Part 1: Stats | Part 2: Abilities | Part 3: Talents | Part 4: Artifacts and Miscellaneous
Class Development Post: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20759151255#1
Part 4: Artifacts and Miscellanous
Artifact Trait Carryovers
As I previously mentioned in the Abilities Wishlist, I believe Gale Burst should be combined with, or made the main mechanic of, Touch of Death. It encourages CD stacking as well as provides further scaling and benefit to other stats rather than being a rarity of specs that have DPS scaling from Stamina. Thunderfist should also become baseline, as a way to increase single target DPS through AOE, or combined with Mark of the Crane as a way to tag more targets quicker with a well aimed Strike of the Windlord.
The next aspect of Artifacts that I believe should be carried over is Inner Peace. The increase cap on energy allows for more pooling and set up time for damage, which further rewards forethought and skill. DPS-wise, an increase to an energy cap doesn’t provide much DPS, but it does give you flexibility and more time to set up.
Tornado Kicks should be kept just for the double backflip visual.
Transfer the Power and Crosswinds can be kept as well, as a way to increase Fists of Fury damage, but I’d put these pretty far down on my priority list as they rarely merited any thought or change in playstyle, so I’d prefer any of my other suggestions over these.
Good Karma and Healing Winds provide good survivability boosts and foster creative use of their respective abilities.
Miscellaneous
I had several fun ideas for this section, but lost them when I closed the wrong tab so I’m left with a suggestion so obvious, that it should have been put in place back in Mists of Pandaria:
All Monks should receive a 5% boost to their DPS, HPS, and survivability, simply for being Pandaren. Pandarens where the original Monks, so those Pandaren trained in the Art of the Monk have been practicing for significantly longer than those of other races that were merely taught by the Pandaren a few years ago. One thing that’s clear and consistent in many Martial Arts media, is that it takes years and years of practice and study to perfect the combat styles. Pandaren are the only races that have been studying long enough to maximize their training. It would be consistent with the study of Marital Arts, for Pandaren to receive a boost to their abilities as a Monk, as many of them have been training since a very young age. Obviously I’m also open to lore-based bonuses for other classes as well, but I feel that no Race-Class combo is so obvious and grounded in canon, as Pandaren Monks.
If any of the other ideas I had come back to me, I’ll be sure to update this page.
TL:DR
- Bring over the majority of Windwalker Artifact Traits, specially Gale Burst, Thunderfist, Good Karma, and Healing Winds
- Increase energy maximum to offset loss of Inner Peace
- Lore-backed 5% boost to all Monk abilities if the character is Pandaren.
I hope you enjoyed my lengthy wishlist and the reasoning behind it. If you happen to be a representative from Blizzard then feel free to use as many of my ideas as possible, I hope that I explained the well enough so they can be seriously considered as ways to improve a class that doesn’t need much.
If you like the content that I, and the others at PeakofSerenity provide, then please support us through Patreon and PayPal. If you have any questions you can ask in Discord.
You can also check me out on Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch, where I stream all my raids as well as article writing and more.
I disagree completely with your concept of a Pandaren-only % increase. From a class-fantasy perspective, that would be interesting, but for game-balance, it would be a huge mistake. I think that there could be different things put in to place that give Pandaren monks the credit for being the originals, without punishing players for a aesthetics or racial bonuses. Asking for more imbalance around this seems to punish an already low played class.
You seem to have taken what was obviously a joke, way too seriously.
Isn’t that also true of pandas in general?
I pandarens are so good as monks why am I, an undead, the grandmaster?
They probably feel that giving away that title to anyone will help boost their confidence so that they fight better against the Legion.
We should clearly get a boost in output for the actual Tauren race and also the new race, this will attract a lot of monies to Blizzard plus you know much strenght you need to do such amazing kicks with a body of a Tauren?! Too impressive for me to no be rewarded, pandas are fat.
I️ think that’s valid, but if you watch a lot of martial arts movies, the best guys are almost never these hulking behemoths, they’re small, thin, and agile. However, since Pandaren invented the ways of the Monk, clearly their style would be built around being fat pandas, so not suitable for huge muscley Cows or thin frail elves.
