Intro & Disclaimer

This week, we got out first look at the class and spec changes that are in the first iteration of the Alpha client for the next expansion, Midnight. This includes many new, removed, and changed talents in the Monk tree, the Windwalker tree, and both Hero Talent trees. As I try to do, I got the opinions of many of the Veterans in Discord for their takes on these changes.

As with any Alpha/Beta/PTR, these are subject to change several times before they go live.

Here are some important links for more information:

Changes

Hero Talents

Conduit of the Celestials
- Windwalker
  - Celestial Conduit now overrides Xuen, the White Tiger when Xuen is cast.
Shado-Pan
- New Talent: Shadow Over the Battlefield – Flurry Strikes deal Shadow damage to all enemies within 6 yards.
- New Talent: Stand Ready – Activating Weapons of Order instantly grants 10 stacks of Flurry Strikes that trigger at 70% effectiveness.
- New Talent: Weapons of the Wall – Flurry charge generation is increased by 50% and Flurry Strikes activates every 150 energy spent during Weapons of Order.
- Windwalker
  - Wisdom of the Wall has been redesigned – Now causes Weapons of Order to summon a Shado-Pan veteran for its duration. The Shado-Pan Veteran’s damage is increased by 2% per stack of Flurry Strikes you’ve consumed since your last Weapons of Order cast.
  - Against All Odds has been redesigned – Now grants 5% Agility.
  - Flurry Strikes now triggers after casting Fists of Fury and Keg Smash.

Class Talents

New Mistweaver Talent: Jade Infusion – Thunder Focus Tea summons a Jade Serpent Statue at your location. Choice node with Jade Serpent Statue.
Save Them All has been redesigned – Now increases your healing by up to 10% based on your target’s health. Lower health allies are healed for more.
Diffuse Magic has been redesigned – Now causes activating Fortifying Brew to transfer all currently active harmful magical effects on you back to their original caster if possible.
Soothing Mist healing increased by 50%.
Vivacious Vivification no longer increases the healing of Vivify and now functions with Sheilun’s Gift.
Replaced Rising Sun Kick with Stagger for Brewmaster only.
The following talents have been removed:
- Chi Burst (removed for Mistweaver and Windwalker only)
- Clash

Developer’s Note

Windwalker Monk’s Midnight updates primarily focus on removing conditional modifiers and making sure the base damage of spells feels impactful. Critical strikes will be the main way their damage changes values and otherwise each spell will remain largely consistent between in and out of cooldowns. Our goal is that this will reduce the rotational overhead and allow more focus on procs, resource management, and Mastery: Combo Strikes to drive gameplay.

