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.