Its been a quiet for weeks for PeakofSerenity , with not a ton to talk about as we anxiously await information pertaining to the new Battle for Azeroth expansion. In the meantime, Blizzard has announced that 7.3.5 will come out tomorrow, and with it, some changes to many classes. All changes can be found on Wowhead. Here are the changes that pertain to Windwalker:
Monk
Blackout Kick now costs 3 Chi (was 1) when it is learned at level 3. The Chi cost is reduced to 2 with an upgrade at Level 12, and reduced to 1 Chi with another upgrade at Level 22.
- Rising Sun Kick (Rank 1) damage reduced by 41%.
- Rising Sun Kick (Rank 2), learned at level 36, now increases damage by 70.
The most important thing that you need to know is; 
This doesn’t affect current lv110’s at all, it is entirely related to leveling!
Unless you’re leveling a new Windwalker, you won’t notice a difference at all. It will feel weird leveling with less RSK damage and BoK requiring more Chi, but functionally for max level characters, there’s no change. Reducing damage by 41% then increasing it by 70% is effectively a net neutral change.
Upcoming Windwalker nerfs
This is a good time to address the paranoia that many may be experiencing, being concerned that Windwalkers will see some nerfs. Some are even going so far as to believe trade chat rumors about the subject. While it is true, Windwalkers are in a very strong spot right now, that comes from a combination of the spec doing good damage, and many fights in Antorus playing to a Windwalker’s strengths. There is no reason to believe that Blizzard will nerf Windwalkers without making changes to, at least, Affliction Locks. Being that this is the last raid of the expansions, and there aren’t that many Windwalkers, there’s really no reason for Windwalkers to see any changes, nor any other specs. Without being able to say 100%, Windwalkers, and any other specs, should be safe from any changes for a while, maybe for the rest of the expansion.
But in terms of the actual changes they made to windwalker leveling. How does these changes affect new monks? Are these good changes? Does it improve the leveling experience? I know alot of you had some great feedback to what changes should be made to the monk leveling experience.
They’re actually pretty crap changes to the leveling experience. Making BoK cost 3 Chi means you’re going to be spamming Tiger Palm to be able to attack which is completely counter-intuitive when you consider any monk with Hit Combo and/or the mastery is going to have to learn how to play all over again after 77 levels of Tiger Palm spam.
At level 22 BoK already cost 1 chi again, so there is no problem related to Hit Combo. But yeah, it realy screws the mastery. RSK only affects DPS, so there is no big change.
It has been a long time since I leveled an alt from the ground up, but I seem to recall that Mastery does not become available until level 60 (?). All this would mean is that someone leveling as a WW would effectively need to re-learn how to play to maximize combo strikes…
what’s with the change to Serenity, i havn’t seen anything about it in the patch notes, but it functions differently now ? speeding up the cooldowns while its active, clipping the end of it with fists of fury doesn’t reduce it’s cooldown ?
That was changed almost a year ago. The cooldown doesn’t snapshot like it used to as, apparently that was resulting from an unintended bug.
yeah but it was still snapshotting everything that wasn’t strike of the windlord till 7.3.5 wasn’t it ?
No it wasn’t
What happened to the 8 secs of increased damage and free chi spenders Serenity had before the cooldown? I’ve noticed it’s only 1 sec now. 🙁
I’m not sure what you mean.