Spec Talents

Apex Talents: Tigereye Brew
- While in combat, you gain Tigereye Brew every 8 seconds, causing your critical strike chance to be increased by 2% during your next Weapons of Order, stacking up to 20 times. Generates quickly up to 10 stacks while out of combat.
- Your critical strike damage is increased by 8/15%.
- You have a chance equal to your critical strike to increase the damage of your current Fists of Fury by 15% each time it deals damage.
New Talent: Airborne Rhythm – Slicing Winds now generates 2 Chi when cast.
New Talent: Hurricane’s Vault – Slicing Winds now costs 2 Chi to cast, but its damage is increased by 100%.
New Talent: Sharp Reflexes – Blackout Kick reduces the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick and Fists of Fury by 1 second. No longer a passive ability.
New Talent: Crashing Fists – The duration of Fists of Fury is increased by 1 second.
New Talent: Combo Breaker – You have a 8% chance when you Tiger Palm to cause your next Blackout Kick to cost no Chi within 15 seconds. No longer a passive ability.
New Talent: Weapons of Order – Chi costs are reduced by 1, and Blackout Kick reduces the cooldown of affected abilities by an additional 1 second. Activating Weapons of Order resets the remaining cooldown on Rising Sun Kick and grants 2 Chi.
New Talent: Harmonic Combo – Fists of Fury’s Chi cost is reduced by 1, but its damage is reduced by 10%.
New Talent: Skyfire Heel – Rising Sun Kick’s critical strike chance is increased by 4% for each nearby enemy, up to 5 enemies. 10% of Rising Sun Kick’s damage splashes onto nearby enemies. Damage is reduced beyond 5 targets.
New Talent: Cyclone’s Drift – You gain 10% more Haste from all sources.
New Talent: Echo Technique – Casting Strike of the Windlord and Whirling Dragon Punch grants Blackout Kick!.
New Talent: Obsidian Spiral – During Weapons of Order, Blackout Kick generates 1 Chi.
New Talent: Stormspirit Strikes – Casting Rising Sun Kick summons a Storm Spirit to focus a secondary target for 20 seconds, which will mimic your Blackout Kicks, Tiger palms, and Rising Sun Kicks that do not also strike the target for 15% of normal damage.
New Talent: Rushing Wind Kick – After consuming Blackout Kick!, Rising Sun Kick has a 40% chance to become Rushing Wind Kick.
Dual Threat has been redesigned – Now has a 30% chance to kick your target and damage increased by 300%, but no longer increases damage by 5% for 5 seconds when activated.
Drinking Horn Cover has been redesigned – Now increases the duration of Weapons of Order by 5 seconds.
Spiritual Focus has been redesigned – Now decreases the cooldown of Weapons of Order by 20 seconds.
Xuen’s Battlegear has been redesigned – Now increases the critical strike rate of Rising Sun Kick by 20% and decreases the cooldown of Fists of Fury by 4 seconds when Rising Sun Kick critically strikes.
Meridian Strikes has been redesigned – Now decreases the cooldown of Touch of Death by 45 seconds and increases Touch of Death’s damage by 15%.
Spinning Crane Kick damage increased 80%.
Fists of Fury damage increased 30%.
Rising Sun Kick damage increased 30%.
Touch of the Tiger now increases the damage of Tiger Palm by 15% (was 40%).
Crane Vortex now increases the damage of Spinning Crane Kick by 15% (was 30%).
Dance of Chi-Ji no longer increases the damage of Spinning Crane Kick.
Jadefire Fists now triggers after every Fists of Fury cast.
Thunderfist, Revolving Whirl, Rushing Jade Wind, and Knowledge of the Broken Temple now triggers from both Whirling Dragon Punch and Strike of the Windlord.
Communion of Wind now reduces the cooldown of Strike of the Windlord and Whirling Dragon Punch by 5 seconds and increases their damage by 20%.
Whirling Dragon Punch cooldown is now 35 seconds and no longer scales with Haste.
Dance of Chi-Ji no longer increases the damage of Spinning Crane Kick.
Memory of the Monastery no longer increases Haste and instead increases the damage of Tiger Palm.
Mastery: Combo Strikes now displays a tracking buff after each cast that displays your previously cast spell.
Strike of the Windlord is now on a choice node with Whirling Dragon Punch.
Ferociousness and Hardened Soles are now 2-point talents.
Flurry of Xuen is no longer on a choice node with Hit Combo.
Combat Assistant’s rotation has been updated.
The following talents have been removed:
- Acclamation
- Courageous Impulse
- Fury of Xuen
- Gale Force
- Invoker’s Delight
- Jadefire Stomp
- Jadefire Harmony
- Last Emperor’s Capacitor
- Martial Mixture
- Ordered Elements
- Storm, Earth, and Fire
- Transfer the Power

First Impressions

Spreadsheet

Because of the enormous amount of changes, I won’t go through every Vet’s opinion of every change. If you would like to see people’s opinions on specific changes then check out the Midnight Alpha Talents: Vet Opinion Spreadsheet, more Vets may be adding more thoughts over time.

Polls

In addition to the spreadsheet, I asked the community and the Vets to add their opinions to a poll in Discord. At the time of writing this, the Vet poll has 17 responses and the Community poll has over 600. It is also worth noting that at the moment, very very very few people have access to actually play on the Alpha. I currently do not, but I expect that I will within a week or two.

The results look like this:

All Negative
- Vets – 0%
- Community – 5%
More negative than positive
- Vets – 24%
- Community – 24%
About equal positive and negative
- Vets – 47%
- Community – 27%
More positive than negative
- Vets – 29% (including myself)
- Community – 42%
All Positive
- Vets – 0%
- Community – 3%

Looking at the responses, it first jumps out to me that the same % of people responded “More negative than positive”. The second thing that jumps out is that the Vets, even with only 17 responses, fit a very nice pseudo-bell curve, and the community fit a very nice right-skewed curve.

The really notable thing is that the people who feel its “More negative than positive” is the minority, which is a good thing. Clearly the community feels more strongly that the changes are “More positive than negative”, at 42% compared to the Vet’s 29%. There are a plethora of reasons for this to be easily explained; the Vets fill a more specific subsection of the community, most have been around for a long time, many have experience theorycrafting what these changes may mean. There’s nothing that inherently makes the opinions of the Vets “better” or “more informed” than the opinions of the Community, but it is important that both are represented.

Overall Vet Opinions

As I mentioned above, if you’d like to see people’s opinions on each separate thing, then check out the Midnight Alpha Talents: Vet Opinion Spreadsheet. I’m putting the “overall” opinions of the Vets, just to make it easier to see the bigger opinion that people have. The “Veterans” are players who have been active in Discord for a long time, helping with guides, helping answer questions, and helping to Theorycraft. Many, but not all, of them play Windwalker at a very high level and have been for a very long time. I’ll try to update this, at least for a few days, as more opinions are added.

