PTR Change
Blizzard put out the PTR for 8.1 and today’s build came with a change for Windwalker:
Good Karma – 100% of the damage redirected by Touch of Karma can now redirect an additional 50% of your maximum health. also heals you.
All other changes are leftover changes from patches in the past, or tooltip updates, not actual changes for Windwalker’s future.
This is what we have been asking for, a reduction in how reliant we are on Touch of Karma, and a return to the way Good Karma was in Legion, allowing us to have quite a large self heal.
For those that didn’t play in Legion, the way Good Karma worked was that as you took damage, you also got healing instantly. So if you took 25% of your health in one shot, you got a heal for 25% of your health at the same time, then that 25% was dished back out to the target over the duration of Touch of Karma.
This will reduce our maximum damage, but should be a welcome change for anyone who felt that Touch of Karma fostered an unhealthy gameplay. Currently, there is no listed buff to offset the damage loss, but this is step one in the process and actual class tuning comes later in the process.
This will mostly shift Touch of Karma back to being an ability that you use as a defensive first, and only offensively if you don’t need to use it defensively. It should feel less mandatory as the difference in using it 100% offensively and 100% defensively should be closer to 3-4% or less rather than 8-10% as it can be currently. Our maximum damage contributions from Touch of Karma will still be slightly higher than in Legion, but nowhere near as high as we’ve seen up to this point.
Although it doesn’t eliminate Touch of Karma as a way to truly maximize your damage, it should lessen the frustration if you can’t get 100% use out of it, or have to switch to another talent, and it should make it easier to get the maximum benefit out of it without having to hunt for damage and put yourself in extra danger as often.
Post Swift Roundhouse Nerf
After the Swift Roundhouse change the other day, I mathed it out that it was a 14% loss of damage overall. However, in my haze of exhaustion and frustration, incorrectly ignored checking how much we would be losing once you considered changing traits to stronger ones and changing talents. This was a shortsighted estimation of the affect that the nerf would have on us, so I need to set the record straight.
At the time, the Mythic Uldir profile simmed for 18,766 DPS in single target and I estimated that it would fall down to 16,484 DPS when still using Swift Roundhouse and Serenity. Once we got the profiles updated the reality isn’t quite that stark. According to Raidbots, using 3x Swift Roundhouse and Serenity, the way that used to be the best, the profile’s DPS is 17,561, compared to the new “best” profile’s DPS of 18,438. This shows that not only were my estimations extreme, but I never compared the old reality to the new reality, going from 18,766 down to 18,438 DPS, which is a loss of barely 2%. Even using the previous “best” profile, the damage loss was closer to 7.5-8%, not the 13.8% that I estimated.
Obviously this is using sims and not real world data, but the real world data from WarcraftLogs does seem to corroborate that reports of Windwalker’s demise were greatly exaggerated. I will, as always, put together a report about how Windwalker performed this week once its over, but the data thats currently available doesn’t show Windwalker falling to much, if at all, in some situations.
So, I do feel the need to apologize to the community for, apparently, creating a bigger stink than was necessary. I have been called a “Blizzard Apologist” for years, but it looks like this time, when I let the fervor and frustration take me, I actually need to apologize.
It appears, at least a few days later, that Blizzard managed to nerf Swift Roundhouse an appropriate amount without crippling the spec. However, the combination of the 55% nerf and us now switching to Whirling Dragon Punch for all content does make Swift Roundhouse drop down very near the bottom of the Azerite trait list. So it was an appropriate amount for using Swift Roundhouse and Serenity, but probably a bit of overkill when using Whirling Dragon Punch, but I guess you couldn’t have one without the other. In this situation I fell to the common mistake of not really seeing the big picture.
Based on the current data, there isn’t really any need for “compensation buffs” as Windwalker is still securely in the average range. Windwalker isn’t toward the top, but its also not toward the bottom. With the change to Good Karma, it should be more straightforward to determine whether or not Windwalker needs any “compensation buffs”.
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So it goes from being 12% of our damage to 6% that is still a huge amount of damage compared to legion’s 2%, I feel like the ability needs a rework with our new health pool.
It was more like 3-5 in Legion where’s now it will be 5-7% or so
The sims for legion have it at 2% with it using it on cd
Babs, is there an updated ability priority link at this point? I’m unsure as to what to do with Fof now. Sims are saying I should be casting it more on ST, but I thought it was garbage for ST now?
The guides are all updated. FoF is our strongest ability, now that SR is gone. What made you think it was garbage
It doesn’t feel as heavy hitting as it used to in Legion. Even with crits, it hits for below my average dps for ST.
Not sure what to tell you, the total cast of FoF is the hardest hitting ability we have.
So are there any buffs to compensate for the loss of dps? I mean it feels like a huge nerf in damage. I was sitting fairly high on damage tables pre nerf now i’m definitely mid range as you said. Feels like a huge fucking Waist of Time ( yes i went there ) to even bother with WW now. I also have not ever used serenity and have always run with WDP.
I answer that in the article
I agree with most of the comments, esp after trying out WDP and opting for ascension – the rotation is fairly smooth and i enjoy it.
