This may come as a surprise to some, but not a surprise to all, but I am quite unhappy with the state of Windwalkers right now. While this does primarily focus on performance in Raids, and even more specifically Single Target damage, it does extend into M+ and AOE as well. So, I thought I’d switch it up with using the Scientific Method to come up with some solutions. Lets give it a shot.

 

Observation

My observation is that Windwalker damage is exquisitely poor in single target and a lot worse in AOE than people think it is because Touch of Death hides it.

 

Research

Single Target Damage

This one shouldn’t really need much explaining, but its important to be thorough. Across all DPS and bosses, in Mythic Raids, Windwalker ranks last for Boss Damage looking at the last time I took data on February 27. In Boss Damage Windwalker is 15.9% below the average, with the next lowest being Retribution (who’s getting a massive rework) at 11.93% below average, then Fury Warriors at 8.66% below average when looking at the 75th percentile. When looking at the 95th percentile Windwalker falls to 17.72% below the average in boss damage.

This is certainly heavily dominated by the fact that very few self-respecting raids will let their Windwalker focus on boss damage, just like they’d be crazy to let their Beast Mastery Hunters focus on AOE damage.

Thankfully, we have a fully single target raid fight in the form of Terros. When looking at the current data, Windwalker is 4th from the bottom, and 8.75% below the average at the 75th percentile. At the 95th percentile it is 11.26% below the average and 2nd from the bottom. Only Demonology Warlocks do less damage on Terros at the 95th percentile and they have 2 other specs they could play to do more damage, even if this isn’t “the best” form of that argument.

The top parse, in the last 2 weeks, on Terros without externals is currently Outofmelk from <The Next Step> on Twisting Nether-EU at 102,557 DPS. The top Windwalker parse, in the last 2 weeks, on Terros is currently Frenogmonk from <Myth> on Blackhand-EU at 85,483 DPS. So, my observations for single target are thus:

• The “average” 75th percentile Beast Mastery Hunter does 24.2% more damage than the “average” 75th percentile Windwalker
• The “average” 95th percentile Beast Mastery Hunter does 21.76% more damage than the “average” 95th percentile Windwalker
• The best Beast Mastery Hunter (without externals) does 19.97% more single target damage than the best Windwalker
  • If you include that Beast Mastery Hunters get externals then that number goes up to 26.56% more damage than Windwalkers.

I have long advocated against comparing the best to the worst, but I’m trying to make a point, and I think these numbers make it. If we want to look at my observations about the averages then they look like this:

• The “average” 75th percentile Windwalker is 8.76% below the average for 75th percentile players
• The “average” 95th percentile Windwalker is 11.26% below the average for 95th percentile players
• The best Windwalker is 8.73% below the average for max parses.

 

AOE Damage

This has long been an area that Windwalker has excelled at. However, I have stated many times that right now Windwalker AOE damage is an illusion and that Windwalker is only great at BURST AOE damage. This is why Windwalkers are great at damage in Mythic+ or destroying adds on Broodkeeper or Dathea. However, Windwalker AOE damage, outside of the burst scenarios is actually quite poor.

Thankfully, raid provides for us again with Primal Council. This is the kind of sustained AOE fight that Windwalker used to be designed for and would blow everyone out of the water. Unfortunately that is not the case.

I’ll save some time and skip to the observations:

• The “average” 75th percentile Windwalker is 11.31% below the average for 75th percentile players
  • The “average” 75th percentile Balance Druid does 36.9% more damage than the “average” 75th percentile Windwalker
• The “average” 95th percentile Windwalker is 9.84% below the average for 95th percentile players
  • The “average” 95th percentile Balance Druid does 32.4% more damage than the “average” 95th percentile Windwalker
• The best Windwalker is 8.67% below the average for max parses.
  • The best Balance Druid does 31.7% more damage than the best Windwalker

If you told me that Balance Druids would be best at sustained AOE then I’d believe you, if you told me that Windwalkers would be the 5th worse, I’d laugh in your face.

To tie the above ST damage into the AOE discussion, on Primal Council Beast Mastery Hunters are only 2 spots below Windwalkers at the 75th percentile, at 17.25% below the average. However, if you assume that some Beast Mastery Hunters will play Marksmanship for a fight like Primal Council then they’re #3 from the top at 10.34% above the average.