Babylonius – More positive than negative

I am, overall very happy with the changes. I think there are a lot of great changes, a bunch of good changes, a few bad changes, and one or two real bad changes, but the trend is largely in the positive direction.

When Storm, Earth, and Fire was changed going into Legion, I was disappointed for losing the unique function of the spell, but thought that it was an overall positive improvement for the health of the spec. A lot of people disagreed and while time has clearly proven me correct, their opinion had merit.

I’m hoping that the changes and the things that got pruned do end up helping Windwalker more than messing it up, but I won’t be able to say for sure until I can actually test it, and those will just be my opinions that are frequently in the minority.

Mickey – More negative than positive

Pretty mixed overall. There’s some good changes, mostly just cleanup, not a lot of fun new tools or ideas, and a lot of worrying or negative changes. We usually don’t see as much iteration as we’d like during the course of alpha, but this feels like a super early sketch of 12.0 WW, and I really hope it gets the changes it needs and heeds this feedback. I’ll need to test on alpha to really get a feel for it, but from what we can read alone, I’m worried for the future of the spec. Also, I’m reminded of doing this same process for TWW alpha and noting how many random little damage amps we gained, so it’s funny to see them all cleaned up one expansion later.

Weapons of Order is generally OK sounding but sounds limp with no damage amp, and it could really use a rebrand as something more fitting fantasy wise, like Serenity.

Tigereye Brew is a pretty unexciting and disappointing “Apex Talent”.

Slicing Winds is way too controversial to become such a core part of the spec (mandatory for Conduit especially). Please reconsider this, and at best, remove it.

CJL talents going away is super disappointing, especially when vestigial forms of Jadefire Fists are barely clinging to life in their place. Swap these, keep CJL and remove JFF.

Shado-Pan rework is mostly good, except for the new pet (please no) and Weapons of the Wall being confusing in its direction. Maybe just placeholder for now?

WDP/SotWL choice node is a mega feels bad that feels like a step too far in simplifying the spec.

A mixed bag, though mostly positive, in terms of smaller talent changes throughout. Nothing too exciting added, a couple sad losses, and some bizarre placement that I’m sure will change throughout alpha (why are the BoK! related talents split into the far left and far right of the tree?). Worried about talent point taxing throughout the tree (2 point nodes, former baseline passives becoming talents) building up as well.

Esu – About equal positive and negative

Let’s start with the positives:

Replacing SEF with a less frustrating WoO

Removal of procs that unintentionally promote bad gameplay e.g TTP

Talents that interact with Critical Strike to make it more desirable in general

Now, onto the negatives:

Loss of some talents with skill expression like LEC/PottK

the continued presence of summons beyond xuen. i.e SP’s capstone talent & Stormspirit Strikes

Does WDP/SotWL really have to be a choice node 🙁

Loss of ID makes Xuen look more lackluster

Neutral/Mixed Opinion

at a glance, BoK looks extremely weak with the loss of CI. Might not be a bad thing if it means our chi spenders with a cd have more impact.

Doubling down on the presence of Slicing Winds, especially as Conduit. This needs to be changed somehow so it’s not overly tied to mobility (or empowering for that matter)

depending on tuning/duration WoO may have a problem where it’s still not as impactful relative to other class CDs. TEB shouldn’t make this as bad but we’ll see.

Overall:

I’m ambivalent about the current outlook of WW. Hopefully alpha/beta feedback & iterations will see some improvements to what -i- think is not looking good, especially the presence of summons and Xuen as a CD

Sappo – About equal positive and negative

It’s a good start, but it’s only a start. For their stated intent of pruning meaningless procs, they sure added a bunch of seemingly meaningless procs of low value. Right now it feels uncomfortably much like BFA’s design schema with the azerite armor effects – Lots of Little Things that had limited meaningful interactions and generally felt like sprinkles on an utlimately very plain ice cream cone. They’ve been responsive to player feedback, so I have reasonable hope they will take our feedback in as appropriate. In that spirit, I have one true bit of feedback I can’t not make; PUT EMPCAP BACK. PLEASE. GIV LIGHTNING.

Kholer – About equal positive and negative

Very mixed. There are lots of good changes (sef removal, some great new talents), some extremely potent ones (hello harmonic combo) and some stuff that definetely needs to be fixed but they didn’t find the time (rushing wind kick). Overall, I’d say we are leaning towards a clear enhancement shaman way of two distinctive builds which I like as a concept. That said, there is alot of work to be done to actually make the two builds work. Please remove unnecessary abilities like slicing winds and reintroduce the cjl talents. There is also not enough for the spec to talent into meaningful aoe damage – the rsk talents are laughable for this.

Right now this is definetely undercooked but our opinion of it will change alot with further fixes. If this goes live as is though, then nobody will play this spec.

Also we are now the squishiest spec aside from boomkin and NEED alot of defensive help if we are to see any play in mythic +. For raiding too as of now this will become a major problem.

Hursti – About equal positive and negative

A lot of changes, some good, some bad, some ugly. Quite interested to specific interactions (like RWK/SH and XBG) and how the resourcemanagement will play out. I was more hyped when they announced the initial changes for TWW alpha but ill stay positive that the changes will be good.

Some weird shit is done by the devs like removing sef due to its problems but putting in new pets that may have the same issues or clinging onto ETL tho

And whoever had the “great” idea of removing empcap and pottk is now on my list.

Sieryoku – About equal positive and negative

Despite my usual relentless optimism and the undeniable fact that there are some very nice changes, I’m still leaning towards an overall negative first impression. The design direction of removing any kind of individual ability amps is not just pruning, it’s hacking off a limb. They’re limiting their own ability to be creative to an insane degree when talents can’t really affect the damage of abilities that much, and it *really, really* shows with this tree. Most of the special effects end up being constantly, passively active, direct damage procs, or just make abilities cost no Chi. There’s less interaction between core abilities than ever before, and that’s one thing that we’ve universally, constantly asked for.

I’m incredibly worried about the lack of value from our burst windows, with WoO offering chi cost reduction *only*, TEB giving a mediocre amount of crit, and Xuen being reduced to an 8% damage amp. This may be the flattest damage profile we’ve had in 10 years, and I am really not here for it.

Similarly, I struggle to see what the AoE rotation is supposed to be in this build. Without Dance, without any aoe-specific effects from our cooldowns still, and without any particularly juicy looking aoe talent, I worry that our talent scaling will also be worse than ever.

This tree needs a lot longer in the oven, and the likelihood of being relegated to the bottom of the priority list again makes me all the more scared.

Foe – More positive than negative

Overall, I’m feeling relatively optimistic about the Midnight Windwalker Monk talent tree. A lot of what I’m seeing points toward meaningful improvement in the spec’s overall playability and flow, but there are still a handful of design choices that feel questionable or frustrating from a gameplay perspective. The big win here is the streamlining of cooldowns — removing unnecessary cognitive load and button sequencing is a massive step in the right direction. Windwalker has always struggled with too many overlapping CDs and the mental gymnastics of timing them all perfectly, so this change alone makes the spec feel healthier and less overwhelming.

That said, I still have some major concerns. Slicing Winds being tied to Flying Serpent Kick continues to be an issue; I just can’t get behind an ability that forces damage to be linked with movement. It feels awkward, and unless they separate them, it’s going to remain a sore spot. Similarly, I’m still not a fan of Fists of Fury being an uninterruptible channel. It’s outdated, clunky, and goes directly against the high-mobility fantasy of the spec. I’ll never understand why we’d choose to make it longer. On the flip side, anything that reduces dependence on Whirling Dragon Punch or abilities that root you in place is an immediate win for me.

I do appreciate that the new design seems to encourage haste more than before. That’s been a problem stat for Windwalker for years, so seeing talents that make haste feel rewarding — and even synergize with buffs like Power Infusion and Bloodlust — is a great sign. There’s also a clear focus on smoothing out resource flow and giving more consistent damage patterns, which should make the spec easier to tune and more fun to play.

Weapons of Order returning is a huge personal highlight — it’s my favorite cooldown the spec has ever had, and I’m thrilled it’s making a comeback. The AoE side of the tree also looks much stronger, with better Rising Sun Kick synergy and more deliberate design around cleave and rotational pacing. Still, I wish there were fewer passive “tuning” talents and more impactful, active decisions that change how the spec feels.

In short, I think the Midnight Windwalker direction is promising. It looks smoother, faster, and more cohesive than the current iteration, but a few outdated mechanics and questionable design linkages still hold it back. If those are addressed, this could easily be the best version of Windwalker we’ve had in years.

Conclusion

General vibes are good, but there are still many concerns. I’m personally much more concerned about the UI/Addon changes than I am the class changes, but I’m also an old man who can’t play other classes without using Hekili. I think most players can get used to class changes, either by adjusting or by playing other specs and other classes. I think the design intent is clear and logical, it will just come down to how it works out in practice, which has been a bit of a mixed bag, historically.

Even with just a few days passed, Blizzard has so far seemed receptive to feedback and they’re specifically asking for feedback about the new Apex talents and UI/Addon things, so hopefully this will mean continued iteration and improvement. As always, feel free to voice your opinions in Discord or in Blizzard’s feedback forum posts linked at the top.

Midnight Alpha Talents – First Impressions