New PTR build rolled out with some changes that affect Windwalkers:
- Rushing Jade Wind Summons a whirling tornado around you, causing [(9) * (10% of Attack power)] damage over 6 sec to enemies within 8 yards.
Specializations changed from Brewmaster to Brewmaster/Windwalker -
Spinning Crane Kick Spin while kicking in the air, dealing [4 * (10% of Attack power) * ((Attack power + Offhand attack power) * 2 / 3) / Attack power] Physical damage over 1.50 sec to enemies within 8 yds. Spinning Crane Kick’s damage is increased by 10% for each unique target you’ve struck in the last 15 sec with Tiger Palm, Blackout Kick, or Rising Sun Kick or Rushing Jade Wind. -
Touch of Death Inflict mortal damage on an enemy, causing the target to take damage equal to
50%35% of your maximum health after 8 sec, reduced against players.
During the 8 sec duration, 10% of all other damage you deal to the target will be added to the final damage dealt. -
Touch of Karma
All damage you take is redirectedAbsorbs all damage taken for 10 sec, up to 50% of your maximum health, and redirects 75% of that amount to the enemy target as Nature damage over 6 sec.Damage cannot exceed 50% of your maximum health. Lasts 10 sec.
What this means…
Rushing Jade Wind is interesting. It will certainly increase the APM of our AOE rotation, but it does change the cost from 18 energy for 6 seconds to 25 energy, so its likely that a damage buff will be required for it to be reasonable. It is an interesting change that we’ll need some time with to really figure out how its going to work and whether its good or bad.
Spinning Crane Kick change doesn’t really change anything, as stacks are so low its easy to do it yourself, and current RJW doesn’t tag for you anyway.
Touch of Death change will be a direct nerf to our burst and opener, there’s not much to say about this. Hopefully, its not a further PvE nerf that hurts PvP even more, but thats unclear.
Touch of Karma change is probably the biggest, when combined with the change to Good Karma. If Karma was maxing out at 15% of your damage currently, the change to Good Karma would reduce that to 7.5%, and this change would reduce it to 5.625%. This will further lessen the gap between using it fully offensively and fully defensively, which should be a good thing.
Windwalker Monk is actually a buff, as going from -27% to -23% is actually a 5.47% damage buff. Its possible, but not guaranteed, that we’ll need more to stay competitive with all the other changes being mainly nerfs. By moving our damage out of Karma and Touch of Death, this does help to increase the effectiveness of other abilities.
This is just another step in the long process that is PTR, so things are certainly not final.
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So overall another nerf? Without the ToD burst how are we even capable of doing any decent damage?
Nice! I was frigging exstatic seeing this. So at last our bust is gonna be dreduced (sadly) but our overall damage will be increased. That’s a step in the right direction, definitely !
I feel like this 5% boost will not be enough to compensate for damage losses from karma and ToD. And ‘skill ceiling’ will be lower cause you don’t need to know encounter good enough to utilize karma fully. Not what I was hoping for :C
I did some quick dirty math on one of my recent heroic fights (Fetid Devourer) and with all the reductions to both touches and general increase to ability damage, for that specific flight it ended up being a change of about 3% less dps. But I would say it’s a bit more than that overall as my karma was only 8%of my damage that fight instead of the usual 15%.
My math was not prefect either so I will need to see the changes first hand and let the sim do their work but it should not be too too bad .. I hope!
I think 3% is probably realistic. I did some dirty math of my own based on optimal output and it’s a bit over a 5% damage loss with an assumed good karma talent.
However this is less if you Ring instead because now we get 75% of our HP pool in damage baseline (up from 50%). This means that ring will be a solid pick up for Mythic + content.
I wouldn’t mind some diversity in my talent choices. Would be nice to bring ring into a mythic +for the blood pool without gimping my ability to kill a boss.
We don’t get 75% of your HP pool in damage baseline.. Touch of Karma will absorb 50% of our HP and 75% of the absorbed damage will be redirected to the enemy. So it’s a huge nerf. Touch of Karma is going to do like 37.5% of our HP pool and Good Karma won’t affect that.
Which means we are going from 100% of our HP pool down to 37.5% of our HP pool as damage.
because now we get 75% of our HP pool in damage baseline (up from 50%)
That’s not how the nerf works. Touch of Karma is going to redirect 75% of the damage it absorbs. 75% of 50% HP is 37.5% HP so our damage from Touch of Karma is going down to 37.5% from 100% in 8.1
Apologies Adam, you are correct. I initially read it as up 75% of your maximum HP is redirected. Thanks for the pick up… although now it makes me much more depressed…
In terms of mythic+ the more i think of the change to RJW the less i like it. Right now you can use RJW just before the pull of a pack and you are able to go on with your AOE-rotation. Now you have to use it all over again and therefore get GCDs. I feel like it slows the playstyle a lot not only because of the GCD, but because RJW gets converted from an “Energy to AOE” ability to an “Energy to Chi to AOE” ability.