 

Touch of Death

Mythic+

My last point is that Touch of Death hides Windwalkers being bad at AOE damage because Touch of Death. This is a more difficult situation to show data on, although anyone who has played Windwalker or played around one knows that Touch of Death makes things go BOOM.

The first place to look is in Mythic+. Grabbing the highest completed Nokhud key with a Windwalker in it that was logged; Sayskel’s +23 on March 10. Touch of Death accounted for 7.21% of his damage to trash. This isn’t a crazy number, except that they only cast it 15 times on trash NPCs, which was 1.35% of his total casts. When compared to Fists of Fury, which they casted 41 times (3.69% of total casts), that did a total of 9.06% of his damage once you account for Storm, Earth, and Fire. So, Fists of Fury had 173% more casts but only did 25.7% more damage.

Fists of Fury provides additional benefits that are harder to quantify, but I’ll try (poorly). Looking at that same log, the easiest thing to do is to combine Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick since they buff each other and are the primary damage in sustained AOE. Combining them increases the damage percentage to 41.62%, but also increases the cast percentage to 25.65%. This would mean that Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick required 1800% more casts to do 477% more damage. I could factor in the fact that you don’t Autoattack while channeling these abilities, but that’s just piling on.

 

Raiding

The second place to check for the power of Touch of Death is a fight like Primal Council, which *should* reflect the power of other parts of the kit since there’s only 4 targets, so you won’t get the full value from Fatal Flying Guillotine and you can only use it at the end of the fight. Looking at the top Windwalker log on Primal Council, Batterypunch of <nVus> on Mal’Ganis-US, Touch of Death accounted for 4.9% of total damage but only 1.5% of their total casts. Compare this to Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick that were 43.3% of total damage but 29.5% of total casts and you get that Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick required 1867% more casts to do 784% more damage.

The next place is a fight like Dathea where a Windwalker’s job in life is to blast the adds on a platform better than almost anyone else. For this I’ll use 풍숩풍운’s Dathea kill from March 10, the current top Windwalker overall damage parse. Looking at what Windwalker is assigned to do on that fight, kill adds, Touch of Death was 13.58% of their damage but only 2.3% of their total casts to adds. Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick, on the other hand, were a combined 31.52% of their damage but also 18.02% of their total casts. This means that Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick were cast 683% more times but only did 132% more damage.

The last place to continue to drive this home is Broodkeeper, where Sawkofpad of <Honestly> on Frostmourne-US is the top ranked Windwalker. Looking at damage to adds, where Windwalker shines, Touch of Death is 7.01% of total damage but 1.83% of total casts. Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick, for contrast, were 44.04% of total damage and 21.8% of total casts. To really drive it home, this means that Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick were cast 1091% more times but only did 528% more damage.

 

Additional Notes

I feel that the above numbers adequately show how much of Windwalker’s power is locked behind Touch of Death, but I also think it is worth noting that Touch of Death also has 5 talents that are devoted to it; Fatal Flying Guillotine, Fatal Touch, Forbidden Technique, Meridian Strikes, and Improved Touch of Death. This means that we’re “locked” into many of these talents automatically any time there’s multiple targets to hit.

Lastly, the most important thing to talk about is that anyone who has played Windwalker will have noticed that there is a delay between when Touch of Death *SHOULD* be usable on a target and when it is *ACTUALLY* usable on that target. Sometimes that delay means nothing, other times it means you lose some of the value you could have had, or even the target dies on you and you then have to try a different target and deal with the same delay. Having to press Touch of Death twice within 5 seconds simply doubles the frequency of the problem and puts a time limit on your panic.

 

Hypothesis

The next step in the Scientific Method is to provide a Hypothesis, so here are three options for fixing the above problems.

 

Spec Aura

The 1-minute solution for the above problems is to mess around with the Windwalker Monk spec aura. Long ago these auras were put in place so that things could be easily tweaked. The current aura provides a 10% damage reduction to nearly all of our casted abilities.

 

Revert Pre-Patch Nerfs

Back on October 31, Windwalkers received considerable nerfs across the board that took the power out of many abilities but left the power in Touch of Death. I wrote an article about it, and while I stressed to people not to freak out, it looks like some delayed freaking out is justified.

Reverting these nerfs would increase Windwalker’s damage across the board.

