WW PvP in Shadowlands

Monks have been ignored by Blizzard on beta to a ridiculous degree. PvP is also an afterthought on beta as usual. Monk players and PvPers alike are used to this treatment. I doubt anyone will read this, but as someone who has PvPed on a WW since MoP I feel like I should at least try to contribute before the expansion launches. I think at this point we’re all just doing what we can so we can at least feel like we tried.

Fists of Fury stun was removed during pruning and Blizzard justified it by saying a lot of classes would be losing control / CC. This was paired with the Paralysis nerf. It really made WWs feel like mongo melee that fly around spam dmg, instead of a spec that could get a good CC/stun setup. But everyone was suffering from pruning so it made more sense that WWs were no exception.

Now, in Shadowlands beta, many classes are being ‘unpruned’ (except us it seems). Restoration druids with feral affinity are getting maim. Combined with bash and rake stun…they will have as many stuns (and can stun as frequently) as sub rogues. Meanwhile, monk Leg Sweep is still an extremely long CD and FoF only slows. A healer spec has far more stuns than WWs. How is no one mad about this? They also have other CC returned like Cyclone and vortex. So, if Blizzard changed their mind about pruning and CC, why are monks not seeing a return of FoF stun or a reduced CD on leg sweep?

I know people will immediately say that WWs are good in PvP right now without fist stun. They absolutely are. And that they will be getting a reduction on Paralysis CD, which is a great start. However, they don’t currently FEEL that great to play. They are successful in PvP because they’re very difficult to kill (versatility stacking, reverse harm, mobility etc) and they do a lot of DPS. They’re still damage bots. And if the fact that leg sweep is AoE makes you think it should be a long CD, then I’m perfectly fine with changing it to affect 1 target, as long as we can set up on someone more often than once per minute.

SeF images bug out (as they do in PvE too) or are easily abused/countered with no alternative playstyle. For example, mages can just frost nova every SeF and Dragon’s Breath the FoF, effectively stopping all damage. Pets you cannot control are bad in PvE but they’re even worse in PvP. Blizzard was too lazy to fix a bug that allowed people to gain extra damage from WDP by cancelling images…so they made images something you cannot cancel. When your images get rooted/bug out you’re actually losing a lot of damage by having pressed your damage ability.

On beta you also cannot cancel roll. That just makes us feel more clunky and awkward in PvP. No one likes falling off a ledge because you cannot stop a movement ability. There really doesn’t seem to be a good reason to remove the cancel function at all. It just reduces skill.

So Blizzard, where is our ‘unpruning’? We’re missing honor talents, have a far too long CD on our one stun and are forced to use bugged out SeF as our damage CD. I know at this point it’s too late to rework us back to the MoP style (such as having TeB as a dmg CD) or any big changes that should have been considered in Shadowlands alpha. But can we at least get something to address the plethora of issues that have plagued monks for multiple expansions?

To make matters worse, I think the few changes we did get are in the wrong direction. For example, making Xuen (another pet!) baseline instead of WDP. Or our BiS covenant ability being one that summons even more pets (not unlike SeF) that we cannot easily control.

Being a WW main is exhausting.

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Unfortunately blizzard doesn’t care about this.

That’s pve not pvp.

It’s actually both. People have been experimenting with other covenants but Fallen Order seems far ahead of all the other options.

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I am going to say this once, pve cares about max dps potential, pvp cares about kill windows and how it will go down.
Hence why there have been times serenity was used over wdp in pvp.

Serenity is extremely nerfed in PvP, so it is no longer used. It doesn’t provide kill windows because it’s lackluster. Which is why every WW plays SeF despite the bugs and other issues - it’s simply more dmg.

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whelp this conversation isn’t going to go anywhere if you aren’t even going to fully read

What are you even on about? Serenity used to be used in PvE too. You’re not really adding anything to this discussion anyway because you’re saying random statements that have nothing to do with current PvP or shadowlands beta PvP.

I am adding that you talking about the best pve covenant doesn’t do anything for pvp.

The emperor lego is going to be the best ST lego and it will be utterly useless in pvp.

I also mentioned wdp and serenity as an example because in legion pve still used wdp for most of it, but serenity was still taken for pvp a lot of times.

I’m not basing it on PvE sims or testing, but rather on PvP testing in beta arenas. There can be mechanics that make a certain covenant really good in PvP but not PvE. However, it seems that Fallen Order is best for both because its dmg is far superior to other options. WWs can burst someone down in seconds on beta but the class mechanics are just bad and need to be addressed. That’s the whole point of my post.

No where am I saying that PvE abilities/talents are the same as PvP ones. There are monk problems that extend to every type of content (such as the many SeF bugs) and some that apply only to PvP.

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are they susceptible to cc? If so worst choice.
It’s why if you fight a frost mage you have to use serenity unless you are just intimately familiar with a frost.

What bug in pvp?

No one takes serenity in PvP, ever, under any circumstances. Yes, even against frost mages. If you don’t believe me you can watch the WWs in AWC tourney against Warlock / Frost mage and look at their talent set up. Serenity is just awful.

In regards to SeF bugs, they are documented all over these forums. It’s worse in PvP because it can cost you the game. They don’t behave, and sometimes just fly off and do their own thing no matter how much you ‘fixate’ your target. Sometimes they stop attacking for no reason or bug out after being CCed for a short time. Not to mention how frustrating it is to want to trinket offensively on your go, only to see your images are going to stay in CC no matter what and they cannot be cancelled. How is this good class design?

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Dude you really need to learn to fully read.

I didnt say sef bugs I said in pvp, I am well aware of all the bugs with sef, just nothing specific in pvp.

Never seen this happen once so far in pvp

Where did I say it was good design, you are protecting and inferring things I didn’t say.

I’m not the one who isn’t reading. You seem to think none of the bugs apply in PvP or something. You’re not really providing suggestions or any useful comments on my original post. I’ll be replying to other people if anyone else wants to chime in on this topic, as our discussion is not really going to go anywhere.

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I didn’t say that, I said focusing a target isn’t an issue. Them doing their own thing is if they lost target which can happen often, as well as there was a point you could taunt them not sure if that is still a problem.
The only cc that stops them doing dmg is ring of frost and roots if the target is far enough away.

I don’t care what you think, you just want a back patting circle and I am here to play devil’s advocate that while no where near as fun or enjoyable as 5.2 monk, it’s not weak by any means.

Okay. Then this conversation is over. You don’t need to keep replying to me on every thread.

tbh i always take sef and dont have an issue. also venthyr w current dmg tuning will absolutely always be taken because for that 20ish seconds you are a beast, and since new clones come out every 6s or so you can’t just keep ccing them

Yeah, SeF is definitely the only option. It’s just a poorly designed DPS CD for PvP. I personally have an issue with monks being just a class that summons pet (tiger, images, and now the Venthyr monks). It’s just not fun.

Not replying to you on every thread, you happened to comment in a thread I was already in so I commented on that.
Then you made a new thread basically asking to be commented at.

Don’t need to be a rude jerk either, but still you do.

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sef is amazing against melee cleaves, and you have to be smarter against wizards.

why do you dislike sef? i think taking it off the gcd was a mistake, because now you’ll have to be careful if you like to fof right out of sef, but other than that, i dig it for pvp.

I dislike it because the images cannot be cancelled or controlled easily. The same bugs that happen in PvE also happen in PvP which can be really costly. Also the images sit any CC (including roots and AoE fear/stuns) even if the monk gets out. I just feel like if I wanted to play a pet class I would have not chosen a WW monk.