I don’t think Blizzard fully knows what or how it wants WW monk to play. Which would be fine, if at least WE had some leeway in determining how to play it.
This whole “energy to chi to damage” is by itself a redundant concept, because pressing one magic button that grants 2 chi isn’t exciting gameplay at all. It would be, if there would be some way to make it different. But there isn’t.
Aside from mastering the rotation which we can, by this point, do pretty much blindfolded, there are less and less moments which we have to prepare for, and more and more irrelevant chi management gets added into the mix.
With these changes, we will be doing “flat X damage throughout the fight”, with slight bumps for SEF and Xuen. Would be fine, if we had one more DPS spec like shamans, but alas, we don’t.
The more I think of it, I think the option to pool Chi to, say, 10, and adding another non-cooldown-dependant single-target ability would be the way to go.
What if we got rid of energy entirely. Tiger palm remains as an energy less filler that grants 1 chi, blackout kick no longer costs chi and the proc has a chance for it to grant an additional chi when used. The sunrise kick would still cost 2,but fists of fury would expend all remaining chi and deal increased damage for each chi spent. Damage and Cooldowns would need to be adjusted a little too compensate for all this
Alas, we can’t, because we have non-rotational abilities that cost energy. Perhaps if they’d revert to mana. Otherwise an interesting idea. What we really need tho is Strike of the Windlord back. That was the perfect ability that’s now missing – a really hard hitting AoE or ST Ability with a decent cooldown. We desperately need a strong damage ability in our rotation.
If I am going, to be honest I don’t understand what they want WW to be with theses changes. Can someone explain how, 5% increase in every other ability makes up for a massive decrease of damage in are CD.
Even if the maths works out to being an overall buff. It’s kinda robbing us of any identity of the spec.
So I suppose at this point come 8.1 ditch all that vers gear you worked so hard to acquire in favor of crit/mastery?
Not at all, Vers will still be the strongest stat
Are you sure? If there was no ToK/ToD vers falls behind crit/mast. I would guess that removing half of their damage and adding 5% to our other abilities should make them a lot closer. My gut feeling is vers at least comes closer in value to crit/mastery and agi gets a little kick from this.
There will still be ToK and ToD, and even without them, Vers is strong. Vers will be slightly weaker, but still the strongest by quite a large margin
We might be worse overall but I’m happy about the ToD nerf. It felt wrong to me that a huge proportion of our damage was deposited into what were essentially two burst abilities that had little to nothing to do with whether you knew your rotation (but then again they were good indicators of encounter experience and timing). I don’t know how WW played before BfA, but not emphasizing our other core abilities felt very “un-monk” to me, more especially so after the SR nerf (which might have been slower overall, but I liked how noticeable RSK was to use).
We are worse overall. Exceptional play is rewarded by mediocre DPS. Mediocre play results in abysmal DPS. Our main secondary stat (vers) just shows how poorly the class is designed with no synergy with other mechanics.
We’re currently 14th on the dps rankings across all bosses but sure let’s nerf it more nobody plays WW monk anyways. Thanks blizzard, very cool!
After two expansions … This is the first time feeling like I may become an anchor for my raid and should reroll … 🙁
It really shouldn’t be a problem in the long run, as long as Blizzard balances correctly as they’ve generally done in the past.
And yet they are all still jealous of our matrix rubbing abilities for g’huun!
Err, running. Thanks phone
Hi Babylonius. Thank you for your updates like always. There are few ptr changes up for ww monk. Changing again overall dmg and buffing Fists of Fury. I though mybe there would be more information on this site but there is nothing to find. Are you going to write anthing about the few last changes about ptr ww?
regards
Taolai – Blackmoore
The last PTR changes were so small and straightforward that I was waiting for there to be a few stacked up to write about. I felt that none of the changes really required explanation as they were pretty simple and easily understood.
And they reverted them now anyway, so… hoping for some future goodness for 8.1 *fingers crossed*
It feels like demon hunters are better monks right now, like why bring a monk when u can just bring DH
The physical debuff is one good reason to bring a Monk.
They wont even bother to take you for the physical dmg buff coz most of the high end guild take Brewmaster and they get the buff from it. Like me in my guild i am benched most of the time coz DH are doing much much better why take WW with low dps when other classes out perform you easily.
I agree they would probably bring a Brewmaster, so then there is a reason to bring a Monk, which you said there wasn’t. There’s just not a compelling reason to being a Windwalker.
I’ve been top dps of my guild literally every fight by a mile except zul where a DH of the same ilvl did more, current WW dps potential is great, BM and MW are just too good for anyone to consider WW besides their carry on G’Huun.
Why there is no feedback about ww monks in terms of pvp? We are so bad at pvp at this point but i only read about pve problems.
Almost all changes in the last 2 months were about PvP… minimal changes to the PvE side of things.