 

Change Touch of Death

This one is really more of something to add onto the above two ideas, and I’m sure everyone has an opinion on how Touch of Death should be changed, but I’m the one with a website, so here’s mine:

• Touch of Death becomes…
  • Empower your strikes with the power of the Sha for 8 seconds. The first enemy within 10 yards whose health falls below your maximum receives 100% of your health in damage.
• Improved Touch of Death becomes…
  • Touch of Death now triggers on the first target to fall below 15% of their maximum health, receiving 35% of your health in damage.
• Forbidden Technique becomes….
  • Touch of Death deals 20% increased damage and can trigger on a second target within 5 seconds of the first.
• Fatal Flying Guillotine becomes…
  • When a target triggers Touch of Death, it also strikes up to 4 nearby targets for 35% of your health.

These ideas don’t take much, or really any, of the power out of Touch of Death, so an additional nerf to being 50% damage if they fall below your maximum health and 10% of your health to targets if they fall below 15% or are nearby would take much of the wind out of its sails.

 

Testing

Testing the above hypotheses is somewhat complicated, but I’ll do my best. Here are the sims I used to determine the effect that each option has on the results of the sims. I chose to sim at 1-Boss target to simulate a single target scenario like Terros, 4-Boss targets to simulate a sustained AOE scenario like Primal Council, and DungeonSlice to simulate a scenario of varied fight compositions.

• Single Target
  • Baseline
  • Aura to 0%
  • Aura to 10%
  • Revert Nerfs
• 4 Targets
  • Baseline
  • Aura to 0%
  • Aura to 10%
  • Revert Nerfs
• DungeonSlice
  • Baseline
  • Aura to 0%
  • Aura to 10%
  • Revert Nerfs

 

Analyze Data

Spec Aura to 0%

Being the “easiest” solution, this one also has the “least” impact. Based on comparing our current sim profile to one where the Windwalker Monk aura is changed from -10% to 0%, this would result in a 7.68% increase in single target damage and roughly 8.5% increase in damage in AOE/Multi-Target. The next step is to look at how this would affect things in the real-world:

 

Terros (Single Target)

An increase of 7.68% would change things like this:

• 75th percentile – 5,149.2 DPS increase, moving from 8.75% below average (22nd) to 0.99% below average (13th)
• 95th percentile – 5,563.3 DPS increase, moving from 11.26% below average (24th) to 3.33% below average  (17th)
• Max – 6,565.2 DPS increase, moving from 8.73% below average (23rd) to 0.97% below average (12th)

 

Primal Council (AOE)

An increase of 8.52% would change things like this:

• 75th percentile – 9,861.3 DPS increase, moving from 11.31% below average (21st) to 2.57% below average (15th)
• 95th percentile – 11,747.4 DPS increase, moving from 9.84% below average (21st) to 1.22% below average (11th)
• Max – 15,027.5 DPS increase, moving from 8.68% below average (20th) to 0.14% below average (12th)

 

Mythic+

An increase of 8.46% for Sayskel’s +23 Nokhud on March 10 would change things like this:

• Overall Damage – 14,194.37 DPS increase from 84,061.20 DPS to 98,255.57 DPS
• Boss Damage – 2,635.21 DPS increase from 15,606.10 DPS to 18,241.31 DPS
• Trash Damage – 11,431.05 DPS increase from 67,696.40 DPS to 79,127.45 DPS

The Overall Damage change wouldn’t be exactly like this since the change’s effects on single target are slightly different than AOE.

 

Touch of Death

Beyond the above increase in damage, because the aura does not effect Touch of Death, it would become roughly 8.52% less of our overall damage as the damage we get from other abilities increases.

 

Spec Aura to 10%

While I’m looking at the numbers that we get from changing the aura to 0%, why not look at the effects that we could get with a bigger increase. Based on comparing our current sim profile to one where the Windwalker Monk aura is changed from -10% to +10%, this would result in a 15.49% increase in single target damage and roughly 17% increase in damage in AOE/Multi-Target. The next step is to look at how this would affect things in the real-world:

 

Terros (Single Target)

An increase of 15.49% would change things like this:

• 75th percentile – 10,385.5 DPS increase, moving from 8.75% below average (22nd) to 5.84% above average (5th)
• 95th percentile – 11,220.8 DPS increase, moving from 11.26% below average (24th) to 3.66% above average  (5th)
• Max – 13,241.5 DPS increase, moving from 8.73% below average (23rd) to 5.86% above average (5th)

