We got another Beta build tonight, this time with some meaningful changes to Windwalker: https://www.wowhead.com/news=284605/battle-for-azeroth-26707-class-changes-and-azerite-traits
- Flying Serpent Kick Soar forward through the air at high speed for
2 sec.1.50 sec.Serenity Enter an elevated state of mental and physical serenity for912 sec. While in this state, you deal40%20% increased damage and healing, and all Chi consumers are free and cool down 100% more quickly. -
NEW Good Karma Touch of Karma can now redirect an additional 50% of your maximum health. Tier 4 Talent, in place of Summon Black Ox Statue
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Power Strikes Every 15 sec, your next Tiger Palm will generate 1 additional Chi and deal 100% additional damage. Removed
- NEW Spiritual Focus Every 2 Chi you spend reduces the cooldown of Storm, Earth, and Fire by 1.0 sec. Tier 7 Talent, in place of Power Strikes
The changes to Cyclone Strikes, Rising Sun Kick, and Blackout Kick are mainly tooltip and formula changes, not actual changes to their functionality.
So as much as I am sad that I’m losing my favorite talent in Power Strikes, Spiritual Focus is a good replacement since it makes Storm, Earth, and Fire have a similar cooldown to live.. So lets do some quick math. Every minute Energizing Elixir generates 4.8 Chi per minute, Chi Burst generates 2 per minute, with no Haste, you generate 600 energy in a minute, or 24 Chi. This means a total of 30 Chi or so every minute, or an average of 0.5 Chi per second. This translates to 0.25 seconds off SEF every second. With a base 90 second cooldown, that’s roughly 22 seconds off. Figuring the shorter the CD, the less seconds you get off with some diminishing returns, the average cooldown of SEF should be somewhere around 70 seconds, assuming my guesstimation is right. This is equivalent to 4/4 in Split Personality, a pretty strong increase in your average SEF uptime. How it compares to the other talents will be more difficult to figure out.
Good Karma is a huge increase to Touch of Karma’s abilities as a defensive, but also as an offensive. It should double its offensive benefit, making it the only talent on that tier of talents that provides an offensive benefit. Suffice it to say that unless you really need Ring of Peace or some extra range on Leg Sweep, this will become the default talent.
Serenity gained some uptime, but lost some damage increase. Similar to the addition of Spiritual Focus, this change is hard to determine exactly how big/small it is with the basic math skills and limited time I had this evening. From a purely mathematical look at it, 33% more uptime but 50% less damage should be a 33% net loss overall. However, because this could mean that you can get another cast of Fists of Fury or Rising Sun Kick into the buff, it may be a net gain when all is figured out.
Many of the answers to the questions surrounding these changes will come out over the next few weeks as we prepare for the expansion. Right now there are still some bugs on Beta that make things difficult, or impossible to test, so time will need to tell. Many of us who normally do the legwork to figure this stuff out are also delaying the harder stuff like optimal Serenity usage due to exact situations like this one where something was changed that invalidates most of what was done before.
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Hey Babs,
Thanks for all the amazing info / analytics that you post. It’s super helpful.
I was really wanting to know whether the reduction on FSK from 2 seconds to 1.5 reduces the max distance travelled as well. The tooltip doesn’t clearly outline whether they will speed us up to clear the same distance in a shorter period of time, or whether the speed will remain and its essential a 25% nerf on the max distance we can travel.
It’s a nerf to the max distance you can travel
As much as I’m perfectly fine with the change, I do wish they’d change how roll and fsk behaved so they didn’t behave so drastically differently depending on how much latency you have.
That said I suppose I will miss my 2x/3x/4x rolls and fsk out in the world if they did do that. /shrug
I’m surprised how much this bugs me. Where did this even come from? As charges go, FSK is challenging, given that it can’t be targeted, gets hung up on everything, etc.; in exchange for that challenge is the fact that it’s got some nice length … which is now being nerfed? Again, why? What weird dev math turned up that FSK was a half-second too over-powered? It’s been very rewarding to learn to plant a nice FSK through obstacles and at the feet of a target, and it makes my monk feel unique more than almost anything else I do with the character. But combined with all the BoA mobility options I’ve been seeing, even this little nerf could take this off taskbars.
I am so torn! I want to main a hunter or WW. I feel at least with hunt mark or bm will be competitive on meters and do lots of dmg. If I do WW and their dps starts off sub par im stuck! I wouldn’t want to heal or tank. Its the same when I went ret and they were poo no one wanted em for 5mans lol. WW just so fun right now tho!
There is definitely something to be said about having multiple dps specs for more options to be strong. For me, WW has been fun enough to keep me playing even when it wasn’t the strongest.
I would rather stick with 3 dps spec class if you don’t care about healing and tanking. It’s a sureproof option.
Thanks! To you both! That was my thoughts..I played DH, Ret both ended up not doing to well at times haha so lead to me to hunter/ww life. I think hunter will be safest play
This is garbage, fsk needed a nerf really?! And u made good karma like welp good luck ever seeing any other talent there, WHEN STILL HIT COMBO AND XUEN ON SAME LINE and xuen looks so cool
I can not imagine them leaving “Good Karma” the way it is in this row. It is just not their style to have such a strong defensive talent in a row with two CC/utility talents.
I think they are still experimenting a bit and I would imagine talents to switch around or change a bit again in the near future.
They’ve been playing around a fair bit with giving specs a choice on more utility or more defensive power, or more mobility. For example, Destruction Lock currently has two talent rows in the BFA beta where you can opt in for more/empowered CC, more mobility, or just a straight up buff to your survival.
The only thing that is making Good Karma the purely OP choice here is that they have made Leg Sweep baseline, and because the AoE stun won’t always be a constant need, Good Karma can take its place to increase your defensive power.
Other than that, the only other place it would fit is in the level 75 row, which currently is in a good place because it gives you a choice between an emergency magic or emergency damage reduction cooldon, or a sustained flat DR which would be more useful on a fight like Varimathras where this is constant but low damage going out.
Based on your math of Energizing Elixir generating 4.8 Chi a minute and using a GCD. Fist of the White Tiger gives 6 Chi at the loss of not giving extra energy, though it saves 20 energy per minute but it also does damage while helping keep the flow of the Combo Strikes.
I use Energizing Elixir on Live and i really dont have any issues with it, but that GCD on beta really makes it feel awful. Plus you want to use it with as low energy and less than 1 chi, otherwise you Energy cap or Chi Cap.
You can jump over here and see some dps test I did to see where Spiritual Focus was vs WDP. It came up sort with all sorts of combo of talents I tried with it.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmjDvTYYeLEGmBzvOJIrXamP9OVyp4a2u
Windwalker to me really feels like its missing another Combo Point Spender. I find myself using SCK in certain situations where Tiger Palm will make me lose a Chi, All my other spells are on CD, which leaves using SCK to keep up the Hit Combo.
For the most part WW is playing a lot better than most specs in BFA atm, but I think the play style could be a little more engaging. We’re basically a game of cooldowns.
Our only RNG is an 8% chance for combo breaker procs, which most the time only goes off when you need to dump chi. It would be nice if they made Combo Breaker more meaningful or at the very least not break Combo Strike/Hit Combo while doing X% dmg more.
Tiger Palm originally was a 1 Chi spender to give armor penetration, it would be nice if Jab returned as the Chi Generator for us and Tiger Palm was a 1 Chi spender that gave us haste, you know cause energy regen feels pretty slow in beta at 120.