I will say though, i feel buffs are needed in PVP due to our now underwhelming burst dmg (taking into account the karma changes) and overall lack of dmg mitagation. We play like a rogue with only 1 stun…
Personally, I’m opposed to the change. While I like the healing we get back, Blizzard could have accomplished this by returning Healing Elixirs to us or buffing Vivify. I find the concept of accounting max value Karma damage into our dps absurd. The way i see it, it shines on some fights more than others, similar to how DoT classes destroy everyone on council fights. I just hope blizz gives us a little something because even though we wouldn’t “need” it, it would be much appreciated.
One of the laziest outs of the situation, but still better than it was.
I just wish we didn’t have to choose between survivability and utility in an utility row. This will have sad balancing consequences in PvP.
9 times out of 10 in PvP we were already taking ring of peace anyway, The consequences for PvP should be minimal. Very rarely on the times when we even took good karma did someone actually burn through the karma damage. Usually it is BoP’d or we are cc’d during the second half anyway. Personally I like it better for PvP now as we only have to take half of the damage to get 100% of our effective health out of it since used at below half it will heal you in the process.
I really dont like this, as it stands we are currently best on st but that is only if we do well with karma, now we will sit at the middle if we do a good karma,it feels so unrewarding, playing ww in bfa. it already feels like a shadow of its former self, and this isnt just about topping the meters, its so damn slow and boring now compared to legion
If you’re comparing it to Antorus, it is slower. But Antorus was the exception, not the rule. Windwalker has almost always been paced this way.
Yeah, as someone who stuck with WW all the way on pretty high level of Mythic raiding in Legion, Antorus was a BIG exception for WW. We were gods of basically everything, except utiltiy in Antorus. Not only in raids but even more so in M+. I’m very happy to no longer have to stand in “bad” to deal optimal dmg, especially since I’m an officer and it feels wierd to tell ppl to not stand in stuff while I do it myself. It was kinda fun on some fights in Uldir (Fetid below 50% for example), but glad its gone.
Would like a buff to our aoe so we shine at M+, and what we were good at since the birth of WW and that was aoe damage. capped SCK hurt us but when DH’s are pressing Eye beam and doing 100k dps I have to ask, was it really so bad to give us uncapped SCK?
I realise that may not happen this expac but then buff RJW to scale better or something ;/
Also wish that fist of the white tiger would feel like SOTW, because currently it just feels like another tiger palm
I personally love the change, So many times I used Karma in fights to get out more damage to only be needing it between Cooldowns. But I do Hope they give a compensation buff to another part of are kit to off set the damage loss from good karma’s changes
You guys got rid of “fofless” rotation (wich was full of desitions when 2/3+ targets), serenity utility and now karma potential. I dont know guys why do you want a so straightforward class and what do you understand by “unhealthy playstyle”. Now we have a retard cleave spam, bugged copies, and the most flexible ability, that required just knowledge of numbers being transformed into useless survival with chip dmg. Tell me what will you use to proq karma dmg now in mythic, without that extra health pool.
I hope there will be announcements with rebalanced ap % or aura twaks, otherwise… Every day closer to rogue reroll.
Not sure what to tell you, you say “you guys”, but none of us made the change as none of us work for Blizzard. We simply provide evidence based feedback and report on the actions that Blizzard take.
I say “you guys” just as a coloquialism. The whole monk community forums, and other people that press so hard in favor of concrete changes at blizz.
Not trying to be offensive, seriously, but lets be real, blizzard will make hotfix based on community level of pression about concrete issues, not based on balance, if blizzard even knows what that means xD
I agree 100% with this, I really can’t stomach these changes ontop of the serenity changes, and it’s why I’m leaving monk for this expansion unless they do something with the class in an upcoming patch.
At the start of BFA we had two diverse play styles with their own unique strengths and weaknesses.
Serenity was stronger in purely single target, or burst situations, and it encouraged a really different philosophy and play style with the class as a whole. It encouraged different stat values, and at times to ignore your mastery in favor of slamming out some really high damage Sun fire kicks.
Whirling dragon punch offered more flexibility, still decently competitive single target, but it destroyed Serenity in cleave heavy fights. You also had some pretty cool tricks you could pull off by breaking knock backs if you lined up a whirling dragon punch properly.
Running Uldir I found myself changing builds almost every boss between the two, and it felt amazing to have a class where I felt like I had the ability to be aware of a situation, and choose what I felt would be strongest to capitalize on the strength of the two different play styles.
Now… I haven’t bothered to change my talents since Round house was broken. Sure, jade winds are better in some situations, but Xuen is still pretty potent and gets the job done.
We lost a whole playstyle, we lost something that gave the class something new, and what did we gain? We’re a worse version of what we were 2 years ago with less interesting toys.
And now Karma.
I can’t speak for most of the monks, but personally, when I think of a Windwalkers stand out features Karma, Storm, earth and fire, and Death are the things that come to mind when I think about the class.
What sold me on playing the monk is karma, even back in MoP Karma was my favorite ability. I LOVED the idea of it, analyzing fights to try and find where I could sneak in lethal damage to get some extra reward. Its a super unique, and fun mechanic to play with.