 

Primal Council (AOE)

An increase of 17.13% would change things like this:

• 75th percentile – 21,994.36 DPS increase, moving from 11.31% below average (21st) to 4.97% above average (7th)
• 95th percentile – 26,201.11 DPS increase, moving from 9.84% below average (21st) to 6.22% above average (4th)
• Max – 33,516.92 increase, moving from 8.68% below average (20th) to 7.22% above average (7th)

 

Mythic+

An increase of 8.46% for Sayskel’s +23 Nokhud on March 10 would change things like this:

• Overall Damage – 14,194.37 DPS increase from 84,061.20 DPS to 98,255.57 DPS
• Boss Damage – 2,635.21 DPS increase from 15,606.10 DPS to 18,241.31 DPS
• Trash Damage – 11,431.05 DPS increase from 67,696.40 DPS to 79,127.45 DPS

The Overall Damage change wouldn’t be exactly like this since the change’s effects on single target are slightly different than AOE.

 

Touch of Death

Beyond the above increase in damage, because the aura does not effect Touch of Death, it would become roughly 17.13% less of our overall damage as the damage we get from other abilities increases.

 

Revert Nerfs

The nerfs at the end of October were largely justified given how strong Windwalker was during the Pre-Patch, but a lot of that was still because of Touch of Death. Hursti was kind enough to put together some overrides to check the effect that reverting these nerfs would have. They showed that it would be 14.38% more damage in single target and 11.30% in AOE. The next step is to look at how this would affect things in the real-world:

 

Terros (Single Target)

An increase of 14.38% would change things like this:

• 75th percentile – 9,641.3 DPS increase, moving from 8.75% below average (22nd) to 4.92% above average (6th)
• 95th percentile – 10,416.7 DPS increase, moving from 11.26% below average (24th) to 2.73% above average  (5th)
• Max – 12,292.6 DPS increase, moving from 8.73% below average (23rd) to 4.94% above average (9th)

 

Primal Council (AOE)

An increase of 11.30% would change things like this:

• 75th percentile – 14,507.30 DPS increase, moving from 11.31% below average (21st) to -0.01% below average (11th)
• 95th percentile – 17,282.04 DPS increase, moving from 9.84% below average (21st) to 1.31% above average (11th)
• Max – 22,107.49 increase, moving from 8.68% below average (20th) to 2.36% above average (9th)

 

Mythic+

An increase of 8.46% for Sayskel’s +23 Nokhud on March 10 would change things like this:

• Overall Damage – 9,673.98 DPS increase from 84,061.20 DPS to 93,735.18 DPS
• Boss Damage – 1,795.99 DPS increase from 15,606.10 DPS to 17,402.09 DPS
• Trash Damage – 7,790.67 DPS increase from 67,696.40 DPS to 75,487.07 DPS

The Overall Damage change wouldn’t be exactly like this since the change’s effects on single target are slightly different than AOE.

 

Touch of Death

Beyond the above increase in damage, because the aura does not effect Touch of Death, it would become roughly 11.30% less of our overall damage as the damage we get from other abilities increases.

 

Report Conclusions

Much of the data should speak for itself. Changing the Windwalker Monk aura from -10% to 0% would have a solid effect. Even changing it from -10% to 10% would have a huge effect, putting Windwalkers in the top portion for most fight styles, but its probably more than is required.

If there was a sizable change to how much damage Touch of Death did in AOE then changing the aura to +10% would be tempered a bit and is probably the “best” overall option for the continued health of the spec, as many of us still expect scaling to rear its ugly head without help. Increasing the aura to 10% would certainly be that help to fight off the monster of scaling and give us plenty of time before it comes back as a problem.

However, personally I think simply reverting most, or all, of the changes from October 31st is the best choice for the spec as it has a larger effect on single target than it does in AOE, which means that it “requires” a Touch of Death nerf less than changing the aura to +10% since an aura change would effect Spinning Crane Kick, whereas reverting the nerfs would leave Spinning Crane Kick mostly in the position it is now. Since Spinning Crane Kick makes up the majority of our damage in Mythic+, reverting the October 31st nerfs would effect Mythic+ where Touch of Death is more dominant.

Ultimately there are more than these three options when it comes to helping Windwalker, but I hope that I’ve made it clear that Windwalker needs immediate help in single target and sustained AOE.