Windwalkers, and many specs operate on a priority system, rather than a strict rotation. However, setting up a priority isn’t often a simple matter. There are many kind of priorities depending on what you’re prioritizing. Many specs follow these priorities, without understanding what they are prioritizing or why. There are several kinds of priorities that are common, so I’ll try to explain them using the priorities based on my own character.
Although the exact order may change over time and class changes, the theory behind this article remains true.
Damage Per Second (DPS)
This is the way that most people think about abilities and the damage they do. This is largely because that’s how we look at comparing classes and specs and our performance on a fight. This is found by taking the damage that the ability does and dividing it by how often you can use it.
What it looks like:
- Blackout Kick
- Rising Sun Kick
- Fists of Fury
- Strike of the Windlord
- Spinning Crane Kick
- Touch of Death
- Chi Wave
When you use it:
This priority is used when you’re not pressed for time and trying to fit as much damage into a time frame. This is generally an overall priority list when you don’t need to worry about resources, such as if two abilities are up at the same time and you have the resources for both. However, since Windwalker has abilities without a cooldown (Blackout Kick and Spinning Crane Kick), and super hard hitting abilities with super long cooldowns (Touch of Death), this priority doesn’t really make a ton of sense without some critical thinking or modification.
Damage
This is another popular way that people think abilities are prioritized. Its simply taking the damage that an ability does without any other conditions
What it looks like:
- Touch of Death
- Strike of the Windlord
- Fists of Fury
- Rising Sun Kick
- Blackout Kick
- Spinning Crane Kick
- Chi Wave
When you use it:
This is a way of ranking abilities that is typically used when resources aren’t an issue, but you’re not limited by a time frame like trying to fit the most damage into a single second, proc, or buff.
Damage Per Resources (DPChi)
For Windwalkers, this is the way we’ve been prioritizing our abilities for most of the expansion and the history of Windwalkers so for us, its Damage Per Chi. This is easy to find, just take the damage the ability does and divide it by the Chi it costs. If it costs nothing, then you simply take the damage it does.
What it look like:
- Touch of Death
- Strike of the Windlord
- Fists of Fury (With Katsuos)
- Rising Sun Kick
- Fists of Fury (Without Katsuos)
- Blackout Kick
- Chi Wave
- Spinning Crane Kick
When you use it:
This priority is used when a spec can’t generate enough resources to fill every single GCD of a fight. This has been the case for Windwalkers for the entirety of Legion so far.
Damage Per Execution Time (DPET)
This is a very popular way of prioritizing abilities as it looks at how to best get the most out of every second of the fight.
What it looks like:
- Strike of the Windlord
- Touch of Death
- Rising Sun Kick
- Fists of Fury
- Spinning Crane Kick
- Blackout Kick
- Chi Wave
When you use it:
This is the preferred priority type for times when you’re not worried about resources and are trying to get the most damage into a single second or buff duration. This would be times like during Serenity, or a trinket buff when you have pooled enough resources.
As Windwalkers move closer to being GCD capped with the combination of the t19 2pc and t20 2/4pc, when using Serenity, this way of prioritizing abilities will become more frequently used.
What this means?
Do you have enough resources for the abilities available? Follow DPS priority (With some critical thinking/modification)
Do you want to fit as much damage into every second in a short time frame AND have the resources to do so? Follow DPET priority
Do you not have enough resources for all the abilities present? Follow DPChi priority
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So FoF does less dmg than SotW and costs more, but somehow surpasses the artifact ability in dmg/chi?
Yup, I found the issue. Thanks for pointing it out.
do you think the rotation is going to change drastically with the new RNG being added by the T20 set bonuses or be relatively the same
I think it will be somewhat different, definitely less downtime
Very interesting stuff. I think that’s generally what I do? Only think difference is that I focus a lot on prioritizing by CD. So if RSK has 2 seconds left on its CD and FoF just came off CD I’ll hold FoF for a couple seconds so I don’t risk losing a cast of RSK, since missing a cast of FoF is far less likely. That logic doesn’t really show up on this list of priorities, at least explicitly. Is that the wrong approach?
It likely depends on if you’re going to have enough resources to cast one right after the other or not.
Perhaps I’ll sound silly but I do not understand the DPS priority. How “Blackout Kick” can be on top priority ? With no cooldown and a chi cost of 1 it meens that it will be the only spell to use with tiger palm in the rotation.
I think you have a big issue with your spreadsheet :/
If you are looking at the first DPS list it is based on the abilities cooldown. Just spamming BoK would be the highest dps compared to only using RSK on cooldown and nothing else. If for example we keep using RSK on CD and add BoK during the free GCDs the damage would be greater than either of the other examples and only goes up as we add more abilities.
Thanks for the explanation. it seems I misunderstood, I thought that is was more a cycle than a spell comparison.
There’s no issue with the spreadsheet. Since BoK has no cooldown, then of course it’s going to be on top of a priority list based on cooldowns. However anyone should be able to see that that’s not where you’d use BoK.
Well, then I do not understand the following conclusion in the “What this means?”
=> Do you have enough resources for the abilities available? Follow DPS priority
If ressource is not a problem then your are only limited by GCD and following the DPS priority implies to spam BoK.
The conclusion should be “Follow Damage priority” if you have enough resource in order to optimize your GCD.
Following any priority requires some critical thinking. I don’t think anyone would look at the priority and think that we should ignore all abilities in favor of Blackout Kick.
You don’t follow the damage priority because then you’ll be delaying short cooldown abilities and missing casts of them costing you more damage than you’d gain.
Ok, I didn’t get that the damage priority delays short cooldown abilities. I was confused by your conclusion in the “Damage” part “When you use it” which is little bit contradictory with your general conclusion.
And that’s I am trying to do with BoK. How to use it in this rotation ? For me it is a simple Chi Dump when my energy is high.
That is how you use it. I’ll take some time to look at the article and if I can improve the wording after work today.
Ok ^^ Thank you for your work, time and answers 🙂
So where does Tiger Palm fall on the priority list? Should it be off our bars for 7.2.5?
You can’t generate Chi without Tiger Palm, it doesn’t have a priority because its a generator, not a spender. You use it when you want to generate Chi.
Trolls. Trolls are everywhere in this comment section 😀 (atleast i hope they are just trolling 🙂 )
Nah, more like poor reading comprehension, lack of sleep, and I’ve never seen a priority list that didn’t include both spenders and generators.
And people whose english is not the native language like me ^^
Hi Bab I’m wondering if there is a way to unsubscribe from the peak of serenity? Because for some reasons, after we moved to peak of serenity, I received multiple copys of email notifications about articles posted everytime there was a update, yesterday I received 11 same emails lol
I disagree putting Chi Wave so far down on the DPChi list. It’s going to be better to cast Chi Wave, than a resource-spending spell, as long as it doesn’t cause any resources to be wasted. The exception would be if you have some kind of time-limited damage buff, in which case you should be following something closer to a damage-based list anyway.