players, got to stop basing everything off what the 1% of players can do with said class and start focusing more on what the middle 50% - 70% of players can do. Theory crafting is great, but I think the way Babalonious looks at it is the base values which is smart. And this is where it gets tricky nothing in the game is prefect. When I sim what dps I should be doing I always feel like a butt because I am always lower than what it says. Some times itās very minimal sometimes itās drastic. I also donāt understand on wow logs how in normal I get all purples with some golds then I go into heroic and get mostly blues with some purples. Even though I havenāt changed anything. Could have something to do with learning the heoric fights
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Iāve read peak of serenity and I appreciate the effort people put into it, Iāve watched videos how to play a monk, I constantly read the monk discord but am not an active voice because honestly I donāt like how they respond to questions, most the time itās like I know you came here to get an answer, but go here and find the answer on your own. But at the end of the day I have learned some things I didnāt know by reading others comments and statements.
In closing the truth is monk is in a great spot right now across the board, heck even in dragon flight we were okay.
Another thing I want to add is you donāt ever say what your specific goal is. For me my goal is to always hit 3k io on three toons every season. In order to do that my toon has to run like all 12s with a couple of 13-14s put into the mix. If your goal is to get the title then maybe your points are valid but anytime I have tried to push that high what I found is people complain more about your lack of hard cc being used, your lack of interrupts, first and foremost then you dps gets focused on.
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As others have stated, youāve essentially just made a DF post.
WW scaling is solid now.
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This is why I love the forums. You can find a guy lacking total self awareness and talking down to the grandaddy of WW theorycrafting as if heās just some uninformed rando lol.
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Reminds me of when some dude lobbied against Babs writing the guide cause he played feral in s2 last expansion XD
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My main concern for WW is we still suffer from lack of competitive talent options. This is especially true for ST fights. WW has barely changed since BFA, which was a small change from Legion. I think I might be headed towards quitting WoW again (would be my shortest return) or biting the bullet and changing class.