So the first PTR posting for 8.3 was released today, and it comes with some long awaited buffs.
Rising Sun Kick
Kick upwards, dealing [(115%143.8% of Attack power) * ((Attack power + Offhand attack power) * 2 / 3) / Attack power] Physical damage, and reducing the effectiveness of healing on the target for 10 sec- Blackout Kick
Kick with a blast of Chi energy, dealing [(77%84.7% of Attack power) * ((Attack power + Offhand attack power) * 2 / 3) / Attack power] Physical damage.
Reduces the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick and Fists of Fury by 1.0 sec when used.
This amounts to a 25% increase to Rising Sun Kick and 10% to Blackout Kick which is an area that Windwalker has sorely struggled with. This has two effects:
First, the change in the balance of power means that we’ll no longer be considering dropping Rising Sun Kick from our rotation regardless of your Azerite traits and essences. It puts Rising Sun Kick safely back into the “use on cooldown” category. There shouldn’t be very much shifting in anything else about the spec, we’ll still look at the same traits and essences, stats, etc.
Secondly, obviously its a DPS increase. Using the current base Windwalker profile and some overrides, the single target DPS goes up from 44,847 in 8.2.5 to 46,518 in 8.3 for an increase of about 3.7%. This is obviously less than what many of us were hoping. Looking at this past week’s data for the raid, Windwalker is currently securely in the bottom spot for Melee at 7.48% below average on Overall Damage and 6.92% on boss damage. If you apply a simple increase of 3.7% to Boss Damage, it moves Windwalkers above Ret and up to 3.72% below the average on Boss Damage. The change would be even smaller in Overall Damage where single target is less impactful.
So really, based on the current numbers and data, instead of Windwalker being currently the last or 2nd to last DPS on Boss Damage, it would be the 5th or 6th lowest DPS on Boss Damage. I guess something is better than nothing. Historically we undervalue the change a bit more than tends to bear out in the logs, but we’d have to be REEEEEAAAAAALLLLLLYYYYY undervaluing this buff for it to be adequate to get Windwalkers any reasonable distance from the average.
As a general caveat, this is only the first changes that were announced and there could be many more left, but based on what we’ve got so far, its getting better, but still not going to be good; maybe moving Windwalker’s Boss Damage in raids from “hilariously awful” to just “laughably awful”.
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I guess there will also be the issue that we are going to lose ToD damage from replacing cyclotronic blast when the next tier of trinkets are available
There is also new essences, new trinkets, higher scaling of azerite gear and all that. We will have to wait until we get more of it on the PTR to see how the further scalling is gonna impact the charts.
Yup
thank goodness we’re finally getting some buffs. i fear it may be too little too late. but i reserve judgement until the next raid’s logs are up.
disappointing though, i would still like to see touch of death and touch of karma tied down to a DPS stat instead of max health. these 2 skills have proven to be problematic right now (azshara fight), and will prove problematic in the future if left unchanged. imagine a fight where everyone’s DPS stats got cut, and windwalkers are going to be over the top because of how these skills are currently formulated.
It wont really do much since we have the worst scaling in the game and we will fall behind again at the end of the tier.
Windwalker actually doesn’t have the worst scaling in the game, that dubious honor goes to Frost mages if you look at real-world data, and Outlaw rogues if you look at sim data. However, Windwalker is certainly toward the bottom of both in 2nd or 3rd place.
Tbh i’m still waiting for a Serenity build. I would like the comeback of a serious DPS CD, since tod is too much hp based and xuen is viable only for burst st or cleave…
Don’t really see why all the windwalkers out there feels so left out. I have been performing better than other classes that are 10 ilvls higher than me in heroic eternal palace. We have great utillity, great damage if you utilize your kit. Windwalker is just a bit more complicated than other classes, that doesnt mean that we can’t perform well if we utilize our kit.
For the majority of raiding, mainly mythic raiders of all shapes and kinds, Windwalker has almost no useful utility that isn’t already covered by MW or BrM, and across the board, on average, bottom of the charts DPS. It’s great that you’re having success, but that’s been the exception, not the rule, this expansion for WW.