I like the ideas you provided. I have always been a fan of windwalker and I always like to see the community being so passionate about the spec although it is considered bad and made fun of by so many people. I saw a great comment on the battle net forums was an idea that as your targets gets weaker, he reveals more and more weak points which could be implemented in our kit some way. For example, adding a stacking dot when using our abilities or something along those lines. I also feel like Xuen should be made a baseline ability that would have a talent buffing it in some way. I was always a fan of the idea of becoming one with Xuen and improving abilities and attacks to deal lightning damage to the main target and maybe also splash around for some cleave damage (I really liked the combo of FoF and the cloak effect we had in pandaria).
What do you guys think?
I’m not a numbers guy so I don’t know how this would all work from that standpoint, this is just something I’ve been thinking about. I think they should remove SCK and return SEF back to what it was in MOP, but make it toggle with no duration. Have it be our AOE, cause a monk would typically multi-form to fight multiple enemies, not just one.
Make TOD our dps cd, and have our 100 talents augment it. Gale Burst to increase its damage, Serenity to make it remove chi cost (adjust damage %’s as needed for them) and Death Art reduce it’s cd by like..50%. If adjusted right GB can be the “burst shield down” talent, Serenity the normal ST/AOE DPS talent, and Death Art the “nuke add” talent.
Remove Effuse(it’s useless) make Healing Elixirs baseline, and put Good Karma in that spot.
Make WDP baseline(if we don’t keep SotWL).
they could make the gold traits talents. gale burst well for burst dmg, crosswinds for AoE, and tornado kicks for a flat dmg increase, BUT this time make the talents balanced and not have 1 single talent in the row so op that the other talents do not matter
also, i would total love the pandaren RP buff
Great article, very thorough and in line with what I am hoping for for the spec in BfA. Any idea if you or other Peak members will do similar articles for for Brewmaster and Mistweaver by the way? As a new Monk main (I’ve had him since 2014 but he was promoted to main only recently, late Legion) this kind of stuff is extremely useful for familiarizing myself with the details of the class and the eb and flow of its development history.
PS. As a Forsaken Monk I was *almost* triggered hard by your Pandaren / 5% suggestion… Then I realized it had to be a joke 😛 Well played.
I️ believe ones for other specs are in the works, but there’s plenty of time, so no ones really in a rush. I️ just had a lot of time this weekend
not sure if we could get away with the racial, the food buff racial is already too good compared to some of the other’s. I would be happy if we could just use a staff with all attacks as windwalker again, my idea of a monk is more the battle friar 🙂
Hear hear! I really miss my dragon-bladed polearm.
These suggestions are great as always. It’s a shame this kind of attention is rarely given to any spec by the devs however, especially now Legion class changes having finished. I would very much settle with hit combo being redesigned and for them to make a decision on Serenity Vs. SEF. Tbh, after 6-piece, I miss Serenity when I’m not using it. But I was the same before when I’d been using WDP forever. I liked the idea above about having both and using SEF purely as an AoE dps cooldown or toggle. However, number one on my priority list is implementing some of your suggested changes to fix our poor scaling.
P.S hoorah for having crossed swords on our backs again!
The thing I’d like to see changed is Fist of Fury getting a mechanic overhaul (can’t think of any decent versions of it atm). FoF has always been the one thing i despised about WW monk, you have a nice and fast paced playstyle aaand you sit there channeling FoF for 3-4 seconds. which imo doesnt fit with the monk playstyle. but hey thats just me and that ability is the one thing i dont like about monks xD
I still don’t get how people even play panderen. Not to mention monk theme is essentially pandaren theme where death knights have their own thing going for them same as dhs are not all about being elves. I’d blame pandarens for people not being interested in playing a monk since it’s a joke compared to games like D3 where monk is balls and muscles of steel same as any yt video with monks in real life. It’s like adding a tortollans to the game and making warriors all about being a turtle while having chargé and leaps.
Like a true yin with your yang it is all about the complaints and less about the suggestions. I suggest you go back to your brainless warrior and leave the rest of us in (inner) peace.