I’ve looked over the comments, and I’ve never felt less connected with a player base then I do with the other monks in these comments. Hearing things like Karma’s inconvenient, boring, and people whining that they just want to smack the boss like every other spec in the game…. Why? Why are you complaining about having a cool, powerful and unique mechanic that let us look at a fight from a different perspective?
During Taloc, everyone else runs away from Taloc and Afk’s for 5 seconds… Monks throw up karma, and throw themselves under the boss to eat the smash for a massive damage spike. That’s cool! That’s unique and far more interesting then the warrior who’s just waiting for the mechanic to end so he can go back to mashing buttons.
Not only that, but I don’t see the good karma changes as something positive. If their concern was damage, why not just reduce good karma’s damage by 50%, but increase the absorb by 50%? There will never be a world where monks won’t try to use Karma to deal damage, and trying to ever think otherwise is absurd. When min maxing, having something that can deal even 1% of our overall damage will be worth capitalizing on.
I heard people complain about the fact that using Karma offensively left us with only one defensive skill… But I’ll be completely honest if there isn’t a clean way to get the 50% shield off safely without taking a massive hit on top of that (Look at Vek’voz for example, the titan spark is RNG, the most consistent way to pop the shield will remain the shadow circle pops.) We’ll just be using a defensive ON TOP of karma to get the damage out safely.
In the past two weeks we’ve lost a whole play style, we lost the reason to respec and think about the best way to approach fights beyond Wind vs xuen, and now we’re just making one of our most unique and interesting mechanics something less potent, and change from something where you analyze fights to find the best thing to eat a 130k burst into just afking and letting passive damage from most fights widdle it down.
So… Unless there’s a change upcoming soon… I’m going to hang up my fist wrappings, and hit the spell books. Everything I liked about monks is being stripped away to leave us with everything we had 2 years ago.
“I dont know guys why do you want a so straightforward class and what do you understand by “unhealthy playstyle”.
I’d consider purposely failing mechanics and running into things like “Surging Darkness” to get max-dps an unhealthy gameplay. Also don’t make the mistake to think that “Karma” is a “flexible” defensive cooldown, it has never been and will stay that way until the possibility to abuse the damage component is being removed.
Calling something “flexible” sounds good on paper, but in reality everyone actively searches for incoming damage when “Karma” is on cooldown.
The upcoming change on Karma does not – as I already stated – change the unhealthy gameplay at all. You will still go out of your way to soak mechanics, but this time you will not get rewarded as much in return; but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ll still do it. If you would NOT you can remove your enchants or gems on your equipment anyway due to not wanting to min/max your char. No one wants to miss out on ~70k damage every 90 seconds, it’s like a second small “Touch of Death”, even after the nerf.
I think the change alleviates the unhealthy play quite a bit, depending on the fight. There are plenty of fights that will do ~50% of your HP in normal play, but few that would do 100% without you intentionally failing mechanics; this makes sense, since mechanics are normally tuned to not 1-shot people who do not have a heavy defensive CD.
Karma its not flexible when you want to peak 1 in wlogs, it become flexible when you delay it to survive in mythic proggres instead to wreck recounts just by spamming it, wich will not kill any bosses if you die cause you didnt delayed your karma to the survival phase. GG. Learning encounters, learning numbers, getin used to timers, and fit your abilities, and thats unhealthy xd The unhealthy thing here its a lot of ppl feeling that they dont wanna take a desition with that big reward or punish.
It will change the playstile, you cannot take the big shit now with just 50% shield unless you use another cooldown to secure survival, in most of the bosses. And that will force you to keep it in the hand and use it for survival phase, or asking a heal for a personal. gl
Provided that the guild decides they will bring a ww on mythic prog when you can have a havoc that does everything ww can but better, and your monk dmg buff is probably already coming from monk tank/heals in a raid
Thats exactly why you cant nerf a class just beacose fantasy and “unhealthy gameplay” without thinking about competiveness compared to other specs.
Things like competitiveness compared to other specs comes with tuning, which is at the end of the PTR cycle. If necessary, WW will get buffs
Tell that to serenity and single target add burst potential, that was the only reason a ww could be reasonable in prog.
I don’t think your opinion is quite supported by the raid data of the last week. I’m going to write a brief article about that later, but last time I checked, Windwalker was still just fine
Mmh, when its not about to bursting an add, compared to havoc and rog, EVEN a survi, tell me what’s the point of having ww in raid. Being “just good” or “above average” in dps dont make you a competitive class, just a dps fill.
Being “just good” or “above average” means that people who play Windwalker can keep playing Windwalker; that any guild with a Windwalker can keep that Windwalker in raid without concern. A raid won’t be held back by having a Windwalker.
Very few guilds have access to equally geared and skilled players for all the specs so they can just switch when a class isn’t as strong as others. Any guild with a WW, and any WW, should still be able to feel secure.
I completely agree Stormbind. This does absolutely nothing to alleviate the unhealthy playstyle encouragement. Any good monk will still try to incorporate touch of karma into a dps increase, now we just lose the bonus dmg and fall further behind. Anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t trying to compete with the rest of their